Survivor ideas

Apparently Survivor season 50 will be all about fan choices.

As a fan of the American Survivor (much less so of the Dutch Expedition Robinson), I have some ideas on how to improve the program, for the most part based on what happened in the most recent season, number 47. I also recently watched Survivor: Cambodia — Second Chance (season 31).

I have two main thoughts on how to make Survivor better, and then a few smaller ones.

The first one: like with season 47 start with 3 tribes. Starting with 2 and then go to 3 like in season 31 makes for a tribe that is way behind in everything, which is definitely no fun to wacht. With season 47, the 3 tribes worked really well, probably for a large part because they were all competitive. A single tribe losing everything just sucks.

In season 47, there was no tribe switch-up before the merge. I'm thinking this is something you want most of the time, especially with returning players. In that case, I would want to go to two tribes at 14 players. So 7 players per tribe. With the 3-tribe start that means either after the fourth episode, or after the third episode where in that episode, there's two tribal councils.

In the first case, the options are 6-6-2, 6-4-4, 6-5-3 or 5-5-4 for the three different tribes. If the third episode has a double elimination (from two different tribes) the options are 6-5-3, 6-4-4- or 5-5-4.

I'd make the merge at 14. This means two tribes of seven. And then make sure it's not possible for any of the original three tribes to have a majority on one of of the two new tribes. So the original tribes that have 5 or 6 members, they pick a buff out of a bag containing 6. So no more than 3 members of an old tribe can be members of a new tribe. For tribes of 3 or 4, you pick out of 4 buffs, and for tribes of 1 or 2, it's whatever remains. So that means either of the new tribes is 3-1-3 or 3-2-2, so none of the original tribes has the majority on one of the new tribes, so inter-tribe cooperation is unavoidable, adding the drama we love so much, reducing the randomness that we don't like but is sometimes necessary.

I think it's useful to have two challenges before the first vote to make sure people have good information to vote on. So have a marooning challenge immediately and then an immunity challenge later in the episode. This way, failing challenge performance will be clearer.

A new advantage: the tie breaker. Use it at a challenge, or at a tribal council vote.

posted 2025-02-25

→ De Nederlandse overheid is gevaarlijk afhankelijk van buitenlandse clouddiensten, constateert de Rekenkamer

In de NRC:

De rijksoverheid is gevaarlijk afhankelijk geworden van buitenlandse cloudaanbieders. Een fors percentage van de data van ministeries staat inmiddels op servers van vooral Amerikaanse bedrijven. Daarmee heeft het Rijk Nederland onnodig kwetsbaar gemaakt, constateert de Rekenkamer in een uiterst kritisch rapport.

In mijn tijd als ambtenaar bij Logius ergerde ik me er groen en geel aan dat allerlei dingen "de cloud" ingerommeld werden. "Tja, Microsoft heeft nu eenmaal Office 365, dus daar moeten we dan maar in meegaan." Zonder na te denken over wat het betekent dat ALLE documenten van de rijksoverheid zich dan buiten de directe controle van diezelfde overheid bevinden.

Dit terwijl vier ministeries elk een "overheidsdatacenter" (ODC) exploiteren (eigenlijk steeds twee, er is ook altijd een backup) waar dit soort dingen ook prima terecht kunnen.

Het onderzoek van de rekenkamer staat hier.

Permalink - posted 2025-01-16