Category Archives: Finance

August 31, 2022 · 01:33

It is more than a pool full

I got a nice surprise this morning from the BBC. They had an interesting article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62717599), in this article named ‘Undeclared pools in France uncovered by AI technology’ we see an article on something different. It is not a pool on which girl has the loveliest lingerie. No it is a large tub of water. In Franco they however have the rule that “Pools can lead to higher property taxes because they boost property value, and must be declared under French law.” And as such we get to “The software, developed by Google and French consulting firm Capgemini, spotted the pools on aerial images of nine French regions during a trial in October 2021.” This led to finding well over 20,000 undeclared swimming pools with the number leading to “some €10m (£8.5m) in revenue, French media is reporting” As far as I can tell it is the first time a revenue service got to be clever about the tools available in this. A novel and lovely way to find something. This is a case of deeper learning taking a dive into the photo’s that aids the tax office. To be honest, I never knew swimming pols had to be declared and as such there is the added fact that I never lived in France. And as we are given “According to Le Parisien newspaper, an average pool of 30 sq m (322 sq ft) is taxed at €200 (£170) a year.” If that is true, the finding of 20,000 undeclared pools will add to the French coffers in a nice way. So it sucks to be the non declaring swimming pool owner. But that is not the real deal. It is about something more and we get that when we see “His comments come as France tackles its worst recorded drought that has left more than 100 municipalities short of drinking water. In July, France had just 9.7mm (0.38in) of rain, making it the driest month since March 1961, the national weather service Meteo-France said. Irrigation has been banned in much of the north-west and south-east of France to conserve water.” And still some see global warming as a nuisance, something that is not real. Last week I saw an image of the largest sweet water lake in China, now completely dry, now we see images like the image below. 

I have nothing against people with a pool and for the most people are not hindered by drought, not in Europe, but the fact that France now has the driest month since March 1961, before I was even born gives a much larger stage, one that we cannot deny. It is not about the pools, it is about water and we need to figure out how we can unite all the data on water and find a common factor. I know, it will be people. But consider that the Seine took care of a few hundred in 800AD, and went from 1960 with 46.62 m to 2021 with 67.50 m people. This is a growth of 44.8% in 61 years, now they do not all spot by the Seine, but it gives a rather large stage when we consider that In 1600, there were roughly 220,000 Parisians; in 1650, approximately 450,000 in 1700, Paris had about 550,000 inhabitants. Now Paris is a city that houses 2.161 million, that shows a growth of 390%, now we have a different picture. And here deeper learning might give organisations a better view and we need to do this, not next week or next year. We need to start looking at the facts now, something needs to be done now. And it has nothing to do with pools, that is merely taxation fun for some. The question becomes have we hit a larger point in our evolution? How long until we have drunk all the non salt water? You think I am kidding, but we need to consider that the population of this planet was 2 billion in 1900, in 122 years time we went to 8 billion. 8,000,000,000 people needing 400% more than the population in 1900. I am not kidding, we might have hit a point of no return in the population. The planet can no longer support this population. Consider that we need 16 billion – 24 billion litres of water EVERY DAY to support this population. And that is before we look at what they need for the washing machine, the shower and so on. I am not putting the pools on that list, but someone will and now the need for deeper learning towards water, water consumption and water levels becomes a little more clear, does it not? This planet had a water cycle, it was a natural order, but we disrupted it and we pretty much destroyed it. Water does not get replenished, it merely recycles in different ways, but 8 billion people consume water too making the cycle smaller every day and soon there will be no water. I do at least have an escape plan that allows me to live out my life without the danger of running out of water, but it would help if Amazon or Google (or Elon Musk) buys my IP, sooner rather than later mind you. So when you consider the issues in Pakistan (see below), consider that nature has a massively strange way to seek balance, but is it really balance, or is it something else, something we did by keeping silent to appease the greed driven?

It is a serious question and most governments were part of this all, so they do not get to lecture, but deeper learning could give us numbers on the global aftermath of water shortages and we need to start now, not tomorrow. Data collection needs to start the moment we can, not when it suits some. That time has passed and is gone forever.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

August 30, 2022 · 03:51

The opposite point of view?

That was the setting I looked t when I saw the article in the New Arab (at https://english.alaraby.co.uk/analysis/saudi-arabias-line-neom-project-too-ambitious) where we see ‘Is Saudi Arabia’s ‘The Line’ NEOM project too ambitious?’ The title gives us a handle and my first question is should that not be the case? Now we take the Empire State Building for granted, but in 1930, people thought the same regarding the Empire State Building. Things need to be too ambitious. The entire setting of Neom and the Line is too ambitious, because this has NEVER been done before. And even if people write it into the ground calling it a ‘gazillion dollar project’ the truth is that they are writing fear, because I personally guarantee you that they would not write that if it was a US project. Two architectural projects and both as in Saudi Arabia. But back to the article. We then get ““In the aftermath of the pandemic, economic rehabilitation is at the forefront of all countries’ political agendas. This is why Saudi Arabia will have no issues in filling any labour gaps with regards to construction and investments in the project itself,” Siddiqa explained.” This is a fair point and every nations has this hurdle, as such I do not see a real problem, a hurdle, not an obstacle. Again a fair point is seen with “NEOM is not without its challenges, some of which Riyadh has addressed and others which remain an obstacle. Financial challenges are the biggest obstacle for mega projects like NEOM and The Line. Research shows that Saudi Arabia has not been able to achieve much success in attracting financial resources and investment from foreign governments and companies.”, what I would like to add is that these companies were eager to invest when oil was their fortune, but investing in something that they at present do not understand is somewhat understandable, greed needs assurances and they have an image (of greed) to uphold. Then the article throws a reality our way. With “While the initial plan was to complete NEOM by 2030 with an allotted $500 billion, some reports claim that the city may not be completed until 2050, which will likely increase costs significantly. For this reason, it is predicted that the entire project, including The Line, will cost the Kingdom $1 trillion.” And here we see the first larger hurdle. With ‘the city may not be completed until 2050’ which is true, but now we also see the essential need to hold onto the larger need for perfection and precision. Any party that cuts corners will become the foundation of failure for the entire project and even if only one phase is ready in 2030, the KSA will show to be a global game changer. And lets fave it, on this day and age that delay is not the biggest one. The line is a city for 9 million people. Rome was not build in a day and that is a fair notion to take. If it helps, I reckon that my IP for Augmented Reality could optionally make an optional larger difference there. But the larger truth is that the Empire State Building took a year to make, the Line is over 200 times larger and as such getting it all ready by 2050 is still an amazing feat, more important it is a building no one else has been able to build as well as a first building to allow nature to restore. That setting is a larger achievement. More important I reckon that the side development in material waste and sewage will have larger repercussions for the internal development of any city and such part have never been this centralised before. A place where pollution stops. Consider London where we would suddenly halt ALL car traffic for a week. The impact of cleaner air would be seeable and sense by all, a city 50% smaller and it has that impact, so what spin will the KSA receive when others offer their version of complexities? Then we are given a part that I found debatable. It is “The financial viability of PIF is highly dependent on the Kingdom’s oil exports, a market that has proven volatile in recent years. In 2020, Riyadh faced a significant fiscal deficit of more than $79 billion. In a country where around 60% of its financial resources came from oil and just 9% from non-oil exports in 2021, the financing of the NEOM project is likely to face financial ups and downs.” So, yes we get ‘In 2020, Riyadh faced a significant fiscal deficit of more than $79 billion’ this is true, but what about 2022? The guardian gave us (months ago) ‘Largest oil and gas producers made close to $100bn in first quarter of 2022’ and two weeks ago we got “Aramco had a 90% year-on-year increase and marks the biggest earnings for the world’s largest energy exporter since its public listing three years ago.” As such the 2020 point of view for a 2022 article makes a lot less sense. And the reference of “around 60% of its financial resources came from oil” might sound fair (or at least correct) but both Neom and the Line show us that this could change, a city with no cars means 4,000,000 less cars creating pollution, needing no gasoline are clear markers in that change. And when the achievement is established other nations will want the same event (especially in Texas where they now start to have energy problems). A stage that could export Saudi skills in other ways too. One significant hurdle is shown with “the biggest technical problem that Saudi Arabia will face in NEOM is the reliance on foreign skilled workers, an issue that is unlikely to be resolved in the short term.” This was true and yes it was a problem, but I illuminated that with “there is now a decent chance that the small hidden engineering texts will be Arabic/Chinese and not Arabic/English. A station that was always likely to happen, but now it seems it is becoming the passing of a fact” a side I saw solved on August 11th 2022, a week before this article was written. I set that in ‘Stirring the soup’, a stage I saw coming a mile away and that too is the larger defeat for the west, especially as China has both the upper echelon and lower echelon of workers, workers Saudi Arabia will need and a job market that is now closing for Europe and America. A longer set of issues that hd been out and open for all to see, now the Silk Road gets the chance to build whilst fuelling itself with oil and revenue, both at the same time. I reckon that Strasbourg never considered that. How interesting that I had done that.

In the end my point of view is that there is no ‘too ambitious’, it comes with the terrain of creating something never done before, as long as the decision makers realise that 2030 is not a static point of completion, they will end up being in a good place. Even completing Phase one by 2030 is an achievement not found anywhere else in the world at present and that completion takes the project crown away from America, not a bad first result. And in all this the redesign of world powers might also be a first, with the chance that China becomes the worlds first power and America? Well they will have to content with the number 6 slot, that is also a consequence of catering to Wall Street, the larger view is lost when the spreadsheet users were all set on next quarter, not next decade. In this I will shown to have been correct yet again. I wonder what else I could see in the near future.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Media, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 29, 2022 · 07:47

Two issues on an increasing scale

That is what I see, a scale that increases in size, all whilst the credibility of the media decreases. This is best seen with the issues regarding Musk v Twitter. It was early as July 25th when I wrote ‘Let’s dance’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/07/25/lets-dance/) where I gave the reader “That is important information, especially if well over 60,000,000 accounts were deleted in 2022. I believe that this shift is large enough for Elon Musk to start the case, when he gets the data from places like Trollrensics he might have enough to bust the Twitter deal. The setting is and always was that Twitter claims that at most 5% of the accounts are fake, I believe it too be a lot higher. I never speculated the numbers that Trollrensics have, but it is my speculation versus THEIR data, as such they win.” Later I gave the readers more and the media was all up in arms on poor poor Twitter against the fiend Musk. Now that we start seeing articles like ‘Twitter whistleblower raises security concerns’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-62633191) we start seeing certain people parade in place, all whilst we are still given quotes like “Peiter Zatko also claimed that Twitter underestimated how many fake and spam accounts are on its platform. The accusations could affect a legal battle between Twitter and billionaire Elon Musk, who is trying to cancel his $44bn (£37bn) deal to buy the company. Twitter says Mr Zatko’s allegations are inaccurate and inconsistent.” And this is not merely him, I myself as well as players like Trollrensics have made similar conclusions. Yes, mine were more speculative in nature, but the media had a clear path FOR MONTHS to contest it with their own research and guess what, no one wants to touch it. Why not? Now that we are given “In Mr Zatko’s damning revelations, first revealed by CNN and The Washington Post, he accused Twitter of failing to maintain stringent security practices and “lying about bots to Elon Musk”.” As well as “He filed his complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission in July. The BBC has seen a redacted copy of the complaint shared via CBS news. In it, Mr Zatko also criticised the way in which Twitter handled sensitive information and claimed that it has failed to accurately report some of these matters to US regulators.” That was in July, no wonder we are given “It says he was sacked in January for ineffective leadership and poor performance.” And consider that if he was sacked in January and his numbers hold up, his claims hold up. We end up with a situation where Twitter has been aware of its mismanagement of fake accounts for a very long time. As I see it, it nullifies the buy claim that Twitter has towards Elon Musk, should they proceed, they need to lower their price by well over 60%-78%. Not a stage Twitter wants to push for, no matter how that plays out, I reckon the value of Twitter will be found in Basement 5 soon enough and with that the fortune of people like Jack Dorsey. So as the Washington Post rears its head with “However in the view of The Washington Post, he “provides little hard evidence” to back up these assertions. Nevertheless, Elon Musk’s lawyers have jumped on the comments. His legal team are currently trying to get the Tesla boss out of the deal, by arguing that Twitter has no way of verifying how many of its 229 million daily active users were actually human.” It is funny, because with that columnist no one gives a fuck about they went all in with speculations. More important, the fact that I had come up with a number around 20% of fake accounts (which could be calculated with an abacus) and Trollrensics stating that the number of fake accounts is much closer to 50% (they have data), which gives a rather large rise to the Washington Post not doing its job and that is saying something. 

The BBC does give a more complete picture with Peiter Zatko who also held senior positions with Google and the US government’s research and development agency, DARPA. As such we need to see the failing of media all over the place as a larger failing and in this the BBC gives us a first stage where Elon Musk needs to be given s little more leeway when it comes to his point of view, something the media to the largest extent has been willing to avoid to every degree.

And in the next article we get issue two (about to publish that one)

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Media, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

August 22, 2022 · 19:23

Is it really that simple?

There was an article on BBC (about 7 minutes ago). It gives us ‘Cineworld confirms it is considering bankruptcy’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62629932) there we see “Cineworld had hoped blockbusters such as the latest Bond film, Top Gun: Maverick and Thor: Love And Thunder would draw audiences back in after lockdown restrictions eased. But it recently said post-Covid customers levels were still lower than expected and blamed “limited” film releases.” I have an issue with that statement. I only saw one of the three (the Thor movie). The issue I have is with “customers levels were still lower than expected and blamed “limited” film releases” I do not think that is the case, and whomever makes that claim is massively shortsighted. Groceries and the cost of living is up EVERYWHERE. Meat alone is for me 25%-30% more expensive several other options are also more expensive, because the home brands are not available, setting us back around 10% per item. Electricity and fuel are up by a lot. These elements are central in the option to NOT go see a movie and there is another setting. It is seen in “Cineworld currently has a market value of around $69m but is carrying close to $5bn of debt.” Can anyone explain how a firm gets to have a debt 7200% of its value? There might be a real answer and this shows that I know next to nothing on cinema’s, but to have a debt 72 times the total value of a company comes across as slightly weird. In addition we see “But at just over 4 pence, the share price is still a long way off from where it was at the start of 2020 (220 pence) before the pandemic struck.” Implying that the company is now at a mere 1.8% of its original value and we see the blame on “limited film release” I think that business reporter Noor Nanji owes us a more (or better) explanation than we are seeing now. The issue all over the field makes little to no sense. It could be that there is a perfectly valid reason, but I can’t see it and that is because I am not in the cinema realm. But I reckon that Noor Nanji can give us a more perfect setting on what is going on. Because a firm in such a situation is not considering bankruptcy, it was utterly broke and broken months ago. 

I am not taking pleasure here. I love cinema’s, but there is a larger sense of weirdness when we look at these facts and a lot more questions should be out in the open. 

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Media, movies

Tagged as , , , , , ,

August 21, 2022 · 22:40

Was that all? No, there is more!

It started with watching another Eaton Centre Mall video (Toronto). This one was 6 days old (a Saturday event) and as I was watching I came up with one more piece of IP and the other piece matured. More importantly, it opens a much larger setting for shops. If Amazon pushes in, it will be the first time that Google has a realistic chance of losing market share, if Google steps in it could do a bit more than set its market share in stone, it could fan out beyond Malls and shopping centres. There is a much larger option to push the envelope in several ways. This is fuelled by what might be a realistic new option for Neom and the Line in Saudi Arabia. I have been keeping these two in the back of my mind, but that is as far as I got, I reckon that there are more marketing ways of supporting that place and a few (non-connected) ideas came to mind. With non-connected I usually mean that a lot more pondering is needed to see how far an idea goes and how easy it could be surpassed by others. That always remains an option. My ideas are good, but I am surrounded by equally gifted people (especially at Google), and as such the 

IP needs to be trimmed, expanded on or redrawn. To make it faster, to make it better and to make it innovative. It was when the filmer passed Kernels that my mind made a UNIX joke and at that point I also realised a few other things. Not on what was there, but on what wasn’t there. It went beyond the 5G IP I have, it was the setting that the Eaton mall (according to the map) did not have a concierge desk (information desk). There is nothing wrong with that, but consider that what my 5G IP does could also be implemented in other ways (with less capability), but it is capability that we have now, so why is it not there? The map is actually rather good and very interactive, But what happens when we see (below)

And the location, app or solution allows the visitor to download the brochure of any of the shops there. More important, why was this not a basic solution for years? They’ve had 8 years and they are not alone in this failing, there is  whole range of malls who do not have that, Google could have stepped in years ago (in case of Eaton Mall 8 years ago). So why were they asleep at the wheel in this? They have Lightbox ads, but never saw this? Lightbox ads are interesting as I found a new use for those. But the setting is there and as I was considering a new piece of IP and a new  setting to use it, I also saw an old stage that could be implemented now and the mall seemingly never saw it, thought it was too hard or whatever reason they have. And it is not merely them, Apple, Gap, Sephora, Victoria’s Secret, Rexxall and that list goes on for a while. All options missed out on or rejected for unknown reasons. And malls do not get to have that luxury, not anymore. The stage of rent, the stage of people who seek engagement and interactions, they are missing out and as such will consider other places and a place like Eaton Centre is not in the luxury place that it can allow for that. As I see it, Harrods is the only place that has that luxury, the other 116,500 malls are under the hammer. They trimmed what they could over the last two years and they have nothing left to trim, so they need engagement with their audience, not tomorrow, today!

It sounds a little dramatic and perhaps that is the case, but if you check on the resources and funds available the malls are in dire need of more people and more sales. You see, the larger players have a global budget and they too need more revenue, but the smaller ones, they are at their last breath, as such they need something now and I listed the setting of what they could do NOW to make a difference and I put it here because it does not hinder my IP, it is based on what exists and merely needs an adjustment, so I am handing it over to Google, so they can wake the bloody hell up and start doing stuff for their users and customers. Yes they do a lot, but when I see a Google Nest advertisement 5 times a day, I wonder if they are doing the proper things in the right directions, with the lack of what I see I have a lot of doubts in that regard, but that might merely be me and if I am right and Google does not act, Amazon could potentially act and create a new market share and expand on that. Time will tell.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 20, 2022 · 04:17

Is it intentional ignorance?

I saw an article yesterday. It was ‘Doubts cast over Elon Musk’s Twitter bot claims’. The article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-62571733) was seemingly eager to attack Elon Musk’s side, but the same media has not now or ever asked serious and critical questions on the Twitter side. But lets start here, those who read my articles know I have had a larger issue with Twitter for a long time. Don’t get me wrong, I like Twitter. I like it a lot more than Facebook. As such I have issues. If it isn’t with their new bully tactics of suggestion topics, without switching that nuisance off in the profile setting, then it would be with the attitude they take on fake accounts, as well as the delusional stage that it does not go beyond 5%. People I have been in contact with and THEY have data shows it to be well over 40%. I personally found 40% high, but they have data and they have data on Russian trolls and fake accounts pushing Russian ‘needs’ regarding the Ukrainian war to be in the thousands of trolls each of them using a massive amounts of click farm numbers. And it does not matter whether Twitter deactivates these accounts. The trolls have more and new methods of creating thousands more each minute. It shows in the first that the 5% Twitter claimed is bogus, more important it shows my initial thoughts that if it can be proven that it is well over double, we have a situation that Twitter has been overvaluing itself for a very long time. The data that places like Trollrensics has, shows this to have been the case for over 5 years, long before the Elon Musk events started. 

But back to the article. There we see “Botometer – an online tool that tracks spam and fake accounts – was used by Mr Musk in a countersuit against Twitter. Using the tool, Mr Musk’s team estimated that 33% of “visible accounts” on the social media platform were “false or spam accounts”.” OK, that is one side to go. I would personally advice Elon to take a step out of his circle and talk to Trollrensics. You see, they have been monitoring and recording events on the Ukrainian war (as well as Russian trolls) for a long time. Now consider that there should be some overlap. But take two circles (like below) we see the two solutions, the overlap is speculative on how much they overlap. 

They are different solutions for different options. As such the overlap cannot be 100%, in theory the second image could exist, but we can prove that, or better stated Elon Musk could prove this. You see, when the two lists of accounts are set together, Twitter has a problem, if image one is true, Twitter’s problem increases by well over 100%, it also blasts the 5% claim out of the water. 

If image 2 is true, Twitter has optionally a smaller issue, but Trollrensics has numbers stating over 40% of all accounts are fake, if so it will be a list supporting the case of Elon Musk, and well over 5%, Twitter will have a hard time opposing that much data.

And now we see in the article a strange event. With “However, Botometer creator and maintainer, Kaicheng Yang, said the figure “doesn’t mean anything”. Mr Yang questioned the methodology used by Mr Musk’s team, and told the BBC they had not approached him before using the tool. 

Mr Musk is currently in dispute with Twitter, after trying to pull out of a deal to purchase the company for $44bn (£36.6bn).” The readers will wonder what is going on, but no fear the BBC did its homework and we see that a little further below with “Botometer is a tool that uses several indicators, like when and how often an account tweets and the content of the posts, to create a bot “score” out of five. A score of zero indicates a Twitter account is unlikely to be a bot, and a five suggests that it is unlikely to be a human. However, researchers say the tool does not give a definitive answer as to whether or not an account is a bot. “In order to estimate the prevalence [of bots] you need to choose a threshold to cut the score,” says Mr Yang.” Now to me this makes sense, but there is a hidden trap. The numbers tend to be less reliable when a hybrid model exists. Let me try to make an image as below.

The hybrid system has three parts. The core (the foundation of that troll system) but it connects to real accounts. The accounts are real, tools like Qanon or whatever tool out there exists to gain coin and perhaps hoping that they are the false prophets that they once hope to become. Trolls and hackers give them a nice little tag and now the troll core has one real account that links to a whole range of people and click farms to like by the thousands and as this hybrid model can go more than one level deep and  consists of an unnamed amount of groups, Botometer and Twitter tools are (speculatively) in a mess, they now can no longer really decide on how real these groups are, and if the troll is intelligent and makes a slightly different message for each group, it can continue almost unabated. Still the Botometer is methodically sound to get the stupid accounts found and there are a whole range of them. Hundreds of thousands of limited click farm accounts, they should be found decently easily. And there I think is Elon Musk, he found the simple ones and he comes to 30%. The stage is real and the fact that is open to debate and moreover starts question the Twitter side of thinks is important. The article has more “Clayton Davis, a data scientist who worked on the project, says the system uses machine learning, and factors like tweet regularity and linguistic variability, as well as other telltale signs of robotic behaviour.” I agree with Clayton and there is also a larger issue. ‘Tweet regularity’ is real but debatable. You see it depends on interaction and time stations. A person has a shifting set. The person who looks at a tweet at 03:00 and retweets it because it is a friend, is different from the same person who is in the office at 11:00 and sees the same or a different tweet. There are more sides to that person, dynamic qualities and I wonder if a learning machine can learn (read: be taught) this. Not telling it cannot, I merely wonder and that makes it harder, than the time zones shift for the travelling person. All elements that can play a role. So when we get “In 2017, the group of academics behind the tool published a paper that estimated that between 9% and 15% of active Twitter accounts were bots.” Which is interesting for me as I considered the number to be around 20%, still that makes it 400% larger than Twitter’s claim, so Twitter does have a problem. And then the gem of the BBC article comes into play. With “Some bot experts claim Twitter has a vested interest in undercounting fake accounts. “Twitter has slightly conflicting priorities,” says Mr Davis. “On the one hand, they care about credibility. They want people to think that the engagements are real on Twitter. But they also care about having high user numbers.”

The vast majority of Twitter’s revenue comes from advertising, and the more daily active users it has, the more it can charge advertisers.” Or as I would state it, there is your Dorsey factor and that part shows both that Twitter is in deep trouble and also that Elon Musk was right all along. There is still a larger debate on how large that stage is, but if proof can be shown that the fake accounts exceed 9%-11% Elon Musk wins and Twitter gets to have a large problem. What I said all along, Twitter is bound to lose this and the media supporting Twitter for their own needs are likely to lose credibility by the day at that point.

A stage that was out in the open and has been for a few years. It was my view and the view of several I knew and now that we are proven correctly, I wonder under which rock the media will hide. The law sees intentional ignorance as a right, a legal station where we are allowed to keep ourselves ignorant, but should the media be allowed that very same thing? I will let you ponder that side of the equation, because it will come out in the open. In the mean time I will consider a few idea’s on Neom and the line bubble to the surface. Perhaps I should have a conversation with Saudi Arabia’s consul general in Sydney, Mashare Ben Naheet. If I am correct it might be worth a few million to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and I could use the money (I need to pay my bar bill sooner then I would like). 

The problems of old age, they come into play at the least comfortable times.

1 Comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Law, Media, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 16, 2022 · 18:59

The old debate

The BBC is hitting us with another version of a debate that has been going on for a while. The article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-61594815) gives us ‘Report blasts “manipulative” video game loot boxes’, first off, they are not lying to you, this is not misrepresentation. In this, I do not completely agree with the point of view of some. The article gives us “The contents of the virtual boxes are only revealed through either game play or by making a payment. While some contain useful tools or desirable extras which improve the experience, others are worthless.” These facts are true. There are two sides here. In the first, why allow for payment? It is the right of a person to buy something, we set ourselves up for that one. Yet in all this, the people who paid 12,000 euro for boxes. No one is debating the utter stupidity of these people. No one is debating that as an adult YOU are responsible for your actions. But the press was all about those poor poor junkies, weren’t they? The other issue is “others are worthless”, what makes the card worthless? It is a direct question. What makes a card worthless? In the NHL game, there are functional cards (stadiums and players), there are cosmetic cards (outfits) and there are support cards, so what makes a card worthless? Then we get “The report authors, the Norwegian Consumer Council (NCC), say gamers are being “manipulated” into spending large sums of money on the chests.” I have an issue with that. Which games were they? How was there manipulation? The NHL game gave card packs on milestones, and there were a lot of milestones. In addition, you got three free packs a day, and if you connected to the game (logged in) often enough, you got enough markers (there is one in EVERY pack) to exchange those markers for an expanded pack, giving you 12 or even 20 cards. The packs also had a betting coin card. One per pack and these funds allowed you to bid for other cards. Within 3 months I had all the stadiums, all the NHL jerseys and hockey masks, as well as over 100 players. I NEVER spend a cent, this was all free. So please tell me “How was I manipulated into spending large sums of money?” There are always the stupid people who want it all on day one, is that the fault of the game maker? Is it THEIR responsibility for the stupidity of others? The next part of my disagreement is seen in “Critics say the boxes are a form of gambling because players cannot see what they have actually bought until after they have paid to open the contents”. In this it is important to see WHY I disagree. You see in CCG games like Magic, Star Trek, Star Wars, The lord of the rings and more we see that a pack has one rare (optionally one super rare), 2-3 uncommon cards and the rest are common. This is a set formula. So if a game set has 50 rare cards, you would be buying at the very least 50 packs. The optional rest is gotten through swapping with other players at events and at tournaments. It is NOT gambling because one element is missing. The element of gambling is that you lose everything, so until there is a pack where you get all blank cards stating “Thank You!”, it is NOT gambling. You always get a set equation, you always get something. It makes it not gambling. 

In this I oppose the setting of “Finn Myrstad, director of digital policy at the NCC, said: “The sale and presentation of loot boxes often involve exploiting consumers through predatory mechanisms, fostering addiction, targeting vulnerable consumer groups and more.”” Yet there is a sparkly of truth here too and I do not deny it. Players like Electronic Arts played the exploitative element too much in FIFA, it backfired. There is exploitation, especially when the complete pack contains 10,000 players. However I disagree with the ‘predatory mechanism’ part. There is a whole range of predators on YouTube with there ‘card reveal’ channel, there “Do this to get something for free” and that is never a good thing, but these groups did not separate the exploiters from the makers, did they? Lets be clear the makers are not freshly white innocent. Only the people from Mass Effect 3 who introduced these loot-boxes in their multi player element, they were phenomenal and massively innocent. Others used that stage to make big money. 

The article ends with “But the same year Fortnite-maker, Epic Games, decided to let players in its hit video game see what was inside its llama loot boxes before deciding whether to buy them.” And their case agains Apple gained traction. I believe that the Epic Games people are the lest innocent, and their setting will have long term repercussions, it is only a matter of time. The one element not seen was given to us by Android: Netrunner. They gave us a different setting making it fair all around, the expansions were all the same price and always had the same cards, so there was only one pack to buy (once a month). It allowed for a smoother and fair game stage. In addition, the CCG world has something called factory sets. They were slightly different (like a silver border) but that was the only difference. A factory set contained ALL the cards of a game. The game was instantly fully playable, but they do tend to come later. So EA had the option to release a factory set half way through the season, but they did not, did they? Is it on EA? That would be a fair question, and I do not know the answer, merely my feeling in this. Is there a larger exploitation? Yes, but not all of it is on the makers. YouTubers were all over their FIFA cards and the more bang the better their bucks and the numbers of their followers, but we do not see that here either.

The BBC (as well as Tom Gerken) never lie to you, yet I have issues with the article as I have issues with the setting of it. The players HAVE a responsibility and some are pushing it on EA (and others) and the media aided them, which is not fair either. All this is merely my point of view, so feel free to disagree.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Gaming, Media

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

August 12, 2022 · 19:38

Slappers only?

It is a term from games, it means empty hands only. In gaming it tends to be a pugilist arena. I heard it first with Golden Eye, which is remarkably interesting as the HK model 23 with a silencer is more effective, we add the silencer in case the target is in a library 

We would not want to disturb the readers.

And this all related to? Yes, it started with Al Jazeera who gave us (at https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/8/9/doj-preparing-to-sue-google-over-ad-market-as-soon-as-next-month) where we see ‘DOJ preparing to sue Google over ad market as soon as next month’. There we are given “The US Justice Department is preparing to sue Google as soon as next month, according to people familiar with the matter, capping years of work to build a case that the Alphabet Inc. unit illegally dominates the digital advertising market” I have issues with this, especially the ‘illegally dominates the digital advertising market’, you see Google INVENTED fair advertisement. The others all made sure that the people, the business and others paid TOP DOLLAR. Take the consideration we see next (I mentioned it before in previous blogs).

Placement, bid and Google price
1 $25 $0.54
2 $20 $0.53
3 $10 $0.52
4 $5 $0.51
5 $0.50 $0.50

So as they would charge the number one bidder $25, that same bidder merely pays $0.54 cents with Google Ads. Before Google Ads this was not an option and there we see the larger stages of Yellow pages, advertisements in newspapers and magazines. These places were racking up massive profits and Google undermined it, giving the people a better deal, as such 99% ran to Google and it caught on, Bing (Microsoft) tried to make it work, they could not, the metrics of Google were vastly superior. So there is no illegal domination, it is domination through superior systems, Amazon had its own system that was on Amazon, yet With Google Ads and Google YouTube, the advertisement world had dug its OWN grave. They slapped the people with bills that were beyond obscene and Hollywood gives us a (highly exaggerated) taste of that in Mad Men and the people are becoming increasingly angry, they are paying for the ego of a few men and when Google Ads becomes the adult player the people switch and the switch en mass. A group of people are now in massive trouble and they cry to every politician they ever gave a nice deal to. The DOJ is involved and we are in this mess now. And we see not one clear explanation of ‘illegally dominates the digital advertising market’, we are merely given a story.

This gets me to the article (at https://techcrunch.com/2022/08/09/the-doj-is-reportedly-prepping-an-antitrust-suit-against-google-over-its-ad-business/) there we see Ted Crunch giving us ‘The DOJ is reportedly prepping an antitrust suit against Google over its ad business’, here we are given “the new lawsuit would focus on the company’s command of the digital ad market. Bloomberg reports that DOJ antitrust lawyers are in the process of wrapping up interviews with publishers after “years of work” that will ultimately culminate in the coming lawsuit” as well as “In 2020, the DOJ sued the tech titan over its dominance in the online search market, accusing the company of “unlawfully maintaining monopolies in the markets for general search services, search advertising, and general search text advertising in the United States.”” This is a lot more to the point and I still have issues. You see we see “its dominance in the online search market” we are not given “Google set out a new look on searching information, they had it made, they patented it and as such they had the new solution for the next generation of computer users”, we are also not given the simple setting that when Google realised a shift, they acted, all whilst IBM and Microsoft ere playing with their dinkey winkey’s pretending to be master of the universe. OK, IBM was going in different directions, but they were still there as well. So these so called captains of industry were asleep at the wheel, but we are not given that, are we? I remember that I voiced the setting of sound-cards in PC’s in 1992. I voiced it to an executive on the IBM trade show stand he merely stated ‘Sir, we are IBM’ and had security escort me off the IBM stand, so where is that wanker now? I reckon making statements that IBM always viewed the multi media market as important. Him and a few others never had a bloody clue. It was merely pretentious ego and it was ‘fake it till you make it’ and now I am here with a dozen of IP solutions, and they? They have little more than their supply of Viagra and stories about their great achievements. I know and should still have emails on the solution now known as Facebook, and I had it 4 years before Facebook. I have seen the folly of these executives and I trust none of them. In the mean time there is Amazon, Google and Elon Musk taking larger strides in the unknown and seeking the new frontiers and those wannabe’s are setting sights on that what is not theirs. And my evidence?

It is seen in “wrapping up interviews with publishers after “years of work”” it took the DOJ years of work, this is not a court-case, I personally believe it to be orchestration for the benefit of losers not unlike Microsoft. To give them a slice of a cake they do not deserve. And that is the problem with America, it only works when a machine driven by the corruptible get their cake too. Even though they are not entitled to it. I saw the daily changes in Google Ads, I saw what was achieved whilst the ones who should be working, were merely leeching. So how is that progress? I run circles around those wannabe’s and I have three systems ready to go (one too depending on Meta, so there are risks) in a world where I should not matter, I am the one with the IP, and that is the station where Google has to go to court. I wonder if it ever amounts to anything. The media wants their slice of beef and as they are hurting to become irrelevant, they are happy to see Google bite the dust, but why are they biting the dust? Because they never understood what was coming and when they woke up the train was already a station further. That is the actual setting, but I reckon that we never get to see that part of the equation. I wonder what happens when 4Chen shows my IP and these wannabe’s they are now seeing billions in IP become public domain, I would really like to see the faces of those wannabe’s who realise that it is becoming public domain and most of it in China. How many years of interviews will that take? They set the stage of slappers only, but the orchestration implies that it is anything but slappers only, that view is reserved for the people they are trying to fool. I am not buying it.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Law, Media, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 10, 2022 · 19:50

The jab from the left

That is the setting I was contemplating today. It all started with the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-62488144) where I saw ‘Elon Musk sells $6.9bn of Tesla shares as Twitter lawsuit looms’ it was at that moment I was contemplating a larger jab from the left. Consider that I reckon that one of my IP will bring in half a billion a month. What if I offer that to Elon Musk? It is not his field, but that has never stopped him before. What if I was the on giving him optionally surpassing 5 billion a year (not in the first year) for some time to come? My way of giving the media the finger, as well as some tech places. We still see the BS from media ignoring the Fake Twitter accounts, we see some BS approach like ‘she cried, she cried louder and we wonder what happens’, well if it helps Elon Musk, I am game. There is also the augmented reality IP, as such there might be another stage where Elon Musk gets the visibility in 116,000 malls. I think it is a good day to give the finger to hypocrisy and the media with there digital dollars? They can watch from the stage as they become more and more redundant. Hmmm, the idea has merit, and if I can set the stage for places like the Line to show it all first we will see all these tech companies come up with “We are working on something much better” yes, like the virgin who is in denial that she was pregnant, a toilet seat must have done it. Well, two can play at that game and I have the IP to make it happen, as such I see a much larger option to have a go at these hypocrites. 35 years of frustration watching wankers and weaklings hide behind fake it until you make it, hide behind their bullet points, like it was the ammunition that could not miss sales targets. There is something totally satisfying watching them cry like the little chihuahua’s they actually are. Will it happen? I have no idea, I think not, I doubt Elon Musk even knows about this blog and he has more pressing concerns at present, but the idea to show the media that we have had enough of the BS they spout by giving billions in revenue to the man they hate, and for that reason only will upset big-tech in a way they have never seen before. 

There is nothing like the sight of a hungry glutton being denied their next meal to see chaos truly explode and that is what would happen. Never mind the Microsoft losers, places like Amazon and Google will take notice, for them having to acknowledge Elon Musk as their equal in mobiles, cars, battery technology AND gaming. That will have a much larger impact and the media will seek all kinds of shelter, crying that their was no place in their publication, crying that they never hd the know how, that it is all the right of publications to chose what to write about and if I can drive the dagger home with a few issues on the EEA and their ignored reports, so much the better. 

So whilst the BBC is not doing anything wrong with “After news of the share sale was made public Mr Musk responded to a tweet asking whether he had finished selling Tesla shares with “yes”, adding that he needed the money in case he was forced to buy Twitter and was unable to secure some of the funding for the deal.” Some might realise that the recent ‘confession’ that Twitter is deleting a million accounts a day and that adds up to a lot more than some are comfortable with. There is a larger station and I feel it is not the worst idea to scorch the media with a flamethrower (I had run out of daisies). 

The jab from the left is one the media is too often not ready for, they will ‘debate’ that there are compromises, all whilst we know that compromise politics is the most corrupt of all politics. And it is time that the proper people get the proper acknowledgement and we can get there by denying the other players their slice of cake. I’ll make it even more extreme. There is at present nothing stopping me to make it all public domain, and when the lists go public on September 30th that might very well happen. All it will take is 1-3 clever people who can look beyond the rim of their coffee cup (something most politicians have not been able to do for some time). Clever people on 4chan could end up with a treasure trove of IP on several grounds (apart from melting down Iranian and Russian nuclear reactors), that one I left somewhere else, I am not THAT irresponsible. And the idea I had came from a snow-globe, but I already wrote about that. 

Just in light of the setting of these days a solution for Iranian arrogance, through a snow-globe ending their nuclear reactors. How could I ever pass up on that? I reckon that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would owe me too and that is not the worst setting to be in, to be owed a large favour from the richest nation in the world. All that because the media would not do their jobs, how is that for freedom of the press and freedom of expression? I am using my freedom of expression the way I can, and they use the freedom of the press to get digital clicks through flaming. I reckon I am in a better position, but that is merely my view on the matter and lets face it, they could call it delusional. I wonder what they will call it AFTER I am proven correct? I reckon it will be stated that this was too complex an issue for people with a university degree in journalism. 

In the end, I still get my money, or my share and I am willing to make amends to that setting, the reward of screwing over the media will be that big a deal for me to cut a few corners leaving me with millions less. Or I still end with the amount of zero, the amount I always expected to end with when it all becomes public domain. I wonder, if I do this, will it be public domain, or pubic domain? Not the weirdest question to get, although, pretty extreme for a Wednesday. 

Such is life!

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Media, Politics, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

August 8, 2022 · 22:03

Altering Image

This happens, sometimes it is within ones self that change is pushed, in other cases it is outside information or interference. In my case it is outside information. Now, let’s be clear. This is based on personal feelings, apart from the article not a lot is set in papers. But it is also in part my experience with data and thee is a hidden flaw. There is a lot of media that I do not trust and I have always been clear about that. So you might have issues with this article.

It all started when I saw yesterday’s article called ‘‘Risks posed by AI are real’: EU moves to beat the algorithms that ruin lives’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/aug/07/ai-eu-moves-to-beat-the-algorithms-that-ruin-lives). There we see: “David Heinemeier Hansson, a high-profile tech entrepreneur, lashed out at Apple’s newly launched credit card, calling it “sexist” for offering his wife a credit limit 20 times lower than his own.” In this my first question becomes ‘Based on what data?’ You see Apple is (in part) greed driven, as such if she has a credit history and a good credit score, she would get the same credit. But the article gives us nothing of that, it goes quickly towards “artificial intelligence – now widely used to make lending decisions – was to blame. “It does not matter what the intent of individual Apple reps are, it matters what THE ALGORITHM they’ve placed their complete faith in does. And what it does is discriminate. This is fucked up.”” You see, the very first issue is that AI does not (yet) exist. We might see all the people scream AI, but there is no such thing as AI, not yet. There is machine learning, there is deeper machine learning and they are AWESOME! But the algorithm is not AI, it is a human equation, made by people, supported by predictive analytics (another program in place) and that too is made by people. Lets be clear, this predictive analytics c an be as good as it is, but it relies on data it has access to. To give a simple example. In that same example in a place like Saudi Arabia, Scandinavians would be discriminated against as well, no matter what gender. The reason? The Saudi system will not have the data on Scandinavians compared to Saudi’s requesting the same options. It all requires data and that too is under scrutiny, especially in the era 1998-2015, too much data was missing on gender, race, religion and a few other matters. You might state that this is unfair, but remember, it comes from programs made by people addressing the needs of bosses in Fintech. So a lot will not add up ad whilst everyone screams AI, these bosses laugh, because there is no AI. And the sentence “While Apple and its underwriters Goldman Sachs were ultimately cleared by US regulators of violating fair lending rules last year, it rekindled a wider debate around AI use across public and private industries” does not help. What legal setting was in play? What was submitted to the court? What decided on “violating fair lending rules last year”? No one has any clear answers and they are not addressed in this article either. So when we get to “Part of the problem is that most AI models can only learn from historical data they have been fed, meaning they will learn which kind of customer has previously been lent to and which customers have been marked as unreliable. “There is a danger that they will be biased in terms of what a ‘good’ borrower looks like,” Kocianski said. “Notably, gender and ethnicity are often found to play a part in the AI’s decision-making processes based on the data it has been taught on: factors that are in no way relevant to a person’s ability to repay a loan.”” We have two defining problems. In the first, there is no AI. In the second “AI models can only learn from historical data they have been fed” I believe that there is a much bigger problem. There is a stage of predictive analytics, and there is a setting of (deeper) machine learning and they both need data, that part if correct, no data, no predictions. But how did I get there?

That is seen in the image above. I did not make it, I found it and it shows a lot more clearly what is in play. In most Fintech cases it is all about the Sage (funny moment). Predictive inference, Explanatory inference, and decision making. A lot of it is covered in machine learning, but it goes deeper. The black elements as well as control and manipulation (blue) are connected. You see an actual AI can combine predictive analytics and extrapolation, and do that for each category (races, gender, religion) all elements that make the setting, but data is still a part of that trajectory and until shallow circuits are more perfect than they are now (due to the Ypsilon particle I believe). You see a Dutch physicist found the Ypsilon particle (if I word this correctly) it changes our binary system into something more. These particles can be nought, zero, one or both and that setting is not ready, it allows the interactions to a much better process that will lead to an actual AI, when the IBM quantum systems get these two parts in order they become true quantum behemoth and they are on track, but it is a decade away. It does not hurt to set a larger AI setting sooner rather than too late, but at present it is founded on a lot of faulty assumptions. And it might be me, but look around on all these people throwing AI around. What is actual AI? And perhaps it is also me, the image I showed you is optionally inaccurate and lacks certain parts, I accept that, but it drives me insane when we see more and more AI talk whilst it does not exist. I saw one decent example “For example, to master a relatively simple computer game, which could take an average person 15 minutes to learn, AI systems need up to 924 hours. As for adaptability, if just one rule is altered, the AI system has to learn the entire game from scratch” this time is not learning, it is basically staging EVERY MOVE in that game, like learning chess, we learn the rules, the so called AI will learn all 10(111) and 10(123) positions (including illegal moves) in Chess. A computer can remember them all, but if one move was incorrectly programmed (like the night), the program needs to relearn all the moves from start. When the Ypsilon particle and shallow circuits are added the equation changes a lot. But that time is not now, not for at least a decade (speculated time). So in all this the AI gets blamed for predictive analytics and machine learning and that is where the problem starts, the equation was never correct or fair and the human element in all this is ‘ignored’ because we see the label AI, but the programmer is part of the problem and that is a larger setting than we realise. 

Merely my view on the setting.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Media, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,