Category Archives: Science

January 3, 2019 · 12:41

Creativity overboard

Yesterday was about the heralding of creativity, yet there is a setting where creativity goes overboad and the Washington Post gives us ‘Scarlett Johansson on fake AI-generated sex videos: ‘Nothing can stop someone from cutting and pasting my image’‘ (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/31/scarlett-johansson-fake-ai-generated-sex-videos-nothing-can-stop-someone-cutting-pasting-my-image).

It is a lot worse than you think and even some might trivialise it by merely hanging onto the idea of women, mostly celebrities being inserted into porn, the problem is actually huge, not merely because of that application. The issue is that whatever I can creatively dream up, I can make a reality if I have enough images. The problem is that most of this software is free (for now), and the problem is growing on two fields.

In the first field we see not merely exploitation of any woman into porn, nudities or weird situations. The technology is close to perfect enough that it is harder and harder to distinguish the fake from the real, the deep fake is overwhelmingly convincing that the Washington Post comment “what your eyes can see and your ears can hear can no longer be taken for granted in the digital field“, that problem is a lot bigger than you think. Even as this example (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU9YAHigNx8) is easy enough to spot, the overall quality is very much on the high side. Here money gives authenticity, the better the computer, the smoother the result and the shorter the timespan to make that result. The average laptop will not get you far, yet a high end gaming PC gets you an optional 1080 HD deepfake version that is increasingly hard to distinguish from the real deal.

In the second field we see a failing, a failing to investigate and legalise the optional prosecution of deepfake video. Not merely the porn side of it, in its heart the opportunity to crate identity fraud and give rise to interfering with political, social and private lives will go further and will be the foundation of a lot more hardship. 5G will merely send these high end videos faster and wider on a global domain. How long until we get the videos of random politician (Emmanuel Macron) and random Celebrity (Anna Kendrick), whilst places like the Daily Mirror will give the innuendo “European Politician accused of hot Hollywood encounter” with a deep fake? The issue is not that a place like the Daily Mirror would or would not use that image intentionally maliciously, the issue will soon be that their trained professionals can no longer tell the difference between real and deepfake and there is more than one indicator that that moment could optionally be reached this year.

The third part is that not only is this technological field charging ahead, the legal field that should protect the people can no longer keep up, in addition the freedom of expression that allows for ‘creative alteration’ is actually assisting in what should be regarded as criminal activities. In addition there is a larger failing in the law, McMillan (at https://mcmillan.ca/What-Can-The-Law-Do-About-Deepfake). The working allows for a failing that no one is able to deal with. We see this in: “The tort of appropriation of personality arises where a person attempts to gain an economic advantage by using some aspect of another person’s name, likeness, or personality without that person’s consent. To be successful, the plaintiff must establish that the defendant appropriated his or her persona for economic gain. This is also enshrined in legislation such as the BC Privacy Act, which states that it is a tort to use a likeness, still or moving, including a likeness deliberately disguised to resemble a person “for the purpose of advertising or promoting the sale of, or other trading in, property or services.”” You see, the failing is not seen in what must be established, it is found in what is negated. We think of lone wolves as terrorists, yet there is another one, the political lone wolf. A person not recognised by anyone, but does the bidding to promote the political field (or alternative field like product field) of others.

When that person goes after the next political contender we see no ‘gain an economic advantage‘, we alternatively see no ‘trading in, property or services‘, yet the damage will have been achieved. Even when we look in the US regarding: “Malice in law is the intent, without justification excuse or reason, to commit a wrongful act that will result in harm to another. Malice means the wrongful intention and includes all types of intent that law deems to be wrongful“, to enter in court on the premise of malice and intent versus ‘creativity and freedom of expression‘ becomes a first amendment court case where the political player loses no matter what and if the transgressor is young enough the damages will never ever cover the impact. In this day and age of viral video and social media, one or two of these videos could end any political career within a day and that is merely the top of the iceberg. Larger players can lay waste to all kinds of opposition with a much greater ease by giving rise to confusion and relying on the gullible population to spread the damage.

McMillan gives one part that could give the smallest of coverage in British Columbia. As we are introduced to: “The BCHRT has the authority to provide a compensation order for any lost wages or expenses incurred as a result of the contravention, and to provide a compensation award for “injury to dignity, feelings and self-respect.”“, how could any unemployed individual compensate for damages inflicted? The problem would not be the act, the issue would be to a much larger degree the setting of ‘injury to dignity, feelings and self-respect‘ when it is a public figure, especially when we consider the last 10 years where: ‘less than 20% of the orders made are over $10,000‘, in a setting where so far $75,000 has been the highest award. So tell me, who would not fork over $75,000 in some way to win a high end election? Even as the Canadian system is seemingly a little better than most out there, what they have is nowhere near ready to deal with the larger impact the deepfakes optionally have and that is merely outside of the porn application field. The experts that gathered in the SIGGRAPH 2018 annual conference on computer graphics in Vancouver from August 12^th to 16^th 2018 already agree that this is going to be an issue in the 2020 US elections, the question is will the law be ready and there is no clear indications that it is.

Even as we see that DARPA has been taking an active interest in finding forensic solutions, the department by Dr. Matt Turek, I also see the flawed impact as we see the optional miss that a high resolution result projected deepfake, then captured by a low res camera will create a version that is either negated completely of will be flagged amongst hundreds of thousands of others and still ends up having a 60/40 chance of passing through. Those numbers are not encouraging and this forensic field is for now in its early infancy giving the deepfake players close of half a decade of free reign on every social media with 5G merely impacting a much larger population, much faster. The overwhelming part is that computing power and high resolution recording equipment is becoming more and more affordable so the pool of non-malicious offender is growing close to exponentially for now. Let’s face it which horny teenager has not dreamt of replacing his prom date with the image of Amber Heard, Bailey Noble or Laura Vandervoort as his desired prom date?

It is for the most the absence of intent and malice that is driving the technology. America has 42 million teenagers, close to 22 million are male, most dreaming of the dream date they can never have, so when there is a software company keying in on close to 50% of those offering a $49.95 solution making their dream come true, that is a market surpassing $1 billion, do you think that this is not happening right now? It is a massive driving force, apart from the sex sells part; it is within us to be a pranker/prankster, to replace ourselves with an edited Batman/Batgirl making ourselves the superhero, others want to be seen with their idols (Frances McDermott/Zack Effron or Bailey Noble/Heidi Klum) depending on our age and spreading that imagined tale on Facebook. At heart it is deceiving (read: pranking) their friends intentionally yet completely absent of malice and for every 50 people that do it for the innocent reason, there will be 1-2 malicious people, yet the overwhelming drive for that software is there and the more that want it, the cheaper the solution and for now that this trial software is often free and it is becoming highly perfect in the result, after which it will soon be sold at an affordable price. The problem is that anything innocent can be perverted and the deepfake technology that made yours truly look like Batman (actually Batman was real, Bruce Wayne looks a lot more like me and a lot less like Ben Affleck) can do the same for any exploiter to look the political target look like an arrested person on the street, two of these viral events can totally impact the next elections. Even as the politician itself is the likely target, making the members of his team (like the spokesperson, the strategist and the writer) targets would be a lot more effective, we will dismiss the political person often out of hand, the people they work with less so, it will create doubt and stop their political engine overnight giving the election away to the other person and with the deepfake field evolving at the speed it does, every political party will need a high end reputation management firm in their corner watching out for these attacks and in addition spend too many resources dealing with these attacks, making the small players no longer a consideration and making the larger players spend a whole chunk of money in different areas impacting their visibility. The lack of law, or more correctly stated the lack of impact that the law currently has, will drag elections and public profiles along in very different directions soon enough.

That part is seen (at https://www.ubermetrics-technologies.com/blog/reputation-management-what-to-do-about-deepfakes/) where we see how Jordan Peele is doing the speech for former President Obama and more important, the fact that this looks authentic enough to fool most republicans into an emotional frenzy, game over and the next democratic president starts in 2020, that is the game now and it is frighteningly indistinguishable from the real deal. Even as we see here the stage of ethics, the issue is not merely consent (it only partially is), we see: “the person whose face is superimposed on deepfakes did not give their consent“, in the batman example, my image is the one superimposed and I am giving permission, it is the other part that is owned by DC Comics, or is that Zack Snyder, or perhaps Ben Affleck. Do you think that their engine is ready for millions of trivial cases, often limited to a ‘cease and desist’ order? Their workforce would not be able to deal with 1% of that workload and in the initial race that viral propulsion was optionally used to their advantage. The issue is more loaded than we think and when the court case comes and I would state in my defence: ‘I was merely expressing myself, fantasising on being the next Batman. I made no commercial gain, merely social visibility for my desired optional career in acting‘, do you think that I will get anything more than an optional slap on the wrist as I was pursuing my dream? With the right lawyer it could optionally be thrown out of court as there would be no visible harm or hardship to Ben Affleck, the case ends soon thereafter.

Even as law firms give us the stage of: “must typically prove that the defendant—the person who uploaded the deepfake, for example—published something that gives a false or misleading impression of the plaintiff in such a way to damage the plaintiff’s reputation or cause them great offense, in such a way that would be highly offensive to a reasonable person“, now consider Hustler Magazine, Inc. v. Falwell, 485 U.S. 46 (1988), there we learn that the first and fourteenth amendment is prohibiting public figures from recovering damages for the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress (IIED), if the emotional distress was caused by a caricature, parody, or satire of the public figure that a reasonable person would not have interpreted as factual. In that setting the deepfake field is wide open to be used against political figured to a much larger extent, that case was never ready for deepfake and by setting the stage to ‘a caricature, parody, or satire of the public figure‘ we see that the reasonable person becomes malleable to the greater extent making the deepfake field a much more effective political swaying tool than we imagined. I reckon that under this setting Larry Flynt will be laughing on the public stage that his case opened up for till the day he dies.

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Tagged as 485 U.S. 46, 485 U.S. 46 (1988), Amber Heard, Bailey Noble, Batman, BC Privacy Act, BCHRT, Ben Affleck, Bruce Wayne, Canada, Daily Mirror, DARPA, DC Comics, Dr. Matt Turek, Frances McDermott, Heidi Klum, Hustler Magazine, IIED, Inc. v. Falwell, Jordan Peele, Larry Flynt, Laura Vandervoort, McMillan, President Obama, reputation management, SIGGRAPH 2018, Washington Post, Zack Effron, Zack Snyder

January 2, 2019 · 14:06

That Lion cliché

Do you remember the time when art was about art? Perhaps you remember the studio that had the lion in their logo? I think that the very same lion was also very active in an old TV series called Daktari (1966, CBS). They had on their logo ‘Ars Gratia Artis‘, although some refer to it as: Arse for the sake of the artists, which is not the same thing.

It means art for art’s sake and that ideology came under assault by the Business Insider through Netflix last year (2 days ago), or did it? The article (at https://amp.businessinsider.com/netflix-bird-box-sparks-debate-over-data-in-hollywood-2018-12) gives a very different light on Hollywood. We initially get: “Netflix said its original movie “Bird Box,” starring Sandra Bullock, was viewed by 45 million accounts in its first seven days on the streaming service, a record for the company“, which is a good achievement, considering that there are 137 million subscribers, we get the setting that 30% watched it, something that should be regarded as a huge success. Yet Business Insider does not think so, it goes on with the quote: “Though Netflix revealed the huge number, it didn’t give specifics. How many of those 45 million watched the movie from beginning to end? What were the demographics of the viewers? Those are the types of stats that movie studios and TV networks release about their content“. Here we have a larger issue; those in the cinema, with rare exceptions will sit out the movie in the cinema, in the digital world we get to consider a new stage: how many watch it completely? Just like Google ads on YouTube where the first 5 seconds is ‘free’, or better stated might not be a viewer, and after 5 seconds the person can skip, so that is not a viewer either, these metrics now count towards the greater need to understand the Netflix viewer, because those who start the movie are optionally not actual viewers, so setting the purchase stage towards those metrics will be the downfall of Netflix soon enough, yet in all this, the viewer, including me, we are all new to the Netflix, Stan and other parts, so we get to switch products, like we switch channels and as such, finding what we like is going to be important to Netflix et al. Also, multiple watching might imply that, or another person at the house was watching, or perhaps I merely nodded off after 24.3 minutes only to realise that a comfy chair and warm weather implies that watching is a lot more challenging? In all this metrics, especially top line metrics with demographics will be increasingly important to all these digital providers. Even as we see: “That 45 million number has not been verified by a third-party measurement company in the way TV ratings and box-office results generally are“, we do not realise that for the most, cinemas have an utter lack of these metrics (other than amount of tickets sold, tickets per purchase and date of purchase), so even as Digital channels have more granularity (a lot more), we can debate and even question these metrics on a few levels. I once heard that a friend has his father drop by every weekend to use his Netflix account and keep up on TV series whilst the sunshine lad was at the beach entertaining his tan and swimming ability, so when he got home, he shared a meal with dad and they talk and watched a little more Netflix. So that implies that for that day the metrics are no longer matching the demographics, merely the member graphics, which again is not the same, not even close.

So when we look back at bird box, we see the interesting quote: “she believes that the latest Netflix news is nothing but a publicity stunt and that Netflix’s lack of transparency about data hurts filmmakers“, which is when the wheels leave the carriage in every direction. If movies are about art, why would data transparency be important? How is a vision or art an indication of data requirement? I get the statement, I get the implied stage where the TV industry is now mimicking Ubisoft when they started claiming another Assassins Creed every year. The implied part is forgotten as soon as you read it, but the danger is there. Those makers who rely on data to form the next hit will never ever get one. You see, the lesson that Ubisoft has been learning the hard way is that a game that appeals to everyone is a game that appeals to no one. The sales figures show that flaw, the ratings of games that at $50 million should have been 90% or better get nowhere beyond the 65%-85%, so basically a products that gets a little more than break even, it is a business model that theoretically works, but it will never produce any diamonds. The 78%-81% for Far Cry 5 is a direct indicator of that, some gave it as little as a 60% rating, a total change from the 90% that AC Origin deserved and that supports my thoughts there.

Yet in TV and movies on digital format we see another shift, we see the lack of materials making the makers a little desperate for choices. Even as we see Bird Box as a massive win, we see that choices are now coming at a much steeper investment curve, making the game a lot more dangerous, and it is pushing these analysts towards the metrics of watchers and optional watchers giving them a dangerous step towards anticipated interest versus real interest. Netflix is the most visible player here, but they are not alone. Stan, Foxtel, Canal Plus and a few others will face their own demons. Disney is the safest player for now as they have the best established brand on any medium, yet over time they too need to face the choices of data use available.

For me this data war is important in other ways too, as we see Bird Box and a title like the Blair Witch project in one box of choices, we see the link of mass media towards creating an inflated hype, yet when we look in another direction we realise that gems like Chilling Adventures of Sabrina would lose their footing into getting a place in creating and release. Sabrina is as I personally see it the true approach to ‘Ars Gratia Artis‘, the moment that data takes over, things will fall apart. It is not the data itself, it is the fact that in the first the data is mostly non-confirmed (member versus actual viewer), anticipated issues on re-watching versus actual reason of re-watching and that list goes on, the inability to properly vet data for a whole league of reasons will diminish the playfield and the Ubisoft stage takes over from the actual artistic stage, it could optionally kill a series like Sabrina overnight and will kill a whole range of other series in the same way in their first seasons too. There is other evidence too, the series Lucifer that got canned in one place, got taken up by Netflix and the fans win, in this case Netflix wins too and they deserve to win, but we need to realise that Lucifer is not unlike Star Trek, a series that initially got canned because the executives did not comprehend their fans (the watchers). We can add Firefly, Dollhouse and several other series to that list. I believe that Dollhouse was going towards the place that Westworld is moving on to and that is great, the stories are still accepted and they evolve for the viewing acceptance and appreciation levels and rightfully so, yet how many TV series were lost to us for the same reason? You see, I believe that the wrong approach to data and the non-comprehension (or wrongful use in dashboards) will make this a much larger issue soon enough, and guess what?

This will not be contained to the Hollywood world, the shift of data and dashboards will push into every realm that uses data soon thereafter. You might not think it now, but you all are part of this, it will affect you all soon enough. 5G is not merely a mobile platform, it is a data platform and we will personally see, feel and experience the impact of data. That impact is not theoretical, it is an actual impact. At Cornell University we saw the creation of a paper in March 2018 called ‘Load Balancing for 5G Ultra-Dense Networks using Device-to-Device Communications‘ by Hongliang Zhang, Lingyang Song, Ying Jun Zhang that gives us that to some degree directly. When we consider: “data traffic can be effectively offloaded from a congested small cell to other underutilized small cells by D2D communications. The problem is naturally formulated as a joint resource allocation and D2D routing problem that maximizes the system sum-rate. To efficiently solve the problem, we decouple the problem into a resource allocation subproblem and a D2D routing subproblem. The two subproblems are solved iteratively as a monotonic optimization problem and a complementary geometric programming problem, respectively. Simulation results show that the data sum-rate in the neighbouring small cells increases 20% on average by offloading the data traffic in the congested small cell to the neighbouring small cell base stations”

Say What?

I am geting there the long way round, stick with me, it will soon make sense, as such, let’s look at this from another angle so that it makes a little more sense. Here I use a quote “We also know that the capacity (density) of current macrocellular 4G networks will continue to increase in the foreseeable future since there’s still spectrum available around the world that could be used or reused for mobile broadband“, this is a given, actually more than a given as both Cisco and Alcatel passed through the average barrier by 100%, as well over half a dozen carriers are on the average expectation, the other two crushed it by almost 100%, and that was 4G, the game changes in 5G (yes this is still about art).

Now consider that we are not set in metrics, my viewing pleasure never was, even as early as the late 70’s; that means that the metrics never fitted me and more importantly these metrics are failing a larger population to a much larger degree and it will increasingly fail those relying on them, no matter how good the story sounds. This part is important in a few ways. You see, from my point of view (always debatable whether it is correct), we see the flawed Ubisoft formula and consider that the choice fits 80% of all, this might be seen as a good thing. Yet in art the change is slow learned and even as with a video game the initial payment is done, we see a much larger stack of players going towards pre-owned games (for financial reasons). Now consider that in the Netflix et al world, it is not set into a $99 purchase, it is a $15 per month and everyone bailing after a few months will increase the financial dangers for players like Netflix (and others) as they have amassed a multi-billion dollar debt, whilst the people can leave at any time; even as leaving in the first year (or after the first free month) is not likely, especially at $15 a month, that same given part is not guaranteed after year one, so getting the right series up and running is a lot more important. Now that Netflix is no longer the one option and now that Disney Plus is gaining a global insertion, having the right data is increasingly important, we do get that, yet the Netflix data is lot more debatable than some think and this is where the problem starts. There are several indicators that the data is not that great or that complete. Unless Netflix is gathering data incorrectly (read: ethically immoral), which is not a given and there is no indication that this is happening, we have the direct issue with valid data versus non validated data and there is a much larger hiatus in play.

And now we get to the producer Rebecca Green, now we get to look at the part that is important. (apart from her ludicrous believe that Netflix data needs to be more transparent), we need to look at: “My goal is to create original content for wide audiences, but how do I cater to an audience if I do not know what they are turning in to watch?” she said. “‘It Follows’ has been on Netflix for two years, and I have no idea how many people have viewed the film. ‘I’ll See You in My Dreams’ has been on Amazon Prime for two years as well, and I have no idea how many people have viewed the film on that platform. Why share the stats for one film but not the others, aside from wanting to create buzz?“, right next to “Netflix needs to be more transparent about the performance of its titles so that people can better contextualize the data and to help more of these types of movies get made“. I Personally believe that an adaptation from Forest Gump is needed: “Stupid is as Ubisoft does!“.

She is implying that she is out to make sure that she will not create a failure, and as such, she is unlikely to ever help create a true blockbuster. That is how I personally see it and so far my view has been supported with the results by Ubisoft several times over, so I feel decently confident on my view. She needs the right dreamers, the ones that dream the new stuff, not data driven, but vision driven. I dreamt the sequel to Mass Effect Andromeda two nights ago and it is still unsettling me today, I hope I never dream in that direction again, this does not imply a success, but it could potentially show to be a blockbuster to a lot of people, enough to take the Nexus for another spin if the investors are willing to take a (likely huge) risk. It is not merely the risk, the state that if they go all in that they are looking at optional sales of 6-8 million copies. That would be the stage where the game gets to approach the billion dollar mark and I am trying to remain conservative there. You see, it is not about the game, it is about offering something not done in gaming ever before, especially in console gaming. So there is the space to truly shift the field onto another track, a high speed track, but to get vested in that, it will cost the makers to get the right software engineers hat can give view to vision and that is a much larger call than some might think. I did a similar exercise with Elder Scrolls VI (not the one that is being made). It was not about a new story, it was about where can we push the story to and more important, how can we instill additional value, for me that has always been the ability to replay a game, not merely watch an interactive story with a few variables. What if we could evolve the game not merely in size, but in the ability to give a game 100+ hours of challenge and fun? In my mind, I gave that setting a whirl with Elder Scrolls VI: Resurrection by changing the nature of the challenge and by adding the openness of the game. Oblivion had done a terrific job initially, but I learned that in the 4^th play through that I went for the anticipated goals too fast, I wanted a change that gave the challenge , but removed grinding to a larger degree (removing grinding 100% in an RPG is pretty much impossible). It is done not by adding more repetitive challenges, but by limiting options. You see, in my view a person cannot join all guilds, they can be members of some (until completed), so mages will auto decline Necromancers, thieves will reject assassins and fighters will not allow for thieves or assassins to enter the guild, so you can do all, but not all at the same time giving an additional layer to the gameplay, because at a later stage one guild will be a lot more challenging than before. Having a long term quest, one that goes on over time, even as you are working other challenges is also a path to set the stage and a third one is seen in choice. In my view The shrines were no more, the [main quest challenge] had undone something and we get to choose whether we fix that, and also having to decide what goes where, or continue on the path Tamriel was on, in that stage I have set 5 main quest lines in a different path, optionally giving a severe different view to how Tamriel continues as a nation, whether the initial main quest is resolved one way or another, that is the shape of close to 50-100 hours of additional playtime, will people like that? What happens when you really give the option of choice a new dimension?

I do not think that those bragging on how they cleared Skyrim in 2 hours will like it, but I am not making it for those few, I thought up ES-Resurrection for those who loved travelling in Skyrim (and beyond), those who create additional content and loved the time they had in Skyrim, the true RPG players that want to see it all. That same situation exists on any RPG (read: Mass Effect) and those value art and the creation of art by software engineers and graphical artists, gamers will bend over backwards buying such a game the very moment it arrives.

This is the same for movies and TV series, You merely have to watch fans going nuts on social media regarding Chilling Adventures of Sabrina to see my point proven; in addition, we saw a mere 3 weeks ago: “‘Firefly’ Fans Are Upset That Trending Hashtag Isn’t About the Show Being Revived“, when we see such impacts, we know that something is missed and some of these metrics will merely increase the amount missed by series makers (read: initial funders) and producers (read: investors). In this it is important to see the view of Robert Bianco (USA Today) with: “that Joss Whedon’s most devoted fans will debate and embrace, and a mass audience just won’t get“, that view is fair enough and the makers invest in the series, so as we see that there was a drop of 50% in viewers, it made sense to them not continue, yet a lot of the story was lost in the end. Could this have been prevented if data drove the choices of writing? I do not believe that to be the case, if anything, when we look at the Netflix setting, data would have made it worse; the series might have fallen over quicker. That is the setting for Rebecca Green (as I personally saw it). She might adhere to data transparency, yet there we see the most likely failure to be a choice made on non-validated data making matters worse, shying actual fans away because of adherence to the masses, which in my personal view makes matters worse, not better. Consider that 5 series with an 80% score, what are the chances that overlapping groups of people that end up no liking 2+ series released? How many members will that cost them in the months 13 and onward? In a stage where they invest $8 billion, how many losses will that ensue?

In all this (a very personal view) when we stop adhering to art for the sake of art, we see the path of data driven art and it will be nothing more than mere marketing of brand, viewers created through awareness, a dangerous setting in any form of art, video games have proven that; how long do you think it will take for people to switch away from 45 minute branding shows? How quickly will we switch to another provider? I believe that this stage will be reached sooner than we think. We might still adore and worship Game of Thrones, yet what will happen in season 8? Will it keep us on the edge? I am not handing the same values to GoT as we have had 7 seasons of GoT already, and a following will continue the story for now; more important at what point will see that there is a stage for season 10? Even if season 8 flops, there will be a drive to end the story lines at this point handing the need for a season 9 at the beginning of season 8, yet for new series that premise does not exist, so how can a series survive when it becomes data driven in a stage where the quality of data is debatable to a much larger degree at the very least.

This is not in the same range as the TV series were, it seems that the new digital series are effectively marketing driven and that might depend on data, but in all that, how many people would have given the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina a proper vetting in the initial hours? As the choice of streaming digital TV companies’ increases the timespan given to vet series changes as well. That is where my reference of that 4G paper comes into play. The stage of “Using higher modulations is a proven, reliable, and well-understood method to increase capacity in a given communication channel, but it has clear limits“, you see for people it is not bandwidth, it is time, yet the equation is basically the same, we have a finite 24 hours, minus 6-8 hours of sleep, minus time for food, hygiene, travel and work. Time is an absolute here and many forget that part; it is equally an issue in gaming. That part is even more so an issue as the digital age is trying to get attention from gamers (and vice versa) in the same way, more than you think. Marketing, TV marketeers and investors are trying to create hype’s anyway that they can and it gives an additional increase, but the personal impact is spread all over the board, so these people are trying to get towards data driven solutions forgetting about art to the larger degree and in that way losing an audience to a much larger degree than they could fathom. that is hard to prove in any direction, yet I feel that (when we translate this to movies), my part is proven by Joe Morgenstern in the Wall Street Journal with: “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse; It’s as if everyone had set out to make the best Spider-Man movie ever, which is exactly what they’ve done“, the mere stage of a movie, an animated movie that is showing to be a comic book that has been close to truly been brought to life, I personally hope that Stan Lee had been able to see the final result whilst he was still alive (he might have done that), the fact that his visionary view on comic books took on a life of its own, data would never have gotten us there, it required art to get there, the fact that Channel 18 gave the people: “This may be the first Spider-Man feature to qualify as a great New York movie, drawn from the life of the city rather than outdated stereotypes“, I personally believe that this was achieved with art, not through data, or data as a mere assistant, not a driver.

We might think of the MGM lion as a cliché, but their slogan is still a driving force in entertainment and arts, it will most likely survive the data farmers for at least two generation, it is only when AI evolves through insight leading to wisdom that we will see a 90% appreciation level through data on arts, I doubt I will live that long, but part of me hopes to see that day where the quantum computer is asked what the state of the cloud is and it answers with an image of a Cumulus or a Cirrostratus with a defined point of arrival. It is my personal believe that people like producer Rebecca Green will always have a place in Hollywood, yet they will never become the Whedon’s, the Howard’s or the Russo’s, they got there by artistic vision, yet that too remains the issue of debate, how will the producers and directors see eye to eye on art versus data? It is something we will see a lot more in 2019, as it will drive the digital providers, as well as their content makers to a much larger degree than ever before.

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Tagged as Amazon Prime, Andromeda, Assassins, CBS, Channel 18, Daktari, dashboarding, Data driving, Digital TV, Elder Scrolls VI, Elder Scrolls VI: Resurrection, Fighters, Forest Gump, Game of thrones, Hongliang Zhang, Joe Morgenstern, Lingyang Song, Lucifer, Mages, Mass Effect, Mass Effect Andromeda, Necromancers, Netflix, Rebecca Green, Robert Bianco, RPG, Stan, Stan Lee, Streaming TV, Swahili, Tamriel, Thieves, Ubisoft, USA today, Wall Street Journal, Westworld, Ying Jun Zhang

December 24, 2018 · 11:10

Shutdown to death

Time for the last article of the year.

In America the news is all about the shutdown, the government is in a stage of what some call ‘democratic’ application of force, some will call it a serious hoax against the American people and many think it is an atrocity, merely in play because of a wall someone wants. In that regards, it worked in China, not many Chinese left the country via the wall route, did they?

The Washington Post gives us that it is now probable that the shutdown will continue until January 3rd, when the new congress convenes. Some might consider the issue of “deny Trump any new wall money, keeping the Department of Homeland Security’s border-security funding at the current level of $1.3 billion“, yet the issue is a lot larger. It is transgressing borders (quite literally). I see it as the impact of a nation now bankrupt. As they approach a debt of twenty two trillion, or $22,000,000,000,000 we need to realise that even at a mere 0.1%, the US government has to hand over $22,000,000,000 in interest every year. Now we see the impact of the non-taxation of the FAANG group, not to mention all those Wall Street individuals and corporations that are able to have a career plan in tax avoidance (which is actually legal), tax evasion is not. So consider that no one pays a mere 0.1%, so the interest is a lot higher than that. Now consider the 22 billion and the fact that there are 325 million Americans. This would imply $67 for every American. Now consider that 12.3% is in poverty, so lucky for them no taxation and it amounts to 40 million people, this gives us an initial $2.7 billion short. Then we get the 10% group. It gets to be worse when we consider the 2016 numbers. There we see: “An estimated 45.3% of American households — roughly 77.5 million — will pay no federal individual income tax“, in addition those in the lowest 20% paid -$620, which implies no taxation and money from the government, and the picture does not get to be any better beyond that. So the US has a massive budget problem and as I see it, it is bankrupt. In this economist Laurence Kotlikoff actually agrees with me, he came to this conclusion in October, whilst I predicted the setting 3 years ago, the world economies have been in denial for that long. These people might hide behind some fictive ‘wealth of America‘, yet that group of people represents less than 1 million people, and they cannot fork over what the government needs and the picture is merely sliding from bad to worse and this is part of the entire shutdown issue, there is simply no money left.

And those behind “There is frankly no path towards him getting $5 billion in American taxpayer money to meet his campaign promise of a big, beautiful wall with Mexico,” Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.) said Sunday on CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’“, you see, how strong will this wall be? How long until that wall gets ‘punctured’ with a few shots from a M72 LAW or RPG7? Perhaps more efficient is drilling a few holes and fill it with Dynamite. So, how long until that wall is nothing more than a leaky billboard supporter? How much costs will there be in repairing that damage, a wall 2,400 miles long? How much concrete, how many holes, how many troopers will be required? One could argue that the cure is a lot more expensive than the disease ever was. All that in an economy where a government could never ever correctly deal with a minus 22 trillion invoice? That is before we consider the damage to nature, Big Bend National park, Buenos Aires National Wildlife refuge, Kino Springs, Organ Pipe Cactus national Monument, the impact on Yuma looks disastrous, the outskirts of Mexicali, and the space between San Diego and Tijuana is a foregone conclusion as lost forever. All elements that can be presented around, but there is the real impact of a dozen complications, none with a solution that does anything but drive the price of the wall sky high, merely leaving the US to ridicule (by China) with the notion that their wall was nine times longer, completed and functional 375 years earlier. Yes, these are matters that you will see in the news soon enough. I have no doubt that there is some benefit of having a wall, yet at $5 billion and a lot more afterwards, is that really the way you want to squander cash when you are bankrupt?

A wall that will prove to be detrimental to the funding option of 2019, that and the fact that federal workers are now either growing hungry or mandatory taking vacation days, so that impact will be seen all over 2019 as well. And this is not the first, as the Washington Post tells us: “making this the third partial government shutdown of 2018“. Who signed off on this? So when I see: “Sen. Patrick J. Toomey (R-Pa.) dismissed it as “really much ado about very little.”“, I wonder how many people on minimum wage were affected and would he be so kind to pay these people out of his own pocket? I wonder how trivial the matter remains at that point. And even as Senator Lisa Murkowski from Alaska gives us: “The votes are clearly not present in the Senate to provide $5 billion for the border wall“, I wonder if that is the full truth, I wonder if the actuality of the opposition is: “There are no funds left for such an outrageous symbol of discrimination“. I get there as terrorists and criminals will find a way around that wall, or under it, so there is that notion and that will happen, it happened, in Berlin, it happened in Colditz, it is still happening in Gaza, and as such it will also happen at the Mexican border.

It gets to be worse, especially in light of the earliest promise that this wall would be on the Mexican dime (never realistic), we see: “There is no mechanism for direct payments from Mexico’s government to the U.S. government for a wall in the trade agreement. And a number of Republicans have been greatly frustrated by Trump’s intransigence“. In light of that, why was $5 billion pushed for in American budgets? Although in this setting, the application was never made so artistically poetic by replacing ‘stubborn mule attitude‘ with intransigence, the Washington Post gets bonus points on that one.

An additional short update

I made mention of it in my article ‘That did not take long‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/12/22/that-did-not-take-long-2/). there I stated: “because AT&T is going to start pretending its most advanced 4G LTE tech is 5G” and even as we were exposed to: “T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray wrote that AT&T was “duping customers into thinking they’re getting something they’re not.” The “E” is easy to miss, too, judging by a mockup AT&T sent out“, and it was the Washington Post (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/12/21/was-year-g-hype-g-reality-is-yet-come/) who gave us pretty much at the very same time: “We’ll make sure America wins the global 5G race,” John Legere vowed. “5G will unlock capabilities that will fuel job creation and innovation well beyond what we have seen so far“, as well as “AT&T said it too had switched on its 5G service, announcing it is the “first and only company in the U.S. to offer a mobile 5G device over a commercial, standards-based mobile 5G network” the catch? Access is limited for now to a select group of businesses and consumers in a dozen cities, and it requires the use of a mobile hotspot“, so is this real 5G, or is that the mentioned 5G evolution? In light of this article in the Washington Post, does this constitute deceptive conduct, or merely a missed communication between the WP editor and AT&T executives? And as we are treated to “As for when we will see the first 5G-capable smartphone? Industry analysts say the consensus appears to be the first quarter of 2019“, we see the completion of a stage of intransigence, I merely wonder who is not clear enough to see the sea of disagreement here. the fact that whatever comes is to be with an estimated price of US$1800 for the complete edition should also consider that this one item could max out the average credit card on the spot and that is without additional warranty and protection. So as 5G goes, it is seemingly merely for the rich (for now), so as such, is it truly an American first, or even a stage where America ends in a fictive first place? Perhaps it is perception on steroids, you can be the first in space, even if you send a monkey, it is in that light we get to see 5G soon enough. You merely have to contemplate who is remembered to be first in space, Yuri Gagarin on the 12^th April 1961 or the monkey?

I wonder how soon we see the update on how trivial the difference is between 5GE and 5G, and how soon people realise that they are merely getting a new double priced contract whilst true 5G is not delivered, it might end up being a lovely day for contract lawyers in the US.

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Tagged as Alaska, AT&T, Buenos Aires National Wildlife refuge, Christopher A. Coons, FAANG group, ig Bend National park, John Legere, Kino Springs, Laurence Kotlikoff, Lisa Murkowski, Mexicali, Neville Ray, Organ Pipe Cactus national Monument, San Diego, Sen. Patrick J. Toomey, Senator Lisa Murkowski, T-Mobile, Tujuana, Wall Street, Washington Post, Yuma, Yuri Gagarin

December 21, 2018 · 12:01

Three privacies walked into a bar

It is not merely the beginning of a bad joke; it has become a distasteful one. Now, for the most I have never really been against social media like Facebook, as it was free and nothing comes for free. Yet in this, I have always advocated and expected certain levels of decency. The Guardian revealed two days ago that large levels of decency have been trampled on to a much larger degree than ever contemplated, and the people remain silent. The people are so uppity uppity on possible transgressions by governments seeking criminals and terrorists, yet they will allow for any transgression towards greed and exploitation, how can we accept any of it?

Show us your tits

It is an old expression, and I heard it first somewhere in the early 80’s. It broadly represents: ‘What have you got to offer?‘ Mostly used by people with absolutely no adherence to either diplomacy or good manners (unless a guy makes the joke to a good male friend). It is the first part in the stage that the Guardian offers in an article (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/19/facebook-shared-user-data-private-messages-netflix-spotify-amazon-microsoft-sony) where we see not merely ‘bending’ the rules; it is the breaking of basic rights towards privacy that is now out in the open. Even as we accept to the smaller degree: “making user data available through loopholes to companies including Amazon, Microsoft and Sony“, can we even contemplate the impact that we would have to face through: “Facebook gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read and even delete users’ private messages“, the fact that these two were allowed to ‘delete’ messages is crossing a line the width of the grand canyon and the fact that those fruits and nuts on Capitol Hill (aka Senators and Congressmen) are clueless in their interviews, showing one stupidity tainted example after another and questions like ‘giving away rights to delete private messages‘ remained largely undisclosed shows just how useless the elected officials have become towards the larger fields of technology.

Merely the tip, or can I shove my whole penis in there?

A small reference to the comedian Jimmy Carr, who once stated: “I can’t get a word in there, let alone my cock“, and that setting gives us the New York Times view of: “Facebook allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages” (at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/technology/facebook-privacy.html#click=https://t.co/p565d1TX5L). As we contemplate: “Acknowledging that it had breached users’ trust, Facebook insisted that it had instituted stricter privacy protections long ago. Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive, assured lawmakers in April that people “have complete control” over everything they share on Facebook“, we see a much larger field opening up. We can think on one side that Mark Zuckerberg had become clueless on what is going on, or he remains intentionally silent on what he believes are personal rights of privacy, the mere realisation that Facebook acknowledges that not one user on Facebook has any rights to privacy is at the core of this stage. It goes further with: “the deals described in the documents benefited more than 150 companies — most of them tech businesses, including online retailers and entertainment sites, but also automakers and media organizations. Their applications sought the data of hundreds of millions of people a month, the records show. The deals, the oldest of which date to 2010, were all active in 2017. Some were still in effect this year” there is a clear transgression going on, and it is merely speculative on my side when we considered the impact of Bing and Microsoft. They have become so afraid of what Google has become that they are willing to stage new settings of alliances against whatever fictive war they face, the innovations that Google has brought and the innovations that Chinese player Huawei is bringing is scaring these large players beyond belief. If they cannot get up to their imaginative version what it means to be ‘on par’ they feel that they will be considered as derelict and considered as merely trivial in the 5G field. That is a much larger realisation and people need to be aware that as they contemplate of what it means to be a major player in the 5G field, the mere perception that they are not that, that they have lost the trust of the people is a much larger hurdle.

The NY Times shows that part in their article with: “Mr. Zuckerberg was determined to weave Facebook’s services into other sites and platforms, believing it would stave off obsolescence and insulate Facebook from competition. Every corporate partner that integrated Facebook data into its online products helped drive the platform’s expansion, bringing in new users, spurring them to spend more time on Facebook and driving up advertising revenue. At the same time, Facebook got critical data back from its partners“. We could contemplate that this is optionally the Ponzi version of a data scheme, but it is as I personally see it more sinister than that. You see, the lower levels would never advance to a higher level and the data would merely flow up to the tip of the pyramid, leaving the rest as mere exploitable facilitators in all this.

Supply Filofax’s to the Russians, it is very organised crime

There is one additional part in all this that could be the beginning of the end for Facebook, as the NY Times gives us: “Facebook, in turn, used contact lists from the partners, including Amazon, Yahoo and the Chinese company Huawei — which has been flagged as a security threat by American intelligence officials — to gain deeper insight into people’s relationships and suggest more connections, the records show“, we are introduced to a much larger issue. Not only has the US been unable to prove the lie (read: non-truth) that Huawei is a National Security danger. We see the makings of the fact that American Corporation (read: Facebook) has been handing over the data voluntarily. As a business solution, Huawei had been able to see where the interactions were the largest and also predict where hardware and software would make it a much better regarded update for consumers, the fact that this data became available gives the first rise (after shown levels of non-comprehension) that technology firms are replacing politicians, politics and policy making them useless as these technology firms have been setting the beat of who gets what data and at which price, yet the US government is not allowed access, not when it can be sold at $14.99 per kilobyte of raw data.

This remains an evolving field and it is not until we get to the part “Apple devices also had access to the contact numbers and calendar entries of people who had changed their account settings to disable all sharing, the records show. Apple officials said they were not aware that Facebook had granted its devices any special access. They added that any shared data remained on the devices and was not available to anyone other than the users“, so not only does the new iPad pro bend under the smallest pressure, which Apple claims is normal (something the consumer was not informed about), we see that the ignorance of their own technology is now a much larger issue all over the playing field. the mere fact that disabled sharing of data still allowed for sharing is an architectural failure of much larger proportions than ever contemplated. In all this data sharing in Huawei devices remains unproven and in all this it seems that Google is not the black sheep some proclaim it is, all whilst Facebook is showing to be without ethics, without regards and without morals, so at what point will we relabel Facebook to Faecesbook?

So as the article ends with: “How closely Facebook monitored its data partners is uncertain. Most of Facebook’s partners declined to discuss what kind of reviews or audits Facebook subjected them to. Two former Facebook partners, whose deals with the social network dated to 2010, said they could find no evidence that Facebook had ever audited them. One was BlackBerry. The other was Yandex” gives a much larger rise to the lack of privacy that up to two billion users have not had for the longest of times. We could argue that it is in the interest of Google, to fix Google+ and allow people to port away from Facebook. When we look at the two players, it seems that Google+ is not nearly as dangerous as Facebook is more and more showing to be. Even as we are considering that Washington DC is suing Facebook, the realisation we get from: “Washington DC has sued Facebook for allowing the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica to gain access to the personal data of tens of millions of the site’s users without their permission“, when we set it against the stage that the guardian, the Times and the New York Times have shown the people. We merely have to print the log of all data shared and number all instances of data transgression will optionally show Facebook to be the most reckless and unethical corporation in the history of technology, that is quite the achievement, and it works for Microsoft as they might proclaim themselves to be saints in a tar pit.

When we consider the quote: “According to a letter that Facebook sent this fall to Senator Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat, PricewaterhouseCoopers reviewed at least some of Facebook’s data partnerships“, we see a massive failure by Facebook to police and protect the data of others, and as we already know, those who have the latest mobile phone, we need to realise that this is no longer a mobile phone, the latest phones and the ones for 5G are no longer merely mobile phones, they have become personal data servers and as we are seeing the impact where Facebook has made most of all that data shareable, with people you never agreed on having access, in how much anger will you be from January 1st 2019 and onwards? For me it works out nicely, it merely increases the value of my new IP, which is currently on the rise to a much larger degree than even I contemplated. 2019 might be finally be the year where my life turns largely to the better and at present I feel a lot safer handing that IP to Huawei than to anyone else, that is one reality that Washington DC has shown to the largest of degrees (Mountain View remains a strong contender for now).

The only part in all this is why large parts of all this was not shown clearly in the senate hearing of September 2018. Just contemplate this weekend, what else did that so called Senate hearing not figure out, and how unsafe would you like your personal data end up being in 2019?

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Tagged as 5G, Apple, Bing, Blackberry, Facebook, google, Google Plus, Huawei, Jimmy Carr, Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft, Milton Jones, Mountain View, New York Times, NY Times, Oregon, Ponzi scheme, Pricewaterhouse Cooper, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Privacy, Ron Wyden, The Times, Yandex

December 21, 2018 · 11:41

Early morning puzzle

I am waking up to coffee and the Guardian giving us ‘Tens of thousands of passengers stranded by Gatwick airport drones‘. The article (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/dec/20/tens-of-thousands-of-passengers-stranded-by-gatwick-airport-drones) gives us how some silly wanker is stranding tens of thousands of passengers. Now I get that this is done for the good of the safety of the people. My initial reaction was (like many others), shoot down that bloody drone and be done with it. Now, I get that things are alas not that simple and I started to get educated on what is currently being used.

As I learned more, we are given: “Michigan Technological University, for instance, has demonstrated an “octocopter” armed with a gun that fires a net to trap and carry off rogue drones. Not only does that approach work at altitude, it also protects the captured drone from plummeting to the ground, potentially causing injury or destroying evidence.”

Hence I reengineered the net, the initial solution that the Skywall has (at https://openworksengineering.com), when we combine it with the Octocopter, gives us the first part. Now we merely add a small cylinder and an ejectable cartridge that activates 3-5 seconds after firing. The ejectable cartridge is filled with high pressure helium that inflates a balloon, one that is similar to the airbag in a car, most likely larger. The cylinder also has a small beacon, which will be active. We have now achieved two parts. The first is that whatever is captured is now being slowed by the balloon on helium, also preventing full speed crashing, and limiting damage. The beacon will guide the people to where an industrial grade drone will go. This now gives us two parts, the operator takes his/her losses, or finds out that the drone is giving away their location, making an arrest a lot more likely and easy. The second part is that no matter how the drone works, it works on physical principles and drag is a bitch; ask any sailor or para-glide enthusiastic. Not only will the drone be less likely to make it back, it will hinder whatever comes next, an alternative solution that merely took 34 seconds to figure out, whether it is an actual solution requires a little bit of scrutiny; if we add a paint or glue device to the cylinder that once the cable is out sets it off? The impact on the rotors as its rotational ability is lowered by a lot might also down it, whilst the impact is diminished by the deployed helium balloon.

The second solution is brought by Defense News (at https://www.defensenews.com/digital-show-dailies/navy-league/2018/04/10/this-gun-shoots-drones-out-of-the-sky/). Here we see: “The IXI Dronekiller is the first and only hand-held counter-drone technology employing the use of software defined radio, according to IXI Technology representatives at the Sea-Air-Space Exposition in Washington, D.C., this week“, we are also treated to: “The IXI Dronekiller will be able to target all Type I and Type II commercial drones, which are exactly the type you’d see non-state, and even some state, actors employ on battlefields like Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan“, an interesting solution. Yet the Guardian gives us: “more sophisticated drones know to automatically return to their operator if they lose signal“, so what if there is a binary signal? What if the first one does what it is already doing, yet the second part ends up being more like the precursor to the laser. What if we take MASER (Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation) to a new level and fry the circuitry at the same time (if that is possible over the range)? We would not have solved the damage by crashing, yet over airfields, the damage will be at the most a landing strip and if it can survive the wheels of a Boeing, it can take the impact of a drone, no question. Another option is tagging, if the perpetrator cannot be stopped, perhaps the drone can be tagged, making it a much larger issue for anyone to get it back. In addition to all this, industrial drones are not cheap, so after this person losses their second drone, the impact will be financially felt, these babies go for $8,000 each and the first serial number will aid towards getting the claim for 800 delayed flights started.

All this took merely minutes to contemplate, implying that there is plenty of progress to be found in the anti-drone field. Still when this happens right before Christmas weekend, the victims will remain the airport passengers and that sucks. I have been in a heavily delayed flight before (twice actually) and even as the airport was not at fault either way, the lack of options at airports for those stranded still sucks.

Let’s hope that these people at Gatwick Airport will make it to their destination without any further issues

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Tagged as Defense News, Drones, Gatwick Airport, IXI Dronekiller, MASER, Michigan Technological University, octocopter, Sea-Air-Space Exposition, skywall, the Guardian

December 19, 2018 · 13:00

The systemic variable we forgot

We all have moments that are etched in our souls. It can be for the weirdest reason; it might not even make sense to the person when it happens. It sticks with them and what they had not realised at that time what or why, it takes time for the person to realise what the brain worked out instantly in the sub conscience. For me that moment was Stanley Kubrick. I saw 2001 early in life, I saw it in Cinerama and I never understood what I saw, I loved what I saw, and was caught unaware that Cinerama was merely a phase; yet that was not the moment. My moment was ‘the Shining‘. I was caught by the trailer, after that by the movie. I had read the book, but Kubrick had done something more with the King book. That feeling was reignited in me again when they used the movie in a part of the ‘Ready Player One‘ movie.

It is this part that will matter a little further down the line. For now I need to start with the Bloomberg article ‘Coke Names on Bottles Spell Money for Fintech with Data Focus‘ (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-02/data-is-money-for-fintech-that-helped-coke-put-names-on-bottles). The article is 2 weeks old, yet it connects to something that happened yesterday (at https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/18/experian-to-offer-a-way-to-add-your-phone-bill-to-your-credit-report.html). Even when we ignore the initial part ‘You may soon be able to use your cell phone bill to boost your credit score‘, you see, like many Kubrick movies what you are reading is not what matters. Even the initial quote “Experian, one of three major credit bureaus in the U.S., announced that it will start factoring in phone and other utility payment history into some consumers’ reports early next year, according to the Wall Street Journal.” The second part is a little more to the point, yet still they will not give you the goods, which is “Your credit score is a measure of how trustworthy you are in the eyes of financial institutions. Showing that you’re consistent about paying your utility bills gives lenders more reason to think you’re a safe bet.”

It is not merely about paying the bills, which is still a must. It is how much of a product are YOU? You are no longer a person, you never were, you are product for enabling and facilitation, that is all that you are to them. The collaboration of Fintech and Technology is about long term facilitation. As the technology and digital age of marketing reaches saturation, we are confronted with the stage of 4G, ‘wherever I am’. this stage is very important, because wherever you are, you are either ‘an enabling consumer’ or you are not. Those who are not have little or no value to these corporations. It is the second stage of what was called: ‘those who have’ and ‘those who do not have’ and it is now a lot more immediate. The tranche of facilitation is directly important to corporations as this is directly converted to value and corporate drive, and your credit score is a first hurdle to them. Even as they are all about a 700, or a 750 score, we are merely misrepresented. It is the 500-700 range that has the larger fortune for them and that is who they want in their partial view for now; it is facilitation towards a group of corporations. When that falters you are out of the game and you will pay exceedingly more for the same as you are considered ‘a risk’. This is the stage where we see ourselves as this is the first icon towards those getting into the 5G game and those who are told (just like a technology firm recruitment drive), ‘you are not the perfect fit for now‘.

That game will continue and expand to a much larger degree; the companies are expanding on the ‘low-risk’ populations on a global scale. The game for Fintech also changes. As we are presented: “By using Experian Boost, those consumers could see their scores increase immediately after they link their bank accounts. And around 1.5 million consumers with no scores could receive a score“, we are not informed on the change where you in advance hand over your financial data and financial stages, so that those in an early stage can be made enablers to a much larger degree as long as they commit. So the telecom and Fintech are maximising potential to have low risk customers, whilst still charging risk enabled margins to all. For them it is win-win no matter how you slice it. Soon thereafter you will started receiving the ‘pay now, avoid a lowered credit score’, which will at some point translate into imparting ‘mortgage fears’ with any late payment.

CNBC then gives us the next level of ‘misrepresentation’, or is that merely ‘partial misinformation’? As we get “This move is the latest in a series of efforts from credit report agencies to increase scores as lenders look for new ways to assess risk levels“, you see the driving change is not new ways of assessing risk, it is about having a much larger population with credit scores as the three players are trying to be the largest player and here they unite. Experian, Equifax and TransUnion are staging a new setting where they have credit scores upfront, not when it has become an optional issue, but as possible risks rise. It is not merely: ‘overhaul how negative information is handled‘, which now connects to “since the overhaul, which was initiated after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau found problems with credit reporting, firms have stripped tax-lien and civil-judgement data from credit reports, and millions of collection accounts have been removed. A year after the changes were made in June of 2017, 25 percent fewer consumers had a collection account on their credit report“, it basically gives them the setting that they have 25% less information, when you have a data population of one billion, 25% adds up fast, in addition, as 7 years old data falls off the debt data, having a new method (like phone bills) add it to the credibility of yourself, they get data with rollover capacity.

The question is not merely how just or how dangerous it is, it will soon become a stage of how discriminating it is. And even as that needs to be untangled, the Telecom companies and Fintech are now working together on how to select the cream from the others, making debt risk a valuating currency to add to their profit margins, as life without mobile phones is becoming increasingly important.

You see, you yourself will become the new system variable in all this. You are requested to freely hand over certain data that will identify you as an enabler to these large corporations and a larger facilitator to stamp out the credit value that you have and as such the technological abilities that you are allowed, or offered to be at a certain price. In a saturated 4G market getting the high end facilitators to be technological enablers for 5G matters to all who are ready to cash in, a lot of it and fast.

So when Bloomberg gave us: “Cassin, 51, who runs Experian Plc, has helped transform his company from a credit-reference firm into a broader data and software business. After starting with maintaining vast datasets of personal credit histories, most of its growth now comes from advising big companies on how to monetize the information they have on customers and supply chains, while avoiding privacy scandals” two weeks ago, they gave us a lot more than you realised. Brian Cassin has found a way to set the new stage, a stage he merely adopted from social media solutions like Facebook. Get them to hand over their billing history freely (for optional extra credit rating points) and as long as every bill is paid, he is happy to do just that, it is when the new stage adds other elements, that is when you either hand over more data, or lose credibility points and that is the stage of enabling them. From my data side, I would go with the premise that it is basically a brilliant move to get data. From the other side is that a financial setback will hurt more and when it is staged against your mortgage, that danger could become surreal for the person involved. It is basically a hidden trap that until you step into it, it is not a problem, when you do you will not merely hurt yourself, you will change the surrounding you are in by a much larger degree and the people handing over those details will not realise the trap they offered themselves up for until it is too late.

Matt Schulz, chief industry analyst at CompareCards also gives us: “You are the best judge of your ability to take on a new loan”. That is the part that bites, because more often than not, you are not. When you think back, who hasn’t made the fatal mistake when thinking: “I can buy this now, if I make sure that I only buy …….. next week“, you see, the actual premise is “If I do not buy these …… now, I will have enough money to buy …… next payday“, we do not do that, because we think we can gratify now and resolve later, and when there is a setback, we merely push it forward, which now becomes making the now initial issue an actual problem. We have all done that, and I have made that mistake a few times when I was younger. That is the immediate value for whoever uses that Experian solution as at that point the risk factor increases a lot and it will impact a few more items soon thereafter. It is a very dangerous setting for anyone under financial pressures.

Yet overall Experian is making a brilliant move to upgrade their data value in light of the 25% setback and basically these three players (Experian, Equifax and TransUnion) will upgrade their value by a lot this way. It will not end here, as Bloomberg gives us the thoughts of Cassin with: “Experian also helps protect against identity theft, and it still runs the core credit-scoring business, whose newer services include allowing lenders to quickly assess applications for car finance via text message. It’s also working with Amazon’s Alexa platform to explore new technologies like voice recognition to use in credit scoring“, the new field for Experian will grow as a much more axial player of 5G in the centre of it all. Identity theft will now no longer be merely around those with a stolen identity, their services will become a founding force is what will be the establishment of non-repudiation. As I stated, 4G was ‘wherever I am‘, yet with 5G it will be about ‘whenever I want it‘ and there the threshold of non-repudiation will rise, it is not merely about streaming, data access of what is there. It will be new levels of domotics, smart devices and automatic deep learning solutions, those paths require a level of non-repudiation, not merely authentication. The expert Varun Gulshan has been informing via academic papers the part of ‘Validation of Deep Learning Algorithms‘ and when you grasp that part, you will see the stronger requirement of non-repudiation over authentication, as Fintech is catching on there, the game evolves in a very different path, parallel the same, but in operations needs quite different and requires a much larger comprehension. Even as his stage was about the application in a medical field, its application applies to a lot more technology shores. The stage of non-repudiation (it can only be diabetic retinopathy and/or diabetic macular edema) and nothing else, versus the stage that we see when we consider ‘this could be diabetic retinopathy and/or diabetic macular edema (optional stage for authentication). As we see the evolution in finding the different stage, we see a new level of machine learning; we see a stage with a setting of being able to see the positive, the negative, the false positive and the false negative. The ability to differentiate between the four is actually a much larger difference than most realise. One could argue that we have a stage where the 95% certainty becomes a 98.1% certainty, making the larger risk no longer existent and the 3.1% difference translates to a trillion dollar market of facilitation, spread over the larger three mind you, so as they unite, they also grow their exponential growth in these area’s as we see basic needs being adjusted to facilitation with fees towards the risks that customers virtually pose. I state virtually for the mere reason that this field is basically new, evolved from an origin, but still brand new and all the companies who have ever been involved with invoice chasing will see that impact and they all want to be on board.

That is the system variable that we forgot, we forgot us as a mere variable in what drives our value, not the value that others impact on us, the value that we press for in ourselves, even if the impact is from the outside sources we face every day. Experian (and others) have found a way to charge us for the risk we are towards our value. So when we see an optional $60 for 200GB, we will soon face the option to get it at the starting price of $60, with an additional risk charge. You might think that this will never happen, but it is already happening, and when Fintech evolves the risk pattern, we will pay optional more, or face credit worthiness loss, losing 20 points when we are late with payment, seeing only 2 points repair per month, that is the part we do not see here. CNBC and Bloomberg only give the ‘business opportunity’ and the harshness of risk in the other direction was downplayed through ‘a natural fit for building solid credit‘, a statement that is not untrue, no one denies that. To see that hidden trap, you need to see the economic impact that 2004 and 2008 brought the people and how long it took them to restore those losses, I can tell you now that a large group of people in the US still have not recuperated, even when we realise that most families have mum and dad work 2 jobs. that is seen in part when we realise that at present both parents work full time in 46% of these households, the number is generic and weighted making it to some degree debatable, and some sources indicate that 30% of that group has both parents working more than one job, the latest information gives us that this is based on 2016 numbers, so it is incomplete at present, I personally fear that most politicians are not that eager to dig into that shameful setting, and as I am presenting these facts, we see no clear path that the quality of life is not getting any better for many, it merely becomes more risk driven than ever before enabling an evolving systemic problem to all households.

Technologically it is brilliant and opening many (fin)tech doors all over the place; looking with a humanitarian view, it is not a good thing, we are merely enabling others to degrade us to an algorithm part, something that was already the case, but until recently never to the degree we are about to see.

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Tagged as bloomberg, Brian Cassin, Cinerama, CNBC, CompareCards, credit score, Equifax, Experian, FinTech, Matt Schulz, Stanley Kubrick, Stephen King, The Shining, TransUnion, Validation of Deep Learning Algorithms, Varun Gulshan, Wall Street Journal

December 14, 2018 · 13:07

Fight the Future

Mark Bergen gives us a Bloomberg article. The Sydney Morning Herald took it on (at https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/inside-huawei-s-secret-hq-china-is-shaping-the-future-20181213-p50m0o.html). Of course the arrest of Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies is the introduction here. We then get the staging of: “inside Huawei’s Shenzhen headquarters, a secretive group of engineers toil away heedless to such risks. They are working on what’s next – a raft of artificial intelligence, cloud-computing and chip technology crucial to China’s national priorities and Huawei’s future” with a much larger emphasis on “China’s government has pushed to create an industry that is less dependent on cutting-edge US semiconductors and software“, the matters are not wrong, yet they are debatable. When I see ‘China’s national priorities‘ and ‘Huawei’s future‘ we must ask ourselves, are they the same? They might be on the same course and trajectory, but they are not the same. In the end Huawei needs to show commercial power and growth, adhering to China’s national needs are not completely in line with that, merely largely so.

Then we something that is a lot more debatable, when we get: “That means the business would lap $US100 billion in 2025, the year China’s government has set to reach independence in technological production” and by my reckoning, China could optionally reach that in 2021-2022, these three years are important, more important than you realise. Neom in Saudi Arabia, optionally three projects in London, two in Paris, two in Amsterdam and optionally projects in Singapore, Dubai and Bangkok. Tokyo would be perfect, yet they are fiercely competitive and the Japanese feel nationalistic on Japanese and at times more important, driven towards non-Chinese goods. In the end, Huawei would need to give in too much per inch of market share, not worth it I reckon, yet the options that Huawei has available might also include growing the tourist fields where they can grow market share through data service options, especially if the can Google to become part of this (in some places). In the end, the stage is still valid to see Huawei become the biggest 5G player in the field.

Then we get the first part of the main event. With: “It started working on customised chips to handle complex algorithms on hardware before the cloud companies did. Research firm Alliance Bernstein estimates that HiSilicon is on pace for $US7.6 billion in sales this year, more than doubling its size since 2015. “Huawei was way ahead of the curve,” said Richard, the analyst.” we see something that I have tried to make clear to the audience for some time.

June 2018: ‘Telstra, NATO and the USA‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/06/20/telstra-nato-and-the-usa/) with: “A failing on more than one level and by the time we are all up to speed, the others (read: Huawei) passed us by because they remained on the ball towards the required goal.”

September 2018: ‘One thousand solutions‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/09/26/one-thousand-solutions/) with: “we got shown 6 months ago: “Huawei filed 2,398 patent applications with the European Patent Office in 2017 out of a total of 166,000 for the year“, basically 1.44% of ALL files European patents were from that one company.”

Merely two of several articles that show us the momentum that Huawei has been creating by stepping away from the iterative mobile business model and leaping technologically ahead one model after the other. If you look at the history of the last few years, Huawei went from P7, Mate 10, Nova 3i and Mate 20 Pro. These 4 models in a lifecycle timeline have been instrumental for them and showing the others that there is fierce competition. The P7, a mere equal to the Samsung Galaxy 4 in its day, yet 43% cheaper for the consumer, and now they are at the Mate 20 Pro, which is 20% cheaper than the Samsung Galaxy Note9 and regarded as better in a few ways. In 4 cycles Huawei moved from optionally a choice to best in the field and still cheaper than most. That is the effect of leaping forward and they are in a place where they can do the same in the 5G field.

We are confronted with the drive with the statement: “Huawei is throwing everything into its cloud package. It recently debuted a set of AI software tools and in October released a new specialised chip, called the Ascend. “No other chip set has this kind of capability of processing,” Qiu said.” This viewed advantage is still a loaded part because there is the fact that China is driven towards growing the AI field, where they, for now have a temporary disadvantage. We might see this as a hindrance, yet that field is only visible in the governmental high end usage that there is and consumers like you and me will not notice this, those who claim it and create some elaborate ‘presentation’ into making the water look muddy. When your life is about Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, you will never notice it. In the high end usage, where AI is an issue, they are given the cloud advantage that others cannot offer to the degree that is available to non-governmental players (well, that is what it looks like and that is technologically under consideration, yet it does look really nice).

When we look towards the future of Huawei we clearly see the advantages of the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, UAE and optionally Qatar if they play their cards right. Latin America is an option, especially if they start in Argentina, where they could optionally add Uruguay overnight, branching out towards Chile and Paraguay will be next leaving the growth towards Brazil. Yet in that same strategy add Venezuela and Colombia first would enable several paths. The business issue remains, yet being the first to have an additional appeal and if it pisses off the Americans Venezuela gets on board fast often enough. The issue is more than technological. The US still has to prove to the audience that there is a 5G place for them all and the infrastructure does not really allow for it at present, merely the metropolitan areas where the money is, driving inequality in the USA even further.

If visibility is the drive than Huawei is very much on the right track and they are speeding that digital super highway along nicely. Yet in opposition to all this is the final paragraph in the SMH. When we see: ““As long as they stick to the game plan, they still have a lot of room to grow,” he said. “Unless the US manages to get their allies to stop buying them.”” This is a truth and also a reassurance. You see the claim ‘Unless the US manages to get their allies to stop buying them‘, gets us to an American standard. It was given to us by the X-Files in the movie with the same name, or perhaps better stated Chris Carter gave it to us all. The end he gives us: “He is but one man. One man alone cannot fight the future“, it equally applies to governments too, they might try to fight the future, yet in the end, any nation is built from the foundation of people, stupid or not, bright or less so, the larger group can do arithmetic and when we are confronted with a Huawei at $450, or an Apple iPhone at $2350, how many of you are desperately rich enough to waste $1900 more on the same functionality? Even when we add games to the larger three (Facebook, LinkedIn & Twitter), most phones will merely have an optional edge and at $1900? Would you pay for the small 10% difference that 1-3 games optionally offer? And let’s not forget that you will have to add that difference again in 2 years when you think that you need a new phone. The mere contemplation of optimised playing free games at $77 a month makes total sense doesn’t it? So there we see the growth plan of Huawei, offering the top of the mountain at the base price and those in denial making these unsubstantiated ‘security risk’ claims will at some point need to see the issue as Verizon is the most expensive provider in the US, So when I see $110 per month for 24 GB of shared data, whilst I am getting 200GB for $50, I really have to take an effort not to laugh out loud. That is the 5G world, the US faces and whilst there was an option for competitive players in the US, the Huawei block is making sure that some players will rake in the large cash mountain for much longer and there others are making fun of my predictions, and now that I am proven to be correct, they are suddenly incommunicado and extremely silent.

As such, when I predicted that the US is now entering a setting where they end up trailing a field that they once led, we will see a lot of growth of Chinese interests. In all this, do you really think that it will stop at a mere 5G walkie talkie? No, with 5G automation and deeper learning, we will see a larger field of dash boarding, information and facilitation to the people and Huawei will optionally rule that field soon enough, with a few non Americans nipping at their heels for dominance because that is the nature of the beast as well. Progress is a game for the hungry and some players (specifically the US) have forgotten what it was like to be hungry. Australian Telstra made similar mistakes and moved their Share price of $6.49 to $3.08 in the stage of 3 years, a 52% loss of value, and when (not if) Huawei pushed the borders all over the place, those people with a Verizon Protective State of Mind will end up seeing Verizon going in a similar setting, because that is also the consequence of adhering to what I would consider to be a form of nationalistic nepotism. The UK already had its ducks in a row for the longest of times (and that island has less ground to cover, which is a distinct advantage), so there BT has options for now and over time they might adhere to some of their policies as is required, the US is not in that good a position and Huawei merely needs to flash a medium purse of cash to show the people in the US that a place like Buenos Aires can offer the masses more and faster than those on better incomes in the US, because the pricing model allows for such a shift.

In this the problem is not a short term one, even as US giants are supposed to have the advantage, we also see that the workforce is not properly adhered to, the US (and the UK) have a massive, not a large, but a massive disadvantage when it comes to STEM students, a disadvantage that China does not have. The AI field is not something that is solved over the next 3 years, so as those with educations in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics is dwindling to some degree in commonwealth nations and America, China can move full steam as the next generation is pushed into high end ambition and careers. As such the entire AI shortfall against America can be overcome much easier by places like China and India at present. It is not merely the stage of more graduated students; it is about groups of graduated students agreeing on paths towards breakthrough solutions. No matter how savant one student is, a group is always more likely to see the threat and weakness of a certain path and that is where the best solution is found faster.

Will we ‘Fight the Future’?

The issue is not the American polarised view, it is the correctly filtered view that Alex Younger gave us initially, it is not incorrect to have a nationalistic protective view and Alex gave the correct stage on having a national product to use, which is different from the Canadian and Australian path proclaimed. We agree that it is in a national required state to have something this critical solved in a national way (when possible that is), in this the path to have a Huawei 5G stage and then reengineer what is required is not wrong, yet it is optionally with a certain risk and when that path is small enough, it is a solution. The UK is largely absolved as it had BT with the foundations of the paths required, just as Australia has Telstra, yet some countries (like Australia) become too complacent, BT was less complacent and they have knowledge, yet is it advanced enough? We agree that they can get up to speed faster, yet will it be fast enough? I actually do not know, I have no data proving the path in one direction or the other. What is clear is that a race with equal horses provides the best growth against one another, the competitiveness and technological breakthroughs that we have seen for the longest time. That path has largely been made redundant in the US and Australia (I cannot say for certain how that is in Canada).

Even as Huawei is gaining speed and being ahead of it all is still a race by one player, the drive to stay ahead is only visible on the global field, and it is an uncertain path, even if they have all the elements in their favour, what is clear is that this advantage will remain so for the next 5 years and unless certain nations make way for budgets growing the STEM pool by well over 200% their long term disadvantage remains in place.

The versusians

In this stage we need to look in the pro and con Huawei field. In the pro field, as Huawei set the stage for global user growth, which they are seemingly doing, they have the upper hand and they will grow to a user base that grows from servicing a third of the internet users to close to 50%, that path is set with some certainty and as such their advantage grows. In the opposition of that, players like need to step away from the political empty headed failure of enabling the one champion stage of Verizon and Telstra, diversity would give the competitive drive and now it is merely Telstra versus Vodafone/TPG, is means that there will be a technological compromise stage where none of the two surges ahead giving players like Huawei a much larger advantage to fuel growth,

How wrong am I likely to be?

So far I have been close to the mark months in advance compared to the big newspapers only giving partial facts long after I saw it coming, so I feel that I remain on the right track here. The question is not merely who has the 5G stage first, it will be who will facilitate 5G usage more complete and earlier than the others, because that is where the big number of switchers will be found and players like TPG and Vodafone have seen the impact of switchers more than once, so they know that they must be better and more complete than the other brand. Huawei knows it too, they saw that part and are still seeing the impact that goes all the way back to the P7, and that is where Apple also sees more losses, We were informed a mere 9 hours ago: “Piper Jaffray cuts its Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) price target from $250 to $222 saying that recent supplier guidance cuts suggest “global unit uptake has not met expectations.”” another hit of a loss to face, optionally a mere 11.2% yet in light of the recent losses, they faced, we see what I personally feel was the impact of the ridiculous stage of handing the audience a phone of $2369, optionally 30% more expensive than the choice after that one, even if the number two is not that much less in its ability. The stage where marketeers decide on what the people need, when they all need something affordable. It personally feels like the iMac Pro move, a $20K solution that less than 0.3% of the desktop users would ever need, and most cannot even afford. That is driving the value of Apple down and Huawei knows that this egocentric stage is one that Apple et al will lose, making Huawei the optional winner in many more places after the first 5G hurdles are faced by all.

Do you still think that Apple is doing great? A company that went from a trillion to 700 billion in less than 10 weeks, which is an opportunity for the IOS doubters to now consider Huawei and Samsung, even as Huawei will statistically never get them all, they will get a chunk and the first move is that these users moved away from IOS, and as Android users they are more easily captured towards user hungry players like Huawei by its marketing, that is the field that has changed in the first degree and as people feel comfortable with Huawei, they will not consider getting more Huawei parts (like routers for the internet at home) and that continues as people start moving into the 5G field. You see, we can agree that it is mere marketing (for now), yet Huawei already has its 5G Customer-premises Equipment (as per March 2018). this implies that with: “compatible with 4G and 5G networks, and has proven measured download speeds of up to 2Gbps – 20 times that of 100 Mbps fiber“, that they can buy their router now, remain on 4G and when their local telecom is finally ready, 5G will kick in when the subscription is correct. It is as far as I can tell the first time that government telecom procedures are vastly behind the availability to the consumer (an alleged speculation from my side).

Do you think that gamers and Netflix people will not select this option if made available? That is what is ahead of the coming options and that is the Future that some are fighting. It is like watching a government on a mule trying to do battle with a windmill, the stage seems that ridiculous and as we move along, we will soon see the stage being ‘represented’ by some to state on the dangers that cannot (or are ignored) to be proven.

The moment other devices are set towards the 5G stage, that is when more and more people will demand answers from industrial politicians making certain claims and that is when we see the roller-coaster of clowns and jesters get the full spotlight. This is already happening in Canada (at https://www.citynews1130.com/2018/12/13/huawei-and-5g-experts-clash-on-the-risk-to-canadas-national-security/), where City News (Ottawa) gives us: “I can’t see many circumstances, other than very extreme ones, in which the Chinese government would actually risk Huawei’s standing globally as a company in order to conduct some kind of surveillance campaign“, something I claimed weeks ago, so nice for the Canadian press to catch up here, in addition when we are given: ““This can be used for a lot of things, for manipulation of businesses to harvesting of intellectual property,” Tobok said. “On a national security level, they can know who is where at any given time. They can use that as leverage to jump into other operations of the government.” those people knowingly, willingly and intentionally ignore the fact that Apps can do that and some are doing it already. The iPhone in 2011 did this already. We were given: “Privacy fears raised as researchers reveal file on iPhone that stores location coordinates and timestamps of owner’s movements“, so when exactly was the iPhone banned as a national security hazard? Or does that not apply to any Commonwealth nation when it is America doing it? Or perhaps more recent (January 2018), when Wired gave us: “the San Francisco-based Strava announced a huge update to its global heat map of user activity that displays 1 billion activities—including running and cycling routes—undertaken by exercise enthusiasts wearing Fitbits or other wearable fitness trackers. Some Strava users appear to work for certain militaries or various intelligence agencies, given that knowledgeable security experts quickly connected the dots between user activity and the known bases or locations of US military or intelligence operations.” So when Lt. Walksalot was mapping out that secret black site whilst his Fitbit was mapping that base location every morning job, was the Fitbit banned? Already proven incursions on National security mind you, yet Huawei with no shown transgressions is the bad one. Yes, that all made perfect sense. I will give Wesley Wark, a security and intelligence specialist who teaches at the University of Ottawa a pass when he gives us: “Still, Canada can’t afford to be shut out of the Five Eyes or play a diminished role in the alliance, and if Britain decides to forbid Huawei from taking part in its 5G networks, Canada could not be the lone member to embrace the company“, OK that is about governmental policy, not unlike Alex Younger there is a claim to be made in that case, not for the risk that they are or might be, but the setting that no government should have a foreign risk in place. This is all fine and good, but so far the most transgressions were American ones and that part is kept between the sheets (like catering to IBM for decades), or leaving the matter largely trivialised.

It is pointless to fight the future, you can merely adhere to swaying the direction it optionally faces and the sad part is that this sway has forever been with those needing to remain in power, or to remain in the false serenity that status quo brings (or better stated never brings). True innovation is prevented from taking grasp and giving directional drive and much better speeds and that too is something to consider, merely because innovation drives IP, the true currency of the future and when we deny ourselves that currency we merely devaluate ourselves as a whole. In this we should agree that denying innovation has never ever resulted in a positive direction, history cannot give us one example when this worked out for the best of all.

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Tagged as 4G, 5G, AI, Alex Younger, America, Android, Apple, Argentina, Bangkok, bloomberg, BT, Canada, City News, Dubai, Fitbit, google, HiSilicon, Huawei, IOS, IP, London, Mark Bergen, Meng Wanzhou, NEOM, Piper Jaffray, Qatar, Samsung Galaxy Note9, Saudi Arabia, Shenzhen headquarters, Singapore, SMH, Sydney Morning Herald, Telstra, Tobok, Tokyo, TPG, UAE, UK, University of Ottawa, Uruguay, USA, Vodafone, Wesley Wark

December 12, 2018 · 12:34

A screen made with real silver

Forbes gave us the news on Monday. Many expected it; many saw it coming and no one is really surprised. It’s ‘Netflix’s Worst Nightmare Is Coming True‘. Stephen McBride gives us: “If you’ve been reading RiskHedge, you know I’ve been warning to keep money out of stock market darling Netflix (NFLX)“, he was of course correct, yet I would not go there for different reasons, reasons he actually mentions in part. As we are treated to: “It comes down to the lifecycle of disruptive businesses. Netflix pioneered “streaming” video where you watch shows through the Internet rather than on cable TV. For years, it was the only streaming service in town. Early investors rode this first-mover advantage to 10,000% gains from 2008 to July of this year.” Many, for the most the investors rejoiced. I saw the loaded cannon in another direction. As Forbes gives us, we are treated to: “Netflix had planned to spend $8 billion on shows and series this year… now it’ll spend roughly $12 billion. It now invests more in content than any other American TV network” that is where the danger is. You see, the cold hearted calculation is: 137 million users worldwide. This gets us on average $24 billion a year, it looks good, but it is not great. You see, this only works if this goes on in the long run, whilst it requires growth, it also requires people to stay with Netflix for a long time. Now, both are an option, but they have muddied the waters in another way. First there are the loans and the interest is due, as well as the principle of the matter (aka, the loan). It is optionally not a big thing if things were great moving forward, yet they are not. I had an idea earlier this year and I thought that handing it to Netflix is a great way to gain momentum. You see, I have written 1100 articles within the last 6 years alone and as such I do have a few ideas running around in my head.

Yet Netflix has a no-unsolicited submissions policy, so until you have an agent and such, there is no option. They only accept submissions through a licensed literary agent or from a producer, attorney, manager or entertainment executive with the players that Netflix has a pre-existing relationship. This makes total sense, yet it also gives rise to a much more expensive track, and $12 billion shows part of that. From my point of view new ideas and optionally the most profitable ones are found in what some would call ‘the geek corner’, these people can often not relate, cannot present but they tell great stories, they are most often really cheap and original. It is a much harder sell, yet the entire expense track could be down by at least 10%, saving Netflix $1.2 billion on the spot. Then there is the international concept. Some TV series became great in their own way. Sweden had Pipi Longstocking and that become a much loved character on a very global stage. Another Swedish treasure was a 70’s series called the White Stone, based on the book by Gunnel Linde, Sweden had its own share of successes down the track and we realise that some might seem less interesting nowadays. The Netherlands had the legendary series ‘Kunt U mij de weg naar Hamelen vertellen meneer?‘ It was a song story by children based on the Grimm story of the ratcatcher of Hameln. The series apart from some a few episodes is lost forever, which is a shame as this was a cultural highlight for the Dutch. The French had Thierry la Fronde, La demoiselle d’Avignon and several more, all unseen by a global audience. It is an option, but is that the case?

No it is not.

Netflix has shown that their money is well spent; series like Sabrina, The Haunting of Hill House and Altered Carbon are amazing achievements. We can clearly see that billions were well spend, yet in this donuts for dollars world, the overall stage (non-advertising space mind you), the annual setting for their audience is set to a requirement of close to 365 to 700 hours of TV entertainment a year to keep them, which that adds up to Sabrina, Star Trek Discovery, Haunting of Hill house, the Good Witch, Marvel’s The Punisher, Lost In Space, The OA, Seven Seconds, The Rain, Requiem, 3%, The Innocents, Sense 8, Grace and Frankie, Godless, The Mechanism, Dark, The Crown, Marvel’s Daredevil, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Stranger Things, Lady Dynamite, Glow, Sabrina, Altered Carbon, Mindhunter and at least 20 movies. They need to pull this off each year, and that pressure with Disney+ also increases, as the chance of switching to someone else is more and more likely.

We get that there are series that will always take the cake (Game of Thrones), and in this we see that there is some space to manoeuvre, but it is not a lot. You see, if someone loses the interest for 3 days, they will wonder what Netflix is for and optionally cancel, especially in this economy. That is the clear math I saw at the very beginning. It is not the price; $15 (the medium option) is more often than not a really acceptable price to most people. Netflix got that right, they merely need to find another additional venue for materials, because the well of creation will soon dry up, not merely because there are other players on the field, it is that Free to air TV, and other medium are vying for that same pool of viewers. Netflix as the first one has an advantage, but for how long?

Stephen McBride, a professional fund manager and the chief analyst at RiskHedge makes his financial case and that adds up to the findings I have. I am not sure on what the share price needs to be, yet his financial case and my mere view of the low average viewer gives light to a Netflix in trouble, how much is a clear unknown. Netflix has shown that with Sabrina and The Haunting of Hill House a new level of creepiness can be reached. Sabrina is a new take on what was fluffy, whilst The Haunting of Hill House had most of my friends scared beyond belief, so that series hit the mark. I saw the interesting catch on Lost in Space that after the original series and a movie can capture hearts all over the place, so Netflix is bringing the good stuff, no doubt about it. However, the entire setting is still low on hours. Even if year one for the audience is great, they will want more, or at least no less in the stage of year two and that is where I see trouble for Netflix. This business model will not work pumping billion after billion in a stage that grows ever more, and the path gets worse as more and more is borrowed.

That is the business case that is lost from the very start. This is all before we all realise that the need for Internet and 4K grows, so their infrastructure will shift within the next two years as well and their cloud will need a serious amount of cash to deal with that. I speculatively reckon that by 2021 (if Netflix makes it that long) will equal the NSA data server site at Camp Williams (Utah), so please take a moment to reflect on this. Netflix will in three years require the systems to facilitate to an audience and its hardware will be bigger than the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI), with the ability to serve optionally a little over half a billion people. That is the path that Netflix is on and people wonder why I am overly negative. Well, overly negative is a stretch. It is the old fashioned sales pitch. A man sells his soul to the devil, the devil agrees and the deal is that he needs to grow his customer base by 20%. Those who know of the value of a chess set might know that one too. That man required as payment one grain the first tile, and double one the next one and so on, until all 64 tiles were paid for. 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128 (totaling 255 grains) and that is merely the first row, after that it goes fast and by the last row it the tile payment equalled the total grain production of Russia. In customer base you require a customer base that surpasses the total population, or in this specific case the hardware of a former super power. Also consider that over time Netflix needs to open a similar base in Europe and Asia to maximise the streaming within the time zones. How much will that cost? Oh and before you think that this is it, how much power will it take to keep that running? It is set to be $50 million a year in energy cost and 1 million gallons of water a day (per base). That is if there are no power surges and other calamities giving hardship to all this. Now we see more and more providers handing out one year of free Netflix, they will have a deal with Netflix, yet year one is not the problem, year two is the bigger issue, content makes that a challenge and as is stated in Forbes: “Netflix has three bad choices: continue borrowing billions and bury itself deeper in debt… dramatically raise its subscription prices… or cut back on making new content“, if we see the three, we wonder what impact monthly increases does, I reckon that they could go for the option of one price (HD, 4K) at the same price of $16. Basically get rid of Normal and merely have basic and premium (for $5 more), it will give a boost and most people might not worry about the $5, knowing that they could always upgrade their hardware and get better viewing. Borrowing billions is a non-starter as I see it, it merely lowers the lifespan, yet the final option ‘cut back on making new content‘, is not set in stone. What if we go by ‘making different new content‘, are they exploring that? This is where the golden oldies might bring life to the amount of materials they get at a much lesser expense. Disney is all about the family and the younger viewers. Disney rules that land, yet in the 70’s we saw that Scandinavia had its share of series appreciated by kids all over Europe and that might lower the edge that Disney has (to a small extent).

In addition, making different new content might also increase the amount of content that can be made with $12 billion. I hope Netflix pulls through, when we are confronted with The Haunting of Hill House we see that they have amazing diamonds to offer any crown viewer and I am curious what else they can come up with, especially after Sabrina.

When we consider this, how many have taken a look for the best TV series from the 70’s? I did and I reckon that this is not where we find the answers, there will be too many people remembering those, yet the international field where a local TV series makes it into the global population will be for the most real new stuff to many, there will be a risk, you see, for every remake like Three man and a baby there is the risk of having at least two mediocre versions like ‘the Birdcage’, and with an audience of 135 million moving towards 200 million diversity will be key. I am not sure how it is to be solved and the makers will have their challenge cut out for them, but the takings for them will be huge if they pull it off. In the end, the search for originality goes on and as we go for books, movies and optional video games (Alicia Vikander or Michael Fassbender anyone?) we see options. Yet how does it go when we go dark, really dark and we take a night at the museum into a very different direction? What if we push the nightwatchman into the Night watch and he has to survive the events of The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch in 1640, where he has to survive the night, not get shot for optional accusation of theft of the 100 florins that each of the 16 members had brought as payment to Rembrandt van Rijn and get back out without leaving a mark. We might think it is fun to walk in on Hortense Mancini by Jacob Fredinand Voet, yet what happens when you end up in The Wayfarer by Hieronymus Bosch (1503) and you have to get back then?

We can add twists on nearly any TV series, but will it work? It is not for us to solve, it is for Netflix to find a solution and that is where the problem starts, I might phrase it wrong, the problem did not start there. We were informed last year that Netflix cancelled 21 series, it does not really matter why, number of viewers tends to be the most likely reason, it merely adds the pressure for new content to be created, remember that they need between 365 and 700 hours per viewer for them to remain decently content. And in that picture, creating new content is a lot harder than merely creating a new season, the ante is up for the creators and so is the pressure for Netflix.

At least that is how I see it, and in this, the cinema has a silver screen, Netflix will need gold to score and they have to do it 20 times over each year making the effort unfathomable and each year that they do pull it off will add to the legend that started as Netflix.

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Tagged as 3%, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Altered Carbon, Camp Williams, CNCI, Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative, Dark, Disney, Disney plus, Forbes, France, Glow, Godless, Grace and Frankie, Gunnel Linde, Haunting of Hill house, Hieronymus Bosch, Jacob Fredinand Voet, La demoiselle d'Avignon, Lady Dynamite, Lost In Space, Marvel's Daredevil, Marvel's The Punisher, Mindhunter, Netflix, Netherlands, NSA, Pipi Longstocking, ratcatcher of Hameln, Rembrandt van Rijn, Requiem, RiskHedge, Sabrina, Sense 8, Seven Seconds, Star Trek Discovery, Stephen McBride, Stranger Things, Sweden, The Crown, the Good Witch, The Innocents, The Mechanism, The OA, The Rain, the White Stone, Thierry la Fronde

December 11, 2018 · 12:50

The assumption of right

This happens, it happens almost every day and we all (including me) see that happen. My view was that oil prices would go up. It is a logic set to demand and supply, a basic principle. As OPEC cut production by 1.2 million barrels a day, we would have expected a rise, maybe not directly, but overall when you get less of a product, the prices rise. It is the basic foundation of commerce; shortage tends to drive prices up. Yet a Forbes article proves me wrong (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/gauravsharma/2018/12/10/opecs-output-cut-not-enough-to-provide-short-term-70-oil-price-floor/#668312a8d58d).

This is fine, I never proclaimed to have all the answers, yet it does seem odd that less oil still drops the price from $80 to $51 in one month, and the logic is gone at my end of the table, yet I also know that oil prices are a little more complex, so I took this moment to learn a little. Gaurav Sharma gives us: “oil price is not just a story of supply; it is also a story of demand“. That part makes sense, yet this part only gives rise to changes if demand dampens and dampens by a whole lot. We see that with: “It cannot be ignored that Eurozone growth continues to disappoint, global trade is decelerating and China’s slowdown is a visible fact, and not just a forecast. We haven’t even mentioned the words “trade wars” and a prospect of further U.S. interest rate hikes“. Yes, so far I am on board, yet does that dampen the need for oil to THAT degree? This is precisely the setting when we consider: “If anything OPEC’s move provides U.S. drillers with a further incentive to pump more, and they already are, having made America the world’s largest producer of crude oil.” This implies that the need is changing; America needs less as they become self-reliant more. This explains the setting in the short term, yet it also gives rise to other dilemmas. As the US is using its own stock to keep cheap oil, we also see the change in the dynamics. Less money in the treasury through cheap oil, more costs (and optionally more jobs mind you), yet the budget and shortages of America (like $21 trillion debt) now has another not so nice tail. The interest on 21 trillion can no longer be fuelled with fuel. With a downwards economy, the debt will rise a little faster and there will not be anything left for infrastructure. Now, in this case none of this is the fault of the US Administration, or the current administration to be a little more precise. There is a lot wrong as the Clinton administration left the nation with surplus. I am not ignoring that 9/11 changed the game, yet the Obama administration had a clear directive to do something and that was not done. We can argue whether they had the options or not, we know that the war on terror has had a long-lasting impact. And the downward fuel price does not help. Yet cheap fuel is good for all the non-petrochemical industries and the people requiring cheap oil for heating.

The writer also gives us: “As things stand, a sustainable $70 oil price doesn’t look certain at all for 2019“. OK, I can only support that for as long as the US can keep up with the reductions that OPEC and Russia implement, when that stops working prices will go up, just how fast is unknown. It depends on the current storage and demand and I am not certain that this will not bite in 2019. I cannot academically argue with Gaurav Sharma and his 20 years of experience. His point might be valid, yet the Economic Times gives us: “WTI is forming Doji candlestick pattern and also near its long term Fibonacci retracement. Both are positive signs for crude oil prices“, If this happens within the next two weeks, my predicted increase of 15% comes true. Yet how is that chance? Focussing on merely my point of view tends to be delusional, which is why I liked the view by Gaurav Sharma. He gave me something to think about. It is Mike Terwilliger, portfolio manager, at Resource Liquid Alternatives, in New York who gave us (last week): “It’s a stunning market backdrop where everything from the adjectives used by the Fed chairman to whom is appointed head of trade negotiations can roil the markets. While the macro backdrop remains firm, with strong earnings and historically low unemployment, sentiment is unquestionably vulnerable. That would, in my view, fit the definition of an opportunity – a disconnect between the underlying and perception.” (at https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/stocks/news/us-wall-st-tumbles-growth-trade-unnerve-investors/articleshow/66946928.cms)

I have always considered and known about ‘the underlying‘ and or versus ‘perception‘, no mystery there, yet are there factors we see to forget about? Part we get from the Guardian (May 2018) when we were given: “Demand is expected to average 99.2mb/d this year.” I am adding the part where that demand is not going to diminish over at least part of 2019. Even as we see more and more drive towards sustainable energy, most players are still all about presenting and not completely in the realm of achieving, hence oil demand remains stable (as far as stable tends to be), in addition we need to look at the oil futures. S&P global (at https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/oil/121018-crude-oil-futures-stable-to-higher-on-opec-production-cuts) gives us: “risk sentiment remained heightened after US Trade Representative Robert Lighthize Sunday said that he considers March 1 to be a hard deadline for a trade deal to be reached with China and that tariffs will be imposed otherwise“. So basically the futures are rolling towards the up side making me correct, yet as long as the US can keep up with demand and as long as we see this continue, oil will remain stable and not push beyond $60 per barrel in the short term. MatketWatch is actually more optimistic towards the consumers of fuel. With: “Oil futures fell Monday to settle at their lowest in about a week on growing concerns surrounding a slowdown in energy demand“.

Why do we care?

We care because the drop in demand as projected and given by several sources is also the economic indicator that not all is well. This is seen in several sources. Goldman Sachs, via CNBC gives us: “We expect the U.S. to slow down to less than 2 percent by the end of next year and as a result of that you could see the market getting quite scared“, yet would be an overly optimistic view. We saw last week that the US Economy gained 43,000 jobs less than last year giving us a much less optimistic view on that part of the equation. Apple is falling down, tension on the Economy (specifically the US economy) is on the rise, some might say sharply on the rise. In addition, the Financial Post gives us: “Wall Street ignored trouble signs for months. Now it sees risks everywhere Markets face stomach-churning swings as economic uncertainty grows“. Even when we stick to the headlines, it was nothing really breathtaking. The US trade deal with China, the growth fears in the EU, they all link into a negative setting of the economy. Not recession, yet a negative impact due to no growth (too little growth is more accurate) and the events in France do not help either. In addition, there is now a realistic chance that Italy is entering recession territory. Even as it is possible to avert it, it will means that the Italian economy will end at a standstill (which is not a recession), yet in all this, with the Two large EU economies at 0 (France and Italy), it falls to Germany to bring home the bacon and sausages, implying that they are all eager and desperate to sink any notion of Brexit as soon as possible. As we see the jesters giving us that the UK can exit Brexit, that whilst they are seemingly unable to get a handle on the ECB and their everlasting lack of transparency, so whilst we see (at https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/news/ecb-chief-rejects-chance-to-adopt-eus-transparency-register/) the unsettling part “The European Central Bank’s President Mario Draghi has rejected calls from European lawmakers to have financiers who give advice and feedback to the ECB register as lobbyists, saying they merely provide “information”.” I merely see an extended reason to pursue Brexit stronger. I actually am in a state of mind to demand the right for targeted killing these so called ‘informers’, which is a massive overreaction, yet the need to get these information givers listed next to the lobbyists is becoming more and more essential. If any nepotism, or if any under the table deal is found within the EU, their exposure is essential. I believe that this will flush greed out into the open rather fast, but then I am merely one voice in all this.

It connects

You see, the QE is supposed to come to an end this Thursday, or at least the formal announcement to end it at the end of this month. However, when we consider Reuters: “the economy weakening, trade tensions darkening the outlook and headwinds still on the horizon in the shape of Italy and Brexit, financial markets are looking ahead to next year and just how the ECB will protect the bloc from a severe downturn“, not only does the rejection to officially end QE have an impact, it also means that suddenly demand for things like oil will suddenly spike, that means that reserves go down, oil prices go up and there the cost of living will impact harshly on Europe in winter and as such on American soil the need for a price hike will not really be one that people will cherish, and when we add to that the part that Germany also has a depressed economy to look forward to, we see the three great economic players all in a diminished form, implying that the economy will tank on the low side not merely in this year, it will have a depressed form of growth in 2019 as well. There will be all kinds of lessened good news, whilst the good news is not that great to begin with. It gives rise to the point that I might be wrong on the oil price as I expected it to grow by 15%, it might still go up yet not that much and it will come at a really high cost this time around.

Right or Wrong?

It does not matter in this case; the issues seen are openly visible and heralded throughout the net, magazines and newspapers. The issue of ‘the underlying‘ and or versus ‘perception‘ is at the heart of the matter. Even as energy and oil prices show certain paths in all of this, it does not make it a correct view (which is neither right not wrong), what we perceive in opposition to the underlying elements connected, that is the bigger picture of impact. It is also a new stage. As the politicians are fighting over the carcasses of opportunity and bonus structures, we see that Germany has a few other elements in play. It is not merely the manufacturing part of it all, it is infrastructure as well and that is where we get my earlier statement, a statement I gave 3 days ago in ‘Behind the facade‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/12/08/behind-the-facade/), if Huawei (minus one arrested exec) shows their value in Germany with the given quote, which came well over a day after my article (at https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/12/09/germany-is-soft-on-chinese-spying/), where we see: “In the terms of reference published last week by the German Federal Network Agency for its 5G auction, security was not even included in the conditions for awarding the contract. In October, the government announced: “A concrete legal basis for the complete or partial exclusion of particular suppliers of 5G infrastructure in Germany does not exist and is not planned.”“, as well as “For Deutsche Telekom and other network operators, the situation is clear: Huawei offers innovative and reliable products at highly competitive prices. Legally, Deutsche Telekom does not bear any liability for the security risks associated with Huawei technology. And the company does not care about the fact that Huawei’s price advantage is the result of a highly skewed playing field in China. In the world’s largest market, domestic providers control 75 percent of the market, giving them unbeatable economies of scale“, we see the hidden trap that some people related to Mr S. Tupid are now in hot waters (optionally with the exception of Alex Younger). Not only have they not given any evidence regarding the security risk that Huawei is supposed to be. Foreign Policy also gives us: “Given the massive cybersecurity and national security risks, the only responsible decision is for Berlin to follow the Australian, New Zealand, and U.S. lead and ban Chinese providers from the German 5G network“, yet there is no evidence, that was always the problem and so far there is more and more indicators (especially in Australia) that the claim “In none of these three countries will domestic suppliers be the primary beneficiaries“, which I regard to be false, on paper it does not impact ‘primary beneficiaries’, but it does harshly (in Australia at least) negatively impacts the competitors of Telstra, which amounts to the same thing (TPG, Vodafone, Vodafail et al). And when we go back to my writing in ‘Behind the facade‘, where I give the reader: “You see, Huawei can afford to wait to some degree, as we see the perpetuated non truths of devices being pushed forward, the replacements better do a whole lot better and they are unlikely to do so. When we see another failure in 5G start and we see transgressions and those screaming that ‘Huawei’ was a danger, the moment they cannot prove it and their ‘friends’ give us a device that is malicious, the blowback will be enormous. There is already cause for concern if we go by CNBC. They give us a few points that show the additional fear that America has on Huawei“, when the intrusions are not proven and Huawei shows to be a strength for consumers and businesses, heads will roll, there will be a demand for blood by the people, which means that politicians will suddenly hide and become ‘on the principle of the matter‘ and transform their perspectives into in all kinds of lethargic versions of denial.

That too is impacting the economy, because those on track to start pushing out new innovations on 5G will have a clear advantage over the other players and that pushes for success even more, will it come to pass? I cannot tell as there are too many elements in motion and the policies now in place are off course under optional revised in the future as Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer will replace Angela Merkel if her party is re-elected as the biggest one.

We are seeing a few versions in the assumption of right, and we need to realise that the assumption of right and speculative version of what will happen overlaps one another, but they are not the same thing. States of delusion tends to be an impacting factor. Am I delusional to think that big business gives away greed? Am I delusional to consider that Huawei is not a danger? If we go by ‘the underlying‘ and or versus ‘perception‘ I am correct. You see, would China endanger the true power of economy where Huawei would become the biggest brand on internet and 5G requirement, using it for espionage when there are dozens of other methods to get that data (including Facebook policies implemented by Mr S. Tupid and Mrs M. Oronic). As this sifting of data exists on many levels in several ways, not in the least that the overly abundance of TCP/IP layer 8 transgressions happening on a daily basis and at least twice on Sunday), when we realise that, why would any Chinese governmental (namely Chen Wenqing) endanger a Chinese technological powerhouse? The logic is absent in all this. This gives us the light of Alex Younger opposing the others. He gave a policy setting of national need, whilst the others merely voiced all this ‘national security‘ banter on risks that do not even exist yet. Especially when we saw the Australian version of: ”5G will carry communications we “rely on every day, from our health systems … to self-driving cars and through to the operation of our power and water supply.”” Perhaps anyone can tell me how many self-driving cars there are at present or within the next 10 years?

And none of these клоуны (or is that Sarmenti scurrae) considered the step to start with Huawei 5G and replace them at the earliest convenience whilst you work out the bugs of your currently incomplete 5G solutions, the few that are out there for now, a simple business decision that is at the heart of any daily event, including military ones. A nice example there is the ugliest dinghy in US history (aka the Zumwalt class) where we see: “Zumwalt-class destroyers are armed with 80 missiles in vertical-launch tubes and two 155-caliber long-range guns“, which is an awesome replacement from the previous version that was regarded as a Ammo less Gun edition, in the face of continuing budget shortfalls, personnel problems and of course the fact that the previous edition was $1 million per shell, for its smart (GPS) capability. The mere elements that some sources gave out that shooting straight was an ability it naturally acquired as well as the fact that a $440 million ship was not given the budget to get its unique, 155-millimeter-diameter cannon that can shoot GPS-guided shells as far as 60 miles the 600 rounds of ammo at a total cost of $600,000,000. And that is apart from the $10 billion the Navy spent on research and development for the class. So perhaps people still have questions why I considered this monstrosity to be regarded as a ‘sink on the spot‘ project. The fact that The Drive gave us a year ago: “the Navy has steadily hacked away at various requirements, stripping planned systems from the design, in no small part to try and control any further cost overruns and delays. Close-in protection, ballistic and air defense capabilities, and various other associated systems are no longer part of the base design, something The War Zone’s own Tyler Rogoway explained in detail in a past feature, leaving it with limited utility despite its size and cost” (and apart from some minor issue regarding stability and stealthablity which we shall ignore for now) in that light the entire 5G redeployment after the fact and the ability are acquired, tested and evaluated, at that point re-engineering away the advantage that Huawei had built, did that not make sense within 10 seconds?

It is common business practice in IT, and has been for over 2 decades, that is why ASUS and not IBM rules the lay of the desktop land nowadays. so getting even would not have been the dumbest idea either, but no, we see all kinds of unfounded accusations and that is where those people are most likely to lose and out in the sunlight, when they cannot prove that claim, that is when we see on how some elements will soon be disregarded. In this Huawei has a nice advantage in Germany and Saudi Arabia. When they prove the elements there, we will see a large driven technology shift and those making the claims at recent days better have their stories straight.

Yet again, I might be wrong, my assumption of right might get sunk on false premise and nepotism, I do recognise that this has happened before and will happen again.

The assumption of right is at times hindered on delusional thoughts, as well as the need that the other players are straight shooter, and that definitely applies to all politicians, does it not?

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December 8, 2018 · 12:56

Behind the facade

There is a question, there are several questions and for the most we have been ignorant of these questions because we give more unruly validity to the populist masses. ABC questioned it yesterday evening with: ‘Why is Huawei so controversial and being targeted by foreign governments?‘, the article (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-07/why-is-chinese-tech-company-huawei-being-targeted/10593156) is an excellent piece by both Ian Burrows and Jack Kilbride, and it is brilliant that for the most we see questions, we see questions that are important. In equal measure we see answers and points made. Points that most of the media shunned from, it all starts with: “The dramatic arrest in Canada of a top Chinese technology executive for possible extradition to the United States has sent stock markets plummeting and cast doubt on a recent US-China trade truce“. We see the shot across the bow with: “Reports say Ms Meng is facing extradition to the US on suspicion she violated US sanctions against Iran“. So there we have that they are not giving us the fact that they have evidence, merely that they have suspicions and that is why the extradition had been started. A woman in high office and that is the one you arrest, right? The fact that Meng Wanzhou is the daughter of company founder Ren Zhengfei might merely be icing on the American cake. As I personally see it, it has nothing to do with any of that, it is not about any option that involves Iran, if so dozens of Indian nationals and Russians would have been in a similar state, yet they are not. America is not acting there are they? No, America is afraid, it has been for a long time and for the longest of times they were looking in the wrong direction. As the cowards they have shown themselves to be 4 times over, they got played and Huawei, especially Ren Zhengfei knows how to play this game and brokered deal after deal. Facilitating towards fintech, but not facilitating to fintech, two very different stages. And now we get: “It says it operates in more than 170 countries, has 180,000 employees and serves more than a third of the world’s population“, that is the fear, because if wealth is set to the currency of data, American businesses don’t really hold a candle anymore do they? I have the goods on $2 billion in value, yet I do not trust anyone, especially the American corporations that hide behind ‘misunderstanding’, ‘miscommunication’ and inflated or deflated values as their need for greed requires. That is why people go directly towards places like Google and Huawei as they tend to cater (more) correctly, as long as their corporate targets are met. The fear of no longer being regarded as an entity that matters is the new fear of America. And with 1/3 of the population catered by a Chinese conglomerate and well over 40% by others moves America from the number one players to a player in the top 6. And you know Americans, they only respect number one, and the idea that this is a Chinese company is just too offensive to them.

The article has more. When we revisit “New Zealand’s international spy agency also followed Australia’s lead, banning the use of Huawei equipment in its planned 5G upgrade, saying it posed a “significant network security risk”“, we are introduced to more lies, lies propagated by America. It was an utter step of stupidity. At present no evidence has ever been submitted that Huawei was a risk and the idea that they serve a third of the population is a debilitating fear that America is unable to deal with, it is like anti-communism on steroids, a new cold war where America is optionally not in pole position. You see, this is in opposition to MI6 chief Alex Younger, he never claimed this. He stated that the British government (or any government for that matter) should never be at risk and should never hand out such levels of infrastructure risk to others. That is perfectly valid, it is a policy choice and the United Kingdom would be well off to take that step. Now we do get that it makes things harder for others, yet in an age of data to not have your own technology in place is ludicrous. That is a fair point to have, and that is valid, very valid. Yet the simpletons under us give us unwarranted and invalidated ‘significant network security risk‘, so please feel free to explain to me when stupidity was a good idea in any setting of data or security?

Concerns

There are concerns when ANY company growths to the size of Huawei, we cannot deny that, you merely have to look at the stupidity Facebook has shown in the last 61 weeks, three days and 6 hours to realise that part of the equation. And the article gets us to a statement that matters, so when we see: “There has long been concern that Huawei is not that separated from some of the Chinese security apparatus and there are suggestions its equipment could be used for spying“. OK, the concern is valid, yet is it happening? Is there a cause for concern, for genuine concern? Optionally there is and it merely gives empowerment to the statement that Alex Younger gave us, not the dozen of Punch and Judy characters claiming the unproven ‘significant network security risk‘. There is a difference you know.

We can argue that there is another part that matters. I remember reading a paper form Shanghai University (2010) who made the setting that there is a theoretical part in AES256 that makes it viable to unnerve the encryption (I did not say hack it). It requires quantum computing skills, but still there was an interesting part in the paper that reminded me of another stage (I will not go deeper into it now).

Going back to the concerns, we see a part by Fergus Hanson, that is valid, yet is it a real concern? He gave us: “The biggest concern is, whether they want to do it or not, they can be compelled by the Chinese Communist Party to spy and conduct espionage on the Chinese Communist Party’s behalf“, I am not sure whether it is valid. It should not be ignored, yet in this age of economy and revenue (and profit) would you want to endanger the goose with its golden eggs when a third of a population is using your products? When you get people by the billion handing data to Facebook and a league of other sources, when that data is already accessible, why push further at present? That is the stage Chinese intelligence is in, and even as we cannot ignore that danger, do you think anyone in the Chinese intelligence chair (namely Chen Wenqing) would be allowed to keep his seat if he directly endangered Chinese economy to that degree?

And how did China react? When the opportunity came up to bash President Trump and his personal iPhone, we see: “Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying dismissed the claims and suggested that “if they are really very worried about Apple phones being bugged, then they can change to using Huawei,” instead“, in one shot, brilliant!

When China is that proud of its devices, would they want to be proven wrong? Would they want to? And whilst we consider how to hack the phone, we forget that there is another way: Kaspersky (at https://www.kaspersky.com/blog/hacking-cellular-networks/10633/) gave us all the way back in 2015: “It was last year when a new method of attack on cellular networks was discovered. It requires neither costly radio scanners nor PC powerhouses and is available to virtually anyone. Besides, carriers have no practical means of protecting against this type of attack“, everybody is crying over the milk being stolen whilst criminals are getting direct access to all the cows in the land, how did that make sense, like ever?

And the hacking gets to be worse. One source giving us: “Interestingly enough, the 3GPP, the organization in charge of setting mobile data network standards and enforcing them, also acknowledged the issue in 2006 but chose to do nothing about it. Researchers brought up this vulnerability to the world in 2015 in a paper titled: Practical attacks against privacy and availability in 4G/LTE mobile communication systems. That same year, the ACLU managed to obtain documents that described the stingray surveillance device had identical functionalities. In the following year, Zhang Wanqiao of Qihoo 360 extended the practical attack described by the initial researchers and presented on it at DEFCON 24 in August of 2016. Now, at Ruxcon in October of 2016, the attack has been demonstrated and been proven to work on all LTE networks with readily available gear“, and in all this Huawei was never part of this, yet that is where the focus remains and whilst this push goes through, we see a short sighted approach. I am not worried on the risk via Huawei, there is enough evidence out there that the concern is not ‘Is Huawei the danger’, it is whether these so called politicians playing with their Punch puppets are setting the stage that hacking becomes increasingly easy for others to hack it.

So here we are, in a stage where America is already facing energy hikes, hikes that started at a mere 5% hours ago as they agreed ‘to cut global oil production by 1.2 million barrels a day‘, something I saw coming two weeks ago. Now we get a new stage, not merely a technological one, it will be a field of what I call ‘techno-facilitation‘, As the 5G pressure changes, places like Huawei are pushing not for the parts they are rejected from, but the consumer parts, the smart devices that are added to more and more non smart devices on a daily basis. Some might have seen the ‘Samsung Family Hub 2.0 Smart Fridge‘. To oversimplify it, it is a fridge with a tablet on the front door (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaKh5qJrTKQ), as we see more applications towards smart devices, these solutions all require interfaces and there Huawei has options and already an advantage. You see, the chance of a players like Gorenje, Hoover, Beko or AEG taking their own department into 5G technology of get a Huawei package is another matter. Soon enough we will see that Huawei will merely spread out, perhaps not allowed be part of the 5G infrastructure, yet as Huawei has shown to be economically terrific towards the consumer, they will get more and more options, and every delay and disappointment the others are making will quickly infuriate the consumers and tax payers to a larger extent.

The bigger worry is not the one; it is the other (nice and cryptic). You see, Huawei can afford to wait to some degree, as we see the perpetuated non truths of devices being pushed forward, the replacements better do a whole lot better and they are unlikely to do so. When we see another failure in 5G start and we see transgressions and those screaming that ‘Huawei’ was a danger, the moment they cannot prove it and their ‘friends’ give us a device that is malicious, the blowback will be enormous. There is already cause for concern if we go by CNBC. They give us a few points that show the additional fear that America has on Huawei.

We get: ‘T-Mobile says a nationwide network will launch in 2020‘, optional a year AFTER Huawei is ready to launch 5G, and then we get: “most people won’t be able to access them since they’ll only be available in a small number of markets next year. Plus, the way we use phones today won’t really require the faster data speeds 5G will offer. Today’s 4G LTE networks are more than fast enough for all the video and music streaming you want to do on your phone“, is it not interesting that something as fragile as 4G LTE is to hacking, which has been known for the longest of times is still the pushed solution? And I personally interpreted “won’t really require the faster data speeds 5G will offer“, is more like a way to state, ‘we cannot offer it’ versus ‘You do not need it’, you merely have to watch Netflix on a tablet in 4K to see that need prop up overnight. All these excuses and intentional phrased denials in a stage without Huawei is why there is such a large issue. I get where Alex Younger is coming from, the rest is merely trying to avoid panic of no longer being a person that matters in the mobile industry, the fact that Huawei grew so fast and so large is the biggest fear that they have because whatever they win, Wall Street optionally loses. Screens behind mirrors, facades behind facades and they are all in fear of being considered redundant in a technological age that is still not slowing down.

And I am not alone here. The New York Times (at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/07/opinion/huawei-meng-wanzhou-china-arrest.html gives us: “This week, the White House released a five-year plan around STEM education — science, technology, engineering and math — that is not nearly robust enough to make the Chinese even slightly nervous that we can keep up with their decidedly more aggressive efforts to train their work force for the next era of computing“, the short and sweet part is that America is not ready to take any lead anywhere for the next 15 years. In addition we see: “I am perplexed about why the Trump administration has been such an embarrassment when it comes to the kind of actual leadership and vision needed to keep the United States at the forefront of the tech race“. This is where he is wrong, you see this is not on President Trump, this is a failing that goes back to the Bush era, the era before President Obama. What had to be done then was not done and now the impact is a lot larger than it could have been. So when we see the quote “everyone would feel a lot more confident if the government was also focused on investing more in American innovation and if the crackdown looked less chaotic“, we see the fear from the US, it is not ready, it has failed innovation and the mistakes made are optionally debilitating the next 15 years of innovation. Chine is primed and ready and that is where we see the fear. American is pushing itself towards becoming a third world nation, they did this all by themselves, and it goes further than merely technology. The US has shown a lack of insight for a much longer time. As we see US Defense giving us: “The Navy is asking Congress to fund a conversion of its 600-foot stealth destroyers from primarily a land attack ship to an anti-surface, offensive strike platform, according to budget documents released Feb. 12“. It was earlier this year. It matters as we see merely 2 weeks ago: “The destroyer Zumwalt’s big guns don’t have any ammo, and the Navy may ditch them entirely because they don’t even work right“, so we are confronted with ‘a request for $89.7 million’ to make it better, that thing costed billions in research, it took half a billion to make, it is useless (decently ugly) and in 4 hours I had a $3.5 million concept solution to sink it. In all honesty I have to admit that my idea was designed to sink the Iranian fleet, but this vessel is just slightly too insulting for comfort. The Digital Journal did some of the legwork form me with: ‘Can’t fire its guns due to massive $1 million per round cost‘, ‘May lose stealth due to redesign limitations‘ and ‘Cuts to stealth capacity add up to many more risks in combat‘. The article (at http://www.digitaljournal.com/tech-and-science/technology/op-ed-accountancy-vs-usazumwalt-a-stupid-story/article/538102) has a lot more and my mere $3.5 million solution, which is a simple redesign from something made in the 70’s. I saw it as a way to turn Iranian cruisers into submarines (with air-conditioning). It is murder on the lungs, but good for non-Iranian morale and as such it was a great idea. It could be easily adjusted to park the USS Zumwalt at 18°38’18.9″S 147°10’15.3″E and help it grow coral for the Great Barrier Reef, all problems solved.

My issue links it as we see the problem, they are linked because we failed the STEM education path for well over a decade, so there is a massive shortage. There is a reason why the larger players like Salini Impregilo are looking at Universities all over the world seeking quality Engineers and they are not alone, the shortage is close to global and there we see the growing advantage that China is now showing to have. The fact that America is showing such levels of non-vision, even within their own navy results is exactly what they are shouting in fear.

I would go one step further in the proclamation that America is not afraid of what China can do, they have no one left to show them and explain to them what the Chinese capabilities are and that is a lot more fearful than anything else. That is how I see it (and I might per 100% wrong), yet consider the failings we have seen in the last year alone, the emotional push in places where logic require to prevail, the inability to counter what should not have been a threat. The Mabna Institute in March: “The DOJ says the hackers stole 31 terabytes of data, estimated to be worth $3 billion in intellectual property. The attacks used carefully crafted spearphishing emails to trick professors and other university affiliates into clicking on malicious links and entering their network login credentials” (source: Wired). Not the fact that it happened, the stage that it took forever to find and do something is equally part in all this. June gave us: “marketing and data aggregation firm Exactis, which left about 340 million records exposed on a publicly accessible server. The trove didn’t include Social Security numbers or credit card numbers, but it did comprise 2 terabytes of very personal information about hundreds of millions of US adults” and important here is that these are the so called clever people. Those with fat incomes and nice additional perks, if they cannot contain the issue, the underpaid, undervalued and overworked IT people at the US government truly have no chance at all, do they?

The facades behind the facades are shining through 10 windows all without curtains or coding (at https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/12/06/windows_10_security_questions_remotely_defined_answers/) and it gets to be a lot worse in 2021 when 5G hits full force everywhere, it is a cyber criminals dream coming true. Huawei is in all this merely the smallest blip on the radar and that realisation should hit us fast and quick, because at present, the only way to keep your data safe is to educate yourself, no one else will, they do not know how.

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Tagged as 5G, ABC, ACLU, AEG, Alex Younger, Beko, Canada, Chen Wenqing, China, Chinese Communist Party, Chinese intelligence chair, CNBC, Exactis, Fergus Hanson, Gorenje, Great Barrier Reef, Hoover, Hua Chunying, Huawei, Ian Burrows, Jack Kilbride, Kaspersky, Mabna Institute, Meng Wanzhou, MI6, President Trump, Ren Zhengfei, security, STEM education, the Register, US Defense, USA, USS Zumwalt

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