Category Archives: Science

Needs of the public

This started last Friday for me, I had taken notice before and I even wrote about it earlier, yet the shift of the view also implied and made it a shift of priorities. In this age and the age of needing to matter, we see a shift in priorities of all the players. Keri Paul the writer has a clear view and that view matters and is on point, yet the dangers are not his view, it is the other side of the coin. Weirdly enough it is a card game that is similar to this, it is Androids: Netrunner that gives us the view that we can explore and dig into the depths we need to. It is Hacker (user) versus Corporations and Government.

When we consider “Servers are created, net security is hooked into place and agendas are advanced, with the runner having to take a blind guess at what these cards might be. Does that server contain the game-winning agenda, or is it a “cerebral overwriter”, which will leave them damaged if they touch it?” (source: the Guardian) And that is the setting in real life too, we cannot rely on an actual whistleblower at the Google Board of directors (I also oppose such actions) we need to consider what the priorities of Google are. In my view its priorities are set around data and China has endangered their market to the largest degree, it does not matter why it happened, because the value of data has always been without question, the entire Trump-China matter merely advanced the time-line, this was however always going to happen and it is Apple (Microsoft too) and Google that are rich enough to counter it to some degree. I myself would have thrown myself onto the growth sector in the Middle East as it is will be the new powerhouse for China (and particularly Huawei), a fact too many are ignoring. This gets us to the first quote in the Guardian article (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/jan/03/google-executive-human-rights-activism) “Ross LaJeunesse, the former head of international relations at Google and now a Democratic candidate for US Senate in Maine, said he was forced to leave the company after reporting discriminatory practices, and that his work to combat censorship was at odds with Google’s desires to expand into a growing market in China“, it is not the wildcard ‘reporting discriminatory practices‘ that matters here, it is ‘desires to expand into a growing market in China‘, Huawei is merely the most visible path, and their new Operating System Harmony is merely the start of a much larger concern for the US. China has 1.3 billion people, let’s say that only 700 million users, that is still well over twice the amount of US people, as Harmony gets traction in China for certain, it will be able to grow in other regions too, the Middle East is a first where the threshold is the lowest with close to 160 million optional users, Egypt really makes a hit there, and as China applies its customer service to the Middle East we will see that within 5 years parts of Europe will consider switching, this is the 90’s in reverse. As the 90’s saw marketing of Microsoft push people to another level (Windows 95 did help), we see the roles reverse, now we see the exploitative tactics of Microsoft and Apple backfire as those tactics come under fire, there will be too much documentation showing these actions. 

Now that data comes into view, we see another economy, this economy that is set around data and IP, more important WHAT ELSE can be done and this is where quote two comes into play ““In reality, I don’t think we can trust Google,” he told the Guardian. “It has been shown time and time again, whether in how it handles personal data to when it’s asked to address violent content online, that we cannot take Google at its word any more.”“, in China it leaves data concern to the Chinese governments, as long as they can come in. Democrats and Human rights are all about the rights of the people and their personal data, yet governments do not care about those rights, they never did (if you think they did, you are nuts). Yes that hurts, but it is the truth. If America embraced Human Rights so profoundly, insurance and other players would not have the data they do and Cambridge Analytica would merely be a nightmare of the paranoid brain, but it is not, is it? within the law the setting of data is too large a sif and both China and the Middle East have their own settings for what data is and what rights are and like in the 80’s companies tried to accommodate whatever they need to to turn a dollar, that path is more profound now than it ever was. We see this path in “LaJeunesse spearheaded a 2010 decision to stop censoring Google search results in China and worked to establish a company-wide human rights program – efforts that were challenged when Google returned to the Chinese market with a censored search product code-named Dragonfly in 2017” it is a reality that many face and now that there is a larger concern for wat is affordable, players like Apple will see their profits shortened. 

It is the last quote ““When I started at Google, there was a sense that we really believed in the power of technology to make the world a better place,” LaJeunesse said. “It’s not like that any more”” that hits home, you see, the world changed, the needs for margins increased and the need to get more sold at the Google margins than ever before, that is the game we all see played when stockholders and shareholders are involved. I remember a conversation with a commercial manager in the 90’s who stated that this is not true, I was proven correct within 14 months after that, and that is the other path, even as margins are low the profits need to come from someplace and data is the next hurdle, a large economic hurdle, you can own it all, but that path is not economically viable, yet accommodating government needs is and they will pay through the nose to get a good handle on it and stream that data to their analytics. The Chinese know this and the people in the Middle East are figuring it out, in that setting Google has two options, be a player in that field or leave it to others. What do you think they will choose? Did you really think that Page and Brin departing was such a big deal? I reckon that it sped things up, they needed other people to voice needs and I personally think that they got that done by changing their board of Directors (merely my personal view). 

The entire setting changes a little when we look at places like CES2020, when you think of it it is a lot about data and that makes sense, but the handling of data is now a larger issue than ever before, even as we consider the impact, we overlook it. The quote “interpreter mode allows an Assistant-powered smart display to translate a conversation between two people, each speaking a different language. Google says more businesses have committed to using it this year, including American Airlines, HSBC banks and a handful of hotels around Vegas, San Francisco, LA, Japan and Qatar“, we see the technology on the spoken word and that has a much larger impact than you thought it would. Even though we get “Google Assistant isn’t supposed to record anything you say unless you start the sentence with “Hey Google”“, we also get “that doesn’t always work. Sometimes things on TV will cause Assistant to perk up its ears; other times you might be mid-conversation and only realize you somehow caught Assistant’s attention when it responds “Sorry, I can’t help with that.” With that in mind, you’ll now be able to say “Hey Google, that wasn’t for you” to have it wipe its history of the last thing you said“, yet how many considered the leap from when it started until you stated the correction and it “wipes its history of the last thing you said“, here we see it, what is ‘the last thing you said‘, there is your margin and it will affect its use nation by nation, they all have to file for corrections and of course, some nations like the margins they have and optionally want to widen it. An automated secret police, right in your very own home.

This is not some paranoid consideration, it is reality and it is coming this year, all whilst Harmony is on the heels of Google being in the same setting of life and data. It is the setting where it changes, the IP and who owns it makes the larger strides in two areas where it matters and at present Huawei has more IP, they merely have an advantage and that is the area where it matters, because whoever has the IP has the battle turned to their favour. Did you think there was no hindsight from me when I offered my IP to China? The entire setting of the US changing its mind like bad second hand car dealers is the controlling stage, a stage where the people in the American Administration cannot make up their minds leaving the inventor in the air whilst the corporation make headway. There is a larger issue especially when we look at the US, UK and China in jointly owning IP, it is becoming a lot more murky in recent years and that stage is almost literally fraught with dangers for the maker of the IP, in that stage trusting your company to be fair to you is now open to discussion. 

This is not nearly the end, especially when we consider the IP side, this part was given to all by Sophos when we are treated to “Google has temporarily disconnected Xiaomi’s IP cameras from its Home Hub service after a user reported that he was seeing images from other people’s devices” a mere 10 hours ago. Did you think that this was only happening 10 hours ago? This has clearly been going on for a longer time and we are merely informed on it now, as we see that part and consider that other phones have optional weaknesses on this side and we add the consideration of user rights from one to another and the ‘excuse’ “The Chinese manufacturer admitted the mistake and explained that it was down to a caching issue on its server“, did you think it was that easy? Why was it even cached on a server? What other data is cached? A lot more questions become open to interpretation when one mistake merely opens the can of worms that was there and the issues are only increasing, global marketing is making sure of that path. Oh and this is not just Google, there are a number of questions that rise when you consider the weird choices that Microsoft made with their Azure cloud, that part becomes visible when you switch on any Xbox made after 2014, yet it is buried by them by stating that this is the responsibility of your telecom provider, even when you are trying to explain to them that it is about the upload, not download. it is a global problem and that is a bad thing, but that is quite literally the game we are signing up for.

Google is only one of many and they are not evil, they are trying to stay afloat in a world of providers and data capture solutions. When (not if) data becomes a viable currency those who are in charge of the data will decide what comes next and that is a game that is now being played between governments and corporations, and where are we? If we are the Android: Netrunner players we are the hackers and we need to set the hardware up for what leaves our hands and we get to say less and less in that regard. The problem becomes, there are 4 billion people (read users) and a lot of them do not have the skills to install any backdrop and the information on the internet is not to be trusted in many cases (they always want you to install THEIR solution) which negates the entire issue as data is siphoned. And as you realise that someone owns your data, the question becomes: ‘Who will you trust?‘ all whilst they merely want the same thing, my personal idea is not to trust anyone and for the most I do not care where the information ends up being, it merely ends up somewhere and it is for that reason that I NEVER link any social media. It is merely a good idea to hand over as little as possible.

In the end this is coming, Harmony will be available to smartphones this year, so the battle will soon intensify and we will start to get weird fear mongering stories from the US on how Harmony will crash your mobile and other things, yet in the end JHarmony will merely start at the Huawei users and as they get no issues (other than US blocks) we will see a technology polarisation in mobiles, it is the stage that Google is desperate to avoid at all cost. And as Harmony gets rolled out beyond China Google will get more and more willing to be flexible, no matter what the US government states, that is the part the US administrations are intentionally blind to, the US has 325 million people, in a world with 8,700 million people, the US does not add up to much on population numbers, corporations see that.

All whilst Google needs to content against numbers like “the company’s inability to work with companies like Google, Huawei’s business has been thriving. The company’s fiscal third-quarter revenue increased by 24.4% year-over-year, and smartphone sales jumped 26% year-over-year in the first three quarters of 2019” (source: Business Insider), all whilst Apple phone sales went down and by a scary amount, and at present it seems that the 5G market is decided out of US hands, making Google even less happy, as mobile markets are their eggs and bacon, they need to do whatever they can to be part of that and for Google this is decently easy, for players like Microsoft less so. The issue is harder for the US, we see all the news and information on heralding 5G in New York giving the user 36Mbps (in one 5G movie), yet when we look at the 5G specs we see: “5G speeds will range from ~50 Mbit/s to over 2 gigabit at the start“, so we see 5G marketing and 5G pricing at below 5G speeds and the people are not catching on, you might see this as a separate issue, but the net runs on speed (quote literally) and the US hiding behind marketing is not catching on, that is the stage where Google wants to get ahead of the curve and therefore it needs to be in a Huawei environment, it needs to be in China for several reasons, the US and its administration is all about misdirecting the people whilst corporations know better and the ardware people want to get ahead of that curve so that they do not fall behind, Google has too much to lose. We might see it as the need of the public, but that need is fuelled by corporations and Huawei is at the top of that chain (at present) so other players like Google need to set a larger stage where they are players and no longer mere service facilitators. 

In all this China and the Middle East are surpassing the US and that is a stage we have never seen before. Wired Magazine gave us “AT&T launches its new next-generation wireless network, but breadth of 5G coverage in the US still lags South Korea and China“, which is the issue, at present the US is in third position in a market they used to rule, and they are in danger of reverting to fifth place by the end of 2020, for the first time in history the US will be trailing others, Google wants to get out of that cursed position as fast as it can. The US (via Wired) gives us “so far, the fastest 5G download speeds in the US top out at around 1.8 Gbps, according to tests conducted by data analysis firm OpenSignal. Those are the fastest speeds in the world, but they’re rare“, I myself did not see any video or evidence showing anything over 200Mbps, making the statement more debatable (like testing setup versus actual connection), yet that is my personal view whilst I am not in the US. The Verizon options are in 24 cities (the US apparently has a lot more places), so that is lacking, it also gives for New York that ‘5G Ultra Wideband near these city landmarks‘ in Midtown, Hell’s Kitchen, Harlem and Downtown Brooklyn, so there is a lot missing and you need to check this for all the regions you plan to be in in 2020, even as you ‘scale back’ to 4G LTE, did you pay for that? Well apparently you did at Verizon, and they are one of a small amount of providers and none of them are national, that is the back push that you see in the US. I am not stating that China is better, they are not, but they have the advantage of Huawei and so will other regions in the world soon enough. 

This setting is important, because Google needs itself to be heading that wave, not following it and in that regard it needs to be in China (and the Middle East), as such the second statement I gave (from the Guardian) is the most important one and Google is all over it, plenty are not (read: most cannot afford the cost) and in this stage where Data is currency, we see that this war may leave the US crippled because of the limitations it pushes onto itself, even whilst the claims were never supported by any evidence and that is not merely my view, it is also the view by a large amount of cyber specialists that are a lot more knowledgeable in that field.

All these issues are linked to the movement of Google and from there the needs of the public are addressed, from an American perspective it will be Google or nothing, yet the non US part is looking at another setting where it is Google versus Harmony and at present I cannot tell whether Harmony will be a bad choice. That is the scary part for Google, as the public tries Harmony and nothing sets them back in the use of their mobiles, we will see a larger and a quicker curve towards other solutions (or away from Google). 

That is the fight that will be in the up and coming this year, as Harmony gets released we will get governments making huffs and puffs away from Harmony, yet let there be no mistake, it will not be towards your data privacy, it will be the currency that pushes them and data is the current they need. We will be ‘lied to’ whilst they will stop at giving out evidence as much as possible. That is what we get to look forward to in 2020, the needs of the public, our needs are what governments and corporations make it to be, not what we decide and that is for a lot of people the largest issue at present, even as it is about data, is it not interesting how they all circumvent that part of the equation?

 

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The age of Christmas

I have been on the verge of many things, this, my last blog for a week (I expect) is also a path towards my goals, my delusional goal is to spend time on a really large yacht with half a dozen maiden vixens of 23-27 all roaring to try the lawlordtobe engine (whatever these girls mean with that), the reality of life is that I will be doing a truckload of chores that I left until this very last moment, so not much excitement there. 

For the blog, the end of the year tends to be a shallow ground for news, yet there was the Khashoggi convictions in Saudi Arabia, an event that the Guardian labelled ‘‘Mockery of justice’ after Saudis convict eight over Khashoggi killing‘, we all seem upset by “crown prince’s inner circle of involvement in murder of dissident journalist“. Yet the reality is that there was never any evidence, in some cases I have a few question marks with the evidence that Turkey gave, the UN Essay by Agnes Callamard read (for me) like a joke and in the end, we just do not know what happened, so it seems that the Saudi Courts, just like most other courts can only convict a person on evidence and that person needs to be sentenced when a person is found guilty beyond all reasonable doubt and that was never ever going to be the case. Consider hat the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/23/saudi-arabia-accused-of-mockery-of-justice-over-jamal-khashoggi-trial) gives us “The findings contradict the conclusion of the CIA and other western intelligence agencies that Prince Mohammed directly ordered Khashoggi’s assassination“, yet the UN Essay states the CIA, yet no evidence is added, merely their point of view and ‘high reliability‘, which in light of their weapons of mass destruction claim is not that reliable. As for the claim ‘and other western intelligence agencies‘ is also a bit weird as I saw no mention of MI-5, MI-6, DGSE, or GCHQ, so what was it? Merely FBI and CIA? That is basically one source as such I rejected the UN Essay for what it was, a joke (to the largest degree)!

Yet, that is as good a the news is going to get, other actual (and factual) great news is that Robert Downey Junior is back in the news, and now not as an Avenger, talking to animals or another role, no this is a series that you can watch on Youtube premium, it is called the Age of A.I.. Now, the weird feeling is there, RDJ playing RDJ and being serious about it is part of the appeal, the other part is that this is not a sales rap, it is explanation and the series via RDJ does that swimmingly (read: pretty brilliantly). 

I need to be careful, because I do not want any spoilers here, apart from the fact that the series is well beyond informative, it shows the A.I. world as it is (well kinda), we see examples most have never seen before, these examples are often not sexy enough for glamour shows, but they are great as the underlying example in this system. If there is one small part that is criticism than it is the use of AI when (as far as I personally saw was no more than deeper learning) yet for the learning part that does not matter, the person watching it gets a much better grasp on AI and this series shines as such. The fact that really outshines the entire series is not RDJ, he is there but often enough we see celebrities that are a lot more than the media exposes (Will.I.Am for example), people in the movie making and we learn that some movie celebrities behind the screen are seemingly merely doing it to fund their real dream and we get to see a truckload of that, especially the truckload of examples the media thought to keep from us. That education is worth a lot more than you are grasping when you see it and you can see it (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwsrzCVZAb8), and the series bring out an interesting fear “This is new, we need to know what is real and what is not“, this is an interesting issue, it is almost never discussed, but it is within us all. And as RDJ narrates we take a trip all over the world visiting the places that are involved in the evolution of NAI (Near Artificial Intelligence) and we get the proper approach towards machine learning, I was pretty blown away after episode one and there are several more to go through, The age of A.I. is a homerun, a bullseye in a world of gratification small enhancements and publications. In the movie world RDJ has had its large shares of successes, the fact that he is part of a documentary like this will make him only a larger success and as such he will push this series to greater heights (the fact that you can watch episode one for free on Youtube does not hurt either), Matt Damon eat your heart out. 

As I personally see it, the Age of A.I. is the first series on A.I. that is actually informative to a much larger degree (than many of the other series). It is such a pleasant surprise to be confronted with a series like The Age of A.I. at the end of the year. I personally feel like a whole new person, for me this series was that much actual fun to watch. 

I hope to see and inform you all again in about a week, have a great holiday series.

 

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Two unrelated issues

OK, today is not the day to piss off Alexander Bortnikov, I wanted to do that just to celebrate his 11th anniversary of him being the Director of the FSB, as such my sense of humour demands that I would put a whoopi cushion on his car seat, alas, I could not get close, someone decided to try a novel approach to the concept of Suicide by Cop (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/19/moscow-shooting-russia-people-shot-dead-intelligence-agency), instead of pushing the buttons of a militia officer, we see the apparant acts of a looney tunes person who decided to fire on the reception of Federal Security Service, that is an act that will get you killed and he did. Now, let’s be clear, there is a reason to bring this up. You see there is one building in Moscow (basically in the entire CCCP), where the most vile, the most feared and the most despicable member of any Russian criminal organisation takes a detour, it is the Lubyanka building, the headquarters of the FSB in Moscow. Consider some Bratva captain, 120 Kg of muscles, fearless and life ignoring person ends up shaking and like a little girl that is crying, the cause would be one building in Russia that does that. So when a person comes around shooting at its reception, I tend to call that a novel way to invite Suicide by Cop and I cannot fathom the desperation from life that a person has to pull that off (there are 999 other ways to go with 99.99999% certainty and most of them are 100% less painful and scary), optionaly as distractions go, it is perhaps the worst one yet. 

Oh, and there is not some special required form of data intelligence required, we could argue that the fear for that building is handed to any Russian citizen when they start school, so for the life of me I can not figure out why someone would be this stupid, it is like grabbing a bucket of water from the Volga in Saratov and personally dumping the bucket in he Caspian Sea, not only meaningless, but you end up being alive at the end of that journey, attacking the FSB building with anything less than an entire army and your chances to survive become a whole lot less certain. Yet in all that, the fact that the attack made several newsgroups is important, you see, the news never sleeps, yet they do get to filter what we hear. 

From the Israeli news desk

The Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/dec/19/israeli-spyware-allegedly-used-to-target-pakistani-officials-phones) (as well as Israeli Newspapers, give us ‘Israeli spyware allegedly used to target Pakistani officials’ phones‘, with the byline ‘NSO Group malware may have been used to access WhatsApp messages for ‘state-on-state’ espionage’, news that made a lot less newspapers on a global scale, is that not weird? Now, I am not stating whether there is validity, I am not stating on behalf of the NSO Group that it is false, yet this private firm founded by Niv Carmi, Omri Lavie and Shalev Hulio is showing to be an expert company in acquiring information. The papers need to guard their words and I get that, yet when we see anonymous sources and “those who could have been compromised” I feel like I am in a play that I have seen before. The more important part is “All the suspected intrusions exploited a vulnerability in WhatsApp software that potentially allowed the users of the malware to access messages and data on the targets’ phones“, yet it seems that there is not really that much taste for the weakness of the makers, is there?

When get the optional state where we see “The lawsuit claimed intended targets included “attorneys, journalists, human rights activists, political dissidents, diplomats, and other senior foreign government officials”” and in that state I would make the demand ‘can we see those names please?‘ Yet it is a personal demand that will not be answered, there is too much doubt on the who did what and who wanted to know. I have a little more faith in “NSO has said it will vigorously contest the claim and has insisted that its technology is only used by law enforcement agencies around the world to snare criminals, terrorists and paedophiles“, you see that is a business approach to intelligence that brings money on the table and Yes, there is a chance that someone wanted to know more about certain Pakistani, yet that list given by Facebook is just a little too weird, yet the names might brighten up the need for it, and as we are treated to “The alleged targeting of Pakistani officials gives a first insight into how NSO’s signature “Pegasus” spyware could have been used for “state-on-state” espionage“, it is the difference of stance, the state of ‘alleged‘ that brings the doubt. In the article I do not disagree with “This kind of spyware is marketed as designed for criminal investigations. But the open secret is that it also winds up being used for political surveillance and government-on-government spying” for that we need to say that John Scott-Railton is seemingly completely correct, yet in all this, we see and identify a timeline and it becomes more and more apparent that not only did other interest groups (CIA, FBI, MI-5, MI-6, DGSE, et al) need this weakness, we see a longer timeline and we wonder what WhatsApp and Facebook have done about it so far. More important, why would any official use something like WhatsApp? I mean for private use, yes, yet for their business phone? It is the application of Common Cyber Sense that is lacking here and to give all that data to Facebook (WhatsApp) is calling some parts into question. CBS News gave the people in 2018 ‘WhatsApp co-founder: “I sold my users’ privacy” to Facebook‘, I get it! Cambridge Analytica changed a lot, but so it would have changed a lot for state players, as such the act of pushing for WhatsApp in government and secure conversations, it does not make sense. CBS also gave us in 2018 “U.S. intelligence agencies have said that Russian actors used Facebook and Instagram to wage a campaign of disinformation in the election” and if WhatsApp and Facebook are owned by the same person we see the even larger lack of Common Cyber Sense. WhatsApp has been the name in Scandals in 2017 and 2018 as well, so when the needed question ‘Why is a state player using WhatsApp in the age of Common Cyber Sense?‘ comes out, we see that the bulk of people, hacktivists and journalists have not asked this question, just like the weird part where we all look at the attack on Lubyanka, and no one looks beyond a certain point. 

This view does not exonorte the NSO group, yet it is asking larger questions that take the group out of the field of vision and looks at the larger issues. More important the claim “While it is not clear who wanted to target Pakistani government officials, the details are likely to fuel speculation that India could have been using NSO technology for domestic and international surveillance“, you see pointing at their natural enemy is fun, however the fact that most European intelligence groups want to know about scores of Pakistani is also left off the table, in light of Pakistan and its Middle East connections, so are Israel and America, especially as America is losing foothold in the Middle East, finding any Russsian link to any Pakistani would be worth a lot to them, they lack all plenty of resources there.

You see, there is all the need for action when we see “The government of the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, is facing questions from human rights activists about whether it has bought NSO technology after it emerged that 121 WhatsApp users in India were allegedly targeted earlier this year” however everyone is overlooking ‘121‘ as a number. There are 400 million WhatsApp users in India, nobody would get to the 121 users in such a short time, the absence of ‘alleged‘ and optionally ‘so far 121 alleged users have been found‘ is a much larger issue that anyone realises. The fact that there are more questions popping up regarding the alleged NSO software is also overlooked. There is a much larger play in the field and it seems that certain people do not look towards certain players and the absence of Common Cyber Sense is just overwhelmingly staggering. It is almost like you are tired of life and decide to attack FSB headquarters with a gun. 

Yet in all this, the amount of users in Pakistan is also the part we need to look at, you cannot merely check in seconds, this is a not an on the fly solution, so there are all kinds of questions, especially with 1.5 billion users of that app, we see a lack of thoughts, questions and especially software engineers treating the software weakness and this has been going on for quite some time. the fact that the larger collection of media is not getting to this question is just allegedly largely insane. 

So as we consider “users in India were allegedly targeted earlier this year” we need to ask, how long until this glitch is fixed? The fact that certain glitches have been there since 2017 is a much larger concern, but the media does not stop at this point, does it? I reckon they are taking their time looking at the one suicidal person pointlessly attacking Lubyanka.

Two issues that might seem unrelated (and they are not), yet it tells a lot more about the media and state players than you should be comfortable with, feel free to WhatsApp that question to others, the state players will get to it eventually.

 

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Lying through Hypes

I was thinking on a Huawei claim that I saw (in the image), the headline ‘AI’s growing influence on the economy’ sounds nice, yet AI does not exist at present,not True AI, or perhaps better stated Real AI. At the very least two elements of AI are missing so that whatever it is, it is not AI. is that an indication on just how bad the economy is? Well, that is up for debate, but what is more adamant is what the industry is proclaiming is AI and cashing in on something that is not AI at all.

Yet when we look at the media, we are almost literally thrown to death with AI statements. So what is going on? Am I wrong?

No! 

Or at least that is my take on the matter, I believe that we are getting close to near AI, but what the hype and what marketing proclaim is AI, is not AI. You see, if there was real AI we would not see articles like ‘This AI is a perpetual loser at Othello, and players love it‘, we are handed “The free game, aptly called “The weakest AI Othello,” was released four months ago and has faced off against more than 400,000 humans, racking up a paltry 4,000 wins and staggering 1.29 million losses as of late November” this is weird, as we look at SAS (a data firm) we see: “Artificial intelligence (AI) makes it possible for machines to learn from experience, adjust to new inputs and perform human-like tasks“, which is an actual part of an actual AI, so why do we see the earlier mentioned 400,000 players with 1.29 million wins whilst the system merely won 4,000 times shows that it is not learning, as such is cannot be an AI. A slightly altered SAS statement would be “Most AI examples rely heavily on deep learning and natural language processing. Using these technologies, computers can be trained to accomplish specific tasks by processing large amounts of data and recognizing patterns in the data” The SAS page (at https://www.sas.com/en_au/insights/analytics/what-is-artificial-intelligence.html) also gives us the image where they state that today AI is seen as ‘Deep Learning’, which is not the same.

It is fraught with a dangerous situation, the so called AI is depending on human programming and cannot really learn, merely adapt to programming. SAS itself actually acknowledges this with the statement “Quick, watch this video to understand the relationship between AI and machine learning. You’ll see how these two technologies work, with examples” they are optionally two sides of a coin, but not the same coin, if that makes sense, so in that view the statement of Huawei makes no sense at all, how can an option influence an economy when it does not exist? Well, we could hide behind the lack of growth because it does not exist. Yet that is also the stage that planes are finding themselves in as they are not equipped with advanced fusion drives, it comes down to the same problem (one element is most likely on Jupiter and the other one is not in our solar system). When we realise that we can seek advanced fusion as much as we want, but the elements requiring that are not in our grasp, just like AI, it is shy a few elements so whatever we call AI is merely something that is not really AI. It is cheap marketing for a generation that did not look beyond the term. 

The Verge (a https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/28/18197520/ai-artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-computational-science) had a nice summary, I particularly liked (slightly altered) “the Oral-B’s Genius X toothbrush that touted supposed “AI” abilities. But dig past the top line of the press release, and all this means is that it gives pretty simple feedback about whether you’re brushing your teeth for the right amount of time and in the right places. There are some clever sensors involved to work out where in your mouth the brush is, but calling it artificial intelligence is gibberish, nothing more“, we can see this as the misuse of the term AI, and we are handed thousands of terms every day that misuse AI, most of it via short messages on Social Media. and a few lines later we see the Verge giving us “It’s better, then, to talk about “machine learning” rather than AI” and it is followed by perhaps one of the most brilliant statements “Machine learning systems can’t explain their thinking“, it is perhaps the clearest night versus day issue that any AI system would face and all these AI systems that are dependable growing any economy aren’t and the world (more likely the greed driven entities) cannot grow any direction in this. they are all hindered what marketing states it needs to be whilst marketing is clueless on what they face, or perhaps they are hoping that the people remain clueless on what they present.

So as the verge ends with “In the here and now, artificial intelligence — machine learning — is still something new that often goes unexplained or under-examined” we see the nucleus of the matter, we are not asking questions and we are all accepting what the media and its connected marketing outlets are giving us, and when we make the noticeable jump that there is no AI and it is merely Machine learning and deeper learning, whilst we entertain the Verge examples “How clever is a book?” and “What expertise is encoded in a frying pan?

We need to think things through (the current proclaimed AI systems certainly won’t). We are back in the 90’s where concept sellers are trying to fill their pockets all whilst we all perfectly well know (through applied common sense) that what they are selling is a concept and no concept will fuel an economy that is a truth that came and stood up when a certain Barnum had its circus and hid behind well chosen marketing. So whenever you get some implementation of AI on LinkedIn of Facebook you are being lied to (basically you are marketed) or pushed into some direction that such articles attempt to push you in. 

That is merely my view on the matter and you are very welcome to get your own view on the matter as well, I merely hope that you will look at the right academic papers to show you what is real and what is the figment of someone’s imagination. 

 

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The List

What happens when we demand certain action by the media, yet that same media might not think it is in their interest to pursue such actions, will the people win, or will the media win. It is a direct question as we are being told (via the media) that we have been kept in the dark for years now and we need the media to step up, will they do it?

I have been playing with this idea for a while now and I think it has become a largely visible issue now. I am taking the action as per ‘Greenland’s ice sheet melting seven times faster than in 1990s‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/10/greenland-ice-sheet-melting-seven-times-faster-than-in-1990s), and it is time to recognise the players. 

The first fact is that this particular issue has been playing for well over 20 years, so we now have a timeline. Even as the media now alerts us through “Scale and speed of loss much higher than predicted, threatening inundation for hundreds of millions of people”, the issue has been playing for well over a decade, so we now can demand a list.

The list needs to show ANY scientist who have been hiding or trivialising facts. These scientists are NEVER EVER to be considered for government jobs or for environmental jobs, they are to be named and any of them attached to big business will find their presence to be a nullifying factor in assessing a company’s environmental value. When we are given the value “Glaciers calving icebergs in south-west Greenland, which has lost 3.8tn tonnes of ice since 1992, and the rate of ice loss has risen from 33bn tonnes a year in the 1990s to 254bn tonnes a year in the past decade“, we need to see the dangers that some scientists have presented us with. So any scientist who altered their views to please governments will alo be marked and in that stage we will see a fading view of intentional misrepresentation. Scientists have been protected by cushy jobs for the longest of times, by smearing the truth in different directions by marking these people governments will have to face the issues thrown at them, not set them to lay by. 

Even now as we see: “That means sea level rises are likely to reach 67cm by 2100, about 7cm more than the IPCC’s main prediction. Such a rate of rise will put 400 million people at risk of flooding every year, instead of the 360 million predicted by the IPCC, by the end of the century” we see an issue that could have been a reason for illumination years ago, but in the age of 1996-2006 the world was swallowed by the need of greed. Even now, we see blatant misrepresentation ‘Fossil fuel firms ‘could be sued’ for climate change‘, is that so? So we want to shove that bill to the Middle East? How about shoving it off to the US, they wanted a car driven population. So as I see ‘Filipino human rights committee finds world’s biggest oil companies have legal and moral responsibilities to act‘, which sounds partly fine when we see the international actions by the Royal Dutch Shell, yet in the end it is an economy that pushed for $29 plane seats, as such that the economy suddenly had cash to burn (almost literally), yet no one sets the value of such drives to the test. So as we are treated to “The head of a Philippines Commission on Human Rights panel, which has been investigating climate change for three years, revealed its conclusions on Monday that major fossil fuel firms may be held legally responsible for the impacts of their carbon emissions” (at https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/cop25-madrid-climate-change-greta-thunberg-fossil-fuel-lawsuit-a9239601.html) we see an absolute absence of the economies that pushed for those solutions, all to ignore a stage of economy no one wants to hear about in our times of debt and debt driven economies. Even now as we see the stories from half a dozen sources go on about how tree planting jobs could be yours, whilst NASA Engineer Mark Rober (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7nJBFjKqAY) showed a working solution that was modern and could be implemented months ago. he even gave visibility at https://teamtrees.org/, where we see that in 6 weeks he got to 17,756,768 of their required goal of 20,000,000 trees. A clear solution that is (obviously) being ignored by mainstream media. Even as the Independent (at https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/brexit-tree-planting-michael-gove-eu-conservatives-a9205371.html) gives us “‘It’s nonsense’: Michael Gove criticised after blaming EU for government missing tree-planting target” on November 16th 2019, way after the Mark Rober solution was presented, and whilst he presented it, it is clear that this working format was already in existence, so whilst Greenpiece and Michael Gove are butting heads, neither of them make mention of the solution that a NASA Engineer gave visibility to and tried (via viral ways) to entice people to help him get to the 20 million tree target. As I see it, the government, Greenpiece and several journo’s all missed the point that was out there to see for all. I wonder how many scientists have been overlooking certain solutions.

So whilst we get another clear view via “Successive Conservative governments have already ensured we will miss one tree-planting target in 2020, and we’re on track to miss the one in 2022. Now they’ve set themselves a new target for 2025 and people will be wondering whether this is raising the ambition or just moving the goalposts yet again“, we do not see the names of the people who have been pushing for these changes, I think that we are entitled to that, those people should not be allowed to hide behind the media, we are allowed to see the emphasis of all who agree of changed goalposts. And even as UK Labour will find some picture (like a baby in a hospital) to hide behind, lets face the truth that the sliding environmental values started in the 90’s, that measn that both sides of the isle is guilty of environmental rape. 

So whilst we see “Parties across the political spectrum have been boasting about the tree-planting efforts they would undertake if they won the general election” we should add the need to invalidate their right to govern for no less than 3 administrations should they FAIL to keep their word, especially when a happily flaky NASA engineer was able to show the opposite in a clear video, all with examples on how to tackle merely some of the issues we face on how to quickly plant trees (in an affordable way).

This all loosely relates an article in the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/dec/07/oceans-losing-oxygen-at-unprecedented-rate-experts-warn) ‘Oceans losing oxygen at unprecedented rate, experts warn‘, the fact that we see “Dead zones – where oxygen is effectively absent – have quadrupled in extent in the last half-century, and there are also at least 700 areas where oxygen is at dangerously low levels, up from 45 when research was undertaken in the 1960s“, so where were all the alert signs a decade ago? Two decades ago? Were we all asleep? Was it hidden in the news papers on page 35 below the fold? The numbers give us that 650 oxygen deprivation areas were added in half a century, I reckon it would have been news two decades ago, so who aided people to hide these truths? As I see it those people are equally dangerous as mass murderers and any scientist on that stack of choices gets to be put on a list. So any scientist that is considering the ‘befehl ist befehl‘ excuse that some Germans used in November 1945, they better realise that the people had no qualms about hanging those people as well. In light of some information we can optionally agree with “the most profound impact on the marine environment has come from fishing. Ending overfishing is a quick, deliverable action which will restore fish populations“, if that is true, then why is there no global agreement on the actions of overfishing? Why do we see the laughingly inactions by Australian law groups in the Great Barrier reef? Why are poachers not arrested, their boats set up for action in another state (to prevent reacquisition) to limit poaching? There are dozens of other options and actions not being seen and the inactions against criminals acting against the environment is an almost global problem, as such the inactions of governments is becoming more and more debatable.

As such I wonder when the media will look at an actual list and give the people a clear view on who is misrepresenting the factual parts, I wonder what we see those scientists say. And lets not forget the number one action that governments use when the data does not meet the question, at that point some will merely rephrase the question, have you considered how often this solution has been an option for governments in environmental questions?

 

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There is more beneath the sand

The Australian Financial Review has an interesting article that they released a little over 12 hours ago (at https://www.afr.com/world/middle-east/is-saudi-arabia-s-royal-family-ready-for-a-market-economy-20191112-p539sv), the title ‘Is Saudi Arabia’s royal family ready for a market economy?‘ is an interesting view on the issues that are coming around over the next decade. Stephen Cook gives us part of the goods, yet I wonder if he is cautiously holding back (an acceptable stance for any journalist) or is there more?

That is not an attack on the article; it is well written and shows a writer with a good grasp of grammar 😉 He also makes a few very nice observations. The issues that come from that are not always visible, but we should argue before we get there that any cautious journalist does not need to go there; a blogger like me on the other hand is (at times) all about the informed speculation. So when we see: “to pull off Vision 2030, Mohammed bin Salman needs some of the international goodwill he enjoyed until mid-2017“, that partially true, most of it can however be built with money and Saudi Arabia has plenty of that. At which point Mr Cook takes that frying pan and hits us with “There’s just one problem: the Aramco IPO is far riskier than the Saudis are letting on“. He gives it in the form of “The Saudis are offering stock in 2-5 per cent of the company. One of the sticking points has been valuation“, he is true, and we see that in the article that there is a margin of valuation (depending on the offerer) that is almost 50%, And that is not the only part, there is a view that Saudi Aramco will value at almost twice the price of Apple, that is a lot and there will be an actual benefit that Mr Cook does not offer. He does give us that the Saudi offering could end up netting between 24 billion and 115 billion. No matter how this turns, there will be plenty of Saudis all wanting a share or two, a population supporting its own national product, so there is interest, the benefit we do not see here is the corporatocracy that the EU has become, with value in the fire of shares, whatever Iran will think of next will bounce back, any attacks is no longer a mere Saudi Problem, Saudi Arabia has done something interesting. By offering 2.5% of a company its visibility will become global and that is the first nail in a coffin named Iran. And that is not the only one; there is another benefit to see when we take a harder look at Vision 2030.

You see Vision 2030 will be a clean systems sweep of 5G (and 4G lte) systems, the old 3G and other systems will be absent, the Saudi’s will get a much better view of what is needed in the 5G atmosphere without having old equipment holding it back, you might laugh, but do you have any idea on the amount of equipment out there switched on because there is some ‘twittle’ hardware connection, or the owners merely does not know that some equipment does not need to be turned on? It amounts to almost 7% of the electricity bill and the amount of technology and hardware involved shows a massive amount of additional loopholes requiring fixing. You might not think this is essential, yet when we realise that there is an amount that is between calculated and measured that is not addressed, we see a much larger issue, in at least two cases I have seen the ‘connections’ merely being ‘improperly’ addressed, I wonder what else was not done. Vision 2030 will allow us to look at hardware connected and we will see a whole range of equipment never connected. There will be an amount of niche markets that will evolve because of it and as we see that evolve, whoever is working in Neom City, will get an interesting benefit to this change.

Getting back to the IPO, there is every concern that the quote “Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has every reason to keep the Saudis on the defensive and mess with Aramco’s IPO” has value, yet the first one who is part of the IPO will have the benefit of calling out Iran’s actions and now there will be nations with skin in the game, Iran is basically done for and it needs the nuclear benefit of playing the bully, yet it is running out of time no matter how blind the EU tends to be. When any Wall Street corporation has skin in the IPO, they will report it to any channel willing to expose Iran and that is what Iran really does not like, you see playing the bully only works when no one is looking at you and that option is about to end. They will now enter a stage where the writer claims ‘make investors nervous‘, yet when they go a little overboard and ‘make investors angry‘ their benefit is gone and that is why they need the nuclear pact to be in their favour. A bully merely knows no other way to look at matters, but now we see a much larger field and Iran is about to get exposed a lot more.

So now we get back to Neom City, the writer gives us “The plans (and promotional video) were impressive, but the effort failed miserably“, yet he gives no reason, I will, The amount of media willing to give Neom City the light of day could be counted with two hands, with the hundreds of accepted media in the Aether, they all shied away from Neom City and it was not Jamal Khashoggi. It was in part America and in part Europe that was scared. A city that is stated to be 22 times the size of New York is a building marvel, it would be no less than another world wonder and the powers that be have no intention of letting Saudi Arabia walk away with a world wonder, not in this age. Even as the bridge to Africa might never become a world wonder, the bridge itself will be a global accomplishment and it will give larger gains to Saudi Arabia. In addition it takes another premise, the city of Sharm-El-Sheikh (Sinai) would gain in several ways, whilst the bridge would open Saudi Arabia to Egypt in larger ways. It would also open up technology paths to Saudi Arabia. In addition we see: “Mohammed bin Salman has calculated that he has a greater chance of eliciting the loyalty of his subjects – and thus shoring up his power – by giving them movies, concerts, and WWE wrestling events; reining in the religious police; and granting women the right to drive“, yet it is missing a part, with the building needs growing for close to two decades, we will see a new class of people, A class to Egyptian Muslims working in Saudi Arabia growing the population and growing a larger stage of a new population drive, those needing a better life, we have seen this in America and Europe and it will drive a new need in these people finding a niche where they can settle their family in growth, that part will be new to Saudi Arabia and it will create new wealth group and a larger drive towards Saudi Arabia. I reckon that Saudi Arabia could grow to well over 20% this was and the size of Neom city would allow for a much larger growth giving new options to Saudi’s and those wanting to be Saudi.

As I see it Saudi Arabia could over time grow that IPO to be up to 9%, so basically it will get access to 3 times that maximum of 115 billion, with an offering that over time will be close to $400 billion, we see that Neom city has been paid for, at that point with the IPO in place, and Neom city ready to grow Iran will be shown to be the bully of the Middle East, and bullies can be dealt with in swift ways by any global population that is clearly aware, which now leaves us Hamas and Hezbollah, we actually need not look in those directions, Israel is looking there already, we merely have to wait what will happen next, with these two elements clearly in lace it will not take long for technology firms to seek their nesting grounds in Neom city, Huawei is actively looking, Google has set its premise, as have Apple, Microsoft and IBM (who added 197 jobs in the last month alone), so the need is being addressed, now it merely takes time for the entire stew to settle, once all the elements have been added, we only have to wait (which will be the hardest part), yet there is little to no doubt in my mind that when we see the elements of Neom City, we will see a much larger shift in the west, it will not only be to stay on par with Saudi Arabia, it will be to get all the residual hardware and all the non-effective hardware to be removed from hundreds of places, I reckon that the US will face a new technology need at that point.

You see, in the end, there is less to a decade to a ‘futuristic city’ and a technologically ‘apt city’, Saudi Arabia is about to show the world that part and all the other nations will need to show that they can keep up and with their debts sized the way they are that will be the hardest issues for them and the US knows it has a large problem keeping up, as does the EU, they never thought that they would require to meet wits with Saudi Arabia, they never thought it was ever going to happen, as such they were not ready. Iran is banking on it, in the end I wonder which of the two elements will be the strongest, I’ll let you figure out what I mean.

i believe that by 2035 the global technological will be redrawn, it will be a map that the EU and the US will not be happy about. The Wall Street Journal gave a nice presentation 4 days ago with ‘U.S. Government Is Tripping Over Itself in Race to Dominate 5G Technology‘ and ever as we see sources stating: “U.S. officials say the country is in position to reap those benefits”, we merely need to see SDXCentral giving us: “AT&T is tempering expectations for its forthcoming 5G network riding on sub-6 GHz spectrum. While AT&T says it was the first wireless operator to demonstrate 1 Gb/s and later 2 Gb/s speeds on a commercial 5G network running on millimeter wave (mmWave) spectrum, it’s not making any grand projections for a speed improvement on its forthcoming 5G network running on the lower spectrum bands” (at https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/att-down-on-low-band-5g-speed/2019/11/) to see that they are all running for the advertised word and there is a large hiatus between the ‘advertised word‘ and ‘achieved technology‘, that difference was seen at the end of October as Reuters gave us: ‘Trump says U.S. will cooperate with ‘like-minded’ nations on 5G networks‘, everybody on the US sided mind is trying to fix the backlog that they have against Huawei and some of them have a huge backlog, when we see “Trump has held numerous calls with foreign leaders, including British Prime Minister Johnson in August, to urge them not to let Huawei use 5G networks“, yet at by the time have we seen ANY EVIDENCE that there is a national interest failure on Huawei hardware? America hopes that it has taken the hardware drive and fixed its own economy (and the mere fact that we will not ask questions), yet Saudi Arabia already has ties to Huawei giving Saudi Arabia the option to pull ahead and make the monthly gap larger on a daily basis. The difference is that intense. There is more and more evidence to see that the EU is not going the way of the US and that will give them an advantage on the hardware range, yet they still have all the other old hardware to deal with. They could face two issues, let’s not forget that Riyadh faces that too, but if Neom City shows the benefit to a newly constructed fast internet city, what we saw in the UK 5G image, that path will be faster seen in Neom city, merely because the change is pushed from the beginning and not after the fact (as most technologies are).

The ‘what 5G is about‘ shows what 5G could do and in many nations we see part of this appear over time, yet in case of Neom city, with a 5G focus it will come all at once, it will give Arabian software Engineers a larger playing field and a playing field on rolling out some of those solutions anywhere else in the world. It is a path that we seemingly forgot about and we have seen this path a few times from Japan and the US, just the idea that Saudi Arabia will be able to focus on it was never in the sight of any of them and it is scaring them, Neom City has become that scary to both the US and the EU (well and Japan too). They have all been in the mind for well over 5 years that they see it first in Japan and later on it will be rolled out to the rest of the world. Now that setting changes those in charge are afraid, they have no ties to Saudi Arabia and no ways to make them.

Fear will be the key that the US and the EU will employ to set issues straight, and stopping Neom City to a much larger extent will be their focus, which gets us back to the quote we saw: “the effort failed miserably“, There was as I see it a much larger need to keep it out of the media, the people just never got to see all the elements that were clearly visible in 2018 when initial view of Neom City was given. I saw the first parts in May 2nd 2018 when I gave “the attached Burton presentation ‘Opportunities in Saudi Arabia – Vision 2030 and Beyond‘ spends two slides on it and the most important part shown is “Vision 2030 calls for 50 percent of military equipment purchases from domestic suppliers instead of imports“” a presentation by Edward Burton, President and CEO, U.S.-Saudi Arabian Business Council from June 2017. (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/05/02/are-there-versions-of-truth/) in the article ‘Are there versions of truth‘ I had not realised all the elements at that point (why should I?) yet I saw that Vision 2030 would be a bigger issue yet the larger impact would be visible beyond “90 executives from both countries to sign new trade and investment agreements worth $350 billion” the fact that in these 90 we would see “Lockheed Martin ● Honeywell ● JPMorgan Chase ● The Dow Chemical Company ● ExxonMobil ● Jacobs Engineering ● Baker Hughes ● McDermott International” was clear, the fact that Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. (Steven J. Demetriou) was involved was a clear indicator of that. I believed that whatever think-tank Edward Burton responded to was seeing ‘roadmap for economic development‘ and Identifies general directions, policies‘ and optionally ‘CEDA established new operating models‘ and realised that this went way past the Council of Economic and Development Affairs (Saudi Arabia) there was an actual global impact. This setting has merely taken an accelerated view, especially in regards to Huawei, there is a much larger setting and we will soon see that the impact is global.

Darn! I was not the first to notice!

Even as we realise that the Council of Economic and Development Affairs was created in 2015, there is a larger stance where Saudi Arabia has found the flex point where they will become a global player, that is why Iran is scared, that is why other parties are about to play diminished roles and they are all afraid, their status quo is about to be removed.

 

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The art of marketing

The art of marketing is not new, it is often not understood (even I doubt whetheer I know what they talk about), even more often the people who do the marketing are clueless on what exactly they are doing but they are doing something and that counts according to their needs.

It all started as I made a stop at ‘SuperYachtWorld’ what they would call the ‘the global magazine for superyacht owners’, Now I am not one of them, I do not even own a tinny, Yet I was on that site for a reason, Lurssen and Damen were producing new ships, I was curious as I used to have Damen as a neighbour (of sorts) and I was curious about his second SeaXplorer sale, a 75 meter yacht. I was curious about his dinky toy. Anyway, the article was nice and ended with “You can read more about EYOS Expeditions in the forthcoming issue of SuperYacht World, which publishes tomorrow“, I do not know whether I will buy it, I was just curious, so I decided to click the link ‘subscribe now’ I was curious on how much such a magazine costed. The next is much funnier in graphic form, as you see, I am showing you the first two pages (of the buy a subscription), and explain to me how I can ‘subscribe’ to ‘SuperYachtWorld’? Now, the subscriptions was not really sincere, I merely wanted to find out how much a magazine would cost. Yet the foundation of digital marketing is seen right here. No matter what you can sell, sell it as soon as possible, they merely forgot to give ‘SuperYachtWorld’ the benefit of whatever they wanted to sell.

Or perhaps something else went wrong, but that is the foundation of digital marketing. I even tried the search option, but alas ‘SuperYachtWorld’ was not recognised by Magazinesdirect.com. There are at least 4 flaws in the digital marketing at this point, lets numbers them

  1. Magazine link did not work
  2. Alternate link should mention ‘SuperYachtWorld’ first, or start with a link to that magazine
  3. TI Media Limited (the people behind MagazinesDirect.com) should have spacing before they start their marketing of their magazines.
  4. After the MD dot com element there was a whole part of empty white, after which we got the magazine issues, there too was a ‘subscribe to the magazine’ but that gave a 404 error which is error number 5.

I can go on for a little while longer, but I would think that a magazine who deals with customers dealing with items worth millions of dollars would be a little more finicky, it is the consequence of digital marketing, it’s a cavalier attitude to ‘We will fix it on the flip side‘, I was just so surprised to see it in this area. Ships captains are at times as anal as it needs to be and on the ocean there tends to be no time for ‘Oops, will fix that on the flip side‘, at that point it tends to be too late for that. Feel free to ask the Captain of the Herald of Free Enterprise, which was Captain David Lewry, there were apparently three warnings, the third warning was covered with a (according to magazines “they were busy, go away“, as such 193 lives were sacrificed to the Channel where temperatures of the water were -3C, so there. The entire event took less than 4 minutes. Yes, on Friday 6th March 1987 we learned how disastrous ‘We will fix it on the flip side‘ can be when it involves boating. Digital marketeers will go with the assumption, ‘When we make mistakes it does not cost lives‘, yet is that true? Now consider me a winner of the lotto (I am not, do not worry) and I wanted to read that specific article because I had money for a Damen Ship of 95 meters (again, I do not, so do not worry), now we get into murky waters, the short-sighted view of one limits the access of many, that is actually why I designed the 5G changes as I did them, that is why I came up with a different distribution system, one that is for the small businesses, that is why I came up with the Stupid Smart Device, it fit the needs we will see in 5G because as speeds go up, time becomes more and more a straight pass through of ‘Time is Money‘, who was up to speed? The person selling his wares will be up to speed more and more and that is why changes will push through faster and faster, Places like Google Ads, will require a stranger selling point and when the changes can be made immediate, the term of time is money will be a stronger stage in all this and that is why I decided to go after the 400 million small business owners, they all want to be on the 5G horse as fast as possible, they will drive the next changes even more than those people in telecom will. They are still twisting their thumbs on what to do next and soon enough that system will change, but not today, Places like Google and Huawei will need tome to set a new stage where the Telecom operators are the followers, no longer the deciders. As they are all in the hurry to make deals as far as they can they are 4-7 iterations behind, my IP will optionally change that.

Because by the time you check, ‘SuperYachtWorld’ are most likely, not updating their website, so more likely than not you and Damen miss out on changes, I designed my system to be depended on the two elements that drive marketing needs, the person selling and the person buying. Too many digital marketeers are about ‘I am in the middle, I know when it is right‘ Yet a decade in software sales told me that the Marketing person is the person inhibiting supports (hence diminished sales) because they want to sell it ‘Now!’, they give some response on how it is all with the ‘shareholder’ yet the shareholder does not realise what they are in for by selling a solution that is only 80% complete, the maker knows when it is ready and that is the moment that the buyer wants it. Should you doubt this, look at places like Ubisoft (Breakpoint) to see that part! TechCrunch had a good article on that (at https://techcrunch.com/2016/07/14/the-3-biggest-sales-mistakes-enterprise-software-companies-make/)

  1. Good product-market fit is not good enough

Yes that is true and we see a good explanation on that, I fought a few iterations of that battle with my bosses, because I was always service minded. Yet they were all sales people, they never got it. The article givers an example of ‘are still challenged with sales cycles longer than ideal‘ OK, that is fair enough, yet I countered it in my solution to be able to set the force of changes when the salesperson thinks it is ready. In addition, a sales cycle should be zero, when the person comes into the shop that is when he/she wants to buy. Yet I know that this is retail thinking, but is enterprise thinking not merely a large customer that comes in now? I get it there are other options and this person wants to buy the best solution, so he is seeking, but that is marketing, not sales. Marketing makes sure that they sell on paper what the salesperson can sell for a price (OK, I get it, it is a self-denying truth) but that is how I roll. We need a solution taking marketing out of the loop, if time is money, marketing is the delay in this, and optionally it needs to be sales driven, when YOU can sell.

  1. Are you competitively disadvantaged?

Nope, my solution came up with the standard you sell when you are ready to sell, and you are not disadvantaged, you merely focus on those who want your product in your neighbourhood. We also get “80% of on-premise software vendors operate a channel program to enable other companies to sell their products, while only 20% of SaaS vendors operate similar programs“, it is all about the stage of selling, and tho whom you sell, a lot of the sales systems in place are marketing driven, so when we change the view of marketing we tend to change the view of sales. It is hard to explain, so let’s get back to boats.

When you see the image below, we see a solution of where the other ships need to be, but we forget that the setting is that we are losing 2 out of 4 sales options, if marketing was on the bow of the ship, he could have guided those two additional sales towards THEIR solution, and in the 5G world that solution starts taking shape, software vendors go from tall order to tall order and at that point forget the 4-9 customers they could have gotten by adding their solution to the front of their convoy, looking for the small enterprises. I decided to change the wheel and the steering of such solutions. There is no competitive disadvantage; there is merely your own advantage and how quickly you can turn around sales.

  1. Bad timing — outta sync, outta luck

I never got that part, ‘sales cycles’ are basically whenever the customer comes to shake your hand and you get to explain on what solution you sell, or basically the customer wants to buy and you either have what they want or you do not. And in a marketing solution where YOU are the solution applicant, it is easy, you have what they want or you do not. At the very end of that setting we see: “and most important deals, people skills are ultimately at the top of that list” is the part where we need to focus on, because only you can sell what you sell. In the end that is YOUR power and there are 400 million small business owners that relay on that believe I merely gave them a clear solution to talk into. The rest is up to them, at their speed with their options at their fingertips.

It was that simple!

The art of marketing is not some solution that one person, or one through gives out, we see too many times that the small business units feel that they are told that they are competitively disadvantaged and they took that as some truth whilst they merely wanted to sell, I am setting the stage where they get to prove it, they get to prove it the moment they get to 5G, the game gets to change, let’s see who is ready for that. Now I need to add a part, I am not taking marketing out of the equation, I merely placing it where it needs to be, before the sales cycle, not part of the sales cycle. For the small business owner that is the game that counts, IT forgot about that part and it is time that we recognise that, and fix it, because in 5G Time will truly be money and every delay is a sales opportunity missed.

 

 

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Finally!

Yup, there is a new fashion in town and it will force the companies to fix the one element in IT that most corporations have ignored fixing for the longest of times. The issue that needed fixing for the longest time was non-repudiation, the issue has been clearly around for almost 10 years, 15 if you want to set a time table, but today on LinkedIn ‘Netflix and don’t share‘ shows that the industry will start doing something about it. The problem is what drives the masses to think that a paid service could ever be free. And even as we see: “Market leader Netflix has already declared it is examining how to curtail password sharing among family and friends. But streamers are treading carefully in teaming up “against the grifters,” aware of the backlash record labels previously generated in the Napster era” we need to be aware of the setting that it is a Netflix world and if you don’t pay, that is fair enough, but it also means that you can’t have Netflix. This issue is not limited to Netflix, it has a setting in video games, a setting in programs and in the past it had a setting in music. The problem is how to go about it. For places like Netflix, there is the non-repudiation solution, so in your network there are a few devices that could be set to receive, in the home environment the router tends to be the most culpable solution, yet in equal measure the home devices are also solutions that give rise to the patch of hardware that will allow one person to be connected, as such, Netflix was nice enough to allow 4 devices to be linked. Yet what to use as a system of non-repudation?

Well, email is certainly one way of doing it, but that only helps to some extent, the nice part about e-mails are that it allows Netflix (and like-minded people) to communicate with the owner on hardware, so as long as the email address is not hacked, this is decently safe.

Non-Repudiation

The term Non-Repudiation is not new, It refers to the ability to ensure that a party to a contract or a communication cannot deny the authenticity of their signature on a document or the sending of a message that they originated. So you and only you could have instigated the connection, bio-metrics are only one part of it, so is a password, non-repudiation is more, an autograph have the elements to complete non-repudiation, but in automated traffic, a copy of a autograph is becoming exceedingly simple, so we need to set the state where two tiered enabling is the way to go. Even if the origin of the two tiers was done in separate ways, combining them in any stream would be a decent level of assurance to convict a jury of peers (and Netflix) that only you could have instigated the stream. And Netflix is not the only one seeking for a solution. Bank solutions, use a pin and a bank pass, it is close but in in the end it is not real non-repudiation. Netflix needs to find a solution and whatever they find will push authentication technology.

And the system needs to be simple, not just for customers sake, the setting of complexity in these matters was best described by Scotty the Chief Engineer in Star Trek 3 whilst sabotaging the Excelsior: “The more they over-think the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain“, it does apply to authentication and non-repudiation systems, especially when distance is an issue. So whatever we have at point X requesting for an authentication that tends to be the soft spot in the track.

It has to be simple, it needs to always work and it needs to set 2-3 alternatives at the spot. The problem with such a system is that it is not really non-repudiation at that point.

For example

A programmable dongle can be hacked; the hacked account can be copied. And these dongles will come from somewhere, so criminals will end up having access to the stuff they need.

As such the best you can hope for is a system that will take out 80% from accessing such a solution, add proper cyber solutions in the form of law and you have a solution that a company can live with, as it deals with 10% of the outstanding 20%. It is not pretty at times, but at least it works. So these solutions could stop 90% from using stated systems in a non-paying capacity.

We can go in all directions from there, but the world needs a solution where non-repudiation will stop 96% dead in its track, and only up to 1% would be able to find a workaround. Making the non-repudiation system a 98.9999% working solution. I reckon that this is as good a solution as we are going to get and the solution is needed faster as 5G will require correct non-repudiation solutions to be up and running. With 5G out and about, the criminals get a 500% chance to get to more systems to infect more and more devices as such the need for Common Cyber Sense is becoming a pressing matter and from there we can move onto non-repudiation. Consider that the current situation allowed cyber criminals to lay their fingers on $120 billion dollars and with 5G out and about criminals will have access to well over half a trillion dollars, one could argue that it is a great day to be a cyber-criminal, or we can do something about it, because the one thing I do know is that the banks will only take hits for as long as they cannot make a case for ‘negligent care, the person did not take care of the item like a father would take care of its child‘, that is not some rant, the art world is already working with terms like that. How long will it be until banks and payment systems will take the same steps? At that point, the hardship will fall on the owner of the hit bank account, not the bank, unless a clear established path of evidence is presented that the bank itself was the intended target.

Oh, and when banks are no longer held accountable how much attention do you think that the FBI has for little you? Common Cyber Sense will be the immediate requirement.

Non-repudiation will be the big next thing soon enough and whoever gets a system like that up and running will make an absolute fortune, it would change my 5G IP systems into small change, nothing more. It is the next thing and we are in dire need for such an inventor soon enough, not just Netflix.

 

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The tradesman and the deal

Yes, we all have moments where a deal didn’t sound great, but the way it was brought was essential when the deal was there ready to be signed, the deal was accepted, not because of the deal, but the tradesman involved had brought it in such a way that the deal sounded too great to pass up. We have seen several of these events in the past, it is the literal event where the numbers do not add up when the analyst brings the ‘good’ news, but the diplomat was able to swing it to the direct event where all were looking forward to the fringe benefits that this deal brought. That is how I saw the Nuclear Deal, and one day after April 1st, the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) was ready for signatures on April 2nd 2015. Now that the deal is up in smoke we look towards the people setting up the deal, but they are no longer there, there is merely the JCPOA and the Iranian party has decided to walk away from it, already in a stage where several parts have been transgressed upon, but diplomats state “be not afraid, we are on top of it, the injunction is minor” (in various publications in the last 3 months), meanwhile Iran has announced (or was that a promise or a threat) that they are about the increase tenfold the Uranium enrichment process. Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s atomic energy organisation has made the statement that enrichment is now up to 5kg per day, up from 450g less than 60 days earlier, also , the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/04/irans-production-of-enriched-uranium-rises-tenfold-in-two-months) gives us “It is not clear how the European Union will react to the latest step, but so far the EU has not put the whole nuclear agreement into review, which would be the first move towards its suspension and possible collapse“, the diplomats are not home, they are out and about on a golf course, on a sabbatical and on long term travels where they are not to be reached, no one wants to touch the toxic agreement, no one wants their nae connected to this, it is the deal that is bringing direct danger to the State of Israel and to the safety of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, so whilst Anna Ahronheim gives us in the Jerusalem Post ‘EU Parliament Members: Support Israel In Fight Against Hezbollah And Iran‘, we seemingly forget that the term ‘EU parliamentary‘ is transient and above all, the 8-person delegation (four MEPs and four European Parliament policy advisers) are close to a joke, 4 MEP doubled by policy advisors are out and about stating (well sort of) ‘We support you against Iran‘, you see 4 out of 751 MEP’s is not much, did they bring the combined voices of 442 coalition members? I do not think so! You see the EU needs to look important, so they keep their options open with Iran and the problem here is that the moment Iran acts with their enriched Uranium, the EU is less than likely to do anything, Iran has oil and the EU needs it, the chance of Iran acting out against Israel is a lot higher than Iran acting out against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the chances of Israel being a first strike victim just went up tenfold. The same can be said for the article by Yonah Jeremy Bob, also in the Jerusalem Post, there we see ‘Iran-Us-Israel’s 40 Years Of Hostility With No End In Sight – Analysis‘, a definite truth, but here too it is all about hostilities. And the quote “One would think the US’s greatest hostility would be for a country that killed 58,000 of its soldiers and that Israel’s greatest hostility would be for a country that killed more than 2,500 of its soldiers in a single war“, but that is not where its at. And he danger is perfectly voiced in one paragraph: “Ironically, 40 years later, it is Iran that is the lasting threat against Israel as many of the moderate Sunni Arab countries are trying to find ways to live a stable coexistence with Israel, even if there is not yet formal peace with some of them” and that is where the danger lies. The two quotes ‘to find ways to live a stable coexistence with Israel‘, as well as ‘even if there is not yet formal peace‘ these two events are the heart of the matter, Iran is not interested in peace with Israel, Rouhani might be president, but he does not represent the Iranian Clergy or the Iranian military, they both merely allow Rouhani to be where he is and they both want to finish off Israel, and remove the power that KSA has, in that order, as such events are required and Iran is on track with it as Uranium enrichment is now allowed by the EU and the US is nowhere to be seen, merely in a stage where they think that more economic sanctions work, in an age where the half time of security is far below the half time of Uranium, and Iran has its targets set. And ever after the first strike on Israel there is EVERY CHANCE that the EU will not harshly react against Iran, they are knowingly selling Israel down the drain to ensure Middle Eastern Oil agreements with ALL OPEC nations, I wonder when the people will figure out that the EU is nothing more than a sheep’s rug that is not being used, it is merely there to give the large corporations the stick they need to deal with individual European nations, it is the result of becoming a corporatocracy.

The corporatocracy wants to find some level of solution, but then we are shown “Europe has made promises to find ways to circumvent the US sanctions“, it was the latest in folly’s, all doomed to fail, corporatocracy on one side, ego on the other, did you actually think that there will be a solution? Even as we see ‘French president Emmanuel Macron’s efforts to set up talks between Iran and the US to break the impasse‘ in the meanwhile the dangers are growing to dangerous levels, because of the Iranian acts, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has no options but to find an equal stick to work with and that is where the Russian and Chinese connections become important to the KSA, one of them has to hand over the technology and that will be the beginning of the end of the EU, because the most prevalent of all reasons are ignored, Israel might seem far away, but they are at the Mediterranean, and any explosion there will give particles all over that sea, optionally directly endangering Cyprus meaning that the radiation is already on European soil, in addition to that Turkey will see the impact and the SE of the Mediterranean will optionally become uninhabitable or fishable.

Yes, that is the direct impact we are looking at and the corporatocratic security that the EU relies on will now be a feigned form of apologies and when the Diplomats wake up it will be too late. That is the direct danger we face and at that point the people get to rely on denials from politicians who proclaim to be working for them. Good luck with that!

We can argue about the validity of the JCPOA and hat nuclear deal, but the direct show-able danger is that Iran has increased its nuclear actions by 1000%, whilst there are no power plants requiring this, do you need a road map to figure it out?

If politicians do not hand over a template of actions within the next 48 hours, to time will have come for citizens to act and ensure that some level of quality of life continues, and for those who are in doubt of it, consider looking at your map, at any map that includes the Mediterranean. Israel is in the SE corner, with radiation having no other course to go but west, the tides will change where that radiation ends up, it includes Greece, Crete, Italy, Spain and the most expensive parts of France (Marseille) as well as Monaco, It will take a while for radiation to move through the waters to those parts but once the radiation is in one part, there is no denying it, it will get to those parts as well. So how irradiated will you like your fish to be when you eat it? Perhaps you like your Paella to glow in the dark when you have dinner at 22:00 in Barcelona.

Feel free to think I am merely having a sense of humour, but that first explosion will be the instant that life in Southern Europe will end and the EU parliament is letting it happen, so what are their priorities? Where are their priorities?

As I personally see it the time to be nice to Iran is over, it has been for a while now and the idea to play ‘soft kitten’ games with someone who is rejoicing on their enrichment program to be 1000% of what it was 60 days ago is not the way to go.

 

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The foundation of a blame game

It was the Independent that gave the headline ‘Tens of thousands of operations cancelled because of staff shortages and faulty equipment, NHS figures show‘ by Vincent Wood about 13 minutes ago, and the by-line gives us ‘Labour blames ‘Tory cutbacks running our NHS into the ground’‘ did anyone catch that? Did anyone catch the issues that were given over the last 5 years, not eventual new issues bu the Conservatives, but the destructive path of Labour? “The Labour party bungled the option to get part of the technological solution implemented that could have helped the NHS (perhaps you remember the loss of roughly £11.2 billion in NHS IT restructuring)” did you think that a loss of £11.2 billion is easy to wipe away? That loss hit out into every corner of the NHS, £11.2 billion in IT, in Systems never delivered and the need to do something, so as Labour make some claim as we see printed: “The simple truth is under the Tories, patients wait longer and longer for vital care. This general election is about the future of the NHS and ensuring quality care for all. Labour will fully fund our NHS, recruit the doctors and nurses we need and safeguard our NHS from a Trump deal sell off that could cost the NHS £500 million a week” my question becomes: ‘Will any Labour MP connected to the initial NHS spending disaster be removed from politics?‘ it is a fair demand, is it not? And as I see “The figures were compiled by the Labour party, is based on responses from 82 per cent of hospital trusts” I wonder what else they wrote up and connected down, now we cannot keep on bringing up the £11.2 billion, but it had to come from somewhere, did it not?

And how did we get to “staff vacancies continue to put the health service under strain, with the NHS reporting last year it was short of 100,000 staff including 10,000 doctors and 35,000 nurses“, shall we take a look at the state of things in 1997 – 2010? Then we also need to look into the state of things from 2010-2019. Shall we take a look on the changes required in 1997-2010 and the impact of the Economic meltdown? Now the second part is not on the heads of labour, but there was a definite impact, it is so easy for Labour to make a definite push to ignore that and in the years when it mattered Labour squandered £11.2 billion, that is a whole boatload of systems and thousands of nurses and doctors. Interesting how they ignore that part of the equation.

So as Labour hides behind “the statistics obtained via a Freedom of Information (FOI) request” shall we ask to include the amount they squandered? And whilst were at it, let’s take a look at the squandered part compared to that nutshell trust charity requiring ‘the amount needed to repair faulty equipment across the service provider at £6bn‘ let’s see what is left when we compare one to the other, it seems that Labour is all about forgetting one element in this equation.

The article (at https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/nhs-operations-cancelled-tens-of-thousands-official-figures-tories-damage-labour-a9183636.html) has a few more idle hands in all this and I am not stating that the Tories are entirely innocent here, but the joke that is regarded to be Labour’s shadow health secretary seemingly decided to ignore the heart ship that £11.2 billion squandered had on the services of the NHS, in addition the loaded debt on the government corporate credit card did not help any, in that regard the Tories are not innocent, i am not claiming that, but the ignoranus that is Labour better get their part right, because the people should be aware of that £11.2 billion fuck up called Labour IT plan, and the issues from there were widespread because that amount had to come from somewhere. And when we start looking at the surplus that the Labour party should have created but did not we will get to an amount that is a lot less representative of what actually should be the consequence of the NHS, amounts and numbers of staff that has been too low for almost 2 decades. When we look a NHS Digital we get that (at https://files.digital.nhs.uk/publicationimport/pub00xxx/pub00912/nhs-staf-over-1996-2006-rep1.pdf) we might think that a good job was achieved with “The number of staff in the NHS has grown every year to 2005 with a small fall in 2006. The workforce is now 27% larger than in 1996“, yet how many SHOULD have been added? When we look at ‘Total staff employed 1,338,000‘ this includes ‘professionally qualified clinical staff 675,000‘ is that not a low number? Remember the earlier ‘the NHS reporting last year it was short of 100,000 staff including 10,000 doctors and 35,000 nurses‘ how come that this number is so divergent from the initial numbers that at the end of Labour was given? How many positions got fired? Yes, there is something wrong and a place like the NHS is dependent of what the government has available and that part is also missing from the equation, so when we start drilling down the numbers Labour comes off as insincere and the usual yokes that they are. All yellow, icky and not really to any point are they?

Oh, and the numbers also calls into question that training places are lacking in a few corners and degrees, so as we are looking at that part too, how did Labour address that in their term? It is important, not because it stops Tories being responsible, it does not, but it does show a systemic problem in the matter and that goes beyond the political element here, there was a shortage for funds and the so called British professional medical degrees should have made a larger and louder complaint in all; this, perhaps it was done, perhaps it was not, but the article does not give light to any of this and it relates to a direct quote that Vincent Wood relies on. And it all related back to the failings that Labour introduced in their term from 1997-2010, so this issue is a lot larger than anyone realises and leave it to the Labour party to add their own failures onto the Tories back, it merely makes no sense to do so, the numbers are out there and it is time to hit Labour with the long term damage that they pushed onto at least half a dozen directions, or did you think that tapping the £11.2 billion NHS vein was the only bloodletting they allowed for? I also believe that certain questions need to be asked towards British Medical Association chair Dr Chaand Nagpaul. He was a topic of investigation in my article ‘As a Puppet‘ in May 2017 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2017/05/18/as-a-puppet/) when I also had a go at the Labour manifesto, I also wrote at that point: It states: “The people of Britain are rightly proud of the NHS and we will invest £12 billion over the next five years to keep it working for them“, so we get a little over £6 million a day, or slightly more than £200 million a month, so where does this £350 a week ‘pledge’ come from? The independent (at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/conservatives-must-make-manifesto-commitment-of-350m-a-week-for-the-nhs-say-doctors-a7739401.html) shows us: “Doctors, academics and public health officials have called on the Conservative Party to include in its general election manifesto a commitment to spend £350m a week on the NHS, in keeping with the notorious posters of the Vote Leave campaign“, which makes me wonder where the actual pledge comes from. So it seems that Dr Chand Nagpaul and Norman Lamb are both missing a few parts here (I am happy to be proven wrong)“, so not only is the claim debatable, yet I wonder what the numbers then and now represent, yes a 2017 number in this day and age will show a total lack of change towards today, is that the case? From my point of view Dr. Chand Nagpaul has a few explanations to make and I get it, he is watching his own turf and what he’s in value, there is nothing wrong with that, but how much has he achieved in spreading the love of budget? And all this is also linked to the January 2017 article where we see: ““Coventry and Warwickshire NHS chiefs fork out £340,000 for advice on how to SAVE money” (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2017/01/15/the-views-we-question/)“, so how much money was forked out by NHS chiefs on how to save money and how much did they safe in the end?

There are a few issues that are open all over the NHS and the Labour party, but in case you were not aware, I am happy to inform you.

Have a great Monday! #Justsaying

 

 

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