Monthly Archives: May 2022

The rock on the road

This is not entirely new. I wrote about it in ‘The Ai setting’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/08/16/the-ai-setting/), it was back in 2020. Yet I did not put everything there. Merely the outline. You see, the people need to realise two things. The first is that even as the Amazon Luna and the Google Stadia are seen as consoles. They are not. It is a new stage of gaming, it is a new dimension of gaming and they are fitted for very different games. To give a comparison, consider Horizon: Forbidden West. An excellent game, a near perfect game. Now consider that the Stadia and the Luna would allow that game, but with the ENTIRE continental United States as a map, boggles the mind, does it not? That map still needs to be filled, so it would be an achievement of well beyond titanic proportions. That is the stage we are about to see. That is the fear Microsoft has, because it cannot comply with that level of gaming, it goes beyond what they and the companies they buy are capable of. Did you think I was kidding that I have a setting that allows for 50,000,000 more consoles to be bought? But it is not about that, it is about EA and the Mass Effect stage. I Vought it, just like many more. The music was overwhelming, the stage was well beyond nice and after that the disappointment set it. It was a decent enough story, but consider the screen below. It is the first view we get of the Nexus and consider ‘all’ what you saw, that does it? 

Mass Effect™: Andromeda_20220507124243

There was a whole dimension of gaming overlooked. A whole range of gaming ignored and stepped away from. What could have been one for the ages became mediocre. What could have been a 90%+ game ended up being a mediocre 71% rating. 

The New stage
From the image we get three new stages. fabricators, initiators, launchers and replicators. The fabricators make elementals (like titanium and steel sheets and pipes). The initiators create more advanced materials like wiring, solar panels and a few other things. The replicators create industrial and scientific materials for equipment. They all need materials to work and the launchers create robots that facilitate. Three levels. Level one drones can do the simple stuff, the second level drones have also acquired the wiring and panelling stage and the third level can command level 2 and one drones in groups of 10 or 25. Now consider that image again. Miles to overcome. So whilst you have missions, that part almost flies itself, as you find more materials more can grow and the nexus will enable a lot more. 

A stage that was out in the open and it was neglected. It also gives a larger stage of what equipment and what scientific information becomes available, it was all wiped under the carpet.

Now we see the worlds Eos and Voeld, places where materials can be found (and in other places too) but by adding two unique materials (like Quartz on Voeld) we see a staggered increase, we see a much larger game unfold.

How to get there
I still believe that relaunching Mass Effect Andromeda with the added stuff, with the altered stuff and with the new stuff is the way to go. There is a lot of good in MEA, and a lot more could be added. Not finding the memories, they are a joke (and a waste of time) yet having them on the Nexus makes sense. How are we in a stage where copying games, doing the same thing makes us better? The streaming consoles are about getting farther, about going the distance plus and then we can have a lot more oft he same. It is not a flaw in your PS5, it is not a flaw in whatever console you chose, it is because Streamers can go further, it is a new generation because that is what they were made for, to set a new stage and when full 5G comes out over the next few years you could be seeing this, but only if Google and Amazon take the baton and push harder, because they can. So when you see a rock on the road, will you trivialise it, will you ignore it or will you see that you missed something?

And it is time you realise this. 

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT, Science

Retail 101

One of the oldest rules of retail 101 is that you buy cheap and sell as high as possible, that is how you create profit. Add to that the simple rule that you spend less than you earn and that will make you rich on the side. These rules are not new, they were old when the crusades started (ca.1095). 

So when the BBC (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61188579) gives us ‘Oil prices have soared. Why won’t Opec bring them down?’ The setting of the American governmental license plate came to mind (Dee-You-Age). We get to see “Opec+ could also lower prices by putting more oil onto the market, which is what major importers like the US and UK want it to do.” Yes, and tarmac is made with liquorice. Opec+ has a good deal, there is a need for oil and they can set the price. The nations relying on oil have done pretty much ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to appease Saudi Arabia. We see the two largest suppliers (Russia and Saudi Arabia) but even though the US is not in that group, how much oil do they produce? 

And then we get “US President Joe Biden has repeatedly appealed to Saudi Arabia to increase its oil output, but to no avail. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson also asked Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to increase production. He too was rebuffed.” In this the first part was that the US played a stupid game.

  1. A journalist no one gives a fuck about goes missing and for weeks the gossip and speculations start, even the United Nations get involved with shoddy documentation (as I personally see it). Realism tells us that something happened. Yet no one and I say again no one produced clear evidence. None gave any clear evidence of what had happened and Turkey who was playing the Iranian game made things worse. The United Nation document had issues, several players were not held to account, but that did not matter, they all got to attack the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
  2. The Houthi attacks and again the Iranian factor in this was openly ignored by the media. The non Arabic nations were not informed on houthi attacks with Iranian support on Saudi civilian targets. Coalition events were exaggerated, Houthi attacks were trivialised. 
  3. Saudi and SAMI needs were stopped and Saudi defence settings were halted. Now, the west can do that, they are allowed to. Yet in that, the Saudi’s have absolutely no need to increase production, do they? If the west was so clear on their needs, they would have increased non-oil options two decades ago, but that did not really happen, did it?

Three clear events that are now biting the hands of the US and the UK, Saudi Arabia is willing to look after its friends, but these two have not really shown to be friends, have they?

And in all this Russia is enjoying what is happening, because they do not have to do anything else but watch the cost of living in the US, UK and EU to rise to almost impossible levels. A stage we never wanted and perhaps those tea ladies from the CAAT are now in a stage where they can afford the tea, but they can no longer afford the cookies. There is an opposing side to almost everything and the simple truth of protesting without understanding what was going on is now taking its toll. But the CAAT had its limelight shots in the newspapers. It is lovely to see those pictures, just too bad that the price of that limelight ended up costing some people billions and under those conditions the UK can pretty much kiss their cheaper oil goodbye.

In all this, I wonder what the CIA did last month, what they offered the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, because the current administration has pretty much destroyed whatever options they had. As I see it, by the rules of Retail 101, the US has only one option, to open whatever weapon sales it can get without restrictions and with a full service package. I reckon that alone is required to lower the oil prices by 10%, they need a lot more, but as such the players will have to offer more and they need to realise that the loud words of ‘no oil’ and ‘end petrol needs’ were merely that, words. It will happen, there is no doubt in my mind, but I doubt I will be alive to see those days, I reckon kids who were born after 2000 will have a decent chance to see the end of a petrol based economy whilst they are still alive. I doubt that it will happen before that. In this, the entire stage of the BBC article was to some degree needed, but they should have given the people a slightly better information ring. Like the interactions of OPEC and airlines. You see over the last 15 years we added a total of 41000 additional flights a day, why? There is also a lack of the American numbers, how much oil do they produce and why can they not produce more? Two simple elements in this equation missing, why is that? 

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Media, Politics

The next instance

The Reuters article ‘Facebook-owner Meta opens access to AI large language model’ (at https://www.reuters.com/technology/facebook-owner-meta-opens-access-ai-large-language-model-2022-05-03/) did a little more than I expected. It stopped me to set a larger stage of the system that was approaching completing in my mind. The stage where Amazon could sell well over 50,000,000 consoles now has the approach to a second wave, one I expected, but it also opened a side that I expected, but could not yet completely surround. It is like a drawing, we see the lines, but the fields were not complete enough to colour the areas. 

When you consider drawing one, you see water, but what happens when it is drawing 2? You think that it is merely a point of view and the water is larger, but there is a dimensionality setting that we forget about, reflections we forget about and consider that in light of the evolution of an unreal 5 engine. 

We now get an entirely different stage, and that is seen with ““Large language models” are natural language processing systems which are trained on massive volumes of text, and are capable of answering reading comprehension questions or generating new text.” You think it is a simple exercise but it is not, this opens new fields in exploration and the approach towards other directions. 

You see, I made mention of this in ‘Ignored options’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/07/31/ignored-options/) I wrote “I offered a solution in social media for gamers, Amazon has a kindle link that no one has, and I even wrote about a larger gaming stage via achievements, which could help Amazon and its moonshine (a Luna joke). Consider that I had to go from memory, the images (like covers) and keyword searches reveal nothing (to me), as such the IP might be in the open and that is merely a western approach. Places like India and Japan might have all kinds of additional path to acquire IP as well as writings to beef up the streaming games. And if I cannot find that, what else is out there from your youth that is forgotten by too many? As such Amazon Luna (Google Stadia too) have several paths to consider before they enter the stream battle with Microsoft and any exclusive that they can offer that Microsoft. Cannot merely pushes them to third or even fourth in another console war, it sucks to be Microsoft (Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk).” I wrote it on July 31st 2021, almost a year ago and now we see the larger station in the media. Meta is releasing the setting for the second wave. If it works as I expect, the 50,000,000 Luna stations might be a low-ball setting, it also pushes whatever Microsoft has to the deep background. Something to point at and giggle. The nice part is that Amazon could include this solution towards the Google Stadia (after some delay) ending Microsoft as a contender in this field altogether. 

I expected this to come, but I also it to come a little later, and now that we have a larger station and the other three landmarks of Amazon are close to complete the stage is almost ready, but will they pick up the advantage that they can get in streaming console world? I cannot tell, but for me it feels good to know that my expectations were more than spot on, and as Microsoft is nowhere near this and there is a technological advantage that THEY AGAIN overlooked, trivialised or merely ignored feels good, because that means that they are close to 50,000,000 consoles behind on a race they never understood and the higher THAT number becomes, the better I feel. The so called ‘guru’s’ of hardware are in the dark into a direction no one was looking in and that means that my 50M could optionally become 100,000,000 or more for ONE software solution no one has.  And it also means that my initial stage for income was well set. The initial payment might seem too low, but the second pay-cycle would have taken care of it and it could optionally make me a hell of a lot better off than I ever expected. And you know what the weirdest part is? The idea that I have the larger advantage over Microsoft feels better than any $$$ amount (not all mind you). 

And it is only Wednesday, whatever will I learn in two days time?

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT, Science

Return of Common Cyber Sense

So, is it the return of CCS, is it Son of CCS? With all the 60’s movie references it can go either way, like Son of Blob, Return of the Predator, the Swamp Man strikes again, take your pick. We can go in any direction. And it all starts with the NOS (Dutch News) article of ‘Hackers stole 3 gigabytes of data from Spanish Prime Minister’s phone’ (at https://nos.nl/l/2427306). There we get exposed to “The hackers who used Pegasus spyware to access the phone of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez last year were able to extract 3 gigabytes of information from the device. They also managed to penetrate the telephone of the Minister of Defense, although less data was stolen from it. The hack of the Spanish Prime Minister’s phone came to light by chance during a routine check, it turned out today. The government was informed this weekend. The telephones of all cabinet members are now being searched for the espionage software.” As such we now have two settings, the first one is linked to ‘State of what?’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/04/24/state-of-what/) where some attacked the NSO on Catalan settings. Now we see that two Spanish governmental targets were out in the open, and its Prime Minister was not too intelligent and lacking Common Cyber Sense. 

So in what universe is it a good idea to put 3GB of data on your mobile? I have (by choice) 224MB of data on my phone (over 6 years) and well over 80% are ASCII files (a collection of articles I have written). 

A mobile phone is a transmitter at rest, no matter how much you run, as such it is a trove of information for any hacker with anti-Spanish sentiments. So in what universe should we see “Spanish opposition parties speak of “a very big coincidence” that the burglary into government telephones is just now becoming known. Others speak of a smoke screen. Already two weeks ago it became clear that 63 Catalan politicians and activists had Pegasus on their phones. Among them were members of the European Parliament, Catalan regional presidents, lawyers and political organisations”? Well the answer is none. You see the setting that we are a witness of shows a massive lack of Common Cyber Sense. And in this consider “Pegasus is sent via apps, a WhatsApp message from friends or acquaintances or an email. When the recipient clicks on such a message, the spy program settles in the phone. Secret services have access to all possible data such as passwords, telephone conversations, location or photos” You see, this is a side that might be on me. People like that have a work phone and a private phone. The work phone has no need for WhatsApp, Facebook, or a whole range of other social apps. Having them on your work phone is folly, extremely stupid and massively shortsighted. When you are a governmental tool (of any kind) you need to adhere to Common Cyber Sense. It applies to any Prime Minister, Defense minister, minister and that list goes on for a while. The only exception might be the cultural minister, but then that person tends to not have any classified data, or classified data of a limited stretch. So when we see “The organisation Citizen Lab, which previously revealed that the 63 Catalans were targeted, is drawing no conclusions about who is responsible for the covert operations against the Catalans. “But the circumstances indicate involvement of the Spanish government,” the authors of the report believe.” OK, that is fair, we are all seemingly nodding towards the Spanish team, but it is assumption. And when we have that stage, the lack of Cyber Sense is making it all into a farce. So whoever hacked the Spanish, might through that have gotten access to two teams for the price of $100,000 per phone. A good deal if any. 

So at what time will governmental teams (on a global setting) decide to embrace Common Cyber Sense, with the added realisation that apps like WhatsApp and several other have no business being on your work mobile? 

In this, my message to these politicians is as follows: You are (for the most) not an A-lister, a movie star or a social media revelation. For the most, you are all governmental tools and you need to take responsibility for the stupidity you employ. Keep personal stuff OFF your work phone, give the hackers a challenge, not a trip to easy street, Common Cyber Sense has reason, take it seriously.

Leave a comment

Filed under Law, Politics, Science

At times I hate being right

To get that we have to take a trip into the past. To February 5th 2021. It was the day I wrote ‘Not a good thing’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/02/05/not-a-good-thing/). In the article I wrote about the energy shortage that certain players were certain to face. I also made reference to ‘Trillion Dollar Musk’ a story written on December 3rd 2020 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/12/03/trillion-dollar-musk/). The important reference is “the UK has an increasing need for Scandinavian power and soon it cannot be met. I reckon that in the next 2-3 years that shortage will be close to systemic all over the EU”, with the added “now that the stage is here, Eon Musk has a massive opportunity and soon enough it will grow into Europe as well, I wonder who will cash in before the half baked solutions stir their ugly heads. Because the impact of that stage is not a good thing.” And now that we get the Dutch NOS making reference to “Companies that want to establish or expand, often cannot meet their energy needs. This applies, for example, to Royal Smilde Bakery in Edam, a retail company in bake-off products. The company cannot run at full capacity. “And that means we are not at the production capacity that the market demands,” says Andries Tuinenga. The grid operator has imposed a maximum on the company that may not be exceeded. And then the peak months are yet to come.” Now this setting comes early because of the Russian gas situation, but it gives a larger stage, the shortage is here now, consider the Netherlands going towards summer and if summer bites (a realistic chance) we see a nation with millions of AC units and no power to fuel them all. That is a realistic future this year and for two years they could have opted for discussions with Elon Musk and all his energy solutions but how many governments exactly have started this discussion? 

A stage I saw coming two years ago, so why isn’t anyone else? And the small laughable story by BBC Technology that gives us ‘Energy supplier counts cost of devices on standby’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-61235367) does not cut the mustard as I see it. Lets be clear, they are not wrong, but the setting is way too late for that. With the giggle moment supplied through “households would save around £55 per year by switching off all their devices when not in use. The organisation, which promotes sustainability and energy efficiency, did not give exact details of how it came to this figure.” I get it if everyone does that you do save, but at what cost? Larger changes have been needed for well over a year and the UK (EU too) are not ready. The age of ACDC is coming (hah, me making a funny yet again) and the saving will not operate the millions of households that want to enjoy the AC they have no matter how much DC it requires. I stated two years ago that energy changes were becoming essential, but it seems that governments has ego and ostrich issues. It seems that they all were willing to attack Elon Musk and too little of them would be ready to engage with him in serious conversation. Now that time is up they might all want him at the same time, as such it becomes a problem Anyway, should Elon Musk buy my IP, they get added hardship, because I can see that there are options (not big ones) to connect what I have to domotics and smart grids. So connect my IP to a smart grid and collect energy numbers from all the domotics around it. It is not what I had in mind, but it could work and the value of my IP goes up, so what do I care. 

The problem is that GOVERNMENTS should have been on this page in 2018, but are they? The fact that we see shortages now is not merely the impact of Russian choices, it was ALWAYS going to happen in this way, they merely got to this point faster in this way. So who will you blame? Will you have another go at Elon Musk, or will you start asking YOUR government for ignoring the painfully obvious for well over a year now?

I will let you decide. Have a really nice sunny not air-conditioned day today.

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, Politics, Science

The IP many desired

There is a side I contemplated in the last week. The thoughts started almost 38 years ago. I didn’t think of it to any degree at that time. In the early years (when I actually was young and innocent) I started my career in technical support I got spoiled. I didn’t know it at the time but that application was close to perfect and designed by technical support people for technical support people. I had the option to enter a phone number, the number of the person I was talking to and digit by digit the list got smaller. And 9 out of 10 times it ended with the person. Consider a system where you have to look up Rosan Perkasa Roeslani? How many typo’s does it take for people to see that when you are a number, service goes up, because you are often instantly found.

The others (Scopus, Siebel), and whatever other sales system there was (and pretended to include technical support). They were for the most a sales concept of a system to drive more sales, at most times merely lacking service and support. Yet recently I got to be on the other side, I needed a larger station of pre-sales support, perhaps it should be called pre-sales determination. They too need a decent tool and it is lacking to a a setting that is almost too much to do the job right. Of course it is MY view on the matter. You see if one tries to represent a company, one must set the larger station to THEIR representation and a little less to the need of their sales department. The object does need to be determination of sales and to propagate the company as best as possible. In this we might need to call everyone, but we should be clever about it, don’t we? 

Lets take a look at the setting of ‘the list’. In this we have two parts. The list we need to call and how we can go about it. I have a method. As we see the list, we can call Peter Rabbit, yet the people of the Animal Farm we need to call one at a time until we connect. You see, the Switchboard operator is ignored, but its role evolved from a mere connector to a high value yielding gatekeeper. So when we get one connection, we need to leave the rest alone until the next day (two days later is better). And the next company who holds the cast of Flipper has the same approach. It is the IMF team that is the most interesting one. We can call them all, they all have their own numbers. It is when we get a list where generic and direct numbers intertwine, that is when we need to become clever about how we call. You see people talk too and when we call them all in one burst we get the label of ‘sales pusher’ and that is one of the most dangerous labels to get, when we have that label we will get stopped too often and we cannot do our job. So as you see the images, these callers need some kind of overlay filter, one that overlays the call list and can set fill colours like a spreadsheet. Yet these programs are not ready for such a leap, the ‘sales people’ behind it are at present not educated enough to see this need, so any third solution will do. Consider that spreadsheet fill on any solution Scopus, Oracle, Hubspot, SAP, Siebel and clever enough when a row is added or removed to that all list and one that has a multitude of colour selections that can be personalised by any person using it, so that the person will have the personal use and strengths working FOR THEM. 

In all these years no one considered the specific needs that some people have, they are merely pushed to some solution that their sales director seem to fathom. And consider that in over 35 years none of them got clever enough to figure this out? (As far as I can tell) Boggles the mind, does it not?

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, Science

Blackmail as premeditation

These is a side to everything. Peace, War and everything in-between is in the eye of the beholder, in the wake of political needs some will say, but that too is a side of a mere point of view. So when I saw the Bloomberg article (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-28/manchester-city-s-owner-helps-usher-more-russian-tycoons-to-uae) titled ‘Manchester City’s Owner Helps Usher More Russian Tycoons to UAE’ we see the side that many shy away from. It starts with “Sheikh Mansour also has a behind-the-scenes role that’s become increasingly important in recent months: Helping manage relationships with wealthy Russians looking to move money into the UAE, according to several people familiar with Abu Dhabi’s engagement with Russians, who requested anonymity as the information isn’t public.” With the added “Even as the U.S., EU and other countries have blitzed Russia with thousands of new financial restrictions, making it the world’s most-sanctioned nation, the UAE hasn’t imposed any. Officials in the Middle Eastern nation have taken the stance that Abu Dhabi respects international law but isn’t required to follow measures implemented by specific countries and that the UAE has the right to adopt its own policies, several people familiar with their thinking said.” It is supported by “That approach, though, has fuelled concern among some Western officials who are worried about holes in their own sanctions programs. Earlier this month, Deputy U.S. Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo voiced Washington’s worries about Russian tycoons moving assets to the UAE in a call with UAE officials, two people with knowledge of the discussions said”. You see, the setting is even more different from what we see. You see, some places cannot be touched, some ships are unattainable and other material matters cannot be touched as the owners identities are hidden from view. There are two parts in all this. 

In the first there is the matter of his highness Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan. He is from the UAE, he does what is best for the UAE, a Emiratian as it were (is that the right pronunciation?) The larger setting is not what he does, it is that there is no war with Russia in the UAE, more important, the blackmail grip on these oligarchs is not entirely legal. Lets look at the clear evidence. These oligarchs are Russians, they therefor embraced friendships with the ruler of that place (Vladimir Putin), this was never a crime. Then the Ukrainian issues started and the oligarchs were split in two teams (as Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich most likely would say) those who openly support Putin and those who do not. Take Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich he is also a philanthropist and the former owned of Chelsea FC (they might be the same). So are the acts against him valid? Consider what he did in the BEGINNING of the war. It casts a shadow over the acts against the oligarchs. And the demented statement by President Biden “We’re going to seize their yachts, their luxury homes, and other ill-begotten gains”, really? What laws were broken, what prosecution was not correctly made? I do not care either way, but there are laws and yes, Russia has to pay for EVERY kopek of damage that they created in Ukraine. But should the oligarchs? Perhaps those in Russia, but those abroad? Those who openly supported Putin’s war in Ukraine perhaps, the rest? I feel uncertain. 

And when we reconsider “some Western officials who are worried about holes in their own sanctions programs” we see the folly of their taxation laws, the holes are large enough to park a 500 feet yacht in. Failure after failure and the entire emotional setting does not help any, mainly because the emotional setting is not a legal one and now we see that Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan has a case to present to his nation. And if this works the UAE will see another wave of long term investments. Long after the US is deserted by too many players, the UAE will hold on. Is it fair? Fair does not come into it. These oligarchs are not involved in a war, they are not involved in bombing the Ukraine. That is the Russian government, the Russian army, navy and airforce. If an oligarch is part of those, then yes, he (or she) become fair game. And should the American government object, then perhaps they can pull the papers on a place called IG Farben and certain people that were given options in the US. So how come that BASF and Siemens were allowed to continue AFTER WW2? Did they not have factories in Auschwitz? As I see it, the US does not have a billionaire problem, it has a hypocrisy problem and the refusal to overhaul tax laws is pretty much a top 3 item in American economy. As I personally see it Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan found a way to propel his nation (as a citizen), is he to blame? I do not believe that he is. Yes, some people and a lot of Ukrainians have an issue with that and I accept that the Ukrainians are not happy, they have every right to be, but laws are laws and there is a dangerous line that the west is trying to avoid. It is a dangerous line as it leads to WW3 and these nations are either fully committed or they are not. I cannot judge here, because war is a dangerous play, a World War even more so and there could be nuclear repercussions, we need to accept that and that is the red line that a lot of nations are trying to avoid. It makes perfect sense. If there is on upside to all this (the UAE) it will be that the harbour that they hand the oligarchs is also the roof that stops them from becoming a nuclear target. It could be seen by some as premeditated blackmail. Can we blame them, or blame anyone for having that thought? The UAE must do what is best for the UAE and as I see it, that is exactly what Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan seems to be doing.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Law, Media, Military, Politics