advisory firm Archives

AppWizard

December 13, 2025

White House really posted image of Trump as Minecraft character

In December 2025, an image of U.S. President Donald Trump as a Minecraft character circulated on social media, attributed to the official White House X account, with the caption "AMERICA'S MOST PRO-GAMER PRESIDENT." The image was verified as authentic by Snopes, originating from a genuine White House post in response to an article about video game developers and tax credits. This was not the first instance of the White House using video game imagery; a previous post featured Trump as Master Chief from Halo. However, the Minecraft image raised concerns about authenticity due to anomalies in the character model and the intricate design of the American flag pin. AI detection tools indicated a high likelihood that the image was AI-generated, despite the post's authenticity.

Tech Optimizer

September 4, 2025

PostgreSQL 18 eyes analytics boost and distributed future

PostgreSQL 18 is set to be released in September and will enhance analytics capabilities and distributed system architectures. Recent data shows PostgreSQL is the most favored database among professional developers, with 58 percent usage, up from 52 percent last year. The new version will introduce an asynchronous I/O subsystem to expedite read operations from disk, potentially improving performance by 200 to 300 percent in analytical workloads. Additionally, PostgreSQL 18 will upgrade the universally unique identifier (UUID) from version 4 to version 7 to improve database index performance in distributed computing. However, it will not include support for bitemporal queries and Property Graph Queries in SQL syntax.

AppWizard

June 30, 2025

NDreams vet Tamsin O’Luanaigh founds new advisory studio Wise Cat

Tamsin O'Luanaigh, co-founder of a VR specialist, has launched an advisory firm called Wise Cat Strategy to improve working environments for game studios and businesses. She has over 20 years of experience as chief people officer at NDreams and received multiple awards for her contributions to workplace culture in the gaming industry. O'Luanaigh emphasizes the need for clear frameworks in people and culture strategies, noting that many employers struggle with implementing meaningful change. Wise Cat Strategy aims to provide tailored solutions to address the unique challenges faced by game studios as they grow.