Category Archives: Finance

November 4, 2020 · 21:03

Pointless versus useless

Yup, consider that part and consider just how useless government oversight really is. To show this we get to the articles about three weeks ago, I noticed them, because I had the aggravated issue with deceptive conduct in advertisement for a while. Several sources give us ‘Ban for annoying puzzle ads which don’t represent the actual game’ (or a version thereof), with the sub-line “The Advertising Standards Authority has banned ads for Homescapes and Gardenscapes”. I have nothing against the game, but any match three game is rigged from the start, it is a clever way to get you to try and perhaps you will make a small purchase, and then she are caught in the addictive need, some just quit. I am ahead of the curve and I steer clear of all these match three games. Yet, The people behind these games (not just these two, others too), made an actual brilliant advertisement jab at the games giving us a DIFFERENT game where you have to select a solution, as such we see “Paid-for Facebook posts advertising games with puzzles – but which did not represent the vast majority of actual gameplay – have been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)”, this is what got to me too and when I saw the news, I was happy. So what happened today? Gardenscapes advertisement (the bad one) now shows up in Fallout Shelter in the iOS version, as such it seems to be bloody pointless. Perhaps it is the price for $8.5 billion, perhaps it is the price of joining Microsoft, yet these so called banned advertisements are back, or they never left. Sometimes vacation does not end, it merely changes location.

This gets me to the Financial Times (at https://www.ft.com/content/8593c8b5-5a98-4002-ac5a-68b59fbb6463) which was given to us in May with the headline ‘Russian brothers behind ‘Gardenscapes’ emerge as lockdown winners’, and we also get “Two Russian brothers living in London have emerged among the big winners of the lockdown, with their mobile games Gardenscapes and Homescapes making $200m from in-app purchases in April alone”, which sets the station that when you are rich, the ASA might not do anything, OK that is just speculation, but the stage is clear, and nothing seems to be happening. Don’t get me wrong, I am happy for Igor and Dmitry Bukhman, 200 million in a lifetime is nothing to be sneered and they are making that each month, I merely wonder if the deceptive advertising was essential to make that much money. 

So here we see the stage of pointless (having little or no sense) versus useless (not fulfilling or not expected to achieve the desired outcome). You might think it is the same, but it is not. The difference was seen in my Pencak Silat classes when I was a young lad (when I was 63.8% smaller roughly). Defensive systems (like Judo) are pointless, you are under attack, only countering doesn’t get the job done, there are pure attack based styles which are useless, if you are under attack, one needs defence, so the best martial art is one that decently covers attack and defence. Yes, we have seen all those movies on how great defence is, yet those grandmaster have been at it a decade or two and that tends to be far away from those starting some form of martial art. It now gives rise to the same setting with the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority), they can go after Facebook all they like, yet when the advertiser moves to advertise via Bethesda games (Fallout Shelter) how useful was the jab at Facebook?

And when the advertising server moves to the USA, or perhaps Canada, or Saudi Arabia, how will that affect the verdict? It seems to me that the leading man, Guy Parker who has been chief executive of the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) since June 2009; living of £120,000 a year might be able to keep up his income and fruitless actions, yet I merely wonder at present what he achieves, do you not feel the same way? When I see advertisement (the deceptive kind) move from place to place, I wonder why we need a man making well over $250,000 a year, it seems a pointless action and a useless way to spend that much money. Feel free to disagree, but there is a massive digital failure in that regard and I reckon I am not the only one thinking that. 

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October 28, 2020 · 21:37

The failing of others

We see this, others fail, we all do at times. My management position is different. I do not care about mistakes made, we all make them and anyone who claims that they do not make mistakes is either a liar or one who is about to make the whopper of all mistakes, history has proven me right again and again. You see, for me it is not about making the mistake, it is how quickly can you fix the mistake that was made, and if it is too late to fix it, what processes do you have in place? It is as reasonable as anyone can get. It is the application of realism. In all this there is the stage where others leave the door open, the door which you can come through. There was a setting earlier, now the setting is more defined. It is seen in ‘Saudi Arabia condemns republication of blasphemous caricatures’ (source: Arab News), they are not alone, all Islamic nations are opposing the farce France allowed for. A stage of ‘secularism’ versus ‘Intentionally insulting religion’, I feel certain that the Islamic nations are feeling a little less academic about it than I am. But for me there is an upside, I wanted to retire in Monaco (when you dream, it better be a good one), and the stage that we see in the Human Rights Watch, one with the headline ‘France Should Halt Arms Exports to Saudi Arabia’ (at https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/06/10/france-should-halt-arms-exports-saudi-arabia-egypt) where we were treated to “After Qatar, the governments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt received the greatest amounts, accounting for €1.4 billion and €1.0 billion in arms, respectively”, so lets take away the €1.4 billion from France and give it to China with a small finders fee, lets make that 3.75% for two years, with 5.3% for any additional sales over the €1.4 billion. I reckon that the stage will give me a retirement fee of € 105,000,000 and that is if there is no additional sales, but I reckon that I can pul that off to, I still have Gordian One in my back pocket and the first bonus will allow me to test it before setting it to the market. Everyone is all s up in arms and all about the evil that Saudi Arabia does, yet the simplest respect or tolerance for Islam is not to be found. So, why buy from them? An in this France has a $4.3B, Italy a $3.8B and Germany a whopping $7.5B, so in all this I would be in a position of a really nice retirement, can anyone blame me? I am upfront on my reasons, most others are not, most others hide behind their secularism to allow for right winged hatred, they are too afraid to be replaced and the worst thing is that replacement will happen at some point, so doing it whilst hurting your coffers to support your nation makes no sense at all, and as I am proving, there is always someone else ready to deliver what the customer needs. If party to is hungry enough, he or she will find a way and there are several nations that need to be aware of what comes next. France is only one example, the US has through its own actions endangered close to $10 billion in sales and in that case Russia and China are fighting on what they might deliver, at that point we see the shifting of the Middle East options that the US (the EU too) has left. A stage that will happen, the stage is too loud for it not too happen and several actions are already in the past, with Saudi Arabia having by far the fastest 5G setting, we see that there are additional setting for the KSA to embrace and China is seemingly increasingly willing to pick up that baton, two batons dropped by the EU and the US through acts of increasing stupidity and that setting is not stopping anyway soon, as that continues more and more additional offers of goods will come from other directions, and in this we see a larger stage, if the sales fall away the drop in jobs come pressing, it will result in additional economic stagnation, all whilst their larger opponents will get economic boost after boost. How will that play out? Well, I am speculating, not too good for the US and the EU, but if it goes my way I will have a nice golden parachute, and as such I will not care.

The station of acceptance is not merely giving the consumer what they want, it is accepting that they work with other values, it is the simplest of rules in the setting of larger sales and that is a mistake at least 5 nations have made, thinking that their values would be blindly accepted on a global setting. In this one source gives us “The Trump Administration has degraded environmental enforcement, favouring polluters over citizens’ interests”, as such, if for these people the environment is so important, why do we see shallow levels of acceptance? Hypocrisy is a dangerous form of ammunition, it can openly be used by shooter and target and there is no guarantee that it goes the way they think, in the end the hooter could end up getting shot by their own bullets. This is not a new setting, there is an entire dimension of sales systems banking on the failing of others, they refer to it as their pipeline, the pipeline of opportunity. So in this, what is wrong by resetting that pipeline to me? It is the way they do business, as such I can too.

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October 20, 2020 · 23:06

Is the link real?

Apart from the continuation of the IP I promised as public domain for Sony exclusive products, I was in doubt of some information on ISIS I got my fingers on. This is besides the information that is out in Israel where we see: ‘ISIS urges attacks on westerners, oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia’, the danger of the nfrmaetion I saw is that they are merely parts of something. I need to painty a picture. In one courtyard there is a person selling sweet fruits, they are orange in colour and in the other courtyard there is a person selling sweet fruits but red in colour. Now, I cannot tell if the first one is selling oranges, tangerines or perhaps nectarines. The other person is selling cherries, strawberries, red currant or even tomatoes (are tomatoes fruit). Some will set the stage that fruit sellers are in these two courtyards. Yet I do not know are these sellers an outlier, is fruit all they sell, can I confirm what exactly they sell and what do they call themselves? Even the issue if the two sellers are related is in question. But some intelligence is set on too little data and too often dubious data. Then there is the stage what do they call themselves? Are they actual sellers, or merely two people in a closed setting where they have something for sale? All questions on the stage we see here, so when I see “An Islamic State spokesman called on the terrorist group’s supporters to target westerners, oil pipelines and economic infrastructure in Saudi Arabia”. This set a few issues. In the first the reliability of it all, the western media has actively avoided a few settings in these places, so there is little to go on and for the most they merely copy one another. In the second Saudi Intelligence is pretty efficient in Saudi Arabia, as such ISIS is calling for activity in a place where they do not have any, so is it a hollow threat, is it a call to arms or a red herring to mess with Saudi Intelligence. The additional problem is that any attack could only happen with a much larger support from Iran and ISIS and Iran do not really mix, which gets me to a slightly inappropriate joke. Two hooligans, one Swede one Dane have an argument over Football, they both grab their knives and stab each other in the chest, instantly killing one another. What is the Score? Answer: Norway leads by two points.

OK, not the nicest joke, but the issue gets across (I hope). ISIS is leaking and making claims, yet the stage is not set and there is debate on how effective ISIS is in Saudi Arabia, and that is the larger truth here. ISIS might have followers in Saudi Arabia, but that is hear say, there is speculation, but no active data supporting this. Iran has activity (to some degree) in Saudi Arabia, but there is still debate on how much and how effective it remains. 

In a stage where we see: “Saudi Arabia has stressed the need to step up efforts to reach a lasting and sustainable peace agreement among the Palestinians and the Israelis” we see one side, we see ISIS in opposition, yet no one is looking on where Israel Hayom got its data (at https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/10/20/isis-urges-attacks-on-westerners-oil-infrastructure-in-saudi-arabia/) from. This was not some leak, this was not intelligent by Mossad, the article given to us is from Reuters and ILH Staff, OK, we can accept that, so why doesn’t Reuters have this as front page news on their Middle East section page? And as such, who at ILH had this and more important when did they have it? An article by Reuters not on their website, especially one involving ISIS is a larger set of weird, and guess what, it was about Saudi Arabia, another reason to have it, and the only other source I saw pushing this was oilprice.com. That and the stage of ‘Offshore Oil & Gas Poised For A Major Rebound’, as such, in light of all this, I have questions, don’t you?

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October 19, 2020 · 14:17

Anticlimactic

Yup we all have these moments, it usually comes after a ‘watch this’, or ‘you’ll never believe what I just heard’. There is no escaping these moments and anyone reading this has a few instances where this happens, or as some married women say, welcome to my life, I get this at least once a day. Such things happen and for one station one could argue that they should not have married that person (40% divorce ratings proof me right).

Oh, and before I forget, the next instalment of the free RPG IP for Sony products comes next. So that is one part that will be coming, I was actually about to work on it when ‘Sheikh Khalifa’s £5bn London property empire’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/ng-interactive/2020/oct/18/revealed-sheikh-khalifas-5bn-london-property-empire) passed my eyes. I wanted to add a comic I remembered, but I cannot find it. It was the early 80’s and in that instance you see three Arabs talking, one saying ‘Shopping was nice, today I bought Bond street and Piccadilly’, which was a reality around 1985, the shops would worship you if you came with German Marks or American Dollars, it was that bad, so the idea that a lot of prime real estate is not British owned is not really a surprise. In 2014 the Daily Mail gives us ‘How wealthy Gulf Arabs are buying up huge swathes of the capital – and now make up a tenth of all buyers in exclusive Mayfair’, as such what the Guardian had in mind to make it some exclusive ‘revealed’ story seems to be a bit of a stretch. In addition to this we can argue (and no disrespect intended) that Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan with a £5,500,000,000 real estate empire is according to some sources not really super wealthy, but he is getting up there. Yes, how sad are we when we gawp at an amount that other refer to as ‘Meh!’. The article goes on with “Now, leaked documents, court filings and analysis of public records have enabled the Guardian to map Khalifa’s property holdings in the UK, revealing how the oil-rich nation’s president became a major landlord in London. Khalifa’s London property empire appears to surpass even that of the Duke of Westminster, the 29-year-old billionaire aristocrat who owns swathes of the city”, which makes me go ‘Really?’ Consider 1 Hyde Park, how many British owners are in that building? Can we get a rundown per nationality please? In 2019 we got (source: Elite Traveller) “London’s luxury real estate market has been given a well-timed boost with the news that a super-prime penthouse has sold for a reported $72million. The sale represents one of the biggest in the United Kingdom in the last year. The property is the largest in the new Clarges Mayfair development on Piccadilly, which has proved popular with the global elite since its completion last year. The purchase was completed by Quintessentially Estates working on behalf of an international client”, there are actual Arab run investment firms in the UK who specialise in real estate projects, and they are pretty much the only ones who can afford living in London, so why is anyone surprised? Why is the Guardian (in this instance) going all ‘revealed’ over one person who might not be the biggest investor in London, and in a stage where the London city administration is pushing these events, why is there a lack of that part of the equation? Even as Forbes gave us earlier this year ‘Is It Time To Move Out Of London?’, we see stage where the Coronavirus is hitting landlords with almost no manoeuvring space, they are all panicking. Even as they focus on “Similarly, rents in the capital are also extortionately high for many, with the latest Rightmove Rental Index putting average London rents at £2,119 per month in Q4 2019, compared with £817 in the same period for properties outside of London. And although the latest ONS Index of Private Housing Rental Prices showed that London prices increased 1.3% year on year in January, compared to 1.6% for the rentals outside of the capital, it’s of little meaning in the bigger picture where capital rentals are on average more than twice of their surrounding neighbours” the stage of landlords is less clearly stated, some when on a limb because it was a sure deal, as such no-one was ready for an even outlier like Covid-19, and no-one was expected to, so nw we see that others are taking over with discount a large setting of the housing available. London will grow back to strength and those with a few millions here and there and not needing them will make a rather nice profit over the next 3-4 years. That is how it works, so when I look at “Analysis of Land Registry data suggests Khalifa’s commercial and private property portfolio includes about 170 properties, ranging from a secluded mansion near Richmond Park to multiple high-end London office blocks occupied by hedge funds and investment banks” I merely shrug and say ‘Meh!’, and the stage of “hedge funds and investment banks” has been the stage of London properties for decades, so why is this big news? Was it so you could avoid reporting on ‘Islamic State calls to attack Saudi Arabia over Israel’s deals with UAE, Bahrain’, yes it makes perfect sense to attack nation A, because nation B and C had a deal with nation D. Yes, that might actually have revolutionary details (sorry, pun intended). And as I go over the Guardian article, I cannot say that it is a bad article, it is actually a good article, yet the entire ‘revealed’ part is a little anti-climatic and the idea that a decently wealthy person from the United Arab Emirates is investing in London might not even constitute news, or newsworthy. That  has been going on for well over a decade. So when we consider “housing a secretive Liechtensteinian company, Holbein Anstalt, which manages the royal family’s private affairs”, an optional actual fact (I did not check the fact), we might consider asking the editor of the Guardian (Katharine Viner) if she has been drinking the other cool-aid. 

The issue is not the current owners, it is the setting where the City of London is doing actual work to set a stage where affordable housing becomes more readily available. I wonder if the waiting list of that part has diminished below 10 years yet. London is one f the few plays in the world where a first house is only affordable for people at the END of their career, it is quite the achievement for the City of London.

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October 17, 2020 · 01:41

When a war is called

The thought started when I saw an article by Yahoo Finance pass by, it was named ‘Why Saudi Arabia May Be Forced To Start Another Oil Price War’, two thing came to mind, it is October, and the northern hemisphere is now going into Winter, it seems trivial, but 700 million Europeans and well over 50% of Americans (and also all Canadians) will need heating and oil is more often than not the essential fuel used. The second part is seen but perhaps missed, as we are given “The threat of European lockdowns is real, hitting global demand again while taking a heavy toll on the economy. Financial easing and subsidies worldwide have kept some demand in place, but the financials of major economies are bleak, which can be seen in the rising level of unemployment” what everyone forget is that in the past most of these people were in offices and shops, places of employment. During the lockdown all these people will stay at home and their houses, places that usually tends to be 5-8 degrees colder because they are at work, these houses will now need heating for all that time. In addition there are in the US over 1,050 power plants operated by oil, all these houses need power, all whilst many shopping centre needs less power, yet the need for power and heating will seem to rise, especially when the cold days come through. Even as some question “Global oil storage levels are still high, while the world is awash with oil and gas. International traders are openly questioning the current OPEC+ move to put extra oil on the market”, I am not convinced. Yes there is less fuel needed for jets, but jetful is only 2% of crude oil production, so I have been told in school (a long time ago), yet power and heating needs oil and there will be a shift, summer is gone, autumn is squarely here and we see a few hundred million places now needing power and heating most of the day, which stands against the needs of a working environment. As such the statement seen here “Saudi Arabia, supported by its main ally UAE, and Russia are both looking at a financial crash of unknown magnitude if oil markets don’t recover soon. Oil prices are currently too low to sustain the government strategy of both nations” becomes one of debate. I cannot counter it, but when we think things through, oil needs are essential during winter, and I see it, these people will not need gas for cars, so where is the tradeoff? Well, mot of these houses still need food, so the car remains used, to a lesser state. Yet heating and power will be needed to a much larger degree, so even as we can assume to some degree that there will be a lesser need, it will at best be a ‘somewhat lesser need’, in light of all this, why is there a call for a war (well, a pricing war)? The article still gives a truth, several in fact. We cannot disagree with “Without higher crude oil prices, not only is the Kingdom’s flagship Saudi Aramco suffering but most government projects too. The world’s largest oil company has already put several major new projects on hold, while at the same time reassessing investment levels of others. High-profile offshore projects” yes there will be an impact, and the impact will optionally continue into 2021, yet the larger stage is not how Saudi Arabia will do, the question becomes when the EU collapses after another lockdown, how will those government foot the bill for essential services (power and heating) when the trough (finance coffers) run dry?

So as we get to “If the threats made by Saudi Arabia’s Minister of Energy Prince Abdulaziz Bin Salman that the Kingdom has had enough of profit takers, short investors, or lack of support of members, are to be taken face value, the market should not be surprised if the OPEC leader decides again to go its own way. A more aggressive move by Riyadh towards market-share or oil prices is not at all unthinkable”, I start to wonder who the writer Cyril Widdershoven is and I see that he is linked to Verocy and that he oversees Mediterranean Energy Political Risk Consultancy. As such, I wonder if he hopes to create a pre-creationary wave, or that there is a stage which in the article is assigned to Prince Abdulaziz Bin Salman. I do not know (I honestly do not know), yet any quick or knee-jerk action required by others, tends to set a different stage in all this and when someone gives me ‘Why Saudi Arabia May Be Forced To Start Another Oil Price War’, I tend to wonder why something like that I needed. Yes from our side a lockdown is not good news, but who considered that they would be warming the house an additional 12-15 hours each day? 

It is well over half a day more, as such heating is required, as well as additional power, because these people will need their TV, their computer, their radio, their console and in many houses they need need close to one of each and with an additional 12 hours a day that drives up the need for power too. So yet there is every indication that there is some level of downturn for Saudi Arabia, I am merely not convinced that it will be as bad as me predict, yet I am willing to admit that I might be wrong. So I will let you do the math on what you need in your house, and consider, will it be more or less than before and when you consider that part, consider the thousands, nay millions of additional homesteads in Europe, the US and Canada. That is what went through my mind, and overall there is an impact for Saudi Arabia, but I am not convinced that it will be as dire as some say. When someone calls for a pricing war, they tend to multiple motives, that I what history taught me, I am merely thinking things through, but as stated, I might be wrong.  

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October 11, 2020 · 22:45

Pleasing the minority

There is a stage we all face, at times we have to please the minority, I have nothing against that. There is a first need to do this at times, and it is also a stage where we see that ONLY pleasing the majority tends to set an empty example. Let’s set the stage by asking 5 questions, in 5 cases 80% says yes, 20% says no, now consider that the questions are related somehow and the ‘no’s’ never overlap. So there is optionally a state here an unanswered question exist where 100% would say yes, but now it is never asked. It is an extreme setting, but they do exist, and the stage is that if we please the minority at times, we have a stage where there is a diminished need to polarise. Now, this last part is speculative from my side, but it is one that exists to some degree.

Yet it is not about some theoretical side, it is a real side and we have been exposed to the largest stage of it. A global economy in shambles as we gave in to lockdown after lockdown, which is fine (to some degree), I understand and accept that actions were needed. 

Yet in all this, consider that we are in a stage where we are trying to please a group of people that amounts to 2.7% of the people who will not survive the Coronavirus. Now I am all about reducing risk and the setting is not the 2.7%, but the expected 4.3%, which we need to name the stage of expected and actual morality rate. No matter how we turn it, the 95% is trying to please the less than 5% of the population who will not survive the event. 

I understand the face masks, and certain preventive measures like social distancing, we want to do as much as we can, but that stage is not always possible, the lockdowns show that. And in all this we are trying to fictively please a minority to continue all this, consider that we told the news that we are locking down nations because of a flu, how would that have ended?

Now consider the headlines ‘Second national lockdown possible, says top UK scientist’, ‘India’s coronavirus outbreak in 200 seconds’, and ‘Israel’s second lockdown slowing outbreak, data suggest’. We can jump any way we want, but until there is an actual vaccine that works, slowing down is as good as it gets and the stage of lockdowns only results in a stage that destroys global economies and nothing more than that. Even as the BBC gives us ‘A visual guide to the economic impact’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51706225) we see the larger impact. Yes there was always going to be an unemployment issue, but the economy was already weak, this merely pushed it over the edge. Yes, we see ‘More people seeking work’, and a weak economy was in part to blame, the lockdowns merely intensified it. And as we seek other reasons, no one is looking at the part the we ignored, when the lockdown started, we were left at home with nothing to do and the shops were closed too, result, millions of people turned to Amazon, which gave Jeff Bezos a $12,000,000,000 sandwich, and I reckon that it tasted good. Now, none of this is the fault of Jeff Bezos, lets be clear about the, global economies overreacted and we got into a stage where Amazon is one of the few beneficiaries clearly having a profitable stage. I agree that governments had to do something, so there is nothin to state against a first lockdown, but as we now see in the UK, and France as the headlines of France24 give us ‘French coronavirus cases set new 24-hour record with nearly 27,000 infections’, lockdowns are not a solution, we merely need an actual working vaccine and until that happens, people will die, optionally me as well. Am I happy if I do not make it, of course not, but if I die I get to avoid my next tax-bill, is this the silver lining, or the dark close the follows the current silver lining? I actually do not know. 

But we are in a stage where we see politicians act the same solution again and again and expect a different outcome, and before you wonder, yet I am coming with an Einstein setting. He stated “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”, and when will we catch on that this is not working? Even as we see ‘Supermarkets, chemist and Bunnings among alert venues after NSW records five new COVID-19 cases’ (source: 9News), consider that New South Wales has 8.2 million people, most of them in Sydney (5.3M), on 801,150 km², outside of Sydney 3 million people are in a stage of being hindered life on all matters. Of course Australia is an example that is a bit of an outlier, yet I feel that France, Germany and the UK have similar stages outside of the big cities. Consider the overreaction of 5 new cases on a place that is larger than 35 nations in the world.

These places and others too have a stage where politicians and scientists are setting a stage that is not a wrong one, but it caters to the minority. I get it, they want to safe as many people as they can, but now the economy is setting a stage of a much larger time of hardship, I reckon that Amazon is pleased of whatever comes next, they are still roaring, and consider that a new lockdown gives us a stage of two new console and several new games and only Amazon will be able to hand over the goods to people in houses staying away from the debatable diseased areas. This is NOT about Amazon, they did nothing wrong, we need to find another solution, something that results in not getting the Einstein insanity definition thrown into our faces. I get the first lockdown action, it made sense, but now that we see that it is not working and when we see that the White House population was a massive spreader of the virus, we need to wake up and consider that for the coming year we will place ourselves in danger, we cannot solve the setting until there is a cure, until there is a vaccine. We can merely protect ourselves as best we can, we can all wear the facemark, we can prosecute the infected who did not for negligent endangerment, and get indicted for a lot more if it results in a fatality. We  might think that all lives are to be saved, but what happens when the economy dies? Was the economy not worth saving? I am not sure about that part of the equation, I do not know if it is worth saving, and perhaps neither are the people. I cannot profess to be wise enough to make that judgement, yet I believe the inaction is a mortal sin, and so is feigned inaction, by doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results, different outcomes. 

Consider what you have done in the last 6 months and see what you gained and what you lost. Close to 99% of the people had a significant loss, so why do we cater to the minority in all this?

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October 7, 2020 · 19:06

The stage of Medici

Yup, we understand (or most at least) the stage that the Medici bring, it is a political stage, it does tend to get a bit confusing when those who who employ the tactics of the medici also study medicine, they are not the same. In this we call the stage (or boxing ring) between Dr. Fauci and Dr. Atlas. In one corner we have Dr. Fauci, an immunologist has had a career in infectious diseases since 1984. This man is extremely qualified on the stage of Covid-19. In the other corner we see Dr. Atlas, a neuroradiologist. It is a subspecialty of radiology focusing on the diagnosis and characterisation of the central and peripheral nervous system, spine, and head and neck using neuroimaging techniques. So oversimplified, one takes pictures and one looks at infectious diseases. I am arrogant enough to say that I could do (after learning it) what Dr. Atlas does, but I would never be willing to claim that I could ever do what Dr. Fauci does.

In all this it is nice to take a look (at https://www.businessinsider.com.au/scott-atlas-hits-back-critics-questioning-science-fauci-redfield-2020-10) the link to the article, there we see “a health-policy expert who spent months speaking out against lockdowns and advocating the full reopening of schools, to the White House coronavirus task force in August prompted outrage in the medical community”, in light of a massive part of the White House, now in a stage where no work can be done, all whilst the cases are till growing globally by well over 300,000 each day. There is not. Lot more we can do, because there is every indication that the numbers are tweaked, incomplete and misreported making the US look worse off, but that stage is (as I personally see it) largely incorrect. In the stage I am on the fence, because the stage is larger and there is a lot of fear mongering. No matter how important we see ourselves, the morality rate is still around 4%, optional a little lower when we consider that several nations have not reported or insufficiently tested for hundreds of thousands of people. All whilst 96% will endure. Yes we would like to see 0% death, but that is not realistically, the over reaction is too often ignored, and when we see “after months of Atlas appearing on Fox News and speaking out against lockdowns”, I am not sure if I can disagree with him, the larger stage is about protecting 96% of the people in amber, which is counter productive and almost pointless. I do not disagree with “members questioning his qualifications to advise the president since his background is in health policy and neuroradiology, not infectious diseases”, if we can accept some lists, we could reflect on Sweden, currently in 42nd place, with 96,145 cases and 5883 Covid casualties, giving them a mortality rate of 6.1%, yet the percentage seems 50% higher, but the economic impact was avoided to some degree. There is also the issue that Sweden is massively rural with the exception of the villages Stockholm, Malmo and Gothenburg. There would optionally be a reason to impact these villages. There is a decent setting that this approach could never work in London, Paris or the Netherlands, the population pressure is too high, it also gives a larger stage that the numbers from India do not add up, yet for the US there needed to be a more fluidic setting. Yes, lock down New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago, yet doing that in Arkansas, Alabama, Ohio, Oklahoma, Kansas and rural settings makes a lot less sense. Even now, I get it, Face masks is in too many places unavoidable, and I do not object, but the mass fears and the mass ashes were not the greatest ideas. So in this, the Medici move gives rise to “In recent years, however, Atlas has transitioned to a career in health policy. He works as a senior fellow at Stanford’s conservative Hoover Institution and has advised politicians including Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani on heath policy”, yet in this case, in the case of Covid, his knowledge is inferior to Dr. Fauci, as such, (again oversimplified) it is a speaker of Medici opposing a speaker of medicine and too many do not understand the difference. I see the wisdom in “his background is in health policy and neuroradiology, not infectious diseases” and I see that too, Dr Fauci is the better expert on the matter, but for any health care worker ever confronted with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, we need to understand that this is not a medical book, it is a book for legal settings. It is a rosetta stone so that health professionals can converse with legal professionals and that is the setting a lot of people seem to miss.

I am aware of the stage where psychiatrist Allen Frances has been critical of proposed revisions to the DSM-5, with the generalised quote “it will medicalise normality and result in a box full of unnecessary and harmful drug prescription”, all whilst I am in a stage where I state “if you had to grasp art the book you know there was an issue from moment one of going there”, and in the end it is not a medical book, it is a reference (of sorts). 

So whilst the Fauci and Atlas are brushing up on pugilism, we are standing on the sidelines, tightly packed to see as much of that fight as possible, forgetting that we can make changes to the choices and optionally keep ourselves and other safe. The first lesson that these fanatics seem to forget, because if their actions can be used as optional evidence that they infected others, those relatives of these people could push for arrests towards negligent homicide. At that point it is not about ‘personal rights’ it will not be about ‘freedom of expression’, they got (optionally) others killed and as thousands are getting arrested and jailed before the election, that stage will set a new record of accusations towards election tempering. It is more than merely a silly thought to have.

Yet on the other side I get it, there is a larger overreaction to the situation. It is the impact of fear (as I personally see it). There is no clean setting (other than the Dr. Fauci vs Dr. Atlas setting) and there this president has created a problem for himself. Especially as deaths are on the rise in the US, and it takes only one death in White House staff for the situation to explode (or implode) in a much larger form of consideration, why did President Trump ignore Dr. Fauci in the first place? So far he has not been wrong. I accept that the president has an issue with the ‘better be safe than sorry approach’, yet that is almost every doctor and in this stage Dr. Atlas has a larger disadvantage. 

No matter how this goes, Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli has been howling with laughter for days, the fact that the medico are now medico di Medici is something he never expected and he is clearly having fun.  I feel like celebrating (and giggling) too, let see if he has any of that Italian grape juice left.

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October 4, 2020 · 18:33

A coin with 2 sides of greed

This morning started out alright, I was still pondering on what I had wrote yesterday and I still stand by it. Any voices on complexity are not dimmed, the issue is larger than I wrote about it, but to take the full scope makes the matter too complex, I was all about oversimplification, as that tends to show things, but it also polarises any view (including mine). This is what was in my mind when the news on Proton-mail and Andy Yen hit me. You see the moment any firm goes into some preaching stage of ‘App Fairness’ mode, the hairs in my neck tend to rise to the occasion. Now, those who read my blog regularly will have seen that I have no issue slapping the big boys silly whenever I can. So like the proverbial pitbull, I have had a mouthful of pants with Apple, Google, IBM and Microsoft logo’s and a chunk of their asses. No matter how big they are, I do not pull my punches (much more fun the way), so let’s have a look at Andy Yen, actually, let’s do something else first, it helps you to understand the station where I am at.

In 2008 Apple launched the App store, initially with around 500 apps. Apple saw in the early days the third party developers would bring home the bacon, but in those years it was not easy being a developer. Those developing for windows had well over a decade of experience and in those days the Software Development Kit would cost a developer $1500, with the additional programming packages and consultancy lessons. So ANY developer would be out of pocket between $3,000 and $5,000 and they would not have anything to show for it. The cost would drastically increase when the program was ready, but the was for another time. So in those days Apple got clever about it and gave us “To publish apps on App Store, developers must pay a $99 yearly fee for access to Apple’s Developer Program”, now consider the first setting of $99 versus $3,000, a new stage that allowed the dreamers and the wickedly clever to publish without a setting of some bulk investment and there was another part, “The income app stores take is 30%. Apple started setting that as a standard – they weren’t the first, but the iOS app ecosystem has been used as a model by many other players in the mobile app space”, now consider the you are a small developer, selling your software will need servers, protection software, shopping kart software, income checkers and go on from that. Apple delivered a system that does it all, so the developer will only need to upload their readied product. Thousands of dollars saved and the small developers get an almost free ride and they pay later through every sale. 

This is beyond fair, because the one million programs that came in the first decade would evolve, these people had a second option. They would sell their program for $0.99-$5 and Apple merely takes 30% of the sale, 70% remains with the makers and that contribution setting was already in play with software houses from the 90’s, yet those programs were often $299-$999. A mobile with the option of programs costing less than $5 are more easily sold and these makers suddenly made thousands of dollars, most of them massively happy. In that same light under Microsoft these developers would never exist. The cost of being up and running would strip all revenue away. As such Apple (and Google too) would create a wave of people creating the thousands of dollars to fuel the system would basically be paid for by the more successful players in this field.

So when I see the headline ‘Why we joined the Coalition for App Fairness’, I merely see a greed driven non-truth that is (as I personally see it) fuelled by greed.

So now the you have some of the background, we see the real deal, people like Epic Games and Proton-mail, they had an idea and they used that system to get ahead, which is nice for them, yet now, now that they made it, they want to avoid fees, they want the 30% that they initially signed up for as well. It is basically the same with Epic Games, once they made the numbers, their success went to their heads and they are now fishing (or is that phishing) for the 30% they signed up for? They want to avoid the apple fee and for one player it makes sense, yet this system was designed so that the small players would get a chance to become big, a stage that many faced. So when I see these ‘displays of fairness’ I merely see greed driven players merely wanting more.

The setting is however larger. The quote “First, to be clear, our mission at Proton is to foster an open, free, private, and secure internet. We exist today because a large community of people agree with these goals and support our work. Helping to found CAF does not in any way signal a deviation from these core values. Proton will always remain fiercely protective of our independence in order to put user interests first” gets to be ripped to shreds when we see “to foster an open, free, private, and secure internet”, yes they do have a free option, but it is limited, which might be fair enough, their goal is to be ready for the 4.00 € and 24.00 € a month users, whilst their free accounts are limited, the paying ones are driving this and so far they got 10 million people in their accounts, I am not aware how many constitutes free accounts.

Another point was “Our purpose for joining CAF is not about advancing the goals of Spotify and Epic, but about making sure that you, our community, have a voice in this important debate”, is the so? I find it debatable, for the simple reason that we are also handed “ProtonMail is run by Proton Technologies AG, a company based in the Canton of Geneva, and its servers are located at two locations in Switzerland, outside of US and EU jurisdiction”, whilst this sounds nice, outside of jurisdictions comes at a price and one could argue the organised crime finds the approach appealing, as do some people the want to avoid data accountability, but for the most, I am on the fence of how reliable data safety outside of jurisdictions tend to be (I am not making any statement on the security they run). So the app store has them as a free app, which implies that they are free, but they offer ‘Offers In-App Purchases’, and their own Twitter account gives us “We actually don’t understand the significance of paid account here? ProtonMail doesn’t offer in app purchases on Android, so purchases need to be made through our Swiss website”, and there is the kicker, they want it via their own website to avoid the 30%, exactly how Epic Games set it up, once they have the foundation of users, they want to avoid Apple (and/or Google) fees. 

I need to admit that Andy Yen is in a slightly different setting (as is Epic Games). You see, he started with the backing through kick-starters and ended up with a beginning capital of $500K, 5 times of what they needed to get started, a lot do not have that option, which I admit is not the stage that Andy Yen cares about (yet he claims the opposite), we get it, but when we see ‘a better internet that puts people first’, we need to realise the this was exactly what Apple did (Google too), by setting the contribution cycle almost EVERY developer had their chance at stardom, and whilst we see ‘free app’, how many people would have taken it up when the app had to be bought at $9.99, or $19.99? You forget that if we avoid the contribution cycle, we see the the funds need to be found somewhere, do they not? You really cannot get it both ways and for the most the contribution cycle is the most fair, because it is only taken from actual sales, so the newbies get to be there for free or for nothing (or both), and the big players basically pay for the little people.

Consider that and the fact that there is a price for being able to chose from 1.75 million app on a store. If that setting did not exist these store would end up having well over a million apps less. And this year, in the covid year, there is suddenly the need to avoid paying because the investors need to be appeased. As I personally see it greed is the final equaliser against choice, because these players want to be the only provider and the current stage allows new developers deploy their system, optionally a real innovative one, but they get a to because the costs of starting are not there, not like it was anyway.

Happy now?

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October 4, 2020 · 03:46

The mind stage

Where is the border of sanity? The is the question that is central at this point. Yes, we are having slightly too much fun with the new President of the United Stage, it is Mr. Covid, he is only 19 but running the US. As the news is exploding all over the news and the internet, we are given name after name, cluster after cluster and it is hitting the White House, the Senate and optionally Congress as well. After that there have been the dozens of attacks on Saudi Arabia, yet Iran is left outside of consideration and Ubisoft is getting hammered. Now, in part Ubisoft has itself to thank for what is happening, and I am not referring to the news that 25% was a witness or victim of unacceptable behaviour, or whatever that means. I am not making light of the situation, I truly am not. Ubisoft is part of its own problem, as marketing is trying to inflate hypes, we see this with ‘Prince Of Persia Remake Nintendo Switch Box Art Leaks Online’, as well as ‘Ubisoft Appears To Tease Rayman Project, Deletes Post After Fans Get Too Hyped’. The problem with hypes is not the they are hypes, they are the figments of illusional marketing. To set this straight I need to take you to an alternative setting

2 out of 3

There are three levers for a new house, one has the settings Cheap-Expensive, the second is called ‘Fast build – Slow build’ and the third one is ‘High quality – Low Quality’, the issues is that you can only select two, the third one will be set against you, which ones do you choose?

Marketing has a similar stage. Large visibility- small visibility, quick – slow, large placement versus small placement and high quality versus low quality. There are a few more elements, but this is merely to illuminate, in these four only two can be set and now you see the danger for Ubisoft as it ignored timing and quality, whilst keeping visibility and placement to large, and now the ignored quality is costing them. So as we see leak after leak (which I believe has been orchestrated by marketing element), we see all the setting in place and there is no consideration towards quality. So whilst we see “The players are back in the game but the way Ubisoft handled the whole ordeal didn’t hold up to a good standard. As a way to thank the players for patience with the patch, the devs offered some freebies to lessen the inconvenience caused by tardiness. One of them was the custom Desert Eagle and the other a grand total of 1,200 Skell Credits” we see the adaptation of quantity, and to fix it the gamers are treated to ‘some freebies’, as I see it the horse has left the stable and the stable is no longer theirs. And that setting is about to be set in a real live testing. The two games where things cannot go wrong for Ubisoft is AC Valhalla and Watchdogs: Legion. If either goes wrong the larger downfall stage for Ubisoft will be set. 

As I personally see it, they seemingly just will not learn, the last time they got it right was 2017, and I believe the they are at present out of options. As their marketing hands us story after story, leak after leak, they are sailing from the setting they need to be in (and perhaps behind the screens they are), and I hope they are, but the first hurdle is 40 days away and they better not miss a beat. 

So how does this touch on Saudi Arabia?

We see marketing via the media and newspapers, anti Saudi Arabia and the silence towards Iran. First things first, Saudi Arabia now has the initial setting of full 5G completed. No matter that this is Huawei, there is a stage where China now has options to open talks on all kinds of matters. Pompeo gave us via newspapers that they are using seduction and nuclear weapons, but that might merely be a second stage. Even as Huawei is opening technology, China does have the option to open up towards larger weapons contract, destabilising US interests in the middle east. All whilst Saudi Arabia with a functioning 5G becomes a testing ground for 5G, allowing Saudi engineers to create a larger benefit, optionally setting up new apps, all tested and ready to be deployed outside of Saudi Arabia. it is merely the setting on the side and the people opposing this are the ones who are afraid to lose too much coins.

Now, I am really willing to accept that it is all in my mind, but the setting stages of media marketing and media exploitation is getting out of control and that is what we now see, we see marketing driven media out of control yet the people who need to see what is going on are ignoring it. And the weird part is that it is happening to Ubisoft and it is happening to Saudi Arabia, two seemingly unrelated pawns in a much larger game, yet is it a real larger game, or one that is merely in my mind? Ignoring this is wrong, it is the same stage that these conspiracy theories have (I am always right, I am the only one who sees this). I try to back all the things I see with other links and verified news, Yet that does not stop a person to see what that person believes, but it does not mean that it does not exist. It is a larger stage of data versus insight. One cannot compare apples to pears.

So even as I see the marketing and media frenzy, I see both elements as separate ones, these two players are merely hit in a similar way. Consider the pro Saudi News, the one relating to Neom city, so a 500 billion dollar investment and we see in Google 21,000 hits? Whilst we see 54 million negative mentions towards Saudi Arabia. Does that not strike you all as weird? Now, I am not stating that Saudi Arabia is innocent, that it has no issues, but the world (pretty much all of it) tends to go coo-coo where money is concerned, and $500,000,000,000 is a lot of money. It inspired me to make four parts of my IP. And let’s be fair, out of $500 billion, even a 0.1% is well worth anyones time (I am hoping for a mere 1% and I am willing to end with only 10% of that), so as we set that trickle, do you think that the players like Google and Apple are not ready to jump in at similar settings at a moments notice? You have got to be kidding, but the media remains silent, 21,000 hits on Neom city? Are you for real? The same can be seen in light of Ubisoft, 6.5M, yet only 1.5M when it comes to Ubisoft and PS5, a lot more mind you, but there is a stage where they seemingly overlap in treatment by the media and that is what I saw. I feel justified in what I see and I feel justified in bringing it to light. Even as a lot will agree that Ubisoft has coming what it asked for, there is a larger stage which is completely absent of fair dinkum (an Australian expression meaning fair play) and I have an issue with that, just like the never ending anti-Saudi news. I saw a right wing poll with the question “Single Greatest contributing factor behind decline of UK”, from the 3237 votes, 72% voted that Islam was the reason, a stage that together with the anti-Saudi waves has become unacceptable, yet all these governments making anti-discrimination claims are massively incapable to do anything.

We are turning several corners at the same time and I for one am completely ignorant on what might be a solution. I merely wonder if we are returning to the age of the crusades, christians against Muslims and I for one had hoped that we had learned our lesson by now.

So if you think it is in my mind, fine, I get it. However, the Google Searches, the news items, they all seemingly prove me right. And this is all before we take a notice of the growing amount of anti-Islam and anti-semitism all over the western world. Is it all truly in my mind? It is (as I personally see it) not a stage that is merely in my mind, it is a growing stage and it is out there and we can no longer continue on the path that we are.

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October 3, 2020 · 04:14

To decide in anger

We know it, we do it, even though our inner voice screams not to do that, we still at times do it. I had such a moment hours ago on a few settings, in the first there is WordPress pushing their Gothenburg editor fiasco on their users. I would think that 2/3 of the ratings being a 1 star for the new editor would be a clear message to not enforce an editor the is not ready, but there is no fighting stupidity that is linked to the ego of others, so as such we see a group of people now looking to Wix as an option, I wonder how long it takes for WordPress to catch on.

The second issue was quite the opposite, I just learned that La Famiglia Trump has the Coronavirus, I got pinged by over a dozen papers, so there is for some the small satisfaction that the coronavirus could kill him before the election does, some will be thankful, I merely see it as an option where people can consider taking the day off, stay at home and not vote, time will tell. Yet the final two were the larger anger settings. Here it is important to set a few things straight. I am a christian (Catholic), I tend to be neutral on religious matters (for the most), but the utter stupidity that we see (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/2/macron-announces-new-plan-to-regulate-islam-in-france), where we are given ‘Macron says Islam ‘in crisis’’, so how stupid does a person need to be, especially when he is a non-Muslim to make a statement like that? There is the additional “‘Islam is a religion that is in crisis all over the world today’, says Macron, as he unveils plan to defend secularism”, which only makes things worse. As I see it secularism is a form of ego driven faith in nothing but self and your own greed (or hunger for power). In a world where well over 80% believes in something more (even the agnostic adhere to that), we get an atheist thing towards us the there is nothing more, well, he is allowed to believe this, yet in a nation that is Catholic driven, why does he not state that towards the Vatican? Afraid the there is little boy movie that he might be interrupting? #JustAsking

In addition as we are given a little repetitive quote by Al Jazeera “President Emmanuel Macron has unveiled a plan to defend France’s secular values against what he termed as “Islamist radicalism”, saying the religion was “in crisis” all over the world”, we need to take notice that apart from Christianity, he also does not push the setting towards India (Hindu), which is another billion people. As such we could flag the statement as discriminatory. So why is he isolating the Muslim voice here? When we look at the issues in play in India, there is a lot we could say, President Marcron isn’t doing that, so what is his game? It is a fair question, he seems to be aware of the world issues in some way, so the question is relevant.

The last piece is from Al Jazeera as well (Qatar is in rare form today), here it is another attack on Saudi Arabia, the story (at https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2020/10/2/mbs-why-the-world-may-be-stuck-with-the-ceo-of-saudi-inc), gives us ‘MBS: Why the world may be stuck with the ‘CEO of Saudi Inc’’, well as I see it stuck is a bit of a stretch. Perhaps we forget that MBS stands for Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud, Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. This means that when his father Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, the current King of Saudi Arabia relinquishes the crown, Mohammad Bin Salman Al Saud becomes King of Saudi Arabia. When? We do not know, yet as his father is 84 years, so there is a decent expectation that this will happen within the next 20 years. In addition, the nation of Saudi Arabia is a monarchy, so this setting was never a surprise, as such the entire ‘stuck with’ falls under the stage of what I call BS. In addition there is “Two years after the brutal murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi by a Saudi hit squad” we seem to ignore that never any reliable evidence was delivered. We could go on with the setting the Jamal Khashoggi is merely missing. OK, I do not believe that either, but if the media ignores vital facts, I can do the same thing, fair? And I will give Al Jazeera that they do give light to the with ‘Two years on, Khashoggi murder unresolved, body still missing’, yes, the murder remains unresolved. As such I could accept that Khashoggi is most likely killed, yet murder sets a level of intent that cannot be proven, and without a body a manslaughter conviction is a fairy tale in any Common Law court.  Anyone accused would most likely walk away, no verdict given. In the end the article is exactly what I expected, a mere written form of advertisement towards the newly released book ‘Blood and Oil’, it also gives us (on the cover), the sub-line ‘Mohammed Bin Salman’s Ruthless Quest for Global Power’, here I take a little bit of a distance. In the first I haven’t read the book, so the stage of ‘Quest for Global Power’ is optionally a stretch, in this American presidents are more easily accused of that. Yet, let’s not forget that the King and Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia have (optionally) a sworn duty to do what is best for Saudi Arabia, I wonder if the book touches on that. And in Muslims terms there is another side to the Al Said family. They are (the king is) Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, one could argue that the responsibility of the King (and optionally) the Crown Prince is larger than life. Consider that ALL Muslims accept that these two places are the heart of their faith, in this 24% of the entire population of the planet, 1.85 billion are Muslim and their faith is centred on Masjid al-Haram (the Great Mosque of Mecca) and Al-Masjid an-Nabawi (the Prophets Mosque of Medina), 

That is some responsibility, it is one that the royal family accepted and it has been the centre of their actions. I wonder how much consideration was given to these parts of the larger equation by Bradley Hope and Justin Scheck. If we look distant and fair to actions in play, we can argue the most nations are looking for Global Power. The UK, the US, Russia, China, all players seeking global power, it has been like that for decades. Yet now there is a new stage, as Saudi Arabia embraced 5G, they are no in a stage to get ahead in the game, r better stated, they could end up with a decent slice of the 5G environment, mostly because others were stupid and made accusations that had no evidence creating a vacuum, and Saudi Arabia, especially in the Neom sage has embraced whatever they could get and that is now optionally a much larger slice of a cake they never vied for. Yet the article gave me one part that was actually insightful. It was given to us by Patricia Sabga. She states: “The Saudi royal family is something of a black box. It’s largely impenetrable to outsiders, including people who have spent decades visiting and studying in Saudi Arabia. How do you go about carving a window into that black box?” There are two sides, in the first the this is optionally true, but how many royal families will allow carving a window in their private lives? And second to that, why would the Al Said family allow it, no matter whether other royal families have done so? Privacy is an expensive commodity and it seems to me that privacy should not be given away, but that is merely my take on that.

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