Category Archives: IT

June 5, 2020 · 20:19

A handjob at twice the price

It started 8 hours ago, the stage that we have been watching on Hydroxychloroquine, an anti malaria drug. The article ‘Influential study on hydroxychloroquine withdrawn’ leaves me with a lot of questions. The quote “An influential article that found hydroxychloroquine increases the risk to death in coronavirus patients” should leave us all with a lot of questions. That is even before we get to the data concerns. Consider that the coronavirus had its initial cases last december (optionally a little earlier), so in January we knew that there was a problem, we also knew that there was NO vaccine at this stage. This was 5 months ago, now we see “Research for the article, published last month in medical journal the Lancet, involved 96,000 coronavirus patients across 671 hospital worldwide. Nearly 15,000 were given hydroxychloroquine – or a related form” In this light, we need to consider that there were enough patients in April, around 3 million, yet as we realise that reporting of Corona cases have been all over the field, so getting 671 hospitals to set up treatments, testings patients and reporting to a source takes time, the incentive for a vaccine started in january/february, and even as they might be on top of their game, the entire setting would require time. As far as I can tell, the situation does not add up. Consider for a moment that there are 4008 forms of approved medication (to coin amere small fat), someone decided to set the stage where hydroxychloroquine was an optional solution, I will not fault that reasoning (as I never studied medicine). So the medication is ‘offered’ as an optional partial solution, there is no vaccine, so still we are all OK. Consider that this started in January, so any negative feedback would not be there until February the earliest. As such, it takes time for possible patterns to form, as such February/March is the start. Now consider that in a period of 60 days, a report was filed with the foundation of ‘hydroxychloroquine increases the risk to deaths in coronavirus patients’, and keep in mind the ‘increases risk’ part, it matters.

You see the timeline to assess and identify ‘increases risk’ is not done in 90 days, the entire path would require all kinds of data on multiple levels and under larger scrutiny, the entire matter should be under scrutiny and should be up for debate in many places

Now we are in a stage where in under 90 days 96,000 patients are measured, 15,000 are documented on the effects of hydroxychloroquine on these patients and the effect and evidence of death due to medication. The timeline does not make sense, so personally, I would state Yes! I very much want to test and scrutinise that data. I would in addition make a memorandum with critical questions to Surgisphere, the timeline leaves me with questions and the data and evidence path would require investigations (in multiple ways), as such when I see this article, I am left with several questions, I also have questions in the direction of Harvard professor Mandeep Mehra. Not in a hostile way, but the entire setting leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth and the professor could end up answering questions. 

So in all 96,000 patients over 90 days at the max, gives us well over 1050 patients a day, after that we have the stage of 166 patients on the drug a day and over a period of 90 days, not all have been properly tested, the stage of data gathering and data collection with tests and setting the proper stage of analyses, verification and reporting. I see a whole range of issues from a distance. Oh, and with the lockdown, how many resources would have been available? We see nothing of this entire field in the BBC article or anywhere else. 

Did someone look into the matter on an empty stomach? 

These managers chasing quick wins are shown to be be lacking in a few ways, I hope that the professor has a good explanation, he most likely does, and perhaps Surgisphere, but the entire data matter is not as I personally see it some ‘client agreement’ issue, I see it as something a lot more serious, and if it was up to me at this stage, unless Surgisphere cannot answer all questions to the satisfaction of all, they should never ever be allowed near medical data ever again. I am not alone in this, some people have been asking serious questions for days, some have has question marks on a few items that I mentioned and most include issues of data collection, it is time for serious organisations to step in, we would ask the WHO, but it seems that America is not paying that bill, so who would properly vet data of this magnitude?

 

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June 3, 2020 · 22:34

30 cents to the dollar

Yes, we all have moments where it is about the discount, and I had a promise to keep. So when I noticed that Breakpoint was available for less than 30 cents to the dollar from opening night 7 month ago, I decided to give it a go. There was a good point and a bad one. The bad was the bug I noticed last october, was still not fixed, it is seemingly part of the system, even after the 19GB patch (which was to be expected 7 months later) the game still has a lot to be desired. The bug I saw was that when you enter a bunker in the first mission, it immediately leaves you 4 hours later, it is suddenly late morning daylight. A lot of the reviews still applied 7 months later, and to some extent it is to be expected, but let’s be fair, do we need a mission for every bloody handgun? It is my personal expectation that I will still be able to end the lives of a lot of people with a trusty HK Model 23 (1991), that handgun 29 years later will still correctly end lives, it has a laser targeter (I never used one) and it also has an excellent silencer. So going onto missions to find some HP USP, even if it is 2 years younger, does not really load my canon. Now, I get the option that soldiers (non military) have their own preference to what is the most deadly solution (if they can aim) and YES, this is a video game, but Ubisoft could have thought it through. Some reviews of ‘they added everything, so you end up running for nothing’ and it applies to this game. I get the loot part, I get the lets look fun part, but a game that has more chopper and drone support then the entire US army had in both Afghanistan and Iraq is a little over the top. Oh, and the amount of opposition outnumbers the US army as well, as such there are more questions, but this is a game, I get it. 

The good

The good are the graphics and the environment, yet the game has its share of glitches (I personally only experienced non essential ones) like winelines in midair (a meter above the ground), yet that is a non-essential glitch. The graphics are pretty good and I felt like I was in the middle of nowhere shooting people I never cared about, just like some people in real life. Th sounds were good, yet debatable, if soldiers talk that loud for real, they deserved to get themselves killed #Justsaying. So, the area was brilliantly selected (read: designed).

The Irritating

Yves Guillemot, you bloody idiot, every time I got killed in action, I got the ‘join and invite people’ yellow blinking part. You idiot, I don’t like others joining me, I don’t want to join other players either! It is a personal thing, learn and switch that bloody part OFF! The second irritating part is the Ubi Club redeem part, especially as the Ubisoft server was apparently not working, even though I was online. There was the issue of redeeming in game perks and for some reason that jut did not work, so when we consider that some published 16 hours ago ‘Ubisoft Making Accessibility Part of Company DNA’ all whilst I cannot redeem Ubisoft club points, clearly lost the plot. In the light, I reckon that David Tisserand needs to clear his speaking points with the Ubisoft internal IT department #JustSaying.

The past

Yes, we have seen the references to other games from within Ubisoft, yet the island made me remember the 1989 Rainbird achievements Midwinter. I keep on remembering this game towards that game. One review did give me that Wildlands is a much better buy than this game, but I felt it essential to try this game, especially as I reviewed parts of it on someone else’s dime (it was their game), so whilst I see the point that some reviewers made (boring and repetitive for example) I see that the biggest issue is that it had to be released to a closed circuit of testers and after that look at the final version, I personally believe that the Marketing non gaming department at Ubisoft has too much power. This game required 4-6 months more of testing and development. The second part (which was nice) was the gunsmith, yet in the middle of nowhere, there is no space to improve my rifle, add a silencer on a rifle I took off a dead person (headshots are an effective way to remove hardware that a person will no longer care about). I would have limited the gunsmith part to the base between the waterfalls, but that part did look pretty awesome. For me it was an interesting two days, but in the end, there is a stage where I accept that the game is optionally not for me, others will like it, I get that, but when I like a game mode and I see that there is still a dubious level of acceptance even at 30 cents to the dollar, the game has more than flaws, it has essential issues, especially when you get to a wharf and you are suddenly surrounded by 3-4jeeps, all with heavy miniguns and around 10 opponents, all triggered by talking to a person about a boat, we see the oldest flaw of all, event triggers, all whilst the army needing that much to stop one person (optionally four for someplayers) has a lacking trust in their own army. 

Conclusion

In the end the games has good and bad sides, there is just that feeling that it still has too many bad sides and the fact that it is at 70% discount does not take that feeling away, that’s just sad (read irritating), I personally believe that Ubisoft should have done a lot better, it angers me because the stage of an open world of this size should have been more inviting, it makes me sad. And yes, I get it, I might be accusing their marketing department on a personal feeling, but where is it stated that Guillemot needed the money desperately enough to let a game be released before it was ready is a much larger nightmare than we would like to consider. Half a dozen games and all of them released before they were ready, that is how I see it, look at CD Projekt Red, they merely keep people waiting until it is ready and the perfection that Witcher 3 brought is still heralded 5 years later, that means something and it is time for Ubisoft to catch on, preferably before they waste every bit of IP they have. 

 

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May 31, 2020 · 21:49

Not the Country

Yes the day is growing dimmer and here I am daydreaming towards June 1st, the first day of winter in Australia. Yes, here we are considering the cold and in that stage the news made me rewatch Terry Gilliam’s masterpiece Brazil. Thank god for Bluray at times. I saw the initial release in the cinema 35 years ago, it was an amazing piece of work and it adds up, it was never judged ‘relevant’ in the US, yet 20 years later it was as a cult movie judged as the 54th greatest British film of all time. In 2017 Time Out magazine saw it ranked as the 24th best British films ever. I always wondered how Robert DeNiro saw his role in this work. Yet let’s get back to the beginning where the bulk (mostly Americans)saw it as a not to be considered as a relevant piece of work and that is where we get to today’s BBC who gives us ‘Microsoft to replace journalists with robots’ , in light there we see “I spend all my time reading about how automation and AI is going to take all our jobs – now it’s taken mine” yet the cornerstone here is that AI actually does not (yet) exist. We (experts too) seem to rely on the setting that AI is the field where “machines mimic cognitive functions that humans associate with the human mind, such as learning and ‘problem solving”, they currently cant, they merely follow a guidance path to make decisions yet new materials are not learned, it is added in scripts and data. New decision data is not added by the computer, it takes human interference, which means that any reference missed will be a larger failing in the AI and this is merely the beginning. The problem here is that the decision makers wont make any as such the AI field will be falling to a much larger degree. 

And now we see that Microsoft is relying on a field that does not really exist. The problem is not the delusion we observe, the problem is that they set a stage of optional scripting and machine learning as the default towards what is AI and AI is actually a lot larger. As such they will miss opportunity after opportunity, optionally we might see that the Toyota Isis, a large seven seater CVT automatic will not be found on Bing as it is terrorist equipment. And that is when we look at it with the funny glasses. The real danger is misalignment of different information, and that is merely a first. McKinsey and Company gave us in 2018 issues like: ‘Economies stand to benefit AI, through increased productivity and innovation’, so whose innovation? Which increased productivity? Is reality part of that situation? McKinsey (and company) seem to paint it as “Even in the near term, productivity growth has been sluggish in developed economies, dropping to an average of 0.5% in 2010-2014 from 2.4% a decade earlier in theUS and major European economies. Much like previous general-purpose technologies, AI has the potential to contribute to productivity growth” How exactly?  We see some conceptual babble, yet the direct impact is not there. Will shoes be sold quicker? Will there be more laptops sold? Not really, the consumers are not there, as such it is a machine that services no one. And since October 2018 there has not been much change. The difference between expected and factual is not a small leap, it is the size of the Grand Canyon. 

The promise of something that represents AI is still years away, but Microsoft is already laying off its journalists. I wonder whether this is about AI or about the setting of what some should not be doing. Just like President Trump who states that the WHO is no longer to be paid for all kinds of reasons, yet might it be possible that the US cannot pay the bill? It is merely $25,000,000,000,000 in debt. And that was before the riots and all these companies folding. Even now that the G7is seen as ‘outdated’ and other invitations are handed out, the stage is not the G7, the stage is that this would be about results and the new invitations will make the meeting, an expensive meeting about meeting and greeting larger economies and ‘their’ face value. So whilst we see the G7, the G8, the G20 and all these meetings, none of them are about stopping the US (and Japanese) debt. In all this, the people in the movie Brazil are getting the better deal here. We are heading to a cliff and there is no coming back from that. The Fiscal cliff that is and as we relabel things and call them other things and waste meeting after meeting on how to call things, things are not getting solved. I wonder if Russia, China and India are in similar stages. In all this there is a much larger game in play. It is a stage where I do not feel like Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) fighting a machine, I am nothing more than Mr. Archibald Buttle (Brian Miller) getting thrown from system to system on a mere typo, and that was without the AI that some call AI and is not AI, I reckon things will go increasingly worse for some soon enough. In this I wonder if the US will be around to see it happen, the riots are pretty interesting, the fact that the US police officers are holding international journalists at gunpoint is a first indicator that their centre is rather unlikely to hold. If you want to see just how weird the world could become, watch Brazil and see just how amazing this piece of work is, and lets not forget, this movie was made in 1985, 35 years before the insanity truck was driving around.

 

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May 26, 2020 · 22:47

Merging greed with stupidity

At times it happens smooth and almost undetectable slow, like watching paint dry. Yet it happens, the greed driven merge with the stupid stricken and the compact new package tends to foil their pound (or dollar) shaped pupils, that part can be seen in the BBC article ‘Huawei: What would happen if the UK ditched the firm?’. It is important to note that this is not about the article, or the writer of the article. So when we see “Huawei’s major 5G rivals are Nokia and Ericsson – two European firms. The networks claim that having three providers to choose from helps them negotiate lower prices” In all this, one could state that this is the first openly stupid statement. Not the fact of it, the fact is seemingly clear. Yet consider that in the time of the Ford Model T, Jaguar released the X series (as is) something that is a lot ahead of the other, why would it be cheaper? Why would it care that the Ford Model T is there? It does not give us more consideration or make prices cheaper, it merely shows that those choosing the Ford Model T as their mode of transportation, is out of business soon thereafter and that is what we face. Ericsson and Nokia are 2-5 years behind Huawei and in that time the 5G fight is fought and those relying on the Ford Model T is out of the race, like that optionally severely stupid MP stating “there were more important considerations”, so what is that? Being the bitch of American greed driven needs? We see the influence of ‘the influence of the Chinese communist party’ yet so far never one clear piece of evidence has been provided by anyone, and it is not just me, people with much higher skills in IT and cyber security are making the same noise. We are flocking to a nation that has been about exploitation and driving iteration. And now that innovation is at their front door, they scream interference whilst not providing evidence. The BBC article is important as we see “Removing Huawei would seriously delay 5G, costing the British economy up to £7bn”, I believe that the costs will be much higher. The losses will exceed £15bn as well as set the economy back 5-8 years and when that happens, others will surpass and others will get juicy service contracts, a stage the UK cannot afford to lose at present. I believe it is time to DEMAND actual answers, to DEMAND actual evidence of communist interference, I feel driven to this because there is no evidence, people a lot more clever than I had already assessed that part. And we need to realise that this is the time when the greed drive should not be allowed to get the stupid to speak up and take the stage. 

 

So when we see ABC giving us ‘British review of Huawei’s inclusion in 5G rollout welcomed by Australian security officials’, I personally merely wonder how many are sucking up to places like Telstra. In addition, unless they give clear evidence on HOW the Chinese government is taking ‘control’ I wonder how many of them will make statements that include ‘optionally could’ and a few other statements that are speculative. In all this, we show that we are all the bitches of American fear of economic collapse and some of them are likely to get nice presents around christmas, perhaps a bottle of wine. The point is not whether they do or don’t, the issue becomes that these steps will hinder our own progress, because that is what iterative technology does and if it was SO important, UK and Australian technology would drive the future needs, not follow others. In the end I do not care who we are following, this government and the one in London decided to be lazy and let others rule the technology, I can live with that, but to exclude technology on unfounded accusations is just plain stupid. Especially when others (who are slightly less stupid) get to take the reigns in mobile communication, when Asia and the Middle East take charge in forward momentum, do you think even for one second that anyone cares what we needed? That is the hidden part of American push, they do not care what we end up with, they merely need their fears of collapse to go away and when that is done they will worry about the next part. Yet at that point it is already too late for us. Is it not interesting that the 5G sales that Huawei offered received little to no investigation? It did not suit the American solution, their economy still loses and we should not care, we need to care what is best for US!

It seems that in that regime those who need to decide for us, seem to rely on ‘the world is too complex for that’ and they go about their personal needs whatever they might be. So all these people who talk on anonymity, when we put them out in the clear we will probably see a very different stage, I wonder who will wonder about that stage and exactly where WE fit in, because I am reasonably certain that in these dark days we have no consideration coming our way. 

The greed and stupid driven people are in a stage where we should demand that they are in the out and open. And I reckon that we are 2 years away from that loud demand from the people, in 2023 as others are taking the 5G lead will push more and more economy their way, that is the moment that we get wave after wave of ‘carefully phrased denials’ and ’miscommunication between officials and consultants’, at that point our goose is cooked in no uncertain ways. 

 

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May 26, 2020 · 01:03

Open Targets

We all have that point in time when we see a person we know, and when we see that person, we wished we had a paintball rifle, that person is the target. That person optionale did nothing wrong, it is a variant to “Slap your annoying coworker day”. I feel certain that more than one person had me in mind and that is probably why my title as ‘certified psychopath’ gets me out of hot water. Iget it, I tend to be goal driven and I have zero regard for diplomacy (most of the time), yet it also works in opposition. I get annoyed when some boss gives me the run around instead of giving me the direct message. There is nothing as hateful as a manager keeping you on a leash instead of giving the bad news up front, which he has had for 3-4 hours. So wasting time on long rides whilst the short message would have changed the dynamics towards the goal. 

Yet the larger issue is not the manager, it is me. I am aware that I have flaws and faults (we all do), yet I present the flaw as a strength, and that is where things get dicey at times. I feel that I am on the right path, but I also understand that those drowning in diplomacy have a case. In this setting we look at Ubisoft, it is hit hard by the Rainbow Six clone (I would call it a rip off), and Apple and Google are actually in hot waters over the entire setting. This is nothing less than copyright infringement. This is a lot more than a clone, this is more than some copy lookalike. Several people, or better stated, several gamers could not tell the difference ad that is a bad thing. Ubisoft has many flaws, but in the titles they believe, they have pumped cash into them and Rainbow Six is an important IP revenue for them. As such the game Area F2 is a much larger concern and the impact on Alibaba will also be significant. It is my issue here that I fail to see how Area F2 even made it onto the App sites in the first place. And that is before we take a look at the Nintendo app store. There is a larger flaw and even as I enjoy slapping Ubisoft, I am also protective of games and Ubisoft does deserve every bit of protection here. There is a larger stage, not merely of what is missed, but of the things we see that require a larger consideration, apart from Alibaba getting every bit of software scrutinised, before it is allowed online. The larger stage is how can we prevent this larger stage exploding. In today’s stage we see that videogames get the initial 30-60 day joust for revenue and that leads to a 60-120 day revenue boost. Basically Area F2 screwed that up for Rainbow Six and they should pay for it, optionally using the Alibaba credit cards. In today’s stage it will be a massive invoice, and as I personally see it, Ubisoft is entitled to those funds. The stage for Alibaba changes even further when we consider the historic stage that Call of Duty and Medal of Honour had, they looked alike but were different in several ways and it kept both alive. In this stage where people cannot tell the difference between Area F2 and Rainbow Six siege there is a much larger and a different stage. Copyright infringement is not new, not even in gaming, but the fact that people cannot tell the difference is pretty new and very unique, and I wonder what play will be set in motion to stop this from happening again, in all this, I do believe that Alibaba will take a large hit to their value, I personally believe that Ubisoft has all the rights it can to divert damage to its IP and let it all be paid by someone name Ali Baba

It reminds me of an old publishing joke, you see the book ‘Ali Baba and the 40 thieves’ was politically incorrect, it was republished as ‘Ali Baba and the 40 fighters for the Palistinian cause’. I wonder how it sounds when the third edition is staged as ‘Alibaba and the 40 game programmers’, yet in all this it is still early days, I will keep my eyes on the court case, because the impact will be a lot larger than most of us can imagine. The only thing I wonder about is how they got it looking alike so fast, there seems to be a factor of intent in all this, so there is every chance that Alibaba will go to court against the people who made Area F2. 

 

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May 24, 2020 · 02:15

In anger

Some say that you should never write when you are angry, I do not know if it holds water, or if it is linked to levels of anger, but for now I am livid. It started with the BBC ‘Leading economist warns of 10 years of depression and debt’ the headline is incomplete, but that is on purpose, I will amend that soon. Nouriel Roubini is warning us of a prolonged downturn. Part of that is true, the fact that the debt in European countries is so high that most require 1-2 generations to fix it if they start now is just the start of it. For Japan and America the news is worse, they have surpassed the point of no return to avoid collapse, Greece is in that stage too, but their economy is not that big. So how that suddenly comes down to 10 years is a joke. Now the BBC started the article with ‘Coronavirus:’ that is the part I left off, but the story remains the same, the virus is merely making it worse. In all this I cannot comment on the Russian and Chinese economie, I do not have enough data on either to make any kind of speculation in that area, but there is enough chatter to see that they are not in a good spot either. And then we see the second jab, it was partially hidden, but it was there “Either you use my 5G, or you are using one of my rivals. Therefore there is going tobe a more divided world” he added things like robotics and AI, but the message is clear, to save our economy, we need to lie down with one 5G solution that fits us the best. There is clear American influence there. The problem is that this stage was to be expected, in the light of the downturn, the US is dead scared that Huawei gets any more positive boosts. We see the first in the Guardian ‘Boris Johnson forced to reduce Huawei’s role in UK’s 5G networks’ The fact that the second line indicates that Huawe’s involvement is set to zero by 2023. So Boris is turning out to be merely the bitch of the White House, the same White House that has NEVER given us any evidence regarding Huawei. In all this there is an upside, when (not if) the American solutions collapses and we see the American whining for delays and we get to tally the hundred excuses that they give, we will see that the EU nations ignoring the US stance, the Middle East and Asia will surpass the other nations to a much larger extent. It will end the EU and as theUS collapses due to technology that does not work, the blamers will demand to see the Evidence on Huawei and as there is none, that stage will end Republican domination in the US for decades to come. Yet that is not the upside, the upside is that technology will be in the hands of Asian players, the EU and the US will have to break up all these bullet point companies and atthatstage the actual nerds in the know will suddenly brain drain towards Asia, we will see a new channel of technology fields rise, merely because the stage will have changed in a much larger field. Even as we see the lies on LinkedIn (for example “In this small world where Human intelligence uses Artificial Intelligence to build our earth a better place to live”)  The problem here is that AI does not exist, you can hype it all you can, but deeper learning is merely a small part of AI if it ever becomes reality, So basically, the person stated “In this small world where Human Intelligence is waiting for AI to build our earth a better place to live when AI becomes a reality”, there is no doubt that AI will become a reality at some point and the IBM Quantum computer (which is in its final stages) is essential for making AI a reality, as such the entire headline by Forbes ‘Can the AI Economy really be worth $150 trillion by 2025?’ is a serious one, but I just can’t stop giggling. Even as we see “Research firm Gartner expects the global AI economy to increase from about $1.2 trillion last year to $3.9 trillion by 2022”, now we need to understand that research on all this is not cheap and never free, but the amount of money being pumped into all this all whilst we are in a collapsing economy and it will hit us long before true AI is ready. So who inherits it all? The Forbes article is good and they give good information, but I see it as a delay point in something the economy can no longer afford. 5G changes that and that is one of the reasons why the US is playing the game they are and as I see it, they are losing it faster and faster. 

There is yet another side in all this, Google is still the one that can mostly keep up with Huawei and it is not getting the resources they need to get ahead of the game, even as Google was on par from the beginning, the entire stage is limited as Huawei has the advantage, that is their benefit as an innovative source. The rest is trailing by 3-4 years, that is the impact that innovation brings and the big wigs in London and Washington are clearly oblivious to that part. The entire delay game will backfire and when it does, those who have fully implemented 5G will get ahead of the rest more and more. In this we see that there is every chance that Asia and some nations in the Middle East will be ahead of the EU and the US, collapsing both groups even further. Consider that side in the simplest equation, if you are a developer, will you set up an office in an ADSL2 building, or in one that has a 64Kb modem? The difference between 4G and 5G is that big and it is only worse for those no longer enjoying a head start. So when we see “My AI is making me build better worlds”, we need to realise that it is a virtual fictive stage in something that does not exist. The media will not properly inform us and we see things getting labelled a something that is not that, we need to see that we are losing a battle as we are driven in directions that do not exist, why is that?

Perhaps if the involved Yanks were not as complacent and lazy as they were, they still had the home field advantage, and we allowed for the drive away from true innovation? Why is that? 

In anger we need to accept that we are getting played by people who want to hold onto their cushy lifestyles, and we are letting it happen. We are allowing a stage of misdirected economy leaving us with less than nothing when it explodes in our faces, and it will explode in our faces.

 

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May 21, 2020 · 22:08

FaceFlu

Yes, we have had Covid-19 v1, we are about to experience version two of that flu and neither of them speak Spanish, so now we see that the BBC is giving us ‘Facebook defends itself over virus misinformation’ less than an hour ago. Why do they have to? Who arrested David Icke over the spreading of the rumour, the false rumour that the Coronavirus was spread by 5G? Who has arrested him, who has prosecuted him? You see in all this, Facebook is fighting this fight with both hands behind their backs and every ankle has a ball and chain bound to it, not really a fair fight is it?

Another article by the BBC gives us that Malaria medication is used as a trial against the Coronavirus, why? Professor Nicholas White from Oxford University is not even sure if it is  beneficial or harmful, so as such does it even make sense to test this on 40,000 health workers? That is quite the trial, I see it as a massive overreaction, now let’s be clear, I did not study medicine, so I do not know, but I am aware that finding a vaccine is 12-18 months away and we are not even 6 months into that timeline. We see all kinds of media talk about frontrunners, with subtle undertones like “very early findings indicate the vaccine is safe and doing what it needs to do” in that path (source: ABC) can we not consider that this is corporate misinformation? Some company no one has heard of sets a record time, a record time that is close to one third? Whilst another source gives us ‘Vaccine experts say Moderna didn’t produce data critical to assessing Covid-19 vaccine’, something that ABC did not give us, or perhaps I missed it. Is misdirected hope not harmful too?

When we see “The Companies stock valuation also surged, hitting $29 billion, an astonishing feat for a company that currently sells zero products” I see that the economy is impacted several times over and all in the light of recession with a flavour of Corona (not the beer). We are so driven to slap Facebook, yet we refuse to slap the media on several fronts. 

We look at the good, we shiver at the bad, but we refuse to valuate and investigate the media bringing the news. How is that fair on Facebook? The media at large also uses Facebook to get the clicks and the views, yet they are not investigated, the balance of events is spinning out of control and we are not looking at what may be, it works for me, I am seeing an optional surge in my IP and I merely have to wait until the new Corona strikes, my IP will flourish because of it. It was never designed to do that, it was merely a happy side effect and my peers are still not looking in the directions I am and it is brilliant (for me), as there is every chance that there is another path that is opening up for me, I rejoice, yet I might have to rely on my nil existing knowledge of the Chinese language, such is life. So as the US senate is delisting China firms with a reference to the Luckin Coffee accounting scandal, I am not aware of it, but I do remember a grocery store named Tesco, how much action did the US senate take there? In 2017 the probe into PwC was called off, so as far as I can tell, we in the west have a lot more skeletons in our closets than China has. As I see it, we have plenty of problems, we do not need to inherit the short sighted, greed driven American ones. 

These are all elements that hit us and they impact our corona lockdown lives as well, because the news that we see, and the media does not care about us, it cares about its shareholders, its stakeholders and its advertisers, and they all need some bogeyman to exist, so that they can move unnoticed, and as flames are created and evidence is absent is several cases, we get handed a bag of goods, one that pleases the media and its three masters. To those four Facebook is a problem and they are making it a much larger and overly visible one, why do we not notice that? So whilst the media struggle for flames goes on, we might notice some news, but we ignore a whole lot more, because we are not informed. 

And there lies the problem, how can we know what we are not told? In some cases Al Jazeera, the BBC, the Guardian, the Washington Post and the NY Times give a decent completeview, but they are all for the most so deep into Corona issues that news slips them all. And that is the stage smeplayers need to have, yet Facebook can change that and they really do not like Facebook. Facebook can adjust instantly and that is what some do not like at present. Will we see another chapter in that? It is too soon to tell, but overall there is a stage where Facebook cold end up playing a much larger role, and if the timing is good the media will cry like a little bitch stating that they lacked resources, the only question that remains for you is how I could see this coming a mile away, the answer is simple, ithas been going on for a while now, yet the Corona virus was not anticipated, it changed a lot too fast for some and Facebook was there, like a tower, merely facilitating for the message and those messagemakers are often not in the pocket of the three controlling the media. It has been this way for years, the Coronavirus escalations are merely bringing it to the surface.

 

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May 19, 2020 · 23:30

Just say ‘BANG!’

We all laugh and we all seem to point fingers, we all seem to endure the blame game. How governments are bowing to the bully (President Trump) and convict without evidence a corporation and a nation (Huawei and China), yet at the core of it all, we are merely sheep, we bask in the sun as the wolves take one or two sheep, and as long it is not us, we merely watch and remain basking in inaction. The media helps here by trivialising news, by basking in inaction on matters that are reported on, without the need for evidence by howling ‘This was what was told to us, we merely report’. So where are the questions on President Trump, who once claimed that it would merely impact 1.5%? Now that 1.5 million Americans have the disease and 92,000 died of it, where is that 1.5% when it is already at 400% of what was expected, what do we get to see? A president blaming the WHO, stating that China is in its back pocket. Even when we realise that the WHO has no legal rights in any nation, realising that the EU has a massive reporting problem that affects thousands, nope, it is all about the blame game. It worked for Senator McCarthy in 1953-1955, it will work for President Trump too and so far, it seems to work. Yet the problem is expanding more and more. Now we see how people are more often in jeopardy. We see hackers and scammers with Covid-19 agendas, we see 5G blamed by short minded people and again we see EasyJet getting hacked and 9 million people just lost their credit card privacy, but there are voices that are trying to calm us “There is no evidence that any personal information has been misused”, yet they are doing more! “We are communicating with the approximately 9 million customers to advise them of protective steps”, yes how about one singular step? “We have instigated a death squad to hunt down the hackers and put them to death!” Not accepting any excuse from parents that their 17 year old did not know what he/she was doing, not some excuse that it was their first time. Nope, we set a gunto their temple and blow the brains out and televise the event so that others know, their time for cheap thrills is over, they become the cheap thrill. And we will all get notified by the media that this is too harsh, too inhumane, yet that is not the real deal is it? The shareholders and stakeholders pushing the media know that at some point THEY become the sought targets and they fear this.

When there are no targets, transgressors fear what will come and that is the fear they have and we need to drive the dagger home, drive it towards the targets that matter.

Politicians will shout ‘terrorism’ at any event, the media will report that, but they will not report and investigate the proper format of accusations, just like they refused to investigate the accusers of Saudi Arabia. First on a missing journalist no one cared about, after that on a mobile phone of a person who was too rich for his own good and no one properly vetted the evidence, they merely dropped it on the desk of a UN essay writer. The Guardian (and many others) hid behind ‘high confidence’ mentions and other media did similar actions, yet they never investigated it, did they? It was a week of jabs and then it quietly went away, that is what we signed up for and I for one have had enough of this media driven BS.

If we can’t direct them, we can tell them to be quiet whilst we fix things and the benefit of my approach is that in a depression, hackers and abusers don’t really get to have any voice in the matter. Hackers and profiteers in a stage where there are 320,000 dead people, it implies that well over 500,000 are affected and they do not really care about the life of a hacker (well their mommies and daddies do), who cares about them?

That is the stage that is in question, the stage where governments will not set a proper stage, where too many industries abused the situation towards their bottom dollar and in all this a new stage of McCarthyism is created by the current administration, all whilst the media reacts towards shareholders, stakeholders and advertisers. In this the public have had enough and they want to see real action, not what the media and politicians call actions, but something tangible and that stage is now out in the open. 

And whilst the news is all about the Covid fears, we get to see how people like Morgan Wright, a former senior adviser to the US State department as a member of the anti-terrorism assistance program, sees similar issues, he reported yesterday “He is seeing the exploitation of human behaviour on the dark web, mainly through the TOR browser, which allows pwople to obscure their identity, it is a privacy driven status now used by criminals to do with impunity” and in all this it is clear that normal jurisprudential methods are not working, so a death squad is what we need. Perhaps you like the original term better “a CIA wet team” a wet team because of all that blood, and the amount of people demanding this solution is increasing by thousands on a daily basis, this is the result when there is no longer some form of balance, when the checks and balances are taken away and the people are settled unjustly with the invoice that should have been properly taken care of. As such we are bound to see a much less appreciated group of people demanding solutions. This is what the politicians and governments are now facing, a new form of terrorism and it is based on the lack of actions by too many. 

So whilst the media is all about privacy whilst we know we do not have any, we see the larger picture, we demand to see factual evidence, we demand repercussions for the transgressors, a stage we haven’t faced ever before, those who put us in this situations forgot that checks and balances requires some sort of balance, and as that was taken away from too many, we demand evidence on the validity of gravy trains and in that absence these people better show long term results, or a lynch mob is all that remains, McCarthy never learned that lesson, in 1950 6,000 miles was a lifetime away, now it is merely a click and nothing more than a few mere seconds. That will become clear soon enough, it comes with every additional Covid death and every lockdown hindering us, the media forgot about that too, in all this the forgotten parts will weigh against them all, and something will have to give, especially with the US in a $25 trillion debt and one in four Americans out of work, it is a situation that is worse than the combined negativity that the great depression and 2008 meltdown showed, but both together will force a new reality, it is in this setting that a loud mouthed republican was possibly the worst of the worst scenarios that the US has to content with, I am not stating that Russia and China are in better positions, but they can sit on the sidelines whilst the US and partially the EU burns down, their inactions allow for all this, there is no enemy to smite and Saudi Arabia was never an enemy, and the people love a real enemy and as such the hackers will have to do. I think that none of us saw this coming, it was never in the books, but ‘New Terrorism’ will soon become very real and the media is out of bounds on this one, their inactions helped create it. 

 

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May 18, 2020 · 11:03

Market(ing) Research

I was made aware of a picture that has been around for some time, it is an optional strong image and it can be used in any direction. The byline that was given was “I’m blown away that this diagram made it into a major publication” I personally agree!

The image is what I would call a 2 by 2 image of a clusterfuck that goes nowhere and openly misinforms people. The more important part is that it is based on truthful observation and that is where the cog tends to upset the machine to a much larger degree. It has two rows (very useful and not useful), two columns (Time consuming and not time consuming) and the 4 elements are labeled “Plan, Learn, Ignore and Browse”. So far one would think that it makes sense, yet the image has in each of the 4 elements:

Plan (AI, Machine Learning, Information security andStatistical Programming), Learn (Data Science, Data Visualization, and Business Intelligence), Ignore is for (Predictive analytics, Mathematics, Statistics and Data Warehousing) and Browse is reserved for (Spreadsheeting, Data Cleaning, and Financial Analysis), as such we might consider the first stage, this was made for people in marketing, for people who need to visualize data to give stakeholders a story to hold onto. The idea that some consider that Financial analyses was not time consuming to acquire is a chapter we will forego for now. It is the Ignore part that gets me, You see Marketing researchers are about the story that can be served like a Tiramisu, something that goes down easily with the Stakeholders and shareholders, yet it is the mathematics and statistics that makes them want to ask questions, not something a company wants, they want them to merely eat the cake and fuck off. But topline stories are actual stories, it is the connected mathematics and statistics that gives them the power, yet in today’s market it is an expensive trip to do and many companies don’t do that well, mainly because the statistics might show another side to all this and that is not what they want to tell the shareholders and stakeholders. And consider that a larger firm has taken the time to properly set up a Data Warehouse, do you really want to ignore all that data?

In all this there is a much larger issue. The field of what was a proper Market Research field has been replaced by mere topline storytellers and we call that Marketing Research and it is as I see it  holy useless.

Topline stories sound nice, but without the underlying statistics it is for the most conjecture and speculation but without supporting finesse. It is the merchant that looks at the tally of his shop and speculates on how they will do in the next quarter, yet it is true that to some extent they can do that, but without supporting numbers (from Statistics, and Predictive analyses) optionally cornered in mathematics, it remains speculative. It is like seeing the marketing manager and sales manager plotting out ‘their’ path towards financial success and as regression was coming up short, they relied on General Linear Modelling to fill in the blanks. In my lifetime career spanning well over a quarter of a century in Business Intelligence, I have met 6 people who truly knew the proper way to use GLM (MANOVA in the old days) In the Netherlands Hans Krijnssen and Jos van den Ronden, In Belgium Jacques Tacq, in the UK Jane Moore, and in the US there are Dave Nichols and Tony Babinec. I am not a mathematician, I recognise proper usage, but I cannot use these procedures properly myself. There are more people who know it, yet I met 6 over a term of 25 years, this is a limited field, it comes in various shapes and sizes, but they all have degrees in mathematics, it sets the analysts apart from the marketing researchers. We have become too reliant on short term goals without the essential need to have a long term direction in mind. Most companies took the bait when they were told that short term planning is the moneymaker, but there is also the need for long term planning and testing, I might think short term with my IP sale, but I am up against long term strategists who do think outside the box and that is where a lot do not wish to be, they cannot make the long term turnover, their sales training with their pipeline is all about quarterly growth and achieved sales trajectory, the image merely enforces that view, yet the larger view needs to come from what they would happily ignore. It comes down to the old story, The analyst shows you the essential path, whilst marketing is set like a politician, they make you yearn for the invoice. This now translates into marketing handing you the invoice and the numbers feeding that need for purchase are and remain absent.

How is that solving your need?

I believe that Marketing Research is the most dangerous of approaches in the near future, if they go about it with their limited topline reporting tools, someone up high will ask that one question that cannot be answered and it all falls to pieces, it will do so eventually when the storytellers rely on the short story and the process goes south too fast and the numbers will not give the shareholders any confidence, because that will happen a lot sooner than most sales people are happy with. Let me be frank, there is a market, an essential market in these topline presenters and their software tools, they take away the loads of effort and the required approach to get there, but by themselves they are not a solution, they are a supporting tool and that is where a lot of players go wrong. 

So yes, there is also the stage where the image is supporting a different text, but overall the image shows a lack of insight and a support track towards what I would call ‘deceptive conduct’ or to state it slightly less diplomatic ‘relying on misconception to sell a view to a sale’ approaches that go nowhere in the long run, especially when the people who should ask questions, actually start asking the questions that are implied to be answers, all whilst they are no such things.

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May 16, 2020 · 03:40

Deceit and Stupidity

For me it is a brand new day, it is 2:36 and I am now seriously contemplating the move of handing my IP to China. Not because I hate America, I do not, I really do not, but the stupidity that we are exposed to should not ever be accepted. The BBC reported an hour ago ‘US targets Huawei with tighter chip export rules’, there is nothing wrong with that foundation. We all have reasonings and whatever the US requires is their business. Yet in the article we see two items. The first is seen in the quotes “aimed at limiting Chinese technology giant Huawei’s access to semiconductor technology” as well as “prevent US technologies from enabling malign activities contrary to US national security and foreignpolicy interests” The second quote here is double edged. When we see “contrary to US national security ad foreignpolicy interests”, we need to realise that it can mean many things, above all it means that what America implies as foreign policy, could also mean their economic position and we all know it, in that regard America is done for. Whether or not we see the acts of the current president being of less academic value than the acts of Popov the Clown is beside the point. The US remained in the laid back position for a decade whilst innovation will never allow for this. As such Korea and China got the upper hand in IP and future technology. In the last half decade the US started to realise just how far behind they are and they are trying to rectify it be staging a cartel position, but they are already too late, now that I am adding to the IP losses in 5G they are done for, and as the people around me realise how I created the IP, as they realise where they have not been looking, everyone will see just how shortsighted US policy has become. Even as we see the words by US Commerce secretary Wilbur Ross see when we are treated to “This is not how responsible corporate citizens behave” we see the joke that this had been going on for almost a decade, a step towards iterative exploitation of technology, whilst the people around them were innovative. And in all this they are equally forgetting that the tables can be turned, whilst I address the needs of 400 million businesses, the US will be out of bounds as well, as such Europe, the Middle East and Asia will push beyond the options that American businesses have, it was a simple equation. From my point of view, the innovation that is being brought shows another side, it shows that whole technologies will now set the US in a stand still pattern until 2024, it shows that I am merely one part (one of several) where the us has no 5G options, as that market evolves we see a much larger loss, a loss where we look towards another coin to replace economic value, the US dollar is losing out and as a nation with $25,000,000,000,000 debt has no longe any say in the matter, the banks holding that debt will decide and that will be one of the only things that this US president has achieved, the US population will get to see who is truly in charge and they will wish that they could turn back the clock, but it is too late now. Even now we see how President Trump is blaming the Chinese for the spread of Covid-19. Interesting is it not, how the clear propagation of the flu is now blamed on a government, just like the Huawei accusations absent of clear evidence. 

It becomes even more interesting when we see “The US has said Huawei’s technology COULD be used for spying by the Chinese government”, all whilst there is strong evidence that Cisco equipment is used to bypass security on several levels all over the world, but that is OK? So when (not if) my IP is used to propel business to a much larger degree, the US will be barred in equal measure, as such, we will see high flying 5G consumer technology in effect all whilst the US is merely trying to not drown and the rich will be standing on the heads of the poor whilst doing so, it is apparently the American way. 

And my reasoning?

Well, it is the American way to find the best suited financial solution or my IP, in this I go where the money is and America does not have it, Google might, but they were seemingly not interested. I don’t know about IBM, Apple and Microsoft, yet they are not interesting to me as they are iterative technology boosters, they stopped being true innovators for some time. I need an innovative player and that leaves us with Huawei and Google, so Huawei is seemingly the winner.

In all this America now gets sunk by its own greedy and restrictive rules and I am not the only one, I have heard a few noises all around me and they are not that much in favour towards the US.

What can we do?

As I see it, governments should have demanded clear evidence from the US, but they did not do that, moreover, several governments let themselves be bullied by America who has no real power, merely huge debts and in this I watched several nations become the bitch of the US, so where did we sign up for that?

So far the US has remained absent of evidence, did we not learn our lesson with the Global tour of Colin Powell and his silver briefcase making the WMD farce? Is evidence THAT overrated? So whilst the US is trying to hold on to the illusion that they have what it takes (they lost that ability almost 20 years ago), the rest of the world needs to see that the superpower table is changing and it is governed by those with IP and patent value, as such we see China, optionally we see India taking a much larger claim, all whilst the US claim is diminishing, in all that they get to sit next to Russia who has an equal small stake in the IP side of it all. It leaves with the uncomfortable conversation where we see that Google is also becoming a global superpower whilst its host nation the US is losing its seat, optionally to Google. all in the same stage where we see that South Korea might end up getting invited to that table. The stakes are changing to THAT degree over the next three years, so should we have faith in a player who is about to lose its seat at THAT table? I don’t think so.

 

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