Category Archives: IT

February 11, 2021 · 05:27

A penny for your brain

On the side of the road was a car, it was near Buvika. The car was empty, yet next to the car was a blanket, on it a man, a woman and two children, a boy and a girl. They were having a nice lunch in the summer sun, basking in the sun. They were enjoying the weather and the food, it was a stop a they were on the road towards Molde. It would take a few more hours, so they would arrive in the early evening, yet in these white nights, there would be great visibility until long after they arrived. The parents were having a conversation, what about was unknown to Inge, but she was enjoying the view of the field towards the water. She got up and walked towards the Trondheim fjord. She was enjoying the view of the water, she looked for a few more minutes when she heard her father shout, she turned around waved and she walked back, yet as she had walked less than a dozen steps her foot gave way and her leg sunk into the grass. She got up and looked down, she saw two yellow coins, she picked up the coins, put them in her pocket and walked back. Her mother looked at her smudged light trousers. She shrugged “A small hole I stepped in”, and laughed. They got into the car and drove off, they ended up at their destination 4 hours later.

In the burrow was a man, he was a frightening man, he was a warrior with power and authority, as he felt his treasure leave the silent shout was almost deafening to any who could have heard it. He felt betrayed, he was stolen and he would have payback. The shield was broken and rotten, but the skull cleaver was comforting in his hand, he focussed and he felt the ground give way, and as this happened he moved up and forward, even now as the light dimmed, he felt the summer sun on his skin, and as he noticed looked to the south west, he saw a golden glow, that is where he had to go and he made one step after another.

It was not for many hours when he came up to a farm, he could feel life in there and he had no army, he stepped towards the farm, the door was there but he pushed the door into splinters and threw it into the house like it was nothing. He walked in and a woman looked around, this shield maiden screamed and he took notice, he pushed the skull cleaver into her chest, she never had a chance. A man came running in, he too was dispensed with, there was no other noise but the sound of horses and cattle. It was only one hour later when the warrior had two new soldiers, the man picked up a pickaxe, the woman picked up a hoe and they looked at the warrior, he never spoke but they followed as he made course into the fields towards the golden glow.

Well, I came up with the ‘draugar’ horror story a few nights ago and this was as good a time as any to add it, making it the foundation of movie number three in as many months. I was amazed just how much folklore there is on the Nordic Draugr, there was even more I never knew (who knew) and I have not used that part yet. A stage where we see the danger coming from the North, so with Covid from the east (and now from any direction), Draugr from the north. I wonder what we can throw against us from the west (perhaps a Trumped up demon) and optionally an Afreet from the south, not the worst day to do something about the population explosion, so far Covid-19 only killed a little less than 2.5 million, so we might as well write in a few more options. And let’s face it, when Wall Street does not have a few billion consumers to worry about, they might overhaul their greed driven numbers system.

Which is an essential thought when you consider that Microsoft bought Bethesda for $7,500,000,000, EA spend $2.5 billion on IP and that race will continue on an exceeding scale, so me throwing some free IP towards public domain on areas like movies, games and TV series is not the worst idea. So whilst two players have spend a combined $10 billion, I hand out IP to public domain and original decent game developers will get a shot at showing those two players that the power of original IP will trump bought IP, IP that is not original pretty much any day of the week.

I do have a hidden agenda, but it is not time for that yet and the idea of showing Microsoft the error of their way is a massively satisfying stage for any ego, even mine (which is not that big to begin with).

When players learn that solidified dreams cannot be set to currency, they might actually learn the one lesson they ignored for well over a decade, I will be there the laugh in the rafters, to that I have no doubt.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

February 9, 2021 · 03:47

The marker, what is it?

We are always in a stage where it is about the price, as such the title ‘are video games too expensive?’ In the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/games/2021/feb/08/are-video-games-too-expensive-assassins-creed-cyberpunk-2077) had my attention, I wonder what they are throwing at us this time, they being Luke Holland. He throws “With new consoles from Sony and Microsoft expected, a raft of video game publishers announced that the RRP of their new releases would increase for the first time since the mid-00s” at us and that seems fine. There is also the fact that most game dealers tend to lower that price off the bat, the makers have there day one discounts and it goes on. I get it. Luke is not wrong and through the article he gives a decent point of view, but some issues remain. It is not given with “While an extra £20 won’t break the bank for some, games might already be stretching what little disposable income many people have, particularly when twinned with the £250-£450 cost of the shiny new console on which to play them”, it is a fact, but there is more (there always is). He touches on it with “the cost of producing an AAA game – big-budget, big-studio, tentpole titles – is now akin to that of making a Hollywood blockbuster. Grand Theft Auto V, released in 2013, cost £195m in development and marketing” yet he dances around it by dangling Cyberpunks and the bugs in our faces, whilst he ignores the massive bug list that AC Valhalla had (the very first image in the story). So whilst we get “A Martin Scorsese film lumbers in at three hours long. Most narrative-led games clock in at 15-or-so hours – five whole Scorseses; a hundred quid’s worth of Marty”, yes but there we see it, the quality, quality is what separates them, Scorsese hands us sheer perfection, Ubisoft products have not done this for the better part of a decade, in addition a game like Cyberpunk is showing us innovation to a much larger degree even (if for now) it has bugs. Ubisoft has been treating us to more of the same for years and they still can’t get it right. That is the part that is missing in this. And the gem is given at the very last “Yes, £70 is a lot. But choose wisely and you’ll never, ever feel short-changed”, yes we agree, but the ‘choose wisely’ part has become tainted. Consider that IGN gave us ‘Update 1.1.0 will fix over 30 Quest, World Event, and Side Activity issues, many that would prevent players from proceeding due to glitches and problems’, they gave this TWO MONTHS after the game was released, so how come that we see scores (metacritic: 80-85) depending on what system, a game with that many bugs is given 70+? And when we see that per source Gamepro (65) to PC gamer (92), we should have issues with the ‘choose wisely part’, in opposition there is Watchdogs: Legion, they did get that part right and when we see metacritic reviews (66-74) we need to sit down and consider that we all have different tastes and the settings are not equally pressed, which is unfair to Ubisoft as well. 

This is where the shoes become an issue, we might think that £20  is not too big an issue, when you are in a stage where you might buy a lemon £20 is a lot, really it is. 

As we try to set a value per time range, we need to consider that art is not easily categorised, and a true video game is still a work of art, which is why I have been slapping Ubisoft all I can, as I feel that they forgot that part. They got parts right they got games right. Even now, I still see in my mind the sunrise in AC Origins, perhaps because it was the first real 4K game, perhaps it was the setting, but they got that part right, pretty much all of it, which is why I am so angry about AC Valhalla. I stayed away from it and until the price is set to below £10 I continue to do so. I got AC Odyssey at £10 at some point, and I still regret it, so I might not fall for that this time around, in this I have serious settings on finding a way to officially remove Ubisoft from the AAA developers list, but then I remember, they got Watchdogs: Legion right, they might pull it off again. 

In this we need to make one more sidestep, Luke gives us “December’s Cyberpunk 2077 – despite being unfinished, riddled with bugs and, on consoles, uglier than a pooing pug”, which is interesting as he did not give us that setting for AC Valhalla, did he? I get it, we all have style of games we like, as I was in the 70’s addicted to the original William Gibson’s Neuromancer, I remain faithful to the game, I keep it on my shelf and I wait until the fixes have come in to play beyond the introduction. We also seem to forget that Cyberpunk 2077 had grossed well over $600 million in digital sales alone as of the end of 2020. He can have that view, I never liked GTA5, I did not like GTA4, so I stayed away from the sequel, I get it plenty like it, but it is not for me, just like Skyrim is not the game for a lot of them. We all have different tastes. 

Yet the title of the article remains in my mind, it still does, you see the part that Luke skated away from is that Immortals Fenyx Rising is $39 in the US, the same game is $50 in Europe, $77 in Australia and $45 in the UK (all PS4 prices). And this has been going on for years, all whilst the prices are even worse when you buy a digital format game, it also impacts the value of the art but we do not see that here, or in Luke’s defence with “a hundred quid’s worth of Marty”, when a game is not set to a level stage we see the issues, especially when the Xbox store charges more for a digital copy than a store would for a physical one, even an Australian store. This has been going on for at least 5 years. Games are judged by markers, but the reviewers are using different markers on different stages and they all refer to them as ‘markers’, as such people are walking away because they can no longer tell the difference. In this the final remark (which is still wise) “But choose wisely and you’ll never, ever feel short-changed” loses ground. An overhaul of what reviews and what should be reviewed is set to corners that are blatantly disregarded and it required an overhaul for well over a decade, I know because in the beginning (1988-1999) I was a reviewer. I might never have been the best, but I was always fair on the games I reviewed and I kept to the games I liked. When you get 2 pages a month, you want to spend them on the games you like, nothing else. A flaw? Optionally, but I had to make the space count so I did it on the games I likes and other reviewers on the games they liked. 

And I will admit, reviewing has become a lot more complex. A game that was on the CBM64, Atari ST or PC286 does not compare what is out today, so in that consider Watchdogs: Legion (at https://www.bworldonline.com/it-could-have-been-transcendent-arts/), I for the most agree with the review and the 85% score is decent and well earned and the one issue that I have is seen in “perhaps due to the weight of its pledges, it never gets to reach its projected dazzling heights. It never stops being enjoyable, but the most demanding players will be bothered by a nagging feeling that it could have been not just better, but transcendent — that it’s just a few steps shy of greatness”, it sums up the failing of Ubisoft, games that could have been beyond ‘WOW!’ are merely ‘Nice!’ And many reviewers do not do half as good a job on reviews as Alexander O. Cuaycong and Anthony L. Cuaycong did. So whilst we give attention to ‘choose wisely’ we forget that gamers are getting overloaded with reviews on all kinds of digital formats, and they often can no longer separate the critical reviewer from the unquestioning followers and the blind hater, which is an actual problem that makes any gamer like they are getting played and suddenly that £20 makes a whole lot of difference. 

If enough people say that it is not a marker, it is a coffee stick. We will see that at some point some will stir their coffee with it, no matter where it was before. 

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT, Media

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

January 22, 2021 · 15:32

When is news not news?

Yup, the news is overwhelmingly misdirecting. Now, I have no issue with stupid people, these politicians are to the larger extend greed driven and not the greatest source of reliable information. This has always been the case, you see politicians are all about constituents, yet an industrial constituent beats ten unemployed constituent, that is because the unemployed version does not prolong his or her career, the industrial could be a donor and set the politician up for life, that has always been the largest setting, it was for the longest time most visible in the US, but now it seems, Australia is about to follow suit. This is seen in a few ways, but let’s take a look at the first.

ABC gives us (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-22/google-stop-search-engine-australia-news-media-code/13079912) “Prime Minister Scott Morrison has pushed back against a threat by Google to stop making its search engine available in Australia if it is forced to pay news outlets for showing links to their websites and stories under a new media code”, you think that this is a simple thing, but the less intelligent person (currently prime minister), is not looking through his glasses, they are merely spectacles. In all this, it is about paying for news, yet the silly people (read: politicians) are being played a fool. This is seen when we Google ‘Google Australia’ looking for this news.

We are given the link, which gives us a subscription image and this paper is not the only one doing that, they are using news items for advertisement, so why exactly does goole have to pay for THAT privilege?

You might be Prime Minister Scott, but you do not have a fucking clue what you are tainting with adjusted media laws, perhaps you need to cater less to Murdoch wannabe’s and consider the larger frame (which you do not fathom). And in all this, your team (as well as the Labor team) to overhaul tax laws in a just way, your greed driven friends did not allow for that, did they? So you created a digital ship that is not is not waterproof, not sea worthy and optionally is unaware of the setting called liquid. So when the impact of no Google hits Australian businesses they will all scream and then you are shown to be the loser you really are.

And this is not new, I mentioned this before and over that time no true investigation was done. And when we consider “The two companies are fighting against legislation currently before the parliament which would force the digital platforms to enter into negotiations with news media companies for payment for content”, I wonder why, consider that the news media has the option not to be digital, not to be online, not to show content, but that is just too much for them and Scott Morrison knows this, so like a Dick (Turpin) he goes from digital firm to digital firm like a highway robber, all whilst the setting of the news outlets are debatable at best and they have been for several years (ABC and SBS excluded), and as such why should Google pay? These links are offered, so tell the news media to stop offering these links, I reckon that when the Courier Mail and the Australian can no longer advertise in that way, they too will cry like little girls. 

Did I oversimplify the issue here?

So when we consider “forced to pay news outlets for showing links to their websites and stories under a new media code”, Google can just block all the Australian news sources and offer BBC, Al Jazeera, Fox News, Guardian UK and CNN links. Let not forget that the bulk of Australian news is shoddy at best and most of them all copy and paste from an American source (Reuters), when you make a tally, we see a setting (as I personally see it) where the news in Australia is not news, it is filtered content to appease shareholders, stake holders and advertisers in Australia, as such, when they lose their Google links the game will get rather interesting soon enough, but that is merely my $0.02 on the matter.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Law, Media

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

January 21, 2021 · 22:40

The untaught shift

I am old school, I say it loud and proudly. As we set the stage of what we enable. And what enables us, we support our bosses (even if they massively goof), we set the stage for acceptance and we act within the law whenever possible. This s not rocket science, well, that is how I see it. As such, I do not steal and I try to be as honest as possible. When it comes to my IP, I will make it public domain before I meet with someone trying to rip me off.  I might not get anything, but the other fellow ends up with nothing as well, then this person has to content with a dozen fighters over public domain hardware, this is how it is played, even as I have only 2 5G devices at present, I will have more, time showed me that, so I can abide or die poor. You see the greed driven fear poverty, I do not, I have been in that stage for a large stage of my life, in poverty you see everyone coming, or better said, they avoid you, which is fine by me. 

So when the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-55732450) gives me ‘Ex-Google engineer among those pardoned by Donald Trump’, I was for the most unaware. And the mis-adventures of Anthony Levandowski were unknown to me. Isn’t it interesting that we see “At the time of sentencing, in August, the judge said it was “the biggest trade-secret crime I have ever seen”. But Judge Alsup also called Levandowski “a brilliant, ground-breaking engineer that our country needs”.” Yet from my point of view, if Tony was so ground breaking, he would have done it and not stole it. As such the note by FORMER President Trump was a bit bogus “Levandowski had “paid a significant price for his actions and plans to devote his talents to advance the public good”, it added.” As I personally see it, when you steal trade secrets you have a mere personal gain in view, not the needs of public goods, and if so only when you personally profit by it. A small shift in cogs most people seem to ignore. And if it was 1-2 documents, we might think that he is on par, when we see “As an employee, he downloaded more than 14,000 files containing the intellectual property of Google’s former self-driving car division, Waymo, before leaving to found Otto, which was soon acquired by Uber”, we see 14,000 documents, a setting that is also on the Google Servers, as such is was a simple white collar heist, nothing noble about it and we can argue whether a person like that deserves a pardon. 

And no matter how it was settled, let’s face it, who would want to do business with a person that has no reliability and limited credibility? This is merely the opening setting, if a billionaire like Peter Thiel, Palmer Luckey and friends are advising former president Trump, you better believe that there is more coming and that there is more at stake. I am not telling what it is, because I do not know, but we can agree that a person like Peter Thiel does nothing without the outlook of a large payoff, and I cannot tell what it is at present, perhaps it is something that is within Anthony Levandowski, I then merely wonder why he had to steal 14,000 documents. If he had the knowledge and skills he had the notes, so we get to the content of the 14,000 documents, something I am unaware of, but it might be a much larger stage, people like Peter Thiel did not become this rich by making silly choices. 

And even if we accept the quote from Vice (at https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgz7w7/peter-thiel-got-trump-to-pardon-uber-engineer-sentenced-to-prison) giving us “It’s worth noting that for all of the years of litigation, the criminal charge, and now the last-minute presidential pardon from a departing authoritarian, Uber’s work on self-driving cars that Levandowski went down for amounted to nothing”, it does not warrant a pardon, it might be the price of grabbing the nuggets of fools gold, and as such I wonder what Anthony Levandowski had that was never revealed, perhaps he had something but never shared it with Google, yet in this we do get that Peter Thiel is nobodies fool, so I cannot wait to see whats next.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Law, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

January 20, 2021 · 06:42

Replay the past in the present

We all do that, we sometimes think we can and sometimes we hope it will be an option. I am on this horse because I am slightly too angry with UK Common Law, and I need to cool down, so I hope that THAT article will come next. To cool off, I did something I had not planned, I installed Skyrim on the PS5, in part because I saw a tweet regarding Skyrim that I can get it to do 60 fps on the PS5, part because I am still one achievement short (slay the legendary dragon), in the last two attempts there was too much grinding going on and I am still playing it on the PS4 as well. Yet for some reason I had forgotten how satisfying the first 10 levels were. The limits, the setting of joining groups, and the setting of having no place. I had forgotten just how perfect Skyrim is. Yes, I know, I have seen the crying people on ALL the bugs, but to be honest, I have had very little issues. Yes, there are a few glitches, but that comes with the setting of a game this big. Oh, and over 9 years we see that there are 17 patches (including the last one for PS5, I am guessing), a game that is 9 years old (released 11.11.11) and still it holds a sway over us (at me at the very least). A good game is really hard to find and Bethesda outdid themselves here. I had designed Elder Scrolls VII: Restoration, and I had hoped it would equal Skyrim, of course my ego feels that I would be surpassing it, but if I only equal it, the game would be a massive success. This is seen in two ways, in the first, write yourself a list of games that you still love to play (beginning to end), and I reckon that this list has less than a dozen titles, If the game must be older than 3 years, the list will be less than half of what you had and in 9 out of 10 cases Skyrim will be on there.

The future options
In light of the news that has been out there, 2021 will be a great gaming year. This is part of what is already out there and part because Bioware has announced a remastered trilogy of Mass Effect on PS5 and that Microsoft contraption. There is off course the first game, yet it is the second one that takes the cake, until recent seen as one of the best tactical RPG’s ever created, the people (read: gamers) have been eagerly awaiting that title. There are all kinds of rumours as to the reason, but in the end it does not matter, millions want to replay that trilogy and on nextgen is a setting that no one wants to miss. Even as I set the premise last year n an idea to relaunch ME4 (together with ME5) to give a larger credibility to the titles, we see that no matter how good that could be, it might never be as great as ME1 through ME3. I get that, the story was breathtaking no game could ever equal that in that era and even now games are struggling to equal those three titles. Bioware and Bethesda set the markers to near perfection and that I what gamers crave, that near perfection feeling, Ubisoft seemingly never understood that. 

Yet no matter who we embrace and what title we go for, we go for the entertainment and in that setting I looked again at the station of the open RPG I created (as a response to Microsoft buying Bethesda) for developers to freely use for Sony exclusive games. It was my way to make the Microsoft $7,500,000,000 to be a lot more expensive than they bargained for. In this I made a few more modifications, or perhaps a better description would be ‘a conceptual path to allow for more’ in this the idea to have 1-2 additions to be played on mobiles, free games that enhances the first one. In Fable we saw Pubgames, yet what happens when we create mobile games (android and iOS), that allows players to do some of the menial tasks in the game, whilst you are on route to work/school, during lunch, or just when you are out enjoying the sun. 

Work
The work app is one where the rejuvenated hero works a job (depending on what job he scored), over 30 minutes you tire the hero and he sleeps it off whilst you work/learn, and at the end of that time you come home, start the game and the hero has gained credits and coins.

Education
Whilst our hero works he learns and gains experience (not as much as in the game), but he could learn and achieve an extra skill point, in addition to that, whilst the hero learns, there will optionally be a stage where new and more equipment becomes available.

As we have thee money to go out and explore, we see that the game gets a larger push towards the gamer, to see more, learn more and do more. Yes, we acknowledge that there was a great stage to play Fable 2 and own the pub BEFORE you entered the tower, yet what happens when your years of absence made you lose the pub and its income? The setting is a mere reflection (I am not negative towards Fable), we need to see that there is a whole range of options and in this I moved as far away from the Bethesda s possible, not because the games were bad, no the opposite, they were really good, so creating something different was essential and when you look at all the D&D games, it is surprising how alike some are. If another franchise gets to stand up, it needs to be different from other games, it needs to set a different stage and it needs to have larger options, in this large is reflecting on the application of other solutions giving you more options to enjoy exploring, and do things. 

In this, I merely thought of a part of my consideration (Elder Scrolls VII) and I came up with another bevel to implore and to exploit. A setting that TES4 and TES5 didn’t have to the degree I considered and as such, I can add this to my game as it was never there, and that is not all, even as we see the larger stage of new opportunities, we need to weigh, just like in every game, will it be an addition, or merely a fab that goes nowhere? It is an important question to ask ourselves, because we always think that our idea is perfect, but that is not a given and even as I create something new, it will not be for every gamer, it will be for the RPG lover, that is who I cater for, and I will say right now, if you do not care for RPG games you might not like this game and even if you like RPG games, you might not like this either. I cater to a group of people and I will be happy when that group is larger than expected, but unlike Ubisoft, I keep realism in the visors, those who cater to all will never cater to anybody, I still believe that and so far I have not been proven wrong.

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 16, 2021 · 23:13

Back to basics

Yup, even I have to go back to basics at time, it is not a bd thing, it is actually a good thing. I was looking at the language setting for the TV series (Keno Diastima) I designed and I came up with an approach that has three layers, the action, the attached location and the intonation. The idea is based on the old Infocom games, even as their language is more advanced, consider that you are in a location and you do not know each other. Would you make it complex, or simple. The actions would be (for example), Go, Get, Eat, Drink, Move, Grab, Describe, Turn, Say, Examine, Scan, Attack, Defend, Listen, Connect, Make (so far, the list might expand), the location list is set to the same icons, but part of vocal expressionism, in all this, I need to set up a logical icon list that is between 100-200 icons. Then there is the intonation, I thought of setting the relevance and meaning towards the Greek gods (in the series a different setting), as such military instructions will take a note from Ares, sustenance is from Demeter, Liquid needs are Poseidon, and so on. It is not limited to gods, in our world wisdom might also have come from Homer or Plato, in a setting we can grab a person, but under Plato, Apollo and Ares, that meaning could differ a lot. A setting in this is optionally now solved. I got most of season one now done, I merely need to set the events and dialogues, not bad, in this short a time, I have spend in total no more than 12 hours on all of this and I am getting close to 3 seasons, what a nice creative vibe, and I think that going back to basics only assisted the matter. 

Yet it is not merely about TV-Series, if language is important, if proper language makes us set the stage that needs to be set, then which yahoo milk-dud came up with the setting of ‘Google Play is unsportsmanlike, U.S. states likely to argue in potential lawsuit’? In what law is sportsmanlike used in corporate decisions? Consider Kmart, Pfizer, Amazon, Shell, Novartis and several others, so how many were accused and prosecuted for ‘unsportsmanlike acts’? Where is that covered in law?

The stage gets wider from there. This comes with the quote “The lawsuit is expected to be filed in February or March, the sources said, and it would follow complaints about Google’s management of its Play Store even though the company was originally seen as more open about its app store than Apple Inc”, this is optional getting ridiculous, I would like to investigate the raw data on all the complaints, including WHO had been complaining. Some might accept it when we see U.S. Justice Department, yet that is run by Audrey Strauss, no matter who she is and she might be really good at his job, but the premise is to get a conviction and just does not work here. 

A system that is complex, an Android system it is a Google System, as we see “requires that some apps use the company’s payment tools and pay Google as much as 30% of their revenue”, what Diane Bartz and Paresh Dave are intentionally keeping silent on is that there is a stage where apps are FREE, as such there is contribution, 30% of NOTHING, is NOTHING. This is a stage where people pay $1-$10 for micro transactions, some are very much worth it, others not that much, but that is in the eye of the beholder, but what is important that the entire commercial side requires hardware and software valued at $3000-$8000, and this is before the entire banking part comes into play. Google (Apple too on their devices) takes it all away from the software guy, And in the 1st year these software developers are making a tidy profit, when it normally takes 3-5 year to merely break even, if ever. And this is not about these makers, if they are banned from Android Play and they have to provide their own hardware, they fold and the not so bright people in the legal offices know this, I speculate that they are facilitating for players like Epic Games and these people will not care who gets hurt. The setting that follows is third party providers, yet I demand that any criminal transgressions by these third party players will result in the US Justice department being accountable for ALL damages on the players and on Google, but then like little bitches they run away and blame miscommunication. The intonation is important on both, the US Justice Department is a tool that is being used (as I see it), and as such we are ALL entitled to know the identity and the exact complaint. When the US Justice Department interferes with the safety of our gaming time, no matter where we do it (Android, iOS), you better believe that we all want to nail these idiots to a cross, fortunately the distance between the two locations (Google DC and the US Department of Justice) is 1.2 miles, in good Roman tradition we can (as I personally see it) nail all these people driven to greed driven stupidity on a cross over the lengths of the distance, there is likely to be length left, but I am not hopeful on that, even though, some will have a lovely view on the Lincoln statue for as long as they live. I get it, it might be overly emotional, but the stage is set that we see more and more stupidity on trying to get to Google, all whilst the overhaul of the tax laws would have done it, but that might hurt other people on the hill, would it not? A solution available for 20 years, still ignored, even now and even tomorrow.

A back to basics package that Audrey Strauss could have figured out if she had set her mind to an actual solution and not a witch-hunt, but that might just be me.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Media, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 15, 2021 · 22:11

Stupid is, as stupid does

Yup, we all have these moments, any person (including me), a setting where we think (or delusionally hope) that effects will turn to our favour. We go through this a few times in our lifetimes, or if you are a civil servant, or elected official 3-4 times a week. So when I saw something that had hit the ‘news’, we see something which was announced previously, as such I am not surprised, and as we are given ‘The Australian government has urged Google to focus on paying for Australian content instead of blocking it’ I merely wonder how stupid the Australian government (my government) needs to get. It is a business principle, one that THEY embraced for a lifetime. ‘Why pay, when you can get it for free?’ A setting that is globally accepted, and as such, why are we surprised? The governments lost credibility and confidence on not overhauling tax laws for decades, now they want to sulk and cry over media not getting paid? Media that does not have the most reliable track record in the last 10 years, so do you think that the people care? Media and taxes have been pussyfooted around on a global scale, as such the people do not really care what happens there, they do not care because the media made it easy not to be cared about.

And the stupidity does not stop there. As we see “After media reports said Australian news websites were not showing up in searches, Google confirmed it was blocking the sites for a small number of users”, we might overlook ““The digital giants should focus on paying for original content, not blocking it. That’s my message to those digital giants,” said Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg”, now we accept that Josh Frydenberg is not the most useful person, yet the setting is different. 
Consider the news below (one of hundreds)

We click on it because we are curious, yet we do not get the news. We get

In this the station is that the news USES digital media for free advertisement, and why exactly should Google, Facebook et al cater to that? Yes Josh, do you have a list of ALL the media outlets doing that? 

As such we are not going to lose any sleep when these ‘news providers’ are no longer in the mix, so perhaps we should change ““The digital giants should focus on paying for original content, not blocking it. That’s my message to those digital giants,” said Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg” into “Digital giants should leave uninvoiced advertising attempt by so called news groups alone said Australian tool Jay Eff”, am I right, am I wring, you decide.

And the same news outlet sent three articles (in that same approach) in the last hour alone, so the fact that we see “Google said the tests affect about 1% of Australian users, and will be finished by February” and we get “After media reports said Australian news websites were not showing up in searches” implies that someone at the news outlets is keeping track on what w see and what we look for, so how Orwellian is that side of the news?

A stage they set, a stage they tried to bake and now that they are getting bitten, they cry like snivelly little bitches, oh whoop ti do. And this is the stage we walk on, the media is getting less and less reliable and we need to wake up, especially when the treasurer is crying too instead of overhauling tax laws for corporations. Is anyone paying attention?

Enjoy the weekend, Monday morning is 58 hours away.

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, Media

Tagged as , , , , ,

January 13, 2021 · 15:46

The contemplation

We all have things to contemplate, for me this all started a while ago, but it got to the forefront yesterday after a call with a friend. We disagree on something and it is not about right or wrong, even if I believe I am right, I see that he in NOT wrong. My setting is data and I have been around it for decades, I have been in specific fields, he has not, but he has a real good grasp of data. So as I made a joke about not forgetting the population of zero for Parler, he dismissed it as zero data groups do not matter, and for a lot it does not, but it actually does.

So how to bring it to the forefront? In this (as a Republican) we can look at the stupid, stupid left and can coin a few phrases. There was the Washington Post ‘Parler, a Platform Favoured by Trump Fans, Struggles for Survival’, my by-line? ‘Rebekah Mercer just got a $23,000,000 tax deductibility option’. USA Today gives us ‘Parler goes dark: Amazon suspends the social platform from its web hosting services’, there is a lot more, but the setting is made, no more Parler and now we get to the zero part. You see, the one thing that President Trump achieved was a larger polarisation, the left thought that they had won, but players like Rebekah Mercer, one the people behind Cambridge Analytica and Parler have settings, they have larger plans. You think that she gives away $23 million without a larger gain somewhere else? It was the nightmare scenario, a unified place for right splinter groups and extremists. You think that people like John Matze will sit still? Uniting right wing splinter groups can be massively profitable, when no one will do business with you, losing 10% on the one who does business with you is still appealing, and splinter groups that cumulatively surpass the 50 million member marker is  still worth the effort.

How does this relate?
Even if Parler is at zero, its members will go somewhere else. There is Telegram, Signal and these people need attention and they will go where they can find it. Even now we see the Financial Times give us ‘WhatsApp fights back as users flee to Signal and Telegram’, and even as we see the quote “Facebook is scrambling to deal with a sudden competitive threat to its messaging platform WhatsApp after a change to its terms of service sparked privacy concerns and prompted users to turn to rivals such as Signal and Telegram in droves” (at https://www.ft.com/content/ee1b716d-4ed2-4b26-8da1-40c98db7b9b6), the stupid stupid left just doesn’t learn, presenting that a thing is doesn’t make it so, and the setting that the media cannot be trusted is out there in big letters. So when I say that Parler: n=0 is important. These people find other means and even as not all will go over, and not all will go to the same solution, if Parler had 100,000 voices, we need to find where at least 80,000 went, we need to tag and identify the extremists, I reckon the US Capitol setting made that clear. 

In this we could consider the work of Marina Soley-Bori ‘Dealing with missing data: Key assumptions and methods for applied analysis’, it was written in 2013, but it is quite good and we start with the premise “the precision of confidence intervals is harmed, statistical power weakens and the parameter estimates may be biased. Appropriately dealing with missing can be challenging as it requires a careful examination of the data to identify the type and pattern of missingness, and also a clear understanding of how the different imputation methods work”, it is a decent starting point. In this stage, the report gives us a group NMAR (Not missing at random) that is the stage we have and it is an important stage. In the report she quotes Allison, 2001 “They lead to an underestimation of standard errors and, thus, overestimation of test statistics. The main reason is that the imputed values are completely determined by a model applied to the observed data, in other words, they contain no error”, the NMAR group is largely ignored and we can accept that in this work, yet in real life, the QAnon group and the Parler users are a larger stage and those who do not flee to 4Chen are in the wind and that is where we do not want them to be, so pushing these people to the dark-web was a silly move. Perhaps some might notice that I bolded one word, one word made the difference. Bias is the setting in missing values that is the dangerous one, most who know what they do see that, they tend to call it ‘arbitrary decisions’ but it remains a form of (whether good or not), of bias and that is where the train goes of the rails (without it being a maglev). The stage to find the NMAR is becoming increasingly important. It is not merely those that move there, it is the group they drag along that becomes a lot larger. You see, they might only gain the interest of an additional 2%, on a stage of 50,000,000 extremists, that is one million votes, that much changes an election, the silly democrats making presentations should have considered that in a much earlier stage. Yes, we see that pornhub can no longer use credit cards, but as these so called hypocrites will still cater to child labor and implied slavery, how much was gained? Especially as one stage was founded on consenting adults, the other was not. We see one side of the story, and the left keeps on hiding the other side, that does not mean that the other side does not exist. The democrats have an ‘out-of-sight-out-of-mind’ approach, that is unless they get hit directly, then they become vindictive. That was never a stage that would ever work, but they will learn at some point. The problem is not their mindset, it is their inability to follow through and people like Rebekah Mercer have the goods to unify one side and get rich in the process. All whilst players like Google pull up their nose at a $25,000,000 bill for a 60% share, they say that they can solve it themselves (they wish), and when they rely on ‘EVERYONE LOVES GOOGLE TV’, all whilst the consumer, when the $65 bill is due and the people see their budget melt away, do you still believe that everyone stays happy and loving? So when I make my solution public domain, do you think that there will be zero cease and desist messages? 

In this the stage is rather large, the splintered right have moved somewhere else and now the larger stage cannot be predicted, when the Parler group goes dark-web, the stage changes even further and earlier some had days to prepare, now hours, how is that a better stage? 

There is no population zero, unless they are all dead they merely vacated somewhere else and that somewhere else is the problem. This population is not missing at random, they are shunning the media and as we are given ‘An Absurdly Basic Bug Let Anyone Grab All of Parler’s Data’ by Wired (at https://www.wired.com/story/parler-hack-data-public-posts-images-video/) a mere 11 hours ago, do you think that it will be that easy, a person like Rebekah Mercer learned from Cambridge Analytica, was at a bug or an open backdoor? So when we see “The truth was far simpler: Parler lacked the most basic security measures that would have prevented the automated scraping of the site’s data. It even ordered its posts by number in the site’s URLs, so that anyone could have easily, programmatically downloaded the site’s millions of posts”, anyone thinking that things where that simple are out of their mind, this is a setting where some had the lowdown on millions, and as Wired gives us “I wouldn’t even call it a rookie mistake because, as a professional, you would never write something like this”, they touch on the stage that matters, when someone has the lowdown on a group of millions of people and they can unite them, do you think that no one looked at something out there for 2 years? Do you think that this is merely seen 11 hours ago (plus a few weeks to write the article), this issue has been out for a while and now that these people go to other means and other voices (the same voices in other accounts), the problem becomes a lot larger and more real. The people of Parler did not stop being an issue as Parler has population zero, now the people who needed to keep informed need to go back to square one and find them first. So how silly was the move we see now?

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 10, 2021 · 21:54

Pirates of a feather

For me this is a little new ground, until recently I was not aware of the ability to speak ‘Parler’, as I see it, they refined it from Parley, which comes from the French ‘Parler’ meaning ‘to speak’. The event was set to “a discussion or conference, especially one designed to end an argument or hostilities between two groups of people”, as such I was aware of the term, but not the setting that President Trump uses. CNN (at https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/15/media/rebekah-mercer-parler/index.html) gave us a little while ago ‘Meet Rebekah Mercer, the deep-pocketed co-founder of Parler, a controversial conservative social network’, and the co-founder to Cambridge Analytica and a few others, so when I saw the Cambridge link, I wondered what data Parler is capturing. This is added in other ways too, but let’s keep to the CNN story for now. And when the article start with the quote “John and I started Parler to provide a neutral platform for free speech, as our founders intended, and also to create a social media environment that would protect data privacy”, all whilst another source gives us “journalists and users have criticised the service for content policies that are more restrictive than the company portrays and sometimes more restrictive than those of its competitors” (source: Washington Post July 2020), and it basically goes from bad to worse. That is given with the quote “The ever increasing tyranny and hubris of our tech overlords demands that someone lead the fight against data mining, and for the protection of free speech online. That someone is Parler, a beacon to all who value their liberty, free speech, and personal privacy.”” And let not forget that this comes from the co-founder of Cambridge Analytica. I still wonder what Parler was capturing, especially with the restrictive rules in place. And if these restrictions were limited to the stage of “But Parler is quickly discovering the limits of free expression. On June 30, Matze used Parler to explain its house rules, apparently frustrated with some of Parler’s new users testing the limits of its free-expression motto by posting pornographic images and obscenities”, I believe that this is up for debate. So even as I take notice of “Wernick wrote a Fox News opinion piece in support of Parler this month, saying Twitter and Facebook are using “technology intended to liberate, instead to subjugate”, I wonder what we will learn when we make a cross section of those on Parler AND on 4Chan, I even wonder if the FBI is not already on this. You see, there is a problem with ‘philanthropists’, the true philanthropist not, but the stage we see “Robert Mercer, who helped oversee Renaissance Technologies hedge fund, and his wife Diane, donated more than $23 million to groups that backed conservative candidates, according to a tally by the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics”, in light of Cambridge Analytica, I am still in the personal opinion, that these people would not set $23,000,000 out in the open, unless they can bank at least double that, and with them owning Renaissance Technologies hedge fund, I feel certain I am right. The power of $110,000,000,000 reaches far and too many want scraps from that table of plenty. In this I wonder if Parler is a way to identify and unify the scattered right, it is not a bad plan, if they succeed they have the means to oppose the Democratic side of things to a much larger extent than anyone is willing to give them credit for.

Even as the Wall Street Journal (at https://www.wsj.com/articles/parler-backed-by-mercer-family-makes-play-for-conservatives-mad-at-facebook-twitter-11605382430) gives us ‘Parler Makes Play for Conservatives Mad at Facebook, Twitter’, I believe this goes deeper. Even as the blinker are attached with “After The Wall Street Journal reported on the Mercers’ ties with Parler, Chief Executive John Matze confirmed that Ms. Mercer was the lead investor in the company at its outset and said that her backing was dependent on the platform allowing users to control what they see”, the seting given to us in the beginning, gives us a different tory, and when ‘allowing users to control what they see’ falls away, the one important part remains is identity, when you look in the past, no one has tried to unify the extreme right, there is every chance that the Mercer family see the power and the massive amount of gains that this optionally brings. It took me less than a day to figure out the parts that the media was so eager not to mention, I wonder who else is on tht train, actually, I believe that they all are, even big tech. I expect that they too want the bucket of gold at the and of that nightmare rainbow, and Mercer might have gotten way more than double the investment on that 23 million dollar train, if he unites the right wing and far right wing, the democrats have much to be worried about, they have been used to a scattered opponent in the last 25 years, a unified one is an opponent that they haven’t faced before. And as I see it, the Mercer family is at the speculated centre of all that. 

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, Media, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , ,

January 8, 2021 · 05:58

Tokyo Marketing

It is 05:00, and I saw a tweet that woke me up, there was 5 minutes before the new Bravia video, and in light of the PS5 I kept my interest as I have no 4K abilities at present. So as I started to look I was confronted by both torture and delight, but which is which?

You see, I look at matters differently from most others and the first 4 minutes were almost disheartening. Now, it is important to understand that I bear no ill will to any Sony employee, this is not an attack on them, it is not an attack on Sony, it is the setting of perceived presentation and that needs to be in the centre of all of this. 

It starts with an introduction by Kazuo Kii, he speaks English, but every time he does so, it seems like he is reading a script, talking at you, not to you (unintentionally). I wonder if he would have been better off talking to us in Japanese. That painful experience only takes minutes, but it is painful and it is not fair on Kazuo Kii, especially when we consider he is the head of Sony TV, but it is only a short time and then we are given to who gives us the goods on Bravia XR, and the explanation is good, it is amazing and it is part of something much bigger, as such I was given insight into something I never expected, I am looking for a new 4K TV so that in time I can enjoy gaming in 4K, what I got is insight into a new system that does not maximises gaming and movie watching, but a TV that maximises viewing in the way IMAX does, something I never saw coming and as Motoi a true marketeer gives us by talking to us and clearly explains the parts we go from initial a little unsettling to an overwhelming presentation making us hope that we can afford the biggest and the best, which is not likely for a lot of us, so when it is time for Inoue, the engineer to come on the screen, who gives us his the technical side, he does so clearly in a genuine tone and explains Bravia XR to us, he might give it to us in Japanese, but the subtitles give us the English part and his genuine tone make us care, we always care about out TV, there is lose to zero exception to that. I have had a Sony TV since 1985 and I never regretted it. Yet there is more and it is not merely about Sony, the fact that it comes with Google TV implies a larger stage, a stage I will not comment on, but there is a larger interaction with IoT, I am not certain that we are ready of all of it, but the TV gives us a desire to have it. When it is time for the designer Yokota to come, we see that Sony is not messing around, this TV advancement is not iteration, it is innovation and it puts them ahead of all others for some time to come, not merely for the PS5, the IMAX viewing side of it all will blow movie lovers away, it will come with a need to get the movies you love on 4K, Sony achieved greatness today, but it came with a few little hitches and there I wonder if the hitches were intentional or not, because one part enhances the other, and they all are enhanced by Bravia Core, a streaming content option that gives the viewer more than w expected and as they seemingly offer movies that are not new, the fact that we get to see the maximum of streaming through Purestream, yet I feel certain that this will also create congestion up the wazoo all over the globe for the next 3 years. Consider 100,000 people watching IMAX enhanced streaming service all whilst I see daily congestion before they are out in the open. Yet even as I realise that, I still want it, I want it badly. A setting I haven’t felt for some time, but this is innovation and we all love true innovation and I reckon that there are plenty of people who want it too, with or without Google TV. 

Leave a comment

Filed under Gaming, IT, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , ,