Category Archives: IT

Valuation and validating

It is at times a hard decision to make. We valuate what we have and then we validate. It happens and we all face it in one way or another. Now I have to make a choice. Validation through path 1, 2, 3 or 4. And they all have valuations. The problems is not the valuation, it becomes the likelihood of that valuation to become a reality. You see I do not trust Microsoft (for various reasons), but the stage is also that I will get bobkis from Google or Amazon and Elon Musk is an unknown factor. I kept him on the books because he recognises good ideas and ideas he can monetise. In this case that could work for me and now path 5 is opening up with path 6 attached to it. Now path 6 is Tencent, but they are teaming up with Microsoft, I did mention that they cannot be trusted? Microsoft is a walking failure spinning what they can and finding new partners wherever possible as they are leaking revenue all over the place. The problem is who is in charge? Tencent of Microsoft? That now leaves me with path 5 and there lies the rub. Path 5 is an unknown to some extent, but they will recognise revenue and they recognise opportunity and this one is not oil based. Yes, path 5 is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the IP packages will add up to $17,000,000,000 (and some coins). So the moment I produce the presentations and the evidence the stage is set and my price? An initial $50,000,000 (post taxation) and a few loose items as well as 10% of the rest. That is the honeytrap. It is more than a honeytrap. Once the evidence is given they will hand over the cash for ownership of 90% of this and I have what is needed for the rest part of the journey. The moment I get to that part the rest is simple. It is the first stage that tends to be the larger issue, once this is in motion the rest will come easily. There is nothing like a simple stage of proven evidence to get the train rolling. I have given Google and Amazon ample chance to wake up. They did not and when others get the revenue and these players see what they missed they will reorganise but it will be to no avail. The larger stage is not that, it is to keep the stupidity of Microsoft out of all this. Whenever I see them I see the Smackos chihuahua yapping “Try Azure, Azure smells nice” and I feel waves of frustration. And Microsoft ALWAYS has an excuse ‘Microsoft Blames Ubuntu Update DNS Problems for Azure Services Outage’, or ‘Dodgy Microsoft Azure update knocks Ubuntu VMs offline’ yet these stages seemingly ignore “A few months back, I wrote about the discovery of a series of major vulnerabilities in Microsoft Azure by security researchers, suggesting that tenant isolation in the public cloud — which ensures that each organisation’s data is cordoned off from everyone else’s — may be more in question than we thought.” (Source: Protocol) Now any provider in this field has issues. Yet when we see “As of the end of 2021, AWS retained the top position with 32.2 per cent market share, followed by Microsoft at 30.1 per cent” we need to realise that we see ten times the issues on Microsoft systems than on any AWS system and that is AFTER the media gives Microsoft pass after pass. Any questions on why I do not trust Microsoft? And I am hungry for my millions and Microsoft would endanger that, as such I do not want them around. And when the evidence of the 50,000,000 is given they will all race to get a part of it, but at that point it is not up to me, it is most likely up to the shareholder from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia who makes that call and now Microsoft is back in to the race (alas), but that would be the right of the owner of that IP (s long as I get my 10%) and when the IP comes to fruition and the people realise that 50 million was not a maximum, it was the bare minimum and there is no way of telling how far it goes, not with over 2 billion gamers in the mix and I am merely aiming for the 3% mark, the rest will follow after that however there is no way of telling how many will follow. Only a delusional mind makes that claim and I am not delusional. But I am face with choices. The entire project would be much smoother with Amazon or Google, yet now I am faced with a less smooth ride and with more clear assurances I get paid. And that is not a balancing scale, not a seesaw or a wedge. There are a number of issues that I cannot properly see because it is a field that never interested me, I merely am a pawn of the outcome. But 50 million subscriptions implies $500 million a month, should that be $250 million a moth it is fine, it also calls out to millions of gamers who get the news that the new player is 50% cheaper and that starts a new wave (in my benefit), even as I only get 10% of that, it is a hell of a lot more than I have now and it solidifies my retirement fund and my long lasting vacation after that. My last true vacation was in 2002, soo I feel that after 20 years I am entitled to it. It is also making me nervous, you see last year there was an inkling of reality, as such I never gave it much value, but now, now there is a serious chance that this could happen and as such I feel nervous, perhaps it is like a marathon runner who sees the finish line 20 meters head and he also feels the exhaustion and they are weighing battle in his mind. I see the finish line and I see that the other parties will pay when there is a clear indication, something I can show. It is a show that played in my mind for years. And I am almost at that finish line. So as my Twitter peeps are unaware (because of certain issues) we get to see a new path, is it path 7? I can only guess, but I am not seeking a new path, merely hoping that one of the first 5 make up their mind (hopefully fast), a stage that has weighed heavily on my mind. In the mean time I have made a first attempt in the finale (of season one) regarding the grandson of Hades. I think I have worked it out to some extend and that means that the cliffhanger could be the last three episodes and the new story will follow in a 2 episode special. Well, I do not see it that way as it I a story and not scripted for TV, but that could be how it plays out in the end. It was when I remembered a fountain in Rethymnon, that started the path  I am on now. As such it becomes more than just the stage and Demeter. I got the surprise guests lined up and now I need to set a stage to get Hephaestus involved, and I think I found that too, in Athens no less. But it is not where the stage is, yet the stage is not the play (not in this case) it is becoming the journey to an arena and that has my attention, just like the paths of IP, this path is there, but it is easier. It merely includes my creativity and that I have to spare (at present). In this I am not entirely original a happy fellow named Plutarch aided me in a few momentary lapses and that drive is now a much larger drive because of it. And there is a second benefit, if the funds come through I can focus 100% on the writing of this tale, as well one other project I have on the shelves (for now). And in all this the validations and valuations are only easy and adhered to when they go our ways, isn’t that interesting. The mind abhors bad news, or negativity on what one creates. Is that not weird too? You might say no, but all life is part positive and part negative and as we go through life, the negative parts are equally driving, so why avoid them?

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When one door closes

Yes, that is the stage I find myself in. However I could say when one door closes someone gets to open the window. Yet, even as I am eager to give you that story now, I will await the outcome of Twitter (who blocked my account) and the outcome there will support the article. Which is nice because it makes for an entertaining story. It did however make me wonder on a few parts. You see AI does not exist. It is machine learning and deeper learning and that is an issue for the following reasons.

Deep learning requires large amounts of data. Furthermore, the more powerful and accurate models will need more parameters, which, in turn, require more data. Once trained, deep learning models become inflexible and cannot handle multitasking.

This leads to: 

Massive Data Requirement. As deep learning systems learn gradually, massive volumes of data are necessary to train them. This gives us a rather large setting, as people are more complex, it will require more data to train them and the educational result is as many say an inflexible setting. I personally blame the absence of shallow circuits, but what do I know? There is also the larger issue of paraphrasing. There is an old joke. The joke goes “Why can a program like SAP never succeed?” “Because it is about a stupid person with stress, anxiety and pain” until someone teaches that system that SAP is also a medical term for Stress, Anxiety and Pain” and until we understand that ‘sap’ in the urban dictionary as a stupid person, or a foolish and gullible person the joke falls flat. 

And that gets me to my setting (I could not wait that long). The actor John Barrowman hinted that he will be in the new Game of Thrones series (House of the Dragon), he did this by showing an image of the flag of House Stark. 

I could not resist and asked him whether we will see his head on a pike and THAT got thrown from Twitter (or taken from the throne of Twitter). Yet ANYONE who followed Game of Thrones will know that Sean Bean’s head was placed on a pike at the end of season 1, as such I thought it was funny and when you think if it, it is. But that got me banned. So was this John Barrowman who felt threatened? I doubt that, but I cannot tell because the reason of why this tweet caused the block is currently unknown. If it is machine learning and deeper learning we see its failure. Putting ones head on a pike could be threatening behaviour, but it came from a previous tweet and the investigator didn’t get it, the system didn’t get it or the actor didn’t do his homework. I leave it up to you to figure it out. Optionally my sense of humour sucks, that to is an option. But if you see the emoji’s after the text you could figure it out. 

High Processing Power. Another issue with deep learning is that it demands a lot of computational power. This is another side. With each iteration of data the demand increases. If you did statistics in the 90’s you would know that CLUSTER analyses had a few setbacks, the memory needs being one of them, it resulted in the creation of QUICKCLUSTER something that could manage a lot more data. So why use the cluster example?

Cluster analyses is a way of grouping cases of data based on the similarity of responses to several variables. There are two types of measure: similarity coefficients and dissimilarity coefficients. And especially in the old days, memory was hard to get and it needs to be done in memory. And here we see the first issue. ‘the similarity of responses to several variables’ and here we determine the variables of response. But in the SAP example, the response is depending on someone with medical knowledge and one with urban knowledge of English, and if these are two different people, the joke quickly falls flat, especially when these two elements do not exchange information. In my example of John Barrowman WE ALL assume that he does his homework (he has done this in so many instances, so why not now), so we are willing to blame the algorithm, but did that algorithm see the image John Barrowman gave us all, does the algorithm know the ins and outs of Game of Thrones? All elements and I would jest (yes, I cannot stop) that these are all elements of dissimilarity, as such 50% of the cluster fails right of the bat and that gets us to…

Struggles With Real-Life Data. Yes, deeper learning struggles with real life data because it is given in the width of the field of observation. For example, if we were to ask a plumber, a butcher and a veterinarian to describe the uterus of any animal we get three very different answers and there is every chance that the three people do not understand the explanation of the other two. A real life example of real life settings and that is before paraphrasing comes into play, it merely makes the water a lot more muddy.

Black Box Problems. And here the plot thickens. You see at the most basic level, “black box” just means that, for deep neural networks, we don’t know how all the individual neurons work together to arrive at the final output. A lot of times it isn’t even clear what any particular neuron is doing on its own. Now I tend to call this: “A precise form of fuzzy logic” and I could be wrong on many counts, but that is how I see it. You see why did deeper learning learn it like this? It is an answer we will not ever get. It becomes too complex and now consider “a black box exists due to bizarre decisions made by intermediate neurons on the way to making the network’s final decision. It’s not just complex, high-dimensional non-linear mathematics; the black box is intrinsically due to non-intuitive intermediate decisions.” There is no right, no wrong. It is how it is and that is how I see what I now face, the person or system just doesn’t get it for whatever reason and a real AI could have seen a few more angles and as it grows it will see all the angles and get the right conclusion faster and faster. A system on machine learning or deeper learning will never get it, it will get more and more wrong because it is adjusted by a person and if that person misses the point the system will miss the point too, like a place like Gamespot, all flawed because a conclusion came based on flawed information. This is why we have no AI, because the elements of shallow circuits and quantum computing are still in their infancy. But salespeople do not care, the term AI sells and they need sales. This is why things go wrong, no one will muzzle the salespeople.

In the end shit happens, that is the setting but the truth of the matter is that too many people embrace AI, a technology that does not exist, they call it AI, but it is a fraction of AI and as such it is flawed, but that s a side they do not want to hear. It is a technology in development. This is what you get when the ‘fake it until you make it’ is in charge. A flaw that evolves into a larger flaw until that system buckles.

But it gave me something to write about, so it is not all a loss, merely that my Twitter peeps will have to do without me for a little while. 

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Decentralised personal insights

My brain had been pondering a few thoughts and the text bubble appeared with the text “Wake up slow boat”, I really hate it when my brain does that at 03:30 in the morning, yet I have learned that it can instantly change dreams and really nice dreams into utter nightmares, as such I tend to obey it when it screams for action. You see, the idea of decentralised insight is not really new, but Google and Amazon never used that to a full potential. And here I think I have an idea that either could use this idea to cater to thousands of YouTubers and TikTok people. I am not talking about streamers like Nalopia screaming “Stop putting dicks in my ear”, but there is a population of thousands that try to do more and there an idea came forth. You see, they all have their own slice of expertise. Some from work, some from school and Uni and some from tradie work. All experts in their small universe. So what if we could add to that, for them. 

To take a small trip to the other side of the street. There is Wiki and Wiki is not a source that can often be held up to scrutiny of a higher rank. However, it’s references tend to be a different story (see below).

Here the person can select the articles that they feel support their point of view, the ones that do not, the ones they oppose and it is THEIR choice. But what comes afterwards (whether Google or AWS, or a third party) that caters to this need and takes the reference apart, allowing the person to easily seek more on the subject from a source (Washington Post) its writer (Terence McCoy) or anything else like a point in time or even more on a FROM-TO date, that setting will support the Youtuber or TikTokker, or whatever they use. Decentralisation will grow and as the mistrust of media grows it will be a sought after optional solution. Wiki is merely one source, there are a whole truck load of media sources that have similar approaches, even magazines have such an approach and whatever tool these streamers can find, they will use. Yet as far as I can see, there isn’t anyone catering to thus level of decentralisation, where the time and effort of these streamers is theirs (and theirs alone). It could set in motion a new wave of software and services that others need and so far I cannot find anything. Interesting, another (speculated) optional niche they did not see, why not? 

There are at present 431 thousand Youtube streamers (a decrease of 65%) and we see that there are TikTok has 1 billion monthly active users out of 3.3 billion installations. Isn’t it time to offer these populations something that could entice them to continue? The nice part here is that suddenly Amazon could become a contender (due to AWS) and that setting is new to both TikTok and Youtube. Will it work? It is merely an idea but a workable one and if I can figure it out there will be more on this path of enabling that much I can pretty much guarantee.

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It is more than a pool full

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

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

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

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Behind door number two

Yes, the ink for slapping Twitter is not even dry and we get to have a go at Instagram. The BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-62686375) gave us ‘Instagram says precise location is never shared’. There we are given “But Instagram said this is not the case and the feature does not share locations with other users.” Now, there is an old expression (in Dutch) that would consider me an ant-fucker. This is a person who looks at the smallest details. You see, Instagram does not give us “But Instagram said this is not the case and the feature does not share locations with anyone.” It relied on people not considering the larger stage with ‘other users’ and advertisers are not other users. So when we see “it was praised when it was first released as a way to improve user privacy on mobile devices because it offers an alternative to the blanket application of location services. The setting is automatically enabled for users on apps given permission to access their location.” We are given the stage of ‘enabled for users’ but does that mean that apps cannot get a link of precise locations? So as the accusation is given “They also said if users were to post a general location of a city, people would still be able to see exactly where you are as a pin on a map.” We do not see any evidence in one way or another way. We are given “we use precise location for things like location tags and maps features.” Perhaps it is a correct statement, but that does not stop some clever app makers using tags and mapping options to get a handle on precise locations. Thee first adjusted statement would have taken care of that, but Instagram never gave that to the people did they? They merely gave us “the feature does not share locations with other users.” And I have issues with that. But I admit that this is slicing the cake mighty thin, and Instagram could have prevented that, but I personally reckon that they merely needed to be as honest as possible allowing them maximum degrees of freedom on spin, and that is what I expect is happening.

So whether I am right or wrong, it is founded on the language that the media gives us regarding the quotes BY Instagram. It is what we see behind the stage and what we speculate is the case of the used language. It could go either way, but Instagram could have prevented it by being clear and the fact that they were not gives out a rather large problem regarding Instagram and precise locations.

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Two issues on an increasing scale

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

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

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

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S.P.I.D.

Yes, we do love our acronyms. There was SPQR (Senātus Populusque Rōmānus), there is RADAR (Radio Detection and Ranging), there is FUBAR (Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition) and my favourite SPID (Stupid people in defence). The last one gets a new level of non-intelligence when we see the BBC article ‘Nato investigates hacker sale of missile firm data’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-62672184). The article alerts us to “Nato is assessing the impact of a data breach of classified military documents being sold by a hacker group online. The data includes blueprints of weapons being used by Nato allies in the Ukraine conflict.” And to show you just how stupid this is, lets take a look at ‘What did they not see?’, which I wrote on May 1st 2021. There I wrote “Ransomware gangs are now routinely targeting schools and hospitals. Hackers use malicious software to scramble and steal an organisation’s computer data”, in addition to this we have ‘Exposing lies?’ Which I wrote on July 23rd 2019. There I gave the readers “The FBI send their cyber experts and behold, they too agreed that it was North Korea. Even as we were extremely aware that they had no way of doing it, the FBI stood firm on their findings.” These elements matter. They matter because on July 30th 2021 I wrote ‘In retrospect’ where I gave the readers “It goes back when I designed an intrusion system that stayed one hop away from a router table between two points and to infect one of the routers to duplicate packages from that router on that path, one infection tended to not be enough, 2-3 infections needed to be made so that the traffic on that route between two points could be intercepted, I called it the Hop+1 solution, I came up with it whilst considering the non-Korean Sony hack. That  thought drove me to think of an approach to find the links.

So when we see ‘now’ (8 hours ago) that “The pan-European company, which is headquartered in France, said its information was hacked from a compromised external hard drive, adding that it was cooperating with authorities in Italy, where the data breach took place. It is understood investigations are centred around one of MBDA’s suppliers.” This is important because I learned basic issues like data at rest and data in movement A DECADE AGO, as such, how stupid were these people? And that is before we start digging into the ‘compromised external hard drive’ part, who got it compromised, where was IT, how did SE-Unix fail, or are these people even more stupid and they relied on Microsoft? So whilst we understand “a Nato spokesperson said: “We are assessing claims relating to data allegedly stolen from MBDA. We have no indication that any Nato network has been compromised.”” Yes, because admitting to a faulty network is a bad gig for all around. I reckon that this gets shovelled under any carpet as soon as possible, and the criminals? They get to fill their pockets. A stage that has a few issues from the get go and that is before we start digging into “Cyber criminals, operating on Russian and English forums, are selling 80GB of the stolen data for 15 Bitcoins (approximately £273,000) and claimed to have sold the stash to at least one unknown buyer so far.” There is still the issue whether the claim is true, who was the culprit and where did it all go? There are all kind of questions and that is not on the BBC or their fault. What one person claims is another person’s believe and yet another man’s doubt. But there is a rather large problem, the fact that there was an external hard drive, the fact that it allegedly was compromised implies that there are failing policies in place, there are failing IT divisions in play and there is a large amount of military IP in the open. There is a lack of questions and the fact that it is not front page news in EVERY paper is yet another matter. So when we take notice of “A former Nato official said: “There’s a lot of over-classification in Nato but these labels matter. They are applied by the originator of the information and NATO SECRET is not applied lightly.

“This really is the kind of information Nato doesn’t want out there in the public.”” We seem to see the change of a dance, what direction and which tempo is unknown to me. It gives a speculated view that there might be additional damage, but that is speculated and in light of one compromised device the question becomes how was this one undetected for so long and whatever more could be compromised? So when you take a dab at my hop+1 solution, consider that a compromised device indicates that some people of rank in that place were especially stupid. But that could just be me and I merely wonder how the relationship of mundane workers at place X versus the amount of SPID’s in that place becomes an interesting investigation. Merely because there are a whole range of players who would want that data and they are all willing to pay, so these hackers could end up with 10-50 times what they have now. 

Enjoy the day!

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Crossover salad dressing

Yes, as confusing ideas go, it is a good one. I have been seeing some Harry Potter system at the supermarket. They call it Magical builders. The setting is cool, like the old children theatres. Any idea that encourages imagination is OK in my books. But the makers did not take it far enough. See the image below. 

This is one of the cards there are around 35 of them. And all the main characters are there, including a cat and owl. But you only have to look on Facebook and the crossover ideas flow from everywhere. What happens when the Enterprise meets Vaders dreadnaught? What happens when Klingons have to fight Legolas? Oh and these are the timid sides. There was one about Hermione Granger with Kylo Ren and one of Ron Weasley with Rey. I will spare you the details. 

Crossovers will happen. It is in our brains to set parameters outside of the series. So my mind was  contemplating other things when I remember the Disney Infinite stages. So what happens when we get these characters and we can upload the ones we have with a code (see below).

Now we have a much larger stage, we get to use these characters online and more importantly we can keep the same settings as the set we see now. But what happens when the new Rings of Power get a similar setting, what happens when the sequel (or is that prequel) to Game of Thrones is added? With stages, with all kinds of solutions. What happens when we allow the people to play such interactions and share that with friends. Consider an old program It was Adobe Director. It was ahead of its time (I think I still have the floppy version somewhere, yes it is that old). Now we get beyond the train-station, the train and the quidditch field more scenes that can be downloaded. In this the creator can move the characters like Flash objects and create dialogues. This is in programming simple and as these series grow and have more characters and scenes, we could see Ron Weasley in Rivendell asking Sauron for liquorice wand (as crazy ideas go).

This setting does need a program hat the makers could easily sell for $10-$25, and in that setting we would see the next generations create initial scenes, but it could start their imagination to create more, to create what comes next and I believe it is important to foster imagination in all ages. This idea came to me in the middle of nothing, so why did others not come up with this?

The idea is decently simple to program (a speculation from my side) and over time that can grow into something serious. All because someone considered adding a QR code to the back of a head, the back that we will not see when the figurine is completed. So what kept them from this next stage? Funds? I reckon that 100,000 times $10 makes a cool million (or $2.5M if you want to charge $25), making an app like that cost a lot less, so the funds could not have been the case. 

When will people (especially in marketing) learn to think out of the box? I came up with several ideas to propel Neom and the Line in such ways that is not seen at present, so why not? Are these marketeers (most likely in London) losing the plot of what might be? Is it like Google (optionally Amazon too) that they are asleep at the wheel? It is slightly speculative from my side, but I am not seeing any start to different places creating visibility, awareness and traction. Why not?

I leave it up to you to consider the rest of that equation.

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Was that all? No, there is more!

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

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

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

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

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Is it intentional ignorance?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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