Monthly Archives: January 2021

WYSIWYS

We have a stage where what you see is what you speculate. I agree and I do not deny it, but the numbers (as I have stated over and over again) are wrong. As such, the COVID mess will get a hell of a lot worse this year. We will get governmental people spouting yaba-yaba, yet the stage is there and the damage is soon coming. For this, we merely have to look to the Corona site (at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/), this site has been giving us numbers since the beginning, they are not starting. They report on the numbers given to them and that is where the shoes become too tight for dancing. 

You see, to consider my point of view we can use the Netherlands with 17 million people and the numbers reflect that one in 20 wither had or has the coronavirus. Then we go to number one, the United States where 25% of all global cases  had or has that flu. For them it boils down to roughy 7% of the population. Now consider India where only 10 million in 1,300 million, a mere 10% of America. There is no way that this adds up, it is what I call the left view, if you do not mention it, it might go away, well it does not and it will not.

The problem is that India could fester into a real global problem and the news is silent on that. In all this I mention the infected, not the mortality rate, because that will become a rather worse setting and a much more complex one, as such I merely focus on the infected. 

All this is important, it is important because we get dragged into these lockdowns, and I am not against lockdowns when it serves a purpose. But India is a much larger stage. You see, what nations have a restriction with people from India? In addition to that, when we consider the Dutch epidemiologist Frits Roosendaal who gave us that there is a 40% chance on a false negative. (At https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/12/28/the-lull-of-writing/), at The Lull of writing.

Now, we do not like the word ‘false’ I get that and a false positive is one thing, but a false negative? The infected can travel and infect others and we are left in the dark.

Most governments are seemingly IGNORING this. I get the setting that they want to check whether the findings are supported or not. They might even be set to oppose it, that is fair if there is a valid reason (the Dutch LUMC is on the same quality as John Hopkins, so good luck with that). The setting is ignoring a dangerous situation making things worse. I did find something (at https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0242958), there we are given “The collected evidence has several limitations, including risk of bias issues, high heterogeneity, and concerns about its applicability. Nonetheless, our findings reinforce the need for repeated testing in patients with suspicion of SARS-Cov-2 infection given that up to 54% of COVID-19 patients may have an initial false-negative RT-PCR (very low certainty of evidence)”, and 54% amounts to one in two persons, this is bad, this is really really bad and the media and governments seemingly intentionally ignoring these findings is making matters worse. 

Most nations have ignored the stage to shut down all airports, they happily spread the disease from nation to nation and in this India might be ten times worse than the Mary Mallon (Typhoid Mary) ever was, but do not fear, most of us will get to learn that lesson in 2021.  

We do not need a media that hides things from us, we need one that genuinely informs us and this is the second source I found which was less than a month old, when I started seeking the information, I had access to the original report in 10 minutes, so either I am a lot more intelligent than any media person, or someone is telling them to hide facts, and when exactly was that EVER a good idea?

WYSIWYS – What You See Is What You Speculate. I am not saying it is the greatest setting, but I am doing it based on two academic pieces, two sources of scientific origin, can you do better?

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The contemplation

We all have things to contemplate, for me this all started a while ago, but it got to the forefront yesterday after a call with a friend. We disagree on something and it is not about right or wrong, even if I believe I am right, I see that he in NOT wrong. My setting is data and I have been around it for decades, I have been in specific fields, he has not, but he has a real good grasp of data. So as I made a joke about not forgetting the population of zero for Parler, he dismissed it as zero data groups do not matter, and for a lot it does not, but it actually does.

So how to bring it to the forefront? In this (as a Republican) we can look at the stupid, stupid left and can coin a few phrases. There was the Washington Post ‘Parler, a Platform Favoured by Trump Fans, Struggles for Survival’, my by-line? ‘Rebekah Mercer just got a $23,000,000 tax deductibility option’. USA Today gives us ‘Parler goes dark: Amazon suspends the social platform from its web hosting services’, there is a lot more, but the setting is made, no more Parler and now we get to the zero part. You see, the one thing that President Trump achieved was a larger polarisation, the left thought that they had won, but players like Rebekah Mercer, one the people behind Cambridge Analytica and Parler have settings, they have larger plans. You think that she gives away $23 million without a larger gain somewhere else? It was the nightmare scenario, a unified place for right splinter groups and extremists. You think that people like John Matze will sit still? Uniting right wing splinter groups can be massively profitable, when no one will do business with you, losing 10% on the one who does business with you is still appealing, and splinter groups that cumulatively surpass the 50 million member marker is  still worth the effort.

How does this relate?
Even if Parler is at zero, its members will go somewhere else. There is Telegram, Signal and these people need attention and they will go where they can find it. Even now we see the Financial Times give us ‘WhatsApp fights back as users flee to Signal and Telegram’, and even as we see the quote “Facebook is scrambling to deal with a sudden competitive threat to its messaging platform WhatsApp after a change to its terms of service sparked privacy concerns and prompted users to turn to rivals such as Signal and Telegram in droves” (at https://www.ft.com/content/ee1b716d-4ed2-4b26-8da1-40c98db7b9b6), the stupid stupid left just doesn’t learn, presenting that a thing is doesn’t make it so, and the setting that the media cannot be trusted is out there in big letters. So when I say that Parler: n=0 is important. These people find other means and even as not all will go over, and not all will go to the same solution, if Parler had 100,000 voices, we need to find where at least 80,000 went, we need to tag and identify the extremists, I reckon the US Capitol setting made that clear. 

In this we could consider the work of Marina Soley-Bori ‘Dealing with missing data: Key assumptions and methods for applied analysis’, it was written in 2013, but it is quite good and we start with the premise “the precision of confidence intervals is harmed, statistical power weakens and the parameter estimates may be biased. Appropriately dealing with missing can be challenging as it requires a careful examination of the data to identify the type and pattern of missingness, and also a clear understanding of how the different imputation methods work”, it is a decent starting point. In this stage, the report gives us a group NMAR (Not missing at random) that is the stage we have and it is an important stage. In the report she quotes Allison, 2001 “They lead to an underestimation of standard errors and, thus, overestimation of test statistics. The main reason is that the imputed values are completely determined by a model applied to the observed data, in other words, they contain no error”, the NMAR group is largely ignored and we can accept that in this work, yet in real life, the QAnon group and the Parler users are a larger stage and those who do not flee to 4Chen are in the wind and that is where we do not want them to be, so pushing these people to the dark-web was a silly move. Perhaps some might notice that I bolded one word, one word made the difference. Bias is the setting in missing values that is the dangerous one, most who know what they do see that, they tend to call it ‘arbitrary decisions’ but it remains a form of (whether good or not), of bias and that is where the train goes of the rails (without it being a maglev). The stage to find the NMAR is becoming increasingly important. It is not merely those that move there, it is the group they drag along that becomes a lot larger. You see, they might only gain the interest of an additional 2%, on a stage of 50,000,000 extremists, that is one million votes, that much changes an election, the silly democrats making presentations should have considered that in a much earlier stage. Yes, we see that pornhub can no longer use credit cards, but as these so called hypocrites will still cater to child labor and implied slavery, how much was gained? Especially as one stage was founded on consenting adults, the other was not. We see one side of the story, and the left keeps on hiding the other side, that does not mean that the other side does not exist. The democrats have an ‘out-of-sight-out-of-mind’ approach, that is unless they get hit directly, then they become vindictive. That was never a stage that would ever work, but they will learn at some point. The problem is not their mindset, it is their inability to follow through and people like Rebekah Mercer have the goods to unify one side and get rich in the process. All whilst players like Google pull up their nose at a $25,000,000 bill for a 60% share, they say that they can solve it themselves (they wish), and when they rely on ‘EVERYONE LOVES GOOGLE TV’, all whilst the consumer, when the $65 bill is due and the people see their budget melt away, do you still believe that everyone stays happy and loving? So when I make my solution public domain, do you think that there will be zero cease and desist messages? 

In this the stage is rather large, the splintered right have moved somewhere else and now the larger stage cannot be predicted, when the Parler group goes dark-web, the stage changes even further and earlier some had days to prepare, now hours, how is that a better stage? 

There is no population zero, unless they are all dead they merely vacated somewhere else and that somewhere else is the problem. This population is not missing at random, they are shunning the media and as we are given ‘An Absurdly Basic Bug Let Anyone Grab All of Parler’s Data’ by Wired (at https://www.wired.com/story/parler-hack-data-public-posts-images-video/) a mere 11 hours ago, do you think that it will be that easy, a person like Rebekah Mercer learned from Cambridge Analytica, was at a bug or an open backdoor? So when we see “The truth was far simpler: Parler lacked the most basic security measures that would have prevented the automated scraping of the site’s data. It even ordered its posts by number in the site’s URLs, so that anyone could have easily, programmatically downloaded the site’s millions of posts”, anyone thinking that things where that simple are out of their mind, this is a setting where some had the lowdown on millions, and as Wired gives us “I wouldn’t even call it a rookie mistake because, as a professional, you would never write something like this”, they touch on the stage that matters, when someone has the lowdown on a group of millions of people and they can unite them, do you think that no one looked at something out there for 2 years? Do you think that this is merely seen 11 hours ago (plus a few weeks to write the article), this issue has been out for a while and now that these people go to other means and other voices (the same voices in other accounts), the problem becomes a lot larger and more real. The people of Parler did not stop being an issue as Parler has population zero, now the people who needed to keep informed need to go back to square one and find them first. So how silly was the move we see now?

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Before life was, I was

Yup, there is the ego, floating over your head, look to the right, no, your other right, look about 43.8 degree higher (if you are outside) take the second star to the right, yup, there I am. So as you might have guessed, it is time to talk about god-games and whatever I consider here, is free to use in any Sony exclusive game.

To see this, we need to go back to the foundation of god-games. My introduction to this type was in the 80’s when Little Computer People came to the CBM64. We all see the age of Peter Molyneux as the stage of the ‘true’ god games, but it is out in the open to accept or reject that notion. And in all this, most of us might remember the game Black and White. It was a more god game than most god games and even the guy upstairs agrees, right Hades? 

Yet what if we create a game where it is merely part of the game, not the game itself. For example, if we set to an example most of us remember ‘Assassins Creed Brotherhood’, consider that the game remains the control of Ezio Auditore, yet the god side of it is that we can to some degree control the actions of NPC’s. An example, Ezio is running through town, and that is fine, but in the god side we unleash rain on the area and as a result all the courtesans hide inside their houses. Ezio loses an ability to his side. This is a crude version. 

So if we use the divine powers in Black and White, it is a direct option, what if it becomes indirect? Like drawing a line in the sand, the ants will find another path, but that is as clear an option as it comes. So what happens when the game is about indirect channelling and it becomes about indirect guidance. Not as a setting in the game, but as a setting towards the game? So like Batman fights his opponents in Arkham knight, we influence the brutality of those around him, we set the premise of depression of the victims around him, it changes the game, it changes his focus, whilst the gamer does not see a change in the player, the stage we see in detective mode of Batman and we see the criminals are at some point terrified, Batman instilled this, but what happens when we set a secondary stage that affects the persons in the area, but Batman cannot directly influence that. That stage is influenced by the the NPC’s, not like the stupid wave like behaviour we saw in AC Unity again and again, but a sort of herd like behaviour in NPC’s, it changes the entire setting of the playable area and we forgot about that, thee gamer (and the developer was so focussed on Ezio Auditore, Batman, Edward Kenway, they forgot to set the influence stage on the population when Batman, Poison Ivy, or Vaas comes into the level. Yes, there was some attempt (AC Unity) the the fear was where we see street run away in front of you was a failed attempt at this. A stage where we can only influence a second tier (up to a point), is something we have never faced. In this I grab back to the Black and White part. Until we set the premise where an evangelist is created by their own choice, the influence is limited. So we can directly interfere in the game (buildings, infrastructure), yet the NPC influence is only limited. Games like Spore, Black and White set the action as direct. I want to change that, give a much larger challenge where the person having the finger needs to think where he draws the line for the ants.

It is a speculative setting, but that is all that I can offer in a conceptual setting. It is conceptual, because it has never been done before and evolution of games happens in a stage where things are new and never done before, there was always the first one. And that is what we are aiming for, something never done in gaming before, upgrading the level of gameplay down the line, and that was all that gamers want, a new level of play, we all want that, because sooner rather than later more of the same becomes tiring. And for the most, the sandbox games has left the NPC part of their game to too much of a limiting factor. So we need to change that side of things if only to make sandbox games more realistic and more believable.

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Naughty or not?

That is the setting I am confronted with at 00:30. I got through the Dutch news articles and I stumbled upon a Belgium article, there we see (at https://nos.nl/artikel/2363911-te-sexy-als-psycholoog-vlaamse-kaat-bollen-levert-na-reprimande-titel-in.html) ‘’Too sexy’ as psychiatrist, Flemish Kaat Bollen hands her title after reprimand’. This actually woke me up, and I took a little time to read the article. She is a psychiatrist and a sexologist, she was part of an erotic movie and she directed a female friendly porn (apparently called a porna), I was a little up in the air, doesn’t a person have a right to a private life and she is as clearly stated a sexologist, so she basically practices what she preaches, its is not too weird as I see it. I myself am at times wondering whether sexology is a specialisation in psychiatry, or sociology, it might be both, yet the situation was created where a peer complained to the Belgium commission of psychiatrists. 

In this I am not sure where I stand, but the fact that it resulted in her losing her credentials is a bit much, but it might just be me.

So guess what, let’s take this to both sides, how about me putting out to the public (with images) the setting of all these male psychiatrists that have been committing adultery. I reckon I would be able to come up with about a dozen cases at the very least, and they can hand in their titles as well. If we accept moet ze rekening houden met het feit dat haar gedrag de beroepsgroep kan schaden” (she must accept that her behaviour could hurt the professional group). OK, if we accept that, than those who are balancing another woman’s vagina on their penis (as in not the vagina of their wives), should be in that same predicament. It is a clear sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander situation, and it will not be some accusation, we will include graphics so that we can check with the spouses it that is her, or is it adultery? And as the adulterous mind, is an equal danger to that professional group, they can hand in their degrees as well, fair is fair.

So is my approach naughty or not?
Yup, I am always ready to hold my actions to account and as the article clearly gives us “De Vlaamse minister Somers voor Gelijke Behandeling wil kijken wat hij tegen de houding van de commissie kan doen. “Dit is schade toebrengen aan wat vrouwen wel of niet mogen doen of dragen in hun vrije tijd.”” (Belgium minister Somers for equal treatment wants to look if he can oppose the stand of the Commission “This is damaging on what women can and cannot do in their free time”), as such I will help out both by giving a little visibility on what some psychiatrists are able to do in their marital position, as I see it, fair is fair. 

I wonder how fast some psychiatrists will set the complaint on the privacy of their needs, yup two measurements and I am happy that if they ignore one side, I can ignore the other side. I am just that frisky today, it sucks to be them at present (no actual sucking is involved).

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The path overlooked

Yes, we all overlook paths, options of choice, you, me, we all do it. It has nothing to do with intent. Most of the time we forgot that the option was there. Yet this time around it becomes an essential part, you see 2021 will offer a larger stage, a stage where Microsoft has an advantage (Bethesda, Bioware, EA), they might be in denial and some will make carefully phrased denials or reconsiderations with last November “PS5 will still get Bethesda games — but they’ll be ‘first or better’ on Xbox”, now, the first part is fine, Microsoft paid $7,500,000,000 for that privilege, it is the ‘or better’ part that I have a problem with, as such I set out and designed (conceptual design) of a new RPG to be used freely by Sony in previous blogs, but that is not enough. There is every indication that Mass Effect might not make it to PS5 either and that too is fair, it is a Microsoft stage and I worry, because Mass Effect remastered will contain Mass Effect 2, which is pretty much one of the best games in history, anyone denying that is nuts. So I need to have to be creative and set the stage for Sony too. Now, Sony has its own stage of exclusives and they are way good, but to set the stage that an independent software house can freely use for a PS5 exclusive is not the worst idea, I am a writer, not a game programmer. Intelligence and business intelligence yes, games no, I am a simple guy (to some extent). 

As such I started to work and after half a dozen ideas (that looked too much like something that existed already), and after I had set the stage of a completely redesigned Murder on the Zinderneuf (optionally now with a different title) and a completely new approach to Seven Cities of Gold, I found the setting I forgot about (all whilst I also made an approach towards Fallout Shelter, yet not the same game, but now set on a space station called Babylon 5) I found the solution in this in an approach taking a coin from the TV series Smallville. Yet this is not a game about Superman, Superboy or Tom Welling. Consider a city, I would say Any city and perhaps that is apt, you see there will be 4 towns, the size of Lancaster, PA. In these towns (you get one randomly assigned at the start of the game). We have a town with 12,000-18,000 NPC’s, we will also have events that impact the town (not unlike the TV series Haven), but not the same, anyhow, you start as a boy (or girl) as a sophomore and you will have abilities and there you can make a directional choice. But here the complication starts, the powers you have have limitations, they drain after use and take almost a full day to recharge, yet as you use a power, you make the power stronger and as such it can be used faster (up to 3 times a day) and as you use one power new options will evolve. 

SO you need to be wise in its use and also consider the option of being clever and find another solution. This will not make it easy, but that is the challenge, get to the end of high school and win all challenges. We have seen a partial setting in Buffy, Angel and Smallville, but no one considered to make a game out of it. 

So why will it work?
I believe it will work as the game maker needs to evolve the NPC part of the game way beyond Ubisoft ever achieved to do so. You need to keep track of up to 18,000 people and their family, if one person will not make it, it will affect at least a dozen people and as you fail to save people, there is a chance that the police will start to investigate you as an optional criminal. 

It sets a new stage where you need to plan your steps ahead, it is no longer fly by the seat of your pants, it becomes fly by wire and you are the Boeing 737, as far as I can tell, it has never been done before and if the makers pulls it off, it is the setting for an almost legendary achievement. And let’s face it, these series have had its settings of antagonists, in this we get the setting that we make some of these antagonists heroes. Some of them have been unfortunately in that regard.  A nice example is Sandman (Spiderman), Alicia Baker (Smallville), Amy Madison (Buffy), Sylar (Heroes), the list goes on and on and no one considered to set this approach of abilities in another frame and not merely there, there are a few more settings. 

Why this path?
Well, we can have another run through the story games like there are so many, but games like Spiderman (PS4, PS5) are successful, not merely because they are perfect, but because they offer choice, we get to go into the game in whatever direction we want to take it. We know that at times we need to follow the main story, but the large stage of freedom is why these games are so adored and replayed. We never considered to take that stage and evolve it. Yet we must also see the path of originality, which is why I merely gave examples. I saw ‘inFAMOUS Second Son’ as an average game, not because of the start, the start is pretty fantastic, a smoke ability? The issue becomes that the game based in Seattle becomes linear way too soon, so as you mark of all the missions per district, as you clean up each segment, you end up with enough power-points to immediately upgrade whatever power you unlock, the stage of choice is great, but always per district and always linear, that is why it is not a great game, but a good game, and the concrete power at the end is not used to the larger stage. Laser power is too powerful. All stages of near hits, but still an original game. A 90%+ game that ended being a mere 80% game, such a shame, such a waste. In my mind I am setting  stage that avoids that, and a stage where the town becomes the sandbox and the NPC’s are the triggers that starts missions (optionally puzzle inclined), and as I do this, I am wondering what happens when we remaster Soul Reaver to a new stage, enlarged, interacted and also take away the weakness the first one had (repetitive and a little shallow). Sony has great IP, I wonder who was sitting and considering what they hd only to fall into the same trap Microsoft is in (it needs to be new, it needs to be cool), and all that time, Sony has access to IP 20 years old that was regarded as an original game. It needs work, no one denies that, but it is something Microsoft does not have, as such we need to consider it, because the more exclusive games, the less chance Microsoft has and we need to acknowledge that the Bethesda deal gives them an advantage, not enough, but why give them that much leeway in the first place?

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Pirates of a feather

For me this is a little new ground, until recently I was not aware of the ability to speak ‘Parler’, as I see it, they refined it from Parley, which comes from the French ‘Parler’ meaning ‘to speak’. The event was set to “a discussion or conference, especially one designed to end an argument or hostilities between two groups of people”, as such I was aware of the term, but not the setting that President Trump uses. CNN (at https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/15/media/rebekah-mercer-parler/index.html) gave us a little while ago ‘Meet Rebekah Mercer, the deep-pocketed co-founder of Parler, a controversial conservative social network’, and the co-founder to Cambridge Analytica and a few others, so when I saw the Cambridge link, I wondered what data Parler is capturing. This is added in other ways too, but let’s keep to the CNN story for now. And when the article start with the quote “John and I started Parler to provide a neutral platform for free speech, as our founders intended, and also to create a social media environment that would protect data privacy”, all whilst another source gives us “journalists and users have criticised the service for content policies that are more restrictive than the company portrays and sometimes more restrictive than those of its competitors” (source: Washington Post July 2020), and it basically goes from bad to worse. That is given with the quote “The ever increasing tyranny and hubris of our tech overlords demands that someone lead the fight against data mining, and for the protection of free speech online. That someone is Parler, a beacon to all who value their liberty, free speech, and personal privacy.”” And let not forget that this comes from the co-founder of Cambridge Analytica. I still wonder what Parler was capturing, especially with the restrictive rules in place. And if these restrictions were limited to the stage of “But Parler is quickly discovering the limits of free expression. On June 30, Matze used Parler to explain its house rules, apparently frustrated with some of Parler’s new users testing the limits of its free-expression motto by posting pornographic images and obscenities”, I believe that this is up for debate. So even as I take notice of “Wernick wrote a Fox News opinion piece in support of Parler this month, saying Twitter and Facebook are using “technology intended to liberate, instead to subjugate”, I wonder what we will learn when we make a cross section of those on Parler AND on 4Chan, I even wonder if the FBI is not already on this. You see, there is a problem with ‘philanthropists’, the true philanthropist not, but the stage we see “Robert Mercer, who helped oversee Renaissance Technologies hedge fund, and his wife Diane, donated more than $23 million to groups that backed conservative candidates, according to a tally by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics”, in light of Cambridge Analytica, I am still in the personal opinion, that these people would not set $23,000,000 out in the open, unless they can bank at least double that, and with them owning Renaissance Technologies hedge fund, I feel certain I am right. The power of $110,000,000,000 reaches far and too many want scraps from that table of plenty. In this I wonder if Parler is a way to identify and unify the scattered right, it is not a bad plan, if they succeed they have the means to oppose the Democratic side of things to a much larger extent than anyone is willing to give them credit for.

Even as the Wall Street Journal (at https://www.wsj.com/articles/parler-backed-by-mercer-family-makes-play-for-conservatives-mad-at-facebook-twitter-11605382430) gives us ‘Parler Makes Play for Conservatives Mad at Facebook, Twitter’, I believe this goes deeper. Even as the blinker are attached with “After The Wall Street Journal reported on the Mercers’ ties with Parler, Chief Executive John Matze confirmed that Ms. Mercer was the lead investor in the company at its outset and said that her backing was dependent on the platform allowing users to control what they see”, the seting given to us in the beginning, gives us a different tory, and when ‘allowing users to control what they see’ falls away, the one important part remains is identity, when you look in the past, no one has tried to unify the extreme right, there is every chance that the Mercer family see the power and the massive amount of gains that this optionally brings. It took me less than a day to figure out the parts that the media was so eager not to mention, I wonder who else is on tht train, actually, I believe that they all are, even big tech. I expect that they too want the bucket of gold at the and of that nightmare rainbow, and Mercer might have gotten way more than double the investment on that 23 million dollar train, if he unites the right wing and far right wing, the democrats have much to be worried about, they have been used to a scattered opponent in the last 25 years, a unified one is an opponent that they haven’t faced before. And as I see it, the Mercer family is at the speculated centre of all that. 

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What is a weasel?

Well, a ‘weasel’ that imply deception and irresponsibility include: the noun form, referring to a sneaky, untrustworthy, or insincere person. Yet this is not complete, the words person and company are interchangeable. That is the feeling I see at present (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55597840), they label themselves with “It comes amid a Big Tech purge of the online platforms used by Mr Trump and his supporters”, and it comes now AFTER congress ratified the win of president elect Biden, AFTER the stage and settings that American endured for years. The BBC is fair enough to give us “Some lawmakers and celebrities have been calling for years on Twitter to ban Mr Trump altogether. Former First Lady Michelle Obama tweeted on Thursday that the Silicon Valley giants should stop enabling Mr Trump’s “monstrous behaviour” and permanently expel him” we are seeing the price of enabling and facilitation and the people are catching on, it is a bad day for Facebook and Twitter altogether. For years they facilitate and there will be a price down the lane, they will pay it because they see it as an essential price for doing business. Yet is that enough?

The BBC gives a quote that is out there is it is debatable with “as mere mortal, repeatedly spreading disinformation, fake news and inciting violence will get you thrown off mainstream social media platforms”, you see what constitutes ‘repeatedly spreading disinformation’ and when exactly does it become disinformation? It is a serious question because it optionally shows the initial inactions of big-tech, the message that President Trump gave on ‘landslide victory’ is one, his views and his statements on ‘black lives matter’ is another. To see this we need to take you back to July 2020, there we see “The US president tweeted on Wednesday about New York City’s decision to paint “Black Lives Matter” on Fifth Avenue, calling it “a symbol of hate””, what clear evidence is there to call ‘black lives matter’ a symbol of hate? All whilst the people behind it state clearly “builds power to bring justice, healing, and freedom to Black people across the globe”, we might agree, we might disagree, we might not care, but it clearly is not set as a symbol of hate, and that is merely one of many examples and big-tech did not act, only after the next guy is ratified  do we see “after close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account”, as such I ask you, what is a weasel?

Those who follow my blog know I am not anti big-tech, I am not against Google, Apple, Amazon or Facebook, but that does not mean I will not hold them to account when the time is there. And in this case, after close to 4 years of facilitating it is time to hold them to account. In this, I do have a sense of humour and state that I am against discrimination and Microsoft devices, so there! 

In this I wonder if these weasels will act on a global scale as ABC gives us ‘Victorian Liberal MP Bernie Finn posts Trump election conspiracy theories to Facebook’, we need to accept the freedom of expression, but I wonder how much freedom is in jeopardy when elected officials are spouting conspiracy theories, especially on elections that they seemingly have a lack of knowledge of. 

And locally ABC covered their ass by also giving us “The ABC is not suggesting Mr Finn supported the violence or rioting at the Capitol”, consider that when the power players in this world start to wield actions based on facilitation and return on that investment, in that premise consider personally how much facilitation would happen towards you personally and when you realise that you do not matter, what will facilitation cost you?

I wonder if you tallied that part of the equation yet, if not you have some work to do.

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Filed under Law, Media, Politics

Choice, can you choose?

Yes, we have that. Can we choose, can we not? It is not really our fault, until there was streaming we had it all (to some degree) and now, in the streaming universe, can we actually make that decision? Netflix, Disney Plus, Apple TV, Google TV, Sony Core, Canal Plus, HBO, Stan, if we chose them all, we are looking at around $100 per month, the bulk of all people cannot afford that, so they must chose. In that setting it pretty much sets the global population to Netflix and/or Disney Plus. That was before the price hike, there is every indication that we alternate the subscription or choose one, optionally two out of the eight. In all this Google TV is the odd duck,. It is a pricey $65 a month, making it immediately unaffordable for a lot of people at present, yet for that price you get 65 channels including CNN, ESPN and Nickelodeon. It basically becomes a global contender to Canal Plus and that is not all. If Google takes the quick road as Sky Channel did around 1989 in the Netherlands, they could get a much better solution. The Dutch (read: Rotterdam) were all charged via their energy bill but for a mere $5 a month, but that gave the people 12 channels overnight, and when you hand the solution over to a million subscribers you have wiggle space. Yet in that setting where will Netflix, Disney Plus and the others fall? It could change streaming overnight and the partnership that Google TV has with Sony implies that Google TV will be in too many houses with a Sony TV soon enough. So as 2021 will shake the streaming industry to its foundation, I wonder what will happen to Netflix at that point as it has invested well over $100 billion in its services. This is by no setting the end of Netflix, it’s pricing is affordable as long as there is one and Netflix does have a lot more, but what happens when Disney Strikes a deal with Google TV as well? That is a setting that Netflix is not ready for and they do not have the capital to change the venue as they currently have it. 

I cannot give you answers, I d not have any, but there is clarity that there will be a larger first strike streaming war, and as I see it, Stan does not have much of a chance to survive it, Canal Plus will take a massive hit as well, they have the benefit that they are cheaper, but only half the amount of channels, when they add the 5 movie channels the price is almost even. Yes, I reckon that 2021 will be a slaughterfest on streaming players and there is no real winner in sight, or perhaps better stated, there are too many unknown variables for me at present too make a definite conclusion, but when we see that the largest part of 300 million Americans cannot meet their payments, add to that 700 million Europeans, 68 million Brits and 1 billion Indians, we can safely assume that there will be a slaughterfest, with Netflix and Disney Plus being the most likely survivors, but this is set on shaky grounds, there is a lot that can happen, but the union of Google TV and Sony Core gives us the stage that there will be wounded all over this battlefield, and as I see it, a stage with original materials is needed, for me it means that someone might take a liking to 2 movies, and optionally 2 TV series as well, for me it does not matter, I am focussed on my 5G IP. Yet I reckon that even there there will be streaming intersections on nearly every level and as such Google TV has the option to have a cheap solution for those who cannot afford the full price, but that comes with advertisements. An affordable streaming stage with advertisements, a stage where the value of a player like Google could optionally skyrocket, but to what level remains a mystery for now. 

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Filed under Media, Science

Mapping insanity

OK, this is a weird one, and it could even apply to me. I was day dreaming a moment ago, and it is not one I had ever before. First let set the situation, in this setting I was acting, my co-players were Matt Damon and Arnold Vosloo, the director was Ridley Scott. I was given very direct orders, I had to yank Matt’s chains as much as possible. In one setting I was teaching  Matt’s character South African, I told him to replace ‘th’ with double f, and asked him to speak ‘When I was at school I thought a lot’, we get ‘When I was at school I fought a lot’ and heaven behold Arnold Vosloo loses his cool and laughs out loud, Matt’s character has a fit, a loud one, then it was Arnold’s turn. He makes mention on the daily events and I hear that Elon Must will be visiting the Prime Minister of New Zealand. I say “that makes no sense, oh, perhaps he is trying to buy the competitor, there are rumours that the New Zealand party has come up with a cheaper electrical car, $NZ 20,000, which is about $15,000. This might be making Elon Musk Nervous”, ‘really?’ Matt’s Character says. My response is “Yep, it amounts to $10,000 for the car and $5,000 for the extension cord”, more laughter except from Matt. 

Yet the reality is different. The story is about a shuttle that is set on a long trajectory because of a defect, it will take the shuttle another 5 months to get back to earth orbit, 3 months have already passed, and as we see into the shuttle, that has no flickering lights, but part of the shuttle is damaged we see Matt Damon in his chair, and when the camera turns to us, we see to dead bodies, Vosloo’s and my character are dead and Matt is dealing with isolation and a lack of resources, we see that this is a movie about insanity through isolation, we were the window dressing, Matt is there to show just how insane a man can come through isolation in a place where you cannot move to conserve oxygen, left with two dead co workers for month and the setting of a malfunctioning shuttle. All whilst the oxygen supply is not completely kosher. 

It is a psychological movie and I saw part of what could be an interesting journey into the mind of an Astronaut who lost it completely all whilst he is yet to learn that the DOD did this to test the Astronaut because of what is about to come and as we see the end titles, we see a much larger shuttle, with the cockpit looking just like the delusions that Matt’s character faced.

Well, that is it for now, anyway it is less upsetting than the actions of a US President who shall presently not be named (to make the accusation deniable).

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Filed under movies

Tokyo Marketing

It is 05:00, and I saw a tweet that woke me up, there was 5 minutes before the new Bravia video, and in light of the PS5 I kept my interest as I have no 4K abilities at present. So as I started to look I was confronted by both torture and delight, but which is which?

You see, I look at matters differently from most others and the first 4 minutes were almost disheartening. Now, it is important to understand that I bear no ill will to any Sony employee, this is not an attack on them, it is not an attack on Sony, it is the setting of perceived presentation and that needs to be in the centre of all of this. 

It starts with an introduction by Kazuo Kii, he speaks English, but every time he does so, it seems like he is reading a script, talking at you, not to you (unintentionally). I wonder if he would have been better off talking to us in Japanese. That painful experience only takes minutes, but it is painful and it is not fair on Kazuo Kii, especially when we consider he is the head of Sony TV, but it is only a short time and then we are given to who gives us the goods on Bravia XR, and the explanation is good, it is amazing and it is part of something much bigger, as such I was given insight into something I never expected, I am looking for a new 4K TV so that in time I can enjoy gaming in 4K, what I got is insight into a new system that does not maximises gaming and movie watching, but a TV that maximises viewing in the way IMAX does, something I never saw coming and as Motoi a true marketeer gives us by talking to us and clearly explains the parts we go from initial a little unsettling to an overwhelming presentation making us hope that we can afford the biggest and the best, which is not likely for a lot of us, so when it is time for Inoue, the engineer to come on the screen, who gives us his the technical side, he does so clearly in a genuine tone and explains Bravia XR to us, he might give it to us in Japanese, but the subtitles give us the English part and his genuine tone make us care, we always care about out TV, there is lose to zero exception to that. I have had a Sony TV since 1985 and I never regretted it. Yet there is more and it is not merely about Sony, the fact that it comes with Google TV implies a larger stage, a stage I will not comment on, but there is a larger interaction with IoT, I am not certain that we are ready of all of it, but the TV gives us a desire to have it. When it is time for the designer Yokota to come, we see that Sony is not messing around, this TV advancement is not iteration, it is innovation and it puts them ahead of all others for some time to come, not merely for the PS5, the IMAX viewing side of it all will blow movie lovers away, it will come with a need to get the movies you love on 4K, Sony achieved greatness today, but it came with a few little hitches and there I wonder if the hitches were intentional or not, because one part enhances the other, and they all are enhanced by Bravia Core, a streaming content option that gives the viewer more than w expected and as they seemingly offer movies that are not new, the fact that we get to see the maximum of streaming through Purestream, yet I feel certain that this will also create congestion up the wazoo all over the globe for the next 3 years. Consider 100,000 people watching IMAX enhanced streaming service all whilst I see daily congestion before they are out in the open. Yet even as I realise that, I still want it, I want it badly. A setting I haven’t felt for some time, but this is innovation and we all love true innovation and I reckon that there are plenty of people who want it too, with or without Google TV. 

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Filed under Gaming, IT, Science