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Ghost of Tsushima releases 18 minute State of Play video for the PS4

Unreal Engine 5 Revealed! | Next-Gen Real-Time Demo Running on PlayStation 5

Unreal Engine 5 empowers artists to achieve unprecedented levels of detail and interactivity, and brings these capabilities within practical reach of teams of all sizes through highly productive tools and content libraries.

Join Technical Director of Graphics Brian Karis and Special Projects Art Director Jerome Platteaux (filmed in March 2020) for an in-depth look at "Lumen in the Land of Nanite" - a real-time demonstration running live on PlayStation 5 showcasing two new core technologies that will debut in UE5: Nanite virtualized micropolygon geometry, which frees artists to create as much geometric detail as the eye can see, and Lumen, a fully dynamic global illumination solution that immediately reacts to scene and light changes.

Also present in the demo are next-gen features already available in Unreal Engine 4.25, such as Niagara VFX improvements, Chaos physics and destruction, animation system enhancements, and audio advancements. Unreal Engine 4.25 also includes support for next-gen consoles.

A Secret Look Inside a Chinese Labor Program for Uighurs | Visual Investigations by The New York Times

China is relocating Uighurs and other Muslim minorities to urban areas as part of a contentious labor program. The Times obtained rare footage taken inside one.   

Uyghurs & Other Muslim Minorities Forced into Labor Programs to Work in Chinese Factories

In China, a shocking new exposé has revealed that Chinese authorities are systematically forcing Muslims — mostly Uyghurs and Kazakhs — into labor programs to supply Chinese factories with a cheap and compliant workforce. The New York Times investigation, based on official documents, interviews and visits to the far-western region of Xinjiang, reveals a sweeping program to push poor farmers, villagers and small traders into sometimes months-long training courses before assigning them to low-wage factory work. 

The programs work in tandem with indoctrination camps where an estimated 1 million adults from the Uyghur community are being imprisoned. China claims its labor programs are “vocational training centers” designed to combat extremism and alleviate poverty, while Uyghur activists say they are part of China’s ongoing campaign to strip them of their language and community and to carry out cultural genocide. We speak with Austin Ramzy, a New York Times reporter who co-authored the recent exposé, and Nury Turkel, a Uyghur-American attorney and board chair at the Uyghur Human Rights Project.

What’s important to note that the Uyghurs and Kazakhs have become a minority in their own indigenous lands (where they’ve been for thousands of years & long before china invaded) but they weren’t for most of human history. This has come about due to CCP (Chinese Communist Party) engaging in full scale colonization of the region by importing in Han Chinese by the millions. This is while Uyghurs and other ethnicity’s are not even allowed to flee China but are being forced to undergo the persecution of the CCP 

A recent New York Times exposé on Uyghur slave labor revealed how people were being forced to leave behind careers and business so that the CCP can claim the unlivable pittance of s salary these people have to take is poverty alleviation - just like they have to smile for the camera in public and claim they have freedom while in reality they can’t leave these labor programs.

Facebook still refuses to ban political ads, including false ones

While Google and Twitter have recently taken steps to directly tackle the undermining of elections, the effects of misinformation and election interference, Facebook has recently announced that it will not be taking any such steps of similar measure. 

Google has decided to prevent its services from being used to target specific groups of people for political ads, and Twitter has outright banned political ads on its platform. Facebook has not outlined any similar steps in its recent statement on political ads on the platform, instead it is offering a library of political ads to browse and more user control over the number - and not accuracy or honesty - of the ads they see. 

Facebook’s inaction on this matter has had very real negative practical effects on peoples lives and nations around the world, from the US, UK, EU and elsewhere. One of the most egregious uses of the Facebook platform the company has allowed was for the spreading of rampant xenophobia and misinformation used to motivate the genocide against the Rohingya people in Myanmar. 

Facebook argues it should not be the one regulating political ads but government should, which is something made difficult by the lack of federal standard on the matter in the US. Both  Daniel Kreiss, a journalism professor at the University of North Carolina and  Sam Jeffers, co-founder of Who Targets Me, an advocacy group researching political advertising both agree that it should not be up to any individual company to decide which limits to set on political ads and whether to allow them or not, but instead should be decided by journalists, academics and other forms of accountability.

Image - “Humans drink water” by  Nyszka Lutek

Taiwan’s powerful “Speak Up” Political Ad (with English Subtitles - click CC)

Taiwanese President Tsai's released a video urging Taiwanese citizens to vote during this Saturday(1/11)'s presidential election. The Ad comes at a time when much is at stake for the island nation. Revelations about interference and infiltration by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) among the nations political entities have rocked the nation. 

This was while major protest took place not far away in Hong Kong over the CCP’s attempt to subvert the rights of Hong Kongers through an extradition bill, which would pave the way for the territory to be subjected to violations like the genocide the CCP is committing against the indigenous Uyghur people of East Turkestan, a nation the CCP seized in 1949.Today an estimated 1 to 1.8 million Uyghur people are forcefully held in concentration camps re-labeled by the CCP as “re-education camps”, where they undergo torture, starvation, sexual assault, medical experimentation, organ harvesting, brainwashing and more. A further 1 to 2 million Uyghurs are believed to be held in outright detention centers and prisons, with 500,000 Uyghur minors forcefully held in “boarding schools”. 

Monster Hunter World

Super Mario RPG . SNES25 Tribute

In a previous post, we alluded to the return of the blog (then known as Kilabytes), today, and with this post we can confirm the blog is back one again, but also with a slightly different direction (and branding) to kick off this new decade with.

For one, there’s the name, now going by qilobytes, distinct, succinct, perhaps a little disruptive.

Then there’s the direction - qilobytes is designed for the digital native, covering all digital and tech related topics and issues that are relevant for today and tomorrow’s world. Like the name, the goal is to be sharp, concise and informative throughout. 

General areas of interest you can expect coverage on would be on topics like gaming, tech, surveillance, privacy, climate change, digital art and design - with more to follow in due time.

For now let’s keep the re-introduction brief, I’ll leave you with these following links for where you can find qilobytes around the web -

qilobytes.com

twitch.tv/qilobytes

Monster Hunter World Iceborne launches on PC today!

Monster Hunter - One Punch Rajang