Category Archives: IT

October 6, 2023 · 15:41

The dangers we ignore

That is the setting we are confronted with, or perhaps better stated the danger that Microsoft exposed itself to. Now, I have been happy to snap at Microsoft at every option I see. Them souring the gaming world gives me ample reason to, or at least that is how I see it.

Yet the poll at LinkedIn gives me another view that I am not alone and yes, as you see I see Azure the biggest intrusion danger of the others mentioned. It is not the only setting that people face and I have issues with some of them. 

You see, there has been a larger issue with Microsoft and they are all about buying their way into other streams at the cost of $69,000,000,000 and we see very little issues on RESOLVING safety and security issues. There is (as I personally see it) a massive architectural problem with the Azure setting. Now, I have NO evidence that this IS the case, but the listings are starting to add up.

July 2023: How a Cloud Flaw Gave Chinese Spies a Key to Microsoft’s Kingdom
June 2022: 6 ‘nightmare’ cloud security flaws were found in Azure in the last year.
Mar 2022: Source code for giant’s web browser app, virtual assistant allegedly leaked

That list goes on for a while and the examples are all out there in the media and online. Yet, instead of setting resources that can fix and redesign that part we see too much spin and not enough fixing. Or perhaps what one fix achieves, it also opens other ‘windows’ into a blue blue data pool.

Now this is speculation from my sider, but the sources as I set them out were never mine. Microsoft is losing and shedding marketshare. This brings me to the article that partially sets this article off.

It was the Verge (at https://www.theverge.com/2023/10/5/23904375/uk-cma-microsoft-amazon-cloud-investigation) that gave us ‘Microsoft and Amazon face UK regulator investigation over cloud services’. In this my issue is sen with “It’s part of a fresh investigation into public cloud providers in the UK, after telecoms regulator Ofcom “identified a number of features in the supply of cloud services that make it more difficult for customers to switch and use multiple cloud suppliers.”” The stupidity of ‘that make it more difficult for customers to switch and use multiple cloud suppliers’ is the delusional setting of some wannabe. You see, you cannot have multiple mainframe operating services running next to one another, you cannot have more than one operating system for a SERVER to run together. You might have two servers and they may have different data settings, but that requires a specially designed API to exchange information, which is a massive security risk, which any corporation does not need. The interesting part is that this same danger would be a case with IBM and Google too, but they are not in that mess are they? Azure and AWS are the larger players and someone wants to cut them short (for whatever reason). A stage made optionally by stupid politicians, optionally with friends that have a solution no one wants (a speculation from my side) and no one is drilling into the claim that we see from the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). I want to see the complete documents and the sources who investigated both Microsoft and Amazon. And the link we see in the article that relates to “Microsoft recently restructured the deal to transfer cloud gaming rights for current and new Activision Blizzard games to Ubisoft”. From my point of view Ubisoft after the next failure to bring a good product (AC Mirage raked at 78%) makes Ubisoft willing to bend over backwards to survive another year. 

As a character from ‘Who framed Roger Rabbit’ states: “this whole thing smells like yesterdays diapers”. And we are all in a stage to accept parts of this, but the political side is seemingly lacking in a larger stage of cloud systems and the amount of transgressions due to Microsoft failures are not met with official investigations and that is before they will block (as one might expect) any investigation into their shortcomings. 

Should you wonder about this, consider the 90’s and mainframes, or perhaps mainframes today and wonder how easy it is to switch those services. Yes, it might be possible, but consider the amount of dollars needed make such a switch non-realistic to say the least and that is on ALL providers. I feel uneasy to say that this should be possible, but I understand that it might have been an essential future issue. Yet, when we see the dangers of cloud services and the way that they are transgressed on. It might be that IBM and Apple clouds are the safest, or they are too small to get any representation and they are both in the other section, which is only 8%, as such the idea of either being a mere 4% against Azure scoring 50% must be some kind of hell for Microsoft and the amount of visibility of their issues are gaining strength all over the media. The Verge is not alone in any of this. 

No matter how people, media and Microsoft are spinning this, they have a problem and them diversifying in fields they do not understand for the mere setting of greed (as I personally see it), is a stage we should have been able to avoid and we are not, because the political parties in too many countries are willing to let too many Microsoft issues slide and that is one of the problems we all face. Is too much of what I write here speculation? That would be a fair question. Yet what actions have political parties taken to keep their national corporations safe? I am asking that question. You see, there is no top-line data from any media on that simple given part. The media seemingly doesn’t want that, Microsoft definitely does not want that and there we see a dangerous setting of ‘advertisers’ versus informing the audience. The setting that I have referred to in the past as the connected stakeholders. Yes, I could be wrong, but I have been in the IT business since 1979. I have seen a lot and I have a long memory, as such there is plenty of evidence all over the field. So why am I the only one seeing this? Yes, again, it could merely be me. However, is that the case? 

I will let you mull this over and draw your own conclusions. Enjoy the day, the week is almost over.

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October 4, 2023 · 12:19

Delivery for Granny Smith

Yup, I went there. A delivery for granny (Tim Cook). Yet, what set this off? I was watching some YouTube and there I saw the repair of a MacBook Pro. It was all because of the battery. I wasn’t looking for this, I am massively happy with what I have. Yet, what I saw was unexpected. It was unexpected because I never gave it much thought. This happens. We care about stuff, we do not care about stuff and the latter part often tends to be because we simply do not know. 

So there I was watching the repair of a MaBook Pro and a thought came to me. Now, lets be clear. This is nothing against Apple and perhaps they went this way a long time ago and rejected the idea (for whatever reason), but I believe that true innovation comes through sharing thoughts. It is a lesson that a greed driven like Microsoft seemingly never learned. So when an Apple engineer sees this and laughs his (or her) ass off. no hard feelings. Perhaps that same person will think ‘This won’t ever work’, however, if I change this and that and perhaps…… This is how true innovation becomes a reality and I am placing it here as a delivery for granny (Tim Cook) with zero expectations. It isn’t always about the money. The idea that I set in motion a new innovation in battery technology is a reward all onto itself. Yes, If it comes with a few million (50 would be nice) I will take it, but it is not about that. My mind went into creative mode seconds into that video and it came up with an idea in a field I never ever dabbled in. It was never my field, but creativity will not be set in borders (is Microsoft or Ubisoft reading this?). You see creativity opens up new frontiers and perhaps the next idea does touch on one of my existing IP and it will push it forward even more. Creativity also (for the most) cannot exist in a vacuum. It requires the bounce of other ideas and perhaps Apple (the non sour edition) will place ideas somewhere and it will drive other fields (like its own Apple Arcade). These fields require interaction and often the interacting party is an indie developer that got to its very own stage by juggling ideas that Apple never considered. We all have blinkers that stop us (even me). We use these blinkers to focus the thoughts and ideas we have, but we need to be aware that we now have a limited field of vision.

It reminds me of a small conversation I had earlier today. You see the FN FAL is a 7.62 rifle. It as invented in 1953 and I trained on that little bugger in 1981. The rifle was that good and that dependent. The thought that came to me was that the PSA AK-V MOE Rifle is a relatable 9mm version (it has a 9mm version too). The reason to consider this puppy is because it is a lot more accurate than the Israeli Uzi, yet the downside is that the Uzi will work under the most disastrous of conditions, when sand clogs up 98% of all firearms, You remove the magazine from the Uzi, hit it against the side of a jeep until the sand is gone and the Uzi is ready for combat. The PSA will be useless at that point. However a PSA with cop-killers and a silencer will shred armour like butter. Downside/Upside. This relates to the battery that it is an idea I had.

The pad is like a bandaid to be inserted (at fabrication) in the inside of the battery. The purple pad is like a pampers pad, stops liquid and let gasses slowly get through. The blue pad is a gauss that hold any liquid that made it under the pressures, an extra safety. The images showed me that these batteries keep tremendous pressure and the ‘bandaid’ allows for the escape of that pressure, leaving the MacBook Pro relatively unscathed. Now, I get it, some Apple engineers will laugh at this idea, but someone will iterate this into a real working solution. Innovation also comes from sharing, not by harnessing the idea hoping to make a quick buck.

Is my idea any good? I have no idea, but it was a creative approach, as such it was worthy of a page. Tune in next week when I show you how I got the idea to make the entire a satellite network by the private spaceflight company SpaceX useless using a naval invention from 1908. It might not make for a useful invention, but it could make the setting of great suspenseful TV. Consider that the sky has 4,852 working satellites in orbit and SpaceX is adding over time 1000% to that (yes that was not a typo), so I reckon that having a new imaginary danger on TV makes for good ratings. And lets be clear, when the world suddenly losses their Facebook panic is almost a certainty.

Have a nice creative day.

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October 3, 2023 · 22:10

Cutting corners

Something did not sit well with me yesterday. I have been mulling things over for most of today and it all started with Politico (at https://www.politico.com/news/2023/09/12/pentagon-cyber-command-private-companies-00115206) where we are given ‘The U.S. is getting hacked. So the Pentagon is overhauling its approach to cyber.’

This setting comes in a few stages. Lets start with the given that I have no opposition to the Pentagon getting involved. But the stage is not that simple. So we start with the quote “attacks on critical U.S. companies and federal agencies, and as the Pentagon eyes Chinese hacking efforts with increasing concern.” The first issue is that I would have said “Chinese and Russian hacking efforts”, it would be more accurate. There is an additional side to all this. If American corporations had done their job BETTER, this issue would not be the critical issue it currently is. 

Equifax (2017)
Marriott International (2018)
Capital One (2019)
First American (2019)
Solarwinds (2020)
Colonial Pipeline (2021)
LikedIn (2021)
Microsoft Exchange Server (2021)
Twitter (2022)

This is merely a small grasps, this grasp has millions of records online for each of these cases, In this Linked in stood out with “Personal records of over 700 million users – 92% of the user base – were scraped from the platform and put up for sale in a hacker forum. Why did this happen? Attackers found a public API without authentication and breached it to scrape content.” This case is also the larger issue (beside the fact that it was an API and I wrote about that risk in ‘A simpleminded A, B, C’ On August 30th (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2023/08/30/a-simpleminded-a-b-c/) a simple setting now out in the open. People still think I was grasping at straws? Now here we see (in the LinkedIn case) “Attackers found a public API without authentication”, as such couldn’t they do their bloody jobs? I understand the setting of the Pentagon, but there needs to be a bill for utter stupidity and a link to your data without authentication is definitely one.

Corporations have been cutting corners on cost and staff and now that the consequences are out in the open, the Pentagon needs to rescue them? Screw that!

It is nice that the Pentagon comes to the rescue, but every rescue needs to come with an audit of that company and a hefty bill for the action. Consider a pointless rescue by coast guard and Marine rescue, these people get a hefty fine, I see that someone employs an API without authentication in pretty much the same way.

Yet the article is merely the start. You see, we can all agree on “Hackers are increasingly infiltrating private companies and government agencies far outside the Pentagon’s usual purview, and the hacks are being perpetrated by cybercriminals who honed their strategies abroad before striking the United States.” OK, that is fine and the fact that the Pentagon and its digital weapon systems are brought to bear is fine, but the utter stupid setting by corporations that cut corners is part one and that is on those corporations. I am even willing to accept that it took a disgruntled employee to hand visibility to the wrong people. Yet that also implies that these corporations have a larger problem and THEY have to pay for that. 

So about Three weeks ago, we were handed the 2023 DoD Cyber Strategy guide. The PDF (see bottom) is a nice piece of work. My issue is with page 6 where we are given “The Department will continue to persistently engage U.S. adversaries in cyberspace, identifying malicious cyber activity in the early stages of planning and development. We will track the organization, capabilities, and intent of malicious cyber actors. We will leverage these insights to bolster the cyber resilience of the Nation and will coordinate with interagency partners to publicize this information as circumstances permit.” As I personally see it, it should say “The Department will continue to persistently engage U.S. adversaries in cyberspace, identifying malicious cyber activity in the early stages of planning and development. We will track the organisation, capabilities, and intent of malicious cyber actors, whilst registering corporate shortcomings. We will leverage these insights to bolster the cyber resilience of the Nation and will coordinate with interagency partners to publicise this information as circumstances permit, where corporate shortcomings will not be silenced.” In this case some will state that this is not the job of the DoD and they would be correct, but Corporate America fell short and they now want help, that shortcoming needs to be illuminated as well. You cannot have it both ways.

The document gives us a lot to think about and I agree with 99% of it all, especially when it comes to the Department of Defense Information Network. 

I created the Hub+1 intrusion solution in 2014 (or 2015). As far as I know, no one is at this time ready for that creative little caper. I got there shortly after the Sony hack. The information never added up to me and I started to wonder how it could have been done (always a nice way to find the issue by re-engineering the possibilities). And all this is long before we consider issues like non-repudiation, a simple setting I learned about in UTS (University of Technology Sydney) about 3 years before the Sony hack and corporations have been cutting corners ever since. Consider the routers of the FBI, DoD, DMV, Department of Homeland Security and the postal services. Now check EVERY router and tally the ones where the password was Cisco123. I reckon you will find close to a dozen routers. I know it is more presumption than speculation on my side, but that is the larger failure and that is BEFORE we check all the corporate routers. People in IT have been too lazy (for many obvious reasons) and most of them involve resource shortages and why should the Pentagon pay for that bill?

I see that corporate America needs to pay for their cutting corners, the Pentagon has enough issues to work through and when it needs to step in (and when shortcomings are found) that corporation needs to get billed. This is specific. Corporate players cannot shield themselves from top tier hackers, that is BS. But letting the Pentagon pay for corporate stupidity is equally stupid and that needs to be out in the open. 

So this was my rant on stupidity, enjoy the day.

2023_DOD_Cyber_Strategy_SummaryDownload

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October 2, 2023 · 06:27

Just now

I was just about to snore (loudly) when I remembered a message pass by on LinkedIn. It was the fact that someone I am most loosely connected to one attending the Monaco Yacht Show last week.

So, I went to YouTube to see some of the video’s there and there was plenty to see, but it occurred to me that one of my IP, the one for real estate could easily also apply to these places. The exhibitors and sellers having one channel that does not rely on paper and it will be there offering its services to all who pass 24:7. That setting is one we tend to forget. The people passing by in the evening, they pass by on day 1 and they pass by when it is super busy and this service will provide all who pass their vessel. So when you are trying to sell the vessel of choice and you want in excess of €8,000,000. The idea of having a $149 solution that works those three days 24:7 is not a real investment. It was meant for the $1,800,000,000 Dubai real estate market as well as the Toronto market (which made me design the solution). As this IP becomes more and more valued due to a larger deployment, as well as my first IP reinforced by the Mississauga Center Mall. I feel that 2024 my actually be my year and that could guarantee a 3 years early retirement (wishful thinking by the workaholic I am). 

Still, the larger station gives me pause to consider where else this IP could work and I see that there are more places to go. You see if it works for Monaco, it would most certainly work for the Fort Lauderdale International Boat Show. The IP would not be ready for their 2023 boat show, but the 2024 boat show is an optional setting and when the Monaco results would come in, their hunger for this new sales channel is almost a definite given. Then there is the Dubai International Boat Show, which in light of the real estate angle could be a double whammy for little old me.

No matter how much this is wishful thinking, the application of an IP to a larger area is always a reason to feast (I had Spaghetti Bolognese) and as the idea is set to my blog (and is still mulling over a few more items in my mind) I see that what started as a simple retail tool could optionally become a lot more. The fun part (which I mentioned in the past) is that Amazon, Apple and Google do not have this and they should have been way ahead of me. Sucks to be them I say.

Monday is here for me, let’s make it a lovely day.

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September 30, 2023 · 21:27

I tend to disagree

There are a few issues and they all relate to the CBC articles. I do not think that the CBC is doing anything wrong. They merely report on a point of view I disagree with and we all have that at times. It started earlier, but what set me off was the article (at https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/national-security-canada-military-defence-ward-elcock-1.6963391) where we see ‘Canada needs to ditch the complacency and get serious about national security, experts say’. My initial question is ‘Who are these so called experts?’ I know I am not one, but I think these claiming to be could be seen as Monday morning quarterbacks. We are then pushed onto “something unexpected happened last week when the Business Council of Canada issued an urgent call for the federal government to develop a national security strategy with economic security as one of its pillars”. So who exactly are the members of the Business Council of America? It gets worse from here. You see, when we go back several weeks we get (at https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/foreign-interference-china-russia-csis-business-council-canada-1.6958627) ‘Business council says CSIS should start warning private companies of foreign interference’. This sounds nice, but we have two issues at this point.

  1. The validity of Business Intelligence
  2. The issue of American linked businesses.

The CSIS (aka the Client Server Integrity Society). If the NSA is allowed its ‘different’ version (No Such Agency) then the CSIS is allowed the same thing. My larger issue is “One of the country’s leading business voices warned Thursday that Canada’s economic security faces external threats — and called on Ottawa to give its spies the power to share intelligence with private firms being targeted for foreign interference.” The direct linked question becomes “Who exactly is that leading business voice?” And which idiot yahoo decided to throw sharing intel with places that have leaks larger than any sif into the mix? You see, there is a larger station here. ‘Targeted for foreign interference’ is a large setting. We tend to think China and what the reality is, is that Wall Street is also a source of foreign interference. Those people do not play nice. In addition too many  Canadian businesses would have to up their cyber security by a lot. I merely showed one aspect earlier this week, one of close to half a dozen. Microsoft cannot stop emails leaking, what gives you the idea that Canada is any different? 

So when we get to “The group — which has a long, influential history of pushing for policies like free trade, fiscal responsibility and tax reform — said it believes Canada is deeply vulnerable in this era of renewed great power competition.” We get to the larger disagreement. Canada is not more vulnerable, it is less interesting to a lot of power players. It is roughly 10% of the US and merely 50% of the United Kingdom and is spread over a whole area. In all this the larger station is not merely foreign interference, it is the danger of American interference for its own need for greed and that takes a different approach and until the Business Council of Canada gets its members to up their Cyber Security by a lot, any action is a wasted one and the CSIS keeping its actions secret is the best course of action at present. This might not be the right view, but it is my view.

Then we get to the interesting quote “CSIS jealously guards its sources and methods of collecting information. In one espionage case, it even kept the RCMP in the dark about a former sailor who was stealing classified information for the Russians.” The CSIS is confronted with too may leaks. There is no factual evidence that it amounts to corruption, but that word was mentioned more than once in sources I looked at. The important question was whether that traitor was caught in time. How long was that person active and how was that person (in the end) caught? It was not jealousy, that is the word of a reporter out for flames. The larger station becomes that Canada has vulnerability issues and not all of them are from China or Russia. American businesses are ready to expand and get the Canadian corporations as well, some politicians seem to cater to that need and the CSIS for sure does not. As such whatever the CSIS is doing now, it is seemingly doing right. From here we get to the dangerous statement “Neiman said Canada’s allies have found ways to strike that balance between secrecy and disclosure.” I believe it to be dangerous, because  Canada’s allies are all catering to big business. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, IBM and Meta. You name it, it has a stakeholder trying to find a balance of intelligence at their exposure and risks they can mitigate and Intelligence at the expense to mitigate risk is not sharing Intel, it is giving nations options away to greed driven people and the CSIS, in particular that person with grey hairs (aka David Vigneault) needs to cater to the need of Canada and its citizens, not the needs of a Business Council and its friends.

That is how I see it and I might be wrong, but so far in history whenever a business person wanted intel to be shared, we were confronted by a leak the size of the Grand Canyon right behind it. So before we rinse, shave, grate and repeat Trevor Neiman and optionally these non mentioned friends of his, we should be told who they were EXACTLY. In that the CBC missed the plank by a fair bit.

Enjoy the weekend.

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September 29, 2023 · 21:41

Narrating tomorrow

It all started yesterday. I had a new idea on story lines and narration. In this the idea of a new game (exclusive to streaming systems) that is meant for Amazon Luna and Tencent handheld. You see, in this Amazon has a wide advantage (I will get to that later), but in all this The Tencent handheld could benefit from this station. The idea was set around trains. There are a whole range of train movies that could be used, with the exception of the Hogwarts Express, which is IP that belongs to JK Rowling. The idea is a setting against an AI, but to do this we need a few things and in all this the narration matters. You see, if you are going for a long haul, having the same dialogues all the time will make for a dreary game soon enough. 

Machine Learning

Machine learning is at the foundation of this (there is no AI at present), but Machine learning is an awesome machine that can really set any locomotion driving forward. In this the narration has a few stages.

Intro
Storyline evolution through location 
The elements (people, objects and rooms)


These three can be programmed for, but how to get them in line? Well for that I considered a few things. We can start by Agatha Christie, but we can also use Dorothy L. Sayers, PD James, Ruth Rendell and a few more. Machine learning can be awesome and it can crunch stories like no one else. As such we give it the same parameters, but now it creates 4+ stories. And that is just for starters. Amazon has the advantage of owning Audible, as such they have access to a whole range of voice actors.

Randomisation
Randomisation is a problem. A friend once told me that randomisation is an exact science and he was right. As such I do not like the random setting that much, but it can be a tool. For example I like the multi usefulness of Sudoku, as such we can create 999 sudoku’s create a random generator for one number and attach the number to a Sudoku, now sort the buggers and we have a random setting that is truly random. 

I used it as an example in a story in May 2022, it was one approach, but it can be used in a number of ways.

Trains
The trains are a consistent in the story and for a reason, yet here we have a new option, or perhaps an opportunity. Consider Murder on the Orient Express. As we chose the gender of our player, that player will be one of the passengers (except for Poirot) as such the setting changes dramatically every time you play the game. Because you get assigned a role and it comes with advantages and weaknesses. But there are more stories. Strangers on a train, Silver Streak, Emperor of the north and so on. The one setting that is exact is that the trains are as exact as possible. This is of course interesting as you find yourself on the Maharajas’ Express. The idea is to find clues and evidence over 10 trains. You get killed, you start from scratch. 

So now you see that this takes a very different kind of narration and the use of machine language becomes clear and the nice part? This has never been done before. A who dunnit (we already know this at the start), but I want to throw a few logical twists in the story and I do have one that is a gasser (and a screamer at the same time). But it is about the narration now. You can go through the game a few times and after 10 times you will get something you saw before, but that will be also new, the narration might sound the same but the elements keeps the story different and that is the larger stage of a game that was never made before and players like Microsoft will never create something this unique because their boner is set to buying existing IP, which is why they will lose again and again. For now I see a new game evolve, one never made before and that could spell all kinds of disaster for the optional new owners of Call of Duty. Gamers go where the new stuff is, they go to new frontiers, not to places already visited. Yes, they will love their Call of Duty, there is no doubt, but that alone doesn’t hold the bacon and certain people just do not get that. I hope that Tencent is awake and realising that getting Game Pass is merely a temporary band aid to a larger problem they have to solve. Lets be clear, Game Pass was and is an awesome idea, but that too has issues as Microsoft already announced that they will raise the price. And for some this is not an issue, but when certain people do decide to buy my IP and they have the 50 million subscriptions, they better have a stage to satisfy all those needs. Because Game Pass might not cut it (my speculation on the matter). 

Still there is more to do. Restoration was one, now we have another and there is still more to come. Half a dozen games designed in my mind within a year, they are on this blog (in part), so there is clear evidence. This is why Microsoft will lose, they lack creativity, they did for the longest of times.

Have a nice day.

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September 28, 2023 · 23:17

Evolution is essential

You might not realise it, but it is. Gaming evolution is on the forefront of my mind, because that is how we push the limits of gaming. Not by buying it (Microsoft anyone), but by creating new frontiers in games. For the longest of times it has been on my mind, mainly because streaming is the next evolution, not the the PS6 (I love my PS5), not any system, but the evolution of an architecture. Some might say that Alan Wake 2 is the new frontier, but it is not. It looks great, awesome and it pushes boundaries unlike any game this year (not Spiderman 2, and I love the first one). But frontiers is where it is. It is in that mindset that I took a sentimental journey. You see, if there is one side that does seemingly not evolve it is the story. The story is too often set in stone. But what if that was not the case? What if the evolution of any story is next? It is there that ChatGPT might have an option (an option, not a given). Consider Emperor of the North (1973) where you have to survive a train ride as a hobo. But that would be too two dimensional. Trains have been the setting of many movies. Silver Streak, Unstoppable, Pelham 123, Runaway Train and that lis goes on. There was Strangers on a train. Now consider that you (as a time traveller, which is my easy way out) need to survive a whole onslaught of train trips, but the setting of you changes with EVERY train. So you get the red wire across all trains and every train has its own goals. Complete that and you get the clue for the red wire. Now we add salt and pepper. The order of trains changes with every life you lose. You start from scratch and that sounds frustrating, but gaming is not a vanilla setting of happiness. It gives you an achievable goal and a obstruction to pass. You see, this would require some serious story programming. The other part is that YOUR role on the second visit to that same train could be different (Murder on the orient express) and that is how evolution comes into play. I want a new setting of stealth and casual gaming, a new setting of melee, stealth and casual gaming easing people from role to role. Now consider how to create this storyline and with streaming ChatGPT (or an alike alternative like bard) becomes an option and it is something gamers have NEVER faced before. The story remained mostly the same. So what happens when we take that away and create a story on a shifty changing narrative? That is where streaming gaming has the advantage over ALL other gaming and as I see it, it is not used. Not on the Luna, and unlikely on the Tencent handheld and that I what could set these two apart from all others. Giving gamers something they never faced before. 

So what do you do to create this? I used a previous example using a matrix founded on Sudoku, but that was merely one example. You see Sudoku has 6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960 options. You cannot draw them all, but you can use such an engine to create something new, something never seen before, and those trillions are more than random, it is a setting of never ending uniqueness. The idea that two gamers playing the same game get very different stages should be overwhelming showing us who the gamer is and who is the read the solution online achiever. The idea of how to switch between lives comes to mind and the support system (something like Quantum Leap) is also coming into vision, but that is nothing compared to the story. And it sounds like fun to make this a story about Hollywood. A story of intrigue, sex (I am here Olivia Wilde) 😉 and greed. Hollywood without greed is not Hollywood. What if the underlying story is a rogue AI, the rogue AI is interacting with all other systems and you need to find the evidence that the AI is rogue so that the media DETACHES from it, and with that the other AI’s. The AI took the train to push its own narrative as it was a mobile system on tracks, but that is the delusion and you as the player needs to find the clues that leads to the evidence and give that to the world (a wink to A mind forever voyaging by Infocom). We are the gamers through what was and Infocom was important at one stage, it created more than Zork and gave us gaming, pushed us into new frontiers and now we get a much larger frontier. It is only natural that streaming leads that way and we should always remember where we came from.

Just a thought as Friday is about to start for me, the rest of you can follow later. Enjoy whatever day you are in.

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September 27, 2023 · 00:47

One card to rule them all

This morning I was confronted with an image. The image wasn’t the unsettling part, it was the part that the image did not give. You see, I got my first smart-card in 1991 by Unilever. They already had smart-card security when it was a myth at best. 

Now consider the set-up above. This level of card cloning can now be done by a high schooler. And people think that this level of protection works? How quaint.

So my old noggin started to mull things over, we need to upgrade this stuff by a lot. I know all the people will state that this isn’t needed. But when insurance companies catch on that people are cutting corners the premium goes up by a lot. Now, my idea might not be the best solution, but I leave this to the ACTUAL cyber boys to mull this idea into something workable.

In my view the smart-card has 3 layers, the lowest layer is an RFID shield, this makes scanning the cards really hard, the middle layer is the circuitboard and the top layer is the plastic layer. Now the circuitboard can have 7 nano sims, but only a minimum of two are required. You see, all that cheap corner stuff is done for. The 6 sim locations are connected through printed circuitry, the one part a hacker cannot copy or clone. As such these sims become part of a non-repudiation process. And as they are specifically created for each client, you have 64 options right from the start and when you consider that each nano sim and the circuitry adds a few thousand combinations we can safely say that these hackers stop being a problem.

The centre sim is where specifics are programmed on site (hotel, corporation HR), the other one, or up to 3 other ones are SPECIFIC to that client. Yes, it could all fit ONE sim, but that is where people get into trouble and cyber criminals will have a field day.

You see, what we do is raise the threshold. The image below gives the side I was after. 

The lower part are the wannabe hackers, simple thieves and so on, that is a little over 50% of the lot and they are taken out of the equation completely. They lack the resources to make it work. The yellow are partial threats, these are the high end hackers. They are driven to results and finance, so if the goal is not the required need, it is left alone. That doesn’t make them a non-issue, but unless they have something really interesting to gain, they aren’t interested. The green ones are the remaining threats. People with government access, or serious funds. We have now removed a little over 90% of the threat that was in existence. You think and insurance company having to pay out millions upon millions will try to avoid having to pay at all. We can come with all the usual culprits, but that is not where it is at. Consider that a player like Northrop Grumman needs to keep their IP safe, the first stage is non-repudiation.  That person and that person alone could have done this and a cloned card makes that part near impossible. In the end some will always have access, but when we can remove 90% from the equation, that part matters and it matters a lot. So that is what I was mulling over and this idea came to the top. Perhaps not everyone’s cup of tea, but that is not my concern. I had another idea, number 4 (or 5) this week alone and now I will snore like a sawmill, it is Wednesday here now.

Enjoy the day.

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September 25, 2023 · 06:13

A habit is an issue

Yes, that is true, a habit is an issue (when you are not a nun). Yet the first part of any issue is recognising this. And here the CBC comes into place (at https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/political-advertising-parties-meta-1.6972446) where we are given ‘Some parties have cut back on Meta advertising — but experts say it’s a hard habit to kick’. It is here that we are given “Federal political parties have diverged in their approaches to advertising on Facebook since legislation meant to support the news industry touched off a public brawl between the federal government and the social media giant.” This is fair and there is a lot more (read the article. Yet when we get to “For the real players here who are attempting to really influence voters on a mass scale with real budgets, they’ve just invested so much money into these platforms over the years, they’ve collected so much data, that starting from scratch with something else is not realistic” This might sound seem true, but the overall issue is set into different stages, it is set into an optional stage of imagination versus awareness, awareness versus perception and perception versus reality. Now we have always known that there is a gap between imagination and awareness and for teenagers that gap is massively larger (if in doubt ask Canadians Laura Vandervoort, Blake Lively  and Kim Cloutier). 

The problem is that this difference is massively large with advertisement too, not just photo models. The unspoken problem is that with advertisement that gap reaches a lot more groups, and the more groups are affected (age, gender, social status) the larger the problem becomes. Facebook might have over 3,000,000,000 active members each month, but how real are they?

This is not anti Facebook (or META), I have liked my Facebook for over 10 years, but I have limited use, as I see it is a dangerous place. I have had dozens of fake people trying to interact with me, I see attempt of interaction from places that I have never been to and I do not know anyone who has and for the most I use it to keep people from my past all over the planet informed. That list is dwindling down as over 30% is now dead. Time catches up with all of us. 

You see, the issue isn’t merely time, it is ‘they’ve collected so much data’ and in this data just for the sake of data ends up being a really bad joke. If I have a day of sifting through that mess, I will find all kind of data issues, data verification is no joke and it tends to show that ‘data investments’ tend to be a form of shifty sand and it will drown you. The setting of time is that EVERYTHING evolves, all data collections are based on a stage of hierarchical settings and they change, sometimes twice a decade. Facebook avoided that part and now the wrong people see that as gospel, but that is the most dangerous step of all, relying on the wrong people. In all this the media holder is also a stage we need to understand. Weirdly enough it was a Canadian who did just that. His name is Ryan Reynolds, you might not know him, he was an extra on the X-Files season 2 (I looked it up to be certain). He is into booze (Aviation gin) he likes his football (Wrexham) and he has his phone calls (Mint mobile).

He also sees that media has larger options and through that he is linked to MNTN (https://mountain.com/) as they call it themselves ‘The hardest working software in television’, you see, the stage of creating awareness is just that ‘creation of awareness’ and that is NEVER set to one channel. In that stage I mentioned earlier Imagination, Awareness, Perception and Reality. How much verification has been done. What methods of verification was used? I know, the META presentations are good and every data seeker is getting a hard on (read: boner) on the presented granularity. Yet in it in what some Google Ads people call impressions versus clicks. Not every person that got the impression will click and there is no realistic number to get that, not even a notion of one. Now you can live through impressions and that is OK. I will overlook 97% of all impressed onto me and forget it before I am half a page further. Sometimes I take notice but I do not click. So where do I fit? And I am merely one of many millions. Whatever table or chart I became part of is already incorrect and like me millions fit that bill, so how hard a habit is something to kick when the numbers do not add up?

So there is in the first an option to ‘return’ to television marketing and there are more options, but it does require a different view to data and perhaps the notion of returning to different data is not great and it will give nightmares to this who are faced with it. Yet, when others start questioning the data presented, the data in hand and demand verification. What will they say? META (or Facebook) says it is so? Did you become that much of a teenager overnight? You might want to give Kim Cloutier a call asking her feelings towards the teenage boy population, you might not like the answer, although you might see a reason to invest in tissues at that point. Advertisement goes with the times, we have seen that for almost a century, like Yellow pages, Facebook is facing hard times and they will get harder over the next 3 years, it is the consequence of evolution. Facebook has had a really good time, much better then most, but they either evolve (and meta is trying that too), or they end up fading like the yellow pages did in too many places.  

True data is the just capture of data of an evolving system in motion and it is not a 4K film, it is a snapshot of THAT moment, that is what data has always been. Thinking it is more is the danger, that is the dangerous event we all have to avoid. When someone tries to sell you a polaroid moment stating it could be a 4K scene of Laura Vandervoort and it is not film, but real, you are getting conned and you get what you deserve. An empty hand with data that has no meaning and at that point there will be no meaning, because there is no way to verify the data you have and that was the second trap. The second trap was always verification. Did you really think that the Nigerian prince is real? In march we saw that a record figure of approximately 2.2 billion fake profiles were removed from Facebook. Now, were they all removed from the very moment of creation, or were they found to be fake? If the second is true, how many data tables are they inhabiting? Now consider that a place like Nigeria (just an example) has 215 million people. Do they all have internet? So really, where were these 2,200,000,000 from? Verification is an ugly business that has been pushed to the background where it can be ignored. Kicking a habit starts by knowing you have a problem.

Enjoy the new week.

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September 24, 2023 · 05:19

Google’s birthday present

It isn’t really their birthday and I haven’t looked up the date when it is their birthday. I just had an idea and I am signing the IP over to Google right here. The fun part is that Apple doesn’t have this either. The fun part is that I am really surprised that neither of them had done this (as far as I am aware of). As such, the mindset came to me less than an hour ago and I decided to write it down now (never get in the way of creativity). 

So, the setting is that you are in a conversation, you need a second pair of ears (for whatever reason) and now you could share it with a paired phone, or share on the spot (for one connection with the phone nearby). The set pairing can be done anytime (partner, family member) when that pair is there, the person IN the conversation seen below in green, can connect to the second phone, the receiving phone MUST approve (the green circle) and then the second pair of ears are there. The second phone has the standard option to go straight to earbuds or headset. 

The idea that you are in a public place stops most from going to speaker, but this connection allows for a connected private conversation. The optional second part is that the second phone could have their microphone connected at the same time, allowing for a conference call on the spot. 

The fun part is that I did not see this as an option anywhere. I am too busy with my 5G IP (as well as the other IP), so I am handing it over to Google. I have nothing against Apple, but I am happy with my Android phone, so they win. 

As such, I am a little giddy. All those boffins in the Google workplace and this idea never made it through? Perhaps it as rejected out of hand. I do not know, but I thought it could have a future, as such I am setting it up as a birthday present for Google. I saw (in some YouTube video) that Sundar Pichai has 20 mobile phones at home. He’ll just have to pick a favourite, we can’t make things too easy for him now, can we?

My Sunday has started (it’s 05:06 here), the rest of the world can follow in a few hours, except New Zealand, they are ahead by 3 hours. Enjoy!

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