Category Archives: Finance

Where are we at?

That is the question I am throwing out there and as I am sitting in a mall enjoying a large cappuccino, I see the phrase “your safety is our concern” pass by, yet is that so? I am not opposing it, yet in the same stage the phrase “Our safety is your concern” is equally valid. We might ignore it, we might oppose it and for the most, the pussies in the field are all about ignoring the safety of others, their ego’s are all about setting the stage of what THEY need, whilst disregarding the simplest safety. I get it, it is not. Normal flu, but the realisation needs to be on the foreground of EVERY person around, and it is not, it there is one certainty, then it was seen in the scenes I personally witnessed yesterday. Th world moves on and whilst we see another clambake article on the hardships of Yemen, we need to realise that the Coronavirus will hit there a lot harder, it is not merely the stage of “5 yeas of hunger, 5 years of war” that the BBC gives us (they make no false claims there), we see that Saudi Arabia is trying to raise $2.41 billion in aid. In all this we see that the European support is dwindling down, support after support project is shutting down, the money is gone and pleads from the UN is seemingly falling on deaf ears. And the noise the people like Andrew Smith are making does not help anyone, even less the Yemeni people. So whilst we are given partial parts on Scotland by the Campaign Against Arms Trade, we simply ignore the massive support that the Houthis are giving by Iran. Do you think that this was was going on if Iran was not involved? If anything we could give out the considerations that the Yemeni war is going on because of Andrew Smith and his band of rascals. We see the accusations on both sides and we can draw a parallel to our own Corona issues, the  entire matter is in a stage of imbalance and the Yemeni people are paying the price. And it is important to see that this was not due to the Saudi intervention, they were asked by the rightfully elected government, a small titbit that is set not mentioned often enough, and now that the Houthis after 3 years are getting better in shooting their missiles, the mess will escalate faster and larger. The problem is not whether the Saudi government gets the support they need, it becomes the question on why full support was not given 3 years ago, now that the Yemeni children are dying left, right and centre, we are all in a stage of “Awwww!”, yet this has been going on for years and for the longest time no one cared, there is merely the presented concerns on these ‘dastardly Saudi’s and their guns’, whilst our concern should have been on ending the blatant disregard fo lives that Iran was ensuing (and ensuring). As I see it, the Saudi coalition had the high ground and even as the media is now calling it the Saudi Arabian led intervention, the Saudi coalition does include Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Sudan, and it also used to include Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco. This thing was always a lot bigger then we thought it was whilst the sources are clear to ignore the Iranian involvement and setting the stage of opposition to a revolutionary committee, the Houthi forces and the pro Sales Houthi. Did you think that this stage would still exist without Iran? We ignore the larger stage and we help it coming of age, killing thousands of children, we have due to our inactions blood on our hands and we are in a stage of ignoring that part.

Just like the corona virus, we seemingly push the responsibility onto others, whilst our actions did matter all along, but feel free to ignore that part and when you see more people die in Yemen. On TV tonight, feel free to switch to Big Brother, hoping to see one of the girls taking a shower, your life almost seem perfect, so enjoy the nightmares you have from prolonging a war that could have ended in 90 days, and consider that someone is feeding the houthi forces ballistic missiles, especially in light that thee isn’t a building left standing to produce these bad boys in the first place. Materials that the Houthi forces could not own or afford, they have them by the dozen (cheaper that way), in a stage where they have no economy, they have spend more on weapons, missiles and drones than a nation like Sweden could afford, did no one realise that part of the equation? A setting of imbalance that players like the CAAT is fuelling and no one takes notice.

When the children of Yemen start chanting “Our safety is your concern”, which excuse will a person like Andrew Smith offer? He’ll probably know someone to blame, but the fault is in us all. Iran should have been dealt with well over 10 years ago, but we were all fooled by a mediocre puppet all whilst the battle hardened IRGC was ignored, in that regard our inaction should pave an interesting highway to hell.

 

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Ch-ch-ch-changes

Today was weird, the shops were in full open mode and the people were also in full mode. As I was personally seeing it, in full repulsive mode. Police intervening on people making a fuzz, I saw the Chinese guy at my coffeeshop getting abused by a woman who was clearly not working with a full deck and a I was watching on the sidelines, I realised then that a lot of people were in fear mode, I am now rethinking today whilst I am listening to lullaby by the Cure. It all seems a little out of whack. In part I am happy that I have my laptop with a proper working space bar, yet I am also eager to investigate a few items and as I am rethinking on my musical needs, I am considering on the waves that we are facing and the impact that they have. You see, some see the entire lockdown as a negative way, I am too, yet I am also seeing the positive impact. Whilst people are looking and running around, I see that the economic stages are changing. 0.1% of the global population is diagnosed with the Coronavirus, a stage that is important, the numbers are low, there is an implied stage where up to twi ce the amount of people hav3e it and a lot of them are in America, as such Wall Street is seeing the unfolding of their worst nightmare, it is not about people that have jobs and people that do not have jobs, it is about consumers an their small realisation that they are dead. Some state between 450,000 and 500,000, but these are official numbers and several of the EU players are downplaying those numbers and they matter, they are consul era no longer consuming and Wall Street has never far ed this and they are panicking, their risk models will not give the bad news, but they can feel it. It is not merely Europe, the Commonwealth and America are part of the equation and the equation is not going according to their needs.

Only 6 hours ago we see that the US is facing a second day with Corona cases reaching new record levels. 45,000 cases in the last 24 hours, yet the numbers underneath it are silently wiped to the side. It is what I stated in the very beginning (February 3rd), it is about the mortality rate and in the US it is not the lowest, this implies that up to 3,000 people stop being consumers, their houses up for sale and with the speed that houses are coming to sale, the housing market will take a new dive for a little while. All things that are tonne cited, all things that Wall Street participants will downplay, because they have to do that and the current administration is halting the visa approach to America. So there will be a harder stage as the year ends, that is if there are any American around at that point (I know it its an exaggeration), yet is that truth that far off?

As I personally see it, the mov e of my IP to China might be the best consideration I had, and it is not just me. The US in many forms is starting to see the light on just how weak they have become. So whilst everyone is hiding behind the $2.3 billion contract of Raytheon, others are wondering on the ‘undervaluation’ of Raytheon only 4 days ago, we see a new seesaw of powers happening and in all this, the consumers that fuel the fire are dying off, less to support it and less people in a stage to wonder on just how far behind the US is in the 5G market, because that is the  actual market that matters, the fuelling of a new economy and that part is overlooked, three sides of a square all requiring a consumer base and that is the one element the US is missing out on more and more. So whilst some news stations report on the fight between the positive thinkers and the negative thinkers on Wall Street, so whilst some are stating (Forbes for one) that that the death rate has continued to decrease, I think that these deaths are either not reported on, or they are set aside as something else and time will prove me right, because there is one thing that is as sure as death and taxes, it is the fact that a mortality rate tends to be a constant and the hiding of numbers does not help anyone, it merely temporarily stops a downward motion of an economic that is in a stage of misjudged numberings and as I personally see it, one that is grossly misreported on in nearly every direction, as such when it comes to blows, we will see law firms running out in all kinds of mismanaged outcries of ‘foul play’ all whilst that stage is in the out an open from day one.

So when the numbers are finally here, what will you do? Cry out or seek the profits you could be enjoying? I am keeping my eyes on some property in California, close to Google and close to new shores of profit, where will you be? In both cases it will be a lovesong, optionally sung by the Cure, which was a nice bonus, but in that stage what cure will you be looking at, an artistic one, or a misreported one? When a larger population becomes in dire need of healthcare and medication, consider where they got sick, at present it is in a nation that is doing what it can to halt Obamacare and set in motion a different care system, implying that there will be a gap, which is not surprising as their covid bonus is indicatively send to a dead person, according to some news stations $1.4 billion was sent to dead people, they obviously did not need it, so how did that mess start, I will tell you, it is sent to the sea of despair, one bad on data manipulation and not reporting and when it is that much money, how many people died that are not in the papers? If we are to believe the Associated press, “130 million of the economic impact payments were sent mistakenly due to a lag of reporting on who is actually deceased”, so when the impact is that high, how many thousands are dead and as the survivors might not have to sent it back, how much worse is this situation getting? We might want to blame the IRA to stop payments from being sent to the deadly departed, but consider the amount and just how many were dead and the IRA is unaware? This is much bigger and it is getting worse, so whilst some people fight on whether this is the first or the second wave, it is my personal understanding that the dead do not care, they never made it in either the first or second approach and that side is more important, because this will hit the US on a few sides before the year is out, and the living will optionally have a really nice future ahead of them, because at that point anyone will get hired, perhaps if only to keep the appearances up.

It’s a whole new ball game and the impact will be visible all over the planet, because even as the US example is the most visible one, it is not the only one, Europe is about to see the impact of all this as well, the EU wanted to pay for it, but Wirecard misplaced $2,000,000,000 and then ended up losing $5,000,000,000, so thee is that too. The money is gone, consumers will not top up that event and everyone is wondering where the money went and where the oversight was, I reckon the overseer was sick at home playing Fallout 4, that is what overseers do, had you forgotten that?

 

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Good thoughts and less so

It all started so nice, the morning was nice and sunny (its winter and my laptop was fixed), so as I was enjoying a laptop with a good space bar, my youth came calling through a knocker like a sledgehammer. After 84 years Olympus is stopping. My second camera was an Olympus, an OM-10, which was followed 2 years later with the OM-2, a camera I never stopped worshipping. Olympus was on the tip of all tongues, on the edge of what was possible and they were giving Nikon a fight, Cannon was not that big (but in an impressive stage) and Minolta was there as well. It is in that age that photography started to become affordable. And in this age they have faltered. It is a shame, but there were indicators that they were lagging more and more and the mobile phones with their less is merely one factor. Age is there to distinguish of what is in the now and what will no longer be, a playing field the forever in turmoil. 

And it is that turmoil that matters, even as Olympus went under in an honourable way, some competitors in other fields were not that lucky. That can be said of Wirecard, a company that had apparently $2,000,000,000 on the books that did not exist and is now in a state where they owe $4,000,000,000 and have no way to pay it, alas Wirecard, out you go! So can anyone explain to me how one person did this? 

I believe it a lot more and as we see Reuters giving us “Wirecard is the first member of Germany’s prestigious DAX stock index to go bust, barely two years after winning a spot among the country’s biggest 30 listed companies with a market valuation of $28 billion.” I wonder how the $28,000,000,000 was achieved, in a stage where 7% did not exist, there is every chance that the damage is larger and spread in a larger stage, and we merely see on what was NOT signed off on. Is that such a weird consideration? Whilst some make calls for reforms, which is a call for change, yet the need to identify the things not being OK will also be less likely to be found, that is the nature of things. You se, I see more, it is seen in the quote “once one of the hottest financial technology companies in Europe, dwarfs other German corporate failures. It has shaken the country’s financial establishment”, if it was the hottest Financial technology company, the technology is still there, the question was was it abused and more important, how can something this so called hot, be this flawed? How do you show $2,000,000,000 you do not have?

Then there is “German law firm Schirp & Partner said that with Wirecard now effectively sidelined, it would file class actions against EY on behalf of both shareholders and bondholders”, so EY does not sign off on the books and they get to be in the dock? Questions rise to the sirface, do they not? I would reckon that in that stage the UK would need a much better setting towards the economy, especially as the banking sector will be in the rough until the end of the year, so the UJK gets to be lucky as we see ‘China’s Huawei to build $1.2 billion research facility in England’, it gives the light towards a growth inn 5G options for the UK as Huawei is trying to be nice to the EU (they need to) and as the US is in a stage of collapse, it makes sense for Huawei to set the stage to a larger field. The step makes sense win a few levels, even as some will state that the mainland of the EU would be better, appeasing the UK will also have its influence in Australia and Canada. Two much larger players and as such Huawei is going to be moving forward. It is therefor weird that 6 minutes later everyone’s favourite Labour puppet Tony Blair gives us ‘Britain should side with U.S. over Huawei, former PM Blair says’, Well one could argue that he is deep in American pockets, can we not? So when we mull over ““I think we do need to make a call and I think it has got to be pro-U.S. in the end,” Blair said when asked about Huawei at a Reuters Newsmaker event. “It is very hard for us not to be with the U.S. on anything that touches U.S. security.””, so why? America has not now, not ever produced any evidence that gives rise to the imaginative danger of China via Huawei. In addition, where was the US when Wirecard had created the imaginative $2,000,000,000, none had seemingly a clue and now that the pied piper is piping they have no issues making a move on EY being the optional culprit in this. 

We need to change the way we do business and as we see how valid makers like Olympics go under without doing anything wrong, we need to set much larger question marks on evidence and demanding it sooner from people on every level of government administration, even former elected officials making claims and especially when they are willing to to rely on evidence, so when we look at Wirecard, take in mind that we need to demand the clear setting on how $2,000,000,000 could be created out of thin air (my bank account needs a bit of that too).

 

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The start of a joke

We all have these moments, it all starts with a joke, and 15 months later the joke can walk. There is within us all an innate ability to rely on the absence of proper decorum. It is nothing serious so to say, one might remember the story on how Peter Dinklage broke his neck on a ladder whilst climbing a Bonsai tree. The so-called joke is lost on us, that is until we know what a Bonsai tree is. No matter how we feel, the side of what is called inappropriate jokes is within us all, and the funny part of it is that for the most there is no malice attached to it. That is actually an important part. So as we became part of the Politically Correct humour brigade we threw away a side of us, we actually became less. 

That sense of humour is actually an important side, not because it matters, but because it does not. It is in that flair that we see ‘America trying to ‘rule the world’, says Russian spy chief’, the man is incorrect (ofcourse), yet the feeling has been brought and we need to see the American failing to a much larger degree. We might consider the quote “Russia doesn’t trust what the British government says about the Salisbury poisonings” and Sergei Naryshkin would want us to believe that this is what it is, but it is not all and by no means the focus of what needs to be. You see, even as we know that greed driven America is on its last legs, we have no real idea on how far along Russia, China and India are on that track. They are far along, just the ‘how far’ is not a given and it matters, it matters a great deal. You see the interview on the BBC gives us an interesting quote: “Using weapons like cyber attacks and disinformation, the European Union only recently accused Russia of a campaign of disinformation over the Coronavirus. Why is Russia doing this?” This in a light of massive misreporting by the EU members themselves? And the part where he basically accuses Russia is another matter. I actually do not know whether it is correct or incorrect, what I do know is that I have not seen the evidence, as such I do not trust any of it. Evidence is key and the BBC knows this, as such the question as asked is giving us a stage that is not about Russia, but on the non-reliability of the BBC, does that make sense? 

Now, as for the misreporting, if the EU is setting itself so high above others, it seems only fair that Russia would have every issue of IT and data collection that is in equal if not on greater measure than the EU (or America for that part). I am not stating that their technology is flawed, but they have less resources committed to technology and data collection, that much can be seen on any tourist trip to the good old CCCP. And in that same setting when we see Russian hospitals, we might notice a lack of computer driven states, as such data collection is all a bust. 

It is a choice Russia made by America letting them not be able to buy any American computers, or so the story goes. Even as we see one side, we forget about the other side. I am not claiming that Russia is innocent, I am claiming that we do not see the whole picture and the BBC interviewer reminds me on a conversation I once had with a protestant Pastor, And I stated: “We both serve the lord, you in your way, I in the way he wanted it to happen”, it is nice to claim thesis of real truth, but that side tends to be undetermined. And it also sets the tone that god needs to be served, by what standard, on whose call? Where did he say that this was so?

From the cold war I would see Sergei Naryshkin as my opponent, yet this is not the cold war, and that does not mean that Sergei is no longer my opponent, but there is a larger issue over the last weeks where we have to wonder who the BBC serves, as I see it, they serve the people a lot less, so who are their stakeholders and shareholders? So in that matter, who took a long hard look at the BBC Bitesize GCSE Business Studies? I am merely asking. Or we might look at the fact that Freud could not get into the nightclub because he forgot his ID, or perhaps what does Freud says comes between fear and sex? Funf! That last joke made no sense unless you know German. And that is where we are, it is not lost in translation, it is that some media is intentionally depriving us of the translation that needs to be.

And we actually have to be aware. It is easier if we turn to Russia (as less speak it), and we will be offered pancakes whenever we set that stage (it is a ‘blin’ joke) and here we need to see that translation software could not see the difference. That is the story, the sources state that Russia at present has a debt that is only 0.04% of the American debt and that is a gamechanger. In all honesty, I personally do not believe it, but the truth of the matter is that I actually do not know, Russia does not hand its budget choices to the media and the ones they do give are debatable on a few sides. And in that stage is America, it is on its final legs and they have no plan to take care of the 25 trillion they owe. So in that approach we would see that ‘America trying to ‘rule the world’’, is incorrect, they merely are trying to bleed others to the same degree, or find a way to dampen the economic bleeding that they are facing and that is a tall order, in that it seems that larger companies are setting pressure on governments to let them continue the financial bleeding, yet when we realising that the US government gets (at best) 10 cents on the dollar, these board members are setting pretty for the next 3-4 generations, so where was the BBC to this level of disinformation?

I am (in part) grasping at straws, there are sides that I cannot prove, as such it is to be seen as speculation and I am not telling you different. I am speculating and it matters, but ask yourself, how much digging has the media done lately? It does not prove me right, but it should give you a few questions. And that is all before China is added to the equation. Yes, for the most we are focussing on Huawei, but China is to some degree an actual danger to the west. Focussing on Huawei is stupid, but the risk of China actually exists. There is in part the stage where American business are colouring Huawei black which opposes black lives matter (a joke, I could not resist), but the colour of fear is there, and those in fear are losing their mind with the American economy skating so close to the abyss and that part is ignored by too large a population. All this especially in a stage where this holiday could end up being one of the darkest in American history, and that is before people realise that the US is facing the fear of trainloads of evictions right as we see new spikes in the Coronaviral population. And this part is not small, the US is looking at no less than 3% of its population becoming homeless if rents are not protected, a stage no nation has ever faced in history to this degree. 

As such the General owing rent is not a general, he is a left tenant. Yes another joke but if we consider who are in the hot zones for rent, my view is not that far off. So why the jokes? Jokes are a form of creativity, wordplay and sometimes out of the box thinking and to evade the traps we are given in 2020 we need all three to stay standing. We can blame so many people, but in the end blame does not get us anywhere, and lets face it, the Russians will at most send us pancakes. Consider that I am on average an average person (misplaced humility), in the stage of 2 years I came up with new 5G IP, a stage of optionally setting the work environment towards 3 videogames and one expansion and I came up with the theoretical stage of a new weapon that takes care of the Iranian fleet. I am merely one person, so what else is out there and how much IP and ideas are floating around whilst some players are servicing their needs through the speculated approach of misinforming others?

So if we continue on that same track we need to get the joke legs and see how it solves it for us. Yet expecting others to solve dilemma’s is a two edged sword and we need to be aware of those dangers. On the grand scheme of things, the Coronaviru is not the danger, I am not worried about the 10% dying, I am worried of the 90% that has nowhere to go, as such we need the economie on a much better schale and in that we need to stop greed, we need to halt it completely, we cannot afford the stage it leaves the others. I am capitalist enough to not diminish it completely, because greed is a forward momentum force as well, yet the idea that Apple is now a 1.5 trillion dollar business, whilst their stores are nothing more than glorified display cases and I have been waiting for my laptop for 6 week, because it all gets made in the US, and the stores merely point (for the most) towards setting up an online sale should have been raising questions with over half a dozen governments, the stage is too weird and they get tax returns that no company has ever dreamed of, we need to change and the politicians are staging this through levels of inactivity that are unheard of.

And now as the economy collapses, we see protests, yet they go nowhere, because the tax laws remain untouched to the largest degree. So these politicians might be deductible, but they remain taxing on their best days.

In this I feel it is appropriate to end the story with a da dum dum.

Happy monday everyone and remember that if you wake up today before 17:00 you did something wrong.

 

 

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Multiple rulers

We have a ruler at times. A ruler so we can see whether the size measures up to the setting we held ourselves to, and a size to what we hold others. We are all like that, and sometimes we use more than one, it is almost like we set a standard metrical and then another one to get the inch setting. There is one stage we avoid; not on purpose, but the stage we set because we did not think of it. That is the stage that I found myself in this weekend. Anyone who has a Playstation 4 (or better) has either been playing the Last of us part 2, or has been contemplating playing it. There might be the smallest group that did not (and that is fair) but that group is really really small. It started in 2013, a (small) player named naughty dog, famous for Crash Bandicoot and a few other titles, had an idea and made that game, that game was titled The last of us, we might not have realised it at the time but gaming history was written that very moment. They made the game that heralded the end of the Playstation 3 on a high. The game was graphically, musically and technically at the very top of gaming, do not take my word for it, the game got over 200 game of the year awards, which is a record by itself, so when it was remastered for the Playstation 4, I did not hesitate to get it, now there is the second part and what I have seen so far is blowing my mind (again). It als gave me the idea to come up with the two ruler rule. So far the only three passing that standard are Naughty Dog, CD Project Red and Bethesda. This does not mean that others are not good, some are great. Yet to fit this measurement you need to be better than the best. I believe that those makers could have turned their game into a movie and it would be as groundbreaking and as appreciated as the game. As I see it CD Project Red did that by getting the Netflix the Witcher made. OK, they cheated by getting Superman to play the lead, but still they got it done and it is every bit as amazing as the game was. Excellence is transcendental (or so I believe) and I feel certain that the Last of US (both 1 and 2) would make amazing movies/mini series. I played part 2 to some extent and then I remembered (I thought back to the first one) and I decided to play it again. Even now, 7 years later, the first game is as overwhelming as any new game is, yes, the second one surpasseds the first one by a fair bit, but both of them leave most others in their wake, the games are that good. This is not bad for the others, there will always be rocksteady, there will always be rockstar and they will endear the gamers in their own way, there is no doubt about it, yet when we see the bullet point memo people at EA and Ubisoft, they are done for. The few franchises they hide behind will not help them, even now, their games at 70%-80% reduced rate are a debatable buy and that is not a good place to be in. When a two billion company like Ubisoft gets passed over by what some regards as small studios, we need to realise that gaming has been on the fringe of technology since the 80’s. Some people decided to give the thought that gaming too is iteration (like every year an Assassins Creed game), some exploited other means, some good and some bad, and before some think that Ubisoft is all bad, they did bring us Assassins Creed 2 (and brotherhood), Far Cry 3, AC Origins, Watchdog 2, The Division and a few others, when we look past the iteration, we see that they make good games, if only they were properly tested and vetted before release, it is the largest flaw that Ubisoft brings us today. And it is getting noticed more and more as we take notice of games like The Witcher and The Last of Us. Wecan add games like Elite Dangerous and Subnautica and the remastered edition of System Shock (hopefully 2020), we see that the original ideas are still there and they are wiping the floor with the iterative wannabe’s. You see the stage is changing and gamers are not completely aware.

We see the created hypes and we see how Microsoft is hiding behind the marketing cry ‘the most powerful system in the world’, yet they got defeated by the weakest system of them all (Nintendo Switch) and as Microsoft hides behind the hype screen we are all missing the larger point. As 4K gaming hits the front yard of many gamers this holiday season, they tend to forget that the games will be twice the size and so will the patches. In this situation consider that in places like Greece and Turkey a Ubisoft patch will take up to a day (estimated), a day per game downloading a patch. The UK, Ireland, Germany, Belgium, Italy and a few others have better connections, yet in these places in Rural areas their internet is not great, so the long term view of the approach that they are currently holding is that they will not be in a great place. Yes, France, Spain and Scandinavia the connection is well above decent, yet is that the same in rural areas? In France it is not and I just set the pulse point on millions of gamers who will be in an extremely agitated state soon enough, yet not if Ubisoft continues as it currently is. And we need to review that too. A game might seem amazing, yet in the 4K life, patches will be increasingly larger and larger. So what do you think will happen when a patch is not 38 GB, but 70 GB? How long until gamers lose their shit over this, because the second time it happens might already be enough for the gamer to demand a refund, and with some places having the 7 day purchase option in place, that cooldown will be enough to end the lifespan of places like Ubisoft, Electronic Arts and Activision. Yes, I get it, others will be in a similar place, but consider keeping a list of all your games and all the patches that come through, who will win the patch race agitation list? 

Yes, we get it Bethesda will also be in a bad place, yet RPG games like Skyrim are too great and will always have patches coming their way, yet overall when I look back at the games like Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3, Fallout 4 the amount of patches have not been overwhelming. As I see it one breakpoint patch has had more to download then the sum of nearly all Bethesda games, that is the station we see, yet we forget that the station we face is nothing more than a small way station, the stations we are about to hit are proper terminals with larger needs. We need to measure what was and what will be to a much larger extent and use two rulers, the size of the game and the size of the patches, whilst we tally the number of patches. Breakpoint was regarded by gamers as the most disappointing game of 2019, 38GB of patches later and it is still up for debate, as I see it, they no longer have any freedom of movement, gaming will change but not in their direction, the games will need to be better and their infrastructure is not ready, the patch notes give a clear indication of that. So yes, we will see a console war, but we will see a lot more than that. Santa Monica Studios, Naughty Dog and a few others are ready and they make Playstation games. The people at Microsoft are not ready for the issues that sme games bring and their Azure cloud is useless at this stage, it is about innovative gaming, the iterative clowns have no place being here. We are about to see a console war and Microsoft could soon end up in 4th position, so when we consider the big three, who else will surpass them? Their marketing hype of the most powerful console for sale, and they forgot that they still needed good games to stay in that place, with less than half a dozen exclusive games, the pickings are slim for Microsoft, to see that you needed an additional ruler, a different stage of measuring. Just like the measurement of power, there are two ways of measuring it, all whilst the elements for both formulas were readily available, too many players were looking at one formula and forgot about the other one, and that is what the limelight will show at the end of the year and when that limelight shows bright, we will see that some players are done for, one ruler would not have shown it, they all focussed on the revenue and they forgot that revenue is hindered by the resistance that patches bring, these players forgot or basically ignored the danger of large patches and now that they are 26 weeks away from a new standard these players will panic, they will panic more and more and let marketing do the fight of the public arena all whilst it will merely stop activities for a few days and some patches required months. Now, we accept that both Sony and Microsoft have that house of Pox looming, but as I see it, Sony has more alternatives and in this fight, the one with alternatives is the most likely to win. In all this there is strength to any marketing endeavour, but its flaws are there too and once your board of directors start to earnestly believe the stories they tell, they have already painted themselves into a corner. 

 

 

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Contemplations

We all contemplate, we consider, we weigh and we make decisions after the contemplation. Yet it is not always that simple, at times the contemplation comes after what preceded. I cannot continue my novel until the laptop arrives, and even as it is completely unrelated to the idea I had for an optional TV series, the idea is still sound, as such I am considering whether the elements in it can be added to my novel, I am only at 60,000 words, it is something that I have to contemplate. We all have similar issues, it is notalways about writing, or playing a game, some contemplations are serious, some are not, yet they too tend to refract into serious parts of our lives, even if we are not initially aware of it. 

It is not the only thing that I am contemplating. I have seen over the last few days all kinds of messages, ‘tweaked’ advertisements and messages of a sort on how we can change business decisions after the Coronavirus. I am baffled on the premise of ‘new approaches to business’, I am willing to accept that new business is where you find it, yet the oversized issue is misreporting, mismanagement of government funds and mismanaging of attempts to look cool, all whilst we know that actual scientists need actual time to investigate. The greed driven elements before the Corona situation had created empty shells with the idea that some time in the future it would fix itself, all whilst those elements knew perfectly well that these things never fix themselves, they are merely pushed onto the next administration. An abuse on a global scale and the people see the impact now, they now get to live in a new situation and they elected the people that put them in that position. These governments never went out to muzzle the EU to the degree needed, as such well over € 3,000,000,000,000 in debt, as such the EU had no reserves left for what is coming now. And it did this after it was clear that the first trillion did not do what they hoped, yet they wanted it, because money has to roll and as such another stint of spending became the concept of normal. All this, whilst the proper stage of properly setting up tax laws for corporations have never been done, delayed decade after decade. All this whilst the EU had no issues to reject (in November 2019) any move to show names of those using tax avoidance a stage where the people would see the proposed situation where firms had to reveal profits made and taxes paid in EVERY EU nation they operated in, I reckon that the FAANG group has powerful friends all over the EU, and these 12 members should be looked at with a lot more scrutiny. The FAANG group is avoiding an estimated $500,000,000,000 a year, as such the irony is laughable, it would have paid for the issue they face now and in that same setting education and housing in Europe would be close to fixed, a stage history never had before. Yet, those with a low tax shelter option were happy to reject, they included Ireland, Hungary, Luxembourg, Malta, Cyprus, Latvia, Slovenia, Estonia, Austria, Croatia and the Czech Republic. We all see the damage, but we are all so relieved that Apple is now a $1,500,000,000,000 company, Yes, at what expense? It is food for contemplation.

So as we see not on how we can work from home and what we need to do it properly, I wonder what happened to all those tax reductions in the 90’s so that we could work from home, there is an apparent lag in what was regarded as enough and is now showing to be inadequate. So whilst some applaud ‘EU did not witness any major internet congestion’, it comes without the mention that Netflix and YouTube slowed down services to avoid congestion, apparently full services are not possible, but that is a story for another time (in the very far future if it was up to them). So whilst BEREC (an EU regulator) was all about the reporting mechanism to monitor internet traffic, we see that I gave you the links yesterday to other people who see that most of them cannot even report the amount of people getting the Coronavirus and optional those dying from it. As such we see another optional example that human lives matter less than any danger to what is laughingly called ‘the economy’, weird is it not? 

OK, I agree that one is not the other, but it seems that when the economy is in danger a whole additional range of support services come into play, when the lives of people are on the line, this support is seemingly missing. The EU shows even more signs of lag on different levels. In other news (as stated in my previous blog) we see Humanitarian actions that are empty and other pacifist actions that are useless, yet their actions pushed close to $13,000,000,000 out of UK and US hands and handed it to both Russia and China, in addition there are several damaged deal thatSaudi Arabia had with Germany, but I have no numbers on that. So whilst I am not anti-Humanitarian, I am a pragmatist and it seems that hollow actions are just that hollow in a time and age that none can afford, even now, we seem to be utterly anti-Saudi Arabia, yet there is no factual reason to do this. In opposition we see that the actions against Iran are close to non-existent, all whilst Forbes reported yesterday that there are 100 new naval vessels in Iran, it seems that there is a lot to contemplate, especially as some EU players are hiding behind the Nuclear deal like it is a Santa wish list, all whilst we see from several directions, some less than a day old ‘New tensions dim hopes for salvaging Iran Nuclear deal’ and ‘New IAEA report is reminder of old problems with the Iran Nuclear Deal’ a stage that shows that Iran does what it pleases and takes no time to be civil about it, when it is conventional it is one thing, the nuclear side is a direct threat to Israel and Saudi Arabia and the EU players are willing to burn those two elements if they look better, because Iran will make some bullshit excuse on how it was not their fault, that it was a fanatic and they possibly misjudged the situation and those European players will all nod in agreement, their pockets optionally lined with income never earned. And we are all letting it happen.

It is perhaps our greatest flaw, we do not act when we should, we let greed driven motivations overwhelm our needs and we seek to blame someone when we all let this happen, as contemplations go, we have to think through a lot at present and we need to do it faster.

 

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Vindication is like Maple Syrup

Yes, that sweet taste, the taste that is not equally the taste of ‘I told you so’, but more the fact that ‘You were wrong and I was right’, a taste that is sweeter, thicker and overly disturbingly addictive. Vindication is the stuff that makes it all worth it.

The situation that followed my article: ‘Corona? I never touch the stuff’ 4 months ago, the umbers never added up and there were all the sources stating the ’bla bla bla’ on age, on complicated health issues and so on, but today (6 hours ago) Al Jazeera (via Laura Winter) gives us ‘Data fog: Why some countries’ coronavirus numbers do not add up’, it is a first in the scene where I am proven correct, all whilst some data miners had the stage of making me wrong, I wish them good luck in countering it all and finding a new job soon enough, their “I know what I am walking about, I have been doing this for the government for 15 years” is now likely to change into carefully phrased version of denial with the added “My case was different, here is the data”, yes yes, blow it into a direction where they care.

Even as Al Jazeera gives us “Allegations of deliberate data tampering carry profound public health implications” is a side I never even skated on as I would never have been able to prove the deliberate part. They go deeper with a setting of the Meyer-Resende’s theory versus the International Corruption Perceptions index. It is one way to go, but it is skating on thin ice. It tends to follow the GIGO law of 1991 (Garbage In Garbage Out), yet there is no denying that the differences of what the Corona cases are through reporting on several nations, the difference is indeed striking. In the article example we see Denmark against the rest, They apparently had triple the cases the world had, I saw the larger stage within Europe (Germany versus France) and a few other settings, in my view the mortality rate should be close to equal and I noticed differences on 4% versus 15% even when minimum numbers were surpassed, mortality rate tends to be almost equal, yes there is some impact in age, but the numbers I saw were nowhere near the acceptable level, not in nations with almost equal level of health care. 

The article has more stuff, more excellent stuff, but they already inflicted the first victim, my ego, I was right all along and it is at present annoyingly present, like a silent person screaming in my ear (on the inside) that I was right. I already knew that this was the case, but it is nice that the media is picking up on it and so far it is just them, but that will change in the next week making my ego even less enjoyable (even for me). So whilst governments are in denial on what to do, as 6 US states are spiking whilst reopening shops, the acceleration will only rely on cheaper housing (more dead people), and those who reject my view of it, I say talk to your elected official and whilst they state that it is a complicated situation in this economy, consider that his target keyword is economie, so who did they serve? News is reaching me that the state of Oklahoma has a 68% rise, is the president not going there? Well, we might see two issues resolved if he does, time will tell. Even if I sound a little repetitive (I stated this before) “There is no use hailing an economy when all the consumers are dead, there is no one left to buy your product ever again”, that small realisation should go a long way. On the other hand, real estate will drop in price, so the others will get cheaper housing, it works out for everyone.

And in this setting it is Business News (Reuters) who stated 22 minutes ago ‘New US pandemic watchdog says data, tech issues challenge oversight work’, the premise does not sound wrong, yet the quote “Federal agencies already lacked some data necessary to track government funds and ensure they are spent as Congress intended, a problem compounded by the speed with which the government has shoveled money to businesses, individuals and local governments, the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC) said on Wednesday.” shows a much larger failing, I get the fact that things needed doing, but the US is throwing trillions (money they do not have) at something hoping it will stick, all whilst for 4 months the data was clearly incorrect. So when we consider the quote “Congress created the committee, which comprises independent watchdogs from 21 government offices, as part of a sweeping March aid package. Its job is to make sure the funds were used to help save jobs and keep Americans off breadlines and were not siphoned by fraudsters or otherwise abused or wasted” (at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa-fraud/new-u-s-pandemic-watchdog-says-data-tech-issues-challenge-oversight-work-idUSKBN23O2D2) a setting to prevent harm whilst the data they are reacting to is flawed, a stage where 21 offices are involved, which would take weeks if not months to align and we see from more than one source “data, tech issues challenge oversight work”, In all this we also see “Critics say few safeguards have already allowed companies to mop up cash with few strings attached”, not only are hard times ahead, I reckon that when the investigation goes on into the dimes where the American people ask for justification on where it all went, those ‘few strings’ will not go well, more importantly, as the US goes from 3G to 6G (it will take 6 generations to end that debt), they will demand their pound of flesh, I reckon that some people will not be given a nice christmas hamper. It is not a stage I predict, I reckon there will be no escaping that stage in the US soon enough, I wonder who will be found with their hands in the $3,000,000,000,000 cookie jar.

 

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Musings

I am currently awaiting my new laptop. My Lenovo Chromebook just is not good enough (apart from the dodgy spacebar). And as I was pondering a few actions, the BBC article ‘How Elon Muskaims to revolutionise battery technology’ I remembered the idea that his car battery gave me. You see, the solar cell idea was nice, yet the setting to ADD somethig to your roof is where the issue optionally starts. My idea was to replace the roof tile in roofs, in newly built houses. This new tile based on the old one, exists in two versions, version 2.0 and version 2.0 plus The 2.0 tile is made from recycled plastics, and therefore over time cheaper and beneficial to nature, the second one has added solar cells in it and it fuels the car battery.

Now one tile is not going to hack it, yet a roof can be replaced over time with more and more cells. Fuelling that battery faster and giving it more use. Over time that battery will fuel lights, heating aircons and a whole range of appliances. Making the house first carbon neutral and over time carbon negative. Those buying houses will benefit the most, yet apartment complexes can benefit too as it fuels the common usage parts and over time we add to the electricity net making them money too. A stage where we look at a stage where we all become the power suppliers. His battery is the start of something more and in this age of power usage, we can become neutral in its needs. Consider your own needs, how much power does your console use, your TV, the router and optionally the PC, now consider that their power use is nullified by the roof, as well as the two most power intensive parts, the boiler (if you have one), and the fridge which will use power 24:7.

Now consider that usage to be nullified not by one person but by 10,000,000. That would reduce brownouts in places like California and Greece by close to 80%, from the benefits of having, we now see the benefits of providing, the electrical car being one part, you create the power it needs, implying that your personal fuel costs will diminish handing you more money every months for other matters. Consider your bills at present, now take fuel and power out of that equation. The larger benefit is not gained overnight, but over time and the stage I considered was one where we grow the creation and diminish the usage by not adding loans from the get go, but replace at easy steps without having to add loans. In this setting we can have a stage with the initial mortgage, and that makes sense, yet over time (every 2 years) you can add 20-50 tiles with spare change, giving you that in your first decade you are well beyond carbon neutral and that is only the start, as I see it the Musk battery technology can alter lives on a very large scale. His car is merely the start of something larger, benefitting billions of households.

You might think that these are simple musings, and you would be right, yet the creativity to apply someone’s creation in another way could start more creativity, more originality and applied to a much wider field. Lets face it, the weapon I created to sink the Iranian fleet was based on an offshore engineering principle (with some added physics). 

The roof idea would not have had the impact if Elon Musk did not do its duracell manoeuvre. We merely need to look at where else a battery like that one could impact us and how we fuel it, and when you walk through any city and see the billions of inactive roof tiles, consider the amount of power you get when every tile you see becomes a power creator. In this the rural people have an added bonus, they will have access to power on a size they never had before. When that becomes a thing of the past, we can focus on new fields and in other areas, there is plenty of mess to fix and a lot of it can be broomed under a rug (we all do it).

 

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Murdering innovation

It started with the BBC about 30 minutes ago, 30 minutes after they released ‘Amazon v EU: Has the online giant met his match’, the title intrigued me and anyone who wants to go after Bezos and his haircut is allowed to do so, yet the EU tends to not care about anyone’s haircut, so I decided to have a calm read of it. 

Certain things made sense, yet a much larger part does not anto illustrate it, I start with a quote on the article: “The EU now looks set to charge Amazon for anti-competitive behaviour. This could cost Amazon a lot of money and could alter the shopping experience it offers customers.” To understand this I need to take you on a little time trip, my initial stage of Amazon was seen in 1994, I heard of it in its beginning and to me Amazon made no sense. You see, I grew up in the Netherlands, and for the most, any shop, in any retail area was never more than a hour away, optionally up to 2 hours if it was an exotic item (weapons, drugs) I had access to most items ever needed, as such Amazon made no sense at all. In 1997 I visited the US for the first time and Amazon started making sense. You see there are massive differences between the US and EU in certain ways and most people in the EU might not have gotten it. Amazon was an innovative player and came up and matured a retail direction. So when we get  EU’s competition enforcer Margrethe Vestager stating “We never accept in a football match that one team was also judging the game”, I merely wonder what her game is. And the setting of anti-competition law makes no sense. It makes no sense, because for close to 25 years others refused to go into the Amazon direction, as they remained in denial of what could happen. They remained in denial because they were iterative and small minded, they want the technology of others to come to them for free. And that is a thought that murders innovation. We see it in almost every area of technology. I worked for a company that stopped Facebook innovation 4 years before Facebook was created. Bullet point spreadsheet users who rely on the mission statement and the bottom dollar. They are left on the sidelines guarding iterative traffic. They feel that their option grants them more personal wealth. Now, anyone who has read my blog knows that I am no Jeff Bezos fan, but this he got right and the entire Covid-19 issue worked for him and now the champions of iteration (like EU’s competition enforcer Margrethe Vestager) are setting up shop to murder innovation a little more. You see the others now want the Amazon system for free, they want to enjoy the decades they were not working on innovation and merely (optionally) fucking their mistress whilst they claimed they were hard at work guiding their commision like it was a taxi meter. 

When I gave the stage of setting tax laws properly in 1998, people accused me that it was too complex and nothing was done, now that these firms are raking in the billions, those same people are staring at the sky stating that there was nothing they could do, but they merely ignore their own inactions.

Yet the larger concern is the stage that erupts when we see “It runs an online store and also sells its own products on that platform. The criticism is, that it’s both the player and the referee.” Yes, Google and Amazon innovated retail traffic, after the Netscape issues Microsoft hid in the IE cloud they created and IBM never showed interest, they merely did their own less profitable thing and now they want to push in on a market that had evolved for well over a decade and does fine without them. Microsoft came up with Bing a decade after Google and still has no proper way to set the algorithm for ranking, and misses out on a decade of data, which is how I see it. IBM has its own innovation (Quantum computing) and is still 2-5 years away from innovating that field, the rest of them are innovation candle holders at best. 

Yet I cannot completely ignore that the EU has optionally a case to bring, yet their own inadequacies regarding the mapping of the other players that never showed any interest in innovating the field Amazon is in is also food for thought. Those iterative players that will only step in on the second tier after the innovator has proven their case, how is there any level of fairness to give them the playing field? 

So when we see: “is the company using that data to give Amazon’s own products an unfair advantage?” I cannot completely disagree, yet the larger issue is that Amazon created a level of data collection that other data dogs refused to bark at. Now we all can agree that not every retail shop can wield such data and they should not get hit, yet this stage that Amazon has was in the UK going on for a long time via Dunnhumby did for Tesco and in The Netherlands it was Albert Heijn (et al) and their Air Miles. If you go after one, you need to go after all and that is not happening is it? Yet there is a size difference, but none of them came with an overlay of algorithm and made sense of it, they all wanted their own little corner, the innovation of Amazon was larger than that and everyone was in that selfish stage until they all learned (the hard way) that their way was the losing one. 

In all this Amazon is not completely innocent, yet that does not mean that they are guilty. The question we see: “But does Amazon unfairly promote its own products at the expense of third parties?” is woefully incomplete. The issue (just like with Google) is not on what is offered, but what EXACTLY did the searcher ask for? It is a huge part in all this and it is left on the sidelines, optionally intentionally and that hurts, because in all this the central side is not the sellers, or the implied sellers, what did the buyer exactly ask for and that matters, especially in the case of Amazon. The buyer did not ask for “A western where we see Talulah Riley naked with loads of added violence in the highest resolution”, they asked for “Westworld season 2 bluray”, and those two searches are not the same. We can come up with a lot more examples, but I hope that the point comes across. We forget that the largest issue is what the buyer seeks and the bulk want the latest products, they want the ones that ship immediately and can we honestly say that the founding setting of the product sought has all the elements in place (like shipping and overnight shipping options) are these elements properly set to those other sellers? You see, the backwash on what is optionally possible is one thing, the fact that these shops set up the parameters of what can be done in comparison of what is done are two different universes. 

For example, I cannot get to ‘there’ from ‘here’ in Google maps. These two locations are not defined, so when someone is looking at the Sombrero galaxy, it does not mean that there is a path getting there. 

It is the innuendo and the missing elements that make some strike out, optionally murdering innovation. Whilst we see: “The general defence is that there are plenty of companies that act as both a shop and supplier. Tesco and Sainsbury’s both sell their own labelled products in their stores, for example.” a setting duplicated in NEARLY EVERY OTHER country. Pretty much every supermarket chain has that setting, and it is ignored, because they are ‘too small’. I believe that the stage is different, as I stated, the others refused to adhere to the needs of the seeker, the consumer. As such they are out of the online game and that part is surprisingly overlooked. It is not the business of Amazon (or Google for that matter) to fill in the blanks, if Bing does that, perhaps it might have a future to some. 

It is our task to protect innovation, there is too little of it (not what a marketing manager claims is innovation, but actual innovation) if we do not, we merely end up fuelling the EU gravy train and those people need to focus on actual issues, not their gravy train. In this I am not stating that Amazon is completely innocent, I am merely stating that there are a few sides that some people left in the dark. To illustrate this I entered “buy arkham knight ps4”, the results in Bing and Google are very different, bing seems to be all about ebay, that same search in Google and Amazon give a much better result, they gave me what I was looking for. I personally was not looking for ebay options, yet was that part of the equation given? 

The buyer is the larger part in all this and most screamers forgot about that part.

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Donkey Balls!

The explanation is actually almost too simple, I am writing this whilst I am rewatching the Expanse on Bluray (thanks to the awesome sale JB Hifi had 3 weeks ago). I was watching and browsing whilst I got exposed to ‘Media rules must help news providers harness digital platforms’ value’, the link was on LinkedIn and came from Facebook. I do not disagree with the setting, but the entire issue is much larger and has traps on a few levels. That issue is a little less complicated when we consider the news on the daily mail where we see ‘Top Facebook exec says it DID help Donald Trump win but only because ‘he ran the single best digital ad campaign I’ve ever seen. Period.’ And NOT because of Russia’, the claim was apparantly made by Andrew Bosworth and it was in the Daily Mail on January 8th. It is not the claim that is the issue, it is the linked advertisements that the viewer gets. I ended up with advertisements by Telstra and Microsoft. Now, there was nothing wrong with that, yet if I had not clicked on the story, the advertisements would not have come. That is the issue, even newsmakers need to rely on clicks and there is the first issue. Basically the (short) story has the following 2nd headlines:

  • Andrew Bosworth is a longtime senior Facebook executive and confidant of Mark Zuckerberg
  • Bosworth wrote a 2,500 word memo shared internally with Facebook employees that was published on December 30
  • He claimed the Cambridge Analytica scandal was a ‘non-event’ and admitted the Russians did manipulate the U.S. election
  • Bosworth also essentially branded criticism of the company as fake news because the press ‘often gets so many details wrong’ 
  • The memo was initially leaked to the New York Times on Tuesday before the top executive published it in full on his public Facebook account 

5 times to get the clicks, 5 times to get advertisements and the news channels are in the setting to get CLICKS, making the quality of news debatable and there is the larger issue. When the news becomes a commercial vessel, how can it be trusted?

SO when I looked at the news (according to the Sydney Morning Herald) we get: “It would allow news publishers and digital platforms that distribute news to continue building on existing commercial arrangements, and support the development of a Digital News Council to advance cross-industry collaboration. It would also encourage more transparency for significant changes to the ranking of news content in News Feed and guarantee to publishers we’ll continue to share measurement data on how their content performs on Facebook as well as insights on their audiences, without sharing personal user information.” Here I see that there are optional ‘agreements’ on the sharing of revenue (which I do not debate, or wonder whether that is wrong), yet I do wonder about who has the stronger pull. Revenue based decisions, or news quality decisions and the ambiguity of it deepens the innate mistrust in me and the mistrust of the optional news that it breeds. So the quote “It would allow news publishers and digital platforms that distribute news to continue building on existing commercial arrangements” sets the steps for commercially inclined news, not neutral based and news baked news. It ends up not getting the clicks and that is the larger problem. The digital problem is that there needs to be space for news to set the parameters, yet the click is what gets the revenue and they tend to be on opposite sides of coins of different currency. Better stated was the Expanse response, which was ‘It really is Donkey balls’, the settings a larger one and those relying on click based revenue would not be interested in slaughtering the goose with the golden egg and I get that. But we need to move the news into another stage of the media, now making it revenue based, all whilst those participating should require to pay these newsagents something, it was their material used.

So whether we accept that the previous elections used a much better digital profile, we need to take the news out of it, and give them their own digital channel, not set to a click based system. It requires new levels of innovation on digital media and we all better accept that fast. 

What is the solution?

I actually do not know, but in part it will be creating awareness with the people, they need to realise that they are part of that problem, they are the inquisitive types and usually that is not a problem, yet the push the click based activities forward and at the point they become part of the problem. As I see it, the news might be part of social media, yet they should not be part of the click based equation and until the news starts realising that, as well as the fact that their shareholders, stakeholders and advertisers are part of the problem and not part of the solution, this issue will continue.

So those who have seen the Expanse season three and know that the initial weapon was something more might realise that in the digital media that click is the something more towards a weapon, all thanks to the shareholders, stakeholders and advertisers. We need a much larger change and until cash is taken out of the equation it cannot continue, yet that too is a dicey position, because the news has every right to cash in on materials they created. We cannot ignore that part of the equation.

 

 

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