Category Archives: Science

October 2, 2019 · 12:20

Inspirational creativity

Today it is not the news that got me active; it was a TED video (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYemnKEKx0c). It was inspirational for a few reasons. In the first, I have had my exposure to Mental Health Law at UTS, best elective subject ever!

Anyway, the video gives an interesting view on the properties of Mental Health. Whether we look at this from the comedy perspective; whether we see it as an assessment of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, it does not actually matter. We can take it into several directions, the problem is the approach towards statistics and how we see people.

Jon Ronson gives an interesting view, but the issue behind this all is that we have pushed ourselves onto the list of being a member of at least one of the stated diagnosis of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Is that not interesting? Consider that close to 80% of the people optionally have mental disorders, 85% if you are in the UK.

How did I get there?

First we get to the group of people who are a sociopath, that group is well over 30%, one in three is a sociopath, I know, because I basically am one (of we accept the evidence).

Let’s go over the rules:

  • Doesn’t respect social norms or laws. Most gamers seemingly disrespect social norms, gamers are a separate group of people and they are often in niche places that are based on what games they play. In addition, workaholics ignore the social norms of a family life.
  • Lies, deceives others, uses false identities or nicknames, and uses others. Gamers are often deceptive, yet we need to see levels of deception, gamers use other players to gain a tactical advantage. Workaholics use nick names all the time to alleviate stress, often these nicknames are not disrespectful or intended to be disrespectful.
  • Doesn’t make any long-term plans. Workaholics live from deadline to deadline; as such gamers often do too, from gaming season to gaming season, as well as release dates to upgrade the pool of games they live by.
  • Shows aggressive or aggravated behaviour. OK, in this, virtual violence (NHL, Fortnite, Overwatch) does not count.
  • Doesn’t consider their own safety or the safety of others. A lot of workaholics are chasing deadlines and meetings; they always overbook their schedule and in addition to that, leave too late for every appointment trying to balance that by speeding and being a menace on the road. Oh and they always call their next appointment that they are stuck in traffic and they will be there in 5 minutes (whilst they are still 15 minutes away).
  • Doesn’t follow up on personal or professional responsibilities. Most workaholics ignore or pushes against personal responsibilities, even as they do whatever they can to meet and follow up on professional responsibilities, with a schedule that is overburdened by well over 15%, they fail there too with some regularity.
  • Doesn’t feel guilt or remorse. It is all about the job, there is no remorse when a target is to be met, there is no guilt when it is met and often thee is a lack of guilt when it is not met either.

As a dedicated workaholic (since 1979) I pass every test but one on the sociopath list, from all this we can state that EVERY workaholic is a sociopath. This is the first issue where we see that the balance of work and life styles is so thin, that line will get crossed on a daily basis. This economy and the work life style that some companies claim (and then set the stage that it can be met when all tasks have been completed) is a stage that warps, instigates and promotes mental health issues.

The plot thickens

You see, there is another revelation; it comes to us when we consider the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath. “There’s no clinical difference between a sociopath and a psychopath. These terms are both used to refer to people with ASPD. They’re often used interchangeably” and now we have created a stage of mayhem!

You see antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) is as I personally see it outdates issue, we see the setting “People with ASPD can’t understand others’ feelings” I do not disagree with the stage, I merely see that stage as a convoluted, overrated and optionally outdated one, social media is part of the live of almost all and it influences all our actions inside and outside the social media. How many people have been willing to ‘understand the feelings of a gamer‘, I have been a gamer since the very early 80’s (1983) and I never stopped being one, yet for decades (until late 90’s) women would ‘yuck’ at those who loved video games, these people were not cool, they were nerds and no one wanted to understand them, because cool people rub off on them making those socially cool people optionally no longer cool.

It was only after the PS2 and the Xbox that gamers were more and more accepted in the world. Now we see the issue when we consider a workaholic that is also a gamer (that still includes me), for us time is a precious commodity, for the social types, time is a measure of procrastination, you merely have to see Facebook, Snapchat and optionally Tinder to see where their priorities lie, and self-esteem with a dose of Ego feeding is more often than not the ingredients of their need.

Those people fill another void of the DSM, the Narcissistic personality disorder.

When we look at the elements we get:

  • Have an exaggerated sense of self-importance.
  • Have a sense of entitlement and require constant, excessive admiration.
  • Expect to be recognized as superior even without achievements that warrant it
  • Exaggerate achievements and talents
  • Be preoccupied with fantasies about success, power, brilliance, beauty or the perfect mate
  • Believe they are superior and can only associate with equally special people
  • Monopolize conversations and belittle or look down on people they perceive as inferior
  • Expect special favours and unquestioning compliance with their expectations
  • Take advantage of others to get what they want
  • Have an inability or unwillingness to recognize the needs and feelings of others
  • Be envious of others and believe others envy them
  • Behave in an arrogant or haughty manner, coming across as conceited, boastful and pretentious
  • Insist on having the best of everything — for instance, the best car or office

Here the colours change, the blue is directly seen in Facebook exchanges that a lot make, the problem here is that they are intent on feeding the urge to respond, feeding the interaction that are part of the Rules towards Social Media engagement. the greens are sometimes part of Facebook, yet too often these elements are merely trolling and cyber bullying issues, they are however optionally still part of the Narcissistic personality disorder, Red is a different issue, at times it is not an issue. It can be the sociopathic side in them waking up; it can also be due to unclear communication in social media. When the one word response ‘fine’ comes through, it could be positive, or perhaps sarcastic oppositional negativity, the problem is that this carries in the voice and not on the keyboard. To quote Big Bang theory, Dr Sheldon: “How can I be conceited when you cannot understand what I say?” He is true and he is truth, communication and comprehension requires a third step, the feedback of comprehension, that part where the bringer of the message sees that you comprehended the message; a step that is left null and void in the bulk of all social media used.

In all this there is also the issue with the DSM, 5th edition. I believe that people have evolved to some degree (whether positive or negative cannot be said), the stage of corporatocracy where it is all about the deadline, all about the next spreadsheet for commission and the next quarter. A created workforce of workaholics in an age where we see ‘work life balance‘ given out as a ‘mandate’ for a happy future, whilst the work pressures have not been dealt with, it is an unbalanced stage where people are more and more in doubt of what to do and in my experience the first group getting hit on that part are the families that these people are part of.

In an age where jobs become an issue, where job security is out of the window almost 24:7 in present day and as these issues become more and more visible, we see the added levels of depression added to the mix.

In all this, I mentioned ‘people have evolved to some degree‘ is the previous paragraph, well here it is, even as some claim to be social companies and socially responsible companies, their shareholders and board of directors are all about the bottom dollar, an environment that becomes corporatocratical more and more, the social markers are diminishing. they claim to have their ‘Friday afternoon drinks‘ or their social events once a month, yet these events are more and more about ‘heralding’ successes as a light on all others to become more successful. That is not some social event that is a directed pep talk to give the people something to think about on the weekend that precedes next Monday. It happens more and more and it is there that I invented the joke (which I love to tell every Friday afternoon): “Don’t worry, only another 62 hours and it will be Monday morning again!“, most people shiver, they get how short a weekend is, they merely never understood why they shivered, it was not about Monday morning, it was about the lack of true social family time that has gone more and more into the mists of forgetfulness and it saddens them to the core.

I believe that we will see more and more technological jumps which gives light to more commerce, more goals, more metrics and further isolation of individuals, as they are pushed and pushed into a stage of performance, making the bulk of your workforce an optional mental health case. Even as the Irish Times seemingly hides behind the quote ‘Employers are recognising the importance of supporting employees’ mental health‘, the underlying question is whether this is about work force retention, or actual mental health wellbeing in the workplace. For Europe this is to address “This is because right now almost one third of senior leaders cite finding talent as their most significant challenge” when you cannot find people hanging onto the ones you have is essential, yet the foundation of all this is not the workforce, not the pressures, as I see it the entire quality of life balance has been unhinged for the longest time of a decade and until that is addressed the issue that comes with ‘Why do I bother‘ cannot be maintained and these people are looking for every workaholic they can, those people go on regardless and that is fine with the talent seekers to a much larger degree.

There is no real short term solution and until the metrics reflect diminished work pressures, the situation merely escalated that part we see when HR presentations are set to a stage that no longer includes certain metrics.

When we see:

  1. Revenue per Employee.
  2. Cost per Hire.
  3. Employee Turnover.
  4. Overtime Percentage.
  6. Length of Service.
  7. Job Satisfaction Rate.

We see a problem that does not go away, even as we understand ‘Revenue per employee‘, there are scores where it was all about the team, where the first person properly informs a person and another sells the product as the person comes back gives a lack of understanding of the ‘browsing around’ customer, in a larger corporation there is a lack of comprehension where services and support are reasons why customers remain and buy again, not the salesperson, not even when he or she is selling in the nude. It is the services department that retains the customer and the business they bring. For the largest degree I have seen a lack of comprehension of that in senior management. As long as that issue remains there will be no resolution, especially when the sales people go to suave places for long weekends of training and booze and diners whilst services keep the business clear as they are away.

And in all of these stages, there has been an almost evangelistic absenteeism of the marketing department and their approach to ‘Inspirational creativity‘. For me it was the poster and the advertisement of Macquarie University, as they gave us all: ‘You to the power of us!‘

Did you ever realise just how brilliant that approach was? It is about inclusion where the approached person is at the centre of it all, how many advertisers were able to inspire you? You might not realise it but inspiration and enlightenment is the first sign that there is no mental health issue, because it is them driving you and it is you who engages that drive to a higher degree, we balance ourselves when someone else becomes the inspiration of us, not the work we need to do, but for us to excel what we were doing all along, at that point when we are there we retain ourselves and we contain ourselves to what we can inspire ourselves. I wonder how many companies have figured that out. I know that Google has been on the right track, but behind that metric is still the need to become accomplished as an increase, not as a state of awareness towards something better and in the second degree that is the track where the true innovations are found. It gave me 7 pieces of IP for 5G, two video games, one movie and an optional TV series (still working that out in my mind).

We can all be creative, yet to be inspirational requires something special and too many have not been able to push that, this is one of the reasons why Huawei is ruling the path of 5G and not anyone else. They all forgot to become inspirational creating their share of workaholics, psychopaths/sociopaths and narcissists, to them: “Welcome to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition”, did you have time to find on which page you belong?

 

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September 28, 2019 · 12:59

It’s been that long

I got alerted to a milestone yesterday on YouTube, you see, last week was the 25th anniversary of System Shock, one of my most beloved games from the past. I still remember the two moments that set the milestones for this game. The first was the PC Format by Future plc. About a month before the release, PC format included the entire first level of the game (medical level). So you got about an hour of gameplay into that game, a month later the game arrived and of course, I had to have that game on day one! I did and that started a tour of around a week getting through the game. Someone was nice enough to stream the game (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IzNzVAxk8E) the stream starts at 10:00. Even now, hearing the intro music still gives me the good shivers. For a game to do that is so rare, it is to some degree scary. I am still awaiting the remastered edition by NightDive Studios. It will be launched a little later than planned (2020) but on all the consoles, so I might get that happy feeling again on all my consoles.

This is the foundation of better than great gaming, the story, the emersion and the control. The game offered all three to a great degree. That part is also important as System Shock 2, a game that came 5 years later had almost all the same controls, the first game was the founding father of RPG games, and control was close to that perfect. Graphics did upgrade by a lot, yet the shock (for me) in this game that the game only sold 170,000 copies, not much for a game this perfect, as such I do hope that the remaster will hand out the multimillion copy achievement sold. When we look at PC Gamer we see: “System Shock smokes. It is the most fully immersive game world I have ever experienced“, as well as “no matter what kind of game you’re looking for, you’ll find something in System Shock to delight you“. Finishing with “unquestionably raises computer gaming to a new level” (at https://web.archive.org/web/20000309153138/http://www.pcgamer.com/reviews/1024.html), I gave the game a similar review and gave it a 95% score when I reviewed it.

From that moment on, I reviewed RPG games using System Shock as the minimum bar, as you might imagine not many games got to that level. It was also the first game where ‘leaning around corners‘ became an option in shooting games. As far as you see the stream and listening to the makers of the game, you get the part how this game became a trendsetter of excellence, even if they do not mention it, it was a labour of love and passion gets to be the deciding driver in any game towards excellence.

Depending on your age, consider the game that you would play again after 10, 20 and 25 years. What titles come to mind? In my view Elite Dangerous (after 35 years), Ultima 4 (after 35 years), System Shock (after 25 years), Ultima 7 (after 25 years), System Shock 2 (after 20 years), and the list goes on, but it is not a long list, games that are dipped in excellence are rare to say the least. Yet I am a gamer, a game junkie and like all other gamers I remain hopeful that another developer gets it right to the largest degree, Ubisoft did that with Assassins Creed 2 (and Brotherhood) then stuffed up to a much larger degree until Assassins Creed Origins was released. That is why the scrutiny of 93%+ games is so essential. Most gamers will take a turn in other direction if it gives them excellence, yet when they leave their comfort zone in gaming, excellence is the only marker that they will accept to make them do so. Games like Mass Effect 2, The Witcher 3, Grand Theft Auto V, Horizon Zero Dawn, all games that relied on near perfection; it is a stage that is seldom reached. And in all this the FX Slogan was key (for me it is) ‘The story is everything‘. Horizon Zero Dawn is perhaps the strongest example. In the beginning I enjoyed the game, yet it was the storyline after the proving that set the stage for me to continue and learn more and more. The origin story of Elisabeth Sobeck and Aloy is absolutely marvellous. Yes, I have seen the rants against the game, rants like ‘Giving up Horizon Zero Dawn‘ (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv_1DzGf_1s). His response ‘I just don’t find it interesting anymore‘. Yes, I do not agree, but it is his view, and his view is valid to him, just when we see this he is still not completing: ‘The War – Chief’s trail‘. Yet the best story parts were still coming up and the game takes it time getting into the story, it is important to show this, because you might have a different love for games, I love stealth games, games with an essential need for stealth, not everyone loves this, I get that. You have to realise that, I might not be the voice for you; I might have other loves in gaming. I was never a lover of GTA5, I admire it for its excellence, but it is not my game, it is however for millions of other gamers.

In this view it is important to find more voices until you find the reviewer that aligns with your fulfilment in gaming. It is easy to find good reviews and for many games a lot will have the same view, but in the 90%+ range you need to find the one voice that is on your level of gaming. It is easy to merely see that The Last of Us was a great game, pretty much everyone will agree, yet Dark Souls 3 and Bloodborne? I loved both games; I never got to complete them. With Bloodborne I actually stopped (after a dozen attempts), I still have the game as it shows excellence on many levels and the engine is sublime, but it is also an excellent example for ratings. I would give it 91%, yet others will give it 93%-95% and now we have the review issue. Are their reviews better? They might be, they might be better at playing this game, more important, they might highlight things I missed, because I was not great at this game. Graphics and engines are easy, the subtle parts defining Bloodborne (as well as Dark Souls 3) is another matter. And now you come into the mix thinking it was merely an 85% game as you did not like the game (which is fair enough), finding the right reviewer is important, more important, the one that aligns with your game play and this is where a game like System Shock differs. The game remained playable for a much larger audience. Now we accept that the gaming bar was not as high in 1994 as it is in 2014, yet playability had remained similar over 25 years, it is my view that Bloodborne is a great game, yet, to me, it is not as playable. That small distinction is important when you seek out buying a full priced game that totally rocks your world.

To me the story is a deciding factor, whilst play style is the most important second. That part is visible to many who remember Metroid Prime on GameCube; I still love that game as well. I never got beyond 98% completion, and I would love to play it again getting to 100%, that is because the game is extremely playable with a play style that is set to comfort. We might sneer at the graphic level (compared to the Xbox and Playstation2 in those days), yet Metroid Prime still delivered as an equal and better to anything the other two could offer. That part validates the 97% rating it received. Yet, if it is not your game, would you still regard it as high?

The question is important as System Shock did make that cut, even by those not loving the game style, they were all impressed with the game, it set a new bar of quality, Metroid Prime and Horizon Zero Dawn both did that as well.

And it is there where we see the stage for streaming games, for Apple Arcade, Google Stadia and thee we see the links. Apple Arcade shows smooth gaming, but not hi-res gaming. That is not an issue if you consider Metroid Prime, the lowest resolution of the three consoles delivered the best gaming experience of all. You can see this (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q73cHEAwKVw), I found the top 10 interesting, but not overwhelming, of course the number one is like some Zelda clone, with decent graphics, but not great graphics. There are 100 games announced yet there too I wonder if people are willing to pay $5 a month, $60 a year to do this, You can argue if you can find even 3 games you really like, then the money is well spent. So it is a decent idea, the issue I have with the stage is that the solution will be years two and later. However, in a family setting the game changes massively, the cost is per family (up to 5 players) as such $1 per person per month is just too good to pass up.
More important is the fact that the games look amazing on the iPad, so there is that to consider. My larger personal issue is long term. For me it is $8 month (Australia), as such in Australia it gets down to $100 a year. It has good games and the important dig is: no ads, unlimited access to 100+ new games rolling out later this year, as well as download for off-line playing are the catchers that will make people try this. Consider the initial $100 for the entire year, seems a lot, but playing 100 games for the price of one is still a game changer. I am assuming that you can only play for as long as you are a member, but we get the same on consoles, so that should not be the issue.

The arrival of Apple Arcade and Google Stadia is still important, but not for the reason you think. System Shock was important as the game was a true innovator in gaming. These new streaming services are set on a stage where the amounts of gamers imply the revenue for the makers. Even as marketing get you in the beginning, the bulk of gamers will push for games that are TRULY innovative and I have learned and seen that true innovation pushes the envelope of games in general. System Shock, Command and Conquer, Metal Gear Solid, Wolfenstein 3D, Gran Turismo, Warcraft 3, Minecraft, Tombraider, Diablo, Zelda – Ocarina of Time, Goldeneye, Super Mario 64, Half-Life, Doom. These are on a short list of the most innovative games in history and the most important part is that most of them started on systems lacking resources. Systems like the first PlayStation, the Nintendo 64 and the PC-Pentium One. Most mobiles and tablets now surpass what was possible even in those maxed out years. As such, innovation was always about imagination and I love the idea of streaming services as it pushes the need for innovation. I go back to System Shock one and two, yet some might remember Molyneux’s titanic achievement Black and White, a god video game. A game where you influence actions and not control all actions, when you realise that innovation is creation linked to imagination, we start considering the lack of resources required, not the max of resources. In this games and gamers are about finding the right note, the right chord that makes your heart sing. System Shock still does that to me 25 years later (OK, Elite Dangerous does it as well after 35 years).

I still play Blockheads by Dave Frampton after 6 years on my very first iPad, it is basically the only reason I still use my very first iPad for anything else but reading (until I get a new one). I got the game to deal with my Minecraft addiction when I was not at home and I never regretted getting it (oh, and I found the tablet edition of Minecraft not that playable), even today (last night actually) I still play Blockheads.

We might think that innovation fades, as it would over time, but I personally learned that innovation creates a captive audience regardless of time, it is a personal observation and you might not agree, but I also believe that this is the stepping stone for both Apple Arcade and Google Stadia. Consider the re-released consoles. CBM64 mini that gives us: Boulder Dash, Paradroid, Jumpman, Temple of Apshai Trilogy, Uridium, Impossible Mission (1+2), Winter Games and Summer Games II all games that could be upgraded and give a new audience the games they love to play. The CBM 64 brought so much innovation in games with only 64KB available; these games became the foundation for better games as systems upgraded (Atari ST and CBM Amiga). In this Nintendo with their 64 was pushing the envelope even further, Super Mario 64 is just one title, Goldeneye (named after the bond movie) set the bar so high that it was still the most desired game a decade later, even as the Wii relaunched the game, it ended up being inferior to the original, that is the level of excellence we lost out on and in this resources are not the issue, these are games that could easily be streamed and offer gaming perfection.

The list goes on and it would take too long, yet when we consider sources like My Abandonware and other sources (like Amiga Emulators) we see optional chests containing hundreds of titles that are ready to be remade and a lot of it has no IP protection, as such the best programmers can take the great vision and turn it into a cash maker through streaming. I reckon that is what both Google Stadia and Apple Arcade are hoping for, I am uncertain to see a winner at present, but the games that make it will be the deciding factor and even as the games on Apple are not great, they are still off to a good start, I myself hope that the historic database will inspire game makers, and this is a field where both genders can excel, you merely need to remember the name Danielle Bunten Berry (M.U.L.E. and Seven Cities of Gold) to realise that creativity was key, not gender. As such I do hope that we see both genders remain active, even as Danielle Bunten Berry left us in 1998, her games could stay around for much longer, that is the other part of innovation, it has no expiration date; it is almost timeless. If you doubt that, consider her games as well as those by Roberta Williams (King’s quest series). That is actually another part of gaming, there the playing field for genders is almost level as creativity not ego decides on the quality of the game.

As such it might have been that long, but in the end, the timeline was not long enough, I am willing to get into streaming to some degree (Assassins Creed Odyssey might get lag issues) but there are hundreds of games that will never have that issue and the list of games that will hit the spot is a lot larger than anyone ever considered, especially when a good idea (or a great idea) gets upgraded with innovations that were not available when a certain game came out.

Consider the game Command and conquer, optionally a game like Battle for Middle Earth, or even Dungeon Keeper 2. We have gone through those games and finished all the maps; now consider the issues you face when the maps are created procedural, would your strategy still hold up? That question impacts all three games. Often the strategy was in the map design, take that away and the challenge changes by a lot. I believe that ‘It has been that long‘ is a premise that does not really exist in gaming, I truly believe that System Shock will capture the hearts of new gamers, I believe that upgrading innovation that was will give life to other games, even games that were in the 80%-90% and upgrade them by an optional 15%, and be honest, what game maker would not love to be linked to making a 90%+ game? At present Ubisoft is seemingly proud of their 70% games (so are a few other makers mind you), so we can see the essential need of excellence in gaming, the question is who will bring it and with two new players (gaming providers) entering that field, answering those question becomes a lot more important as we (gamers in general) have had our fill of mediocre games.

Even now we see that as we still yearn for Elder Scrolls: Oblivion as well as Skyrim; I stated to Richard Garriott (the man behind the Ultima series) a while go, if we could get the Oblivion/Skyrim engine and create Sosaria to life, we would have a winner that could entice millions of gamers. Skyrim with over 30 million sold is clear evidence of that and the tales of Sosaria were founded on great story-lines and compelling interaction of personal choices and philosophical concepts. The entire Ultima line (story 4 and later) are all about eh seven virtues (Honesty, Justice, Honour, Sacrifice, Compassion, Spirituality and Humility), it would be the foundation of 6 games, each one surpassing the previous one and to see the evolution from isometric to first person would be the game changer for anyone who loved that story-line, in addition, the Elder Scrolls never did concepts to that degree, which is not their flaw, but it could be the strength of any new Ultima IP.

It is in that part where I see System Shock one and two, it was near perfect and it is still ready for a whole new generation of players. Especially when you consider that the original System Shock on floppy (yes there was a floppy version) was a mere 15Mb, and Metroid Prime on GameCube was less than 1.5Gb, whilst Goldeneye was a mere 64Mb, so as you can see size was never the deciding factor.

I believe that 2020 will be an interesting year for games and gamers. I believe that those relying on ridiculous large games and high resource requiring games (like a Core i9-9980XE) will find that their size issue gets thumbed by true playability and innovation setting the stage for much better games after that. Innovation remains a game changer for games and I wonder how much change we get to see in 2021-2022.

 

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September 27, 2019 · 12:28

Branding

An Apple original, a Netflix original, Stan presents and so on. This is the view I started this morning when the trailer ‘For All Mankind‘ hit the screens. The game has changed and the value of IP has gone through the roof, finding quality IP is going to take on a new level of interest. Not merely finding the IP, getting there first means something now, it is a new form of Armistice and it is a game designed for all the creative Masters of Art out there. Yes there is the anticipation of new hits and movies we want to see. We look forward to people like Nicholas Cage (Primal), and Robert de Niro (The Irishman). Yet it goes further than that, the amount of movies that are popping up with references to ‘Basically, How to Write a Netflix Original‘, we see new cash cows coming into existence. Yet the basic need is not to write the story, it is to have the idea in the first place. I can, at any given moment drum up a new story; I have been writing my blog for several years now, creating over 1200 articles. All the articles have news references and have references to events, but creation was key! And that is not the stage, the stage is not the Wall Street journal (at https://www.wsj.com/articles/with-chips-down-saudi-arabia-finds-little-goodwill-in-the-u-s-11569495606) giving us: ‘With Chips Down, Saudi Arabia Finds Little Goodwill in the U.S.‘, this is a given and required little creativity, yet the creative eye will spot beyond the quote “Two-thirds of Americans now have an unfavorable impression of Saudi Arabia, according to a Gallup Poll earlier this year, the highest percentage the survey group has ever recorded for the kingdom. It is higher now than it was after Sept. 11 attacks, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi“, it would be able to see that the anti-marketing machine that even included the United Nations (the essay by Agnès Callamard), where even with a lack of evidence the Saudi Arabian crown prince was painted as the guilty party, Eggy Calamari even gave us: “The killing of Mr Khashoggi thus constitutes an international crime over which other States should claim universal jurisdiction. I call on those States to take the necessary measures to establish their competence to exercise jurisdiction under international law over this crime of extrajudicial execution,” we cannot deny that the likelihood that the life of Jamal Khashoggi was ended in an unnatural way with a certainty approaching 100%, no one denies that, yet the who remains an issue and the reference “for which the State of Saudi Arabia is responsible” can only be made through circumstantial evidence (and it still remains dubious at that), whilst the use of that evidence leaves too many gaps, giving a clear failure as ‘beyond all reasonable doubt‘ is not met, yet in opposition these same state facilitating players have ignored actual evidence of Iranian actions of assaults and bombing of Saudi Arabian civilian targets. As such there is a creative engine in play and that engine is targeted at Saudi Arabia (the connections will make sense soon enough).

The actions by the UN to stop escalation with ‘US-Iran tensions escalate despite UN efforts‘, gives us the light that clearly produced evidence is ignored and shunned by the UN, giving us the stage that the discrimination of produced evidence is set aside, the western media to a larger extent has been accommodating to that, in the one case where the Washington Post could get a reprieve, even now when we see mere hours ago headlines like ‘Iranian president: US should end ‘maximum pressure’ policy‘ and ‘As tensions boil in the Persian Gulf, Iraq seeks to rein in Iran-aligned militias‘, we should notice that the Washington Post has gone to extremes to keep the mention of Saudi Arabia as a victim to an absolute minimum.

It is a new kind of branding, it is anti-branding. The western world is scared, too scared at present. First there was Huawei that has the hands on the largest bulk of 5G IP ever made, and it reduces several nations to an Intellectual property joke at best, the cream of all 5G patents is in the hands of Huawei (China), in this Reuters reported less than 12 hours ago ‘Huawei already producing 5G base stations without U.S. parts‘, more important, in 2020 that production line will be doubled, add to that that Norway is not siding with several EU nations not to block Huawei as a 5G solution has the US on the ropes, they are about to lose billions upon billions. It is the price of iterative complacency and it scares Wall Street. You might think that I switched topics, but I did not. There is a clear line.

As Saudi Arabia is more and more committed to build its Neom city, Huawei is now ready to implement their 5G solution and that pushes Saudi Arabia forward in ways never seen before. The academic consideration that Neom City will be on par with the latest Silicon Valley solutions has never been seen before and as that trail picks up speed, the IP consideration will be passed to other regions too, at that point IP firms registering their patents and Trademarks will rise in China and the Middle East even further, it is exactly the play I had in mind when I created my IP and even now I am looking at a golden parachute the size I never held possible ever before.

All this still reflects on the hindrance that pushes these technologies and there we see that Iran is becoming the larger problem in several fields. Even now, as we see projects grow, we also see the larger field that is fuelling this endeavour. The National gave us “Neom’s contribution to the kingdom’s GDP is projected to reach at least $100 billion by 2030” and that is a pessimistic view, as the 5G boundaries are met in Saudi Arabia, there will be a growing workforce trying to get their 5G apps on the ground as this could fuel millions in revenue for any app maker that makes it, and the most important part in this is the fact that being there first gives a lot more benefit for a longer amount of time. This path gained momentum as Huawei started to cater to 5G needs 6 months ago in both India and Pakistan, for Pakistan the middle East and in particular Saudi Arabia will give rise to more apps, better apps and stronger commerce; yet it is not merely in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates is also pushing for this boundary, as is Qatar. The experience in app making will spread form Pakistan further and further giving these entrepreneurs’ futures they themselves never thought possible under the stage of 4G and it makes them all hungry for success.

Creativity

It is there where creativity and needs interact. Whilst the arts are claiming a larger group to write idea’s for streaming TV, the creative engineers are pushing new telecom boundaries in 5G, setting a stage for a new kind of facilitation, one that is not limited to the iterative community, as they were trying to cater to the needs of guided anticipation, the innovators are going where iterative makers did not consider to look, 5 of my IP trains are on that track going decent for now, I still have a little more than 2 years to set the final stage, whilst the stage is curving to my desired needs more and more. That we see when IT Wire gave us ‘US seeks funds to remove Huawei, ZTE gear from rural providers‘ only 2 days ago.

As we see the quote: “Legislation supported by both sides of politics in the US seeks a sum of US$1 billion to help small and rural wireless providers replace equipment made by Chinese vendors Huawei Technology and ZTE Corporation“, we see a growing failure in the US. Don’t get me wrong, the US is allowed to do what it is, but instead of fuelling innovation forward, it is wasting $1,000,000,000 to remove rural equipment, whilst the supporting quote “helping small and rural wireless providers root-out suspect network equipment and replace it with more secure equipment” cannot be met with evidence on any level. Even the term ‘more secure equipment‘ is a grey remark open to interpretation, all equipment form 2018 onward will be more secure than the equipment that was installed in 2012, even with the latest updates this statement remains true, as this is the nature of the technology beast. What is adamant in all this that the lack of security in Huawei equipment was never proven other than one specific 2011 example, an issue that was apparently addressed and settled in 2013.

Even now, no espionage evidence by China was ever given in any way, shape or form. As I personally see it, this is all about economic foundations and progress and the non-Chinese solutions lack technology, innovation and quality to compete with China, now that the Middle East and Europe (to a larger degree) has allowed Huawei to get there, they will reap the benefits of it all, consider that over the next 5 years Neom city, block by block will be 5G ready whilst the longest changes in most parts of the world will be still upgrading, it will create a clear need for to use what is available and now we get to the union of both.

As we see the testing grounds of Saudi Arabia being there, the makers of streaming services will have a place to test and create 5G IP (or was that create and test). We have seen Hollywood, Bollywood and now there is a case to be made for Neomwood as well. If Saudi Arabia plays its cards right, there would be the stage for implementing and creating 5G streaming services and the creation of originals (to some extent) of TV series, shows and movies. People seem to forget that there are around 2 billion Muslims in the world, and the ability to cater to 25% of a global population, whilst the other creators have neglected this group offers a larger opportunity than most people realise.

Even as we accept the story of the 60’s where in the new production called for all mankind we see the stage and setting of the first woman on the moon, there is nothing stopping the Middle East of creating Islamic series that are about furthering their goals on the big screen and the little screen. The lack of actual quality TV in that regard (as far as I can tell) becomes more and more visible. There has been great controversy regarding the TV series Omar, I understand that thousands are stating that the show must be stopped because they believe such depictions are forbidden by Islam. Yet there are other ways to give light to Islam, to educate the non-Islamic community, and I believe that a larger stage could become apparent there. Also, the entire stage of soap series is seemingly ruled by Bab Al-Hara, a Syrian show by Bassam Al-Mulla that has been going on for 10 seasons, as I see TV watching people, they are never content with just one series and to be able to stream globally on 5G will be the larger need soon enough, owning the studios, production, IP and delivery will give whomever gets there first a much larger cut of the winnings and they can be huge, especially with 2 billion Muslims looking for more. I am still smirking (on the inside) to seek a way to make my idea: ‘How to assassinate a politician‘ a reality and optionally get it selected for Emmy and Oscar’s consideration (that is how I roll, never stop dreaming). In this, as I stated several times in the past, the slogan of FX (a filmmaker) is the best ever: ‘The story is everything‘, it is the holy grail that Apple, Stan, Netflix and all other streamers, as well as all other forms of medium are pursuing, it comes from creativity and as creativity overlaps from creation to technology we see a much larger shift in innovation, Whomever doubts that look at Big Brother and consider why it was a success. The overlap of technology, innovation and creation is a direct result of that is something that John de Mol Jr. saw immediately, it took a little while for me to catch on and it was an eye opener (I personally never liked the series, but I admired the approach of innovation and technology towards creation), now creation drives innovation and technology (as it should), yet I also accept that this interaction tends to be symbiotic and the direction of these streams can go in either direction making it the closest to a perpetual system, in this iteration will be the death of it and that is why I have been frantically against iterative designers.

In this, branding has been too much about iteration, Google and Huawei being the obvious exceptions, yet they are at present still the exceptions to that rule. I see that branding can be about innovation, but not the marketed innovation that Apple claims it is. Innovation as Heineken marketing shows it to be is a much better example, even as their product has not changed for the a longest time, their marketing has been on the edge of what is possible for over a decade, if we can keep creativity on that scale we have the making of long term success, no matter what field we move in, that is what the US fears, as innovation grows through Huawei, they see a dip that turns into a revenue canyon, the lack of forward momentum. Even now we see how economic momentum in the US is lost, whilst their IP investments are at an all-time high. If IP becomes the currency of a nation the UIS is indeed in a dire position and their stalling and delays of 5G will not help them, it is exactly in that part where we see the anti-Huawei weaves becoming a disaster for those embracing a non-Huawei solution. The fact that the hardware is not on par with Huawei is one part, the implied accusation ‘But Can They Scale Operations Timely‘ is a much bigger danger, as the markets evolve, scalability will be key and in that (for now) Huawei is far ahead of the others, making any non-Huawei advantage short lived, in addition to that part we see the earlier mentioned solution that Huawei is on the road improving and upgrading the base stations without US parts, when that one hits the US economy will take a much bigger hit, and as latency and delays add to the 5G part, those who want to be at the head of streaming will need to consider where they will be running from, as I see it there is a case to be made (to some degree) for Neomwood, when that happens, the revenue streams will change even further giving the US to live with the realisation that the entire Huawei war was the worst of all idea’s, especially when there were alternatives and especially as the security risks have never ever been proven.

I believe that due to data options there will be a larger change in trademarks in the next 5 years, also in that regard IP will decline in the US a lot more, as data is key, any delaying factor to 5G will have larger impacts over the next 24 months. Those who want to be ahead need to select what gets them there and not listen to fabricated fears and speculative events that have so far not been proven. As creativity shows, those who can dream the new stories, those who can consider the next idea will be catered to, because if the story is everything, the value of a poet and a writer outpaces the accountant by a lot. We can get all kinds of accountant a dime a dozen, yet how many poets are there? How many story writers and story tellers are out there who can spin a story that makes you sit down and relax? Consider what you watch on streaming services and what you are willing to pay for, now consider where the market is and you will see a large gap, a lag that was ignored for the longest of times. In 2020 alone we see a need to invest close to $50 billion, $6 billion by Apple alone for start-up; do you think that there is a higher need for a book keeper or someone who can create a story? As WarnerMedia buys back the old TV series Friends for $245 million, ready to spend $11 billion on content this year alone, how much are they willing to pay for an original idea?

Branding starts with a dream, or a thought that is actually original, how much originality could we find in the Islamic world that has ignored that path for decades? It is a path exploring, especially with 2 billion optional content customers. A path to a larger success that is currently written off through the fear mongering of governments and media needs, whilst there was not ever a need to do so; the facilitation of iteration pushed non solutions and whilst that happens, originality in content and technology will take a backseat to facilitate to the people who no longer should have any voice on the matter, their need to delay and slowdown innovation made it so.

 

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September 25, 2019 · 13:23

Mental health or Medication

We have seen the premise in a few stages in the last decade and for the most people lean towards one or the other and that is fine, it is a hard choice to make and there is no real evidence which of the two is better in the long run. Mental health needs treatment, medication is at times not a cure, merely a way to create a timeline for treatment, or to minimise the impact of the situation. Yet there is also a medial state that is not mental health based, for example treating people with cystic fibrosis who have two copies of the F508del mutation, for them there is Orkambi. Yet, what is the status when this involves a politician? How delusional is a public speaker allowed to become before he is considered unhealthy and unable to perform his function?

That question came up when the Guardian gave me ‘Labour pledges to break patents and offer latest drugs on NHS‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/24/labour-pledges-to-break-patents-and-offer-latest-drugs-on-nhs). So not only is he making claims, he is basically pronouncing war on the World Trade Organisation, abolishing the TRIPS agreement and throwing it all overboard. As we realise that the World Health Organisation gives us: “As of February 2005, 148 countries are Members of the WTO. In becoming Members of the WTO, countries undertake to adhere to the 18 specific agreements annexed to the Agreement establishing the WTO. They cannot choose to be party to some agreements but not others“, the UK and the EU are both signatories, so Jeremy Corbyn is stupid enough to set a stage of war that endangers millions. To give a little consideration to the metrics, we get the numbers on Cystic Fibrosis, not merely those with these two mutations (a specific subset), we see that more than 70,000 people worldwide are living with cystic fibrosis. Approximately 1,000 new cases of CF are diagnosed each year. More than 75 percent of people with CF are diagnosed by age 2. More than half of the CF population is age 18 or older. Now this is not a good thing, we admit, yet we are looking to a population that is less than 0.001% of the entire population, more important the people that need Orkambi are a mere subset of that. And for the UK it would linearly mean that it affects only 0.1% of the 0.001% that optionally have it. That is his ‘limelight’; can someone please kick this idiot out of the Labour party (preferably out of UK politics altogether)?

And in the second part, no political party has any business being in the pharmaceutical industry, there is a reason why industrials should never have any political power (well, we lost that one ages ago, but still). His voice giving us: ‘party will create company to make cheap versions of drugs‘, whilst the metrics give us that it will be a population less than a 100 that have this version of Cystic Fibrosis that is what he is fighting for? He cannot even properly represent his constituency and now he is starting patent wars as well as a war with the World Trade Organisation on abolishing or severely changing The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS)? Not only does it not make sense, the impact could be devastating for the UK. This is a person screaming ‘election’ and then spinning silent when it was offered.

It is my personal view that UK labour is better off getting the clown Ronald McDonald to do the Labour party bidding, and it will do a better job than Jeremy Corbyn ever could. His promises are no longer empty, they are now right-out dangerous.

Pharmaceuticals

There is a larger pharmaceutical issue and it has been going on for well over a decade, the issue that patents are reapplied well over 30 years after date, often in a slightly changed form, only barely passing the innovation line is the largest concern for generic medication, yet there are dozens of examples and Orkambi is nowhere near the top 10 in this. Lyrica (Pfizer), Rituxan (roche), Cialis (Eli Lilly), Xolair (Roche/Novartis), Restatis (Allergan) are 5 of the top 10 expiring patents with a value of a little over $16 billion in total, and those owners would like a little longer exclusivity, because the expiration will hit their bottom line in a real hard way. In that list Orkambi does not even stack up to any decent degree and we have larger issues gaining patents with a generic option and Corbyn’s need to make war with TRIPS, whilst the NHS has larger issues, especially as it was Labour who botched the NHS IT project losing £11 billion and small change to the degree of several millions is not one who should be casting voices on ending patents.

The sentiment is not wrong, but the chosen field is a little beyond stupid, making us wonder whether the man is personally dealing with mental health issues. We all have had that moment where we wanted to stand in front of Dwayne Johnson calling him Tinkerbell, not really wise, but we all have those inflated moments of self, to do what Jeremy Corbyn does worse hiding behind one 9 year old with: “Luis is denied the medicine he needs because its American manufacturer refuses to sell the drug to the NHS for an affordable price“, so this is not some Cystic Fibrosis case, this is a very specific case and the medication required many millions to create and pass FDA approval. A medication for CF patients with a rare mutation. With two specific mutations in a disease that knows more than 1,700 mutations that had been found in the CFTR gene. Orkambi works for patients with the F508del mutation in both copies the CFTR gene, the most common mutation in people with cystic fibrosis worldwide. So even if it is the most common, there are 1700 mutations meaning that his war on one medication to a specific subset that comes down to a lot less than 100 patients in the UK. So this idiot (read: Jeremy Corbyn) goes to war, promising to abolish TRIPS and leaving the WTO, all for a subset of people, too small to fill a village? Now consider that the UK has Pharmaceutical interests as well, the top two players in the UK are GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca representing almost £132 billion pounds, because if he does what he does, then those two will vacate as well, this is how stupid Jeremy Corbyn is, but he is hoping that you will not notice this as he is in feigned tears for one nine year old child. I only mentioned the top two, the field is larger than that, but Jeremy Corbyn is willing to throw it all in the air.

Can you please explain to me how the government budget will be met when two companies representing a taxable £100,000,000,000 leave the UK? This is the kind of short-sighted, BS carrying ventures that Jeremy Corbyn is handing its constituents. His claim is ‘In England about 5,000 young patients could benefit, but the NHS said it could not afford to pay the bill‘, if there are worldwide 70,000 Cystic Fibrosis (CF) patients the UK cannot have that many, the claim of “US drugs company Vertex priced Orkambi at over £100,000 per patient per year” might be true and for 100 patients that is still serious money, but we need to recognise that we cannot hand every working person a Ferrari, we do not have the money, and it is that extreme. We are in a position where until a patent ends, the maker gets to set the price, or not sell the product. In light of the numbers I see, I want Jeremy Corbyn to give us an exact list of these 5,000 patients and what medication they need. I reckon that the picture shifts a lot faster at that point. And we agree that larger changes are required, yet making a direct case to the WTO that patents cannot be extended above the 35 years is a lot better than abolishing the WTO. Yet Jeremy Corbyn has no options to do that, so he comes with a delusional plan to start a company that ‘create company to make cheap versions of drugs‘, whilst there are plenty of companies doing that, the case remains that patents hand exclusivity until they expire, this year 26 drugs are facing patent expiration and yet, Orkambi is not among them, but 26 patents will become generic, before 2022 42 patents will expire and that is good for a lot of people, yet this system is already in place, we do not need some delusional politician to add his need to become a rich pharmaceutical cat as well.

To be honest, I have never had such a low regard of UK Labour ever before, the fact that I have twice the regard towards LibDems than towards Labour at present is something I never thought possible in the age of Ed Miliband, whomever thought that Corbyn would be a worthy successor deserved the title ‘Joker of the Year‘, as I personally see it, it is actually that bad at present.

So whomever is happy that this optional mental health case is running the UK labour party is in desperate need of some medication (generic NHS funded options will be available).

 

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September 21, 2019 · 11:50

The first changes

We have arrived at the point of the first changes; the next 12 months will give a much larger view of the consumers and the changes that they are willing to accept. The Huawei P30 Pro is the beginning of this; at $1249 this choice is a lot cheaper than its competitor Samsung $1849 (a difference of 32.5%, whilst the Apple at $1999 will set you back an additional 37.5%, this adds up to a lot! Yet the price is not the issue, the fact that the Huawei now comes without YouTube, Google Maps and Gmail among other software, it also does not feature Google’s Play Store. It is an Android game changer; Huawei has pre-loaded new alternative apps of its own. It was the step we expected, the trade wars with China and the persecution of Huawei and the discrimination against Huawei was actually THAT stupid. Now that we are confronted with the changes we will see a new optional change. When an equal mobile is well over $500 cheaper we see the changes that matter. As the people get accustomed to other apps, apps that replace social media solutions we see a shift of consumers, I personally believe it will be a lager change. I do recommend that there will be an upgraded LinkedIn and a new Facebook available, yet there is a situation where the Asian population in Australia will embrace the Chinese solutions, there is in addition a larger need for affordable phones, so there will be a larger shift. Yes, most will hate being without Facebook, yet the credibility Facebook has lost in the past, the people might just keep these solutions on their laptop/Desktop. Yet there is already word that Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp would all be available via Huawei’s own store, called the Huawei App Gallery, so all is not lost, but the fact that Google will lose millions of people who will now go via the Huawei App Gallery is almost a given. The BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49754376) also gave us: “He added that the firm had set aside $1bn (£801m) to encourage developers to make their apps compatible, and said more than 45,000 apps had already integrated the firm’s technology. But he did not name any of them“, so $1,000,000,000 to corner a market and get a handle into the Chinese app user market. It will be found and it will create momentum. I changed my mobile less than a year ago, so I have no need to change for now, yet there is every indication that the upgrade to a new Android version will see me change as well and why would I not do that? Perhaps I am part of the population that thinks “Maybe they’re just trying to ride it out in the hope that they eventually get access to those Google services later“, I am most likely on that fence, however when I check the amount of options that I desperately want on my Mobile, I am limited to WordPress and LinkedIn, and they are not essential, merely a nice to have on my mobile. I can do either on a desktop. I am not alone, as thousands will shift from one side to the other month by month, Google will feel the pinch. Consider that there will be a close to immediate shift on YouTube metrics, implying that the Google Ads department will start requiring new metrics to keep their push going, we see a larger impact on Google, it will not be immediate, but it will be there and growing from the beginning, even as Google and the US will debate on how wrong the metrics are, they too realise that the American corporations will see the impact on their business, it will be visible and direct, merely because a war on greed by flaccid politicians and surpassed technologists was stated to be in denial.

The US did not to its homework, it neglected the choirs they have and are now pushing their losses on other markets. Even as we contemplate what the impact of “side-loading” Google’s apps onto the handsets and that phone store staff would advise customers how to do that. They are wondering how it would limit its impact as long as the usage impact remains close to 100%, when that falters a few times the consumers will be offered alternatives that are 100% and that is where we see the shift towards Chinese commerce.

Now that Huawei has been informed on my 5 parts of IP (hopefully bringing me decent funds too), there might be a larger shift as the issues in 5G cybersecurity and propagating 5G commerce is still lacking at least 3 elements, I feel that I will win in the long run. All the players that are behind ‘T-Mobile gets closer to launching nationwide 5G on low-band spectrum‘, I have seen that Sprint, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Telstra, as well as BT have not implemented certain parts and even what they designed lacks certain small business needs, as such I feel a lot more confident on my IP. They had 3 years to look at it and they have the same short minded and shallow approach to business ignoring the Small businesses (a little over 400 million of them) to the larger degree. All elements that were clearly visible moved from the 4G premise of ‘Wherever I am‘, to 5G ‘Whenever I want it‘, that failure alone gives Huawei an additional push. As the numbers rack up towards Huawei and Chinese innovation, we will see a larger change towards the business needs and so far none of the non-Chinese solutions have addressed these changes.

As the Chinese app user market explodes in activities between now and December 2020 we will see a larger shift. With Huawei market share at 19% and Oppo at 9.5%, we see a larger growth towards 5G, as Apple is now declining to 37%, we see that Apple in 5G will lose close to 15% all these parts matter, because it does more than increase the market share for Huawei, it actually gives China a larger option to grow in a few directions that it had no real option to grow in previously, the anti-Huawei steps were THAT stupid and now we start seeing the impact. The only way to stop this is for American brands to start offering their phones at the same price as Huawei is. And that is how we see it, Google took that step and offered the Pixel 3XL at a mere 16% extra and that might be a reason to switch to Google, but in the end the others are now pushing themselves out of the race quicker and quicker.

There is a larger need to consider, as the US is getting its thanksgiving and as we are all facing Christmas (and the Dutch will get Saint Nicholas as well) the consumers will have a limited option, yet an essential need to tickle themselves, when you consider that place, would you accept the $1249 that gives you what you need, or would you spend 37.5% for what others market you towards your needs? When you realise that the essentials can be done on the smaller budget, in a time when budgets are still tight and the dangers of recession remains, can you really afford to spend those hundreds of dollars more?

The bulk of the people I know cannot afford them, they often will accept a more expensive contract, yet in the stage when 5G is about to come, would you really want to tie yourself down? And when all the small business owners realise that the current stage will hurt their business for 2-3 years, would they really want to take that chance when the commerce slice is the one everyone wants, at that point can they tie themselves down?

The first changes are here, but they also signal larger changes towards a stage where commerce will be the deciding factor and the bulk of them merely looked at their needs to sell, they to a much larger degree forget to consider what their consumers needed in the 5G environment, that failure will rear its ugly head soon enough, as I see it, Huawei is finding themselves ready for that shift. In the end that is the third stage of innovation that lazy Americans ignored, I wonder how much that will cost them this time around. As I personally see it, 400 million small business owners was too large a group to leave in the cauldron of non-decisions, yet that is exactly what they did in Europe and the US.

Forbes

So as Forbes gives us ‘Shock New Google Warning For Anyone Buying Huawei Mate 30‘, we see how the writer Zak Doffman gives us (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/09/20/shock-new-google-warning-for-anyone-buying-huawei-mate-30) “Despite impressive hardware innovation, the media write-ups went straight to the lack of full-fat Android, the lack of YouTube and Gmail and Google Maps, the lack of the Play Store” which opposes the BBC, who did give clear mention and as implied so did Huawei. So there we are, already we see issues with the media bringers. After that we see the barricade “24-hours post launch, the reality of the Mate 30 is firming up. It seems highly unlikely there is any Google workaround” yet the reality is that these users get a first glimpse that it is possible to be without Google on their mobile, we do not have to get bothered every minute on news we did not need. In addition with a functional browser we still get what we need, we just will not get it via an app (for now), and believe me when the numbers start slashing into the Google needs, they will want a workaround as desperately as possible. The writer even ends with: “And so for any of you enamoured with the Mate 30 hardware who can live without Google for an unknown amount of time, maybe this is a risk worth taking” which is at the heart of the matter, not the heart we choose and not the one Google choice, because when the numbers start proving that there is real life after google, those numbers will give growth to an exponential growth of people accepting Chinese apps and accepting non-Google solutions. I feel certain that it will happen, merely because the browser is still going to be there and it will show that there is a larger need in people, even if it is to show that the want to prove that dependency on Facebook and Google is a solution, even if it is a mere point of ego, they want to prove that they are not the slave of their mobile. That alone will be a driving factor as well.

No matter how we slice it, within the next 12 months we will see an almost polarised population, those who want the best and fastest and those who need some Google solution, both will have their own validity and merits, yet in the end as small business owners see that Huawei 5G solutions can cater to both, they get to win and that is the real victory, soon thereafter the US will change the blacklist, the moment that there is a clear invoice to the losses and Google will hold the US government accountable to these tax deductible losses, at that point will we see a strong push to find some middle ground, the US will have to give is with every additional billion dollar loss and market shift towards China. They basically have no options left, their inability to deal with Iran is one view, their inability to deal with Syria is a second stage of evidence, and within the next 12 months we will get several other pieces of evidence get released to the larger audience. And that is not the end of it, as the cases regarding Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Purdue Pharma, OrbCare, Insys Therapeutics Inc and their bankruptcy issues are rising, they matter to the regard that the US government is seeing the pinch from 3 directions at present, and that is only whilst California is able to keep its head above the waterline. All these impact are also the impact on 5G propagation, installation and implementation. When you doubt that, consider the Government tech source hat gave us “5G won’t roll out to much of Southern California for a few more years, but companies such as Verizon and AT&T are beginning to install the necessary infrastructure, including those small cells pole by pole, across the region” last April, the fires and other calamities only made things harder, so whilst we see the FCC stepping in, we only see more hindrance for these people, not less and that is the impacting issue from Pasadena to Huntington Beach, and that is only the most visible one. The infrastructure is getting a second hit as we are shown that “the Federal Communications Commission is now restricting how much cities can charge the companies to install equipment: $500 for up to five cells, $100 a cell after that and a $270 annual access fee for each cell“, it is a loaded issue no matter how you slice it and whilst they are trying to figure out how to resolve it, the truth of the matter is that Huawei had this issue solved already and that is how California (and other states) end up getting limited 5G for 2-3 years, all whilst the Huawei case is growing more and more outside of the USA. It is a situation where the technology is not up to scrap and the diminished amount of funds available allows for no alternatives either; now add to this the consumers shifting to some degree away from Google who relies on Google Ads more and more and a near perfect storm is created, a storm that slams the US and gives growth upon growth to China and Chinese interests.

As the EU is accepting Huawei and as Huawei is now embracing a shift towards cloud systems, and as it grows the needs, and sets the growing stage towards 21Vianet, we see a much larger shift and in all this, the first changes brought a push in directions we never considered before. It was only a day ago when Microsoft President Brad Smith requested that the United States should end its blacklisting of Chinese giant Huawei Technologies, we might not realise it, yet the changes allowed for Huawei to look into a partnership with 21Vianet, which will directly impede Microsoft Azure business that is not in Chinese hands (outside of China), in this stage 21Vianet will have a direct option to offer services to European players, as it will not be their solution, but a Huawei solutions and the group of small businesses that are in Europe (a nice slice of 400 million companies) they too will select ‘the other’ Chinese solution. All instigated by a Huawei war that was not based on facts or on reality, it was to address the need of greed and now that it bites back, the US will find itself at the dinner table where only humble pie is to be served. When they buckle (and they will) the shift becomes larger and faster, because at that point the consumers will have the additional questions that will be met with denial on every level conceivable.

Huawei would need to do one additional thing to make that wave a lot larger, I wonder if they will do just that before the end of this year.

 

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September 20, 2019 · 11:48

Tethered to the bottom of the ocean

Perhaps you remember a 1997 movie, about a ship that decided to take a fast trip to America, the HMS Titanic. We all have our moments and what you might not know is that there is a deleted scene that only a few limited editions had. The captain (played by Bernard Hill) was asked a question by one of the passengers: ‘Is land far away?‘ The response was: ‘No, it is only 3900 yards to the nearest land………straight down‘. OK, that did not really happen, but it does sound funny. You see, the image of a place can be anything we need it to be, dimensionality is everything and that is where we see the larger problem.

This is actually directly linked to the article I wrote on September 18th, the article ‘The Lie of AI‘ gets another chapter, one that I actually saw coming, the factors at least, but not to the degree the Guardian exposes. In the article (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/09/18/the-lie-of-ai/) I gave you: “more importantly it will be performing for the wrong reasons on wrong data making the learning process faulty and flawed to a larger degree“, now we see (at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/sep/19/thousands-of-reports-inaccurately-recorded-by-police) a mere 8 hours ago ‘Thousands of rape reports inaccurately recorded by police‘, so we are not talking about a few wrong reports, because that will always happen, no we are talking about THOUSANDS of reports that lack almost every level of accuracy. When we consider the hornets’ nest the Guardian gives us with: “Thousands of reports of rape allegations have been inaccurately recorded by the police over the past three years and in some cases never appeared in official figures” Sajid Javid is now facing more than a tough crowd, there is now the implied level of stupid regarding technology pushes whilst the foundations of what is required cannot be met and yes, I know that he is the Chancellor of the Exchequer. It is not that simple, the simplicity is not seen in the quote: “More than one in 10 audited rape reports were found to be incorrect“, the underlying data is therefore more than unreliable; it basically has become useless. this is a larger IT problem, it is not merely that the police cannot do its job, anything linked to this was wrongfully examined, optionally innocent people were investigated (which is not the worst part), the worst part is that the police force has a resource issue and there is now the consideration that the lack of resources have also been going in the wrong direction. The failing becomes a larger issue when we see: “The data also found that a number of forces failed to improve in subsequent inspections, with some getting worse“, the failing pushed on from operational to systemic. Now consider IT, the laughingly hilarious step of AI, even the upgrades to existing systems that cannot be met in any way because the data is flawed on several levels. It is a larger issue that out of the national police force in this regard only Cumbria, Sussex and Staffordshire past the bar, a mere 3 out of 36 forces did their job (above a certain level) and it gets worse when you consider that this is merely the investigations into the sexual assault section, the matter could actually be a lot worse. Consider the Guardian article in July ‘Police trials of facial recognition backed by home secretary‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/jul/12/police-trials-facial-recognition-home-secretary-sajid-javid-technology-human-rights), as well as ‘UK police use of facial recognition technology a failure, says report‘ from May 2018 (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/may/15/uk-police-use-of-facial-recognition-technology-failure), you might not have made the link, but I certainly did. When you take the quote: “Police attempts to use cameras linked to databases to recognise people from their face are failing, with the wrong person picked out nine times out 10, a report claims“, now consider that a  victim reported the assault on her, a report is made and at some point the evidence is regarded and looked over, the information is linked to CCTV data and now we are off to the races, whilst 3 out of 36 forces did it right, there is now a stage where 91% is looking at the wrong information, inaccurate information and add to that the danger of 10% getting properly identified, even if the right person was picked out, there is still a well over 75% chance that the investigation is going in the wrong direction and optionally an innocent person gets investigated and screened, in the meantime the criminal is safe to do what he wanted all along.

Now we get the good stuff, in 2018 home secretary, Sajid Javid gave his approval and now as he is the Chancellor of the Exchequer, he approves the invoice and also sets the stage of handing out £30 million to a system that cannot function in a system that is based on cogs that were not accurate and are transposing the wrong data. Even then we see “the BBC reported that Javid supported the trials at the launch of computer technology aimed at helping police fight online child abuse“, a system this inaccurate, not merely because of its flawed technology is set in a stage where the offered data is not accurate either, this simply implies that until the systemic failure is fixed the new system can never function and it will take well over a year to fix the systemic failure. So tell me, what do you normally do to a person who is knowingly and willingly handing over £30 million to a plan that has no chance of success?

We need to stop politicians from wasting this level of resources and funds merely to look good in the eyes of big business. I also feel that it is appropriate that Sajid Javid will be held personally accountable for spending funds that would never be deployed correctly.

The reasoning here is seen in the quote “Recorded rape has more than doubled since 2013-14 to 58,657 cases in 2018-19. However, police are referring fewer cases for prosecution and the CPS is charging, prosecuting and winning fewer cases. The number of cases resulting in a conviction is lower than it was more than a decade ago“, the stage is twofold, we see a doubling over 5 years whilst convictions were down from more than a decade ago, it will in the end link to conviction rate on data, whilst the data numbers are not reliable. The quotes “the case was not recorded as a crime“, as well as “noting it as an incident“, in both cases rape registered as something else, and there is no conviction required on ‘incident‘, the underlying questions is whether this lack is optionally intentional to skew that statistics. You might not agree and it might not be true, but when we see a 91% failing from the police force there is something really wrong. The problem intensifies when we see the Guardian statement that “West Midlands was found to be ‘of concern’ and had ‘not improved’ rape recording upon re-inspection in 2018” this implies that the work of the Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) is either not taken seriously or is intentionally ignored, you tell me which of the two it is and connected to this is Sajid Javid ready to ‘upgrade’ to AI (that remains funny) and spend over £30 million on that system, as well as the funds wasted on the current CCTV facial recognition solution, which is not cheap either.

I wonder who the CCTV will point to arrest for the person allegedly having sex on the desk of the Terry Walker, Lord Mayor of North East Lincolnshire. Images show that the local police might be seeing Noel Gallagher as a person of interest at present.

I wonder how that data was acquired?

In opposition

There is however the other side and even a I did not give it the illumination, there was no intent to ignore it. The options to ‘AI to reduce the burden on child abuse Investigators‘ is not to be ignored, it must be the task that will burn out a person a lot faster than they would transporting bottles of nitro-glycerin by hand through a busy marketplace. I am not insensitive to this, yet the Police Professional gives us: “The development will cost £1.76 million from a total investment in the CAID from the Home Office of £8.2 million this year“, which is different from the £30 million given, as I see it additional questions come to the foreground now. Yet there are other issues that are not part of this. There is the danger of misreading (and incorrectly acting on) seeded data. In SIGINT we see the part where data fields are used to misrepresent information (like Camera model, owner, serial number), when we start looking in the wrong direction, even if some of the data might be correct you are in a different -phase and the problem is that no AI can tell you that a camera serial number might be wrong, or right. There are larger data concerns, yet I do understand that some tasks can alleviate stress from the police, yet when we link this to the lack of accuracy on police data, the task remains equal to mopping the floor whilst the tap is running spilling water on the floor. None of these steps make sense until the operational procedures are cleared, tested and upgraded. A failing rate of 91% (33 out of 36) makes that an absolute given.

And for those who missed the Gallagher joke, please feel free to watch the movie the Grimsby brothers. There are actually two additional paths that are an issue, it is not about presentation, it is about the interpretation, as well as the insight of sliced data, they interact and as such a lot of metrics will go wrong and remain incorrect and inaccurate for some time to come. Data will get interpreted and optionally acted on, which becomes a non-option when accuracy is below a certain value. So feel free to be anchored to the ground in the approach to data surveillance employing AI (I am still laughing about that part), yet when you are tethered to the bottom of the ocean, how will you get a moment to catch your breath?

Precisely, you won’t!

 

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September 19, 2019 · 12:06

What if they redid it?

I got lucky last week. I stumbled upon Cash converters with a Mass Effect Andromeda (for Xbox One) for $2, even as I had the PS4 edition, replaying it for $2 was just too nice to pass up. There was another reason to not get it for any more than that. I was hugely disappointed with the game. The makers were holding a huge pastry in front of us, only to offer a mere outdated carrot in the end. Still, the graphics were nice, the game remains flawed on several levels and the goals are for the most too linear.

It was at that moment that my mind redesigned the game again (I did that exercise after I finished the PS4 edition). And I wondered about the one question that needed answering. What if I created Mass Effect Andromeda 2 (MEA2), whilst upgrading the first game from a 72% game to a 91% game or better, would you replay it?

In this stage the game would be 3 discs with the first game (mostly), the second disc would be the Nexus and the third disc would be the second game called Mass Effect Andromeda: Debellatio.

First off, the first game would end up being twice the size, the entire memory segments part would be on the Hyperion alone, the Hyperion would be roughly 20 times the current version, whilst the playable part of the Nexus is 10 times larger and the view makes it 200 times the size. The missions of the first game would remain (there would be more of them) and the story would be amped up to give a larger storyline to the Kett, the scourge as well as the Angara. The question is: Would you seriously consider playing it again?

I believe that this could work. The game would be massive on the consoles (200GB), yet the stage created would give close to 200 hours of gameplay. The original touched on great topics and then let them simmer, which was a waste on a few levels. Still, there is really good material to work with and if the maps are enlarged by well over 50% it becomes more of an exploration. We could also fix the flaws in the first version by making the second tier (after the vault is restarted) a lot more challenging and rewarding. The mining part required upgrades, so that there is a direct link in building the nexus and completing it linking it to the resources found and mined. These are all elements that add to the game and add requirements to the need of exploration.

Lastly, the arks, all 4 (with an optional 5th) will be found by the end of the second game, making it part of the main storyline and not some DLC. Consider these elements and ask yourself, would you buy a game at $160 that offers all that? I believe it would, especially when the multiplayer part is upgraded to a Mass Effect 3 level. It could be a new wave of multiplayer hungry admirers, it will of course come with the guarantee that I get to cut off the head of any EA executive that messes with that concept or forces the buying of loot boxes, the Mass Effect 3 formula was utterly perfect, so let’s not ever mess with that again.

It took a mere hour to consider the steps that could get this game from 71% to 91%, and I get it, there are budgets to consider. The question becomes what does an EA executive see as the difference of a budget toward a 70% game versus the one delivering a 90%+ game? I wonder if they can really set a number to that. Consider that the first version was staged by a budget of C$100 million, which included marketing and research costs, whilst I designed in my mind improvements over a mere cappuccino. There is a benefit of having been a part of gaming since 1985, and I believe that I know what pushes a decent game to a great game. If the EA/BioWare executives make that claim, I wonder why they failed the first time, whilst they had 3 examples in front of them and they owned the IP of it.

Even as Forbes gave us in 2017 ‘EA Is Now Singing Mass Effect Andromeda’s Praises As A Revenue Driver‘, yes it is true, but the bulk of all these were people who had played the previous games and hoped for a glimmer of greatness. And a revenue driver sounds nice, but if it cannot be repeated it becomes lost IP, and who ever won a war by losing its IP?

The important part was that the combat part did not suck, it was a good combat system and that is at the core of the success that was and the greatness it could be. There is also a business case to be made, as Anthem is seen as a failure by more and more, we need to recognise that EA desperately needs a win, one that will allow them to be regarded as an AAA developer. The news ‘BioWare Loses Lead Producers for Both Dragon Age 4 and Anthem‘ that got out two weeks ago supports the placement that Bioware (EA as well) are no longer the high end developers they used to be. It is about business and profit at the expense of gaming, a disastrous formula well beyond twice over. I would go as far as stating that until these two players do not learn that lesson, they have lost their ability as an actual game maker.

The fact that there are options for both EA and Bioware is merely a stroke of luck on their part, hugely due to the previous designers who did do an excellent job, even now, one generation later Mass Effect 2 is still seen as one of the best games ever to grace the Xbox 360, moreover, the Xbox One has only produced games that equalled it, optionally with the exception of Assassins Creed Origin, a game that did break all the records.

And even now when we realise that a few months ago we got ‘EA ‘learned a lot’ from Anthem but doesn’t apologize‘ gives us the larger stage, we don’t need their apology, we need them to make an actual game (if they still can, and sport games do not count).

Yet the premise remains, what if the first MEA is added to the second and upgraded, would you pay for it, and would you play it? I personally believe it to be the case, especially when you realise the amount of times the first two games were played to be a nice and a naughty Shepard, optionally 4 times if you wanted to do it all for the ‘he’ as well as the ‘she’ version of the game. The groundwork was decent, but too largely unfinished and the amount of stages where the game failed on a few levels was just mind boggling, Mass Effect 3 had a few of these issues, but not as much, and they were less irritating I might add.

Why?

All gamers (including me) we yearn for the high of really good gaming and we want that feeling again and again. It is not just the sound of the achievement; the feeling of getting to the end of the game; and not to forget the entire journey to get to the end. We will go through great lengths to get that feeling again and again, hence the power of the Franchise, even after 5 partial failures, AC Origin made up for that and for the most we feel really happy that we got to that point. Ubisoft has seen this personally, EA might say that they learned, but it is still unlikely that they actually did. For the most EA became a pool of business graduates and there is nothing against that group, yet the business is gaming and not spreadsheets. You might want to keep it for your numbers, yet profit is no valid KPI of joy, the KPI of joy is excellence, it always was joy, Elder Scrolls, Ultima, Fallout, Dark Souls, Witcher, and God of War, not to forget the latest new RPG franchise Horizon Zero Dawn. They all know that excellence is what keeps you in profit, EA (optionally Bioware) forgot about that part and now they are bleeding, the amount of damage cannot be seen, it can only be seen in how they survive and whilst they think that profit and margins are the most important, these two players will miss the ball again and again. This is such a shame because before 2016 the Mass Effect franchise was a great achievement, the question becomes are the makers ready to fight for greatness?

Gamers care for that and even as we realise that others are vying for our attention and our allegiance, they now see that the time of options like Anthem is transient at best, the fact that gamers are willing to pay full price for a well-made remaster of the original three, even now after 10 years is the part that matters. You either rely on old games for a little while or you up the ante. It is at Ubisoft where we see that optionally become reality, even now, as far as we can tell, they went all out on Watchdogs 3: Legion and so far all the response is raving, and the fan club of those wanting to play it in the first hour is still growing non-stop, even after its initial view several months ago. Watchdogs had a speckled past, but they upped their game in the second game and it seems that now, in the third game they up it all in a very different and very novel way, the path a gamer did not see coming, the most enticing drug of all, the surprise path, EA and Bioware should learn from that.

It is important to learn and important to up the game because serious games do that and they are up against a larger community of games, games that will include Cyberpunk 2077, God of War 5, an optional Horizon Zero Dawn 2, Watchdogs 3, all games that have (seemingly) upped gaming and both EA and Bioware will be up against it. If they are to be considered an AAA developer they have to equal and surpass that opposition, a lesson that business graduates often did not learn, it might mirror the US stupidity in the Middle East, it is based on the American standard of ‘Money talks, Bullshit walks‘ it is there that the middle east policy failure shows it for what it is. It is the same in gaming, you need to flaunt it, but to do that, you have got to have it, there is no other way and business graduates are too often of the path: ‘Fake it till you make it‘, it merely keeps you afloat in an ocean of gamers, all well versed swimmers mind you.

I have seen excellence in gaming since 1984, I can recognise it almost instantly and it is not linked to micro transactions. I saw the excellence of Elite on a CBM64 in 1985, is still lives today as Elite Dangerous, 30 years later it creates a large following of over 4 million gamers, not a bad result. There were more games and there are even games that are successes and I missed them, I cannot be everywhere. Yet I have never failed to spot good games and I have seen the path to improve bad games several times. I believe that the Mass Effect Andromeda franchise could be resurrected as a great game; I wonder how far Bioware and EA are willing to go to make that happen.

 

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September 18, 2019 · 11:06

The Lie of AI

The UK home office has just announced plans to protect paedophiles for well over a decade and they are paying millions to make it happen. Are you offended yet? You should be. The article (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/17/home-office-artificial-intelligence-ai-dark-web-child-sexual-exploitation) is giving you that, yet you do not realise that they are doing that. The first part is ‘Money will go towards testing tools including voice analysis on child abuse image database‘, the second part is “Artificial intelligence could be used to help catch paedophiles operating on the dark web, the Home Office has announced” these two are the guiding part in this, and you did not even know it. To be able to understand this there are two parts. The first is an excellent article in the Verge (at https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/28/18197520/ai-artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-computational-science), the second part is: ‘AI does not exist!‘

Important fact is that AI will become a reality at some point, in perhaps a decade, yet the two elements making AI essential have not been completed. The first is quantum computing, IBM is working on it, and they admit: “For problems above a certain size and complexity, we don’t have enough computational power on Earth to tackle them.” This is true enough and fair enough. They also give us: “it was only a few decades ago that quantum computing was a purely theoretical subject“. Two years ago (yes only two years ago) IBM gives us a new state, a new stage in quantum computing where we see a “necessary brick in the foundation of quantum computing. The formula stands apart because unlike Shor’s algorithm, it proves that a quantum computer can always solve certain problems in a fixed number of steps, no matter the increased input. While on a classical computer, these same problems would require an increased number of steps as the input increases” This is the first true step towards creating AI, as what you think is AI grows, the data alone creates an increased number of steps down the line, coherency and comprehension become floating and flexible terms, whilst comprehension is not flexible, comprehension is a set stage, without ‘Quantum Advantage with Shallow Circuits‘ it basically cannot exist. In addition, this year we get the IBM Q System One, the world’s first integrated quantum computing system for commercial use, we could state this is the first true innovative computer acceleration in decades and it has arrived in a first version, yet there is something missing and we get to stage two later.

Now we get to the Verge.

‘The State of AI in 2019‘ published in January this year gives us the goods, and it is an amazing article to read. The first truth is “the phrase “artificial intelligence” is unquestionably, undoubtedly misused, the technology is doing more than ever — for both good and bad“, the media is all about hype and the added stupidity given to us by politicians connected the worst of both worlds, they are clueless and they are trying being dumb and clueless on the worst group of people, the paedophiles and they are paying millions to do what is cannot accomplish at present.

Consider a computer or a terminator super smart, like in the movies and consider “a sci-vision of a conscious computer many times smarter than a human. Experts refer to this specific instance of AI as artificial general intelligence, and if we do ever create something like this, it’ll likely to be a long way in the future” and that is the direct situation, yet there is more.

The quote “Talk about “machine learning” rather than AI. This is a subfield of artificial intelligence, and one that encompasses pretty much all the methods having the biggest impact on the world right now (including what’s called deep learning)” is very much at the core of it all, and it exists and it is valid and it is the point of set happening, yet without quantum computing we are confronted with the earlier stage ‘on a classical computer, these same problems would require an increased number of steps as the input increases‘, so now all that data delays and delays and stops progress, this is the stage that is a direct issue, then we also need to consider “you want to create a program that can recognize cats. You could try and do this the old-fashioned way by programming in explicit rules like “cats have pointy ears” and “cats are furry.” But what would the program do when you show it a picture of a tiger? Programming in every rule needed would be time-consuming, and you’d have to define all sorts of difficult concepts along the way, like “furriness” and “pointiness.” Better to let the machine teach itself. So you give it a huge collection of cat photos, and it looks through those to find its own patterns in what it sees” This learning stage takes time, yet down the track it becomes awfully decent in recognising what a cat is and what is not a cat. That takes time, yet the difference is that we are seeking paedophiles, so that same algorithm is used not to find a cat, but to find a very specific cat. Yet we cannot tell it the colour of its pelt (because we do not know), we cannot tell the size, shape or age of that specific cat. Now you see the direct impact of how delusional the idea form the Home Office is. Indirectly we also get the larger flaw. Learning for computers comes in a direct version and an indirect version and we can both put it in the same book: Programming for Dummies! You see, we feed the computer facts, but as it is unable to distinguish true facts from false facts we see a larger failing, the computer might start to look in the wrong direction, pointing out the wrong cat, making the police chase and grab the wrong cat and when that happens, the real paedophile had already hidden itself again. Deep Learning can raise flags all over the place and it will do a lot of good, but in the end, a system like that will be horribly expensive and paying 100 police officers for 20 years to hunt paedophiles might cost the same and will yield better results.

All that is contained in the quote: “Machine learning systems can’t explain their thinking, and that means your algorithm could be performing well for the wrong reasons” more importantly it will be performing for the wrong reasons on wrong data making the learning process faulty and flawed to a larger degree.

The article ends with “In the here and now, artificial intelligence — machine learning — is still something new that often goes unexplained or under-examined” which is true and more important, it is not AI, the fact that we were not really informed about, there is not AI at present, not for some time to come and it makes us wonder on the Guardian headline ‘Home Office to fund use of AI to help catch dark web paedophiles‘, how much funds and the term ‘use of AI‘ requires it to exist, which it does not.

The second missing item.

You think that I was kidding, but I was not, even as the Quantum phase is seemingly here, its upgrade does not exist yet and that is where true AI becomes an optional futuristic reality. This stage is called the Majorana particle, it is a particle that is both matter and antimatter (the ability to be both positive and negative), and one of the leading scientists in this field is Dutch Physicist Leo Kouwenhoven. Once his particle becomes a reality in quantum computing, we get a new stage of shallow circuits, we get a stage where fake news, real news, positives and false positives are treated in the same breath and the AI can distinguish between them. That stage is decades away. At that point the paedophile can create whatever paper trail he likes; the AI will be worse than the most ferocious bloodhound imaginable and will see the fake trails faster than a paedophile can create it. It will merely get the little pervert caught faster.

The problem is that this is decades away, so someone should really get some clarification from the Home Office on how AI will help, because there is no way that it will actually do so before the government budget of 2030. What will we do in the meantime and what funds were spend to get nothing done? When we see: “pledged to spend more money on the child abuse image database, which since 2014 has allowed police and other law enforcement agencies to search seized computers and other devices for indecent images of children quickly, against a record of 14m images, to help identify victims“, in this we also get “used to trial aspects of AI including voice analysis and age estimation to see whether they would help track down child abusers“, so when we see ‘whether they would help‘, we see a shallow case, so shallow that the article in the Verge well over half a year ago should indicate that this is all water down the drain. And the amount (according to Sajid Javid) is set to “£30m would be set aside to tackle online child sexual exploitation“, I am all for the goal and the funds. Yet when we realise that AI is not getting us anywhere and Deep Learning only gets us so far, and we also now consider “trial aspects of AI including voice analysis and age estimation” we see a much larger failing. How can voice analyses help and how is this automated? and as for the term ‘trial aspects of AI‘, something that does not exist, I wonder who did the critical read on a paper allowing for £30 million to be spend on a stage that is not relevant. How about getting 150 detectives for 5 years to hunt down these bastards might be cheaper and in the end a lot more results driven.

In the end of the article we see the larger danger that is not part of AI, when we see: “A paper by the security think-tank Rusi, which focused on predictive crime mapping and individual risk assessment, found algorithms that are trained on police data may replicate – and in some cases amplify – the existing biases inherent in the dataset“, in this Rusi is right, it is about data and the data cannot be staged or set against anything, which makes for a flaw in deep learning as well. We can teach what a cat is by showing it 1,000 images, yet how are the false images recognised (panther, leopard, or possum)? That stage seems simple in cats, in criminals it is another matter, comprehension and looking past data (showing insight and wisdom) is a far stretch for AI (when it is there) and machine learning and deeper learning are not ready to this degree at present. We are nowhere near ready and the first commercial quantum computer was only released this year. I reckon that whenever a politician uses AI as a term, he is either stupid, uninformed or he wants you to look somewhere else (avoiding actual real issues).

For now the hypes we see are more often than not the lie of AI, something that will come, but unlikely to be seen before the PS7 is setting new sales records, which is still many years away.

 

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September 17, 2019 · 11:44

What mattered most

I refrained from giving a view for two days, I saw the attacks on Sunday and I was ready to give voice, but then something happened, a change in the wind was there and it was important to look at that side of the equation. It all started on Sunday (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-49699429) with ‘Saudi Arabia oil facilities ablaze after drone strikes‘, yet that was not the real trigger for the west, there had been other attacks and the west ignored them, as I reported in several articles. It was: “Oil prices ended nearly 15% higher on Monday, with the Brent benchmark seeing its biggest jump in about 30 years” that woke people up, now there was finally a reason to report it, not the fact that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had been under attack for a month, it was the fact that fuel prices were going to rise.

And of couirse, the US ever willing to be late to a party gives us: ‘Attack on a major Saudi oil facility originated in Iran, U.S. intelligence indicates‘, which is weird as I had handed out evidence out weeks ago to show that Iran had been facilitating resources to attack Saudi Arabia, yet for me it is nice to know that I am more able in intelligence after 3 decades than the US has ever been. As such it is not interesting to read: “American intelligence indicates that the attack on a major Saudi oil facility originated in Iran, three people familiar with the intelligence told NBC News“, that part is not interesting, it is the part where we have known that Iran had been supplying drones to Houthi forces for the longest time, for many months, it would have been nice for US intelligence to hand out that information months ago, but I reckon until the prices of fuel soared there was no reason to show support for an ally, they claimed to be an ally of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, yet they never released the intelligence giving rise to lash out at Iran to any degree. That does not make for an ally that is the foundation for being an exploitation tool (at best).

And it gets to be worse, when you consider NBC News. The quote: “Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted Saturday that Iran “launched” what he called “an unprecedented attack on the world’s energy supply.”” seems nice, but it only seems so. I wonder if the US officials are really about the ‘world energy supply‘ or the consequences of oil price hikes and the increased value it has on Aramco? It is the impact of the headline ‘Saudi Arabia oil and gas production reduced by drone strikes‘ that is scary to Wall Street, as production reduces, prices go up, the need increases and it changes the economic models for Wall Street, so again it is not really about the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, or about being their ally, is it? It is about the profit margins everywhere else that is the actual debate behind closed doors.

So when the Wall Street Journal (at https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-tells-saudi-arabia-oil-attacks-were-launched-from-iran-11568644126) gives us ‘U.S. Tells Saudi Arabia Oil Attacks Were Launched From Iran‘ we do not see anything new here. The issue is how the drones get moved from Iran to Yemen. We also see through the faded “Monday’s assessment, which the U.S. hasn’t shared publicly, came as President Trump said he hoped to avoid a war with Iran and Saudi Arabia asked United Nations experts to help determine who was responsible for the airstrikes“, just a moment to delay moments of decision making. The culprits are known. It is not the real fear, the real fear is “Higher fuel prices pose another threat to the world economy” and that is the real issue for the US and for Europe. The response: “Saudi officials said the U.S. didn’t provide enough proof to conclude that the attack was launched from Iran, indicating the U.S. information wasn’t definitive. U.S. officials said they planned to share more information with the Saudis in the coming days” makes perfect sense. As the attack was claimed by Yemeni Houthi, the proxy war stage stays intact, it is the intelligence on how the drones get into Yemen that counts and so far (until now) the US, UK and French have not been overly willing to keep closer eyes on it, they all need degrees of freedom to deal with Iran and their so called Nuclear treaty, that has been in the way for the longest of times.

There are two parts in this and both came from CNN. Part 1 gives us: “A Yemen armed forces spokesman was quoted by the agency as saying the Houthis successfully carried out a “large-scale” operation with 10 drones targeting Saudi Aramco oil facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais“, part 2 gives us “CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen said there have been more than 200 drone attacks launched by Houthi rebels from Yemen into Saudi Arabia, and none have been as effective as Saturday’s attack, lending credence to the belief that the attack did not originate from Yemen“, I personally agree with both. From my point of view the attack on Khurais has too many issues. It is close to twice the distance getting the attack from Yemen instead of from Iraq. It is dangerously close to Riyadh and when we look at the track record from Houthi attacks, we see a very different pattern. There are more reliable parts in all this when we consider Hezbollah or Iran to be the direct acting agent here. I have to mention Hezbollah as they have been involved in the past with attacks on Saudi Arabia. Abqaiq is right on the border of Bahrain and close to Qatar. The Houthi skillset does not give us any credibility on their actions, yet they claimed it, as a tool for Iran that could have been done to muddy the waters more, yet there is another matter in all this. I believe that there is a larger concern that is not open for viewing. We see this in the quote: ““It is quite an impressive, yet worrying, technological feat,” he said. “Long-range precision strikes are not easy to achieve and to cause the substantial fires in Abqaiq and Khurais highlights that this drone has a large explosive yield.”” The part not seen or spoken of is not that the attack happened, but it was completed with assistance nearby. The precision is not from the drones, it was most likely achieved as someone used a laser to paint the targets (one of a few optional examples) in the final minute. If the laser was small enough it would not be noticed, but for the drones it is like a searchlight guiding them to the explosive points. That part would make sense in more than one way, and it is the foundation that counts. The claims that were made by Yemen make sense and grow in validity when they have resources on the ground. That part is not merely on the stage of drones, there is a larger concern for Saudi Intelligence now. When they accept that the drones got their final guidance on the ground nearby, we see the impact that explosive drones would have and will have again. Iran has been staging this proxy war for the longest time and it is time for us to consider doing something about it in a more serious way (that is when Canada is done selling intelligence data to interested third parties that is).

There is additional support for my view and it comes from the BBC. They gave us: “One official said there were 19 points of impact on the targets and the attacks had come from a west-north-west direction – not Houthi-controlled territory in Yemen, which lies to the south-west of the Saudi oil facilities” to be this precise requires drone technology only the largest players have (like the US and the UK), Iran does not have software that sophisticated and to succeed to this degree required the most likely culprit Iran to have assistance nearby. Painting the targets makes the most sense, but it is not the only option, merely the most likely one. It there were 19 base stations guiding a drone, it would require resources Yemen does not have, it has merely attacks in small clusters of less than 5, the images from the US government satellites involved showed the spread and size of the targets, when you consider resources required to be this precise and the pilot skills involved the shift towards support teams nearby becomes a clear issue. Still there are gaps in the intelligence I admit to that, however, when we look at the maps, the size of the attacks and aligned parameters, an attack from Iraq or Iran are the only options remaining. That in itself is not evidence, yet the premise of what was required is clear and even as we can prove that more basic drone attacks could not have been done by Houthi forces because they lack all levels of infrastructure to create and guide drones to the degree required, we see Iran to be guilty by elimination of other players. The precision requires well trained pilots which the Houthi are not; again we are left with Iran. Actually Iraq might have been party to this, but their drone abilities (read: with additional lacking skill sets to consider) are nowhere near the level required.

This now gets us to the New York Times part which gave us: “Administration officials, in a background briefing for reporters as well as in separate interviews on Sunday, also said a combination of drones and cruise missiles — “both and a lot of them,” as one senior United States official put it — might have been used. That would indicate a degree of scope, precision and sophistication beyond the ability of the Houthi rebels alone” it is the ‘a combination of drones and cruise missiles‘ that pushes Iraq out of the consideration circle leaving Iran all alone. We should consider the skills Iran shows here, and it will also be their undoing. When we consider that only Iran remains as an optional player to do this and when we see that Europe and the US will not actually act, but ‘force’ talks, that is the first instance when Saudi Arabia needs to consider that their allies are nothing more than paper tigers, pussycats that make a lot of noise, but when you know they are sculptures the enemies will come, Saudi Arabia needs to realise this fast and we need to consider that the EU, the US and the commonwealth needs to create an actual plan of attack on Iran. This evidence was handed to us almost 2 weeks ago when we were given ‘Iran puts pressure on Europe to save nuclear deal within 60-day deadline‘, Iran keeps on holding the Nuclear deal as a juicy carrot and will use it to stop a direct attack on them, a path that should now be considered to be totally unacceptable. I for one would like to ‘loan’ a Saudi Eurofighter Typhoon (EF2000) and see if all my hours on a Microprose flight simulator (knights of the sky) were well spent and let’s face it, I do have a quirky sense of humour. I would be able to test my knowledge in guiding that Typhoon to Tehran and level a military building or two, on the other hand seeing their oil fields burn might feel equally rewarding. And there is the optional reward to answer the eternal outstanding question: Can you hear the GBU-16 Paveway II bomb explode whilst you fly a plane?

You think that I am making light of the situation and to some degree I am, the basic need for everyone to realise that Iran has been steering towards war whilst employing the oldest Italian excuse (read: It was not me, I know nothing); This stage has been months in the making and now that the drums of combat are approaching, we will see more and more politicians peaking up offering to start talks. I believe it is too late for that, it is almost 6 months too late for that, but that might just be me.

Yet there is one other voice we need to consider. It is the voice of Fabian Hinz, a research associate at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at Monterey (via the Washington Post). Here we get: “photos of the remnants of a missile in Saudi Arabia show a weapon both too sophisticated to be produced domestically by the Houthis and never seen in Iran“, I only partially agree here. ‘Photos of the remnants of a missile‘ is merely partial evidence that should not be ignored. A multi-tiered attack makes perfect sense, it is the scope of the attack and patterns used that makes Iran stand out; it also gives a larger consideration that their new drones are a lot more powerful. There is also his quote “Is Iran secretly designing, testing and producing missile systems for exclusive use by its proxies?” A quote that is not accurate and not wrong. I believe that earlier evidence showed the need for Iran to scrap all identifiers form their electronics, make clean system boards, in addition, it altered the export drones to trade accuracy in for yield (which maximises the Houthi outstanding debt to Iran), in addition to that they had to make a more idiot proof operating system (the Yemeni are nowhere near the academics they need to be to pilot drones). This is not because I want Iran to be guilty; this is because the elements are so overwhelmingly clear that Iran could not be innocent. There are too many parts in play that require the war machine that Iran has to develop what we see in action at present. And there is every indication that the 60 day nuclear deal deadline is used to stage more and more attacks whilst the indecision of Europe and the US remains in place. If there is one small blessing than it is the stage where the Israeli Defence Forces have even less consideration for Iran than Saudi Arabia has and there is every indication that what is created now in Iran will be shipped to Hezbollah soon enough; forcing Israel to act as well.

When this escalates beyond a point of no return the people in Washington, Wall Street, Brussels and Strasbourg need to consider that when they have no options left and they are no longer considered a voice on the issue: ‘What mattered most to them?‘

Because these considerations with the inaction we see is what drives the war no one can prevent. Saudi Arabia has a clear right, Israel has a duty to its citizens and Iran never cared for anyone but themselves. So when we see cries for talks when the bombs fall, remember that this did not start last Sunday, this has been going on for well over 6 months. The news merely decided not to report on much of it that was until the fuel prices went up, now they are all over it, but way too late.

 

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