Category Archives: Science

August 27, 2019 · 11:44

Legally dopey dealings

We all know people who are out and about, some are out for dope, others are merely dopey. As such we have all kinds of checks and balances in place (or so one would think). It was there for a little surprising to see: ‘Johnson & Johnson responsible for fuelling opioid crisis in Oklahoma, judge rules‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/26/johnson-and-johnson-opioid-crisis-ruling-responsibility-oklahoma-latest). I was of the mind that this would not happen. Not because I like the firm, not because I like the product Pledge (for my furniture), and optionally I use other materials by Jay & Jay, I merely am unaware of it.

I am also not debating the events, or the guilt of Johnson and Johnson, I merely have a lot of other questions, questions that as far as I can tell are not answered. To get there, we need to see the accusation: “the giant drug maker helped fuel the deadly opioid epidemic in the state“, first of all, there is a larger failing. When we focus on the ‘deadly opioid epidemic‘, we need to see that this does not go over the counter. So when we look at the words of AG Mike Hunter “a “cunning, cynical and deceitful scheme” to ramp up narcotic painkiller sales alongside other opioid manufacturers by using their huge resources to influence medical policy and doctor prescribing“, I wonder who these prescribing doctors were. Did they not study medicine? The fact that thousands of doctors prescribed opioids is a larger issue, it does not make J&J less guilty, it makes others a lot less innocent. J&J should not be standing there alone. The claim “selling as many narcotic painkillers as possible” calls for an inclusions of the doctors giving out the recipe and the pharmacy accepting that doctors kept on prescribing the drug. We also need to look at the FDA who approved the drug in the first place. Here we are looking at three guilty parties, with two groups consisting of thousands of people involved. Yet the article shows merely a J&J in the dock, having to shell out $572,000,000. This leads to questions that do not add up.

In addition we see: “Oklahoma resolved claims against Purdue Pharma in March for a settlement of $270m and against Teva Pharmaceutical Industries in May for $85m“, it calls for additional questions and they are not given, it seems that the essential questions are not even asked in the article. Even the CDC has questions to answer. This part is given with: “Opioids were involved in almost 400,000 overdose deaths from 1999 to 2017, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention“, there is already a clear case on how these opioids were prescribed, yet we see nothing of that. And as the article continues with: “Since 2000, some 6,000 Oklahomans have died from opioid overdoses“, this implies 300 deaths a year and we see nothing demanded from doctors and more important on how dosage had this effect. All elements that might be attributed to J&J, but it took a doctor to decide on the medication, is that not the case?

The truth of that is seen at the very end of the article by John Sparks, Oklahoma counsel for Johnson & Johnson. “Not once did the state identify a single Oklahoma doctor who was misled by a single Janssen statement, nor did it prove that Janssen misleadingly marketed opioids or caused any harm in Oklahoma“, I would phrase it: “Not once were doctors and their pharmacies called to explain these numbers, the total numbers who got prescribed these opioids and not once do we see any alerts to the CDC on any of this“. The evidence in this is that the 22,500 overdoses a year should have rattled the CDC no later than 2003, so where are the actions shown that there was an issue? The American pharmacy system failed on several levels and even as no one denies that Johnson and Johnson had a role to play, the FDA and the CDC should have clearly intervened no later than 2005 that is seemingly not the case, because the cadavers kept on stacking for at least another decade.

It took me less than 600 seconds to see this truth; as such Mike Hunter is actually dealing with a massive systemic failure that goes all the way to his own office.

And as we read: “cunning, cynical and deceitful scheme“, it seems more apt to accuse the office of the Attorney General for inaction, complacency on a matter that endangered the lives of hundreds of his state constituents every year and his office has remained inactive for well over a decade, it seems to me that his office should equally be investigated for reckless endangerment of people. In all this the pharmacies and doctors need to be heard on how and why these patients were prescribed. My view was supported in July 2019 when we were told (by the Guardian) “The company has previously acknowledged delivering 5.7m opioid pills between 2005 and 2011 to the small town of Kermit, West Virginia, with a population of just 380 people“, this shows the larger extent of pharmacies and their distributors. More important, who was prescribing these opioids?

We can argue that Johnson and Johnson is guilty or innocent, yet the truth is that this reckless abuse system is a lot larger than the pharmacy creating the opioid containing medicine, it is a much larger greed driven setting and I believe that Oklahoma and specifically Mike Hunter failed the American people. He might feel all happy and joy joy that he won the case, yet I believe that it is merely part in covering up a much larger crime that goes all the way to the top of the CDC, as well as a national pharmacy failure. The article does not give us that, does it?

It gets to be even a little wilder when we consider a 1978 episode of Lou Grant (season 2 Episode 1 – pills). In that episode we get a similar setting, more important, in the dialogue at the end we hear: “246 kids went to the same three places. Druggists are obliged to report any doctors who are prescribing abnormal amounts of dangerous drugs, the state pharmacy board had not received a report from any of the three“, now I accept that this is the text from a TV series, a drama series. Yet the premise remains, is there a legal premise in the US (still) in place that this reporting needs to happen? If there isn’t why was this never done? The danger of substance use disorder has been around for decades, this failing cannot be held over the head of a pharmaceutical company. There is a clear indication of violations on local, state and federal level, it is a systemic failure and we might large applause that a large pharmaceutical gets the bill, but the failing is much larger and because of that there is an injustice in all this.

I believe that Johnson and Johnson has a much larger role to play and they are not innocent, yet the failing is systemic, as such there is every chance that their appeal will have large consequences on a national level in America.

I wonder if Ed Asner, Robert Walden and Mason Adams ever considered that they would be part of a stage where they pointed out a much larger American failing 4 decades before it went to court. I remember the series as I was almost 18 (just two years short of that) and It was my dream to become a wartime photo journalist (a younger Daryl Anderson). It was not meant to be, but I never lost my passion for photography.

This case is more than we see and I reckon that jurisprudence papers will soon enough fill up on the systemic failings that Mike Hunter is eager to avoid in the court room.

Even now, we see another article from the Guardian that is almost an hour old. There we see: “It was also revealed that Johnson & Johnson hired the consultants McKinsey, which recommended the company’s sales force should focus on doctors already prescribing large amounts of Purdue’s OxyContin”, there is a level of validity of looking into that practice, yet the part linked to all this, the doctors prescribing the medication in the first place, they had a duty of care towards their patients. A marketing strategy might be debatable, it might also be immoral, yet in the end the doctor is the one acting, so is the pharmacy handing it out again and again, where are they in all this?

It is in that article where we see a two sided issue (at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/26/johnson-and-johnson-opioid-crisis-ruling-responsibility-oklahoma-latest), with: “Sabrina Strong, one of the trial lawyers for Johnson & Johnson, said the ruling was flawed. The company argued that the drugs it sold were approved by federal regulators and that they could not be tied directly to any deaths in Oklahoma”, we see that Sabrina Strong is opening two doors, one bad one. Yes, we can agree that they were approved; the error was ‘they could not be tied directly to any deaths’. Were all hundreds each year all vetted? That is the flaw, because that data could also reveal which physicians prescribed them and which pharmacies filled the prescription. That evidence was not covered by the media, and as this goes over almost two decades, how did the CDC cover this? 300 deaths a year in one state is too large to ignore, especially when it is part of a larger failing. That is the part that Johnson and Johnson have seemingly not covered. I feel certain that the appeal will cover it and it will make life for Mike Hunter a much larger problem than he realises.

 

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August 24, 2019 · 12:34

From trade war to losses

Huawei remains in the news on an international level. Australia gives us ‘Huawei sheds 100 Australian jobs in the face of 5G ban‘ (ZDNet), ‘Huawei Australia says over half of jobs at threat due to 5G ban‘ (ITnews), and ‘Greece opens up to Huawei’s 5G ambitions‘ (ZDNet). For the most there is some level of balance that is going on. We see messages of reprieve given to the US on Huawei, yet the clear part is that there is no way around Huawei. Just like the 80’s when there was no way around IBM. I still remember those arrogant sales people. Whenever they could not answer a question with any clarity (which was more often than I was ever comfortable with), the response became: ‘Sir, we are IBM‘.

It is not limited to one company, CNN reports (at https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/23/business/china-tariffs-trade-war/index.html) “The US-China trade war ratcheted up yet again on Friday, with Beijing unveiling a new round of retaliatory tariffs on about $75 billion worth of US goods“, this round will hit “25% for vehicles or 5% on parts, and would take effect on December 15th. The new tariffs will target 5,078 products, including soybeans, coffee, whiskey, seafood and crude oil“, this war was a bad idea for America the moment they started it. Yes, there is an impact on China and there is an impact on Huawei. Yet the world cannot go around Huawei. The non-Chinese players were complacent for well over half a decade and the invoice is due, it is an invoice that a bankrupt America cannot afford at present. Moreover, the stage is now sliding away from the American market more and more. As Europe is seeking Huawei to instigate growth, America grows lag time losing momentum more and more. In Europe the issue is larger because it is not one EU; we are looking at 27 member states. The UK with BT gives us: “The investment bank also noted that the Conservatives have outlined an ambition for the roll out of super-fast fibre broadband across the whole of the UK by 2025 but it is not clear how it will be funded or what the returns will be for BT“, a technology years out of date, too much delays, politicising and now BT, a company that was once regarded as a company at the height of technology (some might remember the 80’s advertisement with Tom Baker, the 4th Doctor Who showing us a piece of fibre optics, transmitting the entire bible in one second), the message of advanced progress was clear. Yet in 2018 we see other messages ‘Why most of the UK doesn’t have True Fibre Optic Broadband‘, the setting is a disappointing one and there is a really nice explanation (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDp9-tSYpU0). The Dutch have KPN, an advantage here is that they managed to put 30% of the British population on 14% of the UK, so they have less distance issues. So even as Reuters gave us last April “Dutch telecom firm Royal KPN NV said on Friday it would select a Western supplier to build its core 5G mobile“, they will be digging a large hole for themselves. No matter who gets chosen, they all lag to a much larger degree the abilities that Huawei offers and that impact will only increase over time.

To see this we need to take you to a little math equation. An innovative technology gives you 10 years. Huawei has at present two innovations and three iterations lined up, which gives them 26 years (iterations gives one a mere 2 year advantage), which almost aligns as reengineering catches up three years annually. This gives us the number that others need to catch up to Huawei, who could in 2020 be technologically already at 2047. At present none of them have any TRUE innovations. As such the iterators will truly catch up in 2028 whilst that stage will be met in 2020 by Huawei. This is the largest danger for all the other players. In 2028 the 5G market will settle and they are all still catching up whilst Huawei rules the 5G on a global scale.

The math was important, because it also meant that I have until 2023 to sell my IP, at that point iterators will have found part of my IP and they can equal it to me by 2025. The math was everything and the math is not looking good for America or Europe. Those who embrace Huawei to some degree will get a much larger advantage. My IP was about pushing momentum and if that goes as I hope, the others will face a much larger setback, in all this a much larger part of cybersecurity will not work, or will merely delay the commerce. When was the last time you saw commerce seeking safety over revenue?

The fact that the Guardian gives us: ‘Apple warns new credit card users over risks of it touching wallets and pockets‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/aug/22/apple-card-wallet-pocket-warning) gives a much larger issue. Even as we laugh on: ““Apple Card completely rethinks everything about the credit card. It represents all the things Apple stands for. Like simplicity, transparency, and privacy,” as the company said when the card was launched. Just don’t put it in your pocket.”

So when was the last time you went on vacation and you had to take care of all that for a mere Credit Card? What happens when there is damage to the card whilst on a business trip? Oh, and more interesting, what Forbes told us (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/08/10/apples-iphone-faceid-hacked-in-less-than-120-seconds/#1c136a2421bc) with the title ‘Apple’s iPhone FaceID Hacked In Less Than 120 Seconds‘, it is the issue of greed versus Common Cyber Sense and CCS never gets to win, greed dies!

That will show in 5G within the first year and as such there is a lot less taken care of, and it was exactly why I am rubbing my hands, the more desperate they become, the more valued my IP becomes and in the end, my IP pushes commerce and safety in the same IP line. As an android solution I get to thumb my nose against Apple and iOS, it is too iterative to consider. I hope that Google wakes up, so far Huawei might be the only tender and that is just fine by me.

How do these relate?

The pressures that we saw when thatcher decided to stop Fibre, as she saw that BT got an unfair advantage (which is fair enough) too many players try to get part of the cookie for their minimalist services and it directly relates to the US. Their stage of Status Quo as dictated by Wall Street has stopped innovation. The boat that was not rocked was giving Wall Street the managed expected returns they vowed to get. Yet the other side is also a given. We see this as the senior people stayed where they were, stopping innovation too often because they were scared to make the jump, it is the principle that gave Google the growth they had, yet the linked headline (to the smallest degree mind you) ‘Americans Owe $1.6 Trillion In Student Debt – What Will It Take To Solve This Crisis?‘ close to an entire generation was topped to innovate, I grant you that not all are innovators, but the entire innovation cycle was missed. As such highly educated people got menial jobs and went in other directions, a decent amount of them disillusioned. There is a part that gives the concern of affordable higher education, yet there is also the path that those educated and ready were stopped their innovation; each of them stopping 3-7 fellow students to tag along in that innovation path. It is what I call, a non-proven given. It is hard to set a number to this and there are of course other elements (like the economic crash) all set through and connected to the actions of a few on Wall Street, that much we all agree on and whilst that path was set to non-motion, innovation was lost in almost a dozen industries, IT and telecommunication being the most visible ones. Patents are the most visible marker here, but not the only one. That part is making the US scared, not nervous but scared. Over the next 5 years 43 drugs will become generic, the patents expire, 28 of them this year. the world looks at the pharmaceutical patents because of the aging population, yet technology patents expire too and all of those not linked to renewed innovation patents will be collapsing, consider all that was patented from 1985 and 1999, all coming to a close some were just forgotten and not renewed because the technology was surpassed, yet there we forget that original ideas can be reengineered solutions, all up for patenting and that market is well over $100 billion. One consideration is shown (at https://www.dnj.com/story/news/2019/08/22/rutherford-county-jail-hit-lawsuit-over-patent-infringement-stealing-technology-smart-communications/2064500001/) where we get: “Smart Communications accused them infringing upon their patented technology that transformed written mail into an electronic version sent directly to inmates“, I merely wonder how we see that setting when we look at players like Perceptive software, Readsoft and a few other players. Readsoft became part of Lexmark and then Lexmark, the printing and Software Company, agreed Wednesday to be sold to a consortium led by Apex Technology of China and PAG Asia Capital, a private equity firm. Consider the placement of digital transfer, on an international level in the hands of a Chinese consortium. The NY Times took notice (at https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/21/business/dealbook/lexmark-apex-pag-asia.html), for the most no one else did. They had no grasp of the power that the innovations were that Readsoft had. I worked with the materials; it was next gen software in 2003. Now consider that we think digital almost every moment nowadays, but there are decades of legacy materials out there and not everyone has the budget of the America alphabet group. In 5G that material needs to be digital or it will be lost. All these patents give advantage to the owner and stop others, having to re-engineer their idea again and again, that is direct currency and China has a much larger truckload of them with a later end date, even as Huawei is all innovation, they still need their patents and whatever innovation they launch next, they will need to have the patent in place. It stops all the other making the case that their advantage grows as the others forgot to get a workforce that is innovative in nature (Google is excluded from those losers). The innovator drivers are gaining momentum and over the next three years their advantage gets to grow.

That was always the advantage the innovators have and the iterators are starting to feel the pain. IBM, Microsoft and Apple might market their ‘innovation’ yet marketing it doesn’t make it actual innovation. Perhaps you remember the Verge last March giving us ‘Study confirms AT&T’s fake 5G E network is no faster than Verizon, T-Mobile or Sprint 4G‘, marketing versus reality is often disappointing and the iterative technology firms are finding out the hard way that there is no such thing as marketing the reality of shareholders expectations.

We see that part ibn another field as Microsoft Phil Spencer gets to be quoted: “There’s only one new Xbox coming in 2020: ‘We are not working on a streaming-only console,’ says Xbox chief“, yet the end of the article gives us: “given the iterative nature of game consoles and the history of the business, we wouldn’t be surprised to see new versions of Project Scarlett in the coming years – it just sounds like we’ll only see one in 2020“, that is where Business Insider made the massive flaw one week ago. It is a flaw because if that was actually true the Nintendo Switch would exist, iteration would never have led to the Nintendo Switch, and not only is it beating all the records, it is also reducing the Microsoft Xbox One to the number three console. Projections are that Nintendo Switch will get to 50 million consoles sold before the end of the tax year, a lofty promise, yet that too shows the impact of innovation. In 2 years it equaled what Microsoft calls the most powerful console in the world and it took Microsoft 6 years to get there. Clearly power is not all it is cracked up to be. In addition, for the first time in history Sony is worried about how far Nintendo can get. Nintendo never wavered, they never lost their core groups, they merely added to them.

Innovation does that and innovation will push 5G in the same way, it seems that Huawei with its innovation has support all over the world on the impact of innovation and the funny part is that IBM and Microsoft used to be actually innovative, they merely forgot the sweetness of innovation victory, which is sad really. I gave mention to the Wall Street part in the Status Quo, yet they are not the only ones in that game and those who embraced that game held technology and innovation back to a much larger degree than you realise and that loss of momentum is a much larger issue in this trade war than anyone has considered.

 

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August 23, 2019 · 13:26

Another Brick in the growing Wall

The wall of profit is going nicely in France, even as I would like to take another gander on how the western media is all about ignoring the Houthi attacks with drones on Saudi Arabia, it seems that we will get more on that soon enough. As I see it, we have a situation where at present 5 attacks have been ignored by the western media, like they are all about calling Saudi Arabia the big nasty, even though there is no factual evidence, merely biased opinion on several fronts. Today is not about that. Today is about France (the land of Wine, Cheese and Citroen). This place is pushing a few boundaries and even as we think that things are still open to discussion, it seems that the mighty bosses of banks (one particularly) have made their choice, I mentioned it a little over a week ago, yet all were easily persuaded to ignore it. Now that we are given: ‘French parliament passes “Huawei Law” to govern 5G security‘ (at http://telecoms.com/498728/french-parliament-passes-Huawei-law-to-govern-5g-security/), we see an optionally much larger change. This might be the first step in changing the landscape on a much larger scale and as far as I can tell it is just the beginning. There is an important notice to all this and it opposes the UK point of view to almost 180 degrees. In the UK, Alex Younger (big boss of MI-6), aka El Capitano de observadores furtivos is off the mind that important infrastructure should never be in foreign hands. This is a policy issue and I do not oppose this choice. It is the short minded and stupid American view of being shouting anti-Huawei accusations without proof that I object to. Now we see on the other side (France) where Mathieu Duchatel gives us “the French government is creating a regulatory environment that helps reduce its vulnerability to foreign intelligence collection“, which is another policy approach. I tend to like this more than the one Alex Younger gives, but both are valid points. Yet the one Duchatel gives us leaves the players with more options.

To see this, we need to go back to 1993, when Sybase and Microsoft dissolve the partnership they had and Microsoft receives a copy of the SQL Server code base, this was the best approach and after this we see that Microsoft sets their own designers to make evolve their SQL servers, a choice that ends up making them a direct competitor of the code Larry Ellison pushed for (the solution we know as Oracle), and whilst he went sailing across the oceans, MS SQL Server got the be lean and mean. Even as we see flaws, we see that Microsoft created a much larger market than we thought possible. It is that path Europe and America needed for 5G. So as the Yanks decided to screw themselves 6 ways from Sunday, Europe has a much better approach and now we see the path where France has opened up a dialogue to enable that solution down the track. It is a solution that would assist Huawei as well, as we see a solution that uses the Huawei 5G path as a benchmark, France et al could deploy a non-Chinese 5G solution that is set to the Chinese standards and that would suit China (read: Huawei) in a few ways. It all goes from bad to worse for America. What everyone seems to forget is that Azure in China is Shanghai Blue Cloud Technology Co., Ltd., a wholly (or is that holy) owned subsidiary of Beijing 21Vianet Broadband Data Center Co., Ltd. and it now implies that the accelerated evolution of 5G via Huawei has the stage where the best upgrades to implementation and facilitation to 5G will come from 21Vianet and not from Microsoft. Just as Sybase gave the keys to Microsoft in the 90’s, we now see the opposite where the business advantage will be with the Blue Cloud bosses, together with Huawei they now have a much larger advantage than anyone realises. Even as there is a shift in china through the players like BitTitan, I believe that Huawei is still preparing for a much larger innovation giving 21Vianet when that kicks off an overnight advantage that Microsoft cannot equal, not for a much longer time, leaving Microsoft losing momentum to a much larger.

If you want proof, then I have to admit that I cannot give it, the market seems to facilitate to a larger shift and it is not some hidden gem that no one else found. I believe that the Sybase example is what we face today, as Mathieu Duchatel is setting the new policy, we see policy that is accepted over most of the EU, so as Germany, Spain and Italy accept this push, most of the EU nations will follow, they are willing to drop America like a bad habit ion all this. The US overplayed its hand and now they will face the consequences of choice. In this the UK must soon make up its own mind. The path Alex Younger opted for was not wrong, but it is a larger choice that could impede economic growth to a much longer degree for a much longer time, two elements the UK does not really have at present.

The SCMP article (at https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3020354/while-weighing-5g-security-risks-france-predicts-it-can-manage) we see another solution for France and somehow I believe Credit Agricole had been preparing for this step a little longer than most others. France needs to be on top of this as 2024 Paris is coming near soon enough, implying that a multi-billion euro scheme for 5G will be announced before years end to get anywhere near ready and it seems that the Credit Agricole dividend is about to push upwards to a much larger degree. And when we get to the end of the article where we see: “5G infrastructure poses more complex problems. The distinction between core and edge is no longer as relevant, as many software operations will operate in the cloud“, we get to be introduced to the benefit and advantage that Beijing 21Vianet Broadband Data Center Co. now gets to have; Microsoft forgot that most cannot get to China (for simple linguistic considerations) that limitation does not exist in the other direction. And now as the cogs connect we see how the market takes a shift. Remember when I made the joke (and connection) to the cloud; it is merely someone else’s computer. Everyone so needy to muddy the water claiming it is so much more complex. OK, to the smallest degree it is.

To see my point of view consider the NASA Mainframe that was there for the moon landing (and perhaps a little more), now consider my old Mobile, this 2011 mobile needs 5% of available processing power to do what that entire NASA room did. The mobile that followed 4 years later was 400% more powerful with 1600% more storage and the one that followed was close to 300% more powerful than the previous one with an additional 1600% more storage, the market shifted THAT fast.

So when we see a data center now, and consider that a dozen racks with terabyte storage can be replaced by ONE drive, yes there is an Exabyte drive now, one drive with well over 1,000,000 terabytes. We are nowhere near replacing the entire data center, yet in 10 years, that center could be replaced by one large tower in that time, it might look a little different (I always loved the Cray systems, it comes with a place to sit and heating, but that so called ‘cloud’ will be in one clear specific location (just as it is now) and that is the issue;

it is the location of someone else’s computer that is the issue, soon it will no longer be in America, China is now in a position to offer the same, optionally cheaper and when the America BS starts with ‘It needs some vague quality seal of approval‘ (a SAS marketing trick we saw 20 years ago).

It will be at that point that the entire mess becomes ugly real fast and we are already pushing in that direction. The problem is not China, or America. It will be the policy considerations on where data is allowed to be; a lot of cloud issues on data locations are still open to discussion. The problem is not the hardware, it will be the place with the most logical policy in place, that will be the main player for the next stage and it seems that France has been keeping busy on becoming that European location. I reckon that China does not care, as long as they get the business and that is when we see the American failure on getting the business. They planned on greed when pragmatism was the only solution to push the market forward. Now as most nations start waking up on the loss of pragmatism, we see the consideration, to be a player or a tool and some are realising that they banked on the wrong horse and the American horse is about to become a ‘horse no show!‘

Whether it was merely some bank, some policy, or a larger linked consideration, this time the French have played a good long term game and they have every chance to reap the benefits of that game. We have yet to see how it all plays out and Paris 2024 will be the big test, but as the issue stands, the French are pushing forward, it is there that I found some references to Credit Agricole, DGSE, and a very large billion dollar option. Even as 21Vianet and its subsidiaries are not mentions, neither is Azure in any way, it all falls to the one mention of ‘Microsoft Corporation‘. This might all be true, but I still seek confirmation, on a stage this large 21Vianet could not have been unmentioned, the same for the entire Azure part. the line “the proliferation of real-time data from sources such as mobile devices, web, social media, sensors, log files, and transactional applications, Big Data has found a host of vertical market applications, ranging from fraud detection to scientific R&D“, makes its absence of certain players either short sighted or the elements of that article were unreliable. I believe it to be a little of both.

I wonder how the game unfolds; I reckon we will know a lot more by the end of the year.

 

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August 19, 2019 · 11:44

Marketing Deceptive Concepts

We are all in the lane of what is coming; the problem is that what is coming is set on the E40, the longest European highway going from Calais all the way to Kazakhstan (Ridder). So as we depart from Ridder, trying to get to Calais on this AI highway, we need to consider that at present we only got past the first 100 kilometres of a trip that will be 8,000 kilometres long and we are not driving a Aston Martin, not even a Lada, we are traversing this in a 1908 Model T, giving a much clearer indication that this trip will take years (read: a decade at the very least) at best. To be quite honest, as technology goes, we are nowhere near AI, true AI. It will take the largest players (Google & IBM) decades to get to the real AI part, and only when computers become more technically savvy and a lot faster. As such I do not see the reason for people and companies like RACGP to give us: ‘AI is coming to healthcare – and it’s here to help‘, with the quote: “real promise – of artificial intelligence in healthcare“, yet we remain fair. Dr Martin Seneviratne stays faithful when he gives us: “we’re far away from that, to be honest” and he is correct. Yet the stage is there where we see: “In this article we are listing top 15 artificial intelligence apps for android and iOS users“, as well as “an Indian start-up claiming to have built an artificial intelligence-assisted app development platform, is not in fact using AI“. It is all BS (read: Hogwash), there is no such thing as AI, it is theoretical, conceptual at best, the real deal is at least a decade away. It reminds me of some Sales Dumbo I had to deal with on how cloud computing was it bees knees. When I mentioned that there is no thing like a cloud, it is merely someone else’s computer, I was the one who did not comprehend it (in the end I was right, and he (read: it) was not). Yes, I am aware of the ZDNet article (at https://www.zdnet.com/article/stop-saying-the-cloud-is-just-someone-elses-computer-because-its-not/). We get it, it is about scalability and the scale of the cloud is huge, but still, it is a server center that is owned by someone else, and the location of that server is equally important in the data laws we see today. Because the moment China launches its own commercial cloud system, the Americans will ‘suddenly’ come with issues like cloud locations and how the Chinese government can look into every cloud account. I was not belittling anything, merely making sure that we keep focus on terms used (and awareness is often larger than anyone considers). It is the monitoring, hacked data and more important lost data. The cloud comes with all kinds of marketing hypes, but informing on the scope and warning of the dangers that poor passwords bring is often not seen.

So when we get to the Verge where we see: “The company was sued earlier this year by its chief business officer, Robert Holdheim, who claims the company is exaggerating its AI abilities to get the funding it needed to actually work on the technology. According to Holdheim, Duggal “was telling investors that Engineer.ai was 80% done with developing a product that, in truth, he had barely even begun to develop“, we see the larger deception and we also see a lack of actions by governments to a much larger degree, apparently white collar deception is OK in their books.

So when we get back to the RACG (at https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/professional/ai-is-coming-to-healthcare-and-it-s-here-to-help) where we see: “‘Documentation is a constant issue, and so is having a computer separating you and the patient,’ Dr Seneviratne said. ‘The dream of this AI revolution is that it helps with the parts of medicine doctors and patients don’t like, creates a safety net for ensuring quality across the board, and gives clinicians more time to be with their patients.’“, my mind goes back 47 months, 12 days and 14.1 hours (roughly) when I designed the concept of what could be the Google Tome (I concluded that the iTome could never become a reality in an technological iterative pushed corporation), a device that would take case of part of it and help the UK NHS to get a handle on their paper mess and red tape. The device would also be a great solution for places like Scandinavia where the rural population is all over the place. There was one tiny setback, it required 5G, it was the only way to get it to work to the degree it did and 5G was nowhere near ready to the stage that places like the NHS, GP’s and clinics could be upgraded. We are still 1-2 years away, but the Google Tome would be a game changer as it worked on a very different IP. Apple would take a decently large hit as I remembered some original parts from before the PowerMac and Apple actually had the inside track, with today’s iPad they could have ruled, but in the last two years they became a mere iterative needy toddler, taking them out of the game. both IBM and Huawei are not ready for this leap giving Google an actual first position with no chance of any number two catching up for close to half a decade. My solution was not AI based, it was based on the realistic foundation of NHS administrations and to see where the obstructions were. Instead of making some political never working one system (UK Parliament spend £11.2 billion learning that it did not work), my path was to upgrade all the elements and give a new definition to speed, not the one that is founded, for downloading, but a new on access protocol that emphasises on security and data safety. In fact, the results would in theory get to the right physician 30%-60% faster. Anyone who waited for results in an NHS location can tell you what a game changer that is.

And none of this touches the 5G IP I created three years later.

But that is not what it is about, it is about the marketing ploys we are confronted with and for the most, the media greedily uses that hyped term to get traction with people, clicks and awareness, the information is less and less a concern to the larger group of media (or so it seems). The one that I got confronted with yesterday is the one that set it off. A friend (Tom Breur) wrote an excellent piece regarding Data Democracy (at https://tombreur.wordpress.com/2019/08/13/what-does-data-democracy-stand-for/). Yet in data, as I personally see it, there is no real democracy, it can be dictatorial, it can be feudal, it can even be tyrannical, but it is never democratic, you do not get a vote in that hierarchy, that is the way with data and it is the researcher who can redefine you through giving you a weight of 1 (or lower) or disregard you as inconsequential as grouping you with other user missing points of non interest. The respondent never had a voice in the matter negating the entire democracy part.

This setting was most likely started by media with their claims of “Big data’s threat to democracy becoming global problem“, and there the delusion started. Big data is never about democracy and democracy is not about data, it is about applied wisdom, they do not correlate and are even less likely one and the same. It becomes even more entertaining when we (at https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/labour-will-ban-big-money-buying-democracy) see: “Labour will ban big money from ‘buying up democracy’“, it is entertaining and hilarious as this has been happening well over a century, long before there was a silicon based economy (not talking about boobies here). When we get: “Last November Mr Johnson was flown to New York and was paid £94,507.85 for a two-hour speech at the multibillion-dollar hedge fund company Golden Tree Asset Management“, we can argue that he was merely doing a job he was allowed to do, and that is not impeding democracy, is it? And when we see: “We are funded by workers through their trade unions and small donations, averaging just £22 in the last general election“, how much support did you give the people who voted for UK Labour without a donation? And when we see the Washington Post give us: “Data shows that an overwhelming majority of Africans believe that democracy remains the best form of government“, I might not disagree with that, yet the issue is not agreeing and disagreeing, it is the deceptive model of awareness creation that big business allows for when they buy the identities on Facebook by millions and target them with political advertisement. Even as Senators like Ron Wyden are calling to ban that, he knows he is fighting a lost war. Also, as a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he is watching proven CIA tactics being deployed via Facebook and he knows how efficient those can be, it is a game only the rich can play. He even hides behind “I’d rather have them do it voluntarily than requiring a law“, because there is no way that they can pass that law in time and even then there will be a dozen loopholes to circumvent the law passed via the first amendment.

It is all due to the marketing we allowed from the very beginning. there was no stop to the media, the hold on awareness versus deceptive is sketchy at best and now that there is a whole slew of iterations coming forward we see more and more deceptive conduct, yet nothing is done, there are attempts, but they are feeble at best. That evidence is seen when we consider Engineer.ai and its founder & CEO, Sachin Dev Duggal. We see the news in the Wall Street Journal as well as the Verge, yet less than 3 days ago that person won the Serial Entrepreneur award, so it seems that the players are all OK with deceptive conduct. Yet I remain optimistic, I merely have to wait to see this blow up in the faces of those sales driven CEO’s and VP’s to see that their failure gave them months of reprieve and every documented event merely sets the stage for my IP in a much more powerful way.

We need to consider that when it comes to creating awareness, the media is still accountable to shareholders, stake holders and advertisers, as such there are a lot of issues in the IT field, personally in light of recent events the do’s and don’ts of Sachin Dev Duggal take the cake. Don’t take my word for it, merely look at the Wall Street Journal (at https://www.wsj.com/articles/ai-startup-boom-raises-questions-of-exaggerated-tech-savvy-11565775004) and consider how the award two days later was still handed to Sachin Dev Duggal. Even as the man ‘hides’ behind ‘human-assisted AI‘, and when we look at the quote: “it uses artificial-intelligence technology to largely automate the development of mobile apps, but several current and former employees say the company exaggerates its AI capabilities to attract customers and investors“, we need to ask a whole range of questions, none of those are found anywhere. I am not raining on the man’s parade, but clearly no one else is either. I wonder how many righteous participators at that entrepreneurial award feel left out in the cold, a fair question if I say so.

I merely look at the marketing part of it all, when I look into the direct impact, that some marketing hypes are giving us, I tend to wonder if the need was really awareness, or confusion that was behind the creation of the hype. It is sad but that is more and more often the need to wonder when any form of media gets involved.

It is a sad evolution in the age of information as it has been for some time now.

 

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August 16, 2019 · 12:13

The slammer got slammed

There is nothing so rewarding as the moment you realise that you get to slam the door on those slamming the door on you. It is an innate feeling that is in the core of all of us. It is more powerful than getting the drop on your boss or CEO with an overwhelming amount of narcissism and the overbearing feeling towards the need of being some dominant / dominatrix figure (at that point they become merely a figurine).

I made several references over the course of 2018 that this was coming, the stronger one in May 2018 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/05/05/milestones/) where I made the reference: “the EU was never about everyone agreeing on everything and the economic setting that requires that to happen at present is also making the dangers of waves that sinks the barge called EU. Now, that seems like an exaggeration, but when you realise that the German anchor is the only one giving stability, you can see the dangers the EU faces and more important, the dangers of no reserves and an utter lack to keep proper budgets in place, a setting now in more danger for the reasons that I gave supported by the economic views of many others. I believe some are downplaying the impact, yet when we realise that EVERY European Union government is downplaying the economic impact (as every nation always wants to look as good as possible, which is a PowerPoint setting of the human ago) we get a much more dangerous setting“. The article ‘Milestones‘ has more, it also has references to the AfD (Alternative for Germany), and even as we see in the Financial Times (at https://www.ft.com/content/d695fff8-b838-11e9-96bd-8e884d3ea203) “It is a happy hunting-ground for the AfD: if polls are accurate, it could emerge as the most popular party in regional elections on September 1, even beating the left-of-centre Social Democrats which have governed this corner of East Germany since reunification in 1990. Two other eastern regions, Saxony and Thuringia, are also choosing new parliaments this autumn and, as in Brandenburg, the AfD is set to make big gains. That is a major problem for the eastern political elite“, I believe that this powerful eastern political elite is part of causing the headline ‘Germany: AfD surge threatened by party disunity‘, they are that scared at present. The gains cannot be stopped not to the degree some elitists are vouching for; the best that they can hope for is derailing them from becoming the majority, which is actually a political war that is allowed. The question becomes will it work?

We are 2-3 weeks away from finding out.

CNN gave us less than 2 days ago: ‘5 of the world’s biggest economies are at risk of recession‘ (at https://edition.cnn.com/2019/08/14/economy/recession-risk-economies/index.html), it is a huge part because the impact matters. Under Mario Draghi and his bond buying program, there are no reserves left, so the impact towards recession is about to get real. The shift in quality of life makes the consumer spending tactic an instant non option.

Yet, it all comes down to the Washington Post who (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/08/14/stocks-tank-another-recession-warning-surfaces) gives us: ‘Stocks losses deepen as a key recession warning surfaces‘. It is here that we get: “after a reliable predictor of looming recessions flashed for the first time since the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 800 points, or about 3 percent, and has lost close to 7 percent over the past three weeks. Two of the world’s largest economies, Germany and the United Kingdom, appear to be contracting even as the latter forges ahead with plans to leave the European Union. Growth also has slowed in China, which is in a bitter trade feud with the United States. Meanwhile, Argentina’s stock market fell nearly 50 percent earlier this week after its incumbent president was defeated by a left-wing opponent“. First of all, ‘reliable predictor‘ is not the term I would use, the dangers were clear for well over a year, it was the wrong stage of a trade war, with the Huawei 5G setting that pushed the inevitable date forward by a lot. The entire Huawei stage was a stage of stupidity, and a more dangerous post-recession part than anyone was willing to consider. We might find clarity in the footnote: “But with so many losing confidence in the near-term prospects of the economy and rushing to buy longer-term bonds, the U.S. government now is paying more to attract buyers to its 2-year bond than its 10-year note“, is looking in the wrong direction. It is merely a small symptom at present and direct consequence on risk and not the one that bites. The US is losing its footing on the global mobile market faster and faster. And even as we accept the ‘marketing’ that Huawei gives via Cnet towards 6G, the direct truth is outstanding for a longer time. It links to my own IP that is currently available to Huawei and I want my share of that market, I believe that my part after the fact will be enough to truly make me independent on several fronts. One party found my claim a $ billion market through the investment on $25m post taxation too good to be true, but it is the second wave that takes care of my needs and you gotta give a little to get a little. It is was the ‘denied’ parts of Credit Agricole and the Paris games of 2024 that gave me the final straw I needed to see that I was right all along. In all this verification that I was correct was always the biggest issue for me to deal with, and the recession is making those big business daddies of greed close to desperate, giving me a small push forward. Those people are not willing to walk away from a one billion market at the investment of 2.5%, no bank has ever offered those margins and with the Credit Agricole parts exposed to the smallest extent, I know it will work. It is there that I saw that the IP I designed was never considered by either Google or Huawei, all set to iterative paths to innovation, and the economy shows that nearly all of the other players were looking at the next quarter, whilst the quarter+3 was the game changer. The Olympics gave the option to look at inverted innovation and make it a new innovation, Paris was not the first, but certainly the clearest indicator and whilst we see through Channel News “Huawei Technologies has joined 564 other entities in the Paris Call“, the message is not that there are 565 players, it is that they are all looking in a similar direction whilst the none excavated the gold mine that was right behind them, a first lesson that the classics can inspire towards a new direction. Now that I see their direction I found two other fields that had not been considered to the degree it needed. Saudi Arabia is giving us Neom City, but there is a lack in one direction and now that this can be exploited we see even more options. You only had to be willing to get your hands dirty in the most literal of ways. And all this is pushed even more through the impact of the European economy. A French invention gets a new life after almost 2 centuries and we can see that there is more to be found.

Sergey Brin on Sat. morning

It is what else Harmony OS can do that will push the benefits away from the US and it will hurt Google to the smallest degree (almost inevitable), Google is just too big, but now that the equation changes, it is Google who will be chasing Huawei, so well done Trump dude, you merely made everything worse for America and I will sell to the quickest bidder and the 2.5% approach gives me the edge; the two known entities Ren Zhengfei and Papa Smurf Sergey Brin can make the investment from the small change they have in their pockets and the bait would be just too appealing for them.

Al this was confirmed and accentuated through the US Senate with: “In February, the US Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing titled “Winning the Race to 5G and the Era of Technology Innovation in the United States”, to discuss what policies are required to accelerate the deployment of 5G to keep America “competitive on the international stage”” and whilst we accept the American point of view, they forgot about two elements in the 5G field and the upper echelons of decision makers showed at that point that they were working in a dimmed room without lights, giving additional evidence that they never saw the writing on the wall and now I get to make a new voice and whilst I only am willing to trust Google or Huawei in all this, there can only be one winner and the others are merely a chaser at best, it is the price of iteration over innovation. Even as Microsoft and IBM are in denial of what they are about to lose, they do know and accept their choice. Microsoft is banking on Azure and there the hindrance of Harmony will cause a void, they were ready for Android, yet HarmonyOS is another matter and China is seeing that as another opportunity. It is there where we see the talks of Huawei with the Shanghai Blue Cloud Technology taking an additional turn, and how many players in the Paris games are banking on Azure? How many lose out when they are not ready for the 5G version 2 under HarmonyOS, it will work with Android and Azure, but suddenly we will see some accidental 10% gap (latency) and that is how the game was played and all this before my elements come into play, and they will!

The big business slammers all relying on PowerPoint presentation they are given the elements and when we see the 2023 acceleration and people cannot answer the differences because they never considered looking behind them as well as looking at the corners of their eyes, the blind corners they ignored; now they no longer have one blind spot, they suddenly have three and we get all kinds of concept promises in presentation form, all whilst the data was never that unclear from the very beginning. An issue they claimed that it was being looked at.

So here I am, having to take their shit with the option to sit at the sidelines watching them fight over options because they anticipated without comprehension, sometimes the universe gets to be nice and smile at those having to take their shit. A direct zero day exploit of the applied intent of narcissism on how good a presentation looks, whilst their data never clearly supported it.

My case of exceeding expectations towards customer satisfaction trumped some short sighted ‘Ca$h is king‘ setting, because it works at the grocer, but that part has no bearing when their minimum needs exceed he budget of 80%, it was a simple equation from the very beginning. So when we are now considering the new ‘truth’ where the Washington Post gives us less than an hour ago: ‘Weak global growth likely to mean US slowdown, not recession‘, we merely see wishful thinking in the quote “Yet most analysts expect the U.S. economy to power through the rough patch, at least in the coming months, on the strength of solid consumer spending and a resilient job market. The U.S. stock market plummeted earlier this week when the bond market, spooked by the global turmoil, sent a possible early warning sign of a recession ahead: The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note slipped briefly below 2-year Treasury yields“, the article (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/weak-global-growth-likely-to-mean-us-slowdown-not-recession/2019/08/15/1cb8d81a-bfba-11e9-a8b0-7ed8a0d5dc5d_story.html),all whilst we see the clarity of next quarter believes linked to the next Thanksgiving and Christmas, all whilst it is Q2 2020 that makes the tequila slammer which gives the drinker the sledgehammer headache stated it was one that they never saw coming. The entire trade war is taking a new turn and when the people realise on all that the US is missing out on and therefor anyone taking that path will also learn that there is a long term price to pay and it is the markets that Google and Huawei are now staging for that brings the next stage. China has too much to gain, whilst Google will try to retain losses that they will optionally get (reduced growth is clearly a loss). Even as the impact for Google is small, losing one percent is still big news and there one percent adds to a billion plus, whilst their risk to hedge will cost them a mere 1.8% of the optional loss, it is a non-issue.

Guarantee?

There is none, but the option of a new 2% market is worth so much more than that, and it is not open to the iterative industries, innovators only, because it will be about the momentum and there is too much to gain. Consider what the 565 are looking at, whilst I focused on the group that represents up to 445,000,000 SME companies in a new 5G setting. The Olympics are merely the icing on the cake. 2020 Tokyo opens the doors more clearly but the impact is abundantly seen in Qatar 20222 and Paris 2024. And at present I see that they never looked in the places where they could be, merely where they want to be.

In the end it is one of Warren Buffett’s quotes that got me there: “the great moves are usually greeted by yawns“, thanks Warren; you were absolutely right on that part!

 

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August 7, 2019 · 12:31

The drowning swimmer

We all have the moments when we make an error, an error that requires us to re adjust views. The problem is that some people tend to be overconfident when they make that critical error. Sometimes it comes with ‘Watch this’, all whilst the public watches the person dive to death. At times it is less visible, in Australia 249 people drowned during the 2017-2018 season. The Guardian gave us in the beginning of the year: ‘Drownings in Australia up 51% on last summer after five men die on New Year’s Day‘, all because these people overestimated their abilities regarding knowledge on how the ocean reacts and overestimated their fitness and there we see that nature has no regard for stupidity, it merely takes lives, unyielding and not caring.

Sports

The earlier stage is at present important, mainly because we are about to face it in different ways as well. The Japan Times (at https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2019/08/06/commentary/japan-commentary/2020-tokyo-olympic-games-cant-rescue-japan) gives us in an opinion piece: ‘2020 Tokyo Olympic Games can’t rescue Japan‘, the writer gives us a view where the impact against the 1964 Tokyo Olympics are set. The writer is correct, the entire commerce engine, the murder truck called Olympic exposure benefit is a much larger issue and Japan cannot rely on the Olympics to give them the economic needs that they have. We accept that there will be an influx for Japan. There will be people who will attend in person that year, because it was always on their bucket list. I would be in that group if I could afford it, but that is not a realistic option for the bulk of all of us, the quality of life has regressed to the lower end of the scale for too long and for many the trip is not an option. In addition with 5G we will be able to see more, enjoy more than ever before and even if that impression is not for all, it will be for the larger group who cannot afford to make the trip. So as the writer (Fumika Mizuno) gives us: “True transformation requires confrontation with the sticky problems holding back Japan’s society, like gender inequality, lack of diversity and rigid notions of ethnic identity. No sports event can grapple with such a task“, we see partial the correctness of it all, yet we also need to consider that this is happening in a stage where digital visibility will be in the midst of an overhaul, so the Tokyo Olympics is happening just when the digital providers are shouting and screaming towards the consumer acceptance of a changed digital footprint. It also intersects with the offered “With plans for AI-powered surveillance robots and real-time 8K broadcasts delivered over 5G networks, the games are set to be a celebration of Japanese prowess in sectors the country is desperate to dominate“, in a stage where AI is nowhere near ready to the degree it needs to be by 2022, two years early whilst the entire 8K matter will be unaffordable to well over 70%, so how will that help matters? So when we see: “Addressing the labor shortage and the aging crisis in a meaningful way requires profound cultural and political shifts. Blind optimism in the power of technology even reduces the urgency of social change“, we see a stage where labour shortage is optionally replaced by technological scripted events where the high tech enablers like news casts, streaming players and awareness seekers are jumping the digital shark to capture what is needed to enable the visibility of the people in the below 70% who are missing out and none of that will be captured by Japanese firms and/or Japanese enablers, it will be up to the FAANG group to maximise that capture taking the bulk away from Japanese economy players. So not only will they miss out on the sporting parts, the stage is then set to a larger community, one that never existed in 1968 giving Japan a much larger concern and that is where the expectation of Tokyo 2020 fall short for Japan to a much larger degree. Optionally the players like Samsung and Huawei (South Korea and China) who truly will enjoy the boost that Japan (NTT Docomo) was hoping for. That part is shown in several sources when we are introduced to: “Japanese mobile operators are preparing for commercial 5G launches between March and June 2020“, Japan is nowhere near ready and that is largely because Japan started almost a year to late in all this and they are nowhere near what Huawei can offer. In that stage there is every chance that players like NTT Docomo will face almost public humiliation when they have to explain congestion and latency on a network that needed proper testing an adjustment no later than November 2019 to make it ready for the larger consumer groups, in this stage Japan could lose revenue four times over, on the loss of preparedness, on the loss of deployment, on the loss of consumer traction and on the loss of network reliability and that is not merely the workforce, it is the loss of not having a 125% workforce readiness at the time that the initial presentations of the 2020 locations and press readiness is offered. There is no way that this will be ready at present and such we see a dampened visibility as well as larger digital losses, digital losses not because it is not there, but because it will be in the hands of non-Japanese corporations. In this there is one benefit, Japan gets to show the US what happens when you enter the field not being prepared for what comes, the US will surely panic at that point (to some degree), all this could have been prevented by driving innovation over iteration and it will be shown to a global community in full view and full exploitation by others.

For centuries we have seen the slogan: “Si vis pacem, para bellum“, If you want peace, prepare for war, a known rule ignored by the technology firms who relied on iteration for too long, now we see that this is impacting a larger group. The entire global economy is set to a war theater (and has been for some time), we see it almost everywhere and now we see that a nation regarded as a front-runner in applied innovation for the longest of time is not ready. All this directly related to ‘Fortuna Eruditis Favet‘, fortune favours the prepared mind and we are shown that Japan is far from ready, all whilst their own stage was set 3 years ago. They all waited for things to fall in their laps and this was shown a few months ago in the US (thanks to Forbes magazine) with “In recent weeks several major developments affecting the roll out of 5G systems in the United States highlight the promise and the difficulties for near-term deployment of this transformative technology“, as well as “A major issue in the next few years will be the capital costs of installing the needed 5G infrastructure and software upgrades in the U.S. Effective deployment will require hundreds of thousands of new cell sites, new or upgraded connective nodes and central switches, new software and redesigned mobile devices“, the operative part being ‘in the next few years‘ (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasduesterberg/2019/04/30/problems-and-prospects-for-5g-deployment-in-the-united-states) and that is just one player, Japan is seemingly in a less positive place and that is also where Huawei and Google could make additional wins if they merely look outside the box and realise that they are not in a box, but in an terrarium. It makes for all the difference and their time to act is running short. For Japan the issue is larger and more dangerous. Japan has a population of 126 million, with only 10 million in Tokyo, so even if they adjust to get Tokyo covered, they will give 7% and set a stage where 78%-93% gets to miss out on the 5G fun, how would that sell to an economic event that should have been a boost? It is there where we see just how correct Fumika Mizuno is, Japan is facing a larger issue and it is about to cost them more than they realise.

It is at this point where we see the one part that is at present not very likely to happen: “Abe will bask in praise and the people of Japan will revel in politically correct bouts of national pride. But Japanese society will be no less rigid than it was before“, I believe that within the first week of the 2020 Olympics, there will be enough 5G issues for Shinzō Abe, Prime Minister of Japan to take a backseat and make the larger people of NTT Docomo and alike to take the stage and explain the failures to the people of Japan. It is my personal beliefs that at present people like Kazuhiro Yoshizawa (CEO NTT Docomo) are trying to safe or set the stage to make a quick exit by the end of this year to avoid the consequence of having to publicly face not being a prepared mind.

For the US Tokyo 2020 is more likely than not to be a rude awakening of public technological failure. LA (Olympics 2028) will have enough time to adjust to it all and it gives a much larger rise to technological spending for the US, and it is Beijing 2022 that gives the larger rise for the US and at present China is already prepared for that, they have Huawei in their corner, yet how it all plays out is depending on a few elements, so there is momentum in several direction, yet with the underlying lack, Tokyo has a much larger issue to face and at present there is enough indication that they will not be ready in time, they overestimated what they were able to achieve and how fast their stamina could adjust to what needed to be ready, just like all those swimmers that drowned in the Pacific river, which in the end was an ocean to endure, not a river to cross.

 

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August 7, 2019 · 10:55

Brotherhood of Heineken

As we stepwise push forward towards 5G, we think that it all stays the same, it will not. A few parts will change forever. Google has an enormous advantage, yet they too are now pushing for different changes, changes that they had not seen coming a mere year ago. In this case there is no direct link to my IP, so I am happy to give you all the inns and outs of that part (pun intended).

To start this we need to consider a few sides, all with their own premise. The first is the focal point:

4G: Wherever I am
5G: Whenever I want it

That first premise is a large one, it is not a simple localisation part, it is all about getting access at a moment’s notice, yet what we need access to changes with the push we face. The initial part is the creation and the impact of awareness. As we re-distinguish ‘awareness’ the metrics on awareness will also change and for the first year (at the very least) market research companies on a global stage will be chasing the facts. They have become so reliant on dash boarding, Tableau, Q-view and Q Research Software will all have to re-engineer aspects of their software as they fall short. Even the larger players like SAS and IBM Statistics will require an overhaul in this market space. They have been ‘hiding’ behind the respondent, responses and their metrics for too long, the entire matter when the respondent becomes the passive part in awareness is new to them, and that is all it is, it will be new to them and the constructs that are behind the active and passive interactions will change the metrics, the view and the way we register things.

Google has the advantage, yet the stage for them will take a few turns too. Their initial revenue stream will change. Consider the amount of data we are passing now, that amount also links to the amount of ads we see. Now consider that everything in 5G is 10 times faster, yet 10 times more ads is not an option, so they now face revenue from 10% of the ads compared to what we see now. In addition to that, as we adjust our focus on the amounts we face implies that more advertisement space is optionally lost to the larger players like Google and this too impacts the stats for all involved. Google will adjust and change, in what way, I cannot tell yet, but the opposition is starting to become clear a in this example we see Heineken, a global established brand who now has the option to take the lead in 5G awareness.

Introducing

Ladies and gentleman, I am hereby introducing to you the Brotherhood of Heineken, in this fraternity / maternity, we invite all the lords and ladies of their household to become awareness creators towards their brand. In the Netherlands thousands are linked through a company like Havenstad and similar operations, this stretches through Europe and all over the place going global. These lords and ladies can earn points in the simplest thing, by setting a stage for Heineken to spread the message, we see that the initial power is with the consumer to support their brand. Awareness and clicks are converted to points and that leads to exclusive offers and rewards. Consider the unique stuff that Heineken has given to its professional public now for all to get, to buy and to earn. Bags, coolers, clothing, accessories. For decades we saw the materials created and most of us were envious of anyone who had that part others did not, now we could all earn it and because Heineken (Coca Cola too) have created such an arsenal, these players could take the lead in pushing their own awareness to new levels.

Now it is easy to say that Google is already doing this and that is partially true, but that equation will change under 5G and these really large brands could pay a fortune to Google or take the lead and create their own powerhouse and in this day and age that powerhouse will become more and more an essential need. Anyone not looking and preparing to this will hand over opinion and choice to Google and watch how that goes, yet consider that some sources gave us a quarter ago: “Google will remain the largest digital ad seller in the world in 2019, accounting for 31.1% of worldwide ad spending, or $103.73 billion“, now consider that they need to grow 20% quarter on quarter and that in two years that metric has changed and as such the ads could cost up to 30% more, now do the math on how YOU will survive in that environment.

Samsung, Proctor & Gamble, Coca Cola, Nike, Heineken, Sony, Microsoft will all face that premise and that is how it all changes. As we see that the metrics will have reduced reliability, the market research players will need time to adjust and in that lull a player like Heineken can create its own future and set its digital future in another direction to exceed their required expectations. This step seems short now, but as the stage alters it becomes an essential stage. Google may remain in denial and oppose that this will never happen, but the data and metrics are already suggesting this path and that is where we are now; the option to be first or pay the invoice, what would you do?

I believe that the visibility starts to get a little focal just before 2020 games, and it is in full view before the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, and in full swing by the time the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar starts. These two are close together and the people will pay through the nose for that visibility, especially the European parties in all this. I expect a more evolved 5G advertising stage via apps as well, seeing ads to unlock premium view and data is likely to happen, all this is coming to us and our view of advertisement will alter to a larger extent. We will be told that this will never happen, it is not how they work, yet they are deceiving and lying to us. Consider that change in the last 25 years alone, in 1994 advertisement through printed medium and TV was at an all-time high, they all claimed it remained this way, within 5 years that stage was already changing with online ads to some extent and the slowing of printed medium, in addition the international channels would push into national advertisement. A mere 5 years after that (in 2004) it started to take off in earnest and would increase revenue to over 100% in the 4 years that followed. Between 2005 and 2017 that would push from $6 billion to 26 billion, do you really think that their words holds true? To keep that growth and their need for greed the metrics and approach has to change, there is 0% chance that these players will accept a growth of data based impact of a mere 10% of what is was in 4G, there is too much riding on this.

For the largest players there is an alternative and it will not take long for them to set the stage to this and start finding their own solution to keep awareness as high as possible. If you have to pay through the nose to keep awareness or create the environment to reward achieved awareness, what path would you choose?

Let’s not forget players like Heineken did not get to the top by merely offering a really good product, they offered a lot more, a view, an awareness that all embraced; Sony learned that lesson the hard way by losing with a superior product against the inferior competition (Betamax versus VHS). 5G will set a similar yet new battle ground and for the most the media is seemingly steering clear for now.

That is with the nice exception of Marketing Interactive, who gives us (at https://www.marketing-interactive.com/going-beyond-the-big-idea-creative-leads-on-5gs-impact-on-advertising/) “There is no denying that the rollout of 5G will change storytelling and the consumer journey“, it is a true and utterly correct view. They also give us: “creatives need to evolve from old habits and stop hiding behind “the big idea”. “We, as creatives, need to evolve from old habits, stop hiding behind “The Big Idea” and evolve our creative process and creative structures to be based on this new digital reality, to create content based on this new innovative context“, this is the view from Joao Flores, head of creative, dentsu X Singapore and he is right. We also get “For agencies, the opportunity calls for unorthodox alliances to make sure our creativity is the beating heart of this quiet revolution“, which is true, but it ignores the alternative path where the largest players start getting this path in house and in light of the two revelations, we see that during the last decades players like Heineken had been doing just that and that makes them ready to take on the 5G behemoth and push the others into second place or worse. There is a need to have expertise and many do not have it, but in that Heineken has been different for the longest times. It is most likely due to the unique view that people like Freddie Heineken had on their market and consumers. You merely have to realise that they were the first to embrace ‘Geniet, maar drink met mate‘ (enjoy, temper your drinking) it was a slogan that came into play around 1990, as well as ‘Drink verantwoord. Geniet meer‘ (drink responsibly, enjoy it more). All pushes to set a better stage, it is there that we see that a new push could be produced by players like Heineken.

We see so many more paths opening, but in all this the one overwhelming side is not what paths there are, but the stage of metrics that they all rely on, as such having control on the expenses as well as the foundation to create a reliable stage for their metrics will be a first soon enough. Not merely: ‘Who is your population?‘, it is the stage where the passive and active awareness can be differentiated on, that too will push advertisements and the applied visibility through 5G apps and 5G advertising and how the funds are spent, that will be the question that impacts player like Google Ads on the next 24 months, because if they do not do that, their quarter on quarter growth will suddenly take a very different spin, and they are not the only ones affected.

 

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August 5, 2019 · 11:02

Capone Syndrome

There is a larger concern in the US today (yesterday too). I have always lived by the premise that guns do not kill people, people kill people. I still live by that believe today, even as people all over the planet cry that guns are the problem. In the UK we see: “There were 726 homicides in the year ending March 2018, 20 more (3% increase) than in the previous year“, which is fine, you can a person with a knife as terminally concrete as a gun can, you merely have to move up close and personal to do so.

Yet that does not explain the American numbers and I accept that. When we consider ‘17,284 reported cases of murder or non-negligent manslaughter in the United States‘ we see that there is a much larger problem in play. Yet there is also the stage that the numbers have declined by 30% since 1991 (24,700 murders at that point). Yet that would be the facts if we take the word of Statista; it is the New York Times who gives us “There were 39,773 gun deaths in 2017, up by more than 1,000 from the year before. Nearly two-thirds were suicides“, which is an entirely different dish to serve. The article (at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/us/gun-deaths.html) becomes debatable when we see the information they do give us with ‘Nearly two-thirds were suicides‘, so there is an issue, and even as we want to blame guns, these people would have equally gone for pills and optionally tapping the vein with a sharp knife.

So when we see: “In 2017, about 60 percent of gun deaths were suicides, while about 37 percent were homicides, according to an analysis of the C.D.C.” we need to take a larger look at the issue. When we see the numbers, which I accept is disproportionate to most other nations, we need to see that the US has a much larger issue and firearms are not the cause, the economy is. We see part of that reported by the World Economic Forum (at https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/05/the-global-suicide-rate-is-growing-what-can-we-do/). Here we see: “Overall mortality, particularly in the middle years, is increasing as a result of the so-called “deaths of despair” due to suicide, alcohol, opioids, and liver disease. Although 94% of American adults believe mental health is equally as important as physical health, most do not know how to identify changes in mental health that signal serious risk, nor what to do in response“, I believe that this is part of the answer, but not the larger impact. Some have taken this path and it can be directly linked to isolation and the lack of quality of life. Yet it will not stop with the US, there is every indication that these waves will hit the Commonwealth (UK and Australia) as well, In Australia we saw in 2018 ‘Australia’s suicide rate is now at 12.6 deaths per 100,000 people‘, whilst it was reported to be 5.7 in 2016 down from 6.6 in 2007, to see that the numbers have well over doubled in 10 years is a large issue and the limelight on this has been switched off.

The reduced quality of life is a larger issue in the US is that the people that are living in poverty is 13.5% (43 million), which is astounding as the unemployment rate is set to 3.7%, so we have a stage where people with a job are still below the poverty line and they are not alone, the UK is pushing into a similar stage. As the BBC reported almost 3 weeks ago “Between 1994 and 2017, the proportion of people in working households in relative poverty rose from 13% to 18%, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) – eight million people in 2017” (at https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-42223497) we see a shift and the governments are not pushing to improve that setting, more important Australia is pushing in that same direction, yet they make matters worse by remaining in denial of social housing and age discrimination.

This now moves back to the beginning, We see the Capone Syndrome, Alphonse Gabriel Capone was boss of the Chicago Outfit and cause for the deaths of a large uncounted amount of people. In addition to that we must give voice that he donated large amounts of cash and was the force behind the charity that served up three hot meals a day to thousands of the unemployed—no questions asked. In all this he was never convicted of charities, not for murders and not for ‘criminal’ activities, the FBI got him on Tax evasion. Here we see the Syndrome, we blame guns, but other issues are the driving force that is causing all this. Whether the latest two are through mental health or economy driven reasons remain to be seen. However, as long as the people keep on screaming gun laws in a nation where hundreds of millions of guns are in open circulation there is a larger option that will not be tended to.

One of these problems is the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. It lacks leadership and at least 3 presidents are cause if this. With a budget of $1.274 billion, with a little over 5000 staff, the ATF has a massive problem. The larger failure known as Project Gunrunner (2010), as well as the dismissal of ATF special agent Vince Cefalu in 2011 with 24 years of experience is showing to be a much larger issue than the media is giving you. The top brass are an Acting Director, and Acting Deputy Director, no official named and permanent elected (read: placed) director and deputy director have been set for the longest time, so there is a large absence of long term plans and that lack has been an issue for a much longer time. In all this the oversight of second hand firearms has been lacking like almost forever. Even as gun laws are adjusted, second hand merchandise will freely move and as such there will be no improved situation.

If these people who are crying and shouting ‘Gun Control‘ actually wanted any of that, then the ATF would get the needed budget of $3.8 billion, they are trying to get done what they can with a 30% budget, in addition, to properly overhaul second hand firearms an additional 1500 agents would be needed. Yet the power players are not willing to touch this economy. The National Shooting Sports Foundation reported that their group paid $6.82 billion in taxes (including property, income and sales taxes), the government does not want to touch it.

We need to accept an understand that this problem is a lot larger and the fact that everyone is looking at a busy crossroad and they are actually only looking and focusing on that one traffic sign called ‘amendment 2’, how is that ever going to fix anything? You can add a maximum speed of 15 bullets per minute to that crossroads, yet when we consider that the roads themselves are part of the problem, an actual large part, whatever you claim to fix, will not fix anything at all, not until you fix the road, the current signs will have a negligible impact.

Now when we look at the El Paso event at Walmart, we see the accused Patrick Crusius and the fact that he killed 20 people and wounded more than that. We see the mention of some ‘manifesto’ implies a larger issue. It could be a hate crime, yet we still need to learn what set him off. The fact that the person was taken into custody (with little to no force according to the Guardian) implies that this person seeks the limelight, which could give a larger rise to a mental health issue, but time needs to tell us that. In Dayton, Ohio we have another setting. Here a man killed his sister and 8 others. Here the shooter did not survive, something clearly set him off, yet what is unknown at present. Here the Washington Post gives us: “The guns had been legally purchased, police said, and there was nothing in Connor Betts adult criminal background that would have raised concerns“, we could argue that gun control might have been some impact, the issue with millions of guns on the open second hand market, there would have been little to slow this person down. So as we learn that ‘Connor Betts never seemed interested in extreme ideologies, nor did he seem racist‘, we see one optional extremist with racism tendencies and one not, and when we realise that we need to consider that the issue is a lot larger and we need to properly address this issue. Yet screaming ‘gun control laws’ all whilst the ATF is not able to do a proper job now implies that the US is currently heading towards a much larger issue soon enough.

By the way, the fact that the ATF issues have been known for the longest time and the last time it was addressed was on May 19th by David Thornton in an article and not after that, optionally even less before that, does that not warrant questions on several levels?

I reckon that the ATF is not a sexy enough topic for the media, but cadavers certainly are. So when we fix that part, we might begin to fix the mass shooting issues at some point in the future and do not forget that the absence of a permanent director has been an issue since before the Obama Administration, he too never addressed it, which after the Newtown shooting should warrant a question or two as well.

This is not about the NRA, this is not about the NSSF and this is not about guns, this is about policy and how to properly go about it, as I personally see it, until there is a clear mandate and a clear path that includes the ATF, we are unlikely see clear resolutions for years to come.

 

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July 21, 2019 · 14:48

Exploitation by the numbers

Yes, the BBC had the right idea when they gave us: ‘Bianca Devins: The teenager whose murder was exploited for clicks‘ three hours ago (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49002486). The story is about a girl named Bianca Devins. So when we get: “she wrote on a gaming platform about how excited she was to be travelling the 250 miles from upstate New York to a concert in Queens. But before she could return home on Sunday morning, Bianca was dead” we see a story dipped in sadness. We see the quote: “But in the hours after his arrest, it emerged he had shared graphic photographs of the murder online. In the days since, her story has spread across the world – as have the violent images of her death. Her murder, which played out so publicly, is the latest case to place scrutiny on how social media companies police extreme content” we have seen this before, we wonder how and we wonder if it matters. We sometimes here the term ‘lives matter’ but is that really the case? Even as we accept that this was the lone act of a lone man when we get: “the suspect shared an even more graphic photograph of Bianca’s body on Discord – a popular messaging platform for gamers. This image showed the extent of injuries to Bianca’s throat and made clear her wounds had been fatal“, exploitation for clicks is not new, we have seen it for almost 200 days whilst we got exposed to this level of exploitation through the cadaver of Jamal Khashoggi, even the UN got in on it. All whilst there is no actual evidence, speculation, postulation and exploitation. I will give exemption to the Washington Post and his family, they are the two exemptions. To see just that impact we need to look at the numbers.

Yet the numbers are no longer clear, it seems that Google is actively hiding certain events actions and numbers. When I did a thorough search on December 18th, I got a result that added up to a lot “we merely get 57,000,000 search results, most of them misinformation, repeated unsubstantiated rumours and debatable facts that are anything but confirmed facts” (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/12/18/how-americans-lose-wars/), now that number is a mere 13,600,000. And that is seeking all. The exploiters have removed the pages, so not to impair their click manifesto, not to remain visible with all the click options out there, but they are there and as Google is extremely dependent on these clicks, they will facilitate to the largest degree possible, it merely means that we are not given the actual goods, not even close and the exploitation goes on. It’s nice that Kelly-Leigh Cooper chose a subject no one knows, yet this method of visibility has been used for a much longer time than you think.

The party-lines are all about ‘filtering’, or ‘this is what our customers want’, or my favourite ‘have you checked ALL your settings?’ The issue gets diluted; it gets smeared over issues and optional things that are being worked on. Exploitation for clicks became a reality the moment people were offered to earn money through their webpages, and everyone wanted more and everyone wanted the maximum of what was possible, yet now that need for greed is transformed into need to be illuminated, maximum visibility through minimum effort, and for too long social media pushed for this to maximise their return on investment. Now that the fence is gone, we see that the facilitators no longer have a hold on anything and even as everyone points at 4Chan, social media players like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn are all using it to maximise exposure of self. LinkedIn gets a partial pardon as it is limiting itself to business parts for the most and whatever exploitation we see is small and tends to be focussed from merely a few and those are often stopped by LinkedIn to the larger extent, the 2 billion on Facebook are mostly not. There it is often about extreme materials filtered and censored, or largely filtered to whatever censor has its hat primed (a personal observation).

Yet it is not the censoring, it is the focus and exploitation that is a case for worry. For Kelly-Leigh Cooper the focus is what happened to Bianca Devins and it seems an extreme case, yet it is not a new issue. Collective Hub gave rise in 2015 (at https://collectivehub.com/2015/08/21st-century-shaming/) to ‘21ST Century Shaming‘, and there we see: “Cyber-bullying and online shaming seem more commonplace than ever before and Monica highlighted some recent occurrences, like the leaked nude photos of Jennifer Lawrence; the Sony hacking scandal; and the death of Tyler Clemente, who committed suicide after his college roommate secretly filmed him with another man“, it seems that the linked “where the online humiliation of individuals results in more clicks, which means more money for the media outlet” is casually overlooked by everyone. We see how politicians are trying to bash Facebook, yet the headline from the Daily Telegraph: ‘Brit Ayia Napa rape victim tells how she ‘fainted’ after 12 Israelis ‘attacked her one-by-one for an hour’‘ gets 41,900 results in Google, they all need clicks, they all want maximised exposure and the people involved do not care how they get it, it all impacts advertisement and circulation.

When you start to look deeper, exploitation by the numbers seem to have less acceptable methods than we see used by drug dealers on a school yard, we merely have become too complacent to care. It is not until we are hit to a much larger degree that we see actions.

In 2010 Cnet gave us the 5 dangers of Facebook:

  1. Your information is being shared with third parties
  2. Privacy settings revert to a less safe default mode after each redesign
  3. Facebook ads may contain malware
  4. Your real friends unknowingly make you vulnerable
  5. Scammers are creating fake profiles

In all this we have seen the impacts, yet we have ignored a lot of it and it gets to be worse when we see a Telegraph article (at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/05/ex-google-facebook-staff-warn-social-media-dangers/) where we see the following quotes:

“The thoughts of two billion people every day are steered by 50 people in Mountain View,” said Tristan Harris, referring to the Californian headquarters of Google.

“But these companies are also caught in a zero-sum race for our finite attention, which they need to make money.

“Constantly forced to outperform their competitors, they must use increasingly persuasive techniques to keep us glued.

The Truth about Tech campaign was about tackling the “manipulation and exploitation” of some social media companies.

These quotes are often intertwined, attention brings funds, so does manipulation and exploitation, they are linked and shown as issues that are unstoppable, yet the effort to do something about it is lacking, there is circumstantial evidence that goes back to 2010 and so far almost nothing was done, again we see evidence now in the form of the death of a journalist no one cares about (Jamal Khashoggi) and the media themselves all want to ignore it because he was a journalist, yet the speculation (not evidence) that they propagated shows that he was not their concern, propagation and clicks were. The moment you realise that part of the equation is the moment you realise that the system is flawed and broken, and whilst the media is all about showing the flaws, the defects are not tended to, making matters worse for a long time to come.

By the numbers, we are not in a good frame of mind, as I stated before, there were 57,000,000 search results (in less than 60 days) proving me right.

 

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July 15, 2019 · 11:09

It’s fine that fine

I saw he news last week and it was one sentence that made me stop on the spot, but I needed some time to digest it all (and there was news from Iran to contemplate too). Facebook has been fined, the fine (the largest ever at $5,000,000,000) is not the sneer at, but for Facebook it will be business as usual soon thereafter. The amount is nothing more than an Apple building at the edge of the Mojave desert, so it seems little, but that would be the facade that we are offered. The article I initially saw (I forgot the source) stated: “paying fine to stop further investigations“, from my point of view that this would be worth a bundle, I believe that Facebook had been stupid to some degree and super clever in other ways. Let’s face it Mark Zuckerberg is on my level of data knowledge, so he is thinking several iterations ahead of all others and he needs the FTC of his back during the start-up of 5G, whoever is there first has a larger advantage to gain momentum. All my investigations into the dumb smart device shows that, all the data I see optionally coming requires unhindered acceleration and my device was meant to suppress data drag and emphasize on facilitation. Facebook needs this, Google needs this and Huawei has the advantage at present.

The new system when operational will give them (especially with Oak/OS) a 15%-24% advantage and in data terms when we consider that 5G is set to top out at 10 gigabits per second (Gbps), that difference is a lot, it is everything to enable a larger market advantage. Add to this the new devices that offer independence to SME and franchise markets, the stage would push towards smaller independent solution providers, if Google, Apple and Facebook even hesitate for one week the difference will be seen and short thereafter felt as well.

At that point every contract in the new setting will entice 3-5 others to follow as well. It is not word of mouth, it is companies watching their competitors gain advantage and that observed difference is almost exponential against mere word of mouth. And that part will also increase choices.

Yet it is not about what comes next (only partially) it is about what is now. There are two essential parts in the fine. The first is how it was a 3-2 split, with the Republicans all in favour to continue and the Democrats all eager to block. There is a polarising difference there. I am partial on the Republican side, Democrats clearly misrepresented this with the quote: “the dissent of the two Democrats on the commission because they sought stricter limits on the company” (source: NY Times). It is not about stricter limits one the company, it is the fact that the data has grown to dimensionality far beyond what governments have and it is available for purchase (to some degree). The element that we forget with the fine is what the Guardian gives us (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/12/facebook-fine-ftc-privacy-violations) when we see: “Facebook will now re-examine the ways it handles user data, but the settlement will not restrict the company’s ability to share data with third parties, reports said“, it is to some degree about the ability to share data and how granular that data is set for the upcoming war that the Democrats want to wage. It has direct implications in insurance and healthcare and the Democrats have a system in mind that cannot function when all that data is available for health care scrutiny (one of many issues), yet healthcare is the most visible one. One short thought like on what drinks (alcoholic) you like and you might be seen as a higher risk and as such see your premium rise. Alcohol, tobacco and recreational pharmacy might be the most visible ones, but as the data net grows, we see a more comprehensive flag system that pushes close to 20% out of healthcare soon enough (as premiums go up and up on the risky groups) and it is not that this point is coming soon, this point has already been passed and the moment that data gets out, the ducks come home to roost on a coffin.

As the New York Times gives us the quote: “Last year, the European Union fined Google $5.1 billion for abusing its large market share in the mobile phone industry. More recently, numerous officials and lawmakers around the world have rushed to regulate Facebook” (at https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/12/technology/facebook-ftc-fine.html), we seemingly all put it on one pile, yet that would be a massive problem and wrong too. In one side (source: the Verge) we get: “Google also made customers sign contracts forbidding them from including rival search engines on their sites alongside Google’s own. In 2009, Google allowed the inclusion of rival search engines as long as Google’s was more prominent. In 2016, around the time the EU announced its case, the company removed these terms altogether“, we can debate the correctness, but we can also accept that Google started this and took the advantage that they engineered, as in most places software cannot be patented, so it had to find another path to gain the advantage it created whilst followers re-engineered whatever Google published as soon as humanly possible. We can call it wrong (or not) but that stage is in place and it links to now and it also links to Facebook. The 5G wave is all about getting there first and at present the FTC was in a place to stop Facebook innovation and paying the fine will give larger gains to Facebook than to let investigative wave after wave continue to slow Facebook down, and when we realise that Facebook is no longer the only player on that level Facebook needed to make a tactical decision.

Still, there is a remaining issue with the Facebook data and how it becomes available and the lack of answers should remain to be a cause for concern. It comes down to the beginning when we got: “The F.T.C.’s investigation was set off by The New York Times and The Observer of London, which uncovered that the social network allowed Cambridge Analytica, a British consulting firm to the Trump campaign, to harvest personal information of its users. The firm used the data to build political profiles about individuals without the consent of Facebook users“, that was merely the tip of the iceberg and those who comprehend Facebook data know this to be true. The issue is not merely how the data is collected; it is what else becomes available and what else is collected. To see this we need to consider the added image.

At present there are some stages where larger contracts give people their advertising over different locations. Yet what happens when you have a complete mobile image on where what is shown? What happens when we see interactions of an advertising and where it actually works and how users react, that is the next stage and the data is ready and to some degree in that setting Facebook is more ready than others, that is the image that pushes us all and the innovation through handed data and as we can see Facebook people either do not care, or have no comprehension of all the data linked to their actions.

I took that data and more into another innovation and pushed it to a new stage, giving the collector even more data, more advertising options and optionally even more data opportunities on a larger scale. It is that shift that is all the difference between a 5% and a 9% market share for companies and now it is no longer local, the data allows for global exposure, so consider that exposure in New Delhi (India) could also expose those in Little Bombay (New Jersey) addressing a similar group at the same time, brand exposure that becomes global changing the entire setting for smaller enterprises at close to similar prices, driving advertisement bidding wars and pushing revenues for those in that area and that is merely the first part of the IP I created. Places like Facebook could get a much larger advantage and transform advantage into momentum pushing that advantage further and faster. It is only for the bigger puppies (Google, Facebook, Huawei) but they all want the largest juiciest bone to gnaw on and that is where the group of innovations push the difference, so in the end $5 billion is chicken feed under what is pushing towards the surface at this very moment, and they all want to nibble on that pie, they merely need to be the first in the game to gain advantage through momentum. As I see it IBM and Microsoft are already out of the game trying to facilitate the systems and the data and to be fair Microsoft Azure does have a larger advantage here, but IBM is not sitting still and we know that Facebook (to a lesser degree) and  Google have systems that work. The playing field is near level and the match is far from over, now with the Huawei push and Oak/OS they have opportunity to gain advantage and they can decide who to allow access to that new system, so even as Google seemingly had the advantage, the Trump trade war took that advantage away from them, so there is a second level war going on and whomever makes the larger deal with Huawei gets the gain, the issue is that Huawei hardware is more advanced and that is their advantage, the Trump trade war stopped innovation towards the US, so as such in a global setting now pushes the advantage to Europe, India and the Middle East. In this the US loses more than it comprehended in advance and it all depends on how they react to the change. It is the error in judgement on 4G and 5G is where the American disadvantage lies. In 4G is was ‘Wherever I am‘, now with 5G it becomes ‘Whenever I want it‘ and for that step the most advanced provider wins , it is not Ericsson, not Nokia, not Telstra, and not Sprint. It is Huawei that can facilitate towards ‘Whenever I want it‘ to a much larger degree at present and that wins the race, but the others are not done yet and there the Facebook data becomes a power player, an optional sledgehammer for those who know how to bash a wall and that is happening now, so when we see: “Facebook and other large tech companies are under an increasingly harsh spotlight in Washington, D.C., including at a “social media summit” at the White House on Thursday in which President Trump repeatedly bashed Silicon Valley as being unfair to conservatives. Facebook wasn’t invited to attend, nor were other tech companies. They have previously said they police their platforms without regard to political ideology“, we see a setting that we accept to some degree, yet those who are all about that “Social Media Summit” seemingly do not comprehend the application of data to the degree they need to and as such they as shooting themselves as well as their economic options in the foot, which is good news for Huawei, not that much for the other players.

I reckon that I will be proven correct within the next 12 months. When the dust settles we will see the first clear winners, I am certain that Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics shows me to be correct and it will show the first larger winner, at present in this culture of short sighted decisions Google and Huawei will have the largest advantage, but 2 other players are not out of this race yet, so plenty can happen before we see the Olympic flame light the fires and start the Tokyo Summer Olympics.

 

 

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