Category Archives: Finance

Slapping Fortnite

Yup, it happens and I have with some expectation of entertainment slapped them in the past myself. But this is different and I am not in agreement. The article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-63911176) gives us ‘Children stopped sleeping and eating to play Fortnite – lawsuit’, as I personally see it, a debatable article and the BBC knows this, because there is no journo name here. You see, there are a few elements missing and anyone with half a bran knows this. When we see “One of the children cited in the lawsuit played over 7,700 hours of the game in less than two years. The legal action claims the game was deliberately developed to be “highly addictive”.” The first question I have is “How do you program a game to be additive?” It is a serious question. Every game designer would like to know. The second question is that the equation gives us that this child had to play over 10 hours EVERY day to get past that point for two years. So where were the parents? You want to hand this to Epic and not hand any responsibility to the parents? And the one element they all ignore (even the lame journalist) is the fact that peer pressure is a real thing and that is set in stone. More importantly, the parents have to shield these kids from peer pressure. I see nothing of that here either. 

Now I am all for slapping greed driven Epic Games, but lets do that for the right reasons, and lets give some responsibility to the parents in this equation. And the clear stage of “their children would forgo sleeping, eating and showering because they were hooked on the game.” Hands a portion of that blame and the issues surrounding them to the parents, where are the parents in this equation? Anyone with half a brain will miss them too.

Lets be clear, I am not claiming Epic is innocent, but I believe that there are a massive amount of questions and as such Epic is entitled to some support and I am happy to give it, even as I mostly dislike Epic Games with a passion. But I do believe that fair is fair and we need to start with that in mind. I reckon that the legal team and its fearless leader (CLO of Epic Games) will take a serious look at both the parents and peer pressure, two elements that are clearly in the top-line of the equation and the BBC made sure it never got mentioned. I will leave it to you to wonder why.

Enjoy the day wherever you are. 

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The other white paper

Yes, there are always white papers, but which one is true? You see, they are all true, they are all a point of view. Yet the truth from a point of view is relative, that has always been the case. This is why we have peer criticism for academic papers. Yet that is not the case for the media, they are all fighting to remain around with some feigned form of value. This has been the case for over a decade and now the BBC gives us (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-63869013) ‘Meta threatens to remove US news content if new law passes’, you see the truth of the matter is that the people no longer need the news, the news is no longer if value. It started when the media starting soliciting (aka whoring) for digital dollars. Flamed bring revenue, actual news not so much. The events surrounding Elon Musk, the abstinence around Jack Dorsey and a dozen other cases made it so. The newspapers are irrelevant and they know it, so in a last gesture to remain not completely irrelevant they rely on laws to force funds from social media. Even as the shared instances from places like the Australian link to paywalls, they are all about ‘lost revenue’ And the Australian is not alone, loads of American newspapers and media (like Forbes) do EXACTLY the same thing. They will tell you the scoop AFTER you pay, so how is that lost revenue? Not all papers are like that, but many are and now we get “It would give publishers and broadcasters greater powers to collectively bargain with social media companies for a larger share of ad revenue”, I believe this is to be a false setting and Meta gives it to you in the form of “Meta claims their platform, in fact, provides increased traffic to struggling news outlets.” They are correct. Consider the truth, it I simple, how many times did you go to the news site? How many times was this because THEY shared news on social media? This has been the case for a decade and now that Meta is taking off the gloves, we see how irrelevant the media has become. In the last year alone I highlighted close to a dozen cases of incompetency and a lack of information vetting by the media, so why should they get paid for shortcomings? It is almost like the decapitated chicken.  It’s running around, but it is already dead, the rest of its body did not figure it out yet. Is it fair? Does it matter? No, the media had the option to evolve, it merely decided that is was cheaper and more profitable to hang onto someone else’s coattails. It did not work out well for them and now they cry foul, almost like the yellow pages. Their era died and they just never adjusted in time and I am adding to the pain as my 5G seemingly goes to China. Setting a new stage in several ways and taking advertisement power away from all and leave it where it should have been all along, with the advertising people. With the locations of advertising and that is the lesson that they never picked up on, and it is not their fault. A place like Google missed it too and I mentioned it at least twice this year. 

A stage that is moving away from them faster and faster and if Meta makes the move it is threatening to a lot of players in the media world will be done for. Such is life, Media Erectus is getting eaten before passing on its whinges. So do not focus on the whinge, consider the place technology had for almost 2 decades and see where the media is not, and they have not been where they needed to be for almost a decade and now that they are about to become irrelevant they cry laws. Bu the way these same people never championed law changes to the environment, law changes to taxation and they simply went for the emotional targets, it had more expected digital dollars, so where are these dollars now? 

And when we see “Media companies argue that Meta generates huge sums of money from news articles shared on the platform.” So where is THAT evidence? Meta generates advertisement towards people through free accounts, and this gets me to (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2H8wx1aBiQ) the congress statement April 2018 where the answer is ‘We run ads’ a setting that was in place for well over a decade. The news was never an element and as such the media better be quick with presenting ACTUAL evidence in that case.

When I see how irrelevant the media and Microsoft have become and I see them cry like little chihuahua’s all whilst they screw up options left right and centre, what the actual F*** (censored word) the world around them is doing protecting something this irrelevant is beyond me, it actually is.

We can debate things but look at the numbers. the Paris based World Association of Newspapers, which represents 18,000 newspapers gives us that there are a lot more. The world has 8,000,000,000 people, which implies that there is an average of 445,000 people per newspaper. When you start doing the math, you will see that the numbers o not add up. The newspapers that are still relevant are so as they have well over 2 million subscriptions. The Washington Post has 3 million, and The Wall Street Journal 2.4 million subscriptions. The Dutch Telegraaf had in 2001 807,000 subscriptions, in 2017 it was only 393,000. The larger national newspapers are losing ground and now we see the larger play. There are 195 countries in the world. So why are there 18,000 newspapers? They nearly all rely on Reuters, making at least 17,000 irrelevant already. But these are the numbers no one looks at, and they are all vying for advertisements. Look at ANY newspaper and look how many advertisements they have and how much they charge and you will see their actual loss. They are no longer a relevant advertisement group, digital media replaced them, they lost relevancy by allowing to become a family of 18,000 brothers and sisters and that is before you see the rest of the media relying on advertisement sales to qualify their existence. But no one looks at that side are they?

The other white paper that no one gets to see is the one no one in media wants to look at, it merely shows how irrelevant they have become.  

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A shortcut to viewing

Yes, I was here sitting on the sofa, considering what to write about, when suddenly my mind had an idea. It has them all the time, but this one seems like a moneymaker for the right programmer.

You see most of us have particular interests to see on Youtube. And we can go there again and again, or set up something to do that for us. As I is havening to be really lazy, option two works well for me.

So here is the idea in a simple graph (see below)

The mobile app for phone or tablet has the app. There we select the interest, optionally a location and a timeframe. We then select spawn and an icon is created. Clicking on that icon takes us to YouTube and filters exactly what we want to see. In example one I select cats or kittens, with a timeframe of last week, the second is Skiing, with the location of Whistler, BC and a timeframe of last month. You can make your own selection and each one comes with an icon of choice (some preselection is optional). And when you get on the train, bus or whatever. You merely select the icon and away you go. I also added a QR code that allows the person to hand the selection to be used in YouTube, or use it to spread the app. It seems so simple, but there is nothing out there that does this and I think that something like this might work on TikTok as well.

Just a small idea, use it if you can and feel free to cash in on it, a small donation to yours truly will always be appreciated. Well this is my Saturday evening suddenly a little more productive than I realised. So have a nice weekend and do not forget to smile at times.

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Would you like some sugar with that?

I got a message yesterday which I initially ignored. Nothing wrong with the message, but I can only go to so many places in an hour and this message stretched me too thin, as such I let it be. Yet this morning I had a few moments so I checked out the message from Defense One. It gave me ‘US Trying to Persuade More Allies to Send NASAMS Missiles to Ukraine, Raytheon CEO Says’ (at https://www.defenseone.com/business/2022/12/exclusive-us-trying-persuade-more-allies-send-nasams-missiles-ukraine-raytheon-ceo-says/380382/) the thing triggered something, but I did not exactly know what was triggered. I thought I knew, but it was too far into the past for that to make sense. Yet the article set me straight. Initially we might see “U.S. officials are working to broker a deal with NATO and Middle Eastern nations to send some of their NASAMS interceptors to Ukraine, Raytheon Technologies CEO Greg Hayes said Thursday”, it did not help me much and “the Pentagon awarded Raytheon a contract for the first two NASAMS batteries. The company delivered the interceptors within six weeks, Hayes said, because it had many parts on hand and because Doug Bush, the Army’s top weapons buyer, helped speed things along.” So I had to seek out more information and there the other cog fell to the floor. NASAMS or Norwegian Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System is the child of the Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace (KDA) and there the cog felt. It is a system from 1980. Kongsberg is led by Eirik Lie (weird name for an honest person). And there my defence knowledge partially kicked in. I knew of it, but that is about all I had. The Norwegians had designed the system to replace two Nike Hercules facilities in defending Norway’s southern air bases, where it would act in conjunction with F-16s in providing a layered defence, and that it did very well. I reckon that the engineers are proud as peacocks that this system can go to town on Russian missile systems 42 years later, there is no replacement for true innovation. I always said it and here you see it. OK, it was upgraded to a third version in 2019, but still it was tailored to a good design. And now we see Raytheon seeking assistance (of a sort). Here is also the problem I see. If manufacturing is a hard part, there are two sides to helping out now. What if this was Russias plan all along? What happens when Finland, the Netherlands, Spain, Oman, and Chile ship what they can ‘spare’ and a week later Spain and the Netherlands feel the brunt of running low on stock? I am not saying that this will happen, but the steps of Russia have to a larger extent not made sense and the pro-Russian coalition of the Dutch FvD will use that setting to every extent and that leaves a bad taste in my mouth. 

An alternative could be to assist Saudi Arabia with their 2030 goals and create a NASAM production facility there. If distributed manufacturing is a solution, creating an additional pool of manufacturers would become essential. In addition, the US and EU need every positive vibe they can muster as such the option has two benefits. Adding these solutions to Germany, Sweden, Denmark and France make perfect sense as well. When that happens we see five additional manufacturers, but that is not a short term solution, Ukraine needs missiles now and 2 years is too long. Yet with 5 additions, 2 years would be shrunk to 13-15 months, already a large saving. Now sending part of the needed missiles makes sense as there would be 5 additional creators. I see the simple setting that resources are required, then we see the manufacturing and after that shipping. The last part has plenty of options, the first two less so, although we can see that manufacturing is the bottleneck, Russia will soon see that if these 5 nations unite, Russia will end up having less and less options. And that is before we consider alternatives, You see Iceland has only 4% unemployment, but it might be reason to create another plant on the US base there (or next to it) which could create up to 2500 jobs. As such we see six options, is it a solution? I honestly do not know, but when the waiting list is two years something needs to give and it would be nice to see this before Russia gets to be creative with their missiles, ask Poland how that worked for them. The EU (US too) needs to act now, but merely getting others to send what they have might not be the safest path, not with current timelines. That is how I see it and if someone says I am wrong, I will not deny that my idea was completely ‘ad hoc’ and it would require scrutiny, but what would you do when you get told that anti-missile solutions are two years away? Especially when you consider what Russia is doing to the civilian population of Ukraine?

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Girdle your loins

Yes, it is time to commit to a promise, yet to do this you need to understand a few things. This all started two years ago when I had an idea, we all have ideas. Yet in my case, the idea was nice, but not ready to be acted on. The basic stage was to lower islamophobia and I believe that educating people does that. In this case it was staged as a game. The idea was sound, but I am not a programmer and places like Google and Amazon tend to be away from their desk when the return on investment is not clear. 

In the mean time the idea grew and grew. In march of this year a few demo’s were released containing the Unreal engine 5 and that was a game changer, the aspect and the population for my solution changed, moreover the application evolved massively.

Datapoints

Data is important and at that point the equation changed and I had to elaborate on data. As the application of a solution changed, so does the data requested for the new approach. 

As such I had the following data points

Turkey 84 million
Egypt 102 million
Pakistan 220 million
Bangla Dash 64 million
Indonesia 273 million
Iraq 40 million
Saudi Arabia 35

Which represent 914 million of the 1.9 billion Muslims. The Muslim population represents between 20 and 25 percent of the global population. In addition Islamophobia is more outspoken now than it was during the Crusades and at that point we were trying to kill each other. 

It was becoming clear that Muslims need a safe space and both Google and Amazon were seemingly not interested. Even the Kingdom Holding Company was not responding to the offer. The offer was a solution that will get 50,000,000 subscriptions, which is actually the easy part. But I will get to that soon. You see close to 50% of these Muslims will never go on the Hajj or a pilgrimage, most cannot afford it, some will never get the lottery. That is not anyones fault, the numbers of Muslims living outside of Saudi Arabia are just too big. So they will never see the splendour of the Grand Mosque in Riyadh, they will never see the Mosque in Medina where the Prophet himself taught. And this is where the Unreal engine version 5 becomes a game changer. 

Part one

Part one is the Islamic part. The two mosques in detail via the Unreal engine 5. You see, this becomes now no longer some video game, but a setting where you walk through a video of these places, true to perfection and when the times are there, you can hear the sermons. These sermons are already digital, they merely require plugging in. Now well over a billion will be able to see the majestic and greatness of these places and over time more Mosques could be added. The people who could never visit these places will be able to see them in more detail than ever before. Yes, you can see them on Youtube, but they are video’s of a person seeing what that person wanted to see. This is a place equally true to life, but now at any given moment you can look around 360 degrees, see the ceilings and see the place you could not visit, optionally not ever. 

Part two

Part two is the gaming side. People love games, all people do. And now a site would exist where Muslims could play, optionally play together and not be harassed all the time. The games are actually the easy part. Everyone is looking forward and create something they hope everyone will like. But when you look behind you, you will see hundreds of games created between 1985 and 1998 on Atari 800, Commodore 64, Atari ST and Commodore Amiga. Hundreds of games, many without any IP protection and yes, the graphics need upgrading, but in case of many games that is as much as is required, the rest tends to be simple as these games worked on 64Kb (512KB in the latter two cases). And that is before you start looking at adding Chess and Checkers games, board games and a whole lot more. It should be relatively easy to create 12-24 games a year. One alteration is an old game called Defender of the crown. In those days it was huge and awesome, but if you make it defender of the faith where the setting is not England, but Jerusalem, where the attacks are not a simple mouse click, but close to specific attack machines like they had in those days. Let the gamers see how hard it was in those days (see the movie Kingdom of Heaven for details). There are a few more of these alterations and you get a whole trove of games that will entice gamers from 12 to 81. And it might be possible to get twice as many games a year if you create 2-3 software houses. So many games forgotten could receive a second lease on life. After these exercises these software houses will be ready to create new and specific games for a Muslim population. 

Part three

Part three is the social media side. Not based on Facebook, but based on Google Plus or Cocoon. A closed system and it makes sense. Muslims have family, they have friends, friends from the mosque and they are not connected, some of these will be in all three. By setting these groups apart and taking out marketing we return to true social media and here others cannot harass you, if so those people get removed as this service comes at a price. There will be an option for Marketing, but. It can only offer it in certain places. It cannot splash everyones profile like Facebook does, it is the price of a free system. 

Part four

The last part is pricing. I envisioned a stage of $10 a month and $99 a year (two months free). That stage can easily get the controllers of this system 50 million subscriptions, I believe that 400 million subscriptions is possible, but initially not much higher and it would take two years to get there. I also believe that when the system has over 100 million people the price could be lowered from $10 a month to $7.50 a month or $75 a year. 

So that is why I was laughing out loud when we saw in ‘Repetition or Confirmation’ on November 13th 2022 “its Xbox Cloud Gaming program had attracted over 10 million players spread over 26 countries since opening its beta up a year prior.” My plan get me 50 million over 6 countries. My laughing out loud now makes sense, does it not? 

The plan takes on new life as a player like the Kingdom Holding Company could buy the Google Stadia from Google as they are dropping it, as long as it supports Unreal Engine 5. What starts at a nominal 5-6 billion could grow into a $40 billion system. Muslims are fed up with the harassment and American big-tech is not doing anything successful. As such I created a path towards safety. I offered it to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, but they were not interested. So you tell me, am I delusional or did I see what no one else is seeing? 

And there is more, Amazon has distribution centres in three of these clusters, so adding a server park there would be relatively easy and with the 5G systems faltering having satellite locations is important, it sets the bottleneck to the local cluster. All simple constructions that Google and Amazon should have been ready for and they are not. 

As such I am making this now Public Domain and you can see how the big boys (Amazon and Google) were blind for the longest time, they are all contracting their workforce and when someone laces this system the others will ALL lose market share and this player will grow into a power player. So there!

What am I losing? Well, I was hoping for a Canadian Passport, a loaded debit card (or an envelope with cash for initial expenses) and $50 million post taxation in a Canadian bank and I would be able to retire. I had hoped for a second pay cycle of 5% of the revenue for 15 years, but that is no longer realistic. And I feel happier making it public domain than giving it to an idiot like Microsoft.

Good luck and good hunting!

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You are not Tom Cruise

I was confronted with an article on ABC (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-11-28/daniel-duggan-held-under-restrictive-conditions-in-prison/101705510) We see the emotions, we see the indications. But there is a side that ABC is avoiding. The former Marine pilot Daniel Edmund Duggan has a problem, I cannot say if it is due to himself or not. Yet an explanation is required, the ABC was not giving it to you. You see we might all dream of becoming another Tom Cruise, being a fighter pilot and roaming the skies. The smallest of all groups get there, it might be a slightly larger group than those dreaming of becoming an astronaut, but not by much. We want to fly the beast machines, be the beast with Jennifer Connolly (Paul Bettany got that winning ticket) and be a scoundrel of the skies. We all (including me) have had that dream. But there is another side. When you become that one person you also are given unrestricted access to the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor and its $26.2 billion in Intellectual property and the US need to keep it under wraps as much as possible. I do not think that they will allow for a person like Daniel Edmund Duggan or any other person for that matter to hand over IP and IP related knowledge that is owned by the United States Defence department. That side the ABC left untouched. Now, in court that will require evidence and the chance of $26,200,000,000 getting handed over to China is not what the US (or its allies) will react kindly to. Now, there is no evidence that $26 billion will be handed over, but in the same setting if a pilot like Daniel Edmund Duggan hands over knowledge to an ally, the US will grudgingly stand still, when it goes to a US appointed adversarial like Russia or China, the US will NOT stand by. I get it, what I do not get is that the ABC left you in the dark and merely focusses on “Mr Miralis said it was unprecedented to have an Australian citizen with no criminal history placed on inmate restrictions akin to people who had been convicted of terrorist offences and multiple homicides” Well, we accept that and the Lawyer needs to give a best defence, but the stage is that China is recruiting and it is recruiting people like Duggan and there are billions at stake. It is not handing over the specs, it is handing over the weaknesses of any US aircraft he has ever flown, all the knowledge, via brother pilots he got access to. There is a definite risk for the US, I get that and as it was American IP, Duggan definitely has a problem. If he was in the US it might not have gone that far initially, but he became Australian, as such there is an issue and ABC should have told you that. The fact that he worked in China does not help any. It does not matter if what he did was completely unrelated or harmless. He had access to top secret information on US airplanes and ABC did not inform you, there is something called balanced and we get it, there are moments where we are less than balanced, but to leave such a large setting out of the equation is rather dumb, but that might be my take on the setting.

I have no idea how this works out, but people better figure out that there is a new storm brewing and when it hits it will hit to a much larger degree. The US is pretty much bankrupt, it has no exit strategy to get rid of 30,000 billion (30 trillion) in debt and things are getting worse. Soon the US treasury will depend on whatever IP they have and reduction of values of such nature will not go over well and these people signed papers, not unlike the official secrets act. I did not, so I can inform you on the simple fact that Director Richard Moore of MI-6 is now 59 years old and 347 days younger than me, so there! 

Alas, Daniel Edmund Duggan had to sign such a piece of paper when he became a US Marine Pilot. That is what is getting him into the proverbial hot waters.

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What is real?

Some things we know are real, some are part real and some are neither. But for the most I have relied and believed, in a few instances I learned much later that I was deceived. The Catholic Church influenced my education giving me false information. Later that same church did everything to ‘protect’ their paedophilic priests. Now the BBC gives us (at https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-63636641) where we see ‘Gold coin proves ‘fake’ Roman emperor was real’ there we learn “The final blow came in 1863 when Henry Cohen, the leading coin expert of the time at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, considered the problem for his great catalogue of Roman coins. He said that they were not only ‘modern’ fakes, but poorly made and “ridiculously imagined”. Other specialists agreed and to this day Sponsian has been dismissed in scholarly catalogues.” As such the ‘experts’ dismissed Sponsian who ruled in a time line where 11 others ruled, so there are issues. But in all this we wonder what is real. We get it, there were issues with the ‘evidence’ there were rejections, but the coins could not have been the only evidence. More evidence was destroyed or suppressed and we do not know when that happened.  There is every chance that some evidence was mislabelled, as such are all the facts of these 11 other rulers correct? Perhaps it is, but forensic research on 1600 years old data and collections is not easily verified of checked. It will take new technology to do this, adjusted technology. 

The first thing we see is the Tibetan library, there we see that only 5% has been translated. Players like Google can make a huge difference. It will not answer the Italian issue, but as our libraries become more and more complete, we can identify a lot more. We have been lucky to some extent, but that luck is running out. If we are to make any kind of lasting impression, it will be the need to get as much information ready for long term storage and long term recollection. But this is overly simplified. We would rely on experts, but these experts trivialised Sponsian and experts tend to be more stubborn than politicians believing in Jedi’s. And there are political issues in play as well, and that setting transfers to Tibet (China being an issue), and a few more. The issue becomes interesting, it is more than a data puzzle, it is a puzzle of verification which is not the same. Yet, I am intrigued with the speculative process of reverifying 1800 years of data, we might merely have lost a step, but there is every indication that dozens of steps were wrongly assigned and there the stage that these steps require verification as well. More importantly, were some of them every assigned correctly? A puzzle that is enticing, very very enticing.

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The stage of two parties

That is the setting today. It started yesterday, but I have a few other concerns. The article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-63731751) gives us ‘Meta claims US military link to online propaganda campaign’, in the first I would state ‘So what?’ You might think that this is the wrong detail, yet the Russians are doing it, China is doing it, several nations are engaging in this way and that is all before we consider the trolls with dubious third party needs. So when I see “The campaign was the first major covert pro-US propaganda operation taken down by a big-tech company, independent researchers said in August.” I see the implications that big-tech companies are presently not acting on Russian and Chinese activities. But that is merely my point of view. So when we are given “On Facebook, 39 accounts, 16 pages, and two groups were removed, as well as 26 accounts on Instagram, for violating the platforms’ policy against “coordinated inauthentic behaviour”.” I wonder how many actions were taken against stake holders with anti-Saudi sentiments. The fact that places like Twitter have given ‘refuge’ to thousands of trolls acting under the nose of Jack Dorsey all whilst the media ignored that part is still a debate for another day. One might not be another but Meta and Tweets have at times some levels of connectivity, the problem is to identify these hybrid accounts and I get it, it is not easy, not easy at all.

And to look at the math, when we see “39 accounts, 16 pages, and two groups were removed”, Which is interesting as one source gives us “We see it in the thousands of fake profiles of celebrities on Facebook and Twitter, with some successfully misleading others into thinking they’re genuine profiles. Nevertheless, identity theft can turn into a serious offence depending on what is done with the fake profile.” And how many of these fake accounts have been removed? In all this those 39 accounts come across as a bit of a joke. I get it, they are all about the essential true form, but the victims of several other stuff aren’t found. That is not entirely the fault of Meta, but there is a question on where their priorities lie. When we see (last September) ‘Troll farms reached 140 million Americans a month on Facebook before 2020 election, internal report shows’, as such the 39 accounts become a bit of a joke. Don’t you agree?

Anyway, the second part is all about me. I struck out three times, so to test the water within a month (as a personal Christmas cheer), I will put the entire idea for six billion in revenue out here as public domain and I will let you decide how delusional I am. On the plus side, when I publish and it becomes PD, the stage will change by a lot. In the first on how Amazon and Google let 6 billion fade onto public domain and if they try to mine it, a lot of questions will enter the open spaces. How one man, one ignored man saw what no one else saw and I have the additional home run with Kingdom Holding who had 0.6 billion in revenue let 6 billion annual slip (and that was merely the first phase). I reckon that a person like Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal will have some questions.

But that I my sense of humour, if I can’t have my retirement, I will make sure that all other will look increasingly stupid. It is my right to do so.

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iSpoof, You spoof, everyone spoofs

It sounds sad and perhaps that is merely part of the stage, but both the Guardian and the Dutch NOS report on this and they are not completely reporting the SAME thing. The Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/money/2022/nov/24/100-people-arrested-ispoof-uk-biggest-investigation) give us ‘100 people arrested in UK’s biggest fraud investigation’ where we see “More than 100 people have been arrested in the UK’s biggest ever fraud operation, which brought down a website police describe as a “one-stop spoofing shop” used by scammers to steal tens of millions of pounds from Britons via fake bank phone calls”. We also get to see “At one stage almost 20 people every minute of the day were being contacted by scammers hiding behind false identities created using the site and it is estimated that criminals may have stolen close to £50m. The actual amount is likely to be higher as fraud is often underreported.” With for the finale “Those running the scam shop made about £3.2m over a 20-month period, it is estimated” so it seems that these people were able to do their ‘thing’ for 2 and a half years. It took that long to get a handle on things. Lets be clear, I am not having a go at Scotland Yard here. The stage I presented over two years ago is hereby proven, with a full 5G deployment the damage could have been 10-20 times bigger. That is at stake and that needs to be stopped, it sucks to be Scotland Yard soon enough, but this victory they have and they earned it. In the mean time the Dutch report (at https://nos.nl/artikel/2453655-politie-rolt-internationale-spoofingdienst-op-en-arresteert-fraudeurs) ‘Police roll up international spoofing service and arrest fraudsters’, there is clear mention of the English police, yet we also see “In the Netherlands, there are probably thousands of calls per month. The tap led to the arrest of two men from Almere, aged 19 and 22” so it is far beyond the British borders. We also get “The police have so far discovered a hundred users from the Netherlands in the mountain of data and based on this, identify themselves and build up a file. More arrests will certainly follow, according to the police” as such we can say that the situation is fluidic and more reporting will come soon enough. The element that gives us that there is pressure on several sides and the people are at times pressured in ‘acting now’. It makes things hard and with a full 5G it will make it even harder. The law needs adjusting and it is barely catching up with the facts they face. To be honest I wonder if serious prison times will come with the catch. I am expecting some lawyer to come with some cry story that brings tears to the eyes of the judge. It would be nice to reintroduce hard times with prison work where 90% of the earned money goes towards paying for the damages and no parole until all damages are paid for, but people will say that this is merely delusional and it will never happen. 

Time will tell.

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Oil in the family

This is not exactly new, it is a stage that evolved in the last week. To see that we need to take a look at ASPI (Australian Strategic Policy Institute) which hands us (at https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/opec-production-cut-has-washington-questioning-the-value-of-its-saudi-alliance/) a mere three weeks ago ‘OPEC production cut has Washington questioning the value of its Saudi alliance’, in itself the question is not invalid. Every nation assesses its value towards services delivered, but in that same stage, the direction can be inverted and as such the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is questioning the value that the United States brings to the table. President Biden asked to make Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud a pariah. It has stopped deliveries of defence equipment to the KSA all whilst the KSA was under attack by terrorist forces who were receiving aid from Iran. And when we see “Critics of the OPEC decision say it will increase the price of oil at a time when US consumers are already feeling the impact of high energy prices. A higher oil price will also provide a significant boost to Russia’s struggling economy.” All whilst the US exports 90% of its oil, as such they are sitting pretty as well. But the article does not mention that, it is increasingly one sided. Then we get the second setting and it is seen with “Saudi Arabia has lost much of its prestige and is in damage control to rebuild its image internationally and shore up its relations with the US. To reset the relationship in Washington, Saudi-backed lobbyists have spent millions of dollars. Biden responded by visiting Saudi Arabia, presumably as a gesture of goodwill and to attempt some recalibration.” It is the ‘lost much of it prestige’, by what standard? The KSA gained massive silent prestige with Neom and the line, two stages never seen before and the US has nothing in opposition to that. It will be relying on the coattails of Saudi achievements for the next 20 years. A nation that is so broke it cannot fix its support structures, and that all before we see the damage the ultra right is making in the US. And where is the so called hypocritical ‘honest’ media? When did you see any clear article on the line or Neom? The mainstream media is steering clear of it, no doubt due to the (my speculative view) word from stakeholders. 

This is in contrast to the Vox a week ago where we see “Biden “wants to be able to reevaluate in a methodical, strategic, effective way,” clarified national security adviser Jake Sullivan, “rooted in his fundamental interest in making sure that the relationship the United States has with Saudi Arabia serves the American people effectively.” Sullivan in essence suggested that things so far had not been going well.” We see this (at https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2022/11/17/23423031/why-america-cant-seem-to-quit-saudi-arabia), it is showing us a stage set. We are given “Now that the Biden administration re-evaluates its approach a third time, will it come to a new conclusion? It will be tough to change much. The US, after all, relies on the kingdom as a major oil producer and economic power with important shipping lanes, a close partner in countering Iran and terrorist organisations, and a significant trading partner and number-one purchaser of US weapons.” But that stage is not entirely true, that WAS the stage, but as China moved in, we see a spiralling US economy. Lets not give food to the speculator’s there. China increased exports and services to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia from 24 billion in 2019 to 30 billion in 2021, some views give us that it is now approaching 33 billion and as Neom and the Line grows, China will gain more. That is 9 billion the US and Europe lost, more importantly China is now getting more oil and the talks implying that Saudi Arabia is in active talks with Beijing to price some of its oil sales to China in yuan gives us the indication that this will not halt any day soon, it also implies that the US is partially done for. Its games are now backfiring, should oil deliveries decrease by as little as an additional 1 million barrels US economy could implode with all the nightmares and trimmings that come with that. I personally do not care, I warned the US and the UK that there will be a price to pay soon enough and I made that prediction in 2020, now that this is about to happen, President Biden can play its games and let the media decide how much they hate the KSA and Muslims, or he can fold the game. The UK with its CAAT is in a similar position. They had the upper hand towards 2-3 billion in weapon sales, predominantly the Typhoon, now that money is most likely to go towards the Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group, China will be extending its arms for extended services towards Saudi Arabia.

The players wanting to keep Saudi Arabia on some kind of leash are now forced to fold their game. They lost to China and the damage is increasing. It is a fair assessment that the Russian – Ukrainian stage did not help, but that is how the cookie crumbles at times. As some stakeholders encouraged anti Saudi sentiments, they forgot that they weren’t the only players and what is coming now is hurting their long term policies in the Middle East and in the Far East. Did you think it was a fluke that the Silk Road was investing in Indonesia? It has over 200 million Muslims and that opens up new commerce borders and Saudi Arabia is ready to collect. I saw part of this last year and I tried to bank on it, but alas the KSA was not assisting (poor me), now that we see this evolving stage, players like Prince Alwaleed bin Talal and his Kingdom Holding Company will make increasing profits in new areas, all whilst the US and EU are given their walking papers. In the next two years their share will decrease by well over 40%, all whilst their political power in that region is most likely to be a trivial one. One ego driven stage led to the larger loss on influence in the Middle East and soon the Far East as well. A stage that China is happy about, the others? Not so much.

But I saw parts of this a year ago, so why did the media not see this? I am not more intelligent than them, but I can read raw data and that was where a lot was all along. But feel free to disagree with me, it is your right, yet when the oil valve closes a little more, just watch the chaos unfold. When you create a mobile industry you need to be weary of essential parts you need, fuel being one of them and the other solution is not as fast as people keep on slapping Elon Musk with his Tesla. All elements in a game where the people who have oil in the family will have the last laugh. Which remind me, how much longer will the US export 90% of its oil? Is there no shortage in the US? 

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