Category Archives: Science

May 19, 2020 · 23:30

Just say ‘BANG!’

We all laugh and we all seem to point fingers, we all seem to endure the blame game. How governments are bowing to the bully (President Trump) and convict without evidence a corporation and a nation (Huawei and China), yet at the core of it all, we are merely sheep, we bask in the sun as the wolves take one or two sheep, and as long it is not us, we merely watch and remain basking in inaction. The media helps here by trivialising news, by basking in inaction on matters that are reported on, without the need for evidence by howling ‘This was what was told to us, we merely report’. So where are the questions on President Trump, who once claimed that it would merely impact 1.5%? Now that 1.5 million Americans have the disease and 92,000 died of it, where is that 1.5% when it is already at 400% of what was expected, what do we get to see? A president blaming the WHO, stating that China is in its back pocket. Even when we realise that the WHO has no legal rights in any nation, realising that the EU has a massive reporting problem that affects thousands, nope, it is all about the blame game. It worked for Senator McCarthy in 1953-1955, it will work for President Trump too and so far, it seems to work. Yet the problem is expanding more and more. Now we see how people are more often in jeopardy. We see hackers and scammers with Covid-19 agendas, we see 5G blamed by short minded people and again we see EasyJet getting hacked and 9 million people just lost their credit card privacy, but there are voices that are trying to calm us “There is no evidence that any personal information has been misused”, yet they are doing more! “We are communicating with the approximately 9 million customers to advise them of protective steps”, yes how about one singular step? “We have instigated a death squad to hunt down the hackers and put them to death!” Not accepting any excuse from parents that their 17 year old did not know what he/she was doing, not some excuse that it was their first time. Nope, we set a gunto their temple and blow the brains out and televise the event so that others know, their time for cheap thrills is over, they become the cheap thrill. And we will all get notified by the media that this is too harsh, too inhumane, yet that is not the real deal is it? The shareholders and stakeholders pushing the media know that at some point THEY become the sought targets and they fear this.

When there are no targets, transgressors fear what will come and that is the fear they have and we need to drive the dagger home, drive it towards the targets that matter.

Politicians will shout ‘terrorism’ at any event, the media will report that, but they will not report and investigate the proper format of accusations, just like they refused to investigate the accusers of Saudi Arabia. First on a missing journalist no one cared about, after that on a mobile phone of a person who was too rich for his own good and no one properly vetted the evidence, they merely dropped it on the desk of a UN essay writer. The Guardian (and many others) hid behind ‘high confidence’ mentions and other media did similar actions, yet they never investigated it, did they? It was a week of jabs and then it quietly went away, that is what we signed up for and I for one have had enough of this media driven BS.

If we can’t direct them, we can tell them to be quiet whilst we fix things and the benefit of my approach is that in a depression, hackers and abusers don’t really get to have any voice in the matter. Hackers and profiteers in a stage where there are 320,000 dead people, it implies that well over 500,000 are affected and they do not really care about the life of a hacker (well their mommies and daddies do), who cares about them?

That is the stage that is in question, the stage where governments will not set a proper stage, where too many industries abused the situation towards their bottom dollar and in all this a new stage of McCarthyism is created by the current administration, all whilst the media reacts towards shareholders, stakeholders and advertisers. In this the public have had enough and they want to see real action, not what the media and politicians call actions, but something tangible and that stage is now out in the open. 

And whilst the news is all about the Covid fears, we get to see how people like Morgan Wright, a former senior adviser to the US State department as a member of the anti-terrorism assistance program, sees similar issues, he reported yesterday “He is seeing the exploitation of human behaviour on the dark web, mainly through the TOR browser, which allows pwople to obscure their identity, it is a privacy driven status now used by criminals to do with impunity” and in all this it is clear that normal jurisprudential methods are not working, so a death squad is what we need. Perhaps you like the original term better “a CIA wet team” a wet team because of all that blood, and the amount of people demanding this solution is increasing by thousands on a daily basis, this is the result when there is no longer some form of balance, when the checks and balances are taken away and the people are settled unjustly with the invoice that should have been properly taken care of. As such we are bound to see a much less appreciated group of people demanding solutions. This is what the politicians and governments are now facing, a new form of terrorism and it is based on the lack of actions by too many. 

So whilst the media is all about privacy whilst we know we do not have any, we see the larger picture, we demand to see factual evidence, we demand repercussions for the transgressors, a stage we haven’t faced ever before, those who put us in this situations forgot that checks and balances requires some sort of balance, and as that was taken away from too many, we demand evidence on the validity of gravy trains and in that absence these people better show long term results, or a lynch mob is all that remains, McCarthy never learned that lesson, in 1950 6,000 miles was a lifetime away, now it is merely a click and nothing more than a few mere seconds. That will become clear soon enough, it comes with every additional Covid death and every lockdown hindering us, the media forgot about that too, in all this the forgotten parts will weigh against them all, and something will have to give, especially with the US in a $25 trillion debt and one in four Americans out of work, it is a situation that is worse than the combined negativity that the great depression and 2008 meltdown showed, but both together will force a new reality, it is in this setting that a loud mouthed republican was possibly the worst of the worst scenarios that the US has to content with, I am not stating that Russia and China are in better positions, but they can sit on the sidelines whilst the US and partially the EU burns down, their inactions allow for all this, there is no enemy to smite and Saudi Arabia was never an enemy, and the people love a real enemy and as such the hackers will have to do. I think that none of us saw this coming, it was never in the books, but ‘New Terrorism’ will soon become very real and the media is out of bounds on this one, their inactions helped create it. 

 

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May 18, 2020 · 11:03

Market(ing) Research

I was made aware of a picture that has been around for some time, it is an optional strong image and it can be used in any direction. The byline that was given was “I’m blown away that this diagram made it into a major publication” I personally agree!

The image is what I would call a 2 by 2 image of a clusterfuck that goes nowhere and openly misinforms people. The more important part is that it is based on truthful observation and that is where the cog tends to upset the machine to a much larger degree. It has two rows (very useful and not useful), two columns (Time consuming and not time consuming) and the 4 elements are labeled “Plan, Learn, Ignore and Browse”. So far one would think that it makes sense, yet the image has in each of the 4 elements:

Plan (AI, Machine Learning, Information security andStatistical Programming), Learn (Data Science, Data Visualization, and Business Intelligence), Ignore is for (Predictive analytics, Mathematics, Statistics and Data Warehousing) and Browse is reserved for (Spreadsheeting, Data Cleaning, and Financial Analysis), as such we might consider the first stage, this was made for people in marketing, for people who need to visualize data to give stakeholders a story to hold onto. The idea that some consider that Financial analyses was not time consuming to acquire is a chapter we will forego for now. It is the Ignore part that gets me, You see Marketing researchers are about the story that can be served like a Tiramisu, something that goes down easily with the Stakeholders and shareholders, yet it is the mathematics and statistics that makes them want to ask questions, not something a company wants, they want them to merely eat the cake and fuck off. But topline stories are actual stories, it is the connected mathematics and statistics that gives them the power, yet in today’s market it is an expensive trip to do and many companies don’t do that well, mainly because the statistics might show another side to all this and that is not what they want to tell the shareholders and stakeholders. And consider that a larger firm has taken the time to properly set up a Data Warehouse, do you really want to ignore all that data?

In all this there is a much larger issue. The field of what was a proper Market Research field has been replaced by mere topline storytellers and we call that Marketing Research and it is as I see it  holy useless.

Topline stories sound nice, but without the underlying statistics it is for the most conjecture and speculation but without supporting finesse. It is the merchant that looks at the tally of his shop and speculates on how they will do in the next quarter, yet it is true that to some extent they can do that, but without supporting numbers (from Statistics, and Predictive analyses) optionally cornered in mathematics, it remains speculative. It is like seeing the marketing manager and sales manager plotting out ‘their’ path towards financial success and as regression was coming up short, they relied on General Linear Modelling to fill in the blanks. In my lifetime career spanning well over a quarter of a century in Business Intelligence, I have met 6 people who truly knew the proper way to use GLM (MANOVA in the old days) In the Netherlands Hans Krijnssen and Jos van den Ronden, In Belgium Jacques Tacq, in the UK Jane Moore, and in the US there are Dave Nichols and Tony Babinec. I am not a mathematician, I recognise proper usage, but I cannot use these procedures properly myself. There are more people who know it, yet I met 6 over a term of 25 years, this is a limited field, it comes in various shapes and sizes, but they all have degrees in mathematics, it sets the analysts apart from the marketing researchers. We have become too reliant on short term goals without the essential need to have a long term direction in mind. Most companies took the bait when they were told that short term planning is the moneymaker, but there is also the need for long term planning and testing, I might think short term with my IP sale, but I am up against long term strategists who do think outside the box and that is where a lot do not wish to be, they cannot make the long term turnover, their sales training with their pipeline is all about quarterly growth and achieved sales trajectory, the image merely enforces that view, yet the larger view needs to come from what they would happily ignore. It comes down to the old story, The analyst shows you the essential path, whilst marketing is set like a politician, they make you yearn for the invoice. This now translates into marketing handing you the invoice and the numbers feeding that need for purchase are and remain absent.

How is that solving your need?

I believe that Marketing Research is the most dangerous of approaches in the near future, if they go about it with their limited topline reporting tools, someone up high will ask that one question that cannot be answered and it all falls to pieces, it will do so eventually when the storytellers rely on the short story and the process goes south too fast and the numbers will not give the shareholders any confidence, because that will happen a lot sooner than most sales people are happy with. Let me be frank, there is a market, an essential market in these topline presenters and their software tools, they take away the loads of effort and the required approach to get there, but by themselves they are not a solution, they are a supporting tool and that is where a lot of players go wrong. 

So yes, there is also the stage where the image is supporting a different text, but overall the image shows a lack of insight and a support track towards what I would call ‘deceptive conduct’ or to state it slightly less diplomatic ‘relying on misconception to sell a view to a sale’ approaches that go nowhere in the long run, especially when the people who should ask questions, actually start asking the questions that are implied to be answers, all whilst they are no such things.

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May 16, 2020 · 03:40

Deceit and Stupidity

For me it is a brand new day, it is 2:36 and I am now seriously contemplating the move of handing my IP to China. Not because I hate America, I do not, I really do not, but the stupidity that we are exposed to should not ever be accepted. The BBC reported an hour ago ‘US targets Huawei with tighter chip export rules’, there is nothing wrong with that foundation. We all have reasonings and whatever the US requires is their business. Yet in the article we see two items. The first is seen in the quotes “aimed at limiting Chinese technology giant Huawei’s access to semiconductor technology” as well as “prevent US technologies from enabling malign activities contrary to US national security and foreignpolicy interests” The second quote here is double edged. When we see “contrary to US national security ad foreignpolicy interests”, we need to realise that it can mean many things, above all it means that what America implies as foreign policy, could also mean their economic position and we all know it, in that regard America is done for. Whether or not we see the acts of the current president being of less academic value than the acts of Popov the Clown is beside the point. The US remained in the laid back position for a decade whilst innovation will never allow for this. As such Korea and China got the upper hand in IP and future technology. In the last half decade the US started to realise just how far behind they are and they are trying to rectify it be staging a cartel position, but they are already too late, now that I am adding to the IP losses in 5G they are done for, and as the people around me realise how I created the IP, as they realise where they have not been looking, everyone will see just how shortsighted US policy has become. Even as we see the words by US Commerce secretary Wilbur Ross see when we are treated to “This is not how responsible corporate citizens behave” we see the joke that this had been going on for almost a decade, a step towards iterative exploitation of technology, whilst the people around them were innovative. And in all this they are equally forgetting that the tables can be turned, whilst I address the needs of 400 million businesses, the US will be out of bounds as well, as such Europe, the Middle East and Asia will push beyond the options that American businesses have, it was a simple equation. From my point of view, the innovation that is being brought shows another side, it shows that whole technologies will now set the US in a stand still pattern until 2024, it shows that I am merely one part (one of several) where the us has no 5G options, as that market evolves we see a much larger loss, a loss where we look towards another coin to replace economic value, the US dollar is losing out and as a nation with $25,000,000,000,000 debt has no longe any say in the matter, the banks holding that debt will decide and that will be one of the only things that this US president has achieved, the US population will get to see who is truly in charge and they will wish that they could turn back the clock, but it is too late now. Even now we see how President Trump is blaming the Chinese for the spread of Covid-19. Interesting is it not, how the clear propagation of the flu is now blamed on a government, just like the Huawei accusations absent of clear evidence. 

It becomes even more interesting when we see “The US has said Huawei’s technology COULD be used for spying by the Chinese government”, all whilst there is strong evidence that Cisco equipment is used to bypass security on several levels all over the world, but that is OK? So when (not if) my IP is used to propel business to a much larger degree, the US will be barred in equal measure, as such, we will see high flying 5G consumer technology in effect all whilst the US is merely trying to not drown and the rich will be standing on the heads of the poor whilst doing so, it is apparently the American way. 

And my reasoning?

Well, it is the American way to find the best suited financial solution or my IP, in this I go where the money is and America does not have it, Google might, but they were seemingly not interested. I don’t know about IBM, Apple and Microsoft, yet they are not interesting to me as they are iterative technology boosters, they stopped being true innovators for some time. I need an innovative player and that leaves us with Huawei and Google, so Huawei is seemingly the winner.

In all this America now gets sunk by its own greedy and restrictive rules and I am not the only one, I have heard a few noises all around me and they are not that much in favour towards the US.

What can we do?

As I see it, governments should have demanded clear evidence from the US, but they did not do that, moreover, several governments let themselves be bullied by America who has no real power, merely huge debts and in this I watched several nations become the bitch of the US, so where did we sign up for that?

So far the US has remained absent of evidence, did we not learn our lesson with the Global tour of Colin Powell and his silver briefcase making the WMD farce? Is evidence THAT overrated? So whilst the US is trying to hold on to the illusion that they have what it takes (they lost that ability almost 20 years ago), the rest of the world needs to see that the superpower table is changing and it is governed by those with IP and patent value, as such we see China, optionally we see India taking a much larger claim, all whilst the US claim is diminishing, in all that they get to sit next to Russia who has an equal small stake in the IP side of it all. It leaves with the uncomfortable conversation where we see that Google is also becoming a global superpower whilst its host nation the US is losing its seat, optionally to Google. all in the same stage where we see that South Korea might end up getting invited to that table. The stakes are changing to THAT degree over the next three years, so should we have faith in a player who is about to lose its seat at THAT table? I don’t think so.

 

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May 9, 2020 · 14:26

Shame of choice?

I have been around for some time. In this time I have always accepted the choices I have made, and for the most, I have had one regret, that was around 2001, it was a choice and I accept responsibility for the choice I mader, I might not be happy about it, but that is life. In that frame of mind I am or the most a Republican, I believe in Republican standards, yet until January 2019 I had never expected to be ashamed of that. The entire Huawei situation and as the Guardian reported 6 hours ago, ‘US blocks vote on UN’s bid for global ceasefire over reference to WHO’, the idea that the Trump administration opposes mention of the WHO must be one of the most fucked up situations that ANY commander in chief of the US in the history of that nation has set up. The stage is even more diluted when we see “Donald Trump has blamed the WHO for the pandemic, claiming (without any supporting evidence) that it withheld information in the early days of the outbreak.” In all honesty, from that pointof view, when people are THAT stupid, I will had all my IP to Huawei (hoping that they will pay me) there is no chance that there can be any hope for the US in a stage where Trump is president. The man gives rise to chimps being more intelligent than people. To give further notice, I grew up seeing and accepting that Russia was the great evil in the 70’s and 80’s, I was in the mistaken understanding that the US was the bastion of actual freedom, how wrong can a man be?

When the elections were held, it was my opinion that Clinton was the wrong choice, her bungling of the entire Benghazi situation, in light of all the spin and misdirection was reason enough. If she could not get that right, seeing her in charge of the US was in my personal view a massive mistake. I had no idea that the baboon chosen would be even worse.

And the American people are about to find out why. The economic disaster that the US now faces is estimated to outdo the Depression that preceded WW2. 

In all this, I expect that Google, Apple, IBM and Microsoft will see a massive brain drain towards Europe and Asia. I personally expected my IP to be valued no less than $2 billion, yet I personally do not see the stage where the US will honour anything, as such and to protect my IP (which is based on new 5G principles) I have no option but to offer it to Huawei and hope for the best. Even if I end up with nothing, I will set in motion gears (already done) that will push it all to the public domain. Even as that leaves me with nothing, it will be evidence that I was right all along, which will boost my ego and place me on the high moral ground, merely for the view it gives me, above the presenters, the bullet point people and the proclaimers towards their own bonus, their own needs, not the corporate needs. 

I always saw myself as a Republican because personal freedom is where it is at, not the constrictive laws that binds all together behind a fence of rules, less laws and more freedom, yet that freedom comes with personal responsibility, I never doubted or opposed that. I wonder how people will react when the works of Stephen Moore, the one economist that supports the Republican plan reacts when the flaws get out into the open and he is asked critical questions. What do you do when people set the election of a president above the value of human lives? The quote “If we don’t get the economy reopened, we go into november with a severe depression, then you’re looking probably at President Joe Biden”, yet the stage of how many will die as a feigned economy will reopen, one that has an additional $3,000,000,000,000 debt. Bloomberg did not go deeper into that part, yet the question is out there “Why was this not investigated?” Lets not forget that this is the same Moore who set the 2012 taxcut exploding the budget without producing an economic boom (source: NY Times), so where is the evidence this time and in support of that, what are the speculated death numbers? We know that the, so-called expected 1.8% mortality rate that President Trump stated months ago was a joke and he made the claim in a time when it was already well over twice as large. That beside the point of a lacking “intellectual gravitas” as some stated. The NY Times article is still an important read. He makes statements on pandemic culling that sets the stage that precautions like New York are not needed in Lincoln, Des Moines or Boise. That is as I see it the first flaw. If the US had shut its borders a lot sooner, there might have been a small gesture of hope, but that was not done. The interview gives off the noise of ‘lets not set all urban areas the same’ yet the flu will get to any stage where people are together, that is the premise and I am not a health expert either. We see at present that 1/3rd of all infected in the world are in the US. Almost one in three of all global deaths are in the US as well. Those are directly seen numbers and there is every indication that a lot of the numbers of those passing away of the Coronavirus are not showing up, so the numbers might be higher. It amounts to the entire population of Lakewood City California. Not really an urban place is it, but that is the size of the issue and I expect that the station of care includes Lakewood City, not excluding it. 

Numbers are easy to misdirect, lives less so. I understand (not completely agreeing) with Stephen Moore, yet opening as soon as possible will set a much larger stage as the US enters Christmas, and the outgoing president should consider the legacy he is about to leave the US, the outbreak might not be his fault, but the consequences of his actions are and as such I am horrified that they were made by a Republican. 

Even my own reaction, the fact that my chances are much better turning to the Chinese than the Americans is still a debate my two guardian angels are having on my shoulders (the good one on the right shoulder the other one on the left. It is leaving me rather unhappy. It is like listening to the book of Good Omens on a daily basis, unnerving to say the least.

Yet I also accept that there is a larger group of people that sets the accusation that the WHO cannot handle the pandemic. Yet it is also a stage where the US and UK largely disregarded the warnings, I saw the pandemic coming close to two weeks before the media accepted it, even as the the dictionary version of pandemic was surpassed days before I stated it, the media did not follow and questioned this part for the longest time, yet we are not looking at that, are we?

There is a much larger stage that the media is ignoring, but we let that slip, the entire issue is now on the US blocking a UN vote as it indirectly makes mention of the WHO, I wonder if the elected US official is 5 years old (a speculative assumption on my side). There are larger fish to fry, but at present we need to be asking more and more questions of the Republican political base and most media outlets are not doing that and we need to see and wonder why that is. As I see it, there is within me, a much larger fight going on. I feel ashamed for being a Republican, I wonder if I have been wrong on that choice for a much longer time, and it worries me.

It is an internal fight I never had before and that too worries me. 

 

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May 6, 2020 · 01:28

Nature of the beast

There was news on how Samsung failed the net mobile options, the news was given ‘Exynos 990-powered Galaxy S20+ flops hard in gaming’ what I read came from NotebookCheck, and it is important that even as I am no friend of Samsung (due to their own doing in 1985), I tend to not be a Samsung hater. Let us not forget that I love Nintendo and I personally hated the WiiU, I also accept that sometimes a failure precedes a success like the Nintendo Switch, so Samsung might optionally be down,but they are not out. In the end the article lets out that it is basically not the fault of Samsung, but the chip (and its makers) is the cause of all the viewed hardship. The Exynos 990 seems to be below par on a few fields as such depending on that chip caused the project to go pear shaped. This is the direct result of choices, sometimes they blow back on us (WiiU anyone?). Yet in the field the hidden message is often missed. As stated ‘after 10 minutes of running PUBG Mobile, the galaxy S20+ was dropping frames to 50fps (something some recent consoles could not maintain), and as low as 40fps by the 20 minute mark’ the story is nowhere near over and Samsung has time to get up to speed in more than one way.

The writer goes on stating how it is that a $200 solution called Redmi Note 8 Pro did so much better. It is interesting that merely one example was matched. Still it is a mark on the status list of Samsung for now, yet a firm that is in the top 5 of most registered patents in the last years does not have merely one push towards the top and even as (for now) the S20+ is not likely to be a pushing power to the top, Samsng has had its share of true innovative successes and as such it will bounce back, it has done that a few times, and I have no doubt it will do so again.

They are not alone, even as Apple has no recorded future failure yet, it seems that not unlike the time of the PowerMac, they face a new chiprace. The news is that Intel just cannot get their response rate right and as we see that, Apple is considering a new path, one that is RISC or ARM, if it is the RISC, we see a return to happy times (ME: happy happy joy joy), yet that is because I am not a chip man and I know little of the ARM, I merely remember the good times of the RISC (I still have my RISC G5), that systems outdid anything available in those days and made no noise. Still that is not enough for you to rely on. In my mind I see another field starting up, all the APP developers relying on little INTEL options to get whatever they made go faster will have to rethink their options, there will be a weeding in the ranks of APP developers soon enough at that point, not to mention the people making PC games and including Apple as an option, it sets the optional parameters that the design for Apple needs to be truly for Apple. These two matters are a larger stage, last year the Irish Times reported on the collaboration between the two in regards to the iTunes movies, but I wonder if it stops there, Samsung has a much stronger infrastructure, Apple has a few unique designs and a following of millions, I wonder if there is not a larger space for more between the two, they must realise that the changed setting of Covid requires a different stage of thinking for the near future, their approach to almost unaffordable phones is nice, but millions of people are getting laid off, people who used to buy their products and that is off the table for the next two years, if not even longer. 

The changes that we are seeing will demand the largest players to find symphony and chorus between them instead of relying on the powerful solo acts that no one can afford. As such we will see a few more surprises in 2020 and 2021. Some might think that the markets will settle again, but they all forgot that to appease Wall Street too many companies were on a 90% stage with no reserves, now it shows as the bankruptcy numbers are going through the roof, even smaller players like Virgin are running for their life laying off thousands of people, without reserves there is no continuance for any of them, they ignored the common setting for keeping reserves and a 2 month shutdown was enough to make most of them buckle and it will get worse, the EU (those pulling the strings) have achieved in delaying Basel III for another year due to Covid implications. The FSB stated in one of their reports “Funding markets have been under strain amid extreme demand for cash and near-cash assets” it is a stage that is escalating, mainly because of a lack of reserves and it hits back at Samsung as well. This one failure is optionally no biggie, but when you consider that the next two years will be washed from larger revenue and profit in a stage where the time was not great to get a failure to deal with is not great, it is all about the reserves and to appease the markets too many players left ‘margin’ on the side for good reporting, it stands to reason that bad news will rule the news on several fields and it seems that Samsung will join that group that ends up having not great news, and optionally they have marginally good news that will get a downward revision up to 60-120 days later, can’t have the current quarter down, can we?

We can look and see how separate events do not add up and that would be fair, there is however a much larger field in sight and in that field the S20+ failure comes at a bad time, yet they are not alone Apple is in a similar place and forgoing individuality for 2-3 years and set combined products might be the good path for those two players. Samsung could revert to another path but overall they are not in charge, their shareholders are and they fear recession like the black plague. This is merely because 2-3 years could result in a stage of no reserves with a much stronger push towards a 3-5 year stage of no consumers and the shareholders fear that much more than anything. 

Is it not interesting how shareholders make a large company much easier to anticipate?

I have no doubt that Samsung will survive this era, just like it did in 1985, so far history has proven me right again and again, yet the entire Corona escalation is new to too many players and to me too, as such there is a lot we cannot see in a stage of feigned ‘non-panic’, even as these people have no idea just how bad things can get, and they need their shareholders to have faith, as such there remains an unknown. 

Time and profit are the ruling elements of the beast that devours, for the most it devours profit, yet what will it resort to when there is no profit?

 

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April 29, 2020 · 00:28

Parallels

I started playing a new video game. Well, it is not new, I have played it 7 times (I think), I played it on the Xbox 360, the PS3,the Xbox One and the PS4. The game was released on 11/11/11 and it is called Skyrim. I have loved this game since its release and it all started with the predecessor Oblivion. So how does a game become this amazing? There is a parallel with the series I Claudius made in the 70’s. You see there are two distinct differences, this game is great, not great through marketing (Microsoft never learned that lesson). In I Claudius its greatness came from 4 elements. 

  1. The Script
  2. The Cast
  3. The Director
  4. The Environment

I believe that games have a similar side to it, and we can see the difference between a good game and a great game. Even as there is no real cast in Skyrim, the makers have to define the characters, on TV they are played but the impact is similar. It is the environment that has the greater pull, whilst it was Roman times for Claudius, the medieval era that the Elder Scrolls exhibit have a similar pull on people.

It drove me to make the first design for TES: Restoration, yet in all this, I do recognise that another Skyrim was not going to make it, gamers are innovative driven not iterative and we have seen this going back to Tomb Raider 2 (1997) and even before that. 

The first question becomes ‘How can we continue a franchise and remain innovative?’, the second one is ‘How can gaming be pushed towards future greatness?’ In the first case we need to investigate, the second one is for the visionaries. The first question is important because what was released between Assassin Creed 2 and Assassins Creed Origin was less and less and almost destroyed the franchise, it is nice that Ubisoft remains in denial and after that makes a ‘Looking towards the future comment’, yet the issue is much more important than you think. 

Great gaming does not happen overnight and places like CD Project Red are really rare. A lot of game designers tend to be one trick ponies when it comes to great games and so far they pulled it off more than once, as did Bethesda as did a few others. Yet the ones that do are a minority and in the light of console wars investigating what is possible matters, good gaming is good for all, the era where Microsoft and Sony keeping each other one their toes driving gaming is almost a thing of the past and we need to see better games to resolve that issue. It does not matter how it goes, but at present only Sony and Nintendo remain great, Microsoft a lot less so and as such it will impact great gaming for Sony players down the line. 

As to how to fix this, I have no idea. Yet the thought does propel me forward and I Claudius is still a prime example of what makes a product great. The fact that it can stand against any drama produced almost 50 years later is proof of that, yet in that regard looking at the elements help us. The two elements that are the strong drivers here are the Script (the game story) and the environment. In that regard Bethesda is sitting pretty for now. Evenas there is no finality towards Hammerfell (2021), the signs are good and as I personally see it, it would also benefit my idea of TES: Restoration. It doesn’t change the premise, it merely makes it larger and the new consoles are ready for that, the fact that PC’s need to reserve 150GB for the new flight simulator confirms that and gamers do not care about that space, they will do a lot more to their budget to get the best out of games. Thousands of Elite Dangerous fans are evidence of that, they beat flight simulators fans almost two to one on hardware. Andforthese fans storage is an important element (another thing Microsoft never learned in 8 years). And the setting is not PS5 against Microsoft, it is old, stale and Microsoft lost. It is getting The Apple and Google Solution to par off beyond Nintendo. It is not an easy trip but it can be done and a few good games is all that is needed. Not games already released (Diablo 3 and Skyrim), but actual new IP that the others do not have, that makes any new great game 5 times the challenge for the existing consoles. And it can be done, in all this I refuse to discard Apple, when it comes to TV Shows, they are showing to give Netflix a run for their money, and if they can do it on TV, they can do it on gaming too. 

It is a wild west of digital format and both Google and Apple are on equal footing for now, yet the stage in 2022 is not known and cannot be set until the IP comes out for comparison. So all the junkies that are hardware driven will learn a very interesting lesson, the lesson that it was never about the hardware. The CBM64 people saw it, the PS1 and N64 people lived it and no one seems to catch on. It has always been about great games and as we see copies of great amiga games arrive on Android the decision makers are starting to wake up, yet they lost dozens of opportune IP that is now in the hands of those making a few dollars from microtransactions. It is the loss that we have seen over a year and the larger players are apparently not catching on, so where do the gamers stand?

Well, that remains to be seen. I Claudius was almost never a reality and so far has never been remade. The chance of equalling I Claudius is rare to say the least and surpassing it will be almost impossible. It is the impact of a near perfect TV series and games have had that same impact. On TV we saw other series making it good, even great and games can do that too. Will we see it? I have no idea, but if I can come up with 4 golden idea’s in a year there is no way that there is no one else doing that same thing. My biggest issue is that it is unlikely to be Ubisoft, it is more and more likely that several indie developers are sitting on that great idea and finding them by the right people is what counts towards the next console battle. As I personally (and speculatively) see it, someone (high up) at Microsoft will open their mouth making a needed jump to their precious Azure solution, making the game a no go, as such I am more and more curious on what Apple and Google pull off. They might have what it takes to become a member of the big 4, the question at this point will be, does Microsoft have what it takes to remain one of the big four in 2023. The game is open for a lot of players, yet will they have the software to make it count?

 

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April 26, 2020 · 05:00

What is the good place?

It’s Sunday, I am currently watching the original Planet of the Apes, it is one way to pass the time, just watch an actual classic. I have had an interesting day. With my mind on creativity, the series ‘the Good Place’ inspired me to a different miniseries. Consider a simple inventor, the man is a Civil Engineer, and he comes up with the bright notion of inventing a different kind of heavy metal filter, a way that is based on centrifugation. It is a simple yet novel idea, and he submits the idea and registers the patent. It is not a week later when he is suddenly invited for a meeting with an ‘interested party’, when he gets there he sees that the ‘interested parties’ involve a politician and a former employer. Before he knows what is happening, his patent is under attack, the politician and the former boss have sought legal assistance and they claim that the patent was stolen. In the end, after the court case they take 100% and he ends with nothing. Over time he learns that the judge was in on it, he had become a silent partner in the event that scores them $6,000,000,000 split 6 ways. 

This starts the plan where he starts to get even. The clock now jumps 12 years, the 6 are of course really happy, and during that event the social engineer walks in and shoots the entire party, the thieves their partners and 11 children. 

The next moment we see that they are in heaven, the 6 families are there, and they have large mansions, cherubs that take care of their needs and they are seemingly happy. It is at this point that the floor comes down from under them. The idea is that the civil engineer got away from hell somehow and is not wreaking havoc in heaven, yet in all this, heis focused on the 6 families, taking one child after another, all to be collected and placed on a cage of emonic thorns, making the children sign over their souls for their parents non prosecution of theft, all the kids agree and are dropped into hell, at that point the parents have to select heaven or hell, in the end only one accepts the exchange and jumps into hell with the key that will unshackle his child. 

That is as far as I got, the link to the good place is seen when in the end it shows that they were all in hell, the heaven impression was done in a deal between the head demon (Asmodeus) and the civil engineer to get his revenge. The deal was his soul freely given to teach the thieves a lesson. Yet the civil engineer has another part in all this, as the thieves sign over their allegiance towards their soul for the absolution of their crime, the second plan comes into effect. It will be his ticket out of hell. 

That is as far as I got, it took about an hour to think it through, there is a lot more, but I will not bore you with that part, not for as long as it is not properly scripted. 

This was my state of mind as the news hit me on the Coronavirus, the idea that the US has 52,000 deaths to the coronavirus, 25% of all global deaths, and they are now reopening (to some degree) their country, apart from a president making (sarcastic or not) some claim that the body can be cured from the coronavirus by applying detergent to it. In all this, we get the realisation that Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck Trump both seem to live at Pennsylvania Avenue 1600,it seems that Disney characters are getting a living upgrade. Not bad for a weekend, is it?

Yet the idea of making an iteration of the Good Place wasn’t my initial idea, yet I reckon is that this series has had its impact, yet my version is not a comedy, it is much darker, heaven almost exceptionally puritan, and hell is dark and fire red in aspects (I haven’t been there yet so my view on this place is still shaping. Yet if we agree that we are driven by the seven sins and the seven virtues, the trap we make for ourselves is that there is a lack of balance. If Chastity, Temperance, Charity, Diligence, Patience, Kindness and humility are on one side, what is on the other? Pride? Avarice? Envy? Wrath? Lust? Gluttony? Sloth? As I see it, they nullify one another, like a seesaw we are on the twisting point between sin and virtue, how can we chose the balance? If Lust and Chastity are on a seesaw and our setting is the axial, how can we select? Love is a combination of many facets, lust and chastity are part of it, but they do not stand alone and we are in a stage to keep the seesaw balanced. The issue is not lust or chastity, it is fear and greed. The US reopening their places (to some extent). In all this the numbers are screaming part of the idiocy (as I see it), all these nations, the EU at almost 750 million citizens. Then we get India, Asia and in all this, the registered deceased spans 25% of the world, that is the US. Reopening stores and trying to get back into the swing of things is a choice and perhaps it is the better one, I do not have the knowledge to debunk it, but the larger healthcare message is lockdown, there is wisdom in that too. Knowing what is best is not for me to say. I understand both sides and as we see Bloomberg giving us one side,the NPR rolls in another direction, like the seesaw, the axial of balance is in the middle, yet to what direction should we swing? The problem is that for most of us the balance point is influenced by fear and equally by greed. Greed might not be pronounced outspokenly by a lot of people, but greed is a reason we must address. Even as for most it will be about the ability to pay the bills, is it any less greed driven? We might all see greed as evil (I at times do that too), yet the need to survive is also laced with greed, the need we have to pay our bills, we call it differently, but it remains a form of greed and not all greed is pure evil. This reminds me of an original Star Trek episode, it was called ‘the Enemy within’, the realisation that the good Kirk and the evil Kirk need one another, if balance of ruthlessness and empathy is essential to make sensible decisions, we see another path that we all face. The more primal the drive,the more direct the balance between both elements is seen. We are at times driven to deny the negative emotions, yet the early lockdown the harsh decision (or logic) behind it might have lowered the curve for the US, we cannot tell for certain, it is too late now, but the fact remains, in a nation with 325 million people, out of a population of 8,000 whilst there are over 2.5 million of cases and the number of deceased in the USA represents 25% of all corona victims. The numbers seem to indicate that lowering the curve sooner would have been better, but I have always stated that there is more to this virus, and so far the US is still in a beginning stage, as such the 25% might be a low number for now and the bad side is that the reopening of the US in a week might signal a very negative situation. We can speculate on this until we are old and grey, but reality will show us what will be soon enough. 

We will all make up our own minds, some will blame 5G and burn down Wifi masts, some will blame the chinese (again) and come up with more matters to prosecute and in all this, the history of the other versions of corona are ignored, we can ask any cat, but they are seemingly merely the victims in all this. It seems that the bosses that mploy a lot of us are soon to be seen as good and bad, which will upset the curve a lot, but no matter how we look towards the future and where we look, we need to find a balance within ourselves and propagate that outwards, that is essential to create a balance within ourselves, because no matter how this all goes, there is every indication that the month may will see the first of several cycles of blaming the people around us. 

 

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April 21, 2020 · 01:27

Vote Ogre

Even I, on my best day can get duped, we all have it in ourselves to fall like a little guppie taking in hook line and sinker and then wiggle like today is the last day you ever do the macarena. I will not go to deep into details, for several reasons that have nothing to do with my ego, but I fell like a crackwhore falls for a brick of pure H. There is no denying it and there was no gold at the end of the rainbow. Even I, Mr Doubting Anyone can be gotten to. As such the fake coronavirus details out there, are the worst kind of details to follow and to belief (not that I do). In this there are always exceptions. In the first rely only on a real newspaper for the actual and factual events (like the Times, the Guardian, the LA Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe) the list is not super long but it is renowned. In all this the source matters. Yes, even in these forms some will ‘misrepresent’ the cases and elaborate on a percentage whilst the cases are abysmally small, but they will not lie, as such reading the entire article is important. In that same trend The presentation on the Covid virus by Governor Cuomo was exceptionally good. He was clear on issues and explaining the numbers. It is a 50 minute presentation, so it is long, but you see the goods. As such it is a little upsetting to see that it had 950 thumbs up and 1400 thumps down ratings. As such there is a chance that more and more people ignore the well brought news. The press conference was covered by several sources as such searching ‘Cuomo’ on YouTube will get you there. His view is important because New York represents 1/3rd of ALL US corona cases. New York has a massive population packed together and it is only a first indication of the issues that Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Houston could face and if the mobs are pushing to end lockdown, the worst is yet to come for the US. 

There is no guarantee where it hits, how it hits and how many it hits, but there is every chance that the greater cities will need the NY numbers when their deuce is up. 

We tend to go by the deceitful part of the numbers, on how the US is the largest place to get hit (and that is still true), yet the truth is that the US is half the size of the EU and they are at present in an abysmal place. Like the nations of Europe, the US states will have to stop everything for a much longer time and that realisation needs to set in,and it needs to set in fast. 

I could go into reverse psychology and tell them to continue the current path, because 2 dead full time workers in the US means that optionally one in the EU or Commonwealth is regained. I wonder if they ever saw it that way. They are all booing the 22 million jobs missing, but a lot of them are tems and hospitality. Consider what happens when the dead jobs of IT are replaced by EU jobs. The IT field is much more global, and these bosses mostly consider their bonus check, at present I have received 4 international offers, the move towards Europe is already starting by some. In a more greedy setting, as Google runs dry in the US, Huawei can buy my 5G IP, it is that simple. Big business pushed for mercenary tactics when it suited them, now they are not the choosing side and I go where the money is, they taught me that, and they had no problem with short changing loyalty when it suited them. 

There is a larger issue in play, even for the ‘pros’ like me, it becomes ever easier to mistake news and fake news, the difference is often no longer visible and the media when they hunted clicks and views are in part to blame, so when they cry ‘foul’ over fake news, whilst they opened that stream themselves is a little hypocrite, don’t you think?

And it gets to be a lot worse, the speeches from the White House are giving the indication that one elected official is more interesting in setting his ego to a good place, than consider the health and safety of his fellow Americans, I myself have a Republican side and I have never been so ashamed of anyone doing the acts we see, merely to look good whilst over 40,000 Americans are dead and a lot of them have not been buried yet, in addition, there is every indication that the total of non surviving American will double, optionally even triple. In addition to all this there are all the voices shouting on how we were not ready. It is true to some degree and to some degree governments all over the world will hide from the responsibility that these administrations and the ones before them had, yet what we all forget is that this situation has not happened since WW1. The Spanish flu would kill as some numbers give between 40 and 100 million people and in those days only the rich could afford to travel, nowadays we have been spreading the virus all over the planet, in that regard, the damage could end up being worse. Yes, medicines available are better now, but there is no vaccine, there is no real treatment, the strong will live, others will not, that is the short and sweet of it.

In all this, we need to realise that we either stand together or accept the loss of a neighbour, as such the protests in the US are completely out of whack. Will I be wrong? I truly hope so, but most of the factual information I rely on gives a much darker future. We need to change the mindset we have and tht is shown as we face the setting in India which is currently unknown, the numbers are incorrect and there is a much larger stagewhere we see that the Indian government has no idea what to do. They are smaller than the US having to deal with a population close to 600% of what the US has, consider the entire US packed like Manhattan and you get the idea just how uncontrollable that setting is. The Mumbai region alone is 55 million people and there is no way that this can be contained as soon as cases become visible. One will infect 25-50, as such the 12,000 cases stated cannot be correct, yet the setting is that there is no way to find all the infected, there are not enough resources in the EU to identify the cases that require treatment in India and as such the curve goes from bad to worse. In my mind there is also no way that the US is so far ahead of India in cases. It takes one person to travel from region to region (on a train) to end up infecting most of the train and we are shutting our eyes to that danger.

As such, when you see the optional troll stepping in and telling you that everything is safe, step back and vote Ogre! Do not believe him/her, and in that mindset, do not believe me either, find out what is true from factual sources like renowned newspapers (preferable not one owned by Rupert Murdoch).

 

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April 11, 2020 · 00:28

Creativity wins

It has been a hard 2 weeks, for most workaholics the entire shutdown issue is a little larger than normal, gaming or not. So to treat myself I decided to design a new TV series (we all have jobs), it did not turn out the way I expected it, yet it was still a win for me, as it enabled me to set a plan for 30,000 additional words to my novel which is at present (excluding the addition) at almost 57,000 words, so I feel that I am now beyond the 50% marker. To be honest it is an addition I actually did not see coming, and that’s the beauty of creativity, it takes you at times in unspoken directions. 

It is almost like a dream I had, which I cannot recall at this time. I wanted to remember it, but some dreams take a weird flight, they tend to delete themselves from memory, in the end it is still a win for creativity. 

There are more elements linking to all this, but for now, that is all I have to say about the elements involved. I had some notion to try and connect the initial idea on ‘How to kill a politician’, but that is a separate project, I saw that early on. Yet the lockdown is throwing my levels of creativity in overdrive and I am actually less happy about that. On one side I do not mind, but there I believe that there is a link between my creativity and the dreams/nightmares that follow the dose of creativity that I enjoy when I am awake. It seems to me that the brain can give in one direction, and after that gives in the other direction. It is a speculation, but it is based on a world, or a universe that seeks balance, a balance that is almost universal. Instead of the initial idea that I had that action in one direction,implies the need for inaction in another direction. Unlike a computer, the brain does not accept inactivity, it actively rejects it, which beckons me to consider whether I can direct activity in a direction. I know that I can to some degree, but I am not yet aware if this can be pushed to certain limits. There is plenty of  materials on this, but there is less available and less reliable information available to push the dreamer from a dreamer into a lucid dreamer. The benefit is real and direct, if we get control of our dreams we get to utilise the strongest computer ever built (the human brain) in other ways. Whether it is to complete another branch of my IP, another story or another idea, we need to complete it and these weeks are showing us all that the workaholics get another part to play, to push new boundaries in the fields we work in. I do not know if it can be done, but the idea is a larger push towards new ideas and that is an addictive push to face. 

The important part in all this is that this is not merely my journey, I believe that the entire Corona lockdown has a much larger impact. Others are facing a similar journey, the dreamers, the creators and the makers are facing a side they have not been pushed into to a much larger degree and this lockdown is pushing it to the surface. We have been running to keep up with the payments and bills we face and forgot to take time to ourselves. Inthe last two weeks we have had loads of time to ourselves and it seems to show to some people that there is a lot more in them. I would not be surprised that some bosses fave a new era, where their employees have surpassed them and are making the most of what they can o next. For me not much changes. I had set the stage where I can write, I can consider and I can design, That will continue, yet now there is an optional new field where the dreamers and designers at Microsoft, IBM, Apple, HP and a few other places will figure out that innovation is not what marketing says it is, but what the designer makes it. That might over time be good news and we might actually see more innovation, instead of iteration marketed as innovation, the difference is massive. 

The entire Corona event might have losers, yet there is at present a chance that there are also a fair amount of winners and that is the silver lining that no one saw coming.

  

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April 6, 2020 · 11:09

5G? Gesundheit!

OK, to be fair, I never saw this coming. In all this, even in the rage of panic and stupidity, I saw a deprived population that had left leave of its senses, the fact that they would abandon common sense even more than usual was a little bit of a surprise to me, so when I saw the news ‘false coronavirus 5G theory‘, I was actually dumbstruck for about 5.7 seconds.

Not merely the idea that some conspiracy theorists are loons under the best condition, but the fake news that is spreading in a few ways giving rise to the consideration that ‘5G is spreading the Coronavirus‘ is so ridiculous that the personal view of shooting idiots of that calibre before they have kids and create a situation that 2 generations believed that nonsense seems like almost the only option. So as I read “But content that is simply conspiratorial about 5G mobile communications networks, without mentioning coronavirus, is still allowed on the site. YouTube said those videos may be considered “borderline content” and subjected to suppression, including loss of advertising revenue and being removed from search results on the platform.” (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/05/youtube-to-suppress-content-spreading-coronavirus-5g-conspiracy-theory), I wonder just how stupid people have become in the week I was down and out. I myself have been outspoken and adamant that there is another factor propagating the Coronavirus, yet technology is not that path, it is within us and at some point the clever health people will find it and include us in these findings. 

There is another factor and the numbers (at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/) leave me with almost no doubt at all. almost 70,000 dead, and the age station gives us:

80+ years old 14.8%

70-79 years old 8.0%

60-69 years old 3.6%

50-59 years old 1.3%

40-49 years old 0.4%

30-39 years old 0.2%

20-29 years old 0.2%

10-19 years old 0.2%

Yet when we look at the numbers in Italy, Spain, Germany and France and set that against China (Wuhan) the calculation does not completely add up. In this situation I only took these nations as time is a known factor and these nations have enough cases to see a level of stability. Even as some hide behind “Experts say large elderly population, social behaviour and weak healthcare system have contributed to high fatalities“, I personally see it as some people hiding behind a shallow wall with almost zero protection, the numbers are not adding up!

For the math to work over 90% of all corona fatalities would have to be by the 80+ age group (in Italy and Spain) and we know that this is not the case. In other paths I see an option to giggle. In the Netherlands there is an old saying “1 gek kan meer vragen dan 20 wijzen kunnen beantwoorden” (1 fool can ask more than 20 wise men can answer), and YouTube is seemingly getting hit with this expression. There is almost no way to stop a crazy person with propogating stupidity. 

And the problem is not going away I reckon, as stupidity reigns, we see all kinds of forgiveness (they know not what they do) and we ourselves propagate that stupidity. No matter what happens, at some point these people get found and then they end up in court, they get a slap on the wrist and are let go. I reckon that this is the most likely scenario. In all this, I wonder how long we need to consider that path of reinforcing stupidity.

Yet in my mind, no matter how we all push the paths, how anyone would give rise to any notion that the flu was propagated by your mobile is just too insane to waste a second of time on, but that might just be me.

 

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