The charm meter
The idea was to create a game that everyone could play, my goal was a free Android application, I thought I would have a little income with ads, not even in the best scenario did I imagine more than a hundred thousand downloads, it’s very simple, you just launch two dice, the points are accumulated, you never lose, but it turns out that some win more than you, the total results are public, only the results of the first throw of the day are taken into account for the statistics, there are people who play every day, there are people who seem to always get twelve and there are people who always seem to get two.
Even for me, the inventor, curiosity pushes me to play, very few days have I stopped playing.
Then came the idea of taking the average points per shot to compare with those who started playing later.
Then came the thing about ranks, that is, for a given number of days, who has accumulated the most points.
We have come to totalize by GPS coordinates, that is, someone wants to know what the average is in a city area or fifty meters around him.
The latest version, which we are testing before putting into production, can detect streaks, meaning for example that during fifteen days of a strange October someone in Madagascar always got twelve, of course someone also always got two in a row for twelve days of a strange month of March in Portugal.
The money has begun to come in due to the high demand for the analysis of the results, it is very common for someone to roll their dice and pay to know how their results compare with those of the average of their city and country, in addition to seeing them in a histogram of their personal performance.
Getting a two on a day with a global average of six can be seen as a bad omen, in the same way that getting ten on a day with an average of four can be a good omen.
Looking at the comments, there are people who don’t leave their house until they release something above the average for their country or city.
Insurance companies have shown interest in our data, even those that provide credit risk assessment services, but we have resisted the temptation because we know that only by guaranteeing the confidentiality of their results will our users continue to prefer us despite from the growing competition from other services, especially fortune-telling services that have felt threatened by our simple game.
All subscriptions have ads, it is not in our best interest to take them away from anyone, few people have any idea what a congratulations ad is worth every time you get more than ten or a piece of advice every time you get less than five.
Knowing whether you are optimistic or pessimistic is very important to determine the advertising that is best for you.
I can’t stand the champion, he is the son of one of our programmers, he has played every day since before the first version went into production and due to an error the points he had accumulated when the program was made public were not deleted, I estimate who is more than ninety days ahead of the other players and has an average of ten.
He Is a global celebrity, sometimes it seems to me that he has more money than me, all earned from my game, people greet him with admiration and respect, everyone wants to shake his hand, advertisers compete for him, under a freckled skin full of pimples and behind blue eyes that are not at all cold, there is a being who has accused me of being envious and I have had to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Due to pressure from our clientele we have advanced in less than two years from the simple random number generator that comes with the programming language to quantum entropy generators and we have the obligation to stay updated in all random number generation technologies, and If we consider that our range is from two to twelve, it never ceases to surprise us every time someone accuses us in the courts of some country of being biased, of manipulating the results, or of not guaranteeing the confidentiality of individual results, thank goodness that until now we have won all the trials.
Needless to say, all police forces and prosecutors in all countries believe they have the right to have access to the history of gambling results of the people they are investigating; if they have ever achieved this, it has not been with our help.
Another area in which we have worked hard is in identifying the geographical origin of the plays, since VPNs and equipment hosted in the cloud make it a bit difficult to obtain the real data, but since we are also large customers of the providers of those services We, obtain true data from them because we require it as an essential condition before contracting with them.
An area that we had neglected is our corporate services, any company or organization can obtain the statistics of its employees or members almost at cost with the usual guarantee of confidentiality. I don’t imagine why a political party or a company could care about the outcome of the games of its members or employees, but they pay very well for our services.
It has not been convincingly proven yet, but there are people who allege that in the world championships and the Olympics our statistics supposedly influence the bets, the same happens in wars, more than one country has alleged supposed sovereignty over national results, but already I have said that we have won all our cases in court and except for some momentary service interruptions in some countries, we continue to be the providers of a simple game and the statistics of its results at a global level and we have twice as many users as our nearest competitor.
The father of the freckled world champion did not think It was a good idea to eliminate the restriction of only taking the first throw into account for statistics.
It would be very easy to cheat, he told me, it’s easy to imagine a bunch of crazy people trying to accumulate points and influence the statistics.
He is freckled like his son and has warm blue eyes, there are three of us who suspect that I envy his son, anyway I told him to please think of a way to obtain statistics more frequently than daily, the He responded to me that he is working on trends and projections and that maybe they can be charged. We are partners and we understand each other.
Yesterday was a 6.8 day at a global level but yesterday my country got 4.2, I got 7 today on the first throw but with the next ten throws I lowered my average today to 4.6, which is higher than my historical average of 4.1 but this month, and today is 30, came with an average of 5.1, I think this month I will finish above 5.
I don’t know if that’s good or bad, but I would like, I don’t know why, to have an average of more than six.
Today I have a meeting with the ambassador in my country of a country with a very important tourism industry, I have told him several times that my income depends on the veracity of the statistics of our product but he continues to insist that the statistics of his country can harm their income and that I have to improve them, I’m going to roll the dice and if I get more than eight I’m going to threaten him to make public the recording we made of him when he asked me to alter the results.
Anyway, I like the guy, his little country is an island in the Pacific where the date change occurs, I plan to take my vacation there, I can already imagine myself in a stilt house with air conditioning, high-speed satellite connection and without mosquitoes, tucked in a small pool with the appropriate temperature, celebrating with champagne with my wife on January 1st of next year at 00:05 a.m. with a throw of twelve.
Several public collaboration and messaging platforms include our application, as long as access to users’ biometric, genetic and medical data continues to be restricted, it is the best option to measure the charm or karma as they call it of their clients, it seems that someone with 8 average can buy more cars than someone with an average of 4, and out of compassion it is good to offer insurance and funeral services to people with an average less than 3.
Behind each click on some platforms there are dice that are measuring people’s charm or karma, although the evaluation is different from ours, some require distinguishing even from odd, double numbers, and there are those who assign greater charm or karma to the number seven.
My freckled partner is going to spend the New Year’s holidays in a large European city with many museums, I plan to spend them on a small island in the Pacific, everyone has their preferences and tastes, we both believe that those who cannot imitate us will be envious of us.
Li Tao Po
VABM 20/Jun/2024
https://riistas.wordpress.com/2024/06/20/the-charm-meter/
Download in PDF format
https://acrobat.adobe.com/id/urn:aaid:sc:VA6C2:5eb1df2a-f3e0-49c8-b4d7-33494664b027
https://riistas.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/wp-1718913137255.pdf
This text belongs to “The War of the Bots” which will be published in July.
Author store on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/~/e/B00EZC7SRM/
The War of Humans
Book on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BGBPHLJK/
Demo
https://riistas.files.wordpress.com/2022/09/wp-1664026775507.pdf
The Pity of Bots
Book on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BB51R2BC
Demo
https://riistas.files.wordpress.com/2022/08/wp-1660805214195.pdf
Treaty of the good customs and virtues of the Martians
Book on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09ZGZFMZM
Draft for the friends
https://riistas.files.wordpress.com/2022/05/draftforthefriendstreatyofthegoodcustomsandvirtuesofthemartians.pdf
