Category Archives: Finance

March 9, 2023 · 21:11

Afford versus Effort

They are apart, but not in the mind of some. You see the old expression “You get an A for effort” got corrupted. I reckon it started after the 90’s when effort was no longer the main dish. It became not what we can do, but what we can afford so that the fat cats can get their bonus, whilst meeting all other obligations. It wasn’t wholly unexpected. I had spoken to some McDonalds people in the Netherlands in the 80’s. They told be about meeting expectations and not overrun it past the 100%, merely meet the expectations of their bosses. Do not be the ‘surprise’ no one sees coming. At the time it was an utter alien thought. I did not catch on to that exercise until mid 90’s. It was weird. You were hired to do your best, but that became you are to do your best as THEY expect you can be a nothing more. I touched on this slightly whilst writing ‘It was one keyword’ 5 days ago (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2023/03/04/it-was-one-keyword/). This must have stuck in the back of my mind, because it came out yesterday with a vengeance. Two things bubbled up. One reflects on LinkedIn and Facebook. They have (for the most) been all about the quantity and not the quality of stuff. They will give you some runaround on complexity (with loads of yada yada yada), but the foundation is that this was out there years ago. I never mentioned it before as I was designing IP to meltdown Iranian (and Russian) nuclear reactors. I did find a solution with the use of a snow globe (how is that for effort?) But the larger stage is not that, it was the story from some girl with a huge smile telling us how people died. That is how it reflects because that is how her profile picture was set. Big smile, no matter what. I do not care that some people can add emoji’s, we can stage ‘emotions’ like they were sad or angry. It would have been so simple to give any person several profile pics, one solemn, one happy (default), one angry and so on. There I a limit, but I reckon that most are covered with less than 9 profile pictures. There are plenty of accounts that have one picture, these are neutral pictures and that is fine. But showing someone how mines impact the human body with a big smile gives the wrong message. And Facebook and LinkedIn could have done something years ago, there is your A for effort right there, no effort because we get some technology babble on how they could not afford it.

This gets me to the second part. The image gives us a mothers day gift. OK, nice, optionally caring, but why? Not giving the gift, I am all for that (even though my mum died almost half a century ago), but see the second image. 

Now consider this a mockup, set to about 4 inches, optionally in merely in greyscales. The edge has the battery, and an option for an micro SD slot. There would be an USB charging option with the more expensive model having some kind of dock. And we include the one cool thing Microsoft did 30 years ago. We get the about screen to give the holder who it was from and what for (like mothers day). The screen could have not merely a calendar, which the simplest UNIX command (cal), but we could add a dot around important dates, like birthday’s mothers day, fathers day anniversary days and so on. The LCD has a clock option so that they can place it anywhere where they need time and optionally showing images, like pictures. And yes the colour version would be more expensive but that is on the buyer. So why are we looking at some acrylic heart that is reduced to a paperweight within a year? It is a nice gift and the emotion behind it is most likely real, but giving something that has long term impact, is that realisation wrong? Is that now beyond achieving? Why is that? This setting came to me in mere seconds, so why isn’t a player like Amazon all over that? They have pretty much all the technology required, the digital transparent LCD clock is decades old. No one took that for a ride to the next generation? 

That is what shows effort versus afford. We forgot to go all the way, we forgot to take the train to the station past the last station. Technology is cheaper and gets to be cheaper still. In 2005 I bought a 2GB card for my camera for $850. Now that same card is $8, in less then 20 years. So what about the other technology? We forget that our bosses need us, we don’t need them that much, the Covid era made that clear, so go all in, show your maximum effort and you will soon see that the ‘fake-it-till-you-make-it’ people will try their luck in Uber or they become barbers. You need to shine and as such you need to make your maximum effort so that you get noticed by the right people, because the greed game is unrelenting, some boss will notice this and they will see YOUR value, something your boss was eager to trivialise for HIS needs.

Just consider that for a moment.

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March 8, 2023 · 22:24

As media proves itself useless

Yes., I have been on this horse a few times, but I never expected this to happen, well, not a first tier media outlet. Yet, lets not give away the game just yet. Lets first look at the evidence. It started with one person correcting another. 

The correcting party is a Dutch man named Ties Joosten (@TiesJoosten). We get the information that the retweeted man was not a farmer, more importantly the man was not from Frisia (a province in the north of the Netherlands), we also get that this story was copied from Facebook, from a man who is a Frisian farmer. The man who retweeted it was from Zeeland (a province in the south west of the Netherlands). Yet, that message is also incorrect. They made reference that they were peak loader as such there were troubles. 

Ties found out that the Frisian province (@provfryslan) had not designated anyone as peak loaders, none of the provinces of the Netherlands apparently had named anyone a peak loader. The statement is that they are forced to close. More importantly Ties learned from @provfryslan and @FTM_nl that there were no forced closings. More important, this farmer volunteered to be bought out. So there was no forced closing, more important, even as the buy out numbers would be confidential.

What is public is that this farmer received for hundreds of thousands of euros subsidised payments which was found through @provfryslan. 

Which gets us to the final image which gives us the alleged disinformation bringer @Evavlaar brought a message from a farmer who is not a farmer, gives a setting whilst the real farmer in question volunteered to be bought out.

And that is the end of the intro. You see, this problem is a lot larger than you think. It is Forbes who have seemingly lost the settings. With the article (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/dianafurchtgott-roth/2023/03/06/climate-driven-technology-forces-out-europes-farmers/) we get “Thousands of Belgian and Dutch farmers are being sacrificed on the altar of climate change. They are losing their livelihoods as their governments crack down on emissions of nitrogen oxide (from manure) and the use of ammonia in fertilisation.” So which Dutch farmers are losing their jobs? Who was sacrificed? This is on the editor of Forbes Randall Lane. Even as the article comes from Diana Furchtgott-Roth, the editor is responsible. So can we get a list of these thousands of farmers? Can we get a top-line write-out of the numbers? As I personally see it Randall Lane has three options remaining, he fixes the mess we see here, he becomes an uber driver or a barber. That is more options than I ever had. 

The media is showing themselves to be every bit as useless as they always were. With this one event Forbes moved from the shelf of top tier magazines to a mere third tier. We always has issues with materials published, but now we have additional pressures on the quality of the magazines and newspapers. Too lazy to vet the information, to lazy to check numbers. It is all about deadlines and having the juiciest story, accuracy be damned. If it wasn’t for a man named Ties Joosten, we would think that the Dutch government is the big evil, instead we now see that the media is allegedly the big stupid.

Have a great Wednesday!

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March 4, 2023 · 10:23

It was one keyword

Yes, that is at times the short and sweet of anything, but let that not be some alert to the easiness of any endeavour. You see, my opposition to the CBC article (at https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/nordstrom-canada-1.6766073) is not that simple. The headline ‘Nordstrom closing down in Canada, shuttering all 13 stores’ sounds nice and it is a reality, but it is another line, one giving us “It was not Canadian enough”, that is the one that is plain wrong. You see, from all information we could go with the setting that the business mission was wrong all along, especially with any business painting the books in red since 2014 is another matter, one that matters, but the larger stage is not that (for Nordstrom it might be), malls are at present done for in its current setting. You see when Covid hit, it did a lot more. The timeline 2020-2023 changed people. People were forced to sit at home and mull things over. The short gratitude setting of going shopping in the weekend suddenly got hit by the cold light of day and it did not hold up. People started to think over what on earth they were doing and that becomes a whole lot more. 

You see, it started before June 6th 2022 when I wrote (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/06/06/presentation-and-awareness-creation/) ‘Presentation and Awareness creation’. This is based in simple settings. You see, all the marketeers are in some silly exercise of direct marketing. It is direct, simple and cheap and the ROI of it is seemingly immense. But any intelligent marketing boffin will tell you that the actual gems are found in engagement. Engagement is key to get traction with the people, especially the people who woke up after covid. I saw the setting in the Eaton Centre Mall (Toronto), yet I saw this application in places like Harrods too (Harrods has way to much traction at the moment, as such they need not worry), but there are well over 115,000 malls that need to wake up. They need to create traction and that was where my IP came in. It wasn’t hard, parts already existed, but for some reason Amazon and Google (the most likely winners in that race) decided not to wake up and that is where everyone decided to snooze a little longer. But there was a stage that was fast and vastly evolving and players like Omnichannel were already aware. They knew that the race was around the creation of engagement, they merely did not take it far enough. I did and suddenly had created a stage where bookshops and jewellers were a lot more important than ever before. OK, I am a guy so I created the stage for Victoria Secrets as well, they have well over 1,000 stores in the US alone and that is merely the beginning. There was a stage of intensified engagements from Alberta to Monaco and from Monaco to Zurich. An enlarging stage and the one keyword everyone forgot about was ‘Effort’, it is not part of direct marketing as such a lot of people forgot about it, but it matters and it matters a lot. Nordstrom is merely the beginning. Unless malls do not change their approach too many of them will become ghost buildings. The people are awake and these malls are largely done for. Seek any of my articles from June 6th 2022 involving ‘Eaton Centre Mall’ and you might catch on. It was all out in the open and marketing people forgot about the essential approach involving effort. 

What I never figured out is that I am not the super intelligent type, Google and Amazon should have been thee long before I did and they were not, now that they are all about chasing revenue, I wonder who gets there first, that player will have a much larger revenue stream for a long time to come and it is not an adjusted revenue stream, it is a new one with global implications. That is my view on the matter. How the keyword ‘effort’ changes everything.

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March 4, 2023 · 00:32

When is a fence not one?

That is the thought I had a few days ago when I was confronted with ‘Finland’s main parties back plans to build Russia border fence’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/19/finland-main-parties-back-plans-build-russia-border-fence), it was a newer story with added parts, and they do not matter at present. You see, the Finnish border with Russia is 1,340km, like the Texas Mexico fence, it is folly. On the stage of getting a 1,340,000 metre fence costs more than the combined reserves of ALL EU nations, as such Finland cannot afford it. Then we get the simple setting that large parts of such a fence can be tunnelled under in simple ways. And to withstand the power of any tank that wall needs to be strong and it might merely delay any invasion by an hour, so what gives anyone the idea that this wall is a solution, other than the delusional thoughts of some politician? 

I honestly do not get it. Then, if you look at the map, the northern part of Finland borders Norway, who then borders Russia, so how to solve that? Build a wall that includes Norway? There are a dozen settings where the wall falls short, as such the use of a wall there is just folly. 

So what gives someone the idea that a wall was any kind of a solution to anything at all? And when you consider the Russian smugglers who use Finland to get to the shores to Sweden (the Lulea – Tornio – Russia route), I feel sure that some people will see the wall fail there as well. But the Guardian seemed to bite on that red herring with “Finland’s border guard last month suggested building a fence several metres high, topped with razor wire and equipped with surveillance cameras and sensors along 160 miles of the border – roughly 20% of its total”, so we have a wall that is covering 20% of the border, as such where? And when you consider that 80% is still available what does it do but take resources away, resources Finland does not really have that much to begin with. Then we get “The fence would protect areas identified as posing a potential risk of large-scale migration from Russia, mainly in south-east Finland, where most traffic crosses the border, but also around border stations in the north of the country”, which now implies that the Lulea – Tornio – Russia route could also make money for refugee smuggling, so yes, that was a really good idea from day one (sarcasm implied). And then we get the juiciest steak in political Finland. It is given to us with “The project would take up to four years to complete and could cost several hundred million euros, according to border guard estimates. Final approval for the main phase could be delayed until April, when Finland is due to hold parliamentary elections”, did you catch the stage? At a minimum of 200M, the fence will cost $1.3M per mile, which is ridiculously cheap, as such the cost would be well above 400 million and that is still decently cheap. Because border guards, electronic surveillance and a few other items will put the wall, the limited wall at no less than a billion, which is a lot more than several hundred million euros and that is before budgets are overrun and the entire mess will be useless at the price of close to €2,000,000,000 and that is still pinching pennies whilst the wall has no depth, implying that digging under it would be decently easy. So in this time of need, which nation has 2 billion ready to waste on solutions that go nowhere? At present NPR gives us that the Mexican wall is set to around $20,000,000 per mile, implying that Finland is looking at $3.2 billion, implying that my simple calculus exercise was right on the nose with €2,000,000,000 and as Finland has time issues (like Winter is coming) the 4 years is also over optimistic. Increasing the Finnish army by 300% might be cheaper and as we saw that the Ukrainian turned the Russian bear into sishkebab, that idea might be a lot more effective. A wall that cannot defend itself is merely a place you can get around and in this day and age, walls are avoided most of the time. To b e honest, I would like the politicians behind this give us the numbers on how they got to the few hundred million euro. I reckon we can all use the entertainment.

I reckon looking closely at the construction firms and their connections might reveal a few additional items, but that is me, ever the skeptic. Oh that is all before we look at the cost and maintenance of guards on that stretch of wall, you would need well over 80 guard groups, with 24 hour coverage, travel settings and food/drink options. I reckon I low balled the cost by a lot.

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February 27, 2023 · 05:35

On the subject of failure

Yes, it is a subject that we all face and no one (including me) is happy about it. We all face it in one form or another. I saw an event that could play out later this year, somewhere optionally between July and September and I was not happy on how I showed myself. How I responded, no matter how honest I was, at that moment, I saw something I never felt happy about, but no matter how valid the response was, it does not mean that I am happy that I responded in that way. It was not about finding another way to say it, it merely went on about something that does not matter now. It applies to some degree to what this is about, because it made me check news sources and in this I decided on the article (at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cia-director-bill-burns-china-russia-lethal-aid/). The CBS News article gives us ‘CIA confirms possibility of Chinese lethal aid to Russia’ and when I read it, I saw something different, it was not related to the earlier part, but it changed the way I looked at that news. We are given “In an exclusive interview with CBS News, CIA Director Bill Burns confirmed the possibility that China may send lethal aid to Russia in its war against Ukraine. “We’re confident that the Chinese leadership is considering the provision of lethal equipment,” Burns told “Face the Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan on Friday.” We are also given “I think the Chinese are also trying to weigh the consequences of, you know, what the concerns we’ve expressed are, you know, about providing lethal equipment”, this comes from CIA Director William Burn and that is fine. I am not debating that part, but when you consider what is behind it, it is a different stage. You see Russia is close the broke on a few levels and the only way that Russia can pay for this (as China would prefer it) is via massively reduced oil. Oil China needs and Russia cannot sell it to their former largest buyers. Yet behind all this is more. The logistics of the Russian armed forces are a mess. Their soldiers are ineffective, their hardware is failing on many levels and their supply systems are (from my point of view) broken in many ways. Russia has a problem. It needs drones, it needs missiles and it needs hardware that soldiers can use, Russia is falling short on several fronts and it is losing against the 21st largest army in the world. We all have seen Ukrainian achievement reports in several languages on several sources and they seemingly align. Russia could mobilise its armies, but the hardware issues remain and that could push the Russian armed forces in a direction it does not want to go, not in this stage. To give some slight reference. Russia lost more people in this war in one year than the UK and France combined lost in WW2 over the entirety of the war. In one year lost more soldiers than the UK and France lost over the entire world war, they are doing THAT bad. So now they need upgrades in hardware and that is what Russia is seemingly angling for. But I reckon that China is only considering a limited list and the payments are due in oil and upfront. Which would give them millions of barrels in extra oil, oil they need and I reckon they will get it for an apple and an egg. 

But when you think this through we could optionally deduce a lot more. You see that oil can then not be used to heat Russian houses, fuel power and fuel mobility. In addition it would be a first direct proof that the Russian Army has no place to go, or at least not operational. If it was merely missiles the issue would be small (except for the Ukraine), I am speculating that it is about a lot more, even if we accept that Russia is sending troops with 40 year old ammunition. 

The fact that they cannot do this with a renewed offensive is up on the wall and now we see how deployment and supply lines are on the front issues. If they cannot get supplies they will need to acquire them and China is nearly the only option and that is merely the beginning of the issue. Thee news has shown enough issues with soldiers personal gear and debatable mobile hardware (tanks and other things requiring wheels). This is not the stage of some new tanks, this is about the refurbished T-72 tanks that are almost 50 years old, implying that whatever anti tank comes their way will slice through their armour like a hot knife through butter and that is if the refurbishments were properly done, which in light of several issues is now a matter for debate. If Russia stages this war with its regular armies (if they can find them) Those armies will be ill equipped and ill prepared. A lesson France learned in 1812 the hard way and now Russia gets to learn that very same lesson. But is it all true? I am speculating, but I believe that I am in a stage of presumption because I do know how in parts this field is set. And the lesson is not over, not for the Russians and not for me either. Because there are many debates on what was real, I need to wonder how reliable the information I have is. I believe that I made enough sidesteps to alternate sources of information so that I believe that I am on the right track, but that too is not properly vetted information, so there could be gaps. Yet overall the news is still valid. If Russia needs China it means that they were never ready for any real combat and they were never prepared with the hardware they had, or they wouldn’t need China’s hardware. It could be a Russian ploy, but I do not think so, if that was the case the CIA would have come with a very different presentation, of that I am very certain.

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February 25, 2023 · 20:36

Narrative

We all heard it, we all see it. There is a narrative, it is supplied by stakeholders and it does not matter whether it is an academic, a greed hoarder or what should be regarded as a traitor. It does not matter whether this was for Russia or for China. The narrative has overwhelmed their senses and others took that time to make a rather large consideration, all whilst we are pushed into the  narrative of greed driven players.  We saw the noise that people like Mike Burgess made and that illuminated the second tier of problems Australia has, the UK and other commonwealth nations have taken notice. But because the people who were supposed to do their jobs did not, other things were missed. Things that seem irrelevant, trivial, yet they are not. You see, I alerted readers to a few issues over the last 3-5 years. They weren’t simple settings and for the longest time I had no idea there was a much larger plan. There still is debate whether the larger plan is merely conspiracy theory and those claiming that it is would not be opposed too strongly. So whilst we see one thing happen, the clever tactician will see that there are a lot more elements happening. Almost like individual cogs that are one cog separated from one another. As cogs are united with missing cogs, we see a much larger machine in play, but it is one without identity.

Last May we were give via Arab news “Etihad Etisalat Co., known as Mobily, has signed an initial agreement with Telecom Egypt to build the first submarine cable system to directly connect Saudi Arabia to Egypt.” This is nothing new, this happens all the time, but there are a whole range of arrangements that Egypt has been making with Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is where the money is. I myself have offered at least one IP to both the Saudi government and Kingdom Holdings, as such these steps make sense, but there is more. You see Egypt with its 100 million Muslims also lead to Turkey and Greece, extending one cable is relatively simple and that gives Saudi Arabia a first handhold into the EU and its optional hundreds of millions of customers. That is the setting and the impact is ignored. The stakeholders were not paying attention and their ignorance is what some were banking on. Is it ignorance? I make one claim, but neither can be supported. The larger stage (also why I offered one IP part to Saudi Arabia) is that Saudi Arabia is about to become the largest 5G player in the middle East, together with whomever in India becomes the power player, they will optionally unite with China and now we have a much larger ballgame, the EU becomes trivialised in 5G, no matter what games and what unsupported accusations the EU unite against. Huawei had the larger game in mind and now we see optional unison between Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Indonesia and they link to China. Half a billion people and that is before Bangla Desh joins the equation, now as others join the Saudi 5G circle the EU will have a new stage, one where they are the smaller player and the telecom companies have no idea how to proceed, the narrative overwhelmed their senses and they weren’t watching what entered the corner of the room.

Is it real or is it fake. You merely have to seek out the articles I wrote and how they were ignored by others. Before the end of 2024 Saudi Arabia is in the market to be the largest 5G supplier in the Middle East with options all over Europe. Saudi Arabia and Huawei got it there and the claims and accusations will not hold up. Is it the media? I cannot say for certain because the stakeholders did their job well, too well. Yet I noticed the line all over the Middle East and Africa and most of you could have too, but that is on you. So when you consider “The GCC region is expected to have 62 million 5G mobile subscribers by 2026 and they will account for nearly 73 percent of all mobile subscriptions in the region, according to a report released last year by the Swedish company Ericsson” which was given to us 3 months after the intent of the submarine cables. The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) are merely one part. The 100 million people in Egypt as well as the the 200 million in Indonesia are seemingly ignored. I reckon that the 62 million mark will be surpassed before the end of 2024 and when we suddenly hear alarm bells, it will be because the stakeholders will look beyond their greed, but it will already be too late. There was a larger stage and there was a larger plan, the plan goes a lot further than what I can see, but that is because I am not in the loop. I took notice as it benefitted MY IP and as such I saw that 1+1+1 made 4 (one for me), as such I took notice and I adjusted my IP accordingly. Now we have a setting that is close to advancement. Where it ends I do not know, but it is clear that Saudi Arabia had a much larger plan for their needs and they are getting closer to fulfilling it. And the US games did not matter, China was there to fill up the space and now the US with no options left are about to be trivialised by their own narrative makers. That is merely how I see it, but I let you consider the narrative for yourself, make up your own mind.

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February 23, 2023 · 21:38

Data dangers

Data has dangers and I think more by accident then intentional CBC exposed one (at https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/whistle-buoy-brewing-ai-beer-robo-1.6755943) where we were given ‘This Vancouver Island brewery hopped onto ChatGPT for marketing material. Then it asked for a beer recipe’. You see, there is a massive issue, it has been around from the beginning of the event, but AI does not exist, it really does not. What marketing did to make easy money, the made a term and transformed it into something bankable. They were willing to betray Alan Turing at the drop of a hat, why not? The man was dead anyway and cash is king. 

So they turned advanced machine learning and data repositories added a few items and they call it AI. Now we have a new show. And as CBC gives us “let’s see what happens if we ask it to give us a beer recipe,” he told CBC’s Rohit Joseph. They asked for a fluffy, tropical hazy pale ale” and we see the recipe below.

Now I have two simple questions. The first is is this a registered recipe, making this IP theft, or is this a random guess from established parameters, optionally making it worse. Random assignment of elements is dangerous on a few levels and it is not on the program to do this, but it is here so here you have it and it is a dangerous step to make. But I am more taken with option one, the program had THAT data somewhere. So in a setting we acquired classified data through clandestine needs and the program allowed for this, that is a direct danger. So what happens when that program gets to assess classified data? The skip between machine learning, deeper machine learning, data assessment and AI is a skip that is a lot wider than the grand canyon. 

But there is another side, we see this with “CBC tech columnist and digital media expert Mohit Rajhans says while some people are hesitant about programs like ChatGPT, AI is already here, and it’s all around us. Health-care, finance, transportation and energy are just a few of the sectors using the technology in its programs” people are reacting to AI as it existed and it dos not, more important when ACTUAL AI is introduced, how will the people manage it then? And the added legal implications aren’t even considered at present. So what happens, when I improve the stage of a patent and make it an innovative patent? The beer example implies that this is possible and when patents are hijacked by innovative patents, what kind of a mess will we face then? It does not matter whether it is Microsoft with their ChatGPT or Google with their Bard, or was that the bard tales? There is a larger stage that is about to hit the shelves and we, the law and others are not ready for what some of the big tech are about to unleash on us. And no one is asking the real questions because there is no real documented stage of what constitutes a real AI and what rules are imposed on that. I reckon Alan Turing would be ashamed of what scientists are letting happen at this point. But that is merely my view on the matter.

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February 21, 2023 · 00:43

The new rulings

This is change of scenery. This is not about who is in charge, even as we did set that stage, but the stage where we prefer to live. You see, the US is soon becoming a dangerous place to live, as its infrastructures are collapsing, as its debt is over-towering to such an extent that within three years the interest on that debt alone is close to 50% of all collected taxes. A stage that was visible for decades, but no one wanted to overhaul tax systems and now the rule of debt is due and the US has no solution (other than sell of its IP) and now we get a new stage, the stage we admired through the 50’s and 60’s and the US is no longer the main player. 

The new stage is seen (at https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20230219-muslims-react-to-plans-for-new-kabaa-development-in-saudi-capital/) where we are given ‘Muslims react to plans for ‘new Kaaba’ development in Saudi capital’ and lets be clear, this is nothing to sneer at. This has NEVER been done before.

We are given “On Thursday, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) announced the launch of the New Murabba Development Company, which aims to develop “the world’ largest modern downtown in Riyadh”. The project will see the redevelopment of Riyadh’s historic Al-Murabba (“The Square”) neighbourhood, which was said to be named after a square-shaped well from which the area derived its name.” And that is merely the beginning. The building will be 400 by 400 by 400 metres making it one of the largest ever build (if we ignore the line). The second building which is taking the architectonical cake. More important what happens when a building of THAT size is covered in solar paint? It could make it the first building to be carbon negative in history. There are so many other settings that need consideration, but the overbearing case is not merely what Saudi Arabia is achieving, it will soon be about how the US (and the EU) have not been able to do anything near it for over a decade and they will not be able to do something anywhere near it for decades to come. The trendsetters achieve, the rest merely watches the options go by and with the debts the US and EU are in that is what it amounts to, they are watching options pass by. 

There is a lot more to this, but that is for another day. No matter how we slice it, Saudi Arabia is now on the architectonical forefront of the world for pretty much the timespan of 2020-2050, that is the consequence of debt driven nations. We tried to all tell you, but you did not want to listen, so now the most major achievements over the next decade will be held in Saudi Arabia, now if we could do something about Iran’s nuclear hunger that would be nice too. I already submitted my idea for Iranian nuclear meltdown solutions, but that is not up to me to do, I might give it to Israel as well, just for jollies.

But the deeper truth is not that Saudi Achieving all this, it will soon become on how Iran will react and make no mistake, it is equally important. As Saudi Arabia rises, Iran falls deeper into economic holes and there is no way that their nuclear options are set to friendly needs, you do not need uranium to pure needs that Iran is making them, that level of purity is only needed for war, so when will someone wake up to that issue? Or is the US awake and they wait for the first bomb (either in Israel or on Saudi Soil) to explode before they put their foot down? No matter how you slice that, it will be much too late for that. As I see it, when that become clear the Saudi government can cut their oil deliveries to the EU and US and sell it all to China. That part was clear, was it not? Saudi Arabia is waking up to the project the US (and EU) dreamt of half a century ago and now Saudi Arabia is making them a reality showing the world that we have been watching the wrong channels for too long a time. Did you realise that?

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February 19, 2023 · 11:55

The stage between two stages

Sounds weird and perhaps that is a little true. You see, I saw the article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64178956) ‘Staff must be free to work for employer’s rivals – US regulator’, the article was from January 5th and I did see it, but I was unsure how I felt. You see, that setting allows for poaching and there Microsoft has been a little too active in the past. Now they are in the process of trimming the fat by well over 10,000 people and so are the others, so you would think that this is a moot process. But it is not. Microsoft is pretty much done for and their setting (a personal view) is to create shortages everywhere else so that they can get an extension on life. So we would see hundreds of essential workers at Amazon and Google now being offered a nice cushy position in Microsoft. IBM is also on that list, but IBM and Microsoft have too much alike, so there will be issues. They both preferred image above creativity and that is on them, it is also their right. As I personally see it IBM has a setting and poaching might happen, but it is often directly in league of what they are trying to design, so there is less of an issue and their stage of representation does not feel the same. I have less of an issue with IBM on that horse (which is seemingly rare), Microsoft however has a different setting. Just like their acquisition of Bethesda and Activision. It is not that they needed them (well they did in one way), it was to take away choice from Sony players and that is just not on with me. It would be nice if Amazon bought my IP, so I can really stick it to Microsoft, but that is another matter. The case is poaching. 

As such the article gives us “The FTC, which enforces competition law, said a ban would foster a more dynamic economy. The proposal was immediately challenged by the business community. It will now enter a long rule-making process. Non-compete clauses were developed to prevent leavers from joining rivals and sharing trade secrets”, it is not untrue, but to have people trained by Google, or Amazon (Web services) leave after a year (or two) of training and then use all that know how in the service of a player like Microsoft is a dangerous step. I understand and to some degree support non-compete clauses. The problem is that some of the players abused that non-compete setting in a much wider scale that should have been allowed for. So I am on the fence here and there is another stage that the US now opens up for. These people can due to this change now join a player like Tencent, who can open up European markets to a much larger degree. I wonder if they thought of that? Yes, we see the US limiting their workforce from joining Chinese players. Yet the EU has different stages and there these players are still shedding thousands of people and the UK is ripe for Tencent to come in and create a new workforce. If they weren’t becoming a hazard to my pension, I would not care, but they could be and as such I would care.

You see, I have in part opposition to “Lina Khan, who leads the agency and made her name criticising the might of big tech firms such as Amazon, on Thursday called the ability to switch jobs “core to economic liberty and to a competitive, thriving economy”. “Noncompetes block workers from freely switching jobs, depriving them of higher wages and better working conditions, and depriving businesses of a talent pool that they need to build and expand”, in this my opposition is that we see the clear mention of Amazon, and the weirdly avoidance of mentioning Microsoft (or Google) in this and that matters. Amazon has one of the most complete Web Services solutions including cloud solutions. Both Google and massively more Microsoft need people with these skills. I am not sure where Apple is with that but they all have some return to office setting and the noises we hear all over the place, they all have extensive needs soon enough, but Linda Khan is mentioned with her opposition of Amazon, who is leading that trump with most than a nose-length advantage. A player like Microsoft wants to get ahead and getting their hands on senior developers at Amazon is for them the way to go (Azure sucks too much according to some). 

As such with these elements in play, the need for a diminished non-competition clause is not entirely wrong, but the timing sucks and would luck have it, the timing would work for Microsoft and Tencent alike, a setting I am actually not happy about. Yet, I will admit that parts of this are personal views and personal settings I saw evolve over the last 30 years. And that is not all, in the last week we were given two parts. The first is “Microsoft last week laid off around 150 employees from a team tasked with convincing medium-size companies to adopt cloud services such as Azure server rentals and Microsoft 365 productivity apps, said a person with direct knowledge of the matter”, which in part makes sense, but when you add the next view that came 2 days later “Microsoft has officially joined the FinOps Foundation, a non-profit organisation that promotes financial management in cloud technology.” Consider that they need to promote that with 150 less staff, does that make sense? It makes a lot more sense when you poach the Amazon AWS staff pool and replace 150 narrow minded watchers by people with a much wider cloud view. It is pure speculation on my side, but they did a similar track in the Netscape days, as such I worry and you should too. A choice by a lack of options is not a choice and that is where Microsoft has been playing the field a little too long as I see it, which is why I am on the fence a lot more on the non-compete clause as I personally see it.

You should watch too because when your choices are lowered and Microsoft is clearly in the ‘surviving’ pool of choices. We see the power of stakeholders and they were never there for you, merely for their own wallets. But I might be seeing it too dark as some will respond.

My view is merely one view, make sure you learn all the elements in play when you go one direction. Its almost like the life of Harry the Hermit (Harry Styles), he makes an album of his house and the 13th track is about the love of his life (Remy “Thirteen” Hadley, M.D) which makes sense, but when you make 12 songs about your house and one about Olivia Wilde (mucho LOL), you do have your priorities wrong. It is all about the glasses you wear when you see the events unfold. This is nearly always true as is my view on Microsoft. They wanted to be the IBM clone, they played there games and they played it on Netscape and others alike and those who have been in IT long enough see the bitter taste that Microsoft leaves behind and that is before you add the Microsoft failures, they have become obsolete and in this I much rather support Amazon and what they could bring to the table of tomorrow than Microsoft who is merely copying the plate settings of yesterday. Yet that is a personal view, believe me or not but make sure you get a good view on where you stand, that is worth a lot more than merely following me. I want you all to be your own leader, not my follower. I am not some shepherd, I never was.

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February 18, 2023 · 19:23

A house by any other owner

OK, this is the third time I am raising this. I raised it twice before. The reason is that the BBC (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64547396) gives us the event a mere 7 hours ago by Nadine Yousif, BBC Toronto. So are they very late to the party, or is this a lot larger? I honestly cannot tell. The reason is that in the first the article is largely void of dates. In addition we get “A Canadian couple recently learned that their home was sold by fraudsters without their consent while they were out of town. Experts say theft of this nature is rare, but there has been a notable rise of similar cases in the country’s most populous city” the use of ‘recently’.  Really BBC, you could not be precise? Then we are given “The BC Land Title and Survey Authority (LTSA) said it is aware of two title fraud attempts since 2020, only one of which was successful. The public corporation added it only knows of one prior case in 2019, and two in 2008 and 2009”, really? The news gives a lot more recently, but here I might be in error as there are two forms and title fraud is seemingly less used. That is fair, but there is a much larger stage here now. So what happens when any act on title transfer or mortgage acquisition, the person acquiring it must get a biometrical scan? That gives us non-repudiation. That person and only that person could have done this. It is not the weirdest idea. A house tends to be over $500K and a house is a setting of ones identity. When we add the actuary as a control setting, we get a massive drop in these activities. The biometrics and photograph give a much larger stage for prosecution and optionally deportation of these criminals. I reckon the LTSA would applaud such a move as it secures and provides safety for those who own their property. There is still a risk that someone uses the stage to quickly get in under the radar, but the use of an actuary might dwindle this risk and those who tried this approach would soon find themselves looking for a place to live outside of any commonwealth nation, because this is happening in the United Kingdom and Australia. As such a stage needs to be set where the people can create a safety setting and keep their own little castle safe from exploitation by criminals. This is not a fool proof system. I get that. The old expression is “In confusion there is profit” an expression which started during WW2. But if we can lower the risk and 4 out of 5 people currently afflicted could avoid this nightmare scenario, it would be a win win situation. Are there better solutions? That is hard to say, all kinds of instances have used IT as a easy grab for all kinds of shortcuts and I am not aware which of these shortcuts apply to Canada, but the rise implies that there are weaknesses in this setting and as such the biometric stage might lower the risks for the Commonwealth. It is just an idea, but it took me less than an hour to think it up, consider that against the stage where we were given “by the time they found out that it had been stolen last June. As of February, the couple is still working through having their title on the home restored” a nightmare of at least 8 months, so I reckon my hour was well spend and if they can sway this as well as the demand for any title change two sets of biometrics are required, the stage becomes a non-option for criminals. You see, in the EU, they have biometrics on their passports. A second biometric could be scanned at the point of sale, which might take 24 hours (optionally less), the transgressor will not get a match, which now also suggests that this transgressor could be prosecuted, but that is merely an idea. The treasure is to keep realestate safe for its rightful owner. 

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