Monthly Archives: August 2023

August 13, 2023 · 20:56

Discrimination Legislation of America

This is not new and I have talked about it before (some time ago). This all started with a Tweet, not the most academic source, but it gave me somewhere to start.

Then I went out and looked for something more reliable and Forbes handed me (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/alangassman/2023/04/07/bidens-war-on-billionaires/) a story from April. 

The setting given is ‘Biden’s War On Billionaires’ (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/alangassman/2023/04/07/bidens-war-on-billionaires/) it is there we see “All American earners are subject to federal income taxes, but not everyone is subject to the same tax rate. While middle-class Americans pay, on average, roughly 14% in federal taxes annually, the wealthiest American families frequently use loopholes to avoid paying these tax rates.” This is one point of you and it is not an invalid one. Yet, in black letter law the US has tax laws. The law is what nations rely on and I agree it is not a fair one, but guess what. This is the fault of the US Congress and the US Senate. I have been talking about fair taxation for over 10 years. But the law is the law and there is an additional setting, the reason why people focus on Jeff Bezos, this is merely a first step. You see, that 20% will do nothing, America is in too deep, it is a sinking ship and the only thing these political people want to do is step out, so they can say not was not on their watch. It is too late for that. You see when that first law is passed, they might get a chunk of Bezos, but they will also get a chunk of Marc Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Marc Benioff, Larry Ellison and that list goes on. My issue is that this is discrimination, Ageism (age discrimination), economic discrimination is also discrimination. So they are going after the real innovators, real inventors and what America wants is not their money, it is their IP, or at least part of it and co-controlling it. You really want all these systems to be co-owned by the USA? Whatever freedom you thought you had would be gone. The US has been playing stupid since the Clinton Administration, it was the last time that the US had green numbers, since then the allotted a debt surpassing $31,000,000,000,000 dollars. The US is broke and they are now in it to delay for whatever time they can. The USA has become a sinking ship, they are patching holes by cutting pieces out of the same leaking hull, it never ends well. I have pleaded for tax law overhauls for well over a decade. I noticed the slippery slope close to 25 years ago and it impacts the EU and Japan as well. China is growing, China is becoming the next power player in its lonesome position. BRICS is becoming an inner circle with China in the lead position, the moment it sheds Russia, their geese will be count as well. BRICS went from the elite of 5, to a group with 40 nations interested, the lead of the US is gone. No one follows the broke person who can no longer feed itself and with the the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates added to the BRICS group the US has very little left, so now they are setting the stage to go after the billionaires and whatever more they can get. Yet in all this the numbers of what Apple (Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft too) paid in taxation. That would have ben the fair setting, but no one is really digging into this, are they? Fair taxation starts with the corporations that was the first step and that has been overdue for decades, the loopholes had to be dealt with and that never was, that is the real story. Jeff Bezos et al used the legal options like tax lawyers to avoid paying more taxation than was required. Tax avoidance means “the use of legal methods to minimise the amount of income tax owed by an individual or a business”, which is perfectly legal, tax evasion is not legally stated and a crime. This is the stage that brings in the players like PwC, they are one of the leading experts in tax avoidance, this is why a tax overhaul had been essential for about 25 years and now it is too late. The us has its opponents knocking on their gates (BRICS and their members). So we get another populist call for taxing the rich, but it is the tax system and IRS who needed to clean their houses, they never did. I am no friend of Jeff Bezos, I do not think I ever was but that man took an online bookshop and turned it into something huge, then he went against the biggest tech company of all and created an equal if not a better version with his Amazon Luna (against the Google Stadia) which made Google leave the field (leaving billions on the floor), it almost destroyed Microsoft with its Azure through Amazon AWS. Two clear wins by (an online) bookshop. That is what Jeff Bezos did. You have to respect that and the others made their own innovative futures. Now the US wants to go after these innovator? So what happens to the US when these places resettle in BRICS territory? Good luck with that idea. So consider the Discrimination Legislation of America, the DLA, which by pure coincidence (LOL) also means Disability Living Allowance. The pay setting that most Americans are about to get towards to. Consider that the DLA ranges from around $1,000 – $5,000 depending on the member’s pay grade and dependency status. You can normally only receive DLA once each fiscal year. So a maximum of $5000 a year to make ends meet. Where in America can you live of that? I am not certain there is any place that will make America liveable and when the larger corporations leave that will be close to all that is left, until the money is gone. That is the future and I tried to warn you all, not to bite the hand that was feeding the US (Saudi Arabia) and when the tech players leave billions on the floor, why is that? I will let you decide.

Weekend is entering the last hours of the day, it is at the end of Sunday in the East (New Zealand) and at its start in Western Canada, enjoy.

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August 12, 2023 · 22:39

How on earth?

This was my first thought that went through my mind. It came from the BBC and I was reading this in a decent degree of unknowing. The title ‘China property giant Country Garden warns of up to $7.6bn loss’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66470170) where we see “Country Garden, which is one of China’s biggest property developers, has warned that it could see a loss of up to $7.6bn (£6bn) for the first six months of the year” and I am quite frankly at a loss. You see, a developer gets (read: buys) a piece of land, he places a building on it and sells this place(s) and in the end there is a profit, it might not always be a great profit, but a profit nonetheless. So when I see a loss of $7.6bn, the math in my head goes that at $250K it sets the stage for 30,400 houses and if a place costs 1.5 million we see the bungling of 5,065 places. Now it is not that simple. I get that, but the idea that someone set a stage where 30,400 houses are sold for $0 is equally laughable, implying that the problem is a lot larger than we can see. We saw it in the UK with Carillion, we saw a few examples and they all wanted ALL the profit and as such they did it all, all the elements of construction and all elements of the service. That never works, the moment a short cut is made, people start filling to holes and creating more holes in the process. 

Then there is the larger financial impact. How does a company like Country Garden has any setting that allows for that kind of a loss in the first 6 months? Even as the article gives us “The expected loss compares to a $265m profit for the same time last year. The firm also said it has set up a special task force, headed by its chairman Yang Huiyan, to find ways to turn the business around”, I reckon it might be close to ‘too late’, which is seen with “rating agency Moody’s downgraded the company’s rating, citing “heightened liquidity and refinancing risks”” and don’t expect me to give explanations. I have none. I have a few speculation, the first we saw in the beginning. But there was also the 2021 event when 15 buildings were demolished all in one go (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Om6b0_ffyFQ), I cannot tell you the reason, I merely saw the YouTube on USA Today, and we get that one building needs to go at times (still sloppy), but 15 buildings? Now consider those costs and I am certain that those building in total would not have surpassed $2 billion. So now consider that one developer has well over 300% of those losses. Something does not add up and I cannot tell you what it is. In the first I do not have an economics degree, I have engineering, IT and Law degrees and I am still grasping for nothing at this time. The speculation I made earlier makes the most sense of stupidity. Yet it was speculation, so I could be wrong. As such, in an age in China where there are no jobs, there is a housing shortage and there are a few more issues. The 15 building demolition raises questions, the loss by Country Garden gives even more question marks. The Financial Times gives us “Nine months later, it is dangerously short of cash. The company expects to have lost Rmb45bn-Rmb55bn in the first half of the year and is confronting what it calls “the biggest difficulties” in its history.” (At https://www.ft.com/content/c266f377-33dc-4cf6-89a1-b62998896027) and it is not the first time. Evergrande in 2021 has a massive default and it seems to me that all these firms ‘doing it all’ are imploding. Is it a mere setting of idle time? Me and idle time go way back, all the way to the early 90’s and it is not the first time that idle time is overlooked or seen as a linear event, which it is not. It does not explain these billions of loss, it really does not but to see this in China implies that there is a lot more going on than we are able to see and that is never a good thing.

Enjoy the weekend.

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August 12, 2023 · 05:36

Tapping an economy

This happens, some other (or new) player sets the stage where they can become a major player. This is a rare case but it can happen and now I seem to be witness to one that could end up being a much larger stage than I ever expected. The BBC (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-66310714) gives us ‘Why it matters where your data is stored’. The article is all about the cloud, yet this article gave me parts that brought out questions that allowed the consideration that the new player could in a short time frame become a major player. Yet to see this, we need to look at the parts.

Part 1
The first question is coming from ““The American authorities have the right to go in and see any data that is stored in an American cloud, even if the data centre is in Europe,” Mr Åström says.” That was a selling point for American firms and with the IP in data centres the Europeans will become concerned. The American credit score is dwindling down as such they will become more and more concerned with THEIR value, a view Europeans will not share, or will be willing to chance sacrificing asI see it.

Part 2
Then we get to “it’s big enough to rival the major US cloud providers: Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft and Google. They have a 65% share of the world cloud market between them, according to Synergy Research Group”, here I miss the IBM and Apple clouds. Apple is a different issue, they have a niche market and they are optionally decently safe from what is coming. IBM is different, they have been on the corporate data shoe forever, so why is IBM avoided? The numbers give me “IBM Hybrid Cloud has market share of 1.88% in infrastructure-as-a-service market. IBM Hybrid Cloud competes with 71 competitor tools in infrastructure-as-a-service category.” Perhaps they are ‘too small’, time will tell but that doesn’t matter. With this setting Evroc has the momentum to become a major player, perhaps slightly below AWS, but to go from a wannabe to a player next to AWS, possibly surpassing Microsoft is not done lightly and as far as I could tell has never been done before. But that is not the worst of it (for Amazon and Microsoft). You see the EU is larger in population, as such more services are needed there, but this could flow over into Canada (as it is a Commonwealth nation) then the larger concern (for Amazon et al) will be the Middle East. I reckon that both Saudi Arabia and the UAE might want to be separated more strongly from American firms. If I were China, I would be pushing that button too. As such Evroc as localisation bubbles could grow even further. 

Part 3
“Evroc has secured €15m in seed funding and plans to build eight data centres in Europe in the next five years. The first will be a large pilot data centre in Sweden next year.” As I see it, should they decide to add two more clouds (KSA and UAE) they could tap into a few massive organisations and that should make the US a lot more bothered than they ever considered. I had issues with ‘data sharing’ in the late 90’s but I was laughed at, I was overly BS howled at. Well, it seems that I was right all along and now that the US needs its corporations to do well, Evroc comes in and takes away even more. I never saw this coming, yet as I see it Mattias Åström played his cards well and at the right moment. There is no telling how far this goes, yet the idea that (based on the numbers) “Microsoft increased its share from 23%, up from 21% the prior quarter, while Amazon fell from 34% to 33% and Google remained steady at 11%.” Evroc could grow by taking 20% of the others, we get 18% Microsoft, 26% Amazon and 8% Google, Evroc could grow by 12% (optionally towards 20%+) almost overnight (if a night lasts 7 years) That puts them ahead of Google and Microsoft making them a new major player. That is beside the damage they could do in the Middle East. With Aramco, SAMA, Al Rajhi banking, SABIC, STC, MA’ADEN, International Holding Company (IHC), ADNOC, Emaar Properties and a few more more. You might think this is all fun and games, but it is about to get worse.

Part 4
This part was not in the article and that is not on the BBC. You see I have looked in this direction before. In 2020 I wrote ‘Institutionalised Positioning’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/11/02/institutionalised-positioning/) where we see ‘Microsoft Security Shocker As 250 Million Customer Records Exposed Online’ (source: Forbes), and add to that the recent forged key issue, an issue that the NSA warned them for 3 years ago, we see a much larger stage. A stage where Microsoft is bleeding faith, the faith the customers had in them is dwindling down, as such Evroc could take away a much larger part of that blue joke. As such Microsoft could face a much larger loss. It would be nice to state that Amazon loses less, but certain other parts might not make that realistic. The only player optionally not losing any is Apple. Their largest base are iPhone users with subscriptions. 

These 4 parts show that Evroc is the new player to watch. If that is the case they will need staff all over the world. Even I would like to work for a new player and that is the second danger that they (mostly Microsoft) faces. If Amazon and Microsoft only lose 5% of their cloud workforce they both face shortages all over, and this is in a place where you need all hands on deck. This last part is hugely speculative, but with 8 new centres coming and optionally 2-5 more in the middle east Evroc is set to grow beyond the assessments of analysts. As such Mattias Åström and its new Evroc could be a force to be reckoned with and as such bring massive cash coffers into the EU and towards the Middle East as well and all that revenue goes out of the US and that is a loss the US was not ready for.

Enjoy the weekend 

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August 11, 2023 · 08:43

Dee Jay Eye

Yup that is the saying. It is written DJI and would you believe it, it means Dopey Justice Investigations. Of course in this case we have to go to that place that Europeans regard as the land west of the Atlantic River, the Asians and Australians see it as land east of the Pacific river and we all agree that it is south of Canada. It is known as the USA. The BBC gave me 22 hours ago ‘Boy, 6, boasted about shooting Virginia teacher Abigail Zwerner’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-66451768), it is there we see “The boy’s mother, however, Deja Taylor, has been charged with felony child neglect and misdemeanour recklessly leaving a loaded firearm as to endanger a child. In June, she was also charged with unlawfully using a controlled substance while in possession of a firearm and making a false statement during the purchase of a firearm.” This all sounds nice, but when you consider that in January I wrote in ‘Little Shits’ (at https://wp.me/p1RftY-2mn) “So far NO report shows that the parents were arrested, or interrogated over the case. If that is the stage, the US has earned the right to see many more shootings in schools until they fix this mess”, as well as “So what part do the parents play? Well, as I see it the mindset tends to come from parents, not peer pressure, not at that age. But no one is looking at the parents, why not?”, as such I got to this setting MONTHS before the American authorities got there and the evidence is clear, the media had nothing. And you wonder why nothing gets to be resolved during mass shootings? Well here you have the evidence. As such as we are given “His teacher, Abigail “Abby” Zwerner – who survived – filed a $40m (£31.4m) lawsuit earlier this year.” I personally believe that Abigail should have (at least) doubled her claim, with incompetence seen to this degree there is a fair case that her life was trivialised to a much larger extent. I get that the boy was not charged, the rule of Doli Incapax is pretty much all over the common law nations and this means that you cannot be seen as responsible as a 6 year old. I mentioned that in the first article on this event, but how the kid got the firearm as well as the parents (I did not know the household setting there) were not. And now 7 months and three days later we see this play out as being the correct path. Yes, we saw the reference to June, but the media was not all over that, were they? So when we now see “While being restrained after the shooting at a Virginia school, the boy is said to have admitted “I did it”, adding “I got my mom’s gun last night”.” Consider looking back to the media covering in those days, none of them mentions that small part, did they? Why not? Especially the small part of “the boy is said to have admitted”, why was that omitted from the media coverage? The fact that he got his mom’s gun last night is a pretty clear indication to arrest the mother at that moment. The unsafe handling of a firearm leaving it open for a child to get is pretty indicative of the blunders made in this case. To Abigail Zwerner, the 25 year old teacher I say “I hope you get well over 300% of what you ask for”, the media, the authorities and the school all trivialised your life for what? Political points? Business points? There should be a price for that and after that, use that money to retire to a nice happy safe place and enjoy your early retirement, you definitely earned it.

I think that it is time for the dopey justice system of America to wake up and see the mess you are at present making, I have said well over a year ago that upgrading the ATF and giving it actual teeth would be essential in cleaning this mess up and again I am proven correct. 

As I see it, there is no fault at present to its director Steven Michael Dettelbach, but I do believe that he has his work cut out for him and I reckon that keeping scores of whoever block essential needs for the ATF will be required soon enough. You see, 1.5 billion does not go far, not when you have 5,285 people trying to sort the gun mess out. Some might see the mention of “The ATF has received criticism over the Ruby Ridge controversy, the Waco siege controversy and others.” Yet no one is mentioning a story from 2022 “Missing weapons, false records: Franklin Gun Shop owners plead guilty to federal charges”, the Tennessean gave us that one (at https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/crime/2022/11/23/franklin-gun-shop-owners-plead-guilty-over-missing-weapons-false-records/69671186007/) there is a larger stage that gun shops are falling short, and it could have been prevented years ago by giving the ATF teeth and a real budget. There is also a larger stage of automated systems to see where the history of guns are at and I am referring to the NBC article (at https://www.nbcnews.com/news/s-just-insanity-atf-now-needs-2-weeks-perform-routine-gun-trace-rcna39606) where we see ‘‘It’s just insanity’: ATF now needs 2 weeks to perform a routine gun trace’ with the by-line “Boxes of paper records fill nearly every corridor of the ATF’s National Tracing Center, where agents are struggling to keep up with surging requests from local police.” Red tape might be stated to be the source, but I see this as the failing of a justice system. We might take notice of “A 2023 report published in JAMA covering 2014 to 2022, found there had been 4011 mass shootings in the US”, with over 4000 mass shootings in almost 10 years we come to the generic 400 mass shootings a year and you don’t think that the ATF needs an upgrade in IT systems and other materials? Don’t make me laugh, this is beyond dopey and you better realise it. For the American parents it is easy. 400 mass shootings a year comes down to almost 8 a week. So how long will you roll the dice until it is YOUR child you get to bury? It is simple (yet somewhat deceptive) statistics, but feel free to blame the people who are almost certain no part in that play and ignore those who could make a difference because that would be the US Senate and US congress. Did you think that ‘Red tape’ or the ATF was to blame. Someone pushed for that ‘Red tape’ and it is time to wake up and see what causes your children to die. I can assure you it is not the maker of the gun, it is the lawmakers that enable to hobble the ATF. And that gives us the Senate and Congress. And when exactly did either call out to enforce the ATF with the equipment and budget to give the Americans a safer place to live? I am willing to wager you cannot really find that part of the equation. Why not?

Weekend is soon upon us, so enjoy the day and go shopping for a bulletproof vest for your child, you might need one soon.

 

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August 10, 2023 · 19:35

When the past and present meet

I made a promise yesterday and it is time to keep it. This idea is freeware for EXCLUSIVE development of this in game form for the Amazon Luna or the Tencent Handheld (or both). This will be a streaming game, Sony does not need my help and it is too big for the Nintendo. A few nights ago I took a walk down memory lane regarding the Dawn of the Dead. I saw both the remake and the original by George Romano. 

I loved the original and I enjoyed the remake, yet it was then when the investigations I recently did regarding my new IP and looking into malls took a sidestep. You see, there was once a CBM Amiga game based on that movie. I barely remember it, but I knew of it. Then my mind took me to a new setting. You see our computers and streaming systems are a lot more powerful. So what happens when we make the setting a lot more realistic. Not waves of zombies with trigger points and trigger events. But a scene with a set amount of zombies and the setting for every level is a mall and the two blocks around the mall (whenever possible). As such the game could start in London giving us
Trocadero mall
Liverpool street station mall
Battersea Power Station

The setting is that the malls are completely mapped out, the Liverpool Street Station Mall is above a station, so you need to find other ways to get a secure location, the malls have doors, shutters, just like in reality and the task is more than just take out the Zombies, you need to survive for 5 days in each place. As you progress you will find upgrades, new weapons and unlike all other shooters, ammunition is an issue, so you might find weapons, but ammo is an issue making weapons like bow and Arrow, crossbows a lot more important, as do all kind of melee and slash weapons. The stage is that the initial level will give you the intro and will introduce a party NPC. Party NPC’s could be anywhere and you need them to upgrade skills and keeping places more secure. As you progress through the game you will get additional resources from NPC’s and that gives you the larger game. The big burger is the mall, where there is an abundance of goods, but swarming with Zombies. 

Then we get the Netherlands with
Bijenkorf Amsterdam
Magna Plaza Amsterdam
Shopping centre Rotterdam

You basically get to test and try options to secure places and stay alive. As far as I can tell there is no game like it, not one that takes zombie apocalypse survival in a serious way. They are all about the turbo and the cutscene setting and there are all kinds of games in this we get to the third place which is Los Angeles, and after that Dubai with its Malls making the last one (Dubai Mall) the largest enterprise, with over 5.4 million square feet will be the largest challenge and it also has a supermarket (Carrefour market) and when you get through this you will be zombie apocalypse master certified.

The nicer part is that as a streaming game you get to tweak a few things, there is no way you get this right without serious testing and the setting of using the actual mall in a game is novel to say the least. I have no idea of the legal implications, yet I believe that visibility to well over a million gamers will be a boost for any mall. 

In the setting I looked at the environment. How to survive and how to find stuff you can use. I still have some internal questions on the NPC’s, some stay, some will come with you to a new mall (one per city), the rest you need to find, but the boosts and skills they gave you are permanent, so over the towns you will learn more and more. The idea of an Alpha Zombie comes to mind. One in every level. You can kill them from a distance, you can engage them (very dangerous move) but they will always have a unique thing. It could be a bulletproof vest, it could be a piece of clothing you cannot acquire any other way. There are a few things more, but I will let you figure that out for yourself. So good luck and I hope you get a nice slice of these gaming billions that some claim are out there. 

Close to the end of the week now, so enjoy the day.

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August 9, 2023 · 21:14

Late to the party

Yes, that was me. In this case I got late to the party. This is about an article by Stephanie Kirchgaessner where (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jul/18/snapchat-saudi-arabia-ties) which is almost a month old where we see ‘Saudis accused of using Snapchat to promote crown prince and silence critics’. I have had my issues with her. This is massively anti Saudi, she is what I regard to be a tool for any anti-Saudi activity. Yet, I need to keep a clear mind and let me take you through what I found.

Metrics
1. the Saudi culture ministry, has more than 20 million users in the kingdom – including an estimated 90% of 13-to-34-year-olds.
2. One senior Snap Inc executive recently called it an “extension of the [kingdom’s] social fabric”. One of the company’s largest single investors is Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who in 2018 invested $250m in the company.
These are the metrics, there are more numbers in the article to ‘spice up’ the article. 

Accusations
The accusations include the following.
1. Saudi Arabia appears to be exploiting the US messaging app Snapchat to promote the image of its crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, while also imposing draconian sentences on influencers who use the platform to post even mild criticism of the future king.

So, it is ‘appears’? What evidence is supporting the ‘appears’? 

Then we get to ‘imposing draconian sentences’ on what people, what are the metrics, what are the numbers and names of those who received these draconian sentences? 

Then we get more emotions with “Close watchers of Saudi-based verified accounts say the platform is used by many influencers to promote Bin Salman’s image, with influencers widely and uniformly sharing any new photographs of the prince or other video content that promotes him.” We see more things like ‘many’, we are not given something like “Well over a hundred influencers”, we merely get many. 

Then we are given “People who spoke to the Guardian on the condition of anonymity to protect contacts in the kingdom say that posts (or “Snaps”) are closely monitored by Saudi security services. In one case, influencers who are not political were questioned by security services for not posting enough fawning Snaps about the crown prince, according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter.” So not only is the Guardian ‘hiding’ behind anonymity, we get ‘people’ again, no numbers, not ‘a group of witnesses’, merely people. Then we get the question on what evidence there is that Saudi security was monitoring? None was given as far as I can tell. Is evidence not essential here? It is followed by ‘in one case’ so is this the only case? And is that one case the same person as ‘according to a person with direct knowledge of the matter’? All questions and an utter lack of clarity. Is this what the Guardian adds up to? 

My setting is not that I am stating that Saudi Arabia is innocent, but if they are guilty, it better comes with ACTUAL evidence. Then we also get to see “One Saudi Snapchat influencer, Mansour Al-Raqiba, who has more than 2 million followers, was arrested in May 2022 in connection to social media posts in which he acknowledged having been blackmailed by an individual who claimed they had heard him criticising Bin Salman’s Vision 2030 economic plan. A person familiar with the case said Raqiba had been sentenced to 27 years in jail.” So, if he has been sentenced, there is a court case? Where was this case set? This quote links to another article by the same writer from June 2023, all emotions and a total lack of what I regard to be evidence. Can someone muzzle this chihuahua? You see, there is nothing, not even in Arab News or Al-Jazeera on Mansour Al-Raqiba. I am not debating his existence, or his activities. I found one other article in the Telegraph giving us ‘Saudi star escapes jail time in London following accusations of animal cruelty’, the article is behind a paywall, so that is all I have. You would think that if a person had that many follower, the papers would be filled with his exploits and his snapchat activities. There is a total lack of this. 

There is a lot more, but I will let you discover them. I believe that the Guardian is losing its grip on reality. I have had my issues with Stephanie Kirchgaessner in the past. It seems to me that if she has nothing, she merely bashes Saudi Arabia. You see, if this is not the case the evidence would be a lot better. You can make a case towards any security (in this case Saudi), but with places like snapchat there should be a mountain of evidence. In that regard the flimsy approach to the University of Toronto Citizen Lab would have a lot more. We are merely given “Petroleum-enriched Gulf oligarchs have a disturbing track record of punishing social media users, and employing multidimensional digital influence operations to silence critics and undertake transnational repression”, so what EXACTLY is ‘multidimensional digital influence operations’? The lack of specifics and precise explanations make me wonder if any of it is real. And that is not on me, that is on the flimsy and shady writing by Stephanie Kirchgaessner. 

Then we get to Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who is a Saudi Arabian billionaire businessman, investor, philanthropist and royal. He is also the founder and CEO of the Kingdom Holding Company. I have been looking into that for other reasons. In the article he is mentioned once, regarding the investment. So what is he here? Window dressing? 

Then we get to Saad bin Khalid Al Jabri. We get “Snapchat’s popularity makes it an ideal tool for a repressive regime that exploits Snapchat in the dissemination of state propaganda, character assassination of detractors, and surveillance of activists and influencers”. What we do not get is that he is living in exile in Canada. We are also not given that he walked out toward exile with more millions than the sum of all US generals have (Saad bin Khalid Al Jabri is a former general from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia), we are also not given what the Middle East Eye gives us (at https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-saudi-arabia-former-spy-chief-crown-prince-case-thrown) where we are given ‘US judge throws out former spy chief’s case against crown prince’ which was given to us in October 2022. Where we see “Jabri’s lawyers argued that, given the close ties Jabri had developed with the US intelligence community, the crown prince “purposefully targeted” the United States because his alleged attempt to kill the former spy chief was meant to disrupt US-Saudi intelligence sharing.” So why is this case, a case of someone living in exile in Canada being heard in the US courts? Why was this not given to the Canadian courts? Too many questions on an article that has too many flimsy sides and if I can see that in minutes, why did the chief editor of the Guardian (Katharine Viner) not see this? And the questions just keep on coming. Was there ever a serious case against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? I am not stating this is not the case, I am stating that the article gives us serious doubts that there is a serious case against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. 

In case you doubt me (which is always fair enough), read up and make your own mind up. It is there for a reason, not to follow, but to grow and learn.

On the upside, I came up with another game , another piece of IP that could be freeware for developers for the Amazon Luna and Tencent handheld only. It is a streaming game (the only way this would work I reckon) and as such I am planning to post this tomorrow. Yup, after the mid-week running up to weekend.

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August 8, 2023 · 22:26

Moments of remembrance

This comes out of the blue. I knew of the event, I saw the messages pass by. Yet until the BBC article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-66432558) I had no idea what an impact she had. I remember the single Nothing Compares to U, I have the single CD, I also bought the album but that is pretty much as good as it got. I was one of millions that got the song and until recently I was unaware that it was a song made by Prince. It was then that I learned that she had dwarfed him with his one song. I am not dissing Prince, he has made his mark on the world of music, but to be that good and then to be surpassed by someone with your own song takes a special kind of musician (or singer) and Sinead was that. 

Today I saw the BBC article with images (image below is from the Independent) and then it hit me. To have thousands of people pay respect to a musician takes a very special kind of musician. 

And it seems important to me that we stop for a moment to remember her, not because of what I say, but when that many people want to pay their last respect, when millions more on a global level say goodbye to this woman. There is no doubt that this woman was special and to coin a phrase, as far as I can tell nothing compared to her. Born in Dublin on December 8th 1966. This Irish lady’s best-selling album was “I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got” which sold over 4.95 million copies. That puts her in the highest ranking order, especially as this album was released in 1990. This puts her right up there with Elton John, Phil Collins, Whitney Houston and Madonna. I never knew this until I started to dig a little. And no matter how we like her music (or not), that is an achievement worth remembering. So I take a moment of silence, I bow to her album and raise a glass in her honour. I do not know much about her, or her life. But the massive amount of people paying her last respect give me moment to realise that not knowing her makes me the lesser person. There was no intent, but the realisation that what she achieved was beyond remarkable needs to be remembered and that is what I am doing now.

I would like to end with something profound, but words fail me at this time. So take a moment and pause. Think of the people you knew in the past, the movies they were in, the music they made and think of the happy feelings these moments instilled.

Have a great day.

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August 7, 2023 · 23:42

Is it new, or merely more?

This all started a day ago when a tweet passed me by. 

This seems nothing new, I have heard issues like this and I have listened to them. Yet something about this nagged me and I had another look. The link gave me some of the bits (at https://www.law.com/2023/08/02/real-time-litigation-salesforce-hit-with-whistleblower-retaliation-suit-as-former-vp-accuses-it-of-lying-about-genies-capabilities) yet I started to look further. I found a few articles regarding sex trafficking, and I might look into that part, but when I started to dig into “Salesforce Genie court” only two links appeared. This one and a French one and now I have a few questions. The first few are how is the media ignoring this? How come there is only one story? The rest I will leave for later. 

So I went into the article and the start is a good beginning, which is “Salesforce was hit with a lawsuit by its former vice president of product management over whistleblower retaliation allegations after he raised concerns regarding the company’s alleged plan to falsely inform the public that its customer data platform “Genie” operates in real time.” Now first there is an issue (there always is). Salespeople tend to emboss issues (possibly to hide certain short comings). And that text is reinforced with “Publicly claiming that the CDP operated in “real time” could be violations of several federal laws relating to fraud against shareholders, as well as some rules and regulations of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the plaintiff believed.” Now the issue I have is that the claims do not show to have a recording of these events. This is important because if the salesperson (or presenter) stated “almost like real-time” it becomes subjective and a personal interpretation. Just like some salespeople make claims with “my personal view” because in other cases they tend to show things. I know very little about genie, but certain parts of missing evidence leaves me with questions. In addition to that the end of the article states “NOT FOR REPRINT” which I regard to be another media mess. These two elements give me pause to just accept some story and made me look deeper. Yet over the past month we have 2 articles? The fact that Salesforce gets a court mention at all is pretty rare, so I would have expected the media to be all over this. With its HQ in San Francisco and the primary owner being Marc Benioff. I would have expected the LA Times, the SF Chronicle and a few others (USA Today, Wall Street Journal) to pick something like this up, they did not. It leaves me puzzled. I found a lot more on Karl Wirth, but not regarding this case. So what is up?

It is a genuine question because I need to accept that some cases are optionally flimsy, even though the article gives me “A July 28 complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts by Hartley Michon Robb Hannon on behalf of Karl Wirth” and this links to a complaint which I will add at the end. The complain has a lot more, but this is merely a legal brief, as such it is tainted towards one side and I wonder what the other side will do. 

Still, it is cool in a way, because players like Salesforce tend to have a clean look, as such another view tends to be nice and of course there was the option to dig into a player I know little of, so I had a bit of a blank slate. No matter how you slice it, the fact that a company is worth over $205,000,000,000 and no one is looking at a court case is reason for consideration, which is pretty much the number one reason why I decided to take a look.

Enjoy the week. 

salesforce_complaintDownload

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August 7, 2023 · 01:31

Reinventing the wheel

It started on Friday night. I had the weirdest dream. I was in some kind of information centre. It looked like a mix of an ATC centre, but with attached CCTV centres. None of it made sense to me and the weirdest part was that everyone was talking and no one was listening to any of it. It made no sense to me, but then I woke up and my mind was resetting things. Still up to this point I have no idea what started it, but a few hours ago my mind set aside a new kind of CCG for computers. The game was free and every 12 hours you get a free pack. You could buy packs as well, a pack was $0.99, but there was no need to buy any. The game had a starter pack, which was free when you installed the game. So let’s take a look. The game has elements of Illuminati (a game by Peter Jackson), parts of Android: Netrunner (the newer version from NetRunner WotC) and a few other games. The player has two decks, the offensive deck and the defensive deck. Both games have a header card and there will be several headercards, each having a strength. 

I decided on making fun of the current alphabet groups. In the example I created a ‘CIA’ card, but it could have been MI-6, DGSE or another team, all with a ‘new’ designation. So in this case the CIA header card will have the ability to defend an attack without using defense points. But there are other abilities. It connects on all 4 sides, all header cards do that. It is the combination that makes for a structure. 

The connecting card has one input, and up to three outputs. So some cards will have no output, it will be an end card, some will have output points. They all have strengths, a local strength (in this example 5) and a total strength (3), that means if you have 3 of these cards, the entire structure would have 9 support points to ward off attacks. The stars and dots are the strength of the card, as you get more cards and more of the same you can merge them (or when you win games) the stronger card will get an additional local or total srength point and in some cases you get an additional output connector. So a one connector card. Could become a 2, or 3 connector card.

This is the attack deck, the defence deck is similar, but it now has versions of the FBI, NSA, AIVD (Dutch) and so on.

So how does this game play? There is the storyline and there is the free-line. In the free line you set your deck up against another player, but it is played blind. The player does not know who they played and you do not know against who you played, but the results are there. The outcome is Win (they never surpassed you), mate (they defeated you, but never got to the header card), or loss the header card was overruled. If you win, one of your cards (usually the card that stopped the attack) will get an extra point (the 5 balls on he top right), when all 5 are filled the card gets an additional star. 

When you open packs you get new cards, when you have three the same you merge them into one stronger card. You can have the three cards separately, as you have 4 output ports on the header card and you could have more than one CCTV card, but that is up to you to decide. As the game progresses, you will have additional cards and you can rethink your organisation. The attacker has an agent, the agent can use any part of the organisation once only to get past an obstacle. So you get James Brand for MI-6, Reminder Stamp for the CIA, Hubby Bonsoir for the DGSE and so on. These agents  also have abilities. JB has technology expertise (so he can avoid CCTV likeminded cards), RS has Charisma, so he could avoid or gets an edge when one of the connector cards is a person and so on.

The part that I haven’t figured out is how to set the automated stage. I was first thinking on some version of electronic dice, but that might make the game unplayable, I hate to rely on random events, it is a solution that is weak and not really capturing. A pack would have 8 cards, 4 attack, 4 defence and that is set to 2 commons and 2 uncommon cards, when you get a rare card, you get 1 uncommon card and every deck has one rare card (either defence or attack). The starter deck will have all the organisations and all the agents. So you always have those from the start. The setting can evolve and you can build more than one deck as such you get a larger stage. When you play the storyline you setup your deck and during the game you see the opponent cards and see how your deck holds up, so you face an agent, or you play your agent and that sets out the story. As you fail you redo the mission, or wait until you get a stronger deck, in that case you have the option to play your game against the opponents and see how they fare. In my setting your first opponent is the Miniseries of National Strawberries (Jamaica, a Dr No wink) it has no real power and no real opposition, but it shows the options of the game and it will be your first win, which is 2 packs, together with the 2 packs you got with the starter, you will now have 16 cards for defence and 16 cards for attacks, as such you should have a starting set to match up.

There is a lot more to this game, but I thought it was essential that the CCG games of the past would not be lost to the digital era. When you go back and you see the vast offer of CCG games, it is such a shame that it was never pushed into the digital era, only Wizards of the Coast with their Magic game made it to the digital frontier, but there was so much more. It seems a waste to see it all fall away, hopefully whomever gets this game running, will entice all the others to make it to the digital stage. Anyway, I remained creative and as such feel free to use this idea to set up your own solution for Streaming solutions or consoles. 

Monday is about to start west of Australia.

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August 6, 2023 · 02:46

The expression sideways

That happens, we see it and at times we ignore it. We all do, there is no blame, there is no one at fault. These things happen. I get it, but what happens when you see stupidity to the greatest degree take its own failings out on afterburner accelerating it all to a much larger degree?

I am not sure if I truly understand that level of stupidity. So, in comes ABC (one of many sources) with ‘Donald Trump’s threatening social media post flagged by US prosecutors to judge’ (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-08-05/trump-s-threatening-post-flagged-by-us-prosecutors-to-judge/102693572) where we are given “On his Truth Social site, the former president wrote, “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” on Friday afternoon, a day after he pleaded not guilty to charges that he orchestrated a criminal conspiracy to try to reverse his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.” So, first he is accused of starting an insurrection, then he (as self proclaimed billionaire) makes noise for others to pay him for his legal fees and now AFTER he has been warned he seemingly threatens a judge? How stupid can stupid be? This is not some flaw, this is an insufferable mindless amount of stupid. In addition we are given “At his arraignment on Thursday, Mr Trump swore not to intimidate witnesses or communicate with them without legal counsel present. The prosecutors’ filing asked US District Judge Tanya Chutkan to issue a protective order prohibiting Mr Trump and his lawyers from sharing any discovery materials with unauthorised people.” And still he gives these messages? It is without a doubt a new level of stupid and for the most, most democrats get instant orgasms when they dream of Trump spending the rest of life in prison. As such Donald Trump is making their dreams come true. 

Still, I am left wondering how someone this stupid ever got to be rich, actually was regarded as a captain of industry. And consider that if he had never had gone into politics he might have been on the same highway for decades to come, now it could soon end and his new outfit will be the fashion of choice. 

Yes, the radical right will see him as a martyr, the mediocre right will see him as a threat to the message from the right and the politicians have some unwritten protection rule in place that will successfully keep the right out of elected office for close to 3 elections. As I see it for people like Liz Cheney and Mitt Romney it will not be enough, Donald Trump created too much damage and there is no going back from that, he enforced too much stupidity and the bulk who supported him are starting to wake up to the fact that they supported a loser for the longest amount of time. The Republican Party does have an option from the far right (to coin a phrase) but it will require people like Mitch McConnell to step back as well. If someone in the Republican Party can get Arnold Schwarzenegger to return to political office, he could be a force of good for the Republican Party and together with Romney and Cheney there is a chance, not a big one, but one none the less. However someone needs to shut Trump up, he is now causing more and more damage and if it was up to him, he will Russian with his ‘scorched earth’ approach to the entire republican political field. When that happens there is close to no chance that the Republican Party has any chance until 2032, and there is a decent chance that they will be voted out of the house, the senate and the White House for these terms. Waves of stupid (as seen by a lot) as it impacts Disney through Ron DeSantis, the blind support that Trump and the insurrection got is starting to show and the people are taking notice on the impact. I reckon that right sided parties like the proud boys are not helping the Republican message and beyond that there are the messages from Trump. Only a minute ago Skye News gives us ‘Donald Trump defends ‘harmful’ social media post as ‘political speech’’, I personally reckon that when threats become ‘political speech’ the levy has been broken and whatever comes next will hit and harm the entire Republican Party. 

No matter what plays out, should Donald Trump win (which is not entirely impossible) the amount of nations turning away from America will increase and it will also harm the economic outlook of America, to what extent? I have no idea, but I feel certain that it will. Who would have known that Donald Trump is about to become the greatest weapon towards the future of China. 

Enjoy the weekend, perhaps it will get weirder tomorrow, one could only hope. 

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