Category Archives: Finance

May 19, 2022 · 21:55

The true setting

Yes, that is what we want, what we need. What is the true setting? We seek it, because (for the most) the media tends to give us a loaded canon, the question becomes for who they are loading their canons? This is seen with the BBC as they give us ‘Netflix cuts 150 US-based jobs after losing subscribers’ this headline is true, no one denies it and overall I wonder how many people left Netflix as they fired 1.2% of their workforce (150 out of 12,135). I can come up with all kinds of settings, yet we need to accept to some degree that Netflix will do what is best for Netflix, and that is not easy. Netflix has all kinds of issues. The first is that there is saturation in the streaming services. Netflix is apparently offering gaming services and become a competitor to Google and Amazon and as the BBC gives us “The redundancies, announced by the entertainment giant on Tuesday, will mainly affect its US office in California. They account for about 2% of its North American workforce.” This is fair, it amounts to a US workforce of 7500, so why did the BBC not give us that? We then see “In April, the streaming giant shocked the industry when it revealed it had lost 200,000 subscribers in the first three months of 2022, and warned another two million were expected to quit in the coming quarter. The news sparked an investor sell-off, with the firm’s stock plunging 35% in one day. It is now trading at $190 (£152), a 46% drop on its previous premium.” Now it is harder to say something about that. The stage of 2.2 million people is the setting of saturations and to some degree covid ending, or perhaps better stated, the people are expected to go back to work and there we see that Netflix is hurting the most, but not the only one. Covid endings will hit Disney, Hulu, Apple+ and others too. I see another problem, the fact that covid was ending was clearly visible, so the stage of “stock plunging 35% in one day. It is now trading at $190 (£152), a 46% drop on its previous premium” makes me wonder whether the suits of Netflix were wishful thinking or something. They are losing members, they are not correcting for 200K and 10 times that much in the coming quarter and the 35% drop implies an overreaction on one hand, or a lack of information on the other (BBC). This matters, because this knee jerk reactions from investors with their gaming enterprises will make it fail a lot faster than anyone expects. It is good news for Google and Amazon, yet there is the idea that it is not good news for gamers. You see the more game streamers there are, the more interesting it becomes for developers to sit don and seriously contemplate that dimension. Netflix would have been a decent third party. It is still possible with the other two, but three makes for a crowd and therefor for a larger interest by serious developers. That is how I see it.

So how will Netflix fare?
That is not easily seen and whatever I see makes it not truth, mere speculation and I am telling you that upfront. You see, no matter how I see it, how I interpret the knee jerk reaction by investors. There is every chance I might be wrong, and to some degree I do hope I am wrong. I have no idea how Netflix will be as a gaming solution, but a third player makes for more gamers and optionally for more embracing the streaming gaming solution. They do have options, or so we see. With “it’s looking at a cheaper, ad-based model and also planning on cracking down on password sharing which has cost it 100 million households.” We see two parts. The first is one, but one I personally would happily reject. The second one I have no issues with. The idea that 100,000,000 households share passwords implies that Netflix is losing over a billion a month. So they will need to evolve that system. At present I have no idea how, but there is always space for evolution.

So what will the future be for Netflix? I still believe that they can find all kinds of IP in the past, people forgot or merely ignored it and that is no different for movies and TV series. So saving costs in one directions does offer options in another and to be clear, there is an essential need for them to restore the loss of a billion plus. Beyond that? It will be anyones guess and a guess is as good as it gets for Netflix at present.

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May 17, 2022 · 20:17

Set Streaming Solution

Yes there are a few ways of doing this, but can we tell that anyone is right and the other one is wrong? That is actually a serious question, to go further, it is a lot more serious than anyone realises at present. You see Google and Amazon are taking different roads. 

Google
In February 2022 Will Nelson reported ‘Google Stadia focus reportedly shifted to licensing the streaming tech’ and of course there are interested parties there. And we were given “After launching in late 2019 the Google game streaming platform was met with some criticism regarding the quality of its streams, latency, and connection issues. After a slow roll out of major titles and news that the internal Stadia development studios would be shut down, all was looking lost for the game streaming platform.” This makes sense, but it is not a given, in addition we saw news that gamers had access to 50 games, whilst some sources claim that there are 200 games at present. The last one does not make sense to me. It does technically. There are all kinds of resource issues with streaming games and for the most they could be temporary, or merely in play until a full width of gamers is seen, it is better to open the tap a little further later on than finding out that the basement is now a swimming pool. All this makes sense to me, yet the gamers tend to lack patience. If you doubt that, ask Hello Games (No Man’s Sky) and CD Project Red (Cyberpunk 2077), they’ll tell you a few stories. But Google seems to go a path. 

Amazon
Amazon has another path, a more traditional gaming path with a reported number of games that surpass 80, a 60% limit above Google. For gamers this matters, and we need to realise that even as Amazon has a few other options to differentiate itself from Google, the question is will they? Then there is the number of games and kids will see two systems that can do pretty much the same, one has 50 games the other one 80. Which one do you think they chose? So yes Amazon has an advantage for now, but they have by their traditional approach a second one.

See the image, a gamer has to go from A to C, we assume that they will go via B, but Google shows us that they can get there via D as well. Now we get the tricky part. By focussing on licensing Google decided a path, in this we would assume that Amazon is more likely to be the success and I feel that this is correct. And here is where we need to realise that Amazon being a success, does not mean, or imply that the Google path will be a failure. Both can succeed and here we see the larger stage. Some designers will adhere to becoming a licensed technology owner, to set a larger path for THEIR game. This could be good, but for every version of Doom, we also see versions of Apex and Destiny, we see Battlefield 2042 and that list goes on a little longer, so how many failures will the Google Stadia house until it drowns the brand? I honestly do not know, but if you know gamers, you know what a fickle lot of hormones they can be and that is before we consider the new player Netflix, or whatever Tencent launches (I do not believe for one second that business decisions was a reason to stop), and with $200,000,000,000 on the line, Tencent remains a factor (for now). 

And all that whilst I gave articles where we see that the Amazon Luna has a lot more options and that is not including the 50,000,000 console solution (I gave hints in earlier articles). In all this I will see Netflix as an optional new player and I have written off Microsoft, they lost too much and they lost credibility with the gamers, it will take them years to overcome that and at that point Amazon will be the most likely new top 3 player in games town. Google is not disregarded, but with the path they chose, they are less likely to succeed, and that success will depend on the first half dozen AAA titles, if they remain absent, Google will no longer be a gamer or a player, but that cannot be decided now, it will take until December 2023 until we see that finalisation. There is a side in me wanting to tell others that Google is on the wrong path, but that is incorrect, the larger stage is that none of the others have decided to tae the path A,D,C, and that does not make it wrong. Even as I show it with a square, there is no clear information on the paths taken and whether one path is equal, longer, or shorter. Time will decide that and in that we will need to wait, but in case of marketing hypes, I will side with Amazon. Not because they are better, these two systems are a lot more on par than either is willing to admit to (that is how I personally see it), I saw several enhancements to the system that both can do, but with a licensing path Google is less likely to go there, then there are a few other paths and without development Google will also not go there. So Amazon has an advantage, will they take it? I cannot tell, I doubt anyone can tell for sure. But as I calculated it around 2 years ago, that market is close to $600,000,000 at nominal and that is a mere 0.3%, but with such numbers, do you know anyone ignoring such optional revenue? Especially when the system out now could run that solution? It is a mere thought that drives the solution, I wonder what is required to hold such greed to account.

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May 16, 2022 · 00:35

Is it news? Is it interesting?

Yes, that was the setting I saw today. The Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/football/2022/may/12/lionel-messi-saudi-arabia-deal-tourism) gives us ‘Lionel Messi earned $122m last year. He still felt the need to take Saudi money’, well that is a first, when was that more news? And Saudi money might have an oily smell to it, but does that make it less acceptable? This is a world that is changing so fast that many feel (not entirely incorrectly) that more money becomes an essential sign. This is not about greed, this is about the cost of living taking a massive gander towards the unacceptably high. Yes, there are some ideas about when is enough enough. But even a person like Lionel Messi will need to cash in for as long as he can, because at some point, the well dries up and for football icons they tend to have decades ahead of them when that income well dries up. Lets be clear, they are all on massive incomes, yet they also have a larger spending spree due to social responsibilities, a side the media is always happy to remain silent about. So when I saw the article I went ‘Meh’, it is nice that someone has another income, in this case a Saudi tourist ambassador, but those are not that rare, are they. Many nations have one. In Australia a model got her fame with the line ‘Where the bloody hell are you?’ We all respond to different stages and settings and Lionel Messi got this one. As such when I see “Simply put, Messi has enough money that his future grandchildren won’t need to work a day in their lives. He could have politely declined the Saudi offer and still lived out a very comfortable retirement.” I wonder where Karim Zidan gets his point of view. The cost of living goes through the roof and I reckon that by 2025 a lot of people will desire such an extra income, if not they will not be able to afford basic living needs. Now we can accept that Lionel Messi is not in that stage yet, but the events in Europe (Ukraine) implies that Europe, the EU and the US are facing all kinds of hardships and if some plans go through, the US will face its own hardships. You see, it is not merely enough to have cash, you need to have a larger stage of friends who will be there when things go wrong. As such Lionel Messi made his choice and I do not believe it is a bad one. So whilst we are given “Messi has effectively aligned himself with a regime linked to countless human rights abuses, including the infamous assassination of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi, its devastating war in Yemen that has caused a humanitarian catastrophe, and its crackdown on intellectuals, LGBTI+ people, reformers, and women’s rights activists.” We are not given a few items.

  1. Yemen was taken over by terrorists, terrorists supported by Iran, we do not see that here, why not?
  2. The crackdown sound hilarious. So hilarious in light of all the abortion laws under fire in the US, there we see “A leaked supreme court draft ruling shows the US is set to end 50 years of a woman’s right to choose” as such I wonder where human rights are, I reckon they do not exist in the hypocritical setting of feigned christian believes. There is even a setting that over the last millennium, Islam was constant, Christian faith nothing more as a political vessel for those who needed power and those relying on faith to keep them in power. From a christian point of view there are issues with the Arabian nations, but culturally? Misplaced honesty in history has shown a greed driven extermination in the middle east that started on 18 Nov 1095 (council of Clermont) and did not end until 1291 (Siege of Acre) and even as we were told one thing in schools, we were never informed on the greed driven powers behind the crusades, including the Vatican seat. 

There is a lot more, but you can find that in other articles I wrote. Are there issues? Yes, there are and there always will be, but the first step in opening dialogues and starting conversations. A person like Lionel Messi is such an optional enabler. So there is no real surprise when we are given “In Messi, the Saudi government has a premier athlete with a built-in audience and platform ready to be utilised for political gain. While Messi was once lauded for his humanitarian efforts with Unicef and his own charitable foundation, his recent alignment with Saudi raises concerns that he is willing to blatantly disregard human rights in exchange for lucrative deals with brutal dictators.” Yes, and we take a closer look at “he is willing to blatantly disregard human rights in exchange for lucrative deals with brutal dictators”, I wonder who is looking into the abortion issues in the US, the long lasting stage of inaction when it came to wealth in Luxembourg, or the inactions of Strasbourg when it came to a whole range of issues. And when we take a gander towards places like “Global Corruption Barometer EU: People worried about unchecked abuses of power”, we see that the media stays interestingly quiet, all making waves in one direction (rich people with planes) whilst the larger issue is ignored (147 facilities create 50% of all pollution) in at least two events (by the Guardian) the EEA report was muzzled and ignored. As I see it western logic is faltering and it keeps on faltering, too many ego’s and not enough common sense. We might consider that Messi is the only one showing common sense, but that would be too much, would it not?

Is Saudi Arabia perfect? No, it is not, but at present not many nations and almost non in the EU can make that claim. I reckon that New Zealand is the only one who can make the claim of being close to perfect and I am Australian. There are ways we work and ways we think, but it is not on others to copy our way of working, and the abortion issues in the US are clear evidence of that. The misrepresentation by the Vatican is evidence of that. It seems that we need to adjust our vision too and to a much larger degree, but in that I could be wrong.

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May 15, 2022 · 15:06

Time as a factor

There are a few issues, I could sum them all up, but that is actually counter productive. You see, time does not adhere to anything, it is the big brother of nature, it creeps up on you and just when you think you have time left, it pulls the rug from under you and you have run out of time. The first example is ‘Energy shortage warnings across US’ the source does not matter (they are too busy using news as advertisement tokens) but the news can be found all over the field. And it is not merely the US, the EU (a Dutch example was given by me this year), the UK as well as several other places. With the exception of Saudi Arabia, Russia and a few other players, most are running out of energy options. There is a solution and Elon Musk and his energy solutions are part of the solution, I even gave a limelight on ‘Darkness through inaction’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/10/10/darkness-through-inaction/) on October 10th 2021 and even more around June 2020 with ‘Musings’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/06/18/musings/) there was more before that. I know Time, I have seen its many sides so I do know what running out of means. I reckon Elon Musk and others too. Driven to the next milepost they give the world more and more, but the governments and the greedy wannabe’s are making deals to take a sliver of that pie, willing to sink whatever saves them, because living in poverty is worse than death, so they will do whatever they can to stop the process, but now the energy shortages are adding up. We are running out of time and we might merely have 2 summer seasons left where EVERYONE can afford energy, after that all bets are off. So when we see the BS jerking around COP26, when we realise that we cannot evade oil and petrochemical solutions for now we see that those trying to bring us solutions are getting hindered by those who want to be in charge of it all, because energy becomes the next currency. Feel free to doubt this, but Saudi Aramco is now worth $2.3 trillion dollars making it the richest corporation on the planet. In less than three weeks it grew 15%, you still think I am full of it? And the Ukrainian mess does not help, as the EU and others refuse and ban Russian oil and gas, their situation bites more. A setting that was out in the open before the Russian situation started and it was out in the open. We merely ran out of time faster and I reckon that if the media does not openly expose those hindering some solutions are not given the limelight they deserve you will learn the hard way how expensive 2023-2024 will get. As I grew up I saw prices rise, but I never considered that essential needs like power, heating and food would become unaffordable. Time learned me that lesson the hard way. No matter how we look, we cannot see all elements coming for us and I like many (unless I sell my IP) will see heating, food, and electricity needs and like many others I will only be able to pay for two of them, so what will become out of reach for me? I cannot tell, it will be a roll of the dice.

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May 14, 2022 · 18:06

The bird and the cat

Yes, who has not heard of that setting, Tweety and the cat Sylvester, in real life duplicated by Twitter and fat cat Elon Musk. And in that setting most people will group behind the little budgie, yet is that a correct step? Reuters gives us ‘Musk says $44 bln Twitter deal on hold over fake account data’, the article (at https://www.reuters.com/technology/musk-says-44-billion-twitter-deal-hold-2022-05-13/) gives us “Musk, the world’s richest person, decided to waive due diligence when he agreed to buy Twitter on April 25, in an effort to get the San Francisco-based company to accept his “best and final offer.” This could make it harder for him to argue that Twitter somehow misled him.” I have an issue here. Face accounts in Twitter have been the setting of conversation in many nations. 

Trolls, click farms, and many fake accounts, all thee to give people false impressions, to fake that some care about issues no one cares about and to create flames. The problem is that Twitter is (or should) be aware of this. The element that is overlooked is engagement, Some looked into a similar setting in Facebook and it seems nice that one can buy clicks, but when someone in Utah sees that they get 150,000 clicks and 65% are all in Sri Lanka (or some other vague location), who does it serve? The one buying the clicks, and the one facilitating the clicks and it has evolved in an actual economy. So when I see “This could make it harder for him to argue that Twitter somehow misled him”, I wonder just how delusional they are at Twitter. There is a larger need to have two books, one with all the numbers and one filtering for expected fake accounts and it is not some small issue, the numbers are deep in the double digits at present, and as far as I can tell, Twitter and its CEO Parag Agrawal should know better. And now that we see “The estimated number of spam accounts on the microblogging site has held steady below 5% since 2013, according to regulatory filings from Twitter, prompting some analysts to question why Musk was raising it now. “This 5% metric has been out for some time. He clearly would have already seen it … So it may well be more part of the strategy to lower the price,” said Susannah Streeter, an analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.” In this I wonder what (and how much) Susannah Streeter is getting paid for that view? I personally reckon that it has not been as low as 5% since 2 October 2018, when that columnist that no one gives a fuck about went missing, you know the one. And since the events Covid (2019) and The Russian invasion in Ukraine (2022) we are confronted with an even larger explosion of fake accounts. So when I see “The estimated number of spam accounts on the microblogging site has held steady below 5% since 2013”, my slightly less diplomatic view will be “Give me a fucking break please”. 

If there is one side where Parag Agrawal failed it will be to set a more realistic side to finding and creating a clear marker for fake accounts. Now, I get it, it will not be a simple setting, but I think we can agree that even Mother Goose will not tell the children in Digital Sleepy Town that 5% is realistic, no one is THAT delusional.

So when we see “prompting some analysts to question why Musk was raising it now”, the answer is rather simple, the analysts should have raised it themselves at any time since 2018 and who did? I reckon that list is rather short, perhaps non-existent.

So as some are willing to blame fat cat Sylvester, there are plenty of indications that Twitter is hiding behind some granny knowing that it was wrong from the very beginning. 

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May 13, 2022 · 21:42

Restoring Redacted Recognisance

I have been in a bit of a trance, wondering on a few items that were nagging me, that is until I saw some flamboyant article. The article is a little too Simpson tainted to be taken seriously, but there was a grain of possibility there. My What if procedures started to crush the options. It did not make me happy, because for the most, I hate the ‘What If’ statement, it is something in second grade salespeople and telemarketers. As such I tend to avoid using it, but in this case there is almost no avoiding it. In a stage where there is an optional stage of revenue that could be anywhere between $400,000,000 and $17,500,000,000 the players Amazon and Google stay away? In the first it is more tailored to Amazon, but the stages include 5G, as such Google would be equally chomping at the bit.
Now the stage is about to move to Saudi Arabia, and I do not object. In two settings they have an advantage over the other two, but that is only in two of the settings. So I was puzzled, but then a few items from LA Times to UK papers hit me and the ‘What If’ setting came back. 

What If
So what if Google and Amazon just no longer have the manpower and the seniority to see what is about to escape them, it seemed so far fetched, but there was supporting evidence (of a sort) and there is no way in hell I would let Microsoft anywhere near it, I would accept a 35% payment from Saudi Arabia before I would consider a 175% from Microsoft, I am that disappointed and angry with them. And as I refocus towards Saudi Arabia I see a larger stage, one that could fir them taking a larger stake in either Amazon Luna or the Google Stadia, even as the Amazon Luna is a better fit, either will do and that solution alone should be worth well over $350,000,000, as such there is some benefit in having one buyer. Of course the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia might see that different, but that is not a given and as they get more options to diversification.

So we have an alternative stage, but the idea that the resources and brainpower of both Amazon and Google had dwindled to that degree is a little baffling. This has nothing to do with Covid. It has nothing to do with abilities. It dwindles down to two powerhouses, not taking a much better inventory of what is possible and letting it slip again and again until it is too late. Could that be the case? To be honest, I cannot tell, in the first because Sundar Pichai and Andy Jassy did not call me updating me on their HR woe’s and sorrows (and I never expect them to do that). So I am in the dark, but some others should not be and we have not heard from them have we? 

So what gives? Why would either player ignore that much revenue after getting hit to such a degree? It does not make sense, but that was before we see that they face a lot of grievance in the UK, EU and US. The Republicans are willing to slice Disney whilst destroying up to 60,000 small business owners with the attacks on Disney and their IP, Google has a few issues of their own to deal with, so a holding pattern is not the weirdest idea, but in this case revenue could go to China, Saudi Arabia and other players, how does that help any of them in the US, EU or UK? And that is before someone takes a hard look at Canada, with the top 10 of wealth being occupied by banks, but that is the hidden trap, without powerful businesses these banks will falter, time has shown that again and again, so what will be left when the redaction of recognisance is takin its toll? Restoration is the one path left, but that is a window with a limited timespan, I wonder if the UK and Canada realise that there is a point of no return and the US waited too long and now when there is a stage of restoration, the republican party is having a go at one of the most powerful IP holder in history, Disney. A setting that can have only one ending and it is not a good one, as such when Disney loses its protection, the cheap solution bringers in India and China will bring their options cheaper, not better but cheaper and all whilst well over 40,000 small business owners are left with nothing, because the IP kept their business safe and that is about to change, so when that happens and other resources do not grasp the business, what do you think will happen to that $25,000,000,000,000 debt? The interest alone will pull the entire US economy under with absolutely no options to restore any option to breathe. A setting I saw coming a mile away 5 years ago when there was an option, so when the US also losses its IP and more important the two powerhouses that create IP because they no longer have resources, what happens then? 

There is no what if setting here, we can just watch it unfold and I will be watching as well, because to be honest, I never expected these two players to have the IP resource lack they are currently showing. I honestly was caught be surprise (you see, it is possible to surprise me).

I wonder what Sunday brings, a hail Mary and a ZX Spectrum?

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May 12, 2022 · 21:49

Iconification

I have been involved in a program named Hubspot. It is a little big (well over a 1300 variables) so there will always be data gaps. Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing, data gaps happen everywhere, it is how we manage them that matters. But it is not about the data gaps. As I was working yesterday, I saw another missing part. You see, there is an overwhelming need for a better level of intelligence, especially in marketing applications. This has been a fact for years and for the most people think of it as cloak and dagger stuff, but they would be wrong. Intelligence in commerce is essential, they refer to it as Business Intelligence. But over the last 10 years the term no longer applies the way it once did. The umbrella is too large and as such it no longer fits the purpose. Like Military Intelligence it now has a few umbrella’s. They are 

GEOINT
Geographical Intelligence is a much larger field in commerce. For example, there is IBM who has the information of millions of global corporations. They can see where Unilever has activities in Europe, Asia and Africa. As such they can push new more made to measure solutions for a player like Unilever making them a nice fortune in the process. And none of this is ‘under the table’ it is up and out in front. A setting of where they all can go and where they all can unite profit margins. A player like Unilever might be the most visible one but they are not alone. Tech players, governments the EU as a whole, they get a much better serve because of the applied solutions that GEOINT has in commerce.

DIGINT

Digital Intelligence is pretty new, in military sides it is often part of open intelligence channels. In commerce it is still growing, they use the channels different, they seperate all sources (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) these are the largest three but they are not alone. It is also the part that has the most issues. Fake identities, fake processes and fake information make DIGINT an essential part, but a more artistic hand is required. The golden rule of ‘Trust but verify’ is at the heart of this. The problem is two fold, not all intelligence is intentional, sometimes it is a simple miscommunication that starts it. But finding the golden strings tend to lead to options and that is why they are more and more essential. They could point to the person no other way would have revealed, if only one source had the proper name, the proper place and the proper event it worked out well, but that is the problem we do not always get all the puzzle pieces and we think we are creating an image. Yet what happens when the puzzle is kinetic? What happens when the puzzle is not an image but a 20 second movie looping non-stop until the puzzle is complete? It takes a different skill and that skill will be required by governments and by commerce on a global scale, especially when all commerce is trying to complete as much revenue as possible.

OSINT

Open Source Intelligence is a collection of all matters, it is the least trusted, but it is the collection of mails, letters and all kinds of information, here the source is the important part and vetting the source matters to all concerned. It could be an internal person who thinks fondly of IBM, has friends at IBM, and that matters. 

All these elements come together in marketing and now I notice that a place like Hubspot (et al) will need some kind of dashboard, not one dashboard, but numerous dashboards that can collect and display snippets of notes, call notes, response notes that can be used and combined to give new clarity on any client, no matter where they are. And the local intelligence analyst will need to make sense of it all, make sense of hundreds of warm calls, cold calls and other information to see where a larger gain can be made and in commerce that matters. I wonder if Palantir will connect to Hubspot, or if Hubspot will create its own intelligence dashboard system, but I feel decently certain that one of the two will happen, the way commerce is moving makes it close to impossible to ignore that part of commerce revenue.

 

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May 9, 2022 · 22:46

Slippery slope

There are feelings of satisfaction to be heard, and you can hear them everywhere. The setting that ‘UK government sets out plans to rein in Big Tech’ but they are loud noises, having only negative impacts. The BBC reports (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-61342576) “The new Digital Markets Unit (DMU) will be given powers to clamp down on “predatory practices” of some firms. The regulator will also have the power to fine companies up to 10% of their global turnover if they fail to comply.” My problem is not the merely the statement, it is the clear definition of what constitutes ‘predatory practices’, you see it is nice to see “Google and Facebook”, but where is Microsoft in all this? Then we get the debatable setting of “Digital minister Chris Philp said the government wanted to “level the playing field” in the technology industry, in which a few American companies have been accused of abusing their market dominance.” I wonder how delusional Chris Philp really is. Levelling the playing field? How about the others learn a trade? How about the magpies of the tech industry grow a pair and actually set innovation in motion? Is that too much to ask for? And this short sightedness will cost the EU and the UK a lot more than they figure on. Whilst we see failure after failure by Microsoft. You remember them? The people who pushed Netscape out of business, where was the level playing field then? And in all this the setting of predatory practices is not explained, it is a mere emotional stage setting. I now have over half a dozen tech IP, you think I will share that with Microsoft morons? Do you think I will set it in the UK? Then we get “It added it wants news publishers to be paid fairly for their content – and will give the regulator power to resolve conflicts.” Did anyone consider that news agencies do not have to put their materials on Facebook? I have received all kinds of links. The Dutch Telegraaf, the Australian Courier Mail and when ever I open these messages that I never asked for I get (see image below). And they are not the only one. It is the news publishers way to advertise and who pays for that advertisement? 

It seems that we see a one sided story without too much investigations and explanations, so are we surprised that Apple, Google and Meta are not responding? 

Then we get the danger setting, we are given “It will also make it easier for people to switch between phone operating systems such as Apple iOS or Android and social media accounts, without losing data and messages.” Did anyone consider that it will be playing in the hands of organised crime? Did anyone investigate the claims of these so called critics? With complete disclosure of their identities and their educational skills? So when we are given “The UK government said its new rules could increase the “bargaining power” of national and regional newspapers.” I believe that these players are realising that they are no longer relevant and that some will vanish when Meta becomes a reality. And in that stage Chris Philp is reduced to a simple tool, a tool of the greedy who suddenly realise that before they get to the end of their lives, the well dried up. No one is setting the stage that Google Ads is the most fair and the most engaging form of advertising, it offered the advertiser value and choice, something they never had in the past. And Microsoft was nowhere to be seem and when they did come their product was just too mediocre. 

But that is not the big issue, the big issue is that it opens the stage for Chinese solutions that are nowhere in the UK and where the UK has no say over it and that stage is forgotten until it is too late. The internet is global and how long until the people go to a .cn location for their social interactions, their news and their ‘solutions’? How long until these same tech bitches start crying that the bulk of revenue is now going to China? The UK is embarking on one of the most slippery slopes and the news outlets no longer have credibility (with the exception of the Times and the Guardian), so how long until the people are smitten with Chinese glamour magazines? With Chinese news and with Chinese solutions? You think it is never going to happen? Think again, Tik Tok is a Chinese innovation, and they have a pipeline of innovations ready to deploy. So whilst the DMU and debatable ‘critics’ attack the practices of Google, Meta and Apple. Make sure you see the whole field. We do not want to switch between iOS and Android. I am an Android user and that is where I stay. I have nothing against Apple, I have their iPad Air and I am happy with it, after the 1st generation iPad this was a step up and I love it. But I have no intention to get the iPhone and I am not alone, just as there are iPhone users who have zero intentions to switch to Android, as such I see “It will also make it easier for people to switch between phone operating systems such as Apple iOS or Android” as a facilitation towards others, not users, as such the issues with this article stacks up and before I forget it, I can export my phone data to all kinds of solutions and Apple has the same, so who is Chris Philp catering to? In that stage I have a few additional questions for the writer James Clayton. We see a limited view on a stage that is kept partly in the dark, why is that? 

I will let you ponder that part of the equation.

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May 5, 2022 · 00:36

Retail 101

One of the oldest rules of retail 101 is that you buy cheap and sell as high as possible, that is how you create profit. Add to that the simple rule that you spend less than you earn and that will make you rich on the side. These rules are not new, they were old when the crusades started (ca.1095). 

So when the BBC (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61188579) gives us ‘Oil prices have soared. Why won’t Opec bring them down?’ The setting of the American governmental license plate came to mind (Dee-You-Age). We get to see “Opec+ could also lower prices by putting more oil onto the market, which is what major importers like the US and UK want it to do.” Yes, and tarmac is made with liquorice. Opec+ has a good deal, there is a need for oil and they can set the price. The nations relying on oil have done pretty much ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to appease Saudi Arabia. We see the two largest suppliers (Russia and Saudi Arabia) but even though the US is not in that group, how much oil do they produce? 

And then we get “US President Joe Biden has repeatedly appealed to Saudi Arabia to increase its oil output, but to no avail. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson also asked Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to increase production. He too was rebuffed.” In this the first part was that the US played a stupid game.

  1. A journalist no one gives a fuck about goes missing and for weeks the gossip and speculations start, even the United Nations get involved with shoddy documentation (as I personally see it). Realism tells us that something happened. Yet no one and I say again no one produced clear evidence. None gave any clear evidence of what had happened and Turkey who was playing the Iranian game made things worse. The United Nation document had issues, several players were not held to account, but that did not matter, they all got to attack the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
  2. The Houthi attacks and again the Iranian factor in this was openly ignored by the media. The non Arabic nations were not informed on houthi attacks with Iranian support on Saudi civilian targets. Coalition events were exaggerated, Houthi attacks were trivialised. 
  3. Saudi and SAMI needs were stopped and Saudi defence settings were halted. Now, the west can do that, they are allowed to. Yet in that, the Saudi’s have absolutely no need to increase production, do they? If the west was so clear on their needs, they would have increased non-oil options two decades ago, but that did not really happen, did it?

Three clear events that are now biting the hands of the US and the UK, Saudi Arabia is willing to look after its friends, but these two have not really shown to be friends, have they?

And in all this Russia is enjoying what is happening, because they do not have to do anything else but watch the cost of living in the US, UK and EU to rise to almost impossible levels. A stage we never wanted and perhaps those tea ladies from the CAAT are now in a stage where they can afford the tea, but they can no longer afford the cookies. There is an opposing side to almost everything and the simple truth of protesting without understanding what was going on is now taking its toll. But the CAAT had its limelight shots in the newspapers. It is lovely to see those pictures, just too bad that the price of that limelight ended up costing some people billions and under those conditions the UK can pretty much kiss their cheaper oil goodbye.

In all this, I wonder what the CIA did last month, what they offered the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, because the current administration has pretty much destroyed whatever options they had. As I see it, by the rules of Retail 101, the US has only one option, to open whatever weapon sales it can get without restrictions and with a full service package. I reckon that alone is required to lower the oil prices by 10%, they need a lot more, but as such the players will have to offer more and they need to realise that the loud words of ‘no oil’ and ‘end petrol needs’ were merely that, words. It will happen, there is no doubt in my mind, but I doubt I will be alive to see those days, I reckon kids who were born after 2000 will have a decent chance to see the end of a petrol based economy whilst they are still alive. I doubt that it will happen before that. In this, the entire stage of the BBC article was to some degree needed, but they should have given the people a slightly better information ring. Like the interactions of OPEC and airlines. You see over the last 15 years we added a total of 41000 additional flights a day, why? There is also a lack of the American numbers, how much oil do they produce and why can they not produce more? Two simple elements in this equation missing, why is that? 

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May 1, 2022 · 03:57

Blackmail as premeditation

These is a side to everything. Peace, War and everything in-between is in the eye of the beholder, in the wake of political needs some will say, but that too is a side of a mere point of view. So when I saw the Bloomberg article (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-28/manchester-city-s-owner-helps-usher-more-russian-tycoons-to-uae) titled ‘Manchester City’s Owner Helps Usher More Russian Tycoons to UAE’ we see the side that many shy away from. It starts with “Sheikh Mansour also has a behind-the-scenes role that’s become increasingly important in recent months: Helping manage relationships with wealthy Russians looking to move money into the UAE, according to several people familiar with Abu Dhabi’s engagement with Russians, who requested anonymity as the information isn’t public.” With the added “Even as the U.S., EU and other countries have blitzed Russia with thousands of new financial restrictions, making it the world’s most-sanctioned nation, the UAE hasn’t imposed any. Officials in the Middle Eastern nation have taken the stance that Abu Dhabi respects international law but isn’t required to follow measures implemented by specific countries and that the UAE has the right to adopt its own policies, several people familiar with their thinking said.” It is supported by “That approach, though, has fuelled concern among some Western officials who are worried about holes in their own sanctions programs. Earlier this month, Deputy U.S. Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo voiced Washington’s worries about Russian tycoons moving assets to the UAE in a call with UAE officials, two people with knowledge of the discussions said”. You see, the setting is even more different from what we see. You see, some places cannot be touched, some ships are unattainable and other material matters cannot be touched as the owners identities are hidden from view. There are two parts in all this. 

In the first there is the matter of his highness Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan. He is from the UAE, he does what is best for the UAE, a Emiratian as it were (is that the right pronunciation?) The larger setting is not what he does, it is that there is no war with Russia in the UAE, more important, the blackmail grip on these oligarchs is not entirely legal. Lets look at the clear evidence. These oligarchs are Russians, they therefor embraced friendships with the ruler of that place (Vladimir Putin), this was never a crime. Then the Ukrainian issues started and the oligarchs were split in two teams (as Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich most likely would say) those who openly support Putin and those who do not. Take Roman Arkadyevich Abramovich he is also a philanthropist and the former owned of Chelsea FC (they might be the same). So are the acts against him valid? Consider what he did in the BEGINNING of the war. It casts a shadow over the acts against the oligarchs. And the demented statement by President Biden “We’re going to seize their yachts, their luxury homes, and other ill-begotten gains”, really? What laws were broken, what prosecution was not correctly made? I do not care either way, but there are laws and yes, Russia has to pay for EVERY kopek of damage that they created in Ukraine. But should the oligarchs? Perhaps those in Russia, but those abroad? Those who openly supported Putin’s war in Ukraine perhaps, the rest? I feel uncertain. 

And when we reconsider “some Western officials who are worried about holes in their own sanctions programs” we see the folly of their taxation laws, the holes are large enough to park a 500 feet yacht in. Failure after failure and the entire emotional setting does not help any, mainly because the emotional setting is not a legal one and now we see that Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan has a case to present to his nation. And if this works the UAE will see another wave of long term investments. Long after the US is deserted by too many players, the UAE will hold on. Is it fair? Fair does not come into it. These oligarchs are not involved in a war, they are not involved in bombing the Ukraine. That is the Russian government, the Russian army, navy and airforce. If an oligarch is part of those, then yes, he (or she) become fair game. And should the American government object, then perhaps they can pull the papers on a place called IG Farben and certain people that were given options in the US. So how come that BASF and Siemens were allowed to continue AFTER WW2? Did they not have factories in Auschwitz? As I see it, the US does not have a billionaire problem, it has a hypocrisy problem and the refusal to overhaul tax laws is pretty much a top 3 item in American economy. As I personally see it Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan found a way to propel his nation (as a citizen), is he to blame? I do not believe that he is. Yes, some people and a lot of Ukrainians have an issue with that and I accept that the Ukrainians are not happy, they have every right to be, but laws are laws and there is a dangerous line that the west is trying to avoid. It is a dangerous line as it leads to WW3 and these nations are either fully committed or they are not. I cannot judge here, because war is a dangerous play, a World War even more so and there could be nuclear repercussions, we need to accept that and that is the red line that a lot of nations are trying to avoid. It makes perfect sense. If there is on upside to all this (the UAE) it will be that the harbour that they hand the oligarchs is also the roof that stops them from becoming a nuclear target. It could be seen by some as premeditated blackmail. Can we blame them, or blame anyone for having that thought? The UAE must do what is best for the UAE and as I see it, that is exactly what Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan seems to be doing.

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