Category Archives: Media

August 13, 2024 · 23:48

How Presidents become sniffling bitches

It is strong, it is optionally regarded as disrespectful, but seeing the BBC give us ‘Ukraine claims to control 1,000 sq km of Russian territory’, the story (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2lmr29ygjo) comes with the underline of President Putin called stating “Russian President Vladimir Putin has described the incursion as a “large-scale provocation” that involved “indiscriminate shelling of civilian buildings, residential houses and ambulances.”” (Source: Baltimore Sun). So how does it feel to have the shoe on the other foot?

Lets not forget 

Russia has bombed hospitals, churches, refuge’s and civilians with intention. Now after almost devastating losses the Ukraine is expanding into Russia. Ukraine is coming to Russia and calling these new lands optionally their new home. It is a little bit speculative, because there is no clear path. As I can see it, Moscow will soon have another name (my wishful thinking) and the Ukraine has already found a new home as their community building, it will be the Kremlin. It might be a little too soon for that thought. But there is another setting. The other setting is that several GRU members will be wanting a way out. Not everyone is agreeing with the picture that President Putin is painting and as such GRU officers with folders on the agreements on Pascal Hillebrand, Thierry Baudet and other like minded people will be eagerly wanted by the Dutch AIVD and media. Not to mention the army of internet troll media arrangers who are doing real damage to European, American, Australian and Canadian democracies. All that became an optional reality when Ukraine took land from Russia. 

This hasn’t happen since Stalin (1941) when the Germans started operation Barbarossa. Now there is a setting we shouldn’t dispense with, Russia could mobilise their entire army now. The problem is that they have plenty to sow into that region. It weakens the Russian forces to a massive degree. When you have an army that merely covers 70% of your country and pushing it to different areas, more areas will be weakened. The second setting is that it will take longer for Russia to ever recover. The amounts lost and the lack of a properly functioning logistics and equipment supervision, for that matter the actual availability of equipment are all matters that are strangling Russian forces. Using your finger saying ‘pew, pew, pew’ doesn’t really work on forces who have seen their homes devastated, and it was an unprovoked devastation. Being that the Russian forces are relying on North Korean and Chinese arms to an increasing degree is also not to be underestimated. 

On a sideline (making it about me), there is still the plans to ‘make’ Russian nuclear reactors go into meltdown mode. Should Ukrainian forces enable that part than the loss of a mere 3 reactors will put Moscow into dark mode, no electricity and no heating. Taking in consideration that things turn cooler in November which lasts until mid February and it stays snowy until April. You see concrete and steel buildings are nice, but without heating they nearly instantly turn into refrigerators and sleeping there is a one stop location to the death sleep. 

Frightened yet? 

That was the part Russia forgot about, and people like Vladimir Solovyov and Vladimir Molchanov forgot about. We saw their ranting on YouTube and they all forgot what happens when their turn is up. They never thought Russia could be attacked, but the aggressive nature that Russia employed since February 2022 now has a new wrinkle. As Putin announced the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, he claimed to commence a “special military operation”, side-stepping a formal declaration of war. Now that comes to bite him and his ‘friends’ will soon be a lot more afraid then they thought they ever could be. In the mean time I designed several new weapons, one to cluster down on Russian harbours and that is a nice piece of icing (DARPA eat your heart out). You see most weapons are about destruction, as such I designed a steal approach to dislodging. It seems less ‘effective’ but there is nothing as effective as taking an entire port out of commission. OK, I admit that some harbours will merely be in part less effective. Russia has a nice navy when it doesn’t work it is merely a bundle of steel going nowhere. And as they lose their Black Sea and Atlantic abilities, they will see the disaster they unfolded in 2022. Consider (merely consider) that Zapadnaya Litsa is take off the operational board, that and their Arkhangelsk become set pieces in a Russian comedy called ‘What do we do now’?

How will it go from here?
I have no idea, but the fact that the Ukraine captured land from Russia was unforeseen by everyone, Russia least of all. So when we consider “A senior British military source, who asked not to be named, told the BBC there was the risk that Moscow will be so angered by this incursion that it could redouble its own attacks on Ukraine’s civilian population and infrastructure” is decently accurate, but then Russia had bombed Ukraine pretty much into the stone age. This is the setting where we see that people stated that this would be over in 2-3 days, it is now year two and Russia is losing lands. That is the reality they fece and as such a lot more domino stones will be falling over. I am partially hoping that several GRU and FSB officers will defect the bad place they are in and come with their files to other places outside Russia. They still need proper vetting as this is a tactic that dead spies cater too (a Sun Tzu reference, Chapter 13). But it is clear that Russia has now a different kettle of fish on their table and they were never ready for that part.

So as we revisit the current losses consider how come that the 20th strongest army is setting such losses on one of the top three armed armies of the world?

When we consider that for about 5 hundred years we have seen the expedition of logistics, hardware distribution, armed forces and intelligence gathering. So how come that a 2-3 day war has become a 2-3 year war? I stated a partial in ‘On the subject of failure’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2023/02/27/on-the-subject-of-failure/), yet an capture the land against Russia was never a reality, how wrong I was and I was not alone there as the BBC now shows me.

All war is founded in deception, a quote that China came up with over 2000 years ago, to see it to this degree is almost unbelievable, so President Putin had clear documentation that could have prevented this. How the mighty fall.

Enjoy this day, my Tuesday ends in 20 minutes, Vancouver is just about to start their day with waffles, eggs and more. 

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August 12, 2024 · 15:21

What’s in an advertisement?

I have been called many things (not all of them nice) but I do not care, I call it as I see it. This time it is Google that hits the spotlight, you see it is not all Microsoft that I cater against (often I do though). This time it is Cyber News (at https://cybernews.com/news/meta-google-youtube-instagram-advertising/) that gives us the news. This came from the Financial Times and the headline gives us ‘Meta and Google had secret ad deal to target teens on YouTube’, I am not judging this, but Google has stated on a few instances that they would not target kids. Still we get here “Google Ads help page itself says that the “unknown” category refers to people whose age, gender, parental status, or household income are supposedly unidentified. In theory, this could allow ad buyers to reach a wider audience” but we are also given “according to FT, Google could use app downloads and online activity to determine “with a high degree of confidence” that the “unknown” group actually mostly consisted of younger users” Now, lets take a different look and for this I use the Apple population (not people eating Granny Smiths) So lets go by the simple set of an iPad and around 128.5 million units of tablets were shipped worldwide in 2023. A little over 40% in the USA. The younger population uses their iPad for over 4 hours a day to do gaming. I took a small measurement in two hours I was fed around 2 dozen advertisements. Now consider that we have 80 million gamers on the iPad, as such 4 hours represent 40 advertisements per user and that represents 3.2 billion advertisements EVERY DAY, you think that Google, Apple or Meta walk away from that? And when we add the mobile gamers on Android and iPhone it becomes a much larger and more interesting number. 

On one side it works out well for one of my IP issues if we consider the larger premise. You see some are all about hijacking revenues from others, I took it into a different direction. When these three players lose a little over 20% of that advertisement industry. How strapped for cash will they end up being? Don’t trivialise this (many so called captains of industry will), when you need your revenue and you get to face a decline of 20% panic is ensured to come to the table. Like the advertisement bitches who cried fowl when Google wanted to do away with cookies. The setting I had was enable Amazon to a much larger degree, optionally enabling Kingdom Holding (Riyadh). A simple setting that many forgot about, because they all wants us to look to the horizon to the land of honey and AI, but that is at least a decade away, as such I saw another shore. 

But back to the story. So the response from Google was ““We prohibit ads being personalised to people under 18, period,” Google said in a statement to the publication. “We’ll also be taking additional action to reinforce with sales representatives that they must not help advertisers or agencies run campaigns attempting to work around our policies.”” And it could have worked if Google set through the cookie stage, but they did not. Now the setting is different, advertisement gaming is developing and we get a dozen versions of the same game and they all run on advertisements. And the game becomes worse for some ad streamers now also include advertisements. As such they are one step removed from the old setting that Electronic Arts tried to include in their sport games, the billboards in a game all showing the advertisements that EA could sell. In the long run it could have given them a revenue boost. Now the game sets a different premise. You see you can fight of getting more revenue, or you can make sure the others cannot get any, that was the premise that I went for and Saudi Arabia does not have to cater to Americans, more importantly they could deny America well over 20% of that revenue. Consider that the big three techs have to report a drop of 20%, how does that work out? In addition to that loss you could capture a part of that revenue. You see the USA is all about monopolising issues, all whilst no one looked to the shores behind them to see what they lost and that was the place where revenue was all over the floor.

The setting is given, but when we consider that they either confess on targeting minors, or take the losses. And my solution doesn’t target at all, putting this solution largely in the clear.

Still, the EA premise had me thinking, not a similar approach, but a very different approach. One that give a much higher premise of engagement. Like the cheaper Netflix, set the console with a gaming portal and that portal has a niche for advertisers one that pays the viewer in credits, which could go towards a lower fee, or game coins to get free updates (enhancements) for in game shopping, any game on the platform. That was a side no one (seriously) looked at. Games are set to a developer, not to a portal and when they want to be there they will have to agree. Consider any console with 50,000,000-200,000,000 gamers, do you really think a game designer wants to be cut off? Consider that the Xbox Game Pass has only 18 million users. And the numbers I stated were conservative, this solution would be next to the PSX2 (over 155,000,000) and the Nintendo Switch (144,00,000) that is what was at stake and Google shot themselves in the foot (my speculation) as they dropped the Google Stadia, as such the Amazon Luna and the Tencent console are all that remains. And when we see those numbers, a larger base exists for advertisers, but in my view a more limited one. Still, there is (to some degree) an option whilst removing a massive chunk (I think around 20%) away from Apple, Google and Meta. It was an evolution to the system as I set it up and the advertisement funds are merely the icing on the cake. 

The added ‘protection’ that is given could sway plenty of parents to go this way, not my initial interest, especially when phase one 50 million is reached. The system will fuel itself towards users like the CBM64 did in the mid 80’s. Still the others need to rethink their system, because for now they think it is all OK, but when the setting changes it will already be too late. Look at the Cookie stage, only when they finally switched it off in part, the advertisers starting to cry like little bitches. Three days ago we were given “This latest twist in the Privacy Sandbox saga is a wake-up call for the entire digital advertising ecosystem, according to Upwave’s George London.” Wake up call? This setting was known for a couple of years, as such these people had plenty of time to revisit the sands of opportunity, but they thought that it wouldn’t get to that, and the money would keep going in. Now the premise will likely become that they lose out on a population that gets into the millions, no free ride for cookies (cookie monster ate them all) as such they will have to put the prices down by a lot, because targeting is soon to be a real issue, for this the Google and Meta setting comes into play. Either regulators demand a larger scrutiny (expected turn) or the advertisement world will lose 4.3 billion advertisements on iPad alone, now consider how many game on their mobiles? That is a reported 79% of an expected 18,250,000,000 billion in 2025. Set that to revenue numbers. Yes what one party tells is not what some do, or they tell them where not to look for certain restrictive papers. Oh, and my simplistic number stage gives me around 2.8 billion advertisement options are optionally soon lost or diminished. Yes, my 50 million consoles were hilariously conservative. 

What’s in an ad? Nothing a gamer wanted to see anyway, as well as a few other clusters of pushed to watch advertisement people. So how will Meta continue at minus 20%? Apple will do fine and Google will have its android, but when that newly reinvented shore comes, Google will also have to make due. As such,  they can bite the bullet or set up a fee for Youtube, which will make TikTok happy to no extent 

They say all is fair in love and war, did you ever consider that the people have a voice too, that they are pushed towards apps with no avoidance? What happens if you cater to those people? Google should know, they grew their search in a very similar way.

Have a lovely time and see you perhaps in a place without advertisements every couple of minutes.

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August 9, 2024 · 15:20

I missed this setting

That is the premise. So, why didn’t I think of this? We all have this and on the defence of Microsoft, they had the ‘slogan’ at the launch of Windows 95 ‘Without even thinking’ the premise was brilliant as was the innovation from Windows 3.11 to Windows 95, no doubt about it. And without even thinking applies to so many applications and conditions, it is a brilliant created stage (credit where credit is due). So here I was reading the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9d1y0z4z9no) and that gave me the nudge to wake up. You see I wrote about Ruja Ignatova, now mentioned in ‘Fugitive ‘Cryptoqueen’ hit by asset freeze’ with the lines “Ruja Ignatova, known as the Missing Cryptoqueen, is now subject to a global freezing order which prevents her assets from being sold or moved.” I had written about it some time ago and now we see “The freezing order, made public on Wednesday at London’s High Court, is part of a group action brought by more than 400 OneCoin investors”, I looked at this ‘crypto queen’ somewhere in May of June last year, it could have been two years ago. 

What made me consider this is that it has taken 6 years to do this. The questions come to mind is why this took 6 years. Come to think of this, why didn’t my sneaky way of thinking consider this. And in that light it she had moved all ‘her’ cash in some trust setting in Switzerland or Saudi Arabia it might not amount to anything. Those two countries have massive protections in place and anyone of them transgressing on their banking laws are in deep trouble. It is like rowing towards the end of the Niagara falls without an anchor in place.

So why did this global freezing order take 6 years? There might be a good reason, but the article doesn’t hand out the reason. Then we also get “The freezing order does not just target Ms Ignatova but seven other people and four companies – all alleged to have been connected with OneCoin in some form” which gives me another setting. Is ‘alleged’ enough to put a freezing order in place? Don’t get me wrong it sounds nice, but when was alleged enough to prosecute people and companies? Doesn’t that require proof? 

Then we get to “Sebastian Greenwood, who is in a US prison serving a 20-year sentence for his role in the fraud. Also subject to the freeze are British businessmen Christopher Hamilton and Robert MacDonald, who appeared in court in London” which get us the added “The pair are accused by US authorities of laundering OneCoin proceeds, however attempts to extradite them to the US to face trial have failed”, now I do not known enough of either Christopher Hamilton and Robert McDonald, but why did the extradition fail? There might be a procedural or legal reason, but the BBC does not give us this. It might not hit the core of this story, which is Ruja Ignatova, yet in light of the time settings it becomes a liked interest, so why is it missing? 

There are a few speculative sights to this. The first is that she was murdered (read: executed) and whomever was left with the bundles of cash is pretty much singing ‘do wa Diddy Diddy’ on a sunny beach. The second one that I considered was that she has a new identity, living it up in the UAE whilst her cash is in an optional Saudi bank, gaining 5%-10% interest over several billions, and as such you can live like a queen in Dubai or Abu Dhabi living off $100,000,000 plus each year. She might have been seeding the non captured funds to assure her of non-capture and non-freeze cash. This is all speculation but the stage that we see with 6 years vanishing makes these two the most likely scenario’s. And there are more places she could go when the cash is securely non-freezable. 

This gets me back to the number one question. Why did the global freeze order take 6 years? There might be a really good (or correct) reason, but the BBC article does not give us that.

Something to consider especially When we consider the Khaleej Times exposed last June that ‘UAE scams exposed: How thousands of residents ‘lost it all’ in bogus investment schemes’ and this is one nation. They report “over 40,000 UAE residents have collectively lost hundreds of millions of dollars to fraudulent investment schemes” that is a serious amount of money and this is one nation. Don’t you think there is now a pressing need to up the effort to upgrade banking laws to take this factor out (or at least diminish it massively). I understand that a fool and his money are soon parted and that it is everyones responsibility to take steps to make it harder for these criminals. I think that the one clear lesson is that there are no free gifts (EVER). The second part is that nothing comes for free. Now we get that not all ‘currencies’ are the same. Look at Facebook. Their currency is data and a lot of people do not care about data, especially as they do not know what it could cost them. One question I have always in mind when someone offers me a deal to good to be true is “if it is too good to be true, it must be a false setting”, this has (up to now) prevented me a few times to lose my cash. The second thing is that if someone (an unknown person) comes to me with such an offer. My initial question becomes ‘Why doesn’t he (or she) go to friends first?’ The situation might have come up, or they might not have any friends. But when you deliver on ‘great’ deals you suddenly have more friends than anyone ever bargained for. 

This is a paranoia setting, but it is not paranoia when everyone is after your bank account. Just a thought to consider.

So whether your funds are in a fridge or not. Make space by removing the venison and make yourself an awesome Bambi burger, with forrest unions and mushrooms. Bon appetite and have a lovely weekend when you get there. I get there in 2 hours. Now I need to find some venison, I suddenly feel peckish.

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August 8, 2024 · 12:00

How to measure success?

That is the question is was facing today. It wasn’t about my success (or lack thereof). It was about the olympics. One member (a fellow Australian) was happy because we had two additional gold members over the United Kingdom. But there was something wrong with that train of thought. It was too American. Don’t get me wrong, as I see it it is great to have more golden medals, but in my old fashioned way of life (and thinking) it is weird that the runners up get to live. I must be going soft in my old age.

You see with Australia grasping a 14-12-9 achievement and the United Kingdom holding onto 12-15-19 at present this list could go into any direction. However, this got me thinking. How do you measure success? Don’t get me wrong the gold number are nice, yet it is not a true list of achievement, is it? I have been pondering this and my mind took me to the old 1,2,3 squared allocation. So Bronze counts as 1, Silver as 4 and gold as 9. Now we get to 183 for Australia and 187 for the United Kingdom. UK won by a nose-hair as jockeys tend to say. So is this actually fair? How can medals be universally set? I don’t think that a boxer will accept equal points to an equestrian, in support, the horse will not go along with that either. Still there is a need to give some level of equality especially as the best of the best of the best in any of these disciplines are competing, yet the simple set to look at the golden medals seems wrong (possibly Canadian Summer McIntosh might agree but she just got 3 golden and one silver medal), at 17 she got (as far as I know) a tied second place with a few others all with three golden medals in the French Olympics. 

However I still ponder, is my formula the right one? It seems to be, but it might be my own shortsightedness to think so. 

Still, the question remains, how do you measure success, and not just in sports. In the 90’s I was subject KRA’s (Key Result Areas) and I accepted them as I had no knowledge on how to measure success. Even in customer care and Technical Support these numbers (when applied to the field I was in) made perfect sense. At some point you need to consider what to measure and how to measure it. Medals are a finite point of achievement, customer care is a little bit more fluidic. So how to go about it? The Olympic medallist might have kicked this off, but my brain takes into all directions. So with one movie script under my belt (for assessment with Dubai Media) am I more successful in scripting then all my friends (both of them)? They are not in that field, so how to generalise some metrics? You see we can grab Z-scores but as far as I can see that is a near obsolete approach to matters (perhaps what the people call AI use this) and now we get to the next bit and why I used Summer McIntosh as an example. These were her first Olympics, so how could there be a Z-score of her and how would it be reliable (or relatable)? Previous competitions? These were her first olympics and even in global events the pressures are different. 

And the field becomes even more complex, you see whatever they call these systems based on LLM’s and Deeper Machine Learning, it is either set by a programmer, or set by data and there the problem becomes a lot larger as both are used. Without proper verification and a number of constraints the equation becomes a GIGO rule (Garbage In Garbage Out).

I wonder how much some players consider success. Most will measure success by their ability to bring home the bonus funds. To some extent I accept that, but when you consider how they went about getting that success becomes a larger issue. In this I take the conceptual setting of Awareness versus Engagement in market research. Awareness could be shown how many impressions (or clicks) something gets, whilst engagement requires interaction with the solution. As I have always stated Engagement wins every time, but the large companies often herald views per thousand (or clicks as a secondary). So who get the price turkey at the end? Large Language Models with (Deeper) Machine Learning what some call a version of AI has issues and the world is waking up to Nvidia (not meant in a bad way). You see there is currently no AI, not yet anyway. What there is (the LLM and DML reference) is awesome and it can do great stuff, but it has issues like the legal sector recently saw. There is a lack of verification and that will be an issue in plenty of fields. 

Have a successful day.

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August 7, 2024 · 12:36

When does it become a lie?

That is the question. It is not as simple as it sounds and I understand that. But here we are, the BBC gives us an article. I almost passed it, but then I saw something that didn’t read right, so I dug a little deeper. Their disadvantage was that I had just read up on several cases for material, so I reopened it and it is time to give you the fruits of my labour.

The BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy9eegg0rdvo) gives us ‘What could Google monopoly ruling mean for you?’. Well that is an open question but let me run you through the elements. 

“The US said Google was currently paying firms like Apple huge amounts of money each year to be pre-installed as the default search engine on their devices or platforms”. OK, so this is a business proposition. Apple decided that the benefits of Google in their systems would help them in numerous ways and Google was willing to pay this. It was a price for services.

It comes with the repetitive quote “Apple’s Safari browser for example uses Google by default” what the BBC is not giving us is the offset that Apple would have to endure and they were getting $20,000,000,000 as a bandaid, if I got that kind of money I would say “Google slap me silly”. Now we get the parts that matter, it start with “Something that’s easier to imagine is some kind of choice screen, where people opening a browser for the first time are asked whether they’d like to use Google or an alternative like Microsoft’s Bing” This is hilarious. I have had first experience with Bing. Bing influencers were HIJACKING my search and pushing it through Bing. It took me days to undo that damage. Choosing between a bully and Google is not much of a choice. To put it mildly “Google has a 91% marketshare, Bing has 3.86%, where do you get the most bang for YOUR buck?” In this simple setting Google comes out on top EVERY time. And a secondary setting is that Bing has been around for 15 years. It isn’t just that Google is better, Bing has yet to show any level of pure innovation in searches. Microsoft lacks data, innovation and proper etiquette on search engines. 

Now we get to the issue I had, which starts with “Back in 1999, Microsoft found itself in a very similar situation to where Google is now.” You see, Netscape faced new competition from OmniWeb and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 1.0, it continued to dominate the market in 1995 and beyond. In 1997 Netscape had 72% marketshare. That is, until Microsoft switch off the proverbial oxygen to Netscape and whilst the IE was free for all (it was installed with Windows 95), thing went south in several ways for Netscape and the one ‘ruler’ in those days became Microsoft with its Internet Explorer. Google released its browser in 2008. As such (as I see it) Microsoft wasted 10 years and within 2 years nearly everyone was using Google Chrome. They overwhelmed everyone with innovations. They released Chrome v9 in 2011 and Chrome v17 in 2012. What did Microsoft do? Nada, nothing, zip, zilch. In 2012, responding to Chrome’s popularity, Apple discontinued Safari for Windows, making it exclusively available on OS X (source: ubuntu life) . So here is the first setting. Apple made an educated choice. Create your own and reinvent the wheel or select the wheel maker of choice. Even at this point we need to recognise that Microsoft’s star was faltering and falling. That was then. Now there is a different setting. Then it was which American company gets the cake. Now it is different, China is now a much larger participant. They caught up with the US and even now the UAE and Saudi Arabia are massively catching up with America. They decide to waste the time of Google on trivial matters whilst calling it “monopolising” stating that the others should be given a ‘fair’ share. In this day and age it is handing the handling of the commerce horse to China and all the good it will do the American commerce. Small hint, it will not. 

There really more issues with Microsoft and particular with Edge and particularly Daniel Aleksandersen, who called this “clearly a user-hostile move that sees Windows compromise its own product usability in order to make it more difficult to use competing products.” There are issues with edge as Douglas J. Leith, a computer science professor from Trinity College, Dublin, Microsoft Edge is among the least private browsers. He explained, “from a privacy perspective Microsoft Edge is much more worrisome than the other browsers studied. These two quotes are on different sides of edge. But in aggregating these quotes it is my distinct believe that if Google Search is broken up, the American Department of Justice will receive roses from nearly every big organised crime syndicate. It is a mere believe I have, but after having suffered the edge bullies hijacking my browser and inserting edge ad a search engine against my wishes is the beginning of much more. The Verge accused edge of “spyware tactics”, a setting we have never seen Google use (speculation by me). In this day and age of commerce, the economy and data security you want to play with Google? I think that is a really bad idea.

Enjoy today, it is now midweek, the run to the weekend starts…….now.

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July 30, 2024 · 21:03

Rules of the game

It isn’t a statement, it is actually a question. You see, something caught my eye in Al Jazeera today. The article (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/30/why-are-conservatives-claiming-google-is-covering-up-the-shooting-of-trump) gives us ‘Why are conservatives claiming Google is covering up the shooting of Trump?’. I took a look and I noticed the given “Google has come under fire from conservatives in the United States amid claims that the tech giant is suppressing information about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in order to influence the presidential election.” Then we see “Google on Monday told NBC News that autocomplete was “not working as intended for some searches about the names of several past presidents and the current vice president”.”

My issue is that there are other matters not being taken into account. I have partial knowledge of this and. Wonder on the stage we are facing. The first stage are the conservatives, the second stage are the influencers and the conspiracy theorists. Let me explain as best as I can. 

We can search for something direct [attempted assassination of Donald Trump] then we have the option [assassination + ”Donald Trump”] they are not the same you see the first one also gives use anything related to ‘attempted’ as such any combination of [attempted, assassination, of, Donald, Trump] will be caught in this. The problem is that the influencers know this, the conspiracy theorists know this and they are always try to put ‘their story’ above all the others. These two groups have elevated their knowledge of the search routines and the in’s and out’s above all others. Because they need their story to come on top.

Now consider these two groups, do you think that they influence the outcome? So when we see “autocomplete was “not working as intended”” the question becomes how to see ‘not working as intended’ I wonder how the other players influenced the ‘not working as intended’. I do not think that Google did anything wrong (speculation on my side), I think that there is more into this. You see what evidence do the Conservatives have? 

So do you think that Kansas Senator Roger Marshall who also accused Google of suppressing information looked into the whole range of this? I doubt it. These man tend to have less than an hour a day to look into matters. The Google setting requires close to a week of several people dedicated to search and autocomplete. Consider the small setting that the world has thousands of dedicated Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) people. Do you think that Google will mess around with that, or is it likely that these thousands as well as the influencers and conspiracy theorists have found a loophole that sets them above all others and when that is the case is there a clear case of malignant Google messing with an autocomplete. The last part is that it is ‘autocomplete’ as such the search could (or should) have been given completely and not via an autocomplete. Oh, and an autocomplete is relying on an anticipated result, yet when these results are pushed by SEO’s, influencers and Conspiracy theorists, what are the changes that the model sways?

All settings that could (not a given) been an influence and there is nothing of that in the Al Jazeera article. But in all this Kansas Senator Roger Marshall got his limelight. So I wonder how many holes I can shoot in that case, after all Donald Trump merely got his ear pierced and not by a qualified piercer. 

Oh and before we end this story, lets not forget that the conservatives use any option they can to get some limelight, did anyone take that into account as well?

Enjoy the day Monday is almost over for me, Vancouver will follow in 17 hours.

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July 29, 2024 · 11:44

A granny named Smith

Yup, it is time to bitch about Apple products. This should be future Apple products. You see for some time I have seen that Apple has been in a wrong course. Lets not talk about to MacBook Pro. That thing actually looks phenomenal, every bit is seemingly impressive. And even though I cannot afford it (at present) the idea of a 96GB RAM with 8TB storage is overwhelming, it is a bit much (not my needs). Yet storage is what every one needs and I would be content with 4TB (and 64GB RAM). That being said, the iMac doesn’t even come close to it.

So as I saw Matt Talks Tech today, I saw the ‘announcement’ of what is to be (in about 16 weeks) and it is not good. As we see Apple doesn’t seem to learn at all. They give the ‘new users’ up to 24GB RAM, which is in many cases enough. It is the storage, still a mere 2TB. For many it would be enough. Yet the settings of 100MP camera’s is setting a new premise. Medium format in the digital field is calling new professionals and then there are the YouTubers and TikTokkers. They will all need Adobe solutions. And the full Adobe users with other software will soon find out that their 2TB hole is filled with the frustration of multiple connections. That is not why I would buy a desktop. They are throwing their market to PC (and Microsoft) troubles. What is up? Apple becomes a sour apple, a Granny Smith. Sour and meant for senile fossils, the newly adapted age of digital influencers is seemingly totally ignored.

The fact that there is no option for 4TB. We know that not everyone needs it, but any Digital streamer or medium format photographer has only the MacBook Pro. They need to be able to set to a desktop screen working in comfort, and the iMac no longer provides. They should have provided for that last year. There is some consideration that this could have come later, but the M4 news shows that the iMac just isn’t up to it (speculation by me). What are they doing? Leaving it all to Dell and HP? 

As somewhat dubiously stated by me, 96GB is a lot, even in digital edition. I would consider 32GB, even that cannot be provided for as the media tells us. More important there is no mention of set aside upgrades by Apple (32GB RAM, 4TB storage), as such whatever they gained in niche markets they are throwing away to the niche graphic designers. These people only have the MacBook Pro to look forward to. This is great, but when you are working at home, it just doesn’t cook the goose. And the setting that it is due in 16 weeks and for another year people have no real option is disturbing, because this implies that the iMac is pretty much done for. No mention of an iMac Pro either. Apple needs to revisit their presentations and what they have coming and they need to do it really fast.
They are opening the market (that they catered to for the longest time) to Asus, HP and Dell. 

So am I right? The idea that Apple is now becoming the sour Apple no one really wants is a bad move to be considering. I stated this before (last year). There are roughly “64 million YouTube creators” at present. Now they don’t all need high end solution, but most of them want something more comfortable than a laptop screen. Even is only 1% needs high end equipment, that still amounts to 640,000 users. I didn’t ever consider the 1,300,000 TikTok creators, many of them are also on YouTube. Oh and when you consider 1% is too low, the losses to Apple get to be worse. I am pretty sure that Asus likes this setting, but when we see that Apple is lowering their expectations, can we be sure this is valid? The second side to this is that the iMac cannot meet these needs, does that mean that the Tim Cook presentations of ‘innovations’ are still valid?

So this seems like a bitch moment (by me) but consider the needs of the many (well over 640K of them). Are they getting deserted by Apple? Oh and the larger Data miners, who all need storage space, how are they served? It seems to me that Apple has been dropping the ball yet again. Perhaps they should adapt the Microsoft logo? (Me rolling on the floor laughing)

Enjoy Monday, apart from the people living in Nova Scotia and eastern from there. They are still on Sunday.

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July 28, 2024 · 11:24

As the idea erupted

This happens, we do one thing and suddenly an idea erupts. In this case I was thinking of the second script that I am generating in Final Draft.

It was a setting that made me think for a moment. And this setting came from the days of the Commodore Amiga. I even was working an reset emulated version of the game in Macromedia Flash, just 1-2 weeks before I suddenly was made redundant. I suddenly had to relocate from Stockholm to Gorinchem when I got screwed over by my previous boss. But the thought got to me and I thought “Wouldn’t this make a great small budget movie?” An ‘almost’ one person movie with its own narration. Most of the movie in a sort of CGI and an interaction with computers and a sort of deserted place. It might not be the Hollywood stage of stories and not really for the big screen, but an idea that a streaming company might like or consider. In a stage where they have to pump billion into material, a low budget might have a much better chance. They can test an actor or actress as well as the director and director of filming in a cheaper setting. As such 3-5 people straight out of film school. I reckon that Pedro Pascal, Tom Hanks, Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson and Steven Spielberg would be too expensive. But there are over 50,000 actors many of them do not have a place in Bel Air, not to mention of the amount of Directors in the field. New players have a hard time getting through. So, here the speculated number race through my head and now there is a viable setting. The stage of using low budget films to create a talent pool of newbies. You know people like Pedro Pascal had a lucky break. Considering he was the man behind Napoleon Dynamite (vote for Pedro), I know I can be quirky (read: funny) at times. Still the premise remains, luck isn’t always available so what then? I believe that low budget movies are part of that key and places like Dubai Media are likely to break through their own confinements and start breaking through into the West European streaming markets. There is an upside to that. When the current borders by Netflix and Disney plus start pushing their own limitations others could be there taking up the slack. You see one source is stating ‘The US will need 22,700 film directors over the next 10 years’, I cannot vouch for the accuracy there. Yet this implies that ever upper level University will need to fight off job offers with a stick for 100% of their art students. I nice setting, but not realistic. Adding a talent pool becomes essential and not merely for these people, they will all need scripts. There are plenty of them around, but how good are they?

These elements put the larger streamers on the spot and those ready to grow could enter new fields. This puts Dubai Media in a nice place and lets not forget iQiyi and Tencent Media either. America might hate all that is Chinese, but I reckon that Europe is more open to this stage. As the mindset goes that in the first century Decimus Junius Juvenalis stated “Give them bread and games and they will never revolt” It was around the age of Emperor Trajan. What strikes me was that no-one considered owning the bakers. It might be merely a coin per bread, however the Colosseum had 50-80 thousand spectators and that makes for a nice penny. And there were more places over the empire of Rome where these places had crowds. Being the admiral of baker makes perfect sense to me. Even today ‘give them bread and games’ applies but in this setting nowadays growing the streaming services makes a lot more sense. And there to centrality of content becomes a new focal point. Everyone is looking towards Hollywood, but there is a problem there. California is losing their focus, they are saturated, so new borders are required. The Middle East and Asia make sense and when Europe finds out that the American prices are getting too high the aforementioned three players as well as other other streamers will see their markets erupt. Not to mention countries like Indonesia and Bangladesh that over these two countries have a little over half a billion citizens, we see a disrupted market. All looking at California and Hollywood to hand them materials, but the ongoing mass emigration of residents and businesses from California to other U.S. states (Texas) or countries is about to leave California is a near desperate state and the desperate need to pay a lot more. That opens the doors for the Middle East and Asia to make their mark. It is almost the proverbial butterfingered aide putting all egg in one basket. 

All that came to me in a near instant (in less than on hour) whilst was contemplating a low budget movie. I have no idea yet how to do that (I have three other projects in my brains) but it is something to keep in mind. Considering that this setting will take time to implode (before 2026) I still have time and until the end of the year I need to focus on the next two projects but Residuam Vitam comes first. 

Enjoy this Sunday 

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July 26, 2024 · 04:42

The misaligned cogs

This is a little hard. I just read an article on the Military hacks by North Korea, it doesn’t fit. Let me explain with a little time line.

2012
The Dutch had a press tour in North Korea. The Koreans confiscated temporary their camera’s and the Dutch were howling with laughter, they still had their iPhones and Android equivalents. They kept on filming. The Korean officers had no idea what a smartphone was, as such the Dutch had all the footage.

2014
Sony get hacked and soon thereafter we get all kinds of ‘leaked’ information. In addition within a year (I have no specific date) we get an amalgamated

The FBI later clarified more details of the attacks, attributing them to North Korea by noting that the hackers were “sloppy” with the use of proxy IP addresses that originated from within North Korea. At one point the hackers logged into the Guardians of Peace Facebook account and Sony’s servers without effective concealment. FBI Director James Comey stated that Internet access is tightly controlled within North Korea, and as such, it was unlikely that a third party had hijacked these addresses without allowance from the North Korean government. The National Security Agency assisted the FBI in analysing the attack, specifically in reviewing the malware and tracing its origins; NSA director Admiral Michael S. Rogers agreed with the FBI that the attack originated from North Korea. A disclosed NSA report published by Der Spiegel stated that the agency had become aware of the origins of the hack due to their own cyber-intrusion on North Korea’s network that they had set up in 2010, following concerns of the technology maturation of the country.

The sources were the New York Times, Times magazine, The verge and CNBC. I had issues with the release of information, but my issues were speculative and based on the Dutch field trip to Korea

2017
In ‘The Good, the Bad, and North Korea’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2017/09/30/the-good-the-bad-and-north-korea/) I wrote “I got this photo from a CNN source, so the actual age was unknown, yet look at the background, the sheer antiquity that this desktop system represents. In a place where the President of North Korea should be surrounded by high end technology, we see a system that seems to look like an antiquated Lenovo system, unable to properly play games from the previous gaming generation, and that is their high technology?” This is my second opposition. Between 2012 and 2017 they had apparently gained the ability to produce their own smartphone. This is realistic.

2024
Now we get “North Korean hackers have conducted a global cyber espionage campaign to try to steal classified military secrets to support Pyongyang’s banned nuclear weapons programme, the United States, Britain and South Korea said in a joint advisory on Thursday.

The hackers, dubbed Anadriel or APT45 by cybersecurity researchers, have targeted or breached computer systems at a broad variety of defence or engineering firms, including manufacturers of tanks, submarines, naval vessels, fighter aircraft, and missile and radar systems, the advisory said” (at https://www.reuters.com/world/north-korean-hackers-are-stealing-military-secrets-us-allies-say-2024-07-25/).

My issue (still speculation) is two fold. In the first we get to se that the Sony Hack was apparently not North Korea, but the Guardians of peace (the Lazarus group). We see references to “links to” and a small byte that they are “Originally a criminal group”. It is my speculation that these criminal ‘masterminds’ are either Russian or Chinese. They cater to North Korea as it allows them to act freely and I would expect them to share whatever intel they get with North Korea.

Even if these formerly known criminals were behind this setting, the whole picture doesn’t add up. I reckon that we all work at our own speed, however when we see Reuters give us “one elite group of North Korean hackers had successfully breached systems at NPO Mashinostroyeniya, a rocket design bureau based in Reutov, a small town on the outskirts of Moscow.” I do not debunk that setting, but over the timeline I have seen (many might have seen it), it is possible that this last statement is a smokescreen. Was it breached or were the Russians willing to hand over that ‘victory’ to make them sound more of a threat? In addition when we see “The hackers, dubbed Anadriel or APT45 by cybersecurity researchers, have targeted or breached computer systems at a broad variety of defence or engineering firms, including manufacturers of tanks, submarines, naval vessels, fighter aircraft, and missile and radar systems” I mostly worry about the state of cyber security at our own shores. That they get breached by China or Russia is understandable, They are on par in technology with us. North Korea is not. It is like a hacker with an 80282 AT computer, a processor from 1982 coming up to a server with a Xeon processor stating ‘gimme your data’ It is like a swimmer slamming a great white shark with a BB gun. Utterly ineffective. That is merely the hardware, These hackers would have lacked at least a decade of hacking skills. The NSA and GCHQ would be running circles around them. No, I believe that this is another player making North Korea their patsy. 

Now consider that all (or some) of my speculations are wrong. I get that, this is realistically possible, we still get the stage that the time line doesn’t fit. It is like going from an Apricot PC, to an IBM Q System One in a little over 7 years, without the required resources mind you. The other, more realistic, option is that defence and engineering firms have made a booboo and failed their cyber security requirements and now all avenues are racing to hide these facts. 

Can North Korea get to this point? Yes, that is possible, but it seems to me that ‘western’ criminals are using that place to hide their actions and loot whatever they can, whilst they part time hack into places and hand these secrets over to North Korea. OK, I am still speculating. However, remember that building in Russia filled with hackers? Russian forces had to intervene there. It seems to me that these hackers would like another place to work from. It doesn’t make China innocent either. They might have the same issues and these hackers also need a place to work from. In this story, I merely come to the speculated conclusion that the term ‘North Korean Hacker’ is almost an newly seen oxymoron. 

In all this the cogs are not aligned. In 1776 native American Indians got their hands on rifles. It took time to get good with them. In 1877 Satsuma Rebellion, led by Saigo Takamori faced Japanese forces with modern weapons, it took them time to adequately use these weapons. With the complexity of a system the time line expands. The timeline expands even more when excellence of a system is required. As such I feel that these technology skills do not fit the abilities of the North Koreans. But that is merely my point of view.

Have a great Friday, another 150 minutes until I have breakfast.

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July 25, 2024 · 03:03

Baby steps, one at a time

This is a momentous occasion for me. I completed my first film script. The movie is called ‘How to assassinate a politician’ (the alternative title is ‘Essay’) and I think I completed a version between a draft and a final version. I have no movie scripting experience. Initially I did part of the story on my blog (this one) and last year October I got myself Final Draft version 13. I have no illusion what will happen, but this is a baby step to get to a point to create a script that might be accepted. The second step I just completed. I send my script to Dubai Media. 

Now that this part is completed I will learn more about Final Draft, especially the Beat Board which I haven’t used yet. The second ‘script’ is likely to be Residuam Vitam which is supposed to become a mini-series (I reckon 8 episodes) or 4 episodes set to 90 minutes. It will take a lot more then my first attempt and most of it is in my head. Some parts were blogged but  lot is in me head. That story plays largely in New Orleans, A place I have only seen on TV and on Google maps. So I will face a whole range of other ‘frustrations’ also as my story is in a totally different direction it will open questions on scripting as well. From there I need to think what comes next. First there is Keno Diastima, a complete story in 3 seasons and as I see it the story end there. This story will get me to think deeper about storylines. You see in blogging and in my mind stories are like books that play in my mind. For TV series that linear way of thinking is what some call bad TV and I get that, but this is how my mind works and as such I need to reset how I think. Final Draft will help me with that. Also a secondary setting is that I keep my mind busy in new ways and script writing is certainly new for me. 

After that point (far future) is the TV series Engonos, which my mind has constructed to around season 3 (optionally season 2). This comes down to the top sirloin of the Angus. It is a path I set myself to and to show certain others that I will not be tied down to their degenerative standards. In the end it is merely an exercise in creativity. On one day I design a novel way to melt down a nuclear reactor, on another day I design a new stealth weapon and now I write scripts. The funny part is that I can used the previous two stages in new scripts as well. As I stated in a Previous blog Blogger versus DARPA 5-0. If you gotta dream big, make sure that you have the intention to make big players your underling (the use of the word bitch is so harsh). 

Still no matter how things turn out. In the end I learned another non-Microsoft product and I remained creative at the same time. As some would say its a win-win. I cannot tell at present, but as I stated, this is about baby steps and the first hurdle (correct or not) is that I ‘completed’ my first script. Hollywood eat your heart out.

Bye for now, 4 hours until my Thursday breakfast.

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