Category Archives: Science

November 27, 2018 · 13:44

Smite the analysts

It is time to change the game. It is time to do a lot more than merely claiming to do something about fake news. I never claimed to bring the news, I have merely been in the process of nitpicking it as much as possible and the Guardian got my feathers plenty ruffled this morning, so it is time for me to be a little speculative of the matter.

We love our idiot products at time; it is something to laugh at or something to make a joke about; for the most harmless fun. Yet today something snapped. It might have been the abuse that Theresa May has been receiving, it might have been watching some poor sod holding a ‘We’re poorer without EU‘ sign, whilst like me that person is unlikely to have any economic degrees.

So when I see: ‘Theresa May’s Brexit deal could cost UK £100bn over a decade‘ by Richard Partington (at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/nov/26/theresa-mays-brexit-deal-could-cost-uk-100bn-over-a-decade).

I hereby make my first demand (do not worry, no one will listen anyway).

In regards to: ‘People’s Vote-commissioned study says loss is equivalent to annual output of Wales‘, I DEMAND a full disclosure of the names of the people involved as well as a clear documentation of all sources used. this includes the names of those in the ‘People’s vote’ those who commissioned the study, the price paid for the study, as well as the names of those who made that report (not just the three who wrote it), the data sources used as well as how the report was set to the data and its results. I expect to find a dozen flaws in the very least. In this case any arbitrary choice (which at times is perfectly valid), should be seen as a flaw, unless clearly stated as such.

It is time to hold these people up to the limelight exposing what the Guardian (and many other newspapers) are giving voice to as being ‘the facts’. I would like to go as far as prosecuting (to some extent) the makers of these loaded and dubious reports by banning those names from any governmental research for life! When that happens, we will get all kinds of excuses and well phrased words or denial. Yet, I feel that we have come to a point where these activities can no longer be tolerated. Not by any government and not by any organisation with political aspirations, or connections.

The reality here is that the UK will lose income, lost funds and lose options for the short term. This has always been known. We always knew that things would get a little worse. Yet NOONE is making any call on the waste of three trillion euro’s by the ECB on their Quantative Easing and the waste of now close to three trillion that the taxpayer has to pay back, whilst people like Mario Draghi walk away with a ton of money, a member of an elite banking group of 20 and no accountability to anyone. The media refused to hammer on the ECB on any of it and the lack of clarity and transparency that the ECB has. This happened in full view whilst they all had 50+ articles on the death of a journalist no one really cared about (aka Jamal Khashoggi).

My larger concern is seen in: “Garry Young, the director of macroeconomic modelling and forecasting at NIESR, said: “Leaving the EU will make it more costly for the UK to trade with a large market on our doorstep and inevitably will have economic costs.” The NIESR report found May’s deal would not be as damaging for the economy as Britain leaving the EU without an agreement, which would cost the economy about £140bn over the next 10 years.” From my personal point of view, these people are in it for themselves, most of them are. Even as I will immediately admit that this report looks actually valid and good, issues come forward to a degree that might not have been seen at the beginning of it all, yet the scrutiny after the report is also lacking making the issue larger. What some call ‘lucrative European contracts’, we see a lack of investigation on both sides of the isle in all this, because as a Brexiteer, I will never deny a Bremainer to voice their opinion, or their opposition to it all. It is the acceptance of democracy that demands it from within me. The UK has not really profited from the EU, merely large corporations have and that is actually the biggest issue with the entire EU at present. When we look at the 68 million consumers, many of them have not been able to afford any of it. The bulk of all of us are dependent on moments like Black Friday to get the hardware we normally cannot get. It is a known issue that the quality of life is still low all over the UK and in many other places. The only true beneficiaries of the entire EU setting are the large corporations. The local grocer sees no real benefit, whilst the large supermarkets have all these deductibles that for the larger extent benefit its board members, not the customers. People like Gary Young are eager to make mention of ”inevitably will have economic costs“, which is a truth; I and many realistic others do not deny it. Yet in equal measure we can move away from a multi trillion bond buying scheme that has done nothing for the people whilst making the banks fat and rich. Never before in the history of mankind did the banks and Wall Street have such a large hold on governments and its citizens and we sat down and let it happen. Brexit is for the UK the first step to undo that damage and it will take time, we all get that. So as we realise that the ECB failure, in part to unmanaged ‘freedoms’, lack of transparency and accountability has greatly impacted the UK, at that point will we realise that there is a weighted and loaded stage against all of us, in every EU nation. The second part in all this is what some call: ‘the EU gravy train’, I have made mention of it on a few occasions and the lack of actions in that regard is close to sickening. Even The Times gave us some time ago: “MEPs are clinging on to lavish, tax-free handouts for travel despite publicly pledging to repay them, according to an internal report by the European Parliament. They have kept an estimated €6million (£4 million) after promising before the 2004 elections not to claim the money. “They get exposed, promise to be modest and then keep riding the gravy train. It is appalling,” said Hans-Peter Martin, an Austrian MEP, who has led a campaign against abuse of expenses. The €60 million-a-year travel allowance system is so generous that many MEPs admit it amounts to legalised embezzlement of taxpayers’ money. MEPs are paid a first-class air fare for travel to the parliament, even if they use budget airlines. They make an average of £20,000 a year tax free“. We can agree that in that meantime something was done, yet how much was done? The taxpayers have to come up with 751 times £20,000, giving us a total of fifteen million pounds and that is only the travel item every year, one of a lot more items, so how much extra are these people getting? The simple fact that many of these issues have not been adjusted for over 12 years is a clear stage that the EU is the goose for exploiting extra income and benefits, something taxpayers never signed up for in the first place. Even now (8 weeks ago) we see: ‘Details of MEPs’ €4,416-a-month expenses to remain secret, court rules‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/sep/25/mep-expenses-eu-court-ruling) with in addition: “MEPs are also refunded first-class travel expenses and get a €313 daily allowance for hotel and living costs when working in Brussels and Strasbourg“, which in the most optional stage grants them an additional £60K each, adding fuel amounting to £46,562,000 to the tax payers fire. I think I have made my point, did I not?

When Brexit is done and we start seeing the impact, I predict it will be less than 2 years before the complaining starts, not from the UK, but from the other nations that now have to pay for the part that the UK will no longer be paying for and that is the ballgame here. When that happens, and it will we will see a rejuvenation by both France and Italy wanting to get out as fast as possible leaving merely Germany as the large economy to carry the weight of the EU and they will not be able to do this and it will all collapse. That is not a speculation; it is a certainty as I see it. It will only need one of those three to join the leave team and it will already fail. In light of all that is happening it seems to me that Italy is now the frontrunner before France, yet that might be what the horse lover calls a nose length photo finish. It was almost two weeks ago when French Marine Le Pen gives us almost the same view in the Daily Herald with: “French far-right leader Marine Le Pen is blaming the policies of the European Union for Britain’s exit from the bloc. “If the EU wasn’t what it is now, the United Kingdom would still have been a member of a structure that respects the nations, the people, that doesn’t impose migration polices and deals that have very heavy consequences on our industries and agriculture,” Le Pen said Friday at a news conference in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia.” It was for the most what pushed me into the Brexit field a few years ago; even as Mark Carney, Governor of the British Bank and his presentation in the House of Lords gave me reason to doubt that, the acts of stupidity by Mario Draghi and the ECB pushed me straight into the Brexit field, supporting Brexit. A situation that had been known for years, yet in light of 751 beneficiaries nothing was done to keep tabs on it and Brexit become a fact.

So as we accept the setting (via many sources) that Marine Le Pen is giving through “the EU wants to punish Britain by imposing “conditions that are unacceptable to a large majority of the people in the U.K. and to members of the British government.”“, we have seen several parts of that in the media. Is it not interesting how infantile the EU gets when you do not want to be a member? They threatened Greece to throw them out, whilst there was no legal option for the EU, and they demand the impossible from those wanting to leave. In that setting, who wants to remain a member? I would go with the speculation that the EU is for: ‘those who needs the power of exploitation‘.

It is getting worse

In this we look back at Greece. Some might remember the big boast that Greece made. I mentioned it in my blog: ‘They are still lying to us‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/06/23/they-are-still-lying-to-us/), so when we were treated on June 23rd to ‘Greece ‘turning a page’ as Eurozone agrees deal to end financial crisis‘. Here Alexis Tsipras was happy to be quoted with: “Greece is once again becoming a normal country, regaining its political and financial independence”, we saw none of the EU reservations in a claim that was off by decades. I also commented in favour of the Greek opposition shown by Kostis Hatzidakis with: “The opposing party reacted to the credit buffer with ‘Kostis Hatzidakis said it reflected the lack of faith international creditors had in Athens’ ability to successfully return to capital markets.‘ And in this Kostis is right, the international markets have zero faith in their return, they rely on a small thing called mathematics and the clarity there is that the scales are not in the favour of the Greeks.” Now we see a mere four days ago ‘How Greece Is Scrambling to Save Its Banks — Again‘, the EU has become this short sighted, this convoluted in misrepresenting the facts to the people. So as we see: “Greece is scrambling to figure out how to save its banks — again. Burdened by bad loans that make up almost half of total lending, crippled banks remain one of the biggest hurdles to Greece’s economic recovery. There are even worries that the country may face yet another financial crisis if it can’t dislodge its lenders from their downward spiral. With bank shares tumbling, the government and the Bank of Greece are working on plans to help banks speed up efforts to shed soured loans” and this comes one day after: ‘EU: Greece has Not Implemented 16 Bailout Program Prerequisites‘, which we get from the Greek Reporter. We see: “The European Commission is urging Greece to proceed with 16 prerequisites that have to be completed by the end of the year, as agreed with creditors. The first report after the end of the bailout program in August that was released on Wednesday says that Greece is delaying to implement 16 important measures and reforms. Among them are the staffing of the independent public revenue authority, the repayment of overdue debts, the legislative framework for resolving the problem of non-performing loans and the development of the new primary health care system“, the article by Philip Chrysopoulos also gives us “Despite the fact that Greece’s 2019 budget meets the target of a primary surplus of 3.5 percent of GDP” will see a speculative setback (speculated by me) by close to 2% at the very least, in what will likely be a wave of managed bad news. The EU is now that useless and pushing down all the other European players. If only the EU legal setting had allowed for removing Greece from the Euro setting and EU economy settings in 2014, a lot of the issues (like Brexit) would never have been an issue. It is in my personal view greed driven EU stupidity that allowed for this. A blind faith in Status Quo that pushed the need of large corporations and that might become the downfall of the EU as a whole.

Do you still think that the EU is better for the EU economy? First Greece and now Italy are becoming the weights drowning the EU. Merely one hour ago, the BBC reported that: “Italy’s government says it will stick to its high-spending budget plans, setting up a potential stand-off with the European Union over its deficit.“, are you actually believing in fairy tales when you think that this will not hit back on the rest of the EU? Even as the Independent reported 13 hours ago: “The pound fell 0.19 per cent to €1.1284 off the back of reports that Italy is headed for a breakthrough with its budget, which would bring to an end weeks of wrangling between the EU and the Italian government.” we now get the reality that there was no breakthrough, we merely see more of the same and the impact of Italy is not immediately reversing and upping the pound against the Euro is it? In light of the revelation, the pound should be up by no less than 0.27 percent against the Euro (the gain and the 0.19 percent loss), we will not see that will we (or we will see it as late as possible so that the 0.27 percent can be largely minimalized. When you realise that the UK is getting unfairly hammered to this extent, would you want to be part of that group? And when (not if) the UK shows the improvements making the UK economy better, what excuses will the EU, ECB, IMF and Wall Street give the people of Britain?

To be part of any exploitative regime as the EU is starting to show it in a few ways. The evidence of this statement was shown by the Clean Clothes Campaign last June when we see (at https://cleanclothes.org/news/2018/06/11/complaint-lodged-against-the-european-commission-for-failing-to-uphold-fundamental-human-rights-in-trade-policy) ‘Complaint lodged against the European Commission for failing to uphold fundamental human rights in trade policy‘. Here we see: “Bangladesh has committed serious and systematic violations of fundamental workers’ rights. Conditions are unsafe for millions of workers in Bangladesh. Additionally, the labour laws of Bangladesh create significant obstacles to the exercise of the right to freedom of association, to organise and to bargain collectively. Further, the government has not effectively enforced even these flawed laws, and workers complaints to authorities are routinely ignored. Without bargaining power or legal recourse, workers have been forced to live in extreme poverty.” and when we realise that the lack of activities, naming and shaming those who are part of it all, whilst the EU remains inactive to a much larger extent, my case of large corporations being in charge of those acting in the EU parliament is close to well made, tailor made one could state. The lack of visibility given in the EU and the oversight on what is imported into the EU from Bangladesh is frightening. The Dutch CBS reported 3 weeks ago: “The average import price per vest exceeds 3 euros in 2018. With an import price of around 2 euros, vests manufactured in Bangladesh are considerably cheaper. Prices of vests from China (approx. 2.50 euros) are also lower than average, while vests from India were average-priced (around 5 euros) and those from Turkey more expensive than average (around 5 euros).” good luck trying to convince me that this is not about money and that there is a proper investigation into the Bangladesh situation. The fact that even China cannot match these prices is partially evidence enough. The fact that manufacture owners in Bangladesh are part of the 250% plus stage that we see with: “This is the largest quantity ever recorded and approximately 2.5 times more than in 1998“, the lack of questions by those gravy train people is just a little too weird and more questions are not coming forward. That is the European Union that its members seem to like and letting the UK out is also not an option. The analysts are merely the first circle we should go after (the first of several mind you). Any report that is not clearly documented with the names of all the people involved in this should immediately be disregarded and kept on record for prosecution and smiting afterwards (when those reports are proven to be incorrect) at that point I wonder how many studies we will get that are so overwhelmingly negative. And it is not merely the analysts. The names of the people commissioning for the report and the clear definition of the question that was asked will also be set to scrutiny. I wonder how many politicians and corporate figures will suddenly run for cover and darkness like a group of cockroaches.

Feel free to disagree or even oppose my view. Yet also remember, I merely want to see the names and all data on those so called ‘commissioned studies’. Is that such a bad question? When we are given the results, should we not wonder HOW they got there? Is that not a duty we all should have?

When we look at The National Institute of Economic and Social Research, we see a clear stage of names, Arno Hantzsche, Amit Kara and Garry Young (which is a proper thing, mindyou). We also see on page 7 and 8: “The Governor of the Bank of England estimated that by May 2018, UK household income was 4 per cent lower than it would otherwise have been as a consequence of the referendum (Carney, 2018): “one third of the 4 per cent shortfall in real wages reflects stronger-than-projected inflation, which is almost entirely accounted for by the referendum-related fall in sterling. The remainder reflects weaker-than-expected nominal wages, the majority of which can be accounted for by weaker-than-anticipated productivity growth“, which should not be disregarded.

Am I opposing my own view?

No, when you see the charts in that page, we see the UK not being in a good place. Yet considering ‘UK economic growth relative to other G7‘ and ‘UK inflation relative to other G7‘, the UK situation would not look great whilst this is staged up to 2018, and now we get the good part. The G7 are Canada, France, U.S, U.K, Germany, Japan and Italy. Now consider the Italian part dragging down due to the stupidity of their budget decision (which might be seen as their right). In addition the Greek issue will drag down the EU as a whole and the USA is in a trade war that will also impact the USA, all parts seemingly not taken into account and suddenly the UK already looks a lot better in all this. Now, we cannot completely fault the report called ‘The economic effects of the government’s proposed Brexit deal‘, yet there is already a non-negative impact for the UK (it is a stretch calling it a positive effect). In addition we see properly placed “We have assumed” in the proper places and only thrice, which is also a good thing and for the most utterly unavoidable. We also see in one place: ‘Sterling effective exchange rate (January 2005=100)‘, which is possibly merely arbitrary, from my personal view the fact that 2008 and 2016 have impacted it all might also be a stage where the UK had more hardship than before and as such the three stages should have been included. My final issue is on page 15; I do not doubt the numbers or the statement perse. Yet when we consider “Ramasamy and Yeung (2010) find that openness to trade benefits in particular FDI inflows to services sectors, much more than to manufacturing. Ebell and Warren (2016) survey the empirical literature and calculate that reverting to trade under trade arrangements similar to those between the EU and Norway would reduce FDI into the UK by 8–11 per cent, and by 11–23 per cent under a Switzerland-type relationship” that openness of trade also implies the open acceptance of the unacceptable ethical stage that Bangladesh is showing to be, we need to ask the tougher questions on EU inactions to the degrees currently seen. You see, when we accept one part, we need to accept that all these sweatshop articles are out of bounds. They are merely emotional banter pressed on those trying to meet budgets, there is no humanity left, we should not allow for that. In this way my statement is harsh, yet that is what the EU has become, a harsh proposer of status quo at the expense of whatever is coming next. If you do not agree, feel free to ban all Bangladesh T-shirts, leaving others with 215 million T-shirts to sell; was that example too direct?

Even when we accept the part of ‘how the deal affects uncertainty and confidence‘, which is a topic that will remain as there will always be uncertainty, the entire report is seemingly staged towards the bad side, whilst any improves economic marker from the second year onwards are basically ignored. We can argue that year one will have no upsides, yet the stage of no upsides in year two is lose to unimaginable. Apart from the ‘EU donation‘, which has been significant, the downturn of Italy and Greece that will no longer impact the UK is clearly escalating and France is basically scared shitless of that part. France is so scared as it is in a much worse position than Germany currently is, who will also feel that impact to some extent.

No matter how this plays, it is a mess that will test the reality of a lot of people. My largest concern is not how good or how bad things get, it is the fake revelations by speculative analysts that are the impact of a lot of things and the moment when we see the managed bad news after the fact, we will also see the weakness that has become the EU, in light of an already weak USA, this merely strengthens the need for a segretative community (read: nationalistic approach to national issues). It is the one part where I see eye to eye with Marine le Pen: “the policies of the European Union as well as the lack of transparency and non-accountability” are the biggest drivers in this entire sordid affair.

I wonder how draconian the changes will become when others realise how correct my view of the matter was. I am less likely to facing the fact that I was wrong, there is too much documentation pleading for my view, especially as the Wall Street Journal reported “Greece’s Eurobank Ergasias SA said it will acquire real-estate company Grivalia Properties REIC, boosting its capital and paving the way for the creation of a “bad bank” to help deplete its pile of nonperforming loans” a mere 5 hours ago. So when exactly did the people ever benefit from a bad bank solution? We saw that in 2013 with the Dutch SNS and Reaal setting. So as Brussels treated us to: “The costs to the Dutch taxpayer were still substantial, resulting in a deterioration of the budget balance (excessive deficit procedure definition) for 2013 with 0.6% and an increase in EMU debt of 1.6%“, we see Greece doing the same 5 years later. As we look at the quote: “In fact, since the nationalization the Dutch press has regularly published pieces that show how the commercial real estate has been mismanaged for a substantial time period. Did this go unnoticed by the regulator? Why did it not intervene?” We now get to unite that part with the overwhelming inaction of the EU and the unacceptable actions of the ECB, so this will be a much larger thing that Greece is printing on the rest of the EU then the people are currently aware of and the impact will be felt much larger, the fact that the bulk of the EU states cannot keep a proper budget merely makes mathers worse (not a typo, it means ‘reaper of hay’), and now I am in a state of moments uncontrollable deriving laughter.

The lack of visibility to several parts (an issue I cannot blame the media for in this case) is just incomprehensible. In part this is due because there are so many elements interacting, yet the fact that the issues are not visible is still a matter of great concern, and also an additional reason to push for Brexit.

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Tagged as Amit Kara, Arno Hantzsche, Bangladesh, Brexit, Bulgaria, Canada, CBS, Clean Clothes Campaign, Ebell and Warren (2016), ECB, Eu, Eurobank Ergasias SA, France, Frexit, Garry Young, Germany, Governor of the British Bank, Greece, Grexit, Grivalia Properties REIC, Hans-Peter Martin, House of lords, IMF, Italy, Japan, Kostis Hatzidakis, Marine Le Pen, Mario Draghi, Mark Carney, MP, Netherlands, NIESR, Philip Chrysopoulos, Ramasamy and Yeung (2010), Reaal bank, SNS, SNS Reaal, Sofia, the Guardian, The Times, U.K, U.S, UK, Wall Street

November 21, 2018 · 14:10

We test da game

It is time to talk about Bethesda. It is having a rough week and not wrongfully so. Yet the application of exposure is something we do need to talk about. We see headlines like ‘Publishers like Bethesda Should Accompany Sony in Skipping E3 2019’; it is time to do a little more than merely disagree. Another review, the one from Eurogamer made a real effort to keep it clean and academically and that should be appreciated. With: “Bethesda’s attempt at Fallout multiplayer is, like so many of the series’ vaults, a failed experiment.” Those who played the Fallout games will know that this is a jab at Vaultec and that is fine. You see, the short and sweet of it is that we can look at Bethesda and think Nintendo; we can consider that Vault 76 is the Bethesda version of the WiiU and guess what? Out of those ashes the Nintendo Switch was born and it is a massive success, as such Bethesda can do the same, get a similar solution. Now, that does not stop the immediate, and it might not be immediately fixed, is that so bad? The fact is that Bethesda has never been a real ‘more of the same‘ company and we have applauded them for it and this time, we get to wait a little longer. Guess what, Ubisoft made us wait 9 months for Watchdogs (2012/2013) and the end result was still flimsy, Bethesda can outdo that achievement (effortlessly) whilst sleeping. Even as we see articles like ‘9 Ways Bethesda Can Fix Fallout 76‘, we see the impact of some people that have an axe to grind, merely because their expectations were smashed and that is fine. You should have seen me rant in the direction of France (specifically Yves Guillemot for screwing up the AC Franchise to the extent that they had done), we all have axes to grind and it comes with the field of gaming, emotions will run high. It is all linked to the complex mind and the necessity to play. We value that downtime like the hall passes we get on powernaps in the office on Monday morning, isn’t that what the Monday morning is for? When I looked at the list of 9 (at WhatCulture) there were parts we can optionally agree with and some we might not. You see, fast travel is a nice way to exploit glitches and the soul of Vault 76 might be the survival of you, as such the option “There’s not really any reason for the game to charge for fast travel, so it’s simply an unnecessary annoyance. It can be easily patched out of the game without upsetting its balance, and so it should be done” might be rejected, and focus on another stage. I very much felt like agreeing to ‘Add an Offline Mode‘, as this has been the core of everyone, to play offline, or online in solo, singular and lonely mode, optionally merely with the additional path to invite friends.

There I would go with ‘United we Stand, Lonely we Quest‘. I have friends (merely a few mind you) and I got unnerved way too much as they got into my line of fire. You see a marksman needs a clear field and when you get in my way you will get a bullet in the back of your head to remind the others not to get in my fucking way (I apologise for my applied use of French here). In a stage where an opponent needs to cross the 800-400 meter range so he/she can effectively open fire on me, my friends better not screw up my stats, I fought hard to have a decent accuracy rating, so one idiot getting in my way in whichever way is not my choice of acceptance, and people catch on quick, they kept out of my way and whichever enemy got too close was made permanently redundant (and they went down with satisfying graphics) . This is why I never cared for the Olympics, I absolutely love that the winner is heralded, yet why are the others allowed to live? (Sorry, I do have a weird sense of humour)

So back to that list as the previous part was linked to this. You see, I disagree with: “With the inclusion of an offline mode, though, Bethesda could also add in accessibility options for players to toggle the punishment factor of the survival elements“, I disagree here, if Vault 76 is about survival, having an impact and penalty is important, it also prepares you to not run into situations as most gung-ho players tend to do, survival is something else, it is cautious and tends to be slow. There is no greater sense of achievement as wiping out all life in a village and until the last person remains alive, these NPC’s had no idea what he was up against, which is a little wink at the Oblivion ‘Whodunit?‘ mission. In his list of 9 I failed to see a true link for greatness. There are valid points in there and some should be considered fast. Yet the bigger picture I miss is not what I saw, it is what I missed. In my view (apart from the bug fixing) which will take time and Bethesda is on it, I want to give a few points of my own.

A built site needs a much bigger budget; in addition, the cost of defences should be down by at least 50%. Optionally build sites should be expanded on, so when the building budget is full, optionally expand it (for a price, or expansion mission add what would be up to 3 satellite mobile builders (one for each time a maximum budget had been reached), giving you the option to gain well over 100% of space, to optionally create an actual outpost, or perhaps link to a building, an official or community building, so that you can build something lasting. Not sure if that would be possible (software architecturally speaking), yet consider Fallout 3, who had not considered making the US Capitol their own personal space? Perhaps it is too large an example, yet that impact, like a subway station might be an awesome idea to build your own ‘town’. That was my hope when I was introduced to the intro of Vault 76, we understand why another vault is not an option, yet a failed vault (one that was not ready in time) is still an idea. Whether that idea is added as a DLC will not matter. It can even become a quest line in the game.
Quests, there is (seemingly mind you) a lot missing here, as I mainly gathered from loads of reviews. My immediate idea was to add quests like ‘the Greenhouse effect‘. A mission that sets a stage where we need food to survive, aiding an NPC in setting up a greenhouse, growing vegetables and setting the stage to sell groceries to other settlers (a wink to fallout 4 Greygardens), not merely getting the entire structure up, but creating robots so that the work can be long term and automated.
A similar quest could be created for clean water ‘the shape of aqua‘, and should not be repetitive in shape and challenges like the previously mentioned one. With these two in place, the game can give perks for outposts created. Another part for general goods stores ‘Crazy Goods‘ (a Crazy People wink). The trick is to make the challenges very different and testing, giving not merely a stage of improvement, but one with different sided challenges. It is one thing I partially missed in the past, there is a sneak preference in me, yet having a mission that is dependent on a technical skill, and perhaps one on heavy weapons/explosives and one on sneak gives a new view to how we ourselves, play that game, it is merely a thought. And it important to see that this is merely partial criticism on all this, I have not played the full game, not played to any large extent (merely a few hours at a friend’s place, as he has 4K and I do not). Even as it all looks impressive and even as it is buggy, it is still new, as well as in a new direction and that is what I love about Bethesda. I was never a rage fan, I never went beyond the first ‘the Evil within‘, yet they never stopped surprising me and they are willing to take leaps. They prove that their games are not for everyone and that is fine, the ones that do like their games tend to be extremely committed, you merely have to look at the Rage population for that part of the equation.

Diversify! There are too many ‘password for terminal‘ moments in all this (I was given awareness of this, I have not tested this part). I get it that this is the operational stage of the Fallout series, yet the alternative to download terminals so that your Pip-boy can hack it (over time) gives us the need to find empty Holotapes and perhaps add the write capability to the Pip-boy (for the downloaded terminal), was that considered? How come that we cling to the ‘caps’ part, if this is the beginning, is there not a real needs for goods? Making the water, food and goods part more important and optionally also making those missions more rewarding? Then there is the option of ‘RandomWare‘. Spawn unique pieces in solo mode whenever a new game is created. So you cannot run to a place, you have to genuinely find it. For example a power armour helmet with sneak abilities (converting that item to sneak perks card perhaps), or a level 4 Rifleman card (+25% damage). This could be done for different sets and in different ways giving much more challenge and reward to the game. For example, adding 2 special parts for every S.P.E.C.I.A.L. skill might give the people true incentive to find every location and if those 14 parts are scattered randomly over 200 locations, the cheat guides will take a step back requiring people to become better players, it is merely a thought to consider. Consider that you have a game where you need to get lucky. That feeling that you get with Diablo 3, when after finishing the game 10 times, you still get a legendary item you never had before, in a trait that really gives you an edge; it is a real Adrenalin rush when that happens.

These are merely three elements that could add heaps to the challenge, prestige and rewarding sensation that is currently temporary lacking in Vault 76. I use the word temporary as I have complete faith that in the end Bethesda will come through for its players, so far it has never failed them and that must be said too. With about 5000 hours in the Elder Scrolls (not online) and Fallout, I feel that I know what I am talking about, besides the part where I have been connected to games going all the way back to 1982 (CBM Vic-20).

Is there more? Yes, there is always more but is that not the main concern with every Monday morning quarterback? So far Bethesda has not disappointed me and they will get past this, or perhaps not and the next gem we truly end up desiring is the one that comes after. It is always a side we have to accept, merely because games and gaming is not science, it is an art and art will always be personal, we either embrace it, or we do not. Yet in the end, like junkies we hope that the next Rembrandt is another Nightwatch, yet the next one might be merely ‘An Old Woman Reading‘, which is still a Rembrandt mind you. So when you realise that both him and me are both from the ‘van Rijn’ family branch, yet did that branch matter? It absolutely does not and I am not related to him at all, we are two separate trees completely (implying it at times, especially in New York was heaps fun, seeing the shock in the other person alone is worth the entertaining act), giving us another form of artistic entertainment.

When we realise that art is the foundation of any game you should start to realise how insane the Ubisoft claim ‘another Assassins Creed game every year‘ was. As I stated in a different blog before, it took me no more than 8 hours to create the foundation of Elder Scrolls 6 (not the one being made now), yet it is not merely the story, it is the art, the graphics (a part Ubisoft has truly mastered in all their AC games). It is the science of ‘AI’ so that the NPC’s are acting natural in the game and that part is still not perfect (in any game), there are so many parts and they all need to interact (making the Ubisoft claim much worse), because it all takes time and time will never ever bargain. It will never state that it will decrease itself in speed by 10%, it is the one constant we all face (until we die that is), making game testing crucial to success and taking into consideration that a game is finished whenever that is (the perfect CD Project Red) response to its fans. We can design and conceptionally spring the game in moments, yet it still needs to be done in the end and the visionary programmer will be worth gold at that point, yet the interactions with other parts of the game makers (graphics and sound) are still part of it all and that requires time. Bethesda’s approach to use golden oldies songs (in the fallout series) was a master move, we all (most of us at least) want those soundtracks with those old songs and they also give life to the consideration of classics, two home runs for the price of one. All parts that can be used to add to the game even more. The question becomes how to give proper positive impact to the gamer? It is a question no one can honestly state, not even the best marketeer. We can merely hope that the impact is appreciated, perhaps even loved by the gamer exposed to it. So far Bethesda has done really well and even as I was not playing them from the beginning (I started in 2001), I have so far never really been disappointed. Is that because I await the game, or perhaps I refuse to adhere to my own expectations? The second one is extremely dangerous. The moment that you start to live by your own expectations you will miss out, as I did ignoring Far Cry 3 for too long. It is an important moment even as I have raised my fist against Ubisoft for the longest of times, they got that one really right (4 and 5 a lot less so). If there is one impact for Bethesda is that they will face (deservingly) the issue that their launch day following will decline, yet I believe that they will overcome and any really great game will restore faith in the brand. Ubisoft faced that upbeat when we were introduced to AC Origin (still a true gem).

EA could face that same upbeat if they remaster (still a big if) the Mass Effect trilogy, they would have an option to fix the Andromeda parts if they are willing to go all out, but in the end, will they find the cash? It is important to look at this now; you see, most gamers cling to the old successes and so far plenty of people have seen the positive impact of a remaster, so the noise for the Mass Effect series is increasing again (and again, and again). Yet, is that enough? There is an option to set the stage for a fifth Mass Effect game, if the makers can learn to ignore the shouts for early release (aka muzzle their entire marketing division) and focus on quality, if the errors (seen in the first hour) are addressed and looked at as a challenge to make a better product, we see and we get to live through a new challenge that is a true new Mass Effect, but it implies that EA Games needs to be willing to put it all on the table and so far, they have not shown to be testicularly ready (aka they lack the balls), so why mention it? I am a gamer like all the other gamers and Mass Effect 2 is still one of the most perfect games I ever played; like everyone else I do want more of that and it is within EA to find that solution (there are millions of gamers wanting that) implying that if they get it right, it will come with millions of copies sold. Consider that Andromeda might not get that, yet link it with Mass Effect Hegemony (fictive future title) it becomes another matter altogether, especially if they are willing to change the focal point. I merely have to point at movies like: The Day the Earth Stood Still, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, Conquest of the Planet of the Apes, Earth 2, where the humans are basically not the good guys to create a stage that is invigorating, creates moral ambiguity and gives consideration to other venues. A game like that would be a game changer, especially in the Mass Effect range. That same path should be considered with Bethesda. What happens if we up the game, what happens when there are real setback to the choice of becoming Railroad, Brotherhood of Steel or Institute minded? Just like we saw in New Vegas, where a direction impair another one, when direction offers options as well as impairment, we see a need to replay the gamer and that replay is actually just as exciting, providing that the missions are different and new, not merely a palate of sense (replace goods with slaves), it is a path less trodden because of the effort needed, yet the impact also implies that the game is valued up to 200% more that way.

We are all protective on what we desire and love, especially the games we embrace, it is natural to do so, yet we must be willing to be honestly critical when it does not meet our realistic expectations. As long as our expectations were realistic we will be able to do that, as such I feel no reason to joining the AOC (Active Oxhorn Critics). Here we see (via Reddit) “Seems like people hate the game despite it being good or not“, as the operative part is: “Oxhorn gets hate for actually liking Fallout 76“, it does not matter whether the expectations of Oxhorn were really low, or that he is like me, in Bethesda he trusts, all others pay cash up front. His dime, his choice. People are entitled to that part, plain and simple.

Faith is strange and fickle that way. I believe that the entire setting of the stage is not the one or the other, it is the appreciation of art, especially art that remains in transit and is still being upgraded, when the final product is a good one. We got the value for our bucks. Even if that is not the case, the price of art is what we are willing to pay for it. I have always been willing to pay $20 for any Rembrandt, yet that is the limit of my budget for an oil painting. Others pay $1200 for a pre-released No Man’s Sky, it is merely what we are willing to shell out at that moment and it is up to us to learn that we accept the choices we make. So even as some feel really bad of getting a launch day copy of Vault 76, we merely need to learn to look at the right sources informing us on what is and what is likely to be. Granted that this is difficult when a game is as large as Bethesda, or Project Red RPG’s, yet in this the success versus fail rate with these two players is so far massively in favour of the ‘I trust my maker‘ that we tend to go with the launch day part.

We win some, we lose some.

So get over it, especially as Bethesda is openly and loudly committed to fix the product, which in the end is still the biggest part we need to accept and I did mention the result after 9 months of waiting for Watchdogs 1, did I not? So let’s give them time to do the Sir Fixalot routine and await the upgraded result.

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Tagged as AC AC Origin, Bethesda, EA Games, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Far Cry 3, Mass Effect, Mass Effect Andromeda, Mass Effect Hegemony, Mass Effect Trilogy, Oblivion, Ubisoft, Vault 76

November 17, 2018 · 11:44

Annual medical bill $864,685

Yes, that is the price for keeping the doctor away. An Apple a day keeps the doctor away, yet at $2,369 per iPhone it will be a hefty bill, let me tell you that. And the news gets to be worse after that. Apple has been in the news and not in a good way. We all remember the big news earlier this year, when Apple announced that they had become the first trillion dollar company. It was just as the new Apple models had come to town and the impact has been seen. First we get the Financial Times 2 days ago with: ‘Apple falls into bear market territory‘ (at https://www.ft.com/content/c9dd38f0-e839-11e8-8a85-04b8afea6ea3). I thought it was merely metaphorically, yet it is not. You see, bear territory is when a company got into the state of: “The drop takes the stock’s decline from its intraday high of $233.47 on October 3 to 20.3 per cent, meeting the definition of a bear market“, the first corporation to surpass 1 trillion and lose 20% value soon thereafter. Apple did this t themselves in a few ways. It takes me to my dark Apple moment. Now do not get me wrong, I do not hate Apple, I still have the very first iPad and I will get the iPad Pro if my budget would ever allow for it, hopefully before my iPad passes away.

I bought an Mac Book Pro in 2005, I loved it and it set me back $5099, it was all I had and it after 11 months I had one line in my screen, then 3 then I went to the Apple store and I realised that my warranty had past. Two weeks later the screen was no longer usable, $5099 and nothing to show for it. When it ran it ran great, so for 11 months I never regretted buying it, and then the onslaught came. I was not happy, the $5099 was all I had, so there was nothing left for the Apple care and after 6 months I had forgotten to get it, it is my own fault, yet the longevity of Apple (lack thereof) will never be forgotten. The opposite is also true, my G5 and first iPad as well as an iPod Classic are still doing their stuff. So overall there is more good than bad. The previous parts I mentioned matter, as you are about to find out. Forbes, who also on last Thursday gives us (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2018/11/15/apple-new-iphone-xs-max-xr-upgrade-price-cost-camera-sales-face-id/#78e1e0302932): ‘Apple’s new iPhones have a Serious Problem‘. Here we see: “AMS revised its Q4 2018 revenue estimates down from highs of $610M to new lows of $480 citing “recent demand changes from a major consumer customer.” AMS is the latest in a string of iPhone suppliers to announce revenue cutbacks“. The setting here is not merely the suppliers; we see ““Many suppliers have lowered numbers because of their unnamed ‘largest customer,’ which is Apple,” Elazar Capital analyst Chaim Siegel told Reuters“. This shows that the shareholders could optionally panic before the end of the year and it will be an additional downturn for Apple, who is currently worth a mere $US886 billion, in addition the second wave might lower it to somewhere between $794-$811 billion, making Q4 2018 one of the worst moments in Apple history, lowering its value by almost 30%. So if 20% is bear territory, will passing the 30% make it the Groundhog tree stump area? #JustAsking

Yet all is not lost, there is still last moment Black Friday, Thanksgiving, Saint Nicholas (Belgium and Netherlands), and Christmas. It will mean a massive level of facilitation (by Apple mind you), but there is space for a partial turnaround and it was their own doing, this economy is not ready for upper class latest techno prices. Consider the $2365, whilst their opponent is offering a decently close solution for $1499 (Google) and $1599 (Huawei) all top end phones and the next model is 33% cheaper, in an economy where most people are turning around pennies (just look at Debenhams). It was a really bad market moment; one could argue that Apple believed their marketing whilst it was nowhere near realistic. In addition we see (at https://www.macrumors.com/2018/11/16/new-ipad-pro-bend-test/) ‘New iPad Pro Models May Be Prone to Bending‘, the image is very expressive on the curve, which might be moving towards boomerang shape over time (just guessing here). The quote “both forum complaints and a new bend test video suggest the two devices have the potential to bend without a huge amount of force“, gives us that the news is already out there, which gets us the Achilles heel of any corporation that is ruled by marketing deadlines. It is the proper testing of last minute changes. You see, if that was not done it implies that proper testing was never done and that is a lot worse at present for Apple. As the new iPad Pro could set you back $2689 that issue is a lot more important than you think. MacRumors also gives us: “Despite the video and the forum complaint, this does not appear to be a widespread issue. There are a couple of other complaints from MacRumors readers who were seeing slight curves in their devices and received replacements or sent the tablet back, but there aren’t complaints that match the complaints we saw back in 2014 with the original iPhone 6 Plus bendgate“, which should be noted too, just be certain (as it counts for me too) to keep an eye on it, and even as a prospective Apple marketeer gives us: ‘Apple released their folding display before Samsung 😉‘, we need to be certain that any gospel truth involving Apple, just in case it is still partially owned by Microsoft.

For Apple things are escalating in a few ways. First there is ‘Apple admits iPhone X ‘ghost touch’ screen issue, offers free repair‘, which we got form the Sydney Morning Herald last week (at https://www.smh.com.au/technology/apple-admits-iphone-x-ghost-touch-screen-issue-offers-free-repair-20181112-p50ffl.html), yet Apple did respond with: “Apple has announced that it has found issues affecting some of its iPhone X and 13-inch MacBook Pro products, and said the company would fix them free of charge“, which is good, but it is water under the bridge, the damage is optionally already done. The question rotates around the core of properly testing issues before the audience gets them.The issue gets worse when we see: “For the 13-inch MacBook Pro, it said an issue may result in data loss and failure of the storage drive“, no matter how repairs go, the entire matter of data loss is a nightmare for many people, the idea that a days work is lost for whatever reason is a massive push to look elsewhere for a solution and that will hurt Apple down the track as well. The battery issue has put a dent in faith in Apple with many people and the keyboard issue in the Macbook and Macbook Pro models only make matters worse, so as the list is added to the media and as the media gives more and more light to it all, Apple might be in extremely rough seas this coming January. A setting that proper testing might have avoided to a greater extent. If this was not enough, CNBC adds fuel to the fire two days ago with ‘I tested the new iPad Pro and it still can’t replace my laptop like Apple says it can‘. The article (at https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/15/apple-ipad-pro-review.html) also gives us: “I’ve been testing the iPad for the past several days, and while it’s a very nice tablet, it’s still not capable of replacing my regular laptop. In fact, most people should probably just buy a Mac, or Apple’s cheaper $329 regular iPad“. I saw it in the store myself and the new Apple Smart Keyboard is a game changer, which is not available for the normal iPad. He might have a point to some degree, especially when we have to shell out a difference of $1200 at least. The only core issue is that the graphic part of the Pro is close to 300% faster than the not pro, so that is still a consideration to take in a graphic tablet life, but beyond that his view is harsh and optionally not wrong. I found the review of Todd Haselton extremely genuine, especially when he gives us: “The iPad Pro is great, but it isn’t for most people. Let me explain why“, he gives it the proper support, so it is a good part, yet it is also bad for Apple in another way, let’s go there together.

You see, the competition is never far behind and the device already available and several sources give it to us. In this case I selected ‘Huawei’s Matebook X Pro Is The MacBook Rival People Have Been Asking For‘ (at https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2018/11/huawei-matebook-x-pro-review/). Whilst we can look at “Like Apple, Huawei starts with a solid aluminium body and then adds surprisingly powerful speakers to the sides, a big one-piece trackpad down below, and clever power button/fingerprint reader combo in the top left – and all of it is top notch. Then there’s Matebook X Pro’s backlit keyboard. While it is a bit on the shallow side, the keyboard’s relatively high actuation weight and deeper key travel feels vastly superior to the garbage you get on modern MacBooks” from more than one direction, it is the setting that gives is weight (as well as the keys I reckon). We also get two more interesting parts. The first is “the X Pro’s chin is equally thin too, resulting in a screen-to-body ratio of 91 per cent. That’s better than devices like the new XPS 13 (80.7 per cent) and the Galaxy S9 (83.6 per cent) by a fair margin“, as well as “Regardless of how shamelessly you think Huawei has copied Apple’s formula, it has absolutely improved on that template in a number of very important ways“. The second part is the most damning one. Apple had a good thing going and was willing to let marketing rule the ways, whilst improvements have been lacking (many users have made similar statements). When we see that the original has been improved upon and we see an equal in a field where they optionally did not belong, that is when the goose of Apple remains to be cooked (optionally for Christmas). With the final part “As of today we finally have Australian pricing and a release date for the Matebook X Pro, which is November 22, 2018. They start at $1,899 for the i5/8GB/256GB model and at $$2,599 for the i7/16GB/512GB model” we see the nightmare of Apple become a reality, not only is there an alternative available, as CNBC reflects on, we see that this alternative is out and it is with Huawei, which should upset Americans to no end. In addition that model comes with Windows 10 Pro Signature Edition, so you get the good stuff. Even as it is not a gaming PC, the optional Nvidia GeForce MX150 would enable you to truly enjoy places like Facebook in several ways and that is definitely an additional plus point all over the board. The battery was stated as good, not much beyond that, yet in light of the bank hey are bringing, we see that Huawei is optionally pushing into Apple territory and even as that is a really large field, the fact that Huawei moved into laptop space is something no one had really prepared for and that might be an issue over the next two months depending on how the Huawei Matebook X Pro is embraced by the audience, the fact that they are clearly on the radar should be regarded as an optional threat for Apple, they quite literally have a lot to lose at present.

There is also an IOS issue (and it goes way beyond IOS. hackers were able to exploit the JIT compiler flaw with a malicious access point, which Apple is expected to have patched in an upcoming iOS 12 update. This is always going to happen, we get that as an issue by itself it is not a biggie (or at least it is optionally not a biggie). When we see “An iOS 12 Security Flaw Allows Access to Deleted Photos on iPhone“, so OK, it is an issue and it will be fixed, in the worst case if you take photos of your wife/girlfriend you will just have to refrain from deleting them until the patch is out. It becomes a little more of an issue as the Mirror reported (at https://www.mirror.co.uk/tech/iphone-x-explodes-during-ios-13593046). The article ‘iPhone X EXPLODES during iOS 12.1 update – and Apple’s response is laughable‘. The article itself gives us: “@Apple iPhone X just got hot and exploded in the process of upgrading to 12.1 IOS. What’s going on here???“, yes it was done over twitter and the response: “That’s definitely not expected behaviour. DM us, so we can look into this with you” was indeed funny, yet not incorrect. Twitter is limited in the response usage, so it was an acceptable answer in all this. The article was not that great, but there is optionally another issue and whether this is a mere IOS 12.1 flaw, or a larger issue is unknown, leave it to the Mirror to not properly look into this and let emotions rise via responses on a mere Twitter setting and few words. The responses were exactly the ones we should expect to see and not worthy of repeating other than ‘And this deserved an article devoted to it?‘ This is acceptable and fair enough, yet the issue behind it is larger. You see if this is the update that is supposed to deal with the JIT compiler flaw; the update could optionally merely be making matters worse. The grand total is negative for Apple as a multitude of issues on devices and drop of value, as well as intensely lowered sales at present shows that Apple is in a not so good place. We cannot tell for certain because the end of year is 6 weeks away and a lot could optionally be repaired by then, yet the fact that there is a list of issues spanning the range of Apple models is not the greatest place to be in at present and proper testing could have prevented a lot of the issues involved before they happened, which leaves us to the setting: ‘Has Apple become too complacent in all this?‘

It is important because it only means that whatever comes out in the next 6 months could be as messy as anything they have released in the last year and it has not been a great year for Apple technologically speaking, and now that they have both Google and Huawei nipping at their heels on several fields could be a decent sign that there are more issues on the horizon making their shareholders even more nervous than in the previous 4 years altogether, so that too is likely to impact the total value of Apple over the coming quarter, they will survive, no doubt about that, yet it might be a while until they get to that 1 trillion mark again.

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Tagged as Apple, Belgium, Black Friday, Christmas, CNBC, Debenhams, Financial Times, Forbes, Gizmodo, google, Google Pixel 3, Huawei, Huawei Mate 20 pro, IOS, MacRumors, Matebook X Pro, Netherlands, Saint Nicholas, Sydney Morning Herald, Thanksgiving, the Mirror, Todd Haselton

November 16, 2018 · 15:30

Terrorism is OK

How is that for a title? Is it nice, cool, rad or merely scary? One would think that people wake up at some point, especially when we see the condoning of terrorism because of the ‘signs’. It is in that light that we need to see the New Yorker and what it brought to the people (at https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-ceasefire-in-gaza-a-turning-point-for-hamas-and-netanyahu). Here we see the writing of Bernard Avishai, a man who teaches political economy at Dartmouth, Dartmouth being a private university in Hanover, New Hampshire. It does not matter where he is teaching, from my personal point of view; the man has been in a stage of historic denial. You see, over the ages Hamas has only ever agreed to a cease fire when the ammunition was lot and they would only keep it until the stocks were back up. In this stage we need to consider what the impact is. You see, the issue is not that missiles were fired on Israel; it is the fact that 400 were fired. The storage for this would have been pretty enormous. This also implies that for the most, the rocket fire is done with the ‘blessing’ from the Palestinians to a much larger extent than we ever considered before. The even more hilarious view is given by the Washington Post with: “Why did Israel carry out this military operation at a time when many were heralding novel progress in diplomatic steps toward alleviating tensions between Israel and Hamas?” My response would be: ‘Didn’t you guys lose a temporary reporter recently? How much of a stink did you kick up over that one? So when 400+ missiles get fired at civilian targets in Israel, we see clear cause and even the consideration that the response was disproportionate (too light), in this that for every 10 missiles one building van get flattened, Israel can still lower the maximum altitude towards zero for at last 35 buildings at present‘.

From my point of view is that we need to hunt the money. These were not some 400 garage band projects, they were ‘commercial’ products (and not cheap) and there should be a trace on where they are from. 400 missiles, even over 10 months is just too much of an amount. There will be a trace and that stuff needed storage, even if it is after the fact, we need to look at the options at what could be backtracked. There is also debate over ‘Israel risks igniting a war that no one can win‘. I agree that there is a partial truth in all this, yet the risk is already ignited as the premise of premeditation that it takes to launch a 400+ missile attack, yet the Washington Post is not really that interested in giving us that light, merely keeping the darkness alive in hindering the light to shine on the truth of attacks against Israel. We can argue that Boaz Atzili has a point or two and he does have them, yet the lack of illumination on the actions of Hamas is also leaving me with a question mark in all this. In addition, the news (very generic) giving us Likud Minister Tzachi Hanegbi downplaying the rockets is also an issue, let’s be clear that it is a valid political play, but the stage with 400+ missiles is a changed stage and the denial over that is a little too weird for me. You see as a national security expert he knows better, the storage, the preparation to get this done was decently impressive. The timeline before this will be equally important. No matter how many rat tunnels are drowned. There is a direct need to look into the trace these missiles back as this will happen again and again and the next time it could optionally hit the wrong place (what Hamas calls the bullseye) and at that point the fence comes of and we do get a full scale war. We could consider that the pressure is removed as Gaza becomes part of Israel, yet another option would be preferred by pretty much every party (including Israel). It is there where we see the agreeing light to the statements by Dr. Mordechai Kedar. He gave us (more than once): “What would the UK have done to anyone who launched 400 rockets at its civilians? How about just one rocket? What would France do to anyone who dared launch one single rocket at its territory? What would any US president do to Mexico if it dared launch one mortar shell at America?” The bulk of the world has had enough of the mind games that Hamas and Hezbollah plays (as well as Iran and to some degree Turkey too) and the people are getting angry, they want it resolved it in any way that takes Hamas and Hezbollah out of the equation permanently. If anything that feeling is mostly fuelled by the images from Yemen, a situation that Hezbollah was a much larger part of than the news is letting on and the people are realising that too, hence the increased anger and frustration from the civilians in nations all over the globe.

Then we get one accusation that is a much larger issue. When we see: “Qatari money is being transferred at Iran’s behest. Iran’s rulers, under severe economic sanctions at present, do not want peace and tranquillity between Israel and Gaza. On the contrary, they want the smoke rising from a war between Israel and Gaza to divert media attention from Iran and the “deal” which granted the Ayatollahs 150 billion dollars in cash with which to destroy the Middle East. Qatar, a long-time supporter of the terror espoused by organizations whose ideology originated in the Muslim Brotherhood, backs Hamas publicly. It has, for the most part, built the infrastructure, including the military one, for a Hamas state in Gaza.” It is an issue as the evidence is required. It will not only end any nuclear deal, there would be enough public outrage that any politicians who was connected into diminishing this part in the equation, that person will be an outcast, the people will demand that person to be removed from office for life and the media is actually aiding some of these connected politicians. Certain people in the EU will see another light if we can ever clearly show evidence of their ‘assistance’ in feigned opposition to Hezbollah and Hamas, as it comes with a large consequence. One that needs to be put in legislation, yet the calls for an adjustment that a political voice is set to zero if any terrorist assistance could be clearly proven. To get there it is more and more important to trace the missile attacks not merely before the attack, but collect the evidence after the attack so that a much better case could be made against those supporting Hamas and Hezbollah through military hardware. I make it sound easy, but it is not, the water is deeply dark and there will be no clarity, not for a long time. Yet identifying the players in all this is becoming increasingly important., and there is a call to expose those who seemingly hide behind a humanitarian political cloak, and let’s face it the people have a right to know, do they not?

Yet the issue remains clouded and it will do so for some time. So as we see innuendo, gossip and covered information take the central road in all this, we need to consider the impact that inactions have. Even as we see US actions with: “The U.S. Department of State announced on Tuesday rewards of up to $5 million each for information or identification leading to the capture of the following terrorist figures: Hamas leader Saleh al-Aruri, and Hezbollah leaders Khalil Yusif Mahmoud Harb and Haytham ‘Ali Tabataba’i” we need to wonder if it has any impact at all. A Dark web ‘source’ made mention that one of them (Hezbollah) is supposed to be at a place called ‘مسجد الإمام الهادي يحيى بن الحسين’ either within the next 72 hours, of was there in the last 36 hours (the text was ambiguous and the translation by Google did not make any sense at all). Parts of the other text translated to a mosque supposedly in Sadat, which is in Egypt and that made even less sense to me. So relying on Google translate does not seem the best idea in any of this (as well as the fact that I cannot decipher the native Arabian alphabet), yet the exercise was important. Knowing the elements you cannot fathom in the first place is a first step in finding the limitations of a thought process. Data is the foundation of creating the timelines we need down the track and the lack of effort that are seemingly in place is impressive.

Even when we accept: “Qatar played a bad role in supporting the Houthis, especially after having already fought them as a former member state of the Arab Coalition, is self-destructive behavior, “ Al Adini said while explaining that Qatari leadership fully understands that Iran’s agenda in Yemen threatens both Arab and Gulf security“, we are seemingly missing a larger element in all this. You see, Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthi forces, Qatar and Iran are all elements in all this. They are all elements in a progressing destabilisation and money is the central key here. The issue has been going on for a year when we were first treated to “Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Bahrain have imposed a near-total embargo on Qatar since June 2017 over allegations of Doha supporting radical groups and seeking closer ties with Tehran“, I always have doubts, but the given links are becoming overwhelming. It is not merely ‘where there is smoke, there is fire‘, it has evolved into: ‘There is so much smoke in this room, I can no longer see the walls‘, ignoring this and ignoring the games that Iran is playing in all this is becoming a very dangerous stance to maintain.

I did do some (highly speculative and debatable) research in this and there is more and more alleged links towards bitcoin exchange on the dark web. This leaves me with the worry that there are even more Qatari links active as there would be an easy method for Saudi’s to use their banks as they do not reveal anything to anyone ever, so whoever is using this path is requiring an almost total level of isolation. I am not stating that Saudi Arabia is innocent, but the implied facts give more and more rise that other players are using the dark web to launder money and make payments as well as supportive accounts. This is a stage that cannot be proven as any link will never go towards any source that has any value, yet I searched as 400+ missiles represent value and deployment of such resources will cost a fair bit too. So I looked into whatever dark web search I could. Now, there is no way to get anything remotely reliable and my method was as plain as it was useless. I merely looked at the haystack hoping I would see anything metallic (optionally the needle we all seek). That is as good as it gets and even as I got more and more details on optional events, finding the wheat from the chaff is unlikely to happen. I reckon me winning the lottery has better odds. Yet the idea that this path has been taken makes more and more sense so even as we cannot find the relative data, finding the relative data becomes increasingly important because there is every chance that places like Iran would use it to fund events for Hezbollah optionally all over Europe and finding the money is a top priority. Just on the side of all this, the fact that I (as a mere exercise) would have been able to get a Glock 17 & silencer for $1149 (and an additional $49 for two extra clips with a box of 50 rounds delivered to a drop place in the UK, and you still think the entire Novichok issue in Salisbury was as clear cut as everyone thinks? If I was able to find this, then the GRU would have known about it, that entire situation never did make any sense.

There were links that offered something more exotic, but I was unable to get there (reason unknown), so in all this there is a reason to check the links and there was even more reason to pursue or is that peruse the information? I believe that the dark web is the Chinese wall that both Iran and Qatar are allegedly using (extremely speculated by me at this point) to keep insulated from any accusations and therefor that data will become increasingly important. There was more, a Dutch Freelance (detective or Journalist) found an extremist with: “an .onion link in their bio. I thought, Wow, this is the first time I’ve ever seen a jihadist group using an onion link. So I opened it, and I was blown away. I sent the link around to a few different friends with similar interests, and they were also blown away. We wanted to think it was a scam, but there were just too many factors ruling against it being a scam“, I personally believe that the issue is larger and even as some can be stumbled upon, there is a growing trend to use .onion links like burner phones. To be merely there for a short time (a speculated 96 hours) and then abandoned. Yet in those 96 hours, traffic of goods and finances could have been completed. It would be the operations equivalent of an entire lone wolf operation with no chance to find it in time. That too gives rise to the need to start tracking with a long term need after the fact. Even as prevention should remain the initial need, the data could down the track be enough for conviction and that too is important. Yet, for the most I cannot prove any of this. There is a lot of implied and even more speculation linked in all this (as I stated earlier) yet the connections are too realistic and probable to ignore. If people like Ben Strick are correct and there is an actual setting of: ‘jihadi crowdsourcing‘ then the impact of escalations in Europe will only escalate with all the issues that follow, which is an additional reason to stat mapping all this. So unless we want to start living with the slogan: ‘Terrorism is OK‘ we need to start to think about creating solutions that can deal with inverted data funnels with an optional stage that an inverted funnel leads to 3-4 other inverted funnels. This is not an easy path and there is no real direct answer, because it is not merely which inverted funnel it goes into, it could be that the third tier is a funnel where the path is not where it leads to but where it went when the data bounced, that too is a destination and that path that skill will become increasingly important. To illustrate this is a lot harder, but I will try though market research. Consider an interview; it is a mere one on one event. Now we assume that the interviewee was the jihadi crowdsourcer’s data point. So we begin with a few simple narrow, closed-ended questions. From there on we move to broader, open-ended questions. This gives an optional pattern and we move from both specific and general questions. When we have asked enough questions (collected enough data), we enter a stage with Diamond questions, which is a combination of Funnel and Inverted Funnel questions.

Consider the image, we see inverted funnels (yes, go with it), so as we go from A, will B be the exclusion, or did it enter the funnel? If it entered, C is out of the question, so if F, yet E remains a player. This is near impossible and it is not in one transaction, it is over hundreds of connected transactions that certain players will be excluded, even more events are needed to find a group, yet there will be a pattern over time and that is what is needed. Yet if C is not an inverted funnel, but a funnel, or it as an inverted funnel and the traffic went through C, we now see that F remains an option and B, D and E were excluded. It will be a data collection over a much larger time frame that will prove this and time is what is needed. Most Jihadists will not care to live, yet the people behind it will always prefer to outlive events and it is the only way to get to them. You see, when we look at history, we all know Ghandi, many, especially Hindu will know that he was murdered by Nathuram Vinayak Godse. Yet the movie (by Sir Richard Attenborough) implies someone behind the screen and those are the people we need to find. It starts by proving that there was a person behind the screen. In case of Hezbollah that is actually decently simple as the amount of Yemeni missiles required is impossible Hezbollah to afford (or produce) in any way shape or form and it is easy to state that it was Iran, but we need the individuals to connect to it all and that takes time. ‘Follow the money’ is the most realistic path to take in this case. It is more realistic as Mossad has been unable to find actual missile traffic for the longest of times, and even if they did, it would be for one shipment. That too is still important as it links goods and money, so that path must not ever be abandoned, yet conviction without the money path proof is pretty much impossible and the time is now as we see more and more events leading to Europe and to a larger stage, so this path is becoming essential. If we translate the events to marketing (or market research) the same paths can be used. Whether we go via vendor, via drop point or via the path of the funds and buyer, we have the elements of awareness of what to get where, interest to get what is needed, choice of goods and purchase to go through and unless every stage was another person (not enough people) there is still a path. The unaware cannot purchase, the unaware cannot choose, the interested part is aware, a choice was made, it does not matter whether online or offline, it is not virtual, so there was traffic in some form. Even if the first two stages are negated a specific person has made the choice of goods to purchase, so now we have inverted or not a much smaller funnel to work with. In the end at the bottom we have the point of purchase (or point of sale) and there is a connection there. Something was bought/sold and funds are linked to that, so that part is optionally set in cement, the rest is not, yet the deployment path is still ‘riddled’ with actual people as well making the picture more complete. Now we need to find their optional connections to the dark web, if it is web and not dark it becomes increasingly easy, yet this is not a path where we bank on too much good news and there is in the end the question if convictions will be possible. Even if the path is an inverted funnel (showing what some call a Customer Experience Funnel view), we can see that the jihadists unite in certain views and if they were the advocates in this, it stands to reason that they try to engage to increase their footprint (and attempted funding). Finding that point will give optional identification of channels with an optional overlap to people linked to the buyer and/or shipper. It is a slow path, yet as time progresses an essential one. It achieves two parts, the first the optionally linked people, yet it also shows that those not linked to anything can optionally be excluded freeing up resources to refocus in this path, because this path drains resources and whatever resources there are available will be stretched. It is precisely the view we need to have as more data means more efficiency. One could argue that it could make it an optional track to find links to servers that have remained invisible for the longest of times, because if two people are found, there is the optional chance that they have gone to a .onion link that we have never noticed before and that would be a first true victory, yet in a short term span, if temporary is the name of the game, it becomes a near impossible task, should we therefore not do it? Are we ready to admit defeat by stating: ‘Terrorism is OK‘, or will we get the notion to get clever about it and limit the dangers we are exposed to. For this we can actually quote Tom Cruise (the Firm): ‘If you want the criminals, go after their lawyers‘, in the case of Hamas and Hezbollah, we need to go after their accountants and contributors, and optionally their military goods distributor as well.

If you truly want to decrease pressures in the Middle East, this will be the only path that really works. If you are delusional enough to consider peace talks, consider how many there have been since 1982 and how often it worked (as well as the cost involved). It is a discouraging picture that makes depression look like a healthy positive look on life.

Oh, and should you consider Europe to be completely innocent in all this, consider that Bloomberg gave us: ‘U.S. Warns Europe against Iran Payments after Austria Bows Out‘ (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-15/u-s-warns-europe-against-iran-payments-after-austria-bows-out). The quote: “Austrian officials rebuffed entreaties from France, Germany and the U.K. to host the so-called special purpose vehicle, a system that the European Union sought to handle payments to Iran in defiance of U.S. sanctions” has absolutely no bearing on terrorism or fuelling terrorism. Yet it does show a desperate need to keep a level of facilitation to keep some Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in play, a situation that has not been realistic for several months now. The issue optionally becomes a much larger vessel. Even as we see: “EU nations have identified Austria as the best candidate to host a special purpose vehicle that could handle payments to Iran, according to three people familiar with the negotiations. Austria itself is not so keen. Belgium, Luxembourg and France have also been identified as potential venues but Belgium and Luxembourg have declined while France is looking to Austria“, we see a nation not interested and an EU ready to take a desperate step, in all this, when we see the earlier quote ‘France, Germany and the UK‘. Why isn’t France, Germany or the UK doing this? It is that setting that shows a political game of facilitation on too large a field. From my limited knowledge, I feel that the EU is all about non-accountability yet the impact will be felt in Europe. Unless direct evidence can be produced by all EU signatory nations that this Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action could prove to be an actual solution. And in this I mean that politicians have to put their name under it and live with the consequences of being cast out of politics (for life) when it backfires, at that point we will end up seeing that no one would have been willing to put their name under any of this and you still think that Iran is merely sitting on the sidelines?

We need to figure this out before the Middle East destabilises close to completely and we are running out of time, if we have to choose, I personally see no other option but to openly side with Saudi Arabia in all of this, they might not be perfect, but with Iran as an alternative, we are basically ending up not having any options for any stable future at all. That part of the equation was given to us by the SMH merely a few hours ago (at https://www.smh.com.au/world/middle-east/us-eyes-ways-to-remove-erdogan-foe-to-appease-turkey-nbc-20181116-p50gew.html). when we see that the US allegedly accused through: “The Trump administration is exploring possible ways to remove US-based Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, a foe of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, NBC News reported on Thursday“, Turkey an open ally of Iran, as they are openly strengthening trade relations, giving even more pressure to the European union in all this, when the US ends up handing over the ‘enemies’ of President Erdogan to Turkey, so that they can be lost forever, at what point was Iran even a choice?

How much longer must we wait until we make hard and essential choices in setting a path that actually stops terrorist actions, because 400+ missiles can be considered as actual evidence that there is clearly a lack of actions on that front by way too many political players and governments as a whole.

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Tagged as Belgium, Ben Strick, Bernard Avishai, bloomberg, Boaz Atzili, Chinese wall, Dartmouth, Dr. Mordechai Kedar, Fethullah Gulen, France, Gaza, Germany, Hamas, Haytham ‘Ali Tabataba’i, Hezbollah, Houthi, Iran, Israel, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Khalil Yusif Mahmoud Harb, Luxembourg, Mossad, Muslim Brotherhood, NBC, New Yorker, Palestine, Qatar, Saleh al-Aruri, Saudi Arabia, SMH, Sydney Morning Herald, Tayyip Erdogan, Tzachi Hanegbi, UK, USA, Washington Post, Yemen

November 15, 2018 · 13:03

What’s in the room?

It is merely a reference to a modernised joke by the Groucho brothers. ‘Wow, is that a really large penis, or is there an elephant in the room?‘ This is the situation we face (and yes it was an elephant). The stage we see when we are confronted with: “The 240-year-old department store chain was valued at just £65m by the end of the day, after its shares fell by 21% amid reports that it was now being shunned by suppliers. It was the biggest one-day fall recorded by the retailer for more than a decade” (at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/14/debenhams-shares-fall-by-21). There is a question forming in my mind, but I will refrain from voicing it for now. You see, we also see: “The sharp decline also came after very poor weekly sales figures released by John Lewis on Tuesday. The rival department store chain said fashion and home sales collapsed by more than 11% on 2017 levels last week“. This now leads us to the question ‘Hold on, Debenhams is impacted by the bad sales of a competitor?‘ and that is not the worst. John Lewis is doing the British thing and blaming the weather though ‘John Lewis blames weather for clothing and homeware slump‘ they are all in an ‘I am so upset mode‘ due to: “The poor clothing figures came despite the employee-owned chain’s recent investment in its womenswear ranges, including the 300-piece John Lewis & Partners collection“. Debenhams reported more bad news in the recent past and they are all signals and symptoms of another problem. Yet the issue of that problem is not the actual problem, it is actually seen through “The move comes just weeks after credit ratings agency Moody’s downgraded its long-term outlook for Debenhams and increased its “probability of default” rating, which assesses how likely it is that the company will be unable to pay some or all of its debts“. It is not Debenhams, it is Moody’s that is part of the problem and there should be some consideration whether we should look at orchestration here. From my personal view there are two elements. One is actually Debenhams; the other is Moody’s as well as the analysts that they have.

Painting the frame of an empty picture

To get that, we need to look at the larger picture and therefor look at the frame of it all. There are plenty of people who have a job, yet their living expenses are high, and in winter even higher. Now we get the more important part in all this, which is: ‘This is not news!’ And that revelation puts Moody’s in part of the frame. In this day and age, laces like Sydney and London, the cost of living is through the roof and people can only barely get by. In Sydney we also have Christmas coming and it is going to be summer here soon, so the Australian population is going with the Australian bikini (hat and panties), so women look even more amazing than ever before and the weather ensues that they are not cold, so no heating bill (optionally some air-conditioning expenses). In the UK it is the reversed and under these conditions KMart, Target and places alike are doing really nice, whilst places like John Lewis with their “300-piece John Lewis & Partners collection” will not get much traction until the boxing day sales when prices go down 30% or more, so any increased revenue expectations is close to insane in November (besides black Friday that is). Optionally December will be on par (at best), so there we see my reason for the suspicion of orchestration. More so when we see information like “Debenhams did not deny the reports, but a spokesman said: “Many suppliers don’t use credit insurance. Those that have used it historically are well aware of the current situation and work with retailers to manage things accordingly“. This now gives us two parts. The first is seen with: ‘Those that have used it historically are well aware of the current situation‘, so not only is it a known situation, it is known historically so making the 21% down an even larger no-no, because a predicted event is either calculated in, or it is a stage of orchestration as I personally see it. This implies that some players are overly confident in the previous cycle, whilst the known elements were already in place that this was highly unlikely to ever happen. This is an additional part in my personal suspicion of orchestration of the numbers and optionally by the numbers.

The other article on John Lewis (at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/nov/13/john-lewis-says-mild-weather-to-blame-for-clothing-sales-slump) gives us: “It was also a challenging week for homeware, which fell 11.2.% after a sluggish housing market hit demand for curtains and cushions. Technology fared better and, though sales were down by 2.8%, the department was bolstered by gadget launches such as the iPhone XR“, and at this point we see even more.

You see, when we see the household spend being down, why would anyone get curtains and cushions at their homeware, whilst they get a decent and much better deal at places like IKEA? That would have been my forecast and knowing that is also adamant to the stage where the previous estimation of certain vendors would have been too positive in advance, in addition, technology sales would have been overestimated if it was down, yet not as much by the iPhone XR, so that implies (from my point of view) that there was a clear overestimation in the first place, as well as an optional overestimation of the new iPhone which by the way is at least 17% too expensive from the get go. Knowing these elements and you can see them in your own personal environment the best, you know that most of you are a little more cautious because of upcoming Christmas, all that implies that the organisations like Moody’s have been loading their cannons for another reason, because the entire cost of living is out of whack and it seems that it can now be used for optional economic orchestration, which is a huge no-no in my books. In addition, we see this downfall whilst the Black Friday has not started yet, a black Friday that could impact sales extremely positive as some see Debenhams (optionally John Lewis too) as the place to be on such a day. Consider that last year (according to the Express) ‘Debenhams offered up to 70 percent off on certain goods. Calvin Klein clothes were discounted by 50 percent‘, so when we see that, can we expect that these places were shunned last month so that the people could buy a lot more bargains? When you know that there is a chance that articles will be priced sown by 70%, would you shop now, or wait for an optional 70% cheaper pair of jeans (and if the man is lucky, his girlfriend will stock up on lingerie on that day too). All elements that are close to given, so when we see a 21% downfall on given expectations, whilst we see that certain elements are not considered in the first place, it is my believe that there is a setting of orchestration, which can have far reaching effects, especially as certain players with openly pressuring anti-Brexit feelings should no longer be ever trusted, not as they are trying to sway people through fear mongering. That is a personal believe of mine and so far I have been proven correct in more than one way ad on more than one occasion.

Let’s be clear, we need places like Fitch and Moody’s, yet when we see that certain known factors are downplayed by analysts and when we see that they are not held accountable in any way, we see a power vacuum, where people unelected and optionally non-qualified are setting a dangerous stage for corporations to be scrutinised on a few counts where there was a seemingly level of neglect on applied business intelligence, at what point will we see the open questions on how the curve was overly downgraded at a prearranged point? If Debenhams and John Lewis get to hit the ball out of the part on the coming weekend and we see overly good news on the week after, will we start asking the questions on how analysts are optionally intentionally fear mongering companies into some level of administration? My views are supported by Springboard. The Guardian gives us: “The most recent data from Springboard, which counts shopper numbers, showed high street footfall down 2% in October – the 11th consecutive month of decline. Its analysts suggested shoppers were waiting for Black Friday and other seasonal promotions“. When we see that view and we do see that there has been a drop and the drop can be explained in simple and logical ways, at that point we see that there is an urgent need for Moody’s to explain their actions and give us jerk-knee actions like lowering the forecast for well over a fifth of the value, whilst the known status for the UK has been that Christmas tends to be a decent time, especially as there is no Thanksgiving outside of the US (for the most).

It seems to me that analysts and credit agencies like Fitch and Moody’s are becoming the elephant in the room and their actions should be the beginning of a lot of questions, especially as there are still too much questions on how they were in denial for too long in the 2008 bank and housing issues. It seems that they have been given a pass for too long and it is time to address that, especially as the US has been deploying whatever they can to avert Brexit into a remain status, they do not like to lose their upgraded revenue at the exploitation of Europe any day soon and that has come under fire to a much larger degree, and it should be receiving a lot more scrutiny by all levels of media soon enough (actually, they are already a year late on that too).

At some point serious people should address the elephant in the room. I am hereby voicing clearly that I might be completely wrong, yet I am asking questions, ready to be corrected. The facts are clearly shown that some actions are overly excessive, especially in light of certain parts shown out there, the Debenhams situation is not new, there are pressures and no one denies that, yet they are not new. There are clear indicators that this has been a longstanding issue, a longstanding status of consumers not having enough available to splurge in any real sense of the way, making the entire 21% drop questionable on many levels and we do not see the questions asked, more so the drop is just accepted as is, which is another issue as well. We can clearly ask John Lewis a certain amount of questions that link the words ‘sanity’ and ‘reasoning’ on their ‘300-piece John Lewis & Partners collection‘. When was that done? Was it ever done? When we see the mention of ‘The line, which will be available in sizes 8-20 and available at prices ranging from £10 for a cotton jersey tank to £250 for a cashmere coat‘, yet I see no information on where the mean, the median is and how many pieces are at the outliers of that 300 piece range, is that not an important part as well? You see if 45%-65% is between the lowest and the -1 median John Lewis really arranged for a good time for themselves, if more than 40% is higher than the mean, we see that their insight was poor, with the optional ‘utterly stupid’ label if 30% is between Median +1 and highest priced articles, especially in this economic climate. Did anyone look at that? I am asking, because I searched, but I did not find that information. I am willing to accept that I did not look everywhere and in the wrong places, but Google search is pretty good that way. So as that part is optionally missing, the question I had on analysts, forecasters and prognosticators is setting them in a not so good light, especially as this data would have been available pre-launch (consider that these catalogues needed months to be created and printed).

These are all elements that were available way ahead of a sudden drop in values. Now, in the case of John Lewis, there is a chance that the fashion was initially rejected (until Black Friday) but that too could have been accounted for ahead of time. This all gives additional value to the question: ‘What is in the room?‘ So what if it was not an elephant, but merely an overextended ego? How would we see the status that Moody’s, Fitch and others are giving certain UK retail downgrades ahead of the curve?

I wonder if we will see the questions come after Black Friday and in January 2019, but I am not getting my hopes up, not any day soon at present.

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Tagged as 300-piece John Lewis & Partners collection, Analysts, Black Friday, Brexit, Christmas, corporate value, Debenhams, Fitch, forecasting, John Lewis, Kmart, Moody's, Target

November 14, 2018 · 11:55

The beat goes on

Perhaps you remember the stage. It was around the time that Sony started giving the audience both God of War 4 and Spiderman, breaking all kinds of records in the process. It is gaming at a new level and both groups of players (and many who play both games) have been satisfied well beyond amazement. Now we see that Microsoft is trying to bring the pain to Sony and they are doing it the right way (and only 5 years too late).

With the acquisition of Obsidian (Fallout New Vegas) and InXile (Wasteland 1+2) we see that they are starting to wake up, yet will it be enough? Having exclusive RPG games is the right way to go about it. You see, dedicated RPG fans tend to be long term fans. If you get the game right, there will be no chance that these players will switch consoles or PC Gaming platform. Bethesda proved that point and it gets to be better, there are people (including me) who have the game on all their consoles. There is value in doing that, but it tends to be reserved to the dedicated few and if you are not that person and you merely like it on one system, that is good too.

But it is not all roses and honey in this arranged marriage. Former Obsidian Owner Chris Avellone gave us (via Screenrant) “Chris Avellone didn’t hold back after discovering that Microsoft had just acquired Obsidian Entertainment in a blockbuster deal, beseeching the powerful tech company to gut the leadership that still worked there” that might be the case, it might not. I do not know. Yet what is a given is that the value of such a company is its IP, plain and simple and no matter how amazing Fallout New Vegas was for the Xbox360, that is still Bethesda IP, so is the Elder Scrolls. If they cannot match my ability to create the foundation of new IP within 168 hours, what value, or perhaps what costs is Microsoft looking forward to and will it even have a chance? Let’s take a leap in another direction. In 2017 Guerrilla Games released Horizon Zero Dawn, a game that when looked in depth has an amazing story behind it. It’s a little Matrix perhaps, but the intention towards greatness was there and with reviews ranging from 89%-95% shows that they had the good stuff, the right stuff and the parts that Ubisoft keeps missing out on. Now they are in not merely in the right pace, they are literally sitting on the next goldmine. How it will turn out? No way to tell. I am not in their in-crowd, but the potential is there. Can Obsidian bring that level of pain to their competitors in this field, because that will be the need? I know a lot less about InXile, yet so far they have been largely dependent on the Bards Tale and Wasteland franchise and that could be enough if they take it to new levels, because that is what the players look for. For me the Bards Tale looked awesome as I had not touched the Bards Tale Franchise since the CBM-64. I never really got into that game. Not every game is everyone’s cup of tea and that is not a bad thing; only Ubisoft has been delusional enough to think that they can make a game for everyone and they keep on making games that pleases no one (OK that was a bit of an exaggeration).

You might think that gaming is not interesting, yet it is the most interesting part in all this, merely because gaming has remained on the edges of technology for the longest of times. Its push is also a push for hardware. It is my personal belief that the new I9 processor (an Intel fabrication) would not exist without gamers. Mark Seconi (Intel) gave us in Forbes last month “Gaming has traditionally been the more lightly-threaded of applications your PC will face, but over the last couple of years we’ve seen games and gaming engines become more threaded. Nonetheless, they do still remain lightly-threaded, but we also recognize that a lot of the gaming community also do content creation to some extent. That’s both casual creation or something more demanding and a lot of those applications are beginning to use more and more threads“, you merely have to consider how this skill could propel blockchain software solutions over time and we see that partially at Digital trends with two quotes. The first one “Rather than compete directly with either the Threadripper 1900X or the Ryzen 7 1800X, the Core i9-9900K promises the best of both worlds. It has a base clock speed of 3.6GHz, matching the Ryzen 7, but boosts up to an audacious 5GHz Turbo frequency. Not even the 2nd-gen Threadripper has cracked that milestone. Its core count might be far behind, but the Core i9-9900K can hit higher per-core clock speeds at default settings“, as well as “the Core i9 is the clear winner in every benchmark and test we could put it through. Against the previous generation Core i7-8700K, the Core i9 matched its single-core performance, but flexed its eight-core muscles by upping its multi-core score by around 25 percent. That’s the kind of improvement two extra cores provides“, something that is 25% more powerful than anything else. This implies that your data mining scripts can clear up more data, aggregate as well as set the stage for more predictive analytics in a single day, well over 25% more because the solid state drive fixed a lot before, the processor had become the bottleneck and that is now changing. Consider another paraphrased quote: “It takes millennia to break the cryptographic algorithm. This cannot be done faster because of the computational limits we have (now that takes 25% faster). Quantum computers in the future might be the answer, yet we merely upgrade the algorithm. Satoshi Nakamoto, the bitcoin creator added cryptography in his system to help people authorise bitcoin transactions from their wallets“, yet it is not the hacking, it is the creation of all this that also takes time and if it is about speed, creating the cryptographic 25% faster will be everything in banking and FinTech solutions for decades to come, that is where the i9 will find itself get embraced by banks at the speed of light, and that is even before we see new solutions that will allow people to now create live video-edited streams on the air. A system that optionally censors ‘live news action’ within 7 seconds, from the battlefield straight to the TV recipient, a stage that allows almost instant filtering. Places like CBS, Fox News, SBS, BBC and many others will fly to the shops getting that solution taking away time constraints. When you consider ‘There are nine factors associated with newsworthiness: generally recognized significance, possible future impact, conflict, human interest, proximity, the number of people affected, timeliness, exceptional quality, and shock value‘, now consider that this so called ‘gaming chip’ optionally removes the time constraint for the creation of 3-4 of them, do you still think it is merely about gaming?

Is this about gaming?

It still is to some degree; it is about pushing corporate creativity, this is not merely set in a more expensive computer, it is seen in the creation of material and the creation of a video game is one of the most visible digital creation fields there is.

We can all admire the creativity of an advertisement, the clever use of innuendo and graphics. Yet this is all staged in a time frame. What happens when we remove that element? What happens when we see (as this is happening at this very moment) that data mining is done on the fly, the need of ‘on to go’ editing for dashboards and presentations are set to zero time? Don’t laugh because this is happening at this very moment all over the world. The systems are fast enough to no longer be the bottleneck. Now we see the need of a new kind of data miner. One that can see through data and who can creatively look at other ways to present the lack of 2.75% growth, or perhaps a long term impact that has to be explained to the shareholders in an acceptable way. It is a new age in Data Visualization, where the story is everything and now we see the intersection with gaming development. Adjusting the storyline of the dashboard is becoming the mainstream player here. Don’t take my word for that, Forbes gave us two weeks ago: “Any great story means visualization and detail. It takes the small additions of those details to build a picture in someone’s mind to truly make the story complete. The same goes for analytics and data“, it is a new style of adherence. a person needs to be able to focus the listener and create attachment of the shareholders to a cause, a trust and a commitment to that corporation, in this creativity is become everything and that is directly seen in the ability to create any Role Playing Game.

It is digital theater in a new way, the hardware is now ready to do it on the fly, but with the wrong presenter that view collapses as soon as it is presented and the gap between projection of data, capture of results and presentation to the shareholders is now diminishing and we see that solutions like Tableau are ready for that, if they can only find the right people to get the data from Point A to PowerPoint presentation. The corporations still have their marketeers to tell the story, yet the shareholders will no longer accept the delay of the presentation pushing a new need to a group of people that we have not seen before.

Uniting Business Intelligence and Gaming

In the first stage we see (a random choice) presentation (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LntX_5qA_Aw), this two minute presentation gives what BI was, frozen moments in time presented on the screen to a group of people. Now we go to the extreme other end, it comes from a game called Counterstrike. It is 90 seconds and shows how the display dashboard is adjusted (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQO8dR8NHM4). In the second stage we need to unite the views, the issue is that no one is ready at present. A company named Profitsword is making waves in the right direction, yet they have not arrived at this destination yet (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhE6RMZYF3M), it is merely on theme and it is the themes that drive the solutions. Should you doubt me, ask yourself, have you ever gone to a car site and configured a car to your liking even though you will never be able to afford the wheel caps? Jaguar, Dodge, Maserati and there are plenty more. You see, it is actually quite simple. A thematic approach gives us identity and the identity of a company translates into value, interaction gives engagement and these two elements are becoming more crucial in keeping the shareholders (and the general audience) interest. The question is problem is how to avoid a mere ‘sprinkle’ of interest and keep it business oriented. The gaming industry had that solved close to a decade ago, people ignored it too long and those in the trenches of that world are now reaping the benefits. The game has 11 million players, in May 450,000 people were actively playing the game. In a business of 100 billion, those numbers matter and the fact that this game has been around for 18 years is even more amazing. We are halfway in the month and this morning 178,000 gamers were playing that game. These numbers matter, because if engagement and interaction is everything in this field, how long until BI graphics require a lot more than we currently see?

What happens when Hawaiian Tropics changes the game and this poster is not merely advertisement, but the Shark, and the swimmer in the water becomes elements of profit, loss, ability and availability shown in its own way? What happens, when the presentation is not merely graphics, but the water itself shown brand visibility against others? That is not a fab, that is the direction that we are going in and people will stop, they will take additional looks at that presentation and when they can choose elements like placement, and product type to see how the brand shows up against others, how much better in protection, where to get it, where the best deal is and we are there now 5G will allows that to be done on the fly, to see the ads, interact and the people will engage, and as has been shown for a few years now, engagement is quality marketing. It is not views on Facebook, it is not a display advertisement, it is the engagement with the presented product that draws people in, every single time and the quality programmers for that solution have been doing it in gaming for over a decade. As I started, the beat goes on, but the tune is shifting as are the beats per minute in that showstopper. The push for engagement will be everything over the next 5 years and that will be seen even more clearly in the boardroom and shareholder presentations. Having the ability to mainstream such levels of interaction is going to be the next gold rush and at present the amount of players on that level is disturbingly low. The moment they catch up too late we will see all these golden fires that promise a lot, yet in the end you merely see a file with scorched data results.

Whatever we will see, it is not an easy path and there will not be too many good players, ready to go that distance, yet those who do will corner that market for close to the next generation. That path is actually a different one and the golden programmers will be needed, but not high on this corporate ladder. that place will be limited to the with the creative vision to see what needs to be programmed and those programmers who see the image and comprehend how to program that will end up being the people with a job and career until their retirement.

It has been a long time from the models we had to the model where creativity was the slowest element in the digital framework, however we are there now and knowing how to deal with it will be the crux. Or to frame it in another view, the time for the cold accountant is over in the Annual stockholders meeting, now it is not merely that knowledge, it is the one who finds the novelist that gives the correct engaging story that weaves it all together in a way all shareholders can relate to, that will be the golden placement to have.

This now gets us back to Microsoft. No matter what software house they buy, yes they will always have a Minecraft audience need, yet the bulk of all the gamers require a new a most original IP to get them through the next season of gaming. Guerrilla Wars figured it out and gave the people Horizon Zero Dawn. A new IP, now Microsoft needs to do the same with two houses that have relied on the same IP for an awful long time; are they ready for what comes next? Microsoft Studios has the right stage when the connected with Bioware and unleashed Mass Effect on the people in 2007, it seems to be a lesson they have forgotten too easily, so I hope that they catch on quick as this is a stage where you are merely allowed to get it wrong only once. Mass Effect Andromeda taught them this lesson the hard way, a C$100 million dollars development failure that merely gave them a 71% rating (in gaming rating translates directly to revenue), Guerrilla Wars needed a mere 50% to get a much better result, creativity and the story were everything, pretty much quite literally and we will see that same push in Business Intelligence. Data Visualisation is getting us there, whether we want it or not. When we realise to all the ways we can engage with an audience, we will learn that a few buttons will not do the trick, it will be about the backdrop, the interaction and the choice of what we see. It is a path gaming has been on since 1993. You cannot ignore 25 years of technology evolution that would actually be really stupid.

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Tagged as 5G, Bethesda, Bioware, Blochchain, Chris Avellone, Counterstrike, Data Visualisation, Dodge, Fallout New Vegas, FinTech, Forbes, Guerrilla Wars, Hawaiian Tropics, Horizon Zero Dawn, i9, INTEL, InXile, Jaguar, Maserati, News, Obsidian, Profitsword, Quantum computers, Satoshi Nakamoto, Screenrant, the Bards Tale, Ubisoft

November 11, 2018 · 14:10

That crazy thought

Crazy thoughts, we all have them at times, we all think them, we all wonder the ‘What if’ question whether it is valid or not. So when the news hit, among them the line ‘The $6 trillion wipeout in Asian stocks is getting deeper‘ (source: Sydney Morning Herald). I was not contemplating the quote: “Just like that, the region’s equity benchmark erased weekly gains and is now heading for a sixth slide in seven weeks, only worsening the wipeout that already erased $US4.3 trillion ($5.95 trillion) of market value this year“. So there I was looking at that quote, as well as the quote “One thing that might be worth keeping an eye on is data around China’s consumption — car sales fell for a fifth month and and Ctrip.com International joined the likes of Baidu and Alibaba Group Holding in being unable to avoid the economic slowdown. Also throwing cold water on the recovery is the US dollar, which resumed its appreciation as the Federal Reserve signaled it’s still ready to increase rates in December. The strong greenback has been a key concern for investors in the region, as its weakened local currencies and triggered massive outflows from emerging-market assets“. You see, I believe that none of this matters, the excuses like ‘consumer prices steadied amid sluggish demand‘. I went into the ‘What if this was always meant to happen?‘ mode. It is my personal belief that we have been sitting still whilst analysts have been inflating prognoses of economy, whilst they were all humming; it is a bright and sunny day, whilst it was not. We get excited when USA Today gave us ‘Economy adds robust 250,000 jobs in October in last employment report before election‘ on November 2nd. Yet this is news that was merely overdue and way too late. The world has been at a stand still for the longest of times. Millions of US citizens are still overcoming a decade of hardship, many of them lost the bulk of their retirement funds and it will take half a decade of really good news to turn this around. Too many have felt the pain and it is the same all over Asia. We might see news last month with ‘India adds 7,300 new millionaires’ thinking that hard times are over, yet this merely shows the stage where 7,300 clever Indians are getting other Indians doing their bidding, the millions behind those 7,300 people are not in a much better place, they have not been for the longest of times. Those 7,300 will be the foundation of a dozen or perhaps two dozen billionaire over time, yet like in any pyramid scheme, the profits go upwards, the foundation of that pyramid will not see a dime of that and we forget about that unbalanced setting. So as we are all in a stage of happy happy joy joy, the market is relentless in too much upbeat procrastinated prognoses and the market will seek equilibrium. No matter what excuse we see, what term we give to oil, what term we give to car users. The foundation is that every sold car is linked to a person buying it and from the current stage less than 25,000 were able to afford a new car, because the normal monthly expenses remain the same or go up, they never go down. So when we see ‘car sales fell for a fifth month‘, it makes perfect sense, you can up production all you like, yet when the people cannot afford to buy one, making more really makes no sense. That stage is clearly seen in Asia and Europe, in addition, the people in the US don’t have that much extra to spend, even with the new job, their living expenses had been through the roof for 2-3 years and they build either a buffer or go hungry and become homeless.

It all gets to have a hilarious side when you consider the Wall Street Journal (at https://www.wsj.com/articles/peter-navarro-blasts-china-and-wall-street-globalists-1541787254). We see “President Trump’s senior trade adviser, Peter Navarro, excoriated China and attacked Goldman Sachs and Wall Street as Beijing’s “unpaid foreign agents” who are weakening the U.S. leader before his meeting this month with China’s president“. It seems to me that Peter Navarro does not comprehend Goldman Sachs or Wall Street, so as an Australian I feel it is my duty (my entertaining duty mind you) to explain that part in a plain manner. ‘Mr Navarro, these two players Wall Street and Goldman Sachs do not give a fuck about you or your president, they never did! They only care about their bottom line, the annual growth, the profits they do make and their bonuses. It is that plain, and simple enough the board of directors in these two places care exponentially more about their bonus, nothing else matters!‘ I do hope that Peter Navarro comprehends that part, because it has never been different. The American people were sold down the drain in an instant in 2004 and 2008 and those people will do that again and again. It is not rocket science; it is transparent and extremely predictable. So when I see “As a summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping looms at the Group of 20 meeting in Buenos Aires, the economic council is coordinating what kind of trade deal the U.S. might accept from China. It is focusing on intellectual property, agricultural tariffs, forced technology transfer and requirements that U.S. firms form joint ventures to operate in China“, I see no mystery, I see no questions. It is merely the execution of the operational merit that profit brings to these 20 players that is on the table and the US is weaker than it has been ever before. A lot of the IP is not in American hands, the ones that matter are in the hands of IBM, Google and Intel and the US administrations have been able to piss all three off in more than one way, so good luck there. In addition, if the US exercises some ownership need, we will see both IBM and Google moving their IP all over the place making matters for the US worse.

Oh and this was all before we see the current US president in a stage where we see: “France on Saturday attempted to defuse a row sparked by President Emmanuel Macron’s comments about a European army which angered US President Donald Trump“, we can consider that passing of the few allies left is not really a good thing, is it? Especially in light where Marine Le Pen is currently more popular than Emmanuel Macron is the upcoming EU elections. The advantage is only one percent, yet we also see: “Far-right parties, including those supporting a French exit from the EU, secured a combined 30 percent of support“, that is way more than most EU nations are currently willing to be comfortable with. The fact that President Macron has agreed with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte to a union of En Marche, Dutch Liberals and Democrats is optionally one that could backfire in France to some degree and if Le Pen gets to the 40% mark a stage of Wall Street panic would be the consequence making the markets slip even further getting the overall losses to surpass eight trillion before the year ends. This stage becomes an even larger US nightmare as Matteo Salvini enters the stage, and he is siding largely with Marine Le Pen in all this, most likely purely for his own interests as would be expected in Lego Politics, but the impact is still there. This all impacts to a much larger degree as Italy has stated less than a day ago that they will not adjust the Italian budget which now puts the ECB and the EU in a much darker light, this budget could optionally impact the stage in a few European ways and the other nations will be reminded of the Greek tragedy when it overstated what they did not have, whilst we now see Italy not acknowledging the things they do not have, with a similar impact to several EU nations, the consequences could propel out of control and that too will impact greed driven Wall Street. This means that President Trump is going into a G20 meeting with three sets of balls and chains on their ankles, whilst China gets to point out these six balls and chains and remind him that this is partially all his doing (whether that is true or not).

So in the end, he sits in a meeting with little to use, nothing to go by and all merely because the previous 4 administrations all left control of the wealth reigns with Wall Street themselves, how was that ever going to work?

So that crazy thought is now going into the direction: ‘What if we remove the reigns of wall Street?‘ Would that be the craziest idea? In the end it is not going to happen, yet a first step is not the weirdest idea. It is time to take a very close look at those Wall Street analysts and their exectations, even if they ever correctly solve their rounding problem, the people still end up being confronted with a (what I personally would speculatively call) a 1.13% offset from any norm and that made all the differences for well over 12% of the companies ‘underperforming’ in the eyes of Wall Street. When we consider going back in time to 1874 when French economist Léon Walras decided to give ‘Elements of Pure Economics‘, he failed (as these settings did not exist) to give two elements a much larger consideration. The first is ‘behaviour of supply and demand‘, whilst not realising that governments have a required supply and demand and the corporations have a forecasted supply for the expected demand of an international community, which is weighted and rounded upwards sinking the notion of science towards anticipated presentations. So there we see three sets of numbers, all weighted and only after the fact shown as ‘due to unexpected factors‘ graded downwards after the fact giving us a few headaches all at the same time.

So as we see ‘adjusted’, ‘evolved’ and ‘expert driven’ algorithms towards forecasting the fact that there was something wrong with the formula’s in the first p[lace is not set into the stage of punitive prosecution ever. Meaning that these wipe-outs will happen again and again and the next time it hits a group of people that will revolt violently for being presented the invoice that others should have paid for, a stage that is unseen as many are in denial and often merely wiping the consideration away as non-relevant and unimportant. And the idea is not unique, my thoughts, my very own thoughts were proven correctly in 2013 by former Wall Street analyst Yves Smith in her book ‘ECONned‘ and she is not the only one, yet in the 5 years that followed, after all the evidence shown in several ways, the US Administration decided not to act, decided not to take control of the situation, even largely diffusing the danger was beyond them and now we see the stage where we see ‘weakening the U.S. leader before his meeting this month‘, in my personal view Peter Navarro needs to wake up and smell the coffee. He comes from an environment that did nothing for too long.

How crazy was that thought?

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Tagged as Alibaba Group Holding, Baidu, Buenos Aires, Chna, Donald Trump, ECB, ECONned, Elements of Pure Economics, Emmanuel Macron, Eu, France, Goldman Sachs, google, IBM, India, INTEL, Italy, Léon Walras, Marine Le Pen, Mark Rutte, Matteo Salvini, Netherlands, Sydney Morning Herald, USA today, Wall Street, Wall Street Journal, Xi Jinping, Yves Smith

November 10, 2018 · 13:13

The heart processes

There is an awful lot of technology news today or perhaps better stated a lot happened in the last week that we are made privy to. It is not exactly the same, and it is not that we are downplaying 70,000 cadavers are we? If you question that part, talk to The Independent (UK Newspaper) and ask a long-time foreign correspondent Patrick Cockburn, on how the media screwed the readers over for the longest of times. The quote that matters here is: “For almost two years, the corporate media have cited a UN figure of 10,000 Yemenis who have been killed in the US-and UK-backed Saudi war. Recently, Cockburn pointed out that this figure grossly downplays the real, catastrophic death toll which is likely in the range 70,000-80,000“, it is merely another piece of evidence that shows just how unreliable corporate media has become.

Yet this is about technology (is it?). We start of in the precious life of gamers where we are treated to: “Blizzard’s divisive new Diablo title tops the week in games” (source: Wired), and to give you the dimensionality here. The last Diablo game was launched on May 15^th, 2012 a game I have since launch day and I still play it today on my PS4. This game has kept me entertained surprised and challenged for that long and whenever they release a new challenge season where the rewards can really stack up in ultra-rare weapons and outfits, the stage restarts and we start a new character just to get there. Blizzard has been able to keep the attention of its gamers for that long. Do when I was made aware of ‘upcoming Blizzard Entertainment mobile title Diablo: Immortal at the BlizzCon‘, I was a little sad. Not in a bad way, merely in a way that I might still be playing Diablo 3 whilst also playing Diablo 4. You see, to have a hard-core dream team (a hard-core person is a person that gets one life, if you die at any point, there is no option to load it again, that person is gone forever) with paragon 150 on every class takes some doing and the long hours in all of them will make me a little sad. Yet this is not Diablo 4, this is Diablo on a smartphone, which is presently less of an issue and more of a ‘this is not me‘ part. I never have the cool new phone. I have a Huawei P7 and even as I have to replace it soon (dodgy battery) I will only do so when I have no options left. I am happy that I can get a really nice new phone for a sharp price, but it will not be the strongest the fastest or the most upgraded one, so gaming is usually not going to happen on a smartphone, which is no great loss to me, but that also means no Diablo: Immortal for me. And in the second, I want my diablo on a 55″ TV, not on some 5.5″ mobile screen. Staring at such a screen will make you lose your eyesight faster than a life time of non-stop masturbating, so I do not intend to go there. Microsoft does not escape the gravity here and is now expected to release Crackdown 3 in February 2019, which, after its initial announcement in 2014 some delay, almost the longest in gaming history, so again Microsoft sets a new record, but not a good one. This all follows the news in Mobile phones where the latest of Huawei is heralded as an absolute superstar by more than one reviewer, the most important part here for me is the battery that scores 10 out of 10, a 100% score, which is quite the reason. This high end horse is still cheaper than the Samsung, the Apple by roughly 15%-20%, yet at the same price as the Google Pixel 3. That whilst its baby brother the Huawei Nova 3i 128GB, which came out almost 3 months ago is 50% cheaper and is only minimally less powerful, as well as overkill for anyone that has mere regular use for a mobile phone (people like me) and it comes with 2 years manufacturers warranty, who would not go for that awesome deal (if you can afford it that is)?

Then we see several players bringing us a foldable phone, but one where the screen actually folds. There will be Samsung; there is also Chinese company with FlexPai. All new tastes of an old concept now pushed into another dimension, the screen. It seems that Chinese (and South-Korean) technology is taking leaps where others are merely moving inches. Even as Google is only in its third iteration of phones all three made rapid leaps forward. The roles have been reversed, where Taiwan and Chinese clones were cheap knock offs from the PC’s that IBM heralded (the one with the $2500 10MB hard drive), we are now in a revered stage where the west is trying to keep up with the east and their idea of novelty and innovation, all in a stage that is increasingly affordable by many, the first hurdle we all need to overcome and the Telecom corporations are only now starting to figure out the shallow marshes they put themselves on. Their game of exclusivity is about to go out of the window, older players like TPG who started really bad are now on top and they are in an auction fight with Telstra (who claimed to be so high and mighty) for the 5G spectrum, three years ago that notion would have been a laughing matter in more than one way. The field is changing and some players are out of their depth, especially as their depth perception was merely a virtual one and laced through ego driven presentations.

Yet when we look at Telstra we suddenly see news that is no longer available, it seems that Geelong news (https://www.bay939.com.au/) is no longer having the article that was supposed to be (at https://www.bay939.com.au/news/local-news/99401-nation-wide-telstra-issue-potentially-swept-under-rug) so when they said ‘under the rug‘ they were not kidding. Was this fake news, or was this the Telstra legal department in a ‘seize and desist’ action? I cannot tell from one one-sided part of information. ABC News (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-11-04/telstra-outage-leaves-hundreds-of-offenders-unmonitored/10463642) gives us: “Hundreds of offenders have been left unmonitored for more than 24 hours in South Australia following an electronic failure in monitoring devices blamed on a nationwide Telstra outage“, now this would not be a biggie, yet the question becomes, what kind of back-up was there? And even so, in most cases the criminals would not have been trying to edge their options if they were unaware at the time. When we see: “The company also confirmed the cause of the outage, describing it as a “complex issue” which technicians had worked through on Friday night. “The issue was caused by a fault in a vendor’s network and we had expert technicians onsite to assist them with restoration,” the spokesperson said“, we should realise that something like this could always happen, the fact that there was no backup and that the outage took 24 hours to rectify remains an issue. We see a little more with the quote “The outage has been blamed on faulty vendor equipment that had since been replaced. Telstra did not say what the equipment was, or name the vendor in question” (source: CRN), which now also gives us another part. You see, The government took Huawei out of the equation and will not give us a reason or evidence, and here we see clear faults and a downed system, whilst giving us ‘Telstra did not say what the equipment was, or name the vendor in question‘. I do not think that Telstra is allowed to have it both ways, are they? On the other hand, Michelle Bullock can get the balls for all I care. When we see her giving: “These sorts of outages disrupt commerce and erode trust of consumers in payment systems”, whilst I have had one outage in the last 8-10 years. ONE!, not once every now and then, merely one, at that point she needs to take a long hard look at herself and contemplate what ‘customer trust erosion‘ really is, because I proclaim her to be clueless in that regard. Whilst she is puckering up to Fintech people, and she needs addition apart from ‘outages disrupt commerce‘, she needs to consider what investments have been made by some players in the last 10 years and how many are merely fleecing and roaching of a well-built system hoping it will last a lot longer.

So when I see: ““Regulators are therefore starting to focus on the operational risks associated with retail payment systems and whether the operators and the participants are meeting appropriately high standards of resilience.” Bullock’s comments appear prescient as Telstra and financial institutions tried to hose down consumer and merchant anger“, yet when I also learn that the element not shown here is “ANZ confirmed that the outage had hit its merchants whose terminals are connected to Telstra’s 3G network“, so whilst there is now a direction that this is about a failed 3G Network moment, it is my personal view that Michelle Bullock needs to sit in some corner and shut the fuck up! The question is now whether the criminal monitoring part is also set on 3G technologies, because there is a much larger issue at that point. Not only is 4G consistently faster which gives us the ‘participants are meeting appropriately high standards of resilience‘, merely because of the consideration that ‘Communication in 3G networks may experience packet losses due to transmission errors on the wireless link(s) which may severely impact the quality‘, a paper from the Helsinki University of Technology made in 2008, so a system with optional issues that has been known for 10 years. That is why I asked for the muzzling of Michelle Bullock. This has nothing to do with any resilient of optionally very reliable system. This is about something on one flaw that we have noticed, whilst we see the optional foundation of ‘prescient’ as we revisit ‘Bullock’s comments appear prescient as Telstra and financial institutions tried to hose down consumer and merchant anger‘, prescient meaning ‘showing knowledge of events before they take place‘, which in her case means that she was shouting in some meaningless direction instead of asking the hard questions of Telstra. She becomes merely another stooge in the machine to aid Telstra in any direction required. This now links it back to Huawei (5G barred), the iterative actions of technology whilst we are being surpassed on every technological side. The full article (at https://www.crn.com.au/news/telstra-fault-takes-down-eftpos-and-atms-515080) gives a few more question, yet I will get to them in another article when I give you all a few more technological jabs against certain Telco players as they presented their ego and not their actual capability.

When we add the triple zero (000) call failures, the setting where we now see that “Telstra failed to deliver 1,433 calls to the emergency service operator on May 4 due to a network outage, breaching s22 of the Telecommunications (Emergency Call Service) Determination 2009 and the Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999“. It gets to be worse when you consider one source giving us: “deputy commissioner of State Emergency Operations Controller Mark Walton speak to media in Sydney on Friday. Mr Walton says an issue with triple-zero calls is not resolved, and Mr Gately admits Telstra did not notify emergency services of the issue. “We identified, through our normal processes, that things were not operating as normal,” Mr Gately says“, Yet Telstra allegedly seems to have notified Michelle Bullock to cool tempers in another stage. Double standards in a few ways and whilst we do not know the vendor of the supplied ‘faulty vendor equipment‘ (which weirdly was reported by EVERY news outlet, not one speculated on the owner) and until the hearing we might not know, in the end we might never be notified on whose faulty equipment it was, which in light of the barred Huawei equipment is a much larger issue and it should anger us all.

Technology is failing people, not because of the technology, but because of the corporations that used technology as the bottom line and now we learn that they seemingly never learned the foundation of the hard-core needs linked to all this. The Age gave us last week: “Telstra cannot give proper service, even with those extra 8000 staff. I have been trying to get Wi-Fi on since July. Promises were made, contracts were agreed to, then broken, over and over again“, it seems that an issue that has been around for 20 weeks, an issue that should take a maximum of three visits any of them less than an hour could have resolved it. There is a 72% chance that the first visit would have fixed it, yet the latter one is merely a guess. Even as we also see ‘Telstra vans – declaring “We are here to help” – are whizzing around my suburb‘ a seemingly simple issue that has been around for 20 weeks, I believe that the problem for Australians is a lot larger than they even realise. The issue is not the technology, it is the fear that a place like TPG, an organisation that would be regarded as a banana republic at best, could with the Huawei solution surpass Telstra, could even replace Telstra and that scares a lot of politicians, it scares them beyond believe and that is optionally the truth that we are not told, so as Telstra sheds jobs, sheds proper emergency services (whilst blaming Zeus and his lightning), we are closing in on the most uncomfortable truth. We are not allowed to leap technologically ahead as some corporations become utterly redundant in our lives and let’s face it that board of directors would not survive the label ‘redundant’ would they?

So how did games fit into this?

It is the first of several steps where people are better managed and anticipated when they have a much better mobile. You see, all the new devices, any mobile smartphone that was released after 2017 is no longer a mobile phone. You think it is, but it is not. These devices are now clearly evolved, they have become your personal data server and as you move forward in this mobile age your perception will change, it will be catered to every individual, it will cater to your needs and filter out what you do not need, or perhaps more precise, it will filter out what the system regards you do not need, which is not the same. The choice that was never offered to you is just as deceptive as the wrong choice given to you, do you not agree? And as 5G allows corporations to maximise their impact on your finances, these corporations require you to be ready from the get go. Corporations are finally accepting that gaming is a part of everyone’s life and pushing the latest technology onto these people has a large benefit that falls in their scope, yet is presently not always considered by the user, 5G will push those boundaries by a lot within 16 months of availability.

Telstra is desperate to remain part of that equation because those who are not no longer have a future and TPG surpassing Telstra was the one nightmare they cannot handle (Huawei would have enabled that) and there are more parts to that, you will learn those in 2019.

Oh and when you realise that some commonwealth nations end up being technologically second to nations with Huawei solutions feel free to demand the resignation of your local politician because of that. Yet, the heart processes and so does yours. The question is not merely that we control our hearts and that it does not overwhelm the brain with emotion, it requires us to take an additional cold look at things, and when we do that, how do any of the Telco troubles make sense? It does when the heart becomes an accountant, at that point it all makes perfect sense, but that was not our problem was it? We were expected to get the best deal, whilst the telecom players wanted the ultimate perfected profit wave, now that it bites back they want to change the deck of cards and make the consumer pay for it all, including letting them pay for the bad decisions they made in the past, do you feel obliged to pay for their screw ups?

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Tagged as ABC, ABC News, ANZ, China, CRN, Diablo 3, Diablo: Immortal, FlexPai, Geelong News, Helsinki University of Technology, Huawei, Huawei Nova 3i, Korea, Mark Walton, Michelle Bullock, mobile phones, Mr Gately, Patrick Cockburn, PS4, Samsung, Taiwan, Telecommunications (Consumer Protection and Service Standards) Act 1999, Telecommunications (Emergency Call Service) Determination 2009, Telstra, The Independent, TPG, Yemen

November 8, 2018 · 12:25

Return towards Tyranny

To be honest, I never expected to be alive when this moment came. I did not fear or dread it, I merely did not expect it. Perhaps I had grown weak; perhaps I like all the others had become complacent. It also reopens an old wound. It was not me that started this; it was actually the work of an associate professor of strategy, economics, ethics, and public policy at Georgetown University (aka Jason Brennan) who gave us the ground works. In his book against Democracy which was published in 2016 we see ‘Should dumb people be allowed to vote?‘ I have always believed that voting was a basic right, yet should it be? And I am not devoid of criticism on self either. When I was young, I voted, yet I voted populist, the need of what some would call ‘my fairway’ and what might be regarded as short sighted.

I had little or no knowledge of the word policy (other than spelling it correctly). I would not comprehend a decent level of policy for another 5 years. I did not comprehend the exploitation of subsidisation and the impact on the quality of life until years after that. So was I in any place to give voice to who should direct a nation in any direction?

Jason introduces some and reminds many of epistocracy. Here we see: “Epistocracies retain the same institutions as representative democracies, including imposing liberal constitutional limits on power, bills of rights, checks and balances, elected representatives and judicial review. But while democracies give every citizen an equal right to vote, epistocracies apportion political power, by law, according to knowledge or competence“. If nothing else, it is the showing of the failings through the current American president Donald Trump that is calling for such a change. There are examples in Australia and the UK for similar shifting, yet how to resolve it? There are voices that we have become too dumb for any democracy, yet in this, if we are about checks and balances, there is an upside to all this. In equal measure we will push towards the creation of an accountable press society. Meaning that some of the glossy news innuendo presenters could find themselves barred from ‘journalistic consideration‘ in some future. As dumb is becoming an issue, then too clever needs to be looked at as well. You see, some politicians are merely too clever for their own good and they have not been overly intelligent about it.

Political science site The Cut gives us additional goods via Jesse Singal. We see: “Whatever cutoff point you set for You Must Have This Much Knowledge to Ride the Epistocracy, it would in all likelihood be strikingly easy for rich people to meet that threshold, simply because of how money and privilege and education work, and the vast majority of the people who couldn’t get past the sign would probably be poor — and therefore disproportionately non-white as well” In this Jesse is right and we can partially solve it by having political science in High School, I admit not the greatest place. A place where most are sex, sport, gaming and procrastination driven, oh and there is an abundant need to imagine one of the sports illustrated swimsuit models doing a balancing act with her vagina on your penis (or is that the other way round?) Yes sex sells in so many ways and it gets you past more classes dreaming through the day. So we have a much larger problem than we think, but there is a growing consensus that the current democracy no longer hacks it.

Some might remember Starship Troopers, the movie. There is a quote that comes from Heinlein’s book: “When you vote, you are exercising political authority, you’re using force. And force, my friends, is violence, the supreme authority from which all other authorities are derived!” It is an important realisation that we all have this power and we squander it, at times almost utterly meaninglessly. The same book also gives us a ‘Citizens versus Civilians’ issue. When I was young I was living with the impression that this was merely a resident versus citizen equivalent. You see, the setting is: “Citizenship is a privilege, not a right, the competency tests help weed out the complete idiots and morons. Also, if you have to work for the right to vote, you will be more likely to study the candidates in order to use your vote better. That which is free is valued little, but that which costs much is valued highly“. We seem to have forgotten about the ‘privilege’ part and the current settings all over the world give rise to this shift. When we are seeing the implications here, we see that on one hand it would spell a massive advantage to republican based people, yet the balance here is that intelligence comes creeping in and there goes their advantage. Some even dug into that deeper stating that in the old style stage of militia (the age of the minutemen – 1645) only citizens were allowed military grade weaponry. So we would optionally have two optional advantages here, we get a natural culling of weapons and those who are wielding them and we get a less likely evolution of the populist politician, all advantages. We also accept that there are weaknesses in all this and it would never ever be perfect. Yet if it would be better to what we have now, would it be a solution to consider?

That is the question, is it not?

And when we consider some of the news we have seen in the last two days alone, this question is actually going to the forefront of many minds. Consider the Guardian Quote “Gorman points to 1957, the year the state constitution was amended and Utah became one of the last states to give Native Americans the right to vote. Ever since, he says, white GOP leaders – many of whom trace their ancestry to Mormon settlers who moved into the region in the 1860s, after the Navajo were forcibly removed by the US government – have used a host of tactics to suppress the Navajo vote“, it is not the first one and not the only one. Yet if we transfer this to the Jason Brennan change, would they not be equally disadvantaged? I see that as the Achilles heel in all this, because the idea that those too stupid to vote is not an issue to me, yet to evade those unable to get schooled into the right to vote is equally unacceptable. In the end, the Brennan solution might be the best solution if we can solve a few issues that are unacceptable. The Native American part is one, yet there are others and one example is found in Australia. The Sydney Morning Herald gives a few parts. The one that seems to be an uplifting one is: “Mr Latham announced the move on Alan Jones’ 2GB radio program and said he joined One Nation to “fight for our civilisational values”“, yet the issue is larger. SBS (at https://www.sbs.com.au/news/parliament-warned-against-normalising-white-supremacy) gives us the goods that cannot really be placed in a single quote, even as: ““On the face of those words, without any context, you may think there’s nothing objectionable about that,” he said. “‘it’s OK to be white’ is a slogan used by white supremacists, by neo-Nazis who use it deliberately to make their ideas sound benign and unthreatening… It’s not about the literal form of the words, it’s about the meaning. If we are not careful about calling out the dangerous appeals to racial homogeneity, purity or integrity, then we can end up in a situation where parliament here in Australia can normalise white supremacist slogans.”” does drive the dagger home, we see that there is much more to former Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane. You see the danger of ‘normalise white supremacist slogans‘ is extremely dangerous. It is a fortune cookie philosophy stage where the sentence makes perfect sense, yet the meaning is pushed in another direction whilst not clearly pointing that out. It is actually explained pretty perfect in a TV-Series called West Wing. In the episode ‘Red Mass‘ we see this in action. The quoted scene:

Josh: Here he quotes Robert Frost. “Good fences make good neighbours.” Did he talk about that?
Donna: Yeah.
Josh: What did he say?
Donna: Basically, that if you stay within your personal space, you’ll end up getting along with everyone.
Josh: Is that what Frost meant?
Donna: No, he meant that boundries are what alienate us from each other.
Josh: Why did he say “Good fences make good neighbors?”
Donna: He was being ironic, but I still don’t see…

This is brilliant in so many ways, and it gets to be better when you know the history. You see Robert Lee Frost (1874 – 1963) was an American blessing for America. The stage where a person with two educations and no degrees bring an audience a creation that would stand the test of time, a stage where this man ended up receiving four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry. So his work matters on several levels. So when we see the original poem Mending Wall which was done in blank verse that remains relevant even today. It involves two rural neighbours who one spring day meet to walk along the wall that separates their properties and repair it where needed.

He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
and eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, “Good fences make good neighbours.”
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
if I could put a notion in his head:
“Why do they make good neighbours? Isn’t it
where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.

You see I identify towards self, in this day and age in another way. I like my fence when I watch a movie or play a game. I want to focus on these two and the small moments I have truly that are me are valuable, I embrace my isolation. It does not matter whether I work in a server room, whether I sit in a chair and dream of the day, all day long. I am with the thoughts I need to be, my creations continue to grow, the puzzle is solved and the interruption stops all that. Yet isolation in totality is a wrong thing, it is harmful to self. If one does not realise that, one harms one’s self more than others. We are all in need of our walls, even more so in this day and age of feigned positivity to the open plan offices that distract like no other. I am from the age of the cubicle and it never bothered me. When I work, I work. When I eat, I eat. It is simplicity yet it is also dangerous, I do admit that and the fortune cookie philosophy brings the dangers to that surface. If you can recognise the danger, the need for interaction becomes clear and important, I never opposed that. Yet too many voices go into one or another extreme and here is where we see the wisdom in Buddhism. Here we see: “maintaining a balance between faith and wisdom, and between effort and concentration. Faith opens the mind to the possibility of things that cannot be immediately experienced or understood. But if faith does not go hand in hand with caution, questioning and even a healthy scepticism, it can be very misleading“, balance is the great equaliser in all this. It has ben or the longest of times and not seeing that is a danger in itself. This now reflects back to epistocracy and democracy. When we optionally realise that they are extremes on the same line, we might see the danger to embrace either extreme. One might state that we need to embrace both and find a balance there. It does not negate all dangers, but it might remove a few and in the age where American votes were purged as they were seen dangerous to the vote for one side or another, we see the need to alter the reality we are in, to give shape to democracy and the need to hold it and the people wielding it accountable to the choices given, the promises not kept and the politicians and the press both to be held liable, even up to the point of criminal conviction. Freedom of the press is only an act of freedom it it also holds it responsible for the freedom that they exercise, in this President Trump has lately been proven more correctly than the responsible press is comfortable with. The bad apples in that basket are ruining it for all the pieces of fruit in that basket, and that was never supposed to happen.

That is seen when Tim Soutphommasane offers the one Kohinoor in the SBS article. A truth that seems to apply to the United States, the united Kingdom, Australia and a few other nations. That wisdom is: “I would even venture that it’s likely that naturalised citizens, those who have to sit a citizenship test, are likely to know a lot more about Australian democracy than those who have citizenship as a birthright.” I would state that it has become sad state of affairs in those nations as we are offered that one truth that shows the utter need of governmental change.

When we reflect that back to the stage of tyranny where the rule is not what we think it is. We still wipe it off the table as: ‘cruel and oppressive government or rule‘, yet hat is not completely true. You see, a more apt version is: ‘A government in which a single ruler has absolute power‘, this is more correct, or perhaps a little more complete. In my view it is the adjusted view: ‘A government in which a single ruler has absolute power, though an absence of checks and balances‘ that brings the stage of completeness. It is the absence of checks and balances in the ECB, the absence of it on Wall Street, as well as with the media and press, they are all elements of a stage that is shifting. Even as the people (mostly in the US) are staging the war against the second amendment as the meaning has changed to the largest degree. We see that the very same is happening to their first amendment. In the text we are informed of: ‘prevents the government from making laws which respect an establishment of religion, prohibit the free exercise of religion, or abridge the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press, the right to peaceably assemble, or the right to petition the government for redress of grievances‘, yet the part of ‘the freedom of the press‘ as they altered the ‘the people have a right to know’ the people have often been misinformed by not being correctly and completely being informed. The media, as the news, which created for the most their own demon ‘fake news’ is now a much larger concern and there are no plans to stem this tide on several levels (especially in the fore mentioned nations) giving us a much larger problem, driving us to a much less tolerant tyranny by our own design.

Until some of these problems are addressed and even redone we all as nations of vote eligible civilians and citizens are now approaching a stage where the idea of an epistocracy replacing democracy is more appealing than ever. We all got there in our own way, via our own path and when that change is completed the media will wish it had done its job more proper. It will cry and rant on the freedom of the press and that they can govern themselves and they will realise that accepting the Leveson charter might have been the easiest solution for them in many ways.

Even as I see the growing tyrannical push, the diversion towards an epistocracy is not the worst part in all this. In one blessing we should see that those in a monarchy will be in a much better place than those in any republic, yet this is not a new track. Consider Plato, who in Republic a work that is almost 2400 years old that discusses the morality of ‘the meaning of justice and whether the just man is happier than the unjust man‘, we assumed the former choice, yet over time both Wall Street and Apple have shown us (in the last 10 years) that the latter is the happier one and the people are catching on and they are all starting to demand change. A 2400 old work might in the end force our hands and whilst nepotism and flaccid politicians paved the way for such a large change, they are not the only cause. The fact that populations as a whole are willing to consider such a change is an actual plus point in all this, merely because such unity had not been seen in my lifetime to this degree and that is also a refreshing yet worrying notion.

Have a great day!

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Tagged as and public policy, associate professor of strategy, Buddhism, democracy, Donald Trump, economics, epistocracy, ethics, Georgetown University, Gorman, Jason Brennan, Jesse Singal, Media, Navajo, Plato, Press, Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Race Discrimination Commissioner, republic, Robert Heinlein, Robert Lee Frost, SBS, Starship Troopers, the cut, the Guardian, the West Wing, Tim Soutphommasane

November 6, 2018 · 11:54

In the back of my mind

Today is not the same as yesterday. Yes, the same issues are playing still. They will remain an issue for some time to come. Whether we look at Yemen, Iran, Grenfell or the Saudi Consulate at Istanbul, the media has decided to make this a long term event. Some events cannot be resolved easy or quickly, that is merely the stage we find ourselves in and as such I accept that. It was this mindset that was awakened rudely by a thought that I have had for the longest of times. Now, this is pure speculation and perhaps it is all utter BS. I accept that, yet it remains in the back of my mind, it will not delete itself from my thoughts and this morning it woke up again as I read the headline ‘Yes, I ‘cheat’ at video games – it’s half the fun‘.

I respectfully disagree, it just ain’t cricket!

Yet the thought has been there for a while. You see, the latest adult generation is different. It partially grew up with that thought. So as we read the article by Stephanie Munro (at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/19/cheat-video-games-gaming-performance), we get a little more than we bargained for.

The cornerstone here is: ‘some games are worth a bit of cheating‘, we can agree that this is a thought every gamer has had, but I believe it transcends gaming. I believe that game makers have created the shits that audited Tesco (and devaluated it by billions). The people willing to quickly skate around the edges of Market Research to create a story that fits the bill, yet when we dig into the data, when we consider the weighting used, we see another issue. Some of these stories are more often than not, not worth the paper they were printed on. More importantly, the people mentoring these ‘younglings’ making (as a mere example) are achieving linear correlation by plotting two points. Even as they know that straight-line relationships between two variables can be achieved, they sometimes forget to tell them (implying that the newbie should have known) that it takes more than two observations. Yet a mentoring position is not about assumption. Even as reality is not this far-fetched, we see that there is a stage that counts. TU in Norway is one source giving us the most common example of unethical behaviour. It is: ‘Taking shortcuts / shoddy work‘ and it scored 72%, which is huge! I believe that there is a growing group of people relying on making deadlines and the entire issue is found there. It will almost always be on the new kid, getting advice left right and centre and not getting proper mentoring. Even when we see some parts not being violated, in some cases we see extreme examples of weighing data where weight values of well over 25 are achieved, an issue to be sure (when the population was increasingly small and unbalanced).

And here is where the shoe becomes too tight for comfort. You see behind this is the ‘golden rule’: ‘It’s important to realize that what is unethical may not always be illegal‘, it is a dangerous truth as it can at times be both.

Now this reflects back to the gaming article.

The quote: “I wonder whether cheating at video games is really anything to feel bad about. While downloading unverified cheat programs and exposing yourself to malware is not something to encourage, there are wider and greyer areas of game manipulation that deserve consideration“. There it is! The intentional push to consider cheating! We have all taken shortcuts; some are glitches within the game. Some are merely flaws in game design, the other part is exploiting a gaming bug and then there is God mode. God mode goes back to the beginning of gaming. A code that will set damage received to zero, or perhaps usage is now staged to a decrease of nil and the final part where build time and cost are set to zero. These are all stages that give you an immediate upper hand in the game. The codes tend to be there for testing purposes and were in the older days never removed, in some cases they still are not. Yet when we see the application done in Business Intelligence it becomes a different issue altogether, it has impact and it is too dangerous at present.

When we go back to Tesco in 2014, the Guardian gave us two parts. The first was: “what has already come out raises profound questions about how one of Britain’s biggest companies allowed itself to be run questionably – and about the role of its auditor. The making up of the profits figures was not in a report signed off by PwC. That happened in August – three months after PwC had given the supermarket chain’s figures a clean bill of health. Even then, it noted that there was something potentially funny with the numbers, and expressly warned about “the risk of manipulation” – but allowed them to pass anyway“, and the second one was “The audit is a key part of the scaffolding of shareholder capitalism. It is one of the primary ways in which investors, business partners and regulators can tell the true state of the company they are dealing with. If you can’t trust the audited accounts, you can’t really trust anything. This is why the vast bulk of public limited companies – and hospitals and charities – are legally obliged to submit audited accounts. And the vast bulk of those are done by PwC or one of the other Big Four auditing firms“. Now we get back to the gamer side. The bulk of people now becoming CPA have a gaming life. Whether they stay in the console closet is up to them, yet in a healthy life gaming will be part of it. It is a social interaction or perhaps a challenge to be among peers and see if you can Fortnite the hell out of your buddy and Overwatch him/her to death at the same time, nothing wrong with that. Yet we see more and more that the stage of normal gaming no longer suffices and we start relying on glitches and weaknesses, which is not altogether wrong, but when we knowingly have codes that give us 10% more, what then?

Gamers are actually getting pushed into that frame of mind and the industry as a whole loves it as the person willing to take every legal shortcut is a revenue asset, yet is it a long term solution and what happens when the border of legality was a grey area altogether? Consider the impact of Tesco, the most visible case in the last decade. And that is when we get to the 2017 New York Times (3 years after the event). Here we see: “The regulator said that finding did not suggest that any of Tesco’s directors “knew, or could reasonably be expected to have known, that the information in the August trading statement was false or misleading.” It did note, however, that there was knowledge at a sufficiently high level below the board as to the false and misleading nature of the trading statement to constitute market abuse under British law.” That is now the ball game. The two points ‘could reasonably be expected to have known‘, in opposition of ‘there was knowledge at a sufficiently high level below the board as to the false and misleading nature‘. So someone got a massive raise, someone got an overwhelming promotion and no one went to prison. This is what I would call an orchestrated cheat. When we look at PwC and we see: Tyco, Tesco, Taylor Bean & Whitaker, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi and MF Global. All stages that are massive and all stages where in the end it is merely about the fine, the pressure for using ‘cheats’ is increasing and it seems that the gaming industry is banking on this. What is more appealing when an almost impossible task is achieved by someone who should not have been able to make it to level 2?

This is where Stephanie gives us the gem: “In the world of competitive sport, the line between a so-called clean win and one in which the performance of an athlete has been chemically enhanced is blurred – but we leave it up to governing bodies to decide what’s acceptable and what’s not. This leads us into the moral quandary of whether something being legal makes it acceptable“.

It is the moral quandary that is the switch, which is no longer an on and off switch, but a level that goes from 100 to zero. A lever that is pushed again and again a staged setting with online and single player achievements where we learn to do what it takes to get all the achievements, yet to keep a much more high profile stage to make us seemingly clean players.

So when we see a Battlefield example: “John is on the extreme end of a spectrum, because his tactics are so lethal, so outside of what the game’s creators intended, so far beyond what rival players can defend against and, oh yeah, he paid some hackers to have them. John pays to be able to kill your character instantly in Battlefield. He’s surely crossed some line, though it’s anyone’s guess just where that line must be” (source: Kotaku), we see the issue that is the stage on all this. This now directly reflects Apple and their mobile battery game. a conviction with a 10 million euro fine, whilst the payout makes crime a joke. The article (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/10/25/crime-as-a-business-model/) where in ‘Crime as a business model‘ we see: “Apple required the sale of 16,000 phones just to break even on that fine“, against “the means to sell 123 million iPhones through what the court is seen as deceptive conduct gets a fine that amounts to 16,000 units. A fine received that represents a mere 0.013% of their cost of doing business” and we see not only the progression of what should be regarded as unethical conduct, governments are actually encouraging it by giving fines that were a joke on a scale that is a mere 1% of what was done here.

So whilst we see: “For some of us, the idea of using a walkthrough is anathema, to others it is a means of bringing us back to a point where we can have fun. I’ll admit that I never completed the Ocarina of Time. It was too hard and I got bored. I’m sorry, Princess Zelda, I abandoned you“, we ignore that Ocarina of time is one of the best designed and most overwhelming puzzle journeys ever seen (I never got to 100%), the exclusivity of getting there is merely brushed on and the cheaters are given a pass. That is actually beyond the point where those with a gaming guide are not really cheaters, they merely walk the journey to get to the 100%. Apart from Ocarina of Time, there is Metroid Prime. A game I worshipped almost forever, I ended up only getting 98%, which is an achievement I was proud of (I never found all the missiles). And I played it a few times, loving that journey again and again. Yet the BI industry is merely hiring those with a 100% score and they had no interest how the player got there and that is actually the sad and worrying part in all this. Wall Street does not care how the revenue was achieved as long as it is and that is a much more dangerous setting in the upcoming future. To get the required numbers some analyst proclaimed no matter what. And when it is revealed in some scandal and the media is all over it, it is the mere ‘could reasonably not have been expected to have known‘ is what keeps the board members out of their well-deserved Rikers Island excursion (3-5 years). This sad evolution is not merely the creation of another Star Chamber, an old reference to a tribunal abolished in 1641, where we saw the king in council exercising criminal jurisdiction. It was inquisitorial, and torture is believed to have been used, with no accountability in any way shape or form. It is an upgraded system, evolved from those settings that allows corporations to do whatever they need to appease Wall Street and other financial centers, to exceed analyst expectations, whilst we see that these findings are increasingly becoming more and more unrealistic because that is what the market needs.

In all this holding these analysts and their formula’s up to scrutiny and accountability in the long run will not happen, making the need for these players to find the people who are willing, not to bend the rules, but to cheat their way across, increasingly more and more important to corporations and as such, the danger is that we get into a world where cheating is not half the fun, it is merely the only way to keep ahead of the curve and avoid being classified as no longer relevant.

When did we sign up for those values in our lives?

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