Category Archives: IT

December 31, 2016 · 14:41

This last day

This last day should be a day of reflection, a day of consideration. I feel none of these things as I am observing the mistakes that Marine Le Pen is now making. I get why she would get the referendum vamped up and get stronger waves towards Frexit, yet her call to leave NATO makes a lot less sense. For one, NATO still does mean the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, France is part of that North Atlantic, she has a duty of care there (a lot less so for the EC, the EEC or the Euro for that matter). She does make a point when we look at the expansion into Eastern Europe. Let’s face it, when we look into the original line, there was Germany which goes a lot to the south, then basically it is Italy. Getting into Eastern Europe makes a lot less sense. Let’s not forget, the Americans at present no longer have the means to play this game. A fact Lockheed needs to take into consideration, even if the price of the F-35 is given without an engine ($133 million, without engine), making it basically the most expensive paperweight in history. In addition, it came with a truckload of issues in 2014, whilst the 2015 report states “the majority of the fixes and for capability deficiencies being discovered are being deferred to later blocks rather than being resolved“, with new items of concern added. I found the additional quote form the 2015 report “inherent design problems that are only becoming more obvious and difficult to fix” most amusing, so if Marine Le Pen has in mind to not go anywhere near a Lockheed design, that would make sense. Now I do not want to brag, but with all my flying hours in the Microsoft Flight Simulator (2004), I might actually beat that latest flawed Lockheed F-35 with my experience in a Mikoyan MiG-35 (OK, I am bragging a little as I have never flown ANY jet in my life). What is the issue is that the politicians have not kept a good accord on the military abilities of the armed forces, not the people mind you, but the equipment they get stuck with. As such we see a 1.5 trillion dollar project showing more holes than an IKEA Pasta insert (named ‘Stabil’, which is hilarious as it is also means stable in Swedish). A project $160 billion over budget and 7 years behind schedule, and these were the numbers in 2014. A defence project that was too big to kill and that is what the NATO partners have to content with?

So why these topics? The world is changing, it is changing faster than ever before and the minders of the store have been so selfish in regards to their own personal needs (read: visibility of self via ego) and achievements that the duty they had was pushed under the rug. This is how I personally see the F-35 project.

The financial sector in the UK alone these financial boys (girls also) had the bulk of the £44bn in bonuses this year, so did your quality of life increase any (the topic jump will make sense in a few moments)? Now, even as wealth increased, it did not do so to that extent. It is not that fair to just have a go at the financial sector, apart from the fact that they ended up with bonuses of 1900% more than the amount all the others got, so balance is not that much in play. That view is shown stronger as we look at Forbes this week (at http://www.forbes.com/sites/francescoppola/2016/12/28/greece-the-game-is-on-again/#2585dbd946e5), the quotes that matter here are “Euclid Tsakalotos, the normally mild-mannered Finance Minister, accused the IMF writers of “economizing on the truth”. He pointed out that the main reason why so few Greeks pay income taxes is that their incomes have crashed, and that nearly half of Greek pensioners are living below the poverty line” and “The IMF’s case is that pension cost as a proportion of GDP is now unsustainable, and further, that the creditors are not going to agree to debt relief while pension cost remains so high. It is probably right on both counts. But once again, what really matters is the psychological framing“, in that regard I will be on the side of the Greeks, but not on the side of Greece. You see when their previous governments got loans and misrepresented their value, they had zero consideration on what pensions were in regards to the loans that they were getting under false pretense, in that regard, did any of those politicians go to jail? Did they refund 90% of their incomes? I am certain that the answer to both is ‘No!’, in addition those elected officials are sitting pretty and nowhere near the poverty line. Yet in all this the hardship is not over, in addition, the facts (as I personally see them) requires a little more digging, especially when I read “Attica Bank, the country’s fifth-largest lender, was poised to install a new management team he thought was capable of turning round the struggling lender” which were the thoughts of Yannis Stournaras, the governor of the central bank of Greece, which was followed by “While he was in the air, the government in Athens reversed the decision to award the job to Mr Pantalakis. It was his introduction to a web of allegedly related events, ranging from a raid on his wife’s business to an unsuccessful bid for TV rights backed by Attica loans“, this gives the implied issues on Yannis Stournaras, which gives more cause concern when we see “A confidential report on Attica carried out this year by the European Central Bank, the Eurozone’s top bank supervisor, and seen by the Financial Times, cited “severe findings” of poor governance and inadequate controls on lending. With some 70 per cent of its loans rated as non-performing, Mr Stournaras and others believed Attica urgently needed a professional banker at the helm. Government sources denied any intervention in the process to select Attica’s CEO” (at https://www.ft.com/content/aab0aaba-c6db-11e6-8f29-9445cac8966f). The implications are on a few levels especially in the light of ‘government sources denied‘, there is a mess on a few levels and the idea that personal needs were adamant in decisions is not without probable cause. The levels that are in question cannot be set because too much information is missing, but there are issues, make no mistake about that.

These issues connect, not directly but in the view of national voters, governments have made absolute shambles of their nations giving power to those with key wealth management options, in that need those who need to be at the helm are politicised and set to markers that are off the table and outside of the scope of visibility to scrutinise, whilst the presentations are showing markers that do not fit the person best suited for the job, in that Greece is not the only place with such issues. In the UK Mark Carney is facing similar issues, yet in the opposite direction. The best person for the job is the one the elected government seems to have an issue with. The independent (at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/bank-of-england-mark-carney-theresa-may-attack-monetary-policy-tory-conference-speech-a7380016.html) gives us “Mr Carney argued that the monetary policy pursued by the Bank in recent years has had a positive impact that is “without parallel”, despite the Prime Minister using her speech to claim it had led to “bad side effects”“, in addition we see “Since quantitative easing was first introduced in the economy in 2009 … there’s been 2.6 million jobs created, GDP is up 16 per cent, per capita income is up 9 per cent and this is following a trauma in the economy“, we might see this as good news, but the good news is in the UK not dripping down to the other people just yet. In addition, the dangers will change if sharp budgets are not maintained. Getting the debt down is an absolute first, it will have additional benefits down the road, yet the initial benefit is that money could go to other destinations than paying for the interest of the debt, the interest of a debt amount that is currently in excess of 1.6 trillion. This was not the first attack, Michael Gove had a go at England’s Marky Mark in October. It is always nice when a person is called arrogant, especially when that person has proven to be amongst the very best in his field on the planet. I myself had had some issues in the past with Mark Carney, yet not against the man, but the economic issues that the UK faced because of actions (read objectives) pushed for by politicians, however his speech in the House of Lords showed him to be the expert he is and he nearly got me away from the Brexit team. Yet Mark Carney himself states it very well when he said: “Politicians have done a very good job of setting up the system. Where it can be difficult, sometimes, is if there are political comments on our policies as opposed to political comments on our objectives“, in this we see the issue that is part of the problem. as the politicians set up the objectives, they are then confronted with the policies from technocrats and those two groups do not see eye to eye, so friction goes back and forth, the Lockheed F-35 lightning is an excellent example here, in addition that part got an extra iteration as the military requirements were added by yet another group (read: the military). In all this the political objective is hampering the essential need against ‘it needs to be done by date X for no more than amount Y‘, which gives us the political joke that the NHS IT project was. A present from the Labour government which boiled down to a £11.2 billion wrapper around an empty box. Two projects set through objectives that ended up being off the wall and the back and forth friction that resulted in something unmanageable and non-functional. I reckon the political side of both events needs a new level of scrutiny, one that we have not considered before. In that regard having people like Mark Carney around is essential for the wheels of a state to remain functional, because if there is one clear thing, it is that America lost that oversight some time ago, before this Democratic Administration, the previous republican one lost sight of the needs and the accountability of the intelligence network and data processing side no later than 2006, we can all agree that the 2007-2012 total budget of $435 billion was money massively spent in all the wrong ways. This was shown in a Foreign office document that was quoted in an article stating “Army officials, though, said Palantir wasn’t up to the job. Now, a 57-page report by the Pentagon’s acquisitions arm basically says the Army was wrong to dismiss the Palantir system. The study instead gives Palantir high marks on most of the Army’s 20 key requirements for the intelligence system, including the ability to analyse large amounts of information, including critical data about terrorist networks and the locations of explosive devices, and synchronize it in a way that helps troops on the ground combat their enemies more effectively“, so there too billions were spent when millions could have sufficed. When the EGO of an individual with the power to decide is on the line, the results could be disastrous. In my personal view, if we accept the wrongful spending of 25 billion, how many extra troops could have been saved by adding fire support groups to those in IRAQ in those years? How many of the 4486 fatalities could have been prevented?

Politicians, advisors and ego are a really dangerous combination in many ways, even as we look at what is coming now, we need to be mindful of the changes that some are pushing for. Even if we are in favour of dropping the EC altogether, pushing NATO boundaries might not be the best solution. France might be privy to one of the better intelligence machines, that machine is also dependent on the intelligence it is fed from allies, an essential element that will fall away when NATO does, Marine Le Pen should be very mindful of that.

Yet this year and more important 2017 will go beyond Frexit. There is still a large debate on the Netherlands making any move away from the European Community, the numbers require people to be realistic on what will happen, yet those numbers are nowhere near the numbers Brexit had, so it is still unlikely that this will happen at present, no matter how certain Frexit will be. Italy might not have any manoeuvring space, it requires a massive infuse of funds, when we see the Reuters quote “An Italian government official told Reuters on Tuesday that €20bn earmarked for the rescue of the Italian banking system should suffice“, we need to wonder in how much trouble Italy is. This question is raised as we see Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena will issue €15 billion of debt next year (source: RTE). So we see another iteration where “The Treasury may have to put up around €6.6 billion to salvage the lender, including €2 billion to compensate around 40,000 retail bond holders“, so, how exactly is it acceptable that people ‘invest’ with a risk, yet when that risk comes calling, they still get compensated? How did any of us ever sign up for that?

Anyone who mentions that it is for the good of all is of their rocker plain and simple. Here too we see connection between France and Italy, mainly that the Natixis Global Asset Management (NGAM) thought it was a good idea to list Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena as a major purchase right next to Ubisoft. I reckon a little less ‘lack of nationalism’ and putting all of that cash in addition to the other amount into Ubisoft might have been a decently better idea. I feel certain that next year when we see the ‘Top Ten Holdings’ in the Natixis report will not make mention of Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena, which could just be me though.

So in this last day we see that we have quite the collection of choices to deal with, some good and many bad ones. Yet no matter what is happening, no matter what will fall, there is a decent indication that unless changes are made 2017 will not be a good year. I might be too negative to see some level of collapse in Q2 (no later than Q3) in the next year, yet the proper setting and if the key players are willing to forego ego and focus on cooperation, they would be setting the stage for a lucrative 2018, that is beside the initial technological presentations of the new age of G5. G5 will be the pushing power in IP, especially Trade Marks, yet that path is also loaded with new growth opportunities for IT and developers as they start setting the tone of what 5G could personalise, it will be the first firm push to switch providers to SaaS. That is almost without question, the degree to it happening is very much depending on actual cooperation. In that the Telco providers need to realise as per immediate that thinking SaaS whilst selling Paas and charging IaaS, which sounds nice on bonus day. Yet the boomerang effect is that clients will walk away a lot faster and they will also automatically entice 10 personal connection to not seek the services of the telecom provider being that stupid. Infrastructure as a Service is almost a thing of the past. It seems weird, because there should be space for it, yet in our new outfits we see that infrastructure is a long term commitment and with annual mobile purchase the people have learned to be as flexible as possible, so the limited mobiles that some sell (32Gb instead of 64Gb editions) is why people are realising to walk away from those offering limitations instead of solutions. It is at times harder with Platform as a Service. You see, PaaS might sound nice when we see Apple and SAP connecting, yet the bulk of the revenue will be the smaller fish in the pond, the small players will be 80% of the revenue, one can argue the actual taxable cake of government will be largely depending on those players and for them IaaS is a laughable solution when they are trying to get as much as possible in the first few years and those smaller players want as much flexibility as possible taking to some extent PaaS from the table. SaaS will be solution of choice and those now adhering to that need will fall short in 2018 and they are unlikely to be part of anything in 2019. In that we see the government need of objectives that cater to what the SME’s need. A mere application of supply and requirement. You might think that this is not connected to the previous parts, but it is. When we see the NHS, Banks and government, their needs to address their audience, they need to consider that no matter the infrastructure or platform for communications, they all need to see that their clientele is no longer rigid, no longer bound to certain paths for the simple reason that the infrastructure of places like the NHS can no longer deal with. It is by definition a mobile customer base that needs addressing, this means, or at least implies that the SaaS solutions require a wider setup, other paths of non-repudiation and a very different approach to data, its quality, its controls and the application of the results in any report or estimation towards costings and profit. It is a path of contribution, which is set as revenue minus costing.

For the better part an entirely new path in a setting that has for too long been about a rigid collection of data, which when compared to a setting in a flexible framework no longer holds a candle and will come with the implied death of data quality. in these places there will be a growing need for a data team that has the sole purpose of managing the quality of data, this path is one that IT has never worked on to the degree it had, because in the past systems were set in concrete and after the correct data pass had been made, the data usually would not require ‘resetting’ it in another framework, a change that will be almost evident in the systems we will see start in the next 4 years. There, for some the problem becomes that they have never contemplated the changes, which now also means that once they go into the deep of it all, the time required and the resources required will be a lot more draining than ever before. It is in that path that we see the danger of politicians and technocrats in the required path of objectives and policies. As there is plenty of evidence that so far this track record is not that great, we will see a squandering of funds and a dangerous curve of unprotected data whilst no one will be actually held accountable for the transgressions against those consumers aka victims.

So on this last day there is no way that any solution will be found, just take in the information and next week wonder what on earth is about to hit you, there is some speculation in this, yet I believe that the ‘objective callers’ (read: politicians) will rely on the word ‘glitch’ a lot more than ever before, it might just become the most popular word for 2017.

 

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December 30, 2016 · 13:22

In speculated anticipation

This is on a matter that is slippery like a promiscuous nymphomaniac lady contemplating monogamy. In a world where any person next to you could be a pimp, a whore or merely psychotic. Welcome to the cold war! Merely a few hours ago, the Guardian gave us ‘Obama orders sanctions on Russia after campaign hacking during US election’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/29/barack-obama-sanctions-russia-election-hack). Now, we have known the CIA and other parties to be blatantly incorrect when it came to Sony and North Korea. Yet, here in this case, there are a few elements in play where it is indeed more likely than not that if there was real interference that Russia would have been guilty, involved or at the very least privy to the events. In this China is a lot less likely, because as business deals go, they are a lot better of with the Ignorance of former State Secretary Hillary Clinton, than they will ever be with President elect Donald Trump, so as the calling of garden grooming spades, the one turning the soil is overly likely to be the Russian side.

There was an earlier article referred to in this one, where we see: “He dodged whether Putin personally directed the operations but pointedly noted “not much happens in Russia without Vladimir Putin”“, which is actually incorrect. You see, and President Barack Obama know this to be an absolute truth is that deniability is essential in some operations. Yet, in this even as President Vladimir Putin would have been kept in the dark (likely by his own request), it is less likely that Sergey Kuzhugetovich Shoygu is involved, yet if the GRU was involved than Igor Korobov would know for sure. You see, the FSB is the second option, yet for those who have seen some of the reports that Darknet has regarding investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov gives at some parts the inclination that the FSB funding on more advanced cyber actions was lacking making the GRU the opponent of choice. This comes with the assumption from my side that less advanced equipment would have given US cyber sides a lot more data to show earlier that Russia was intervening with the elections. The reports of a group called Fancy Bear gives way to the technology they get access to and the places they can access them at. There is another piece that I have not been able to confirm, it is speculative and even as it gives base to giggles of all matters, it remains a speculation. It is said that Fancy Bear operatives have been able to work from North Stockholm, if so, they might have accessed the IBM backbone there, which has a massive amount of data pushing power. Giving way that the US gave powers to enable hacking of the US election system, live is just too cynical at times.

Another quote is also linked to this, but not from the cyber point of view. “Obama repeatedly weighed in on what he saw as increased polarization in the United States. “Over a third of Republican voters approve of Vladimir Putin, the former head of the KGB. Ronald Reagan would roll over in his grave. How did that happen?”“, in that my response would be ‘Well Mr President, if you had gotten of your ass and actually do things instead of politicising things. If you would have actually kept a budget and not push the US into 20 trillion of national debt people might be less on the fence for the other side, right?‘ There will be no reply because not only as this administration been close to useless, the actions of the last few days where the new electorate gets an agenda pushed down its throat where a clear cooperation with terrorist organisations is seen is plenty of food for thought, yet that rave needs to seize as it does not completely apply to the case at hand!

There are however other matters for concern “In a conference call with reporters, senior White House officials said its actions were a necessary response to “very disturbing Russian threats to US national security”“, which beckons three things:

1. Why was it a conference call and not on every video or a live presentation?
2. Wow long has this been actually known?
3. Where is the actual evidence?

Like Sony, like other parts, the press wants to see evidence and NONE has been presented. No station, as far as I have been able to tell has shown any schematic on how the election could have been tampered with evidence. There are hundreds of anti-Clinton and anti-Trump conspiracy theorist videos, yet none form any reputable news channel. Which also now gives voice to the thought whether the US intelligence branch in this administration has been the biggest joke ever (North Korean accusations et al).

Still in all this, the US is pushing for a cold war, which might not be the worst thing, yet as the US is to be regarded as bankrupt, the upgrades that will involve a data centre and 4-6 billion in equipment and resources is something there will be no room for any day soon.

So what is this about? Is this about the Democrats being really sore losers? I am not sure what to think, yet the entire approach via conference calls, no presentation of evidence, there are a few too many issues here. In addition, if there was evidence, do you not think that President Obama would present it, to show at least that he is capable of publicly smiting President Putin? Let’s face it, he does need to brownie points. Yet, in light of some evidence not shown, the actions at the 11th hour, are they a sign that the Democratic Party will be relying on act that some could regard as Malfeasance in office? Of course these people will not need to give a second thought as they will be removed from office in a few weeks, yet to leave open the next public officials to added pressures to clean up not just their last 8 years of action, but in addition acts of impeding elected officials could have long term consequences. Let’s not forget that the Republican Party starts with both a Republican Senate and Congress, as well as their guy in the White House, so if the Democratic Party wants anything to happen, being nice is pretty much their only option.

In addition, when we look at the US recount (at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/28/election-recount-hacking-voting-machines), we see first off ‘US recounts find no evidence of hacking in Trump win but reveal vulnerabilities‘, in addition we see “In Wisconsin, the only state where the recount was finished, Trump’s victory increased by 131 votes, while in Michigan, where 22 of 83 counties had a full or partial recount, incomplete data suggests was a net change of 1,651 votes, “but no evidence of an attack”“, which is not amounting to evidence in total, we do see that two places were not intervened with, still the system is setting the pace that there are future concerns. The message ““We didn’t conclude that hacking didn’t happen,” he told the Guardian, but “based on the little evidence we have, it is less likely that hacking influenced the outcome of the election” does clearly state that hacking did not happen, it is given with some clarity that any hacking if it happened, that the outcome was not influenced by hacking. This now gives rising concerns to James Comey and what is happening on his watch. More important, the responses that the Guardian had (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/29/fbi-dhs-russian-hacking-report) where we see “The report was criticized by security experts, who said it lacked depth and came too late” as well as “Jonathan Zdziarski, a highly regarded security researcher, compared the joint action report to a child’s activity center“, which is not the first time we see it. More important is the quote “Tom Killalea, former vice-president of security at Amazon and a Capital One board member, wrote: “Russian attack on DNC similar to so many other attacks in past 15yrs. Big question: Why such poor incident response?”” is exactly the issue I had in the initial minute of the information being read by me and that is not the only part of it. The fact that the involved parties seem to be lacking more and more in advising actions as well as a clear cyber security pathway (the Clinton private mail server issues) that is correctly enforced and checked upon. The utter lack of proper ‘Common Cyber Sense‘ as seen for close to a decade at present all over official and governmental US is cause for a large amount of problems, yet the amount of evidence produced that there actually was Russian Cyber actions into changing the election results have not been brought and was brought was done in a very unconvincing way, in a way that top people had deniability of involvement in fingering the Russians. The PDF reads like something less serious in a few ways. You see, the techniques described are not wrong, but it leaves it open to who was the participating party. It could have been mere private hackers, the Russian Mafia is also a cyber-player. The fact that alleged actions from summer 2015 are only now coming into the light.  Is that not equally strange? By the way, the fact that Russian intelligence would try to ‘visit’ the files of the US Democratic Party is not that weird. Is there any indication that NSA, GCHQ and ANSSI would not have been accessing (or trying to) the United Russian party servers for intelligence is equally silly! Neither shows intent to influence an election. Let’s face it, Benghazi was a large enough mess to sway the vote in the first place and US insiders were all too happy to leak information, the Russian merely had to sit back, laugh and drink Vodka. In addition, the fact that malware was on the systems in not in question, it happens too often in too many places, yet clear evidence that APT28 or APT29 were the culprits implies router information, router data and clear information on when EXACTLY is happened (summer 2015 is a little too wide). More important, this also implies that proper malware defence was NEVER in place, so how shallow do these people want to get?

From page 8 we start seeing the true ability of the intelligence to envelope themselves into the realm of comedy. Items like ‘Update and patch production servers regularly‘ and ‘Use and configure available firewalls to block attacks‘ as well as ‘Perform regular audits of transaction logs for suspicious activity‘, these events should have been taking place for a long time, the fact that registered events from 2015 and now show that these mitigation elements are mentioned imply the fact that IT reorganisation has been essential is a larger issue and heavy on comedy if that has been absent for 2+ years. I think negligence becomes a topic of discussion at that point. The least stated on ‘Permissions, Privileges, and Access Controls‘ the better, especially if they haven’t been in place. So in retrospect, not having any ‘evidence’ published might have been better for the Democratic Party and especially for James B. Comey and Jeh Johnson. The main reason is that these events will have a longer term implications and certain parties will start asking questions, if they don’t, those people might end up have to answer a few questions as well.

In that regard the Guardian quote “The question hasn’t even been asked: ‘Did you take basic measures to protect the data that was on there?’“, a question that seems basic and was basically voiced by Sean Spicer on CNN. The fact that according to 17 intelligence agencies agree (as quoted by CNN), brings worry to those agreeing and the laughable bad quality PDF that was released. Consider that we are seeing the reaction of unanimous agreed intelligence without any clear presented evidence, actual evidence, so what are they agreeing on? As stated by Sean Spicer in the CNN interview, the burden of proof is on the intelligence community. Especially as there is an implied lack of due diligence of the Democratic National Committee to secure their IT systems. The fact that the implied lack of diligence should give view to the fact that there are plenty of American citizens that are anti democrats in the US alone to give worry on WHO have been jogging through the DNC servers.

A view that seems to have been overlooked by plenty of people as well.

In the act of anticipated speculation we should speculate that proper presentation of the evidence will be forthcoming. The presentation on a level that will give a positive response from security experts will be a lot to ask for, yet in all this, you should be asking yourself the one question that does matter, it is possible that the FBI got it wrong three times in a row? If so, in how much trouble is Cyber America?

 

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December 29, 2016 · 13:08

The back door

This news got to me this morning. It is yesterday’s news and it is by no means anything ground breaking like the US and UK actions on the Middle East at present. Yet what happens now will have a long term consequence and even as global legislation is trying to stay away from this issue for now, the question becomes: ‘Should this be allowed?’

The Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/28/amazon-refuses-to-let-police-access-suspects-echo-recordings), gives us the following premise ‘Company has declined to provide audio recorded by smart speaker system at house where man died, according to a report‘, the company in question is Amazon.

It is the following quote that brings the issue to the surface: “But firms often retain a “back door” for their own use – to automatically scan emails for key terms used to target advertising, for example – and that can complicate claims that law enforcement access would uniquely invade a user’s privacy. Amazon’s internal approach to user data will likely prove integral to its ability to resist the warrant“, in this it is important to set the term ‘alleged‘, because there is no data available to state that this is actually happening in this specific case. You see, when we see ‘a “back door” for their own use’ and ‘used to target advertising‘, so how is that firm NOT invading a person’s privacy? More important if that Meta data is saved by Amazon to create a fingerprint profile, how are they not invading ones privacy? In that regard the ‘Amazon has refused to hand over data from an Echo smart speaker‘ especially in light of ‘an industry that considers privacy a prime selling point‘ is like watching the pot calling the kettle black. In this there is an issue, especially whether the police should be given access to all data. There is off course, especially in the US the 4th amendment, which officially reads: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized”

Which sounds all good and fine, yet in this case as James Andrew Bates has been charged with the murder of a man found dead in his hot tub in November 2015, we need to worry on how Amazon can sell to its customers that they are instrumental in protecting a person incriminating data, possibly guilty of nothing less than manslaughter. In all this, the Alexa speakers could be seen as a factor to his proclaimed innocence, so as the legal team of the accused is making all kinds of statements, we should worry whether the voices collected are a real issue or not, you see we do not know, more important, what data is Amazon actually collecting? What is stated and what is happening are two very different things. In addition to this ‘the device is also occasionally accidentally activated, through similar sounds‘, which is an additional path in all of this. You see, we knew that this was a factor as the Xbox One had a similar issue in the very beginning, I do not know whether this was ever fixed, but the link to all this is not just the audio file, the fact that the police got other data, in this case from a water meter, stating that ‘a flow of 140 gallons between 1am and 3am‘ was recorded. Here is part of the issue seen. You see, I get that this data is recorded, yet next year as 5G kicks off, we will see an integral set of systems all getting more and more complex and more and more complete. The Amazon and Google systems are at the forefront of all this. By 2019 the average household will have a minimum of 10 devices linked to 5G systems, all that data collected, some open, some not so open and it is that part that is the worry, not just for privacy reasons mind you. A large group of people will get more and more access to your way of life. In addition, there will be an option to influence your way of life, which is a side nobody signed up for. Not unlike the inaccurate systems we see at present at the Australian Centrelink, we will see a shift in data quality by bad designers and even worse coders, we will end up getting categorised into groups we were never part of and as such we will get information pushed onto us that we might not want, we will not need and as those markers shift we will be denied access to information we actually needed. In this last part there is a small exercise you can try on yourself. Let’s say that you can only access the last 10 email messages a day for a few days, now take notice, yet do not read the other messages sent to you, so on average I get 35 messages a day. Consider that I miss out on 25 messages a day. How long until you notice that you missed out on essential information? Now, the number 10 was chosen at mere random, just to make a point, now consider the amount of mail you have at present and see what happens when 10 devices are added to your house profile. The refrigerator, your smart TV, your smart recorder, your game console, your laptop/tablet/PC, your 5 smart devices. How much additional information will you get? How much time will you lose? Because as advertisement is set to your personality, you will be more and more inclined to read those messages that were automatically sent to you. That is just a mere matter of fact. More important, no matter how good the Google Home presentation was (it was actually really good, and here is another review https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hKRPMpxRuc), the reviewer touches on the issues we need to ask ourselves. I think more important, we need to be aware of them. You see, the sketch we see here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVBIeEglehw. Now this is good for a laugh, yet what did the parrot remember and what will your speakers save on cloud servers (read: remember for all to hear for all eternity). It is one thing when it is a murder investigation, it is quite another when it is marketing collected data you were not so comfortable with. In addition, what happens to the connected devices when the data is all combined? The dangers of fueling crime (because the cloud tags you as being in another country, or the collected data shows that the water meter shows no usage of hot water for 2 days, when those are not weekend days, there is every option that the criminals now know that there is a decent chance that you will remains out of the house for 3 days or more. The more devices we attach, the greater the danger of security becomes. It is for that reason I noticed the flaw in the Google Pixel and the Google Pixel XL. It is not an issue now, but it will likely become one in 2018, meaning you might still have that device.

In all this there is no proper legislation, this is not merely a Common Law or Civil Law issue, the global nations at large, none of them have proper legislation in this regard and 5G is less than a year away, which will trigger a tsunami of these issues as we imbue ourselves with the options of laziness of tomorrow. In addition, as we will be more and more relying on RFID option in our daily life, we will see a different cloud of data evolve. It will be a new version of Pokémon Go, only now, we the people become the Pokémon. The big issue is not just the collection of data, it is in addition the security that these new ‘innovations’ are also likely to lack, we will see a cloud of data bundling and with each addition we will also grow the flaws of security. Now, this is speculation from my side, yet history has proven me right again and again. In the end it will be a short sighted head of marketing forcing a deadline that will result in a needed app that suddenly sets all our personal data open to the people on the internet, after which we get carefully phrased denials, apologies and a half-baked ‘promise’ that it will be fixed as soon as possible. In that time our personal data remains on the open internet and we will lose days to get passwords changed and settings checked on all the connected devices. In all this there will be a lack of legislation, especially as ‘intent’ is still a factor, as we see ‘the plaintiff must prove the additional element that the defendant acted with the specific intent to perform‘, yet in all this ‘intent’ can never be proven and the loss will be ours and ours alone. In all this the need to set factors on ‘negligence’ and there is the issue we see, you see ‘people should exercise reasonable care when they act by taking account of the potential harm that they might foreseeably cause to other people‘, which at this point can never be proven in cases of privacy loss due to broadcasted data. The firms will ‘always’ be taking account of potential harm. The issue is that in many cases there is never any foreseeable cause, just the consequence. In this data gatherers and IP creators need to isolate data more and more and this takes smaller independent creators equally out of the farm, which is not that just. In all this legislation will fail the consumer and time is running out for the people who want to move forward. 5G will bring a massive amount of innovation and technology forward, yet in this greed driven world, it will also bring forward the utter idiots who want to make their cash quick and in that case there are too many options for them to remain unaccountable.

The back door in programs and apps is a real problem (not the only one in this case) and those who need to ask all the serious questions currently aren’t doing anything of the sort. In that, it does not matter whether Amazon Echo actually has a back door (not established), too many apps do have that and in some cases hardware does too. DSL gateways with a backdoor to port 32764 is one noted version, an issue that was at some point concealed yet never fixed. Some get one added via a free plug-in (read: Joomla), Interbase versions 4 through to 6. Some of these back doors were intentionally added, some were hacks and some were zero day exploits. All have consequences to your life when you get to 5G, and these are the easy to spot kind. Once you get to a situation where the security is circumvented by linked apps, for example Facebook and Facebook Messenger. Once we start getting apps like that and the combination introduces a back door, there is every chance that this weakness would not be found until millions of records have been obtained by those finding the linked weakness. In all this organised crime remains a growing concern, because they will ignore whatever legislation is in place and just transfer the data to a hidden server, or better, sell all that fresh and juicy data on the deep web or Darknet.

There is no easy solution and you should realise that most developers have indeed the best intentions, yet for a growing group of those needing a fast fix on income, the user ends up with less security, even less safety and no option to seek compensation, whilst those connected to it get to have all the freedoms and at present end up not getting convicted in any way, which has to change and it has to change rather fast because time is running short.

 

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December 20, 2016 · 14:33

Rephrasing a Minder

Politics tends to be filled full of weird and crazy people, from my point of view those people tend to be members of the Labour party. That view got a new light in the article ‘Labour calls for closer scrutiny of tech firms and their algorithms‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/dec/18/labour-calls-for-regulation-of-algorithms-used-by-tech-firms). Now, there are two sides to any equation, so let me give you the two that I have.

1. I believe that tech companies have been facilitators for too long, many will not accept any responsibility for way too much. On the other side, I do believe that the only working internet is a free one. So when I read the words from Shadow minister Chi Onwurah, I honestly did not regard her to be anything more than a person seeking the limelight. It is equally important to realise that she is using last week’s amazon debacle in Scotland, with questions how that relates to regulating algorithm, it’s a mere application of employment law, is it not?

From the quote: “The outcomes of algorithms are regulated – the companies which use them have to meet employment law and competition law. The question is, how do we make that regulation effective when we can’t see the algorithm?” I feel slightly cautious to call Chi Onwurah a joke, there is a chance that some of this was lost in translation, if not, she has a larger problem to deal with. That problem will be clearly visible when she decided to look into a mirror. So why to look at my point of view?

You see, there are no regulations on algorithms, they are basically formulas with a solution. In addition she states: “greater scrutiny of the mathematical formulas that now control everything from the tailored news served to Facebook members to the speed at which workers are required to move around an Amazon warehouse“. I think that we need to look a little closer at the last statement. You see, it is highly likely that any staff members would need to meet a certain amount of jobs for shipment and delivery. Yet how feasible is that requirement? I can’t tell from the description that was given a week ago, too many variables missing, that does not make the approach regulated. Yet like in any job, workers have ‘responsibilities’, yet more important, they have rights. These are clearly set in most countries of the Commonwealth, so how does that equate to apparent regulated algorithms.

2. The openness of any system will silently advocate the abuse of it. A not so good example was given by the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/04/google-democracy-truth-internet-search-facebook), where we see ‘Google, democracy and the truth about internet search‘. We get Carole Cadwalladr with the quote ‘and this was Google’s answer: Jews are evil. Because there, on my screen, was the proof: an entire page of results, nine out of 10 of which “confirm” this‘, which started with typing 7 letters ‘are Jews’, which is an issue from character one onward. She then tries to dilute the issues by setting the image of the search of ‘are women evil’, probably to ease the tension, but the damage is done, short-sighted (as I see it) she continues. So whilst she wastes two paragraphs on titles of the slightly anti-Semitic nature, which she then sets in an atmosphere as “I feel like I’ve fallen down a wormhole, entered some parallel universe where black is white, and good is bad. Though later, I think that perhaps what I’ve actually done is scraped the topsoil off the surface of 2016” and she ends with “This isn’t a secret Nazi cell lurking in the shadows. It’s hiding in plain sight“. As I personally see it, she is the person who has been standing behind an iron for most of her life and now she sees her first microwave, a cliché if I ever saw one.

You see, the article goes on for some time and there are really good parts in it too, although the spatial map is a bit of nerdy space we could have gone without, the issue I never see properly addressed is that the term ‘are women evil’ and on number one is a WordPress blog, literally with the link ‘sheddingoftheego.com/2015/06/25/are-women-evil/’ and the title ‘Are Women Evil?‘ literally a perfect match for what the person was seeking. Google worked perfectly. What is ignored and what influences many sights, especially on how Google Rankings are influenced. Now Google has a way to counter it, yet this is not immediately done and it is not perfect either. Places like Reddit are actively working on posting whatever they need to raise their ranking and the rankings of their customers. It is interesting that the Guardian, the Huffington Post and Forbes take absolutely ZERO time to explain the games that SEO’s are playing to influence ranking through scripts. because it is in the end what someone was seeking for, yet the fact that this is the direct value for SEO’s and terms like ‘Tips on how to improve your website’s ranking on Google’s search engine results’ were also ignored in these articles giving rise to the one sided and unbalanced view the press is giving, whilst those in the digital media all know that this is done and those who are doing it usually have a massive tag list ready to add to EVERY story they write.

So when we see the quote “Many search results are now reinforcing extreme views, with articles denying the holocaust or disparaging women increasingly appearing at the top of the rankings“, we need to wonder Chi Onwurah should even be allowed to be Shadow Minister of Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, or Just the elected MP for Sesame Street. By the way, what I did not know is that this department is also responsible in the area of Intellectual Property, so if Labour ever wins, we need to get scared fast.

So getting back to the MP in my sights, it is important for her to realise not just what a google search does and what it shows, but the elements that influence it and what happens under the real guise and the influenced guise of what people are looking for. By the way, her article acted for possible millions of additional clicks, because she raised the issue, whilst not raising the alert of how the numbers get influenced. So, as we go down the article, we do need to stop at a part that matters a lot. This is seen in the quote “Social media platforms are being blamed for allowing the spread of misinformation and online abuse, conditions which some argue are fuelling the resurgence of extreme politics in America and western Europe“, which is a fair point, yet as bullies and trolls can hide behind the freedom of speech without accountability, there is little chance of this changing, in addition, this isn’t a transgression from 68 million people in the UK, it is the search result and interaction of billions of internet users on the planet, so as there is no localised situation, misinformation and online abuse remains. In addition, as Chi Onwurah should clearly realise, when we see webpages with quotes like ‘Millions of People Are Cancelling Their Netflix Account Because Of This One Site‘, whilst the link looks like a cookie 2 miles long, all set to improve visibility. The media at large, including the UK make use of professional cookie, tags and ranking strategies and all kinds of advertisement counters, so when she is talking about regulations, setting anchors against the exploitative use of cookies might not be the worst idea. In addition to that thought, whilst labour was in office, they did zero to get the tax accountability rolling on corporations, so to see this quote “need to take responsibility for the unintended consequences of the algorithms and machine learning that drive their profits” in the reality of the law (the act of facilitation), she needs to realise that her statement is empty and hollow to say the least. So when we see “we need a tech-savvy government to minimise the downside by opening up algorithms to regulation as well as legislating for greater consumer ownership of data and control of the advertising revenue it generates“, she is not unreal, she is utterly unrealistic for even considering to open up that tar pit, because once we see that regulation come to ground, the economic algorithms are the first one we will have a go at and at that point, when that reality comes knocking, she will soon be the loneliest politician in the history of the UK. In addition, is it not interesting how Bing was not mentioned once in all of this? Why is that Chi Onwurah? Basically this is an act of discrimination, however let’s not nit-pick in an article that is already shoddy in several ways.

The software engineering reality (historically speaking) is that the Google search results and Google ranking was filed in 1998 with a priority in 1997. Lawrence Page realised that the content on the internet would be growing exponentially and as others were concentrating on corporations and corporate views the founders of Google looked at a much bigger picture, so finding anything would sooner rather than later become a massive issue.

In an age when the ‘great’ internet companies were about image and looking cool, Google started to get professional. In the days of Yahoo, Yahoo was the search engine of choice. Alta Vista, later Excite and a few others were garbage from week 1 whilst never catching up in any novel way. Yahoo started in 1994 and they were leaders for a while, and in the 90’s as Yahoo grew its value, they started to lag behind. Now the irony is that Yahoo got started at Stanford and the Google rank patent was designed and invented at Stanford too. By the time someone started to ask the right questions it was already too late and the Google patent for ranking gave them exclusivity which will last a little while longer, but others are now considering the consequence that Google Rank patent will still be in effect when G5 starts, as the issue of ranking is still growing near exponentially as more and more files are added and with G5 it will take on an additional dimension.

now we see the issues that are brought to the foreground in what I regard as a half-baked shadow ministers approach, asking ‘questions’ and implying regulations, all this whilst a below par informed level of knowledge is shown in the articles they set to press. One of the issues is actually shown in one paragraph in the Huffington Post “Finally—and this is the key point—even without human intervention, Google’s algorithm, while doing exactly what it’s supposed to do, routinely boosts one candidate higher in search rankings simply because of normal “organic” search activities“, which is the cornerstone. As we know, organic search (what you type in the google search bar) is used, yet what happened when this is done through scripting? What if a few of the 200 parameters gets influenced from outside though scripted actions, again and again? That part was never clearly mentioned, but it is the bread and butter of nearly every SEO, to get the position and ranking of their clients to the very top, in every possible way and method and the shadow minister does not give any visibility to it, the visibility it requires and deserves.

That is the flaw in all this and this is the need to rephrase a minder, a minder who as I saw it never understood the plot, or she did know and she was misinforming the readers to some extent, yet how much requires misinformation and was that not what she was accusing social media of? So as we await Labours industrial paper, we will have a few more options to have fun of labour especially as they define supervision whilst again not getting any results in proper corporate tax legislation, not even as suggested proper corporate tax legislation.

taxformulaSo should we see the taxation algorithm for large firms where x is the taxable amount, b is revenue and a is tax deductible options, you know that it is not just the regulations of algorithms she got wrong.

 

I’ll let you decide.

 

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December 16, 2016 · 10:55

The mental state of health

This all started two days ago when I got alerted to one news issue and shortly thereafter to something entirely different. Let’s start with the news, you see, the news I got was rather extreme, even for the average judgement in criminal law. You see, it all started with the mere headline ‘Prisoner jailed for 45 years over letters threatening to kill people‘ which was a bit much. For example in the Netherlands when you drive and kill a 2 year old and in addition kill the grandparents, you get 120 hours of community service. At 8 hours a day that is a mere 3 weeks, if you work the weekends too, 2 weeks is all you have to suffer. So when I read 45 years I tend to wake up and really wonder what a person needs to do to get 45 years. Mainly because killing children or committing treason no longer gets you anything to that degree.

The issue was given in the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/dec/14/inmate-jailed-for-45-years-over-letters-threatening-to-kill-people). The issue is clearly seen in the quote: “A prison inmate who wrote a series of letters from his cell threatening to kill 10 people, including prison staff and police officers, and then have sex with their corpses has been jailed for 45 years“. Consider the following two quotes; the first one is “Heath said the maximum sentence for an offence of making a threat to kill was 10 years’ imprisonment“, the second one is “The judge said he was trying to balance the need to protect and the need to ensure that the sentence was not “wholly disproportionate to your criminality”“, which it clearly seems to be. You see, no matter what the convicted man wanted. Either never to leave prison or to get the limelight. Basically the man committed psychic assault and there would be a consequence to that, yet the line between 10 years and 45 years is massive. You see we have no idea what that person would have been like after 10 years. So how come that 45 years is suddenly an option? Only because of the quote “The judge Michael Heath, passing sentence at Lincoln crown court on Monday, described the long jail term as highly unusual and said the case had caused him “very considerable anxiety”“, so the judge got anxious? That makes the case clearly a loaded canon on several fronts, not to mention the dangers of after overturn costs when the appellant court would consider the verdict to be disproportionate. So what makes this case such an issue for me? You see, the quote I overstepped earlier was “Ford wrote a series of letters from his cell at Nottingham prison in which he identified people – including prison officers, a fellow inmate, a district judge, a police officer and a former partner“, what if the letters to the police officer and the district judge were the reason for the over inflated verdict? If that is regarded and those from the established order of jurisprudential would be the reason our verdicts become a lot more severe, we would be walking a very dangerous tightrope, one with long term consequences. Now do not get me wrong, the man is guilty, that was established, yet from 10 to 45 years is a massive leap. So now we get to the good stuff, because there is more, there always is. The fact that we need to consider “he had been assessed by a number of psychiatrists but there was no recommendation he receive hospital treatment“. So why not? The fact that the psychiatrists did not recommend hospital treatment implies that either he is not that crazy or other elements are not getting the illumination they need. Would that be a fair assessment of the situation? It might be even darker and the man has a split personality, all complications that might divert from a successful diagnoses, all still giving pause to the need of 45 years, no matter the level of creepiness that this mental health case is showing to be.

You see, this issue and it is a real issue is only part of it. In almost the same timeframe I got news of something entirely different. It is something fresh and new from Cornell (at https://tech.cornell.edu/news/this-smartphone-keyboard-app-can-read-your-emotions). The headline ‘This Smartphone Keyboard App Can Read Your Emotions‘ is a lot more interesting than you think it is. The quote “Keymochi uses data like typing speed, punctuation changes, the amount of phone movement, distance between keys, and a user’s rough sentiment analysis to detect emotions“, might seem to be an average achievement, it is not. I think it is an optional invention for something a lot bigger than the makers envisioned. The quote “To protect privacy, Keymochi does not store what is typed, just how it is typed—the physical cues and the sentiment analysis from PAM” gives us the initial goods, the larger prize is given by “So far, the app is able to predict emotions with 82 percent accuracy“, now consider that this is not on a smartphone, but on a tablet. What if this app is adjusted to aid the psychiatrist that possibly failed in this case and now gets to deal with additional data and evidence? What if this app could enable additional emotional data? Consider that this is the first generation where the bulk of action is no longer done with goose feather and ink jar, but with the keyboard. Our auto acceptance of pretty much every keyboard gives an interesting consideration on the valid honesty that we give our as we take out our frustration and denied inner considerations to a keyboard. Let’s not forget that an initial 82% accuracy is not a bad result at all.

Yet the original intent as it was designed by the three Cornell Tech students, Hsiao-Ching Lin, Huai-Che Lu, and Claire Opila was to detect emotions, which is what we knew, yet their application is that as a user is typing out a text message or email via smartphone, each movement adds to an emotional profile of the user. In addition, users can select one of 16 pictures to indicate their mood by using a photographic affect meter. Which is brilliant in its own right, so that the issue we have seen for too long in auto fix and auto correct in android so as we see “even when a message is communicated in complete sentences, we often misjudge the author’s intentions and current emotional state” it makes perfect sense, because the bulk of us, have all experienced the weird response when we were trying to type something funny, or just a little sarcasm, which got the response like we had slapped that friend with a 9-Iron at maximum effort. So the pictures would be a great help, especially as the receiving party gets the message “you doing the munchies again?” with a picture of a laughing chipmunk. Yet as I read the article, I just saw a whole range of possibilities growing from within the system itself. The upcoming art/science of digital diagnosis might be in the early stages, yet as we see the overload of data and responses we face in the 5G universe that is about to arrive, these tools will present an exponential need, not just on a consumer level, but on the level of the tool creators who want to give their consumer that little bit extra. In that regard the timing of these three students could not be better and I feel certain that they have a decent clear path towards exceptional growth. Yet as stated before, I feel equally certain that the scope of applicability of this tool goes a lot further then perhaps even they realised, which is just a lovely layer of icing on the cake.

In addition, when we look at one final part, the part on how their app could interact with domotics and automated mood parameter transfer as Google Home envisions it, is only the start of the large cake they could be serving a massive interested audience.

 

 

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December 10, 2016 · 17:03

When everyone is a winner

You have heard of these special schools? The school where everyone wins, no one has a bad grade and everyone is special. Yes, we are talking about the Eurozone, the one school where lessons are not learned, where those who posture (read: all) win a prize, or perhaps they fetch a price. What matters is that this social path does not get us anywhere.

You see, I am not some anti-social person, I understand that we can be compassionate, but I do have a problem when grown men, all making 7 figure incomes are given that level benefit of doubt. Mainly because I could do a better job for half the price. We see the first issue a few days ago when Wolfgang Schäuble makes the statement (source: the Guardian) “Greece must implement economic reforms if it is to keep its place in the Eurozone“, and when we see the degrees that this man has, we might consider that he is not a demented toddler, so when we consider the knowledge that we have obtained over the last year:

1. A nation can only voluntarily leave the Eurozone.
2. Considering the UK and the hassle it is facing just to get past article 50.
3. The fact that Grexit was not a possibility, which drove the UK towards Brexit and France towards Frexit.

Can we sincerely ask the question why this man is opening his mouth posturing some level of adulthood (or adultery for those with a sarcastic look at the EU charter), whilst all know that this is basically an empty statement?

So, if the statement “If Greece wants to stay in the euro, there is no way around it – in fact completely regardless of the debt level”, the entire Brexit could have been avoided when the children of the EEC commission had acted when they should have (read: all the way back in August 2014), so because the denied ‘status quo group‘ who tried to keep the gravy train going we all had enough and most Britons decided that going it alone is just the best solution, now that we see that this same group is realising what they are about to lose, it is only now that we see the first noises to make the hardest decisions, all because they are about to lose trillions. The fact that this comes from Germany is not a surprise and it isn’t linked to the hardship the Deutsche Bank faces. Yet, the people behind Schäuble (Wall Street and the IMF, which is my personal speculation), we now see desperate steering towards alternative solutions hoping to find an option to thwart Brexit and perhaps steer Frexit away from a referendum course. It might work, but we all need to realise that French pride has already been dented, so there is no way to accurately tell how that part will pan out.

We see a diversionary tactic in the quote “With his own popularity plummeting in the face of fury over creditor-mandated cutbacks, the prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, had hoped to wrap up a second review of policy measures in time for Monday’s meeting as part of a broader strategy to secure short-term debt relief and participation of Greek bonds in the European Central Bank’s quantitative easing programme“, yet this is all true. So why do I call it a diversion? You see, the players behind the screens are about to lose thousands of billions (read: trillions), so Greece and their 300 billion really do not add too much on the entirety of the big picture. Even as the US is heralding such huge achievements in unemployment figures, most will not realise that in February, after thanksgiving, after Christmas and after January sales, the shops will downsize by a lot. There is a lot of speculation on Black Sunday and the other shopping spree numbers, but as too many speculations are given here from too many sources, we actually will not know the actual outcome until mid-January and after that any action and all numbers will get quietly hushed to page 23 of newspapers. That is done because the Democrats really do not want anything in that regard to receive too much visibility until January 20th when all eyes will be on the start of the Blame Trump campaign.

What is a given is that the American administration is facing dire moments and their only fortune is that this impacts Wall Street, the IMF and the Rothschild’s, so their all uniting in finding any solution that keeps their Status Quo. They might not be related to the band, but the tour that these players have been preparing for will include hits like ‘Whatever I want‘, ‘Roll over stay down‘ and ‘Rocking for all that I own‘. Now, what is the link between the IMF and the Rothschild banks? Well, it is not what some conspiracy theorists states like: ‘Rothschild Bankers Looting Nations through World Bank/IMF‘ or ‘Hungary Becomes First European Country to Ban Rothschild Banks‘, what is of principle matter is the claim that ‘The International Monetary Fund is an international development banker. It makes loans to governments. It gets its funding from member governments‘. Yet, when you consider the debt these members are in, with the top 5 having a total debt that surpasses 35 trillion, can anyone explain where their money is actually coming from? The short answer is that the funds are fictive and virtual, and basically as I personally see it based on fraudulent economic settings to say the least; which now implies that only the larger (read: largest) players with the Rothschild family at the very top are included as behind the screen underwriters (for a percentage of course, they are not philanthropists), that is the reality of banking and those underwriters want to see their money. So at this point losing 300 billion is nowhere near the issue as losing an amount surpassing 5 trillion. So there is every issue in play and the German Wolfgang Schäuble is doing the ‘kick off’ whilst everyone is slightly less interested in economy and more into the Christmas parties with the office assistant in a horny accommodating outfit that in the mind would include transparent Red Santa lingerie, willing to engage in activities of a ménage-a-troy kind.

Welcome to the holiday season they will think, whilst on the other side the economy is decided for the largest players in a setting of debt by those not elected but enabled. The mere consequence of governments and the corporate contracts. The debt must flow, the debt must grow and the UK moving out of the EEC is the first step into giving the UK its true independence from these financial institutions. That part is now also under attack as the ‘British Balls’ (read: Labour Party Ed Balls, former Economic Secretary to the Treasury) is at the core of that part, as was shown (at https://www.ft.com/content/2616611e-a665-11e6-8b69-02899e8bd9d1), on November 17th in the Financial Times. You see, even as I have had a few disagreements with its Governor (aka Marky Mark of the British bank), the man has steered it correctly in the direction the United Kingdom required it to go. Yet now as this does not pleases the non-governing parties at large, well Balls, let’s make a deal, shall we? If we agree to reign back the independence of the Bank of England, you must agree and sign a decree per immediate that any politician squandering treasury money due to any level of negligence (or incompetence), will have to go to prison for 10 years without the option of parole. Would you sign that Ed? Consider the NHS IT issue of 11.2 billion, how many of your friends will be set to prison? How many negligent programming contracts were signed off on? Are you willing to make that leap, because the only ‘friends’ you end up having are those of the non-UK kind and many of them mere graduates that were on your every word in that Harvard building where you made that speech and a few more in financial institutions who didn’t much care for the independence of the Bank of England. So how about it Eddy, you got the Balls for that one? I would expect some kind of other proclamation soon enough. You see what he wants is not any accountability in a setting where all is squandered away. The British people have had more than its share of that one. So as we read: “The paper comes after vehement attacks on central banks and their policies in the US, UK and Germany; criticism that would have been unthinkable in the 1990s and pre-crisis 2000s, when the fashion for central bank independence was at its peak“, where I would see that the idiotic notion of the Bank of England should be forced to fund infrastructure projects, whilst we know where 11.2 billion didn’t get the job done and there wasn’t enough money to get it sorted due to negligence and what I would regard after 20 years in IT as ‘steps of utter stupidity’, well worth of getting those decision makers in prison for the longest of time (read: while I am aware that the maximum prison term would be 10 years), a term that others would call too light, especially those who are now due to no fault of either party are getting less from the NHS that can no longer meet the high standards it gave for the longest of times.

So when we read in that same paper “Carney says politicians ‘deflect blame’ by attacking central banks’ Rising inequality is driven by more fundamental factors, argues BoE governor“, my response would be: “Right you are Marky Mark!“, although I would speculate that some of these fundamental factors would be the ignorance of the decision makers whilst relying on people trying to get the maximum they can out of the deal offered and the connections relying on them. That would a fundamental first to consider and solve. Which gets me to the point that those politicians will be held accountable for the support to these projects and they need to be dealt with if they fail. So the special prize for these non-kids is the one that every winner wants, 120 months of hotel accommodation in places like Holiday resort Wakefield, or Wandsworth Garden retreat in South West London? Would that perhaps up the game of a few politicians, or will they suddenly decide to be less enabling to those who see the independence of the Bank of England to be more than an eye sore and a factor that stops their maximum profit to continue? I am merely asking, not making a claim of any kind.

The Financial Times article has a few other sides and makes fair statements, even though the initial source is questionable from my point of view. The writer Chris Giles adds at the end “For the Fed, the problem is reversed and while it has in its Financial Stability Oversight Council sufficient political legitimacy for macro prudential policies, the US central bank does not have sufficient tools to do the job and cannot request new tools from the administration, it adds“, you see, the British and US systems might seem the same, but they are not. I would surmise that there is a Federal and State level of these issues that the UK does not have to the extent the US has them. It is not just the differences in approach and connections, I and most of us see the Bank of England as the pulse of the health of the British economy and as such, its independence, especially from a boatload of politicians, is essential to this view. Now, I might certainly be wrong, yet overall, how many would agree that many politicians seem to spend in what they truly believe to be for the best, whilst not having a clue on how proper debt levels need to be and they will happily push that bill to the next cycle, the NHS IT is not the only, but definitely one of the clearest and largest examples of mismanaged spending on several levels, having someone independent in charge of the Bank of England making sure that the tap gets closed before it is too late in this term with a clear look at what comes next and what else is due now. A view many politicians on a global scale are lacking. And as the US system has a much more isolated view regarding the economy enablers, the economy and the US treasury gives another shine on their view and their lacking demand for independence and accountability (again, as I personally see this).

You see, there is a lot more in play, this isn’t just on what is due to Greece, the UK or the Banks wanting there coin. The fact that left and right have to some degree social values and of course, the left tends to have a little more of that. Yet, when we look at ‘Greece under fire over Christmas bonus for low-income pensioners‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/09/greece-under-fire-over-christmas-bonus-for-low-income-pensioners), we need to question certain responses. The quote “A goodwill gesture to ease the plight of those hardest hit in Greece by tax increases and budget cuts has backfired spectacularly on the prime minister, Alexis Tsipras” is one that is of great concern. Consider that this is about retirees that get less than €800, so, when we consider that rent in Greece is €450 or more, with added monthly utilities of no less than €140, this means than they get to live of €310, which is abysmally little. A week of food and clothes and other things at €75 per week is the nightmare scenario for even the best miser in town. Now consider Christmas is around the corner and these Greeks and those getting even less are getting a one-time bonus for Christmas. It is a social smallest act by the Greek government and after the issues that the retirees have gone through clearly the act that should be done as soon as possible. So I would really like to know the names of these ‘International creditors pour scorn on prime minister Alexis Tsipras‘, in addition, I would like to see what their functions were and their incomes from 2004 onwards. You see, I want those people and I want to see if they were in any way enabling the imbalance that Greece developed between 2004 and 2009. Mainly because the Greeks suffering now would really like to get those names and addresses. For those following a little longer, I have had plenty of criticism towards what I used to label ‘rock band Tsipras & Varoufakis’, in addition I have had additional issues with what was done over the time period, yet I had never had issues with any solution that could be found resolving the issue, in addition, when Greek was playing hard to get, I was first in line to throw them out of the EEC and the Euro, yet the power players behind all this, and possibly the people holding onto the debt markers were equally accountable. Yet, I have never had anything negative to state over the Greek people at large (apart from the stupidity of all these strikes), so I would have no issue with Tsipras giving a little release in the one month when that makes perfect sense and likely matters the most. Yet in this social climate, we see in equal measure the debatable view by Labour people wanting central banks to be more dependent on the politicians who cause a lot of these issues to begin with. How freakin’ crazy do you need to get here?

So when we consider that special school where everyone is a winner, can we actually accept or even entertain the thought of hiring someone who is on that school of thought? How much damage must Europe endure before the people at large gets a clue? There is accountability, which I have always supported, yet in equal measure, the strain on the Greek people have been unjust been brought by those who have been facilitators of a system that should never allowed to continue to this degree, meaning that Greece should have been removed from the Euro at least 2 years ago. Doing it now, could only be done if the debt of 300 billion would be forgiven, a step that the players are unwilling to give, yet in the light of all that is passing, they are now considering certain steps, only so that they can hang onto an optional 35 trillion, that is the game in play and now, as they realise that the UK has had enough and that France is on the same side of that seesaw, now those creditors are considering the consequence of pressure so now they will divide the EEC and conquer whatever funds they can, for as much as possible. In that light the one off payment is scorned on, so how inhumane have some players become and should we even consider tailoring to their needs?

The scenario where everyone is a winner is a long time away and it is unlikely that Greece and a few others feel this way any day soon, giving even more caution to the words of a president who is on the way out. And who are Greeks creditors? What is the full list, is it not interesting how the press has the detailed specifics on the knickers (read panties) of a Kardashian and the Greek government creditors list gets trimmed to the aggregated list that serves themselves and no one else. In that I believe that Yanis Varoufakis is only scratching the surface when he states “the UK referendum was a “symptom” of a series of mismanagements from EU leaders“, in that he is right and it seems that now he is less of the rock star he presented himself to be, now we see another Yanis, one that is not just driving the nails on the head, he is quickly realising that certain players are preparing for even more issues to be added to the exit of nations from the EU. Even as some is by part to smear the cogs of Germany’s needs, the quote “To take a trip down the Danube to discuss the formation of a European army – pure irrelevance. There is no evidence unfortunately that the political class on the Continent is capable of even sitting down to address the right questions, let alone, deliver the right answers“, which is at the core of failure of any created European army. The biggest issue is not how it is formed, we will see soon enough that once Frexit is a reality, what would actually be left to actually form any decent European army with? It could be a revolutionary new Disney. As we redesign Snow White and the Seven Dwarves into Germany & the 7 minions who cannot agree on anything, will we now see new polarisation in several ways being added to the list of negative plights? In addition, if Italy remains as the larger player, the mere concept of language will be the hilarity of many. I would be willing to wager that the concept as it is failing will derive laughter from 2400 Route de Pexiora, 11452 Castelnaudary Cedex, so loud that it can be heard in both Berlin and Rome, which should make for an interesting news cycle to say the least.

I have spoken against the ideas of several people mentioned in this article, I thought that they went the wrong way about things and they got bit, which I would call ‘serves them right‘, yet I have never applauded or agreed to the level of pressure the Greek people are currently under, in addition, the German finance ministers views, as I personally see them, are not about Europe and not about what would be best for Europe or the United Kingdom. I believe some are starting cycles of facilitation and enabling that will in the end be really bad for Europe, for the United Kingdom, for France and for Europe as a whole. I will let you contemplate how wrong I could be and if that is not the case why the clear outspoken opposition against these proclaimers aren’t coming from more sides, more people and more media. Is that not weird either?

A game where everyone is a winner only knows losers, a truth that goes back to ancient Greece, they were the founding fathers of the Olympics after all!

 

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December 7, 2016 · 12:53

The playful Prey

Hi all,

Sorry for the longer silence than usual. There is this thing about pesky assignments and as it is my last master subject, I do want to make it count and it is an awesome subject. I am preparing for a research paper which will be shown here after it is graded, because the subject is an important one and it puts some pharmaceutical companies into a very different light, not to mention the financial backers, who allegedly known or not, backed a certain idea. Now as far as I can tell, they aren’t going after the company because of projected losses due to certain acts the company relied on, which makes me wonder how innocent some of these financial backers are, yet fortunately, another system is showing me the money involved, so we will look at that in the decently near future.

What comes today is all about my little heart and more important, what makes it tick a little faster, especially around Christmas. You see, I got to see a little glimpsed of what Arkane is bringing us next and my heart just went boom-boom-boom-boom-beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

If we like proper quality gaming, then take a look at the intro video by Arkane (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81Ofcp8Pp_U). It might be only 8 minutes, yet you get a decent impression of what to expect. From the first instance you get a little feeling of Bioshock from the architectural look. The art is distinct, shapely and if you ever had any doubt whether 4K gaming will be for you, then this game shows you that ‘yes’ will be the answer. It goes a little further, the wrench game me a Half-Life feeling, there is the feeling from System Shock (remake to come in the near future) and as I stated, Bioshock, yet the music style we heard in Dishonored makes an entry too. The best of all games, whilst the game clearly shows and feels not to be anything but utterly original, the narration clearly has a handle on that. You see, the story is everything and the fact that you are set in the open world of a massive space stations adds to the story and gameplay. The other titles are not infringed and replaying System Shock on Xbox One is almost on the very top of my list. This does not take away my interesting in this game. You see, the people at Arkane have figured gaming out correctly. It is freedom of options. They are not the only ones who figured it out, yet in this gaming style they picked it up better than most. You see, I worshipped System Shock for the longest time, yet consider that the game still has to some degree a guided path. For example past medical you can only go to….., which when you consider the game was released made perfect sense, yet today that is not a given. What if I go straight to the bridge in System Shock? I get that you needed skills that will not allow you to finish the game in 2 minutes, which could be seen as good value, but in equal measure the lack of choice feel confining. System Shock, Bioshock, Dead Space, both exquisite games, both have that restriction. Prey will likely have it to some extent, yet what if that limitation was not there? What if you needed to figure it out for yourself? In that I recall Metroid (NES), Eye of the beholder 2 (Amiga), SunDog: Frozen Legacy (Atari ST), here you had to figure things out, which was great! That part has gone missing in most games as we get ‘guided’ towards what we need to do. Dishonored brought it back when we were left to our own devices to figure it out how to get it done. Which makes the brothel level awesome as in the second play through I found a very different way to get into that place. It was even more awesome when I heard how someone had an even more elusive way to get from point 1 to point 2, when the developer stated live ‘that works?’, the house was brought down (in a good way). This is what give a game greatness, this is what makes a game 90% not 75%, a lesson the bigger developer never really figured out. It gives support to my view ‘If you aren’t willing to take a leap, you might never be a failure, but you will in equal measure never become a legend’. A truth some others (like Hello Games) did learn, perhaps a small team of 11 will actually communicate?

So prey is coming and what is shown looks pretty amazing. Now, we cannot decide on 8 minutes, which I understand, yet the game is several months away, so get properly informed and try not to seek out too many spoilers, because a game like this requires a surprise or two. The first hit you’ll get in the first few seconds of the game showing off. What could be a luxurious airfield terminal, or perhaps a 5 star hotel, with golden shine of polished brass, large windows looking out into the night is actually a space station. As the view turned, the large atrium view, the chesterfield sofa’s give that world a shine, apart from the smoothest graphics (likely 4K PC), the sharpness of the signs, the details on the walls and floors. It reminded me of my first game on my second PC (April 1998), it was a Pentium II-450 which was the latest in those days, with a Diamond Labs Viper V330 card and an Illiama monitor, Unreal was the smoothest game ever released and on a viper card the main menu rotating on the Unreal world was something no one had ever seen before to that degree. That same feeling creeps up to me when looking at Prey. That feeling I did not get with Bioshock or Dishonored, which are very good games in the graphical sense. Somehow, this game has that little extra. In addition, the uses of the Glue gun will show you that you get to see a lot more than you consider when you see the different ways the glue gun can be used, or as stated earlier, perhaps you find yet another way the developer didn’t consider, because that tends to be the result of those who are creative. There is a lot more to see and speak of, yet, I feel that that my point has been made and revealing other spoilers seems pointless as there will be other places that show you more of this game. And this game will not be alone. Both Horizon Zero Dawn and Mass Effect Andromeda will like Prey woe you for your attention. And as each of these three would be a great buy, there is plenty of evidence that not everyone can just go out and buy all three games. Some are already trying to get you to 4K gaming, Mass Effect is stating that it is specifically 4K, meaning that without a 4K TV, you will lose out. Again, not everyone will be able to afford that at present, or even in a few months’ time. From that point, you need to consider what to get. In my view, getting whatever can run 4K now, games you can still play fine, then when you do upgrade the TV, you can replay and enjoy these works of art again in 4K. This might leave you with a question mark as some will have heard issues on the Last of us and 4K mode on PS4 pro. Eurogamer gave us some of the highlights (at http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-the-last-of-us-remastered-patch-108-for-ps4-pro-analysed), whilst giving us a pretty complete low down on the game.

Yet, I feel that they equally missed the boat to some extent. I doubt that this was one on purpose. I reckon that they are so deep in games that the one element that they forgot was the one we could all have forgotten. You see Naughty dog achieved something we did not consider, the game, originally launched in June 2013 is a game that was made for PS3, launched 5 months before the PS4. The game was already an exceptional game, well worthy of its 96% rating. So, when the remastered for PS4 was launched in July 2014, many went to get that wunderkind as the game itself remained a legendary achievement. So the issue I consider many missed, is that this game, remastered from a previous generation console is running 4K on consoles 2 generations later. Of course patches are needed and a few little issues still remain, but the fact that Naughty dog got this to work shows how excellent their coding skills are. The fact that a few patches are needed is less important than the fact that they got it to work in the first place. So even as we hear from Gamespot less than an hour ago that it is not all perfect (all complete with an advertisement, asking us to pre-order a game that was released on October 7th, shows more on the failing of their marketing divisions in other places. So even as they are all critical (which is a good thing), showing that frame rate dropped from 60 framer per second to 57 frames per second seems a little over the top when we consider that the game was a PS3 game, it was remastered and that was done 2 years before this point where PS4 pro is released. I am happy that Naughty dog is taking the effort to patch their game, because the Last of Us is a perfect game, a game that is an absolute must to any person who likes more than racing or shooting, a real RPG with a few challenges, now running perfectly acceptable on a system 2 generations later (read: OK, 1.5 generations later). The fact that this remains unmentioned is a little bit of an issue, because a proper illustration of the setting goes a long way in people accepting that some patches are cool and really cool that a software house takes this effort 2 years later, an issue that was not mentioned either.

What is interesting is that the reviewer makes a good case for new games to have display setting in game at their disposal, especially native resolution controls and not via the console main interface. That makes a lot of sense and it would be in the best interests of Arkane, Electronic Arts, Guerrilla Games et al to take this seriously into consideration immediately, for any game currently in development for 4K and not later after the facts when too many gamers start nagging.

So no matter what we see next, be mindful of the origin of a game and as we start moving towards 4K gaming, also realise that the face of console gaming is adjusting the ‘mass need’ of 4K game options. I think that many are just trying to sound cool and some are actually into 4K resolution, yet the fact that it requires close to $2K to get decent 4K will remain a hurdle for many gamers, especially the non-mature ones for some time to come, still, as the XB1s has a 2TB edition and as the PS4pro allows for a 2TB drive, both are now awesome options. The XB1s now wins as it has a 4K drive, meaning that 4K movies are optional now without having to spend from $150 upwards to get a 4K movie player, making the Xbox a great choice. As the high end 4K players are currently well over $300, there is no way that I am considering 4K movies at present, yet with the Xbox, we get that option, or we could consider that we are getting a console for a mere $250 extra. Yet this was not about the consoles!

The reality is that the new direction of 4K will be impacting console gamers in ways they are not all expecting. This is actually the logical path to see, even though consoles for the most followed the TV resolution era, the generation that followed (PS3, Xbox 360) was on par with the high resolution TV’s. This is also why Sony offered a free PS3 with the first batches of digital TV’s (which is how I got my PS3). Now the roles are reversing and the consoles are leading the need for new TV’s, although those high resolution games would still be really playable on a ‘normal’ TV, and you will play in 1080p and not 4K mode. Still this change will likely drive TV sales over the next year. Personally I have been happy with the current resolution and until there is a clear need for price adjusting (down) before I am getting a new TV (the one I have now is awesome). What is equally fun is that I have been here before, that PC I had? It was about five years later when my ‘New’ PC was no longer able to deal with the latest games. I could still play them, but at lower resolution, which was really funny that I could only play Unreal Tournament setting all to the lowest setting. However, when I did upgrade to a newer PC and set all to highest, the view changed well over 100%, it is that part that gamers will face on consoles, which will drive the need to replay games.

So, as we now see the play through of new and upcoming games, it is important to remain playful, yet not become prey to the need of technology. It is an expensive track to go and in the end you still lose, because becoming an early adopter in gaming is a lot more fund draining than you bargained for. Yet the feeling you get when you see prey and the jolt to be able to play this game at its maximum potential is equally riveting, lowering the threshold of early adopter in gaming by a fair bit.

 

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November 23, 2016 · 13:20

When games become real

It is one thing to stalk a person, sneak up on that person and slice his throat, it is not that big a deal when we do this on a console or PC, but when we do it for real it is murder, whether targeted killing or not. It is warfare against most often a non-combatant. And when it is simple murder, we are outraged (or we should be) and if the rules of evidence are clear and fulfilled you go to prison, unless you are in the Netherlands and you kill a child and two grandparents whilst speeding, in that case you get 120 hours of community service (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-Q0Mg9tioM) . So, at times things are not equal, that has never been a surprise.

Yet, what happens when the lines are blurred? Let’s take a step back to 2014, after a year of delay Watchdogs was released. It was over hyped in many ways, yet it was not awful and it was as we needed to recognise an entirely new game, a new Intellectual Property in gaming. So like many, I thought it was a flawed game, but it had potential. So, I kept an open mind for the sequel that was released a week ago. Well, I have spent enough hours of game time to form an opinion. Graphically the game is passable (read: awesome in some ways) and as an open world it is pretty impressive. I think that San Francisco as a choice for several reasons was the deal breaker that took the game from failure to optional success. I reckon that in another major city this game would not have worked. Whether you visit Nudle (read: Google), whether you see Pier 39, the Rock or just Jack London Square. The game gave me the feeling that I was actually seeing San Francisco, and let’s not forget that big bridge!

As an open world it is one of the best released open world locations. I think Ubisoft did what I hoped it would and as such, the jump from Assassins Creed to Assassins Creed 2 has been equalled from the stern Altair we went to Ezio Auditore. In Watchdogs we went from the driven Aiden Pearce to the data tyranny opposing Marcus Holloway. This African American is more than just likeable, like Ezio Auditore he is the good hearted scoundrel we all wish we were. In a similar way to AC, this game is also a large leap forward. They are not there yet, because the game still has issues on several levels, but overall the game is more than just playable. In the first game, I quickly grew a dislike to driving, that feeling was not present in this game. Traffic was a lot better, less annoying (apart from some Taco truck, which might be an inside joke), the game has a much better setting towards stealth, it could improve in many ways, but it is a lot better than it was. Control of Marcus is still a question in some specific cases, yet we might digress too much towards Assassins Creed and this is no Assassins Creed game.

What is above all others is the story, this one is sublime in several ways. Those stinkers (read: level of envy) at Ubisoft Montreal did something brilliant. Even though the game comes with disclaimers of fiction and coincidence if too alike, but they did manage to pull a rabbit out of a bow tie. You see, the world we move towards as per 2017 is in the game. It will not be  like the game in reality, yet when we see the data gathering that is happening now and when we see the 5G world as it is to happen (at https://5g.co.uk/guides/what-is-5g/), parts that were described in my earlier blog ‘Non iudicium tuum‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2016/10/18/non-iudicium-tuum). We need to get an eerie feeling, you see the accusations for 2 years on Facebook selling your data/information, and we see mentions of Google doing the same.

We see these accusations and the opposite defence by both that this is not happening. It is not what I believe, because I do not think that this is what is exactly happening. Yet, when Facebook offers the deepest and most granular population for your advertisement, it seems to me that it has access via portals to offer to advertisers a selection of people. Google does the same, it offers a portal for advertisers even though those advertisers will never know the identity of the individual; their advertisements go to the most likely interested people. So data is not sold, it is a semantic on how people are approached and by what means. This reality will grow over the next 5 years, especially through 5G and that is the group watchdogs 2 is now dealing with. You see, the reality of 5G is offering Smart mobility, domotics and Utility management. It also offers smart security and surveillance. Yet what Watch dogs 1 and now 2 in a larger extent addresses is that one man’s smart is another man’s stupidity. So is the world we move to as in the games or not? You see, the reality is catching up to the games and this game is showing the dangers of no privacy. The issue in reality is seen to some extent (at http://theconversation.com/there-really-is-a-link-between-your-facebook-posts-and-your-personality-68186), where we see “Privacy campaigners this week applauded Facebook’s decision to block big UK insurance firm Admiral from using young people’s social media data to help set their car insurance premiums. But this is just the start of a debate over the use of social media information for such purposes“, yet this the reality we faced for a while. The event seen in November this year happened in real life less than a month before Ubisoft voiced it in its game where people saw premiums rise because of life choices (like ordering pizza) and a mere 10 months after I mentioned it in ‘Double standards, no resolve (part 2)‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2015/01/26/double-standards-no-resolve-part-2/), where I stated: “So if we do the following math 32% of 70 million (falsely assuming that they were all American gamers), then we now get the number of people confronted with a $144 a year additive. So in one swoop, this data set gives way to an additional $3.2 billion for insurance fees. Data is going to be that simply applied sooner than you think“, and guess what, UK insurance firm Admiral did try just that. Yet as we read: “Facebook’s decision to block” is just a shot across the bow, because when the genie is out of the bottle putting him/her back is much less of an option and data tends to get out into the open. If you doubt that, just ask the Mail server IT person of the Clinton family, he can assure you of that.

In this now, we get the point when gaming and reality get uncomfortably close. It is one thing when we play call of duty where it is just guns, guts and adrenaline. The reality of war tends to hold us back from doing stupid things, yet what happens when the reality is merely copying a file, how will we stop acting when we have misguided ourselves into believing that it is just a harmless file? When we see: “The Admiral case could well be remembered as just the beginning of a tortuous back and forth over using digital footprints in financial modelling“, yet the danger is seen in other ways too, yet it is not voiced. We pay a certain premium for a certain risk, yet it takes years to get a discount for loyal non claiming clients. It only takes one algorithm to raise it by 10% plus on collected data that is alleged of personality not a given and as such we get to pay for being social in many ways. This is a clear case of worry at the very end where we see “As long as companies use our data transparently and with our consent, why not allow both parties to an insurance transaction to rely on what appears to be very accurate data?“, because it might give a $10 relief for a healthy young person. It will cost anyone who had been in an accident an additional $200 a year and we have decades of data that these companies are run by greed driven people, board members who do want their 8 figure bonus and giving discounts is creating a gap of getting that bonus. Meaning that we sell our neighbours away for a few dollars whilst the neighbour is cut off from health insurance because he fell and hit his head, that is what the message on Facebook said and it did not come with an admittance or with evidence. That is the danger and Watch Dogs 2 shows that in clarity as you move from hacking router to hacking router.

The 5G guide gives us: “By 2020 it’s predicted that there will be 50-100 billion devices connected worldwide, many of which will need continuous data access“, which is a low estimate. Here at University I see people with a Laptop, a smart phone, some with additional Tablets and music stream devices. Now some of these elements overlap, some are used strictly separate, yet in all this the low estimate of 50 billion devices can easily be surpassed before 2020, and connection are growing in other ways too. Most TV’s are now Android enabled and connected to the home network, so are PC’s and consoles, so the average family will have 8-12 devices connected. That whilst the RFID world is only now starting up within the domestic household sphere, so this number will drastically change soon enough. This is what the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility team advertised today “At least 60% of security breaches start with employee credentials getting into the wrong hands. With modern mobility and bring-your-own-device solutions, protecting your data starts with protecting the identities of your organisation’s employees. That’s why we’ve made identity security central to Microsoft Enterprise Mobility + Security (EMS). Discover how focusing on identity can help make your organisation more secure“, I am not questioning on how needed this is, because mobile security needs to be on the top list of any person, whether as an employee or as a personal reason. You see a system that requires over a 100 patches on an annual basis has issues. Now, we need to accept that this was always the case and a system this big will always have flaws, yet when we see the level of issues in an age where non-repudiation is almost more important than digital evidence gives rise to the reality we face and the games we play.

Are we an algorithm?

Are we real is the question we should ask and whilst we play we are not the real us, we play to be Marcus Holloway in San Francisco, Ezio Auditore in Venice or Geralt of Rivia in some other place. We are seeing that Marcus Holloway is showing us a world that is the one we seem to live in and that should be a little more upsetting than it actually seems to be, because we remain in denial. Although, all things being equal, me working in a place like the Delaware data farm would be a dream come true. Who would not go weak at the knees seeing the tens of thousands of data servers all streaming data? The game story gives us several parts, many I will not speak here because I do not want to give away the game, it is so much better when you experience it for yourself, but the truth will hit you as it remains close to the reality we now see in newspapers, although without 5G none of it can come to pass to the degree we see. The question that we are faced in reality is that as we are valued and weighted by our social interactions, have we been minimalised to a mere algorithm, which then leads me to the question are Sociopaths soon the only people valued correctly? It certainly seems to be the case when we consider the elements of the Admiral insurance scenario. The SK Telecom white paper on 5G (at http://www.sktelecom.com/img/pds/press/SKT_5G%20White%20Paper_V1.0_Eng.pdf) goes as far on page 40 on combining Business Intelligence (BI), Network Intelligence (NI) to form within IoT (Internet of Things) to form Service Intelligence (SI), that whilst we now get one of the earliest official papers to set SI as a “It knows me better than I know Myself“, this will vamp soon enough as they state it themselves as ‘Telco Asset-based personalised service‘, which is pretty much the founding father of Mobile based Software as a Service, based on collected data. It is a stretch to call this a personal data based service level agreement, yet, I wonder how far off I am when I do that. In addition, at the IP conference last week, I predicted that by 2022, the total amount of Trade Marks will have grown by 300% on a global scale. 5G will be driving new versions and new iterations of corporations, many who missed the initial digital age boat, those will run like crazy to not miss a second of the next wave, because those who do will be corporations that become non-existent. If there is one part that Google AdWords and Facebook advertising are proving is that granularity will become the next key in those who advertise, although there is a case to be made that the current data at present is not voluminous enough to currently completely rely on this advertisement track, implying that this path seems to be less than 18 months away.

This is where we are going and Ubisoft was more than a little brilliant implying darker versions of reality in this game, especially in the San Francisco light of living, where freedom of identity is everyone’s Personal Jesus. So in light of that, the game does hold up, due to the improvements and in larger pat to the stories that connect to one another in the game, the fact that some elements are taken from life almost here is just the icing on the cake making for a sweet gaming treat.

So even as the corporate world at large has been ignoring non-repudiation as a bad taste, we see that 5G is no longer making that an affordable option as the collected data is  going to be key in the time of personal services. Don’t take my word for it, Edgar Allen Poe is stating the same thing on Facebook, as did Shakespeare who gave me his fax number (bonus points for those who know what film that was from). In an age of SaaS, SI and service personalisation’s, we will see a dependency on identity and more important the linking of certain elements, which also implies that messing with that part will be the prankster’s new ‘O’ (for Orgasm), giving non-repudiation a very new light in security requirement on a level we have not cared for before, although, the wrong people have not been not-caring on that requirement for a little too long. So as we realise that there is a reality to these things, as our reality caught up with the games we play, we might wonder where Marcus Holloway is. So Ruffin Prentiss (at @RPrentissIII), you need to get your ass in gear and save millions of potential victims from themselves soon enough!

smartfridgeNow, we know that an actor might not have the skills to do what is needed, yet in all fairness, some actors became president, so the call is not that far from centre, in addition, many require decent degrees to get a gig nowadays, not just in communication. The reality that Watchdogs uses is based on real issues, some providers offer ‘zero day exploit protection‘ at premium price, so when we saw “By 2020 it’s predicted that there will be 50-100 billion devices connected worldwide“, how many will have been engineered by the lowest bidder? How many zero day exploits will we be confronted with? Now, many of those devices will have no real information, but what about that ‘intelligent fridge’? Remember Admiral Insurance? What happens when he has that juicy list of your fridge? The fish fingers (optional with custard), the Pizza, all those sugary drinks. What happens when your parties become the health risk you advertised in your fridge, what happens when your health insurance premiums start going up? That reality is not that far-fetched, because Facebook isn’t giving that data at present, does not mean that Admiral Insurance et al cannot get their fingers on the data it wants and needs to spike premiums. That is the issue we all face. And the image of the ‘smart’ fridge is already 3 years old, implying we have come a lot further in less time. The reality of growth is here, but so is the realisation of personal secured privacy data and it did not require a game to give that reality to us, but Ubisoft is bringing this story in an excellent way, a way that should give cause to realise that our private needs of safety are not being met and we are giving away whatever privacy we had much easier and freely than we admit, because we do not realise what else can come of it.

Even as Google is calling this ‘the year of mobile’, there is every clear indication that 2017 needs to be ‘the year of personal data safety’. I wonder how many people realise how little they have done for themselves in that regard and if you have a PC or Console, Ubisoft has a game that can help you figure that part out, even though it is still a little futuristic for now.

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October 25, 2016 · 14:19

The risk of androgynous automation

Today we see another message, another prediction and another approach to make people nervous. This time it is a combined effort from the fields of Oxford University and Deloitte, they find that ‘77% probability of ‘repetitive and predictable’ roles being automated‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/oct/25/850000-public-sector-jobs-automated-2030-oxford-university-deloitte-study).

So how true is this?

Actually, there is a lot of truth in it. The truth is not just a given, it is an essential need. Yet the headline ‘Study says 850,000 UK public sector jobs could be automated by 2030‘ is a problem, not one of disaster, but one of opportunity possibly missed. The article gives us a few things, including links to the full report (indirect), which is a good thing and let’s be honest, Deloitte is no PwC; they stand miles above that group of Excel users. My first issue is with page 2. Not because it is incorrect, but the difference from my view is as I see it more than semantics. You see, they state “eliminating the budget deficit – into an era of parallel challenges as it moves towards Brexit“. I believe that Brexit will enable over time a speedier recovery of the deficit, it will be no picnic, but it will happen. Which is why I in earlier writing opposed the view the independent had. They wrote “Britain’s largest banks are planning to move business overseas due to uncertainty over the Brexit process, the head of the British Bankers’ Association has warned“, where my response in a decently diplomatic tone was “So, let them fuck off! The moment they feel the initial 2018 collapse of the Euro and the US Dollar, which will be voiced as ‘our currency will face a temporary contraction of value’, then they will see the cost they face and the revenue they are now missing out of. So, feel free to consider to return after learning that mistake under conditions of massive administrative fees for consideration of inclusion into the UK economy“. This is not an empty view, when the UK returns to strength, those moved away will see contracting economies in Germany, where the Deutsche Bank will be desperate to retain business out of fear of the damage of ‘written off’ collapsing corporations. France will be in a similar state, but there Crédit Agricole and Natixis are the Powerbrokers and neither will consider some ‘grocery bank’ that is relocating to ‘new shores’, so these moving banks will not be too welcome there. And several other nations are in a similar setting. So what is left? Italy? Greece? Good luck with that idea!

So as the UK is facing new issues and new challenges, Deloitte is showing that it is not all roses. The report shows on page 12 “The OECD and IMF views are backed up by OBR analysis that suggests spending on investment, public services and benefits are the interventions most likely to provide rapid economic boosts while providing a platform for medium and longer term growth“, this illuminates an earlier issue that has been mentioned by yours truly (aka: me) more than once. It isn’t just the £11.2 NHS IT failure the UK Labour party gave its citizens. The bigger issue is that governments at large have had a failing grade in managing such projects. Over micro-managing made these projects too massive and in the end no longer feasible or realistic. If this is the path, than it needs to precede an altered adjustment in procedures on how to manage and set these projects. The issue we see that still is required for the NHS, also clearly shows that the political interference tends to be a hindrance rarely a solution. However, the political part cannot be removed, but the entire setup can be altered in another way. A clear definition of what is required, that would after this point be scrutinised by proper IT specialists working for the government (to keep that part of the costing down), only then when that part has been dealt with, can the project move into a new field. If this was the Law and Mental Health, it might be best phrased that the government needs an IT version of a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Such a manual would need a data requirement part, and application part, a data networking part and a security part. Until such an approach is made, the need that we see, will end up being a massive expenditure towards the Exchequers chest, with the risk of no result and no alternative. These paths make sense in two ways. In the first there will be a lot more clarity on what is requested, required and delivered. There will be less contractual mud and as such whomever took the project will be responsible for the delivered bad boy and it would show a clear path of adjustment and repairs (where needed).

There is even a new side in this, it will shape the required need of technical universities. Because as they become involved, delivering the hours and manpower towards these projects, the costing will be reduced, the Universities will also gain an income and their students would end up with a partial career and years of work and subsequent income. You see, the need to move away from these ‘conceptual consultants’ and selling concepts not products is an essential need to make it all work. There is even an additional benefit that larger IT corporations will lose their grip on governmental budgets and it will serve a wider audience, a change that has been overdue for at least 10 years.

The report gives on page 20 the public’s attitude. My issue is number 2. “More people expect public services to get worse because of Brexit“, I am not sure if that is complete. It is not incorrect, but the point of focus would reset really quickly when we consider the Guardian where we read “Deloitte’s previous work has shown that all sectors will be affected by automation in the next two decades, with 74% of jobs in transportation and storage, 59% in wholesale and retail trades and 56% in manufacturing having a high chance of being automated“, any automation where we see the change from personal towards an automated androgynous system, tends to cause waves of rejection and stress. Even today, we still have an automated irritation when we hear ‘press 1 for sales‘. Until we can upgrade these systems into a much better evolved system, automation will fluctuate into people seeking other avenues in acquiring that what they need. In addition, there is still an aversion to automated sales in some areas as distribution misses the quality marks the recipient demands in some cases. Now, we can all agree that there is plenty of evolution in this field and the evolution is growing in many directions and in long before 2030 we will have systems that are vastly superior to the systems we have today, that is the way the beast tends to work. There is also a given that we cannot yet predict how that will be in 5 years, yet all this requires a solid foundation between sales, services and facilitation/distribution and that part is currently still missing.

Now we get to the part that is a little bit of an issue with the report. We see that the top issue is ‘Better public transport‘, but better how? We see it on page 21 of the full report, so when we see ‘What things would you say would most improve public services in your area?’ Here, I miss a part where we see what the audience now feels is missing or failing. Is it prices, the amounts of times the public transport comes in, how busy it is (no sitting options), you see, they all come with extra costs. More busses means more costs. The solution that seemingly addresses all three mentioned, but is that the failure, the flaw or is it something else? I think that this issue remains subserving to the public’s personal issues ‘Poverty, inequality and low pay‘ as well as ‘Housing‘, which is all about the quality of life for most people. How to address that part is also an issue and automation does not address these policies in any way. Which is respectively 20% and 18% of an asked population of 1099 adults, which in my view is a population way too small to set this ‘State of the State‘ to. For a decent level of reliability, especially as the UK is a mere 65 million people, having a response quota 5,000-10,000 on a national level would have been an essential first. If the results were weighted towards the UK demographics, than it is likely that this report will have additional ‘flaws’, making me wonder who signed off on the requested paper?

There is another side the Guardian gives “However, in contrast to the doomsayers who predict mass unemployment, the firm has argued that over the last 140 years automation has created more work than it destroyed“, I am on the side of Deloitte here. In addition to creating more work, from the issues I raised earlier when considering that 10%-20% is moving towards retirement, the new jobs that are brought will be largely long term jobs and as the setting from tertiary IT education focusses on the governmental automation needs it already has as well as those we will likely see over the next 5 years, the overall quality of the workers in this field could rise almost exponentially when set this against the prepared workforce in the last 10 years. The result of better and more focussed workers will also increase the curve of automation as well as the quality of it. Part of the new data world is discussed on page 34 of that report. the quote “A police and crime commissioner compared data security challenges in the public sector to those in banking, concluding that banks “have secure information and have got away with it”” reads a little weird, yet the foundation of it is a requirement factor that will grow immensely. That field will grow in two ways. The first is the growing field of non-repudiation, a clear register that a certain person accessed certain data and only that person could have done it. This field especially if a cause for concern because there is a gap in technology here and especially in the case of NHS data, that gap needs to be filled (as well as several other fields). Should you doubt that, or prefer to trivialise this, then look towards Ashley Madison, the Office of Personnel Management, Anthem, Hacking Team and Premera. In effect totalling the endangered personal details of up to 150 million people. And this is only the hacks of 2015. When we see the upcoming move towards domotics, the overall danger of personal data getting out has the option of growing the number of people exposed by 1000%, basically a lot more than the complete UK population, at that stage even the sheep, sheepdogs and pony’s on Shetland could find their personal details online. This industry will grow, with a large club of international career opportunities in IT and the growing niche of Data Security.

In the end, we can agree with the numbers, or we can disagree. No matter how the meat is sliced, the recommendation on page 49 are in the end what matters. That part reads a little too diplomatic, but in all fairness they are points that count. Yet, as I personally see this, especially when set against page 2, I am missing something. You see, in my view, there is an item 6. I would state “This state will need to grow into a different dynamic (Government, Non-Profit and Commercial), it requires to grow its government policies by actively engaging and hiring the final year students into its governmental workplace and make them part of the IT evolution“.

It is my view that corporate needs will always exist, yet by preparing these students, graduating them and for them to adhere to corporate policies as they sell their innovations to government is all good for those corporations and I am not against that, because they will get a massive dose of that throughout their careers. There is nothing wrong by having these places of education create part of the engines of solution for the UK government. It falls directly in line with the thoughts in recommendations 2, 3 and 4.

The paper is a lot more than just about IT, even though IT takes the forefront here. When we look at the Guardian quotes “Interactive roles, which require “a high degree of personal interaction, including jobs such as teachers, social workers and police officers”, face a 23% chance of automation“, “senior staff in “cognitive roles that mostly require strategic thinking and complex reasoning, including finance directors and chief executives”, 14% have a chance of being automated” as well as “but the number of health service staff in this “interactive” job is expected to fall to 266,000 by 2030“. This grows another side in the IT business. Over the next 10 years we will see evolution and change as we see CRM systems and the interpretation of ‘What is a CRM system?’

The interpretation of ‘manage and analyse customer interactions and data throughout the customer lifecycle‘ has gone through massive change due to places like Google and systems like Facebook. This is an ongoing path and the inclusion of 5G and domotics over the next 5 years will create even more waves. It is starting to be almost essential that governments at large (not just the UK) are grabbing these changes by the proverbial balls before we see another iteration of lagging adapted technology. It is not the requirement to be ahead, but to be ‘inclusively ready’ will turn the tables on many issues. To be ready to include within the current technological iteration would give an additional decade of data and opportunities, whilst not adhering to these large changes could become increasingly costly over time. In an age where we move towards automation the need to be ahead is not the most essential one, it is staying behind where the danger lies. In that regard, you end up having to adhere towards whatever the commercial technologist brings, instead of shaping technology in ways where it is most useful for you.

A lesson most have learned the expensive way in this generation.

If there is one part I have to disagree with, than it is “Our wider research on automation also shows that while jobs are displaced by automation, new, higher-skilled and better paying jobs are created as a result“, the issue is not the need for these people, but as governments are no longer able to afford certain pricing plans (as those commercial managers hope they could price them at), it becomes a market where the cheapest provider is willing to offer it on, meaning that junior staff gets to be under higher scrutiny for less money, in a place where unemployment is relatively high, these hiring managers will get away with it. I reckon that the market will positively adjust by 2021, but that is still 5 years away. Unless you are a niche specialist, it will be your fate, but overall the quality of life would start to go up by 2019 (due to rising cost of living, aka rent), that is if you have the right degrees.

A slightly gloomy picture that is absent of doom and still a lot better than the issues the EU population overall is facing over the next 3 years.

 

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October 18, 2016 · 14:13

Non iudicium tuum

This telling is a little overdue. You see, when you are looking at one aspect, when the aspect is blended into the frame, it tends to be a larger puzzle to decipher where the colours have ended up. You see, when you start the painting, you work with blue, yellow and perhaps a little red. So before you know it, you have in addition purple, Green, Orange and at times brown appears. Yet, how much of yellow is in each of the blends? Do not think it is a black and white path, it is tainted in contrast and the one trying to decipher it all is in the largest of dangers by letting his or her ego speak in the extent that the amount of yellow that made green is used. It isn’t always science, it is at times art. This is the path of intelligence analyses and whomever is pointing its finger at a mere correlation table of SIGINT (or Business Intelligence) will for the most never have a clue what got themselves into that number and they end up painting themselves into a corner, the deadliest of actions in any given analytical equation.

So when I initially got to the fact that the foundation of the Huawei revenue was down 4.25%, I was looking at the base of it. You see, like the blending of colours, Huawei is also getting blended. Samsung would be the strongest indicator why their profits are up by a fair share. In addition as Apple disappointed to the smallest equation is an equal measure of the impact, yet Google is about to hit the revenue ball out of the park with the Pixel and Pixel XL, where it now seems that filling the initial US and UK orders is no longer feasible, the demand for this communication jewel is crushing all expectations raising the bar by a sizeable amount, something we have not seen since the early days of the Apple iPhone.

You see, in July the Financial Times reported on operating margins shrinking, even though revenue surged 40% (for Huawei), the quotes aren’t too ‘informative’, you see the answer isn’t always easy when a brand is global. Yet this quote will help “But while revenue surged, picking up from 30 per cent growth in the same period last year, Huawei’s operating margin shrank from 18 per cent to 12 per cent, the privately owned company said on Monday“, yes the revenue went up by a lot, mainly because over the previous year Huawei was very aggressive offering the P7 at such discounts that in its league it was almost the only choice to make. Other models were sold at very sharp prices, giving shoppers clear reasons to select something that seemed too good to be true. The rest at the Financial Times is pretty spot on, but incomplete. (at https://www.ft.com/content/12a427e2-5232-11e6-befd-2fc0c26b3c60).

It is the next quote I have an issue with “Sabrina Meng, Huawei’s chief financial officer, predicted the strong sales would continue through the year: “We are confident that Huawei will maintain its current momentum, and round out the full year in a positive financial position backed by sound ongoing operations”“, as stated before, people are getting more and more clued in on what is required in a smartphone, as they went the way of Samsung and others in limiting what was available the market is slowing down for them, it will slow down faster and faster as they ignored to comprehend their mobile customers. The lesson Apple knew and Google comprehends at presale is the reason that the Huawei and other markets will slow down even further. Don’t get me wrong, they will still make a profit, but their mobile share will take a hit (when we exclude the Samsung shift). By listening to the wrong analysts and not realising that their production path could have been optimised by not giving in to fragments, the margin was kept low. This is a choice you can make, and it comes with consequences.

Huawei is following Microsoft, Motorola, Sony and a few others in this. And as we see the news in the corner on how others are following the P9 dual lens, they are all ignoring the main element in all this, it is storage plain and simple! That is, for the consumer users, in addition, when we see Ericsson dive deep down into a 94% drop, we need to consider the quote that IT News gave (at http://www.itnews.com.au/news/ericsson-profits-plunge-94-percent-439317) “Acting CEO Jan Frykhammar was confident Ericsson could fight back, noting it had faced a similar situation in 2007-2009 when it was waiting for demand for 4G technology to kick in“, you see, ‘waiting’ is the issue, you either take the lead and jump or let the revenue slide by, that was the consequence. They gave up the mobile smartphone a long time ago, as there was no way to compete with the market. In addition, Ericsson has been dropping the ball on a few telecom fronts.

I think it is relatively safe to state that there is a lull in the Telecommunication market (in general). The final quote “Our result is significantly lower than (what) we expected, with a particularly weak end of the quarter, and deviates from what we previously have communicated regarding market development,” said acting Ericsson CEO Jan Frykhammar” this sounds like an answer, yet it is not.

Is he showing that he had no way to forecast what the market was doing?
Is there no correct focus on ‘market development’?

The Ericsson case is showing us that there is more than one issue. In the same state we have to see that Huawei is a lot more than just mobile phones, as it is with Ericsson, yet as I personally believe it to be, some places aren’t thinking through, at l;east not to the extent that they should be thinking it through. They are trying to get back to the ’98 time when they were getting rich by selling concepts. I see it as backward thinking. Ericsson states on their website “Opportunities in 5G! We asked 650 executives from 8 industries how they use communications technology today, which use cases are likely to dominate their industry, and what business reasons are driving them to move to 5G“, which is not untrue, but as we see the PR machine waking up 4 years early on the biggest opportunities that are eligibly coming, whilst there are still 4 general meetings and as I see it no less than 8 shareholders meetings, so focussing on the now is extremely essential (don’t you agree?), this is why Ericsson got to drop 94%, the ‘now’ is not covered and we only have yesterday’s technology to compare it to. If you wonder about 5G, look here:

https://5g.co.uk/guides/what-is-5g/

what-is-5g-euroWhat is important is “Huawei is planning to launch the first 5G pilot network with its partners in 2018. Interoperability testing is to be completed in 2019 ahead of a commercial launch in 2020. Ericsson is planning to demonstrate 5G at the Winter Olympics in South Korea (as is Samsung) and at the World Cup in Russia, both in 2018“, this sounds nice, and it actually is, but consider that the devices that need to be there are not created yet, so they are dealing with old tech that is soon no longer interesting, whilst todays needs that shows clear forward momentum thinking is not shown by either and relying on 32GB mobile devices is definitely not it. So the consumer at present is looking at buying at least 2 more mobiles in the next 5 years, so having one now that last 3 years is a massive requirement as I see it. In addition, lowering the upcoming threshold is an initial requirement. The image on that page, shown here, is the first step. The image shows two elements. In the first we see ‘smart mobility‘ and ‘smart wearables‘ in the second we see ‘domotics‘ and ‘Entertainment, apps beyond imagination‘. This gets us now back to ‘Viewpoint to a point of view‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.wordpress.com/2016/10/05/viewpoint-to-a-point-of-view). Google wasn’t just ‘on the ball‘ they are now leading the game and are the new game deciders in the field where everyone wants to play. In that presentation on Google Home they showed to be active in all four elements, and they are now leading in at least two of them. That is the part Huawei ignored. And as so called 2018 G5 partners they had the option to lead the field, they just decided not to do so. By using the initial Apple approach, the Pixel and Pixel XL offer the 128 GB solution for $150 more. Meaning that your phone could last you until 2020 and only when the 5G requirement is actually needed, the current Google solution will give you some of what 5G is supposed to offer, so you will only be upgrading the centre of the hub of your domotics, namely your mobile phone. The rest will most likely already be there, so that is why we see the shift.

So is my view tainted?
It is!

I look at a lot more elements than the consumer will, yet in all this, the consumer is already getting exposure to these elements and as such we see a level of contrasting within the consumers choice that we haven’t seen before, that elements needs to be taken into account as well. Whasun Jho who has published works regarding building Telecom markets. As he sees it and I agree we see a contrasting in the Telecom markets where we see the growth of facility based competition versus service based competition, I believe that the second is only a field of combat if your hardware isn’t up to specs to deal with the wave that will follow over the next 5 years, so in that Huawei, as I stated in the past had the option to grow the market to rule as they went with sharp competition in 2015, they now gave it away by seeking margins instead of overpowered ruling through superior options. In my view as we see where limitations were the only options, it was about competition between providers of the same or similar services (in Australia Telstra versus Optus) and by giving in, they are now losing market share that I stated is a base drop of 4.25% and could rise to 11% before Christmas, almost literally depending on the power of Google’s devices as accepted by the global consumers. In this situation, it is not a given that Google would switch to a Software As A Service path, but by offering the path on corporate whilst leaving the consumers with open and negligible costs, the image as shown implies that ‘smart’ elements and ‘domotics’ will give us Google at number one, with a massive advantage for the longest of times, that is, unless the players change their ways and right fast. Because when proven to work, customer loyalty will soon be the most important metric in this telecom shift. Samsung gambled and got hit hard, yet they are not out. One burning battery does not stop a company the size of Samsung and a lot of burning batteries makes for a fun roasting of Marshmellows (pun intended).

So here we see the use of colours. Which colour is what is not a given and does not matter, what matters is what the consumers and what the corporations need, in the next 3-4 years it will all be about what will last longer, not some hardware as a service that requires annual replacement. Ericsson shows us what happens when you are not proactive on the ball and there will be the licking of wounds for some time there, in addition, as we see the mobile iteration (Experia Z to Z5), actions that I call to be an iterative market that has no chance to survive. sweetening deals like a couple of movies has no place here as I see it, it seems like a quick fix and it is, yet in that Sony has made that mistake a few times too often and Huawei should have learned from those failures. They were all options that could have been avoided and it will hurt Huawei, yet in all this they too are not down or out. Just a little bruised as I see it. So we will see a market that will shift over the next 4-6 weeks. Yet in the end there is no certainty on how matters are impacted. What is clear is that the Telecom market will shift in a massive way, those who do not shift with that market are most likely the players that will not make it to 2019, an extreme prediction, yet will I be wrong?

Consider what the market is trying to imbue to us between 2017 and 2021/2022. As per 2018 you should only consider a device that will last that initial transition (software without the 5G speed), and the one after that will have the speed if you want to play on that level. So buying with clear common sense could save you $1000-$1800, that is for most people serious money, for those relying on a new plan with a new phone, you better remember that soon such a solution might not be that easy to get, or that cheap. The Telecom providers will remain facility based competition, yet the market we swim in is more and more becoming service based, so we need the right device that can deal with this and for telecom companies to keep on playing a ‘this will do for a year‘ isn’t thinking forward, or at least just limited short term. A game we cannot go along with and there are enough people to realise this danger, which is what is pressuring the Huawei market as I personally saw it.

There is more to all this, but a market that revolves on ‘We decide your choice‘ is not a choice, it is a limitation, something that Google is building awareness on by showing us what is possible and then offering the overkill device for a mere $150 extra, like Apple did, but Apple didn’t come with the shown benefits of actually showing us that part. As you realise that you already knew most of these elements as you YouTubed your way through the internet universe, consider the options your phone don’t allow for at present. There is no reason to suddenly update the phone at present, but you should realise that these limitations will hinder you in the future and realising what you need in three years is more and more important in today’s mobile market. It is something you only need to be aware of at present, when the shift comes you will be ready with the right phone and with the options to do it all (without getting pushed into spending $1000+ overnight), as well as the option to keep your movies, your photos, your Pokémon’s, as well as whatever the domotics apps universe brings to your mobile.

 

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