Category Archives: Science

Google’s birthday present

It isn’t really their birthday and I haven’t looked up the date when it is their birthday. I just had an idea and I am signing the IP over to Google right here. The fun part is that Apple doesn’t have this either. The fun part is that I am really surprised that neither of them had done this (as far as I am aware of). As such, the mindset came to me less than an hour ago and I decided to write it down now (never get in the way of creativity). 

So, the setting is that you are in a conversation, you need a second pair of ears (for whatever reason) and now you could share it with a paired phone, or share on the spot (for one connection with the phone nearby). The set pairing can be done anytime (partner, family member) when that pair is there, the person IN the conversation seen below in green, can connect to the second phone, the receiving phone MUST approve (the green circle) and then the second pair of ears are there. The second phone has the standard option to go straight to earbuds or headset. 

The idea that you are in a public place stops most from going to speaker, but this connection allows for a connected private conversation. The optional second part is that the second phone could have their microphone connected at the same time, allowing for a conference call on the spot. 

The fun part is that I did not see this as an option anywhere. I am too busy with my 5G IP (as well as the other IP), so I am handing it over to Google. I have nothing against Apple, but I am happy with my Android phone, so they win. 

As such, I am a little giddy. All those boffins in the Google workplace and this idea never made it through? Perhaps it as rejected out of hand. I do not know, but I thought it could have a future, as such I am setting it up as a birthday present for Google. I saw (in some YouTube video) that Sundar Pichai has 20 mobile phones at home. He’ll just have to pick a favourite, we can’t make things too easy for him now, can we?

My Sunday has started (it’s 05:06 here), the rest of the world can follow in a few hours, except New Zealand, they are ahead by 3 hours. Enjoy!

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A delusion within a delusion

A few things happened today that gave pause for thoughts. I believe it that it reinforces the ideas I had from the very start. Some (especially Microsoft sycophants) will state that it is exactly the evidence making me delusional. I will let you decide.

To state this I will take some detours. The setting I always had was that by the time phase one was completed, 50 million subscribers would be added. A few parts support that media, yet I will not mention them here due to some sycophants. What you need to know is how I got there.

So there is the setting that three and three and three make nine. I state that it could be 729. So how did I get here. Well, (3×3)3 is the quick route. But that would be regarded by most as flim flam numerology. So how did I get there?  

Consider two persons, person A and person B. They both have 4 million followers. You would think that you get to 8 million which makes sense, but you would be wrong. Consider these two persons. They both have interests and for the simplicity we will take random groups. Fashion, Books, Technology and Art. In these classifications they can attract each 2 people. As such the equation now becomes 2+2+2+2 times 8 million. We now have 64 million. There will be overlap, yet the more diverse these groups are, the lesser the overlap. It is a little bit like anti clustering. New clusters that are similar but not alike. This (sort of) relates to Späth, H.: Cluster dissection and analysis: theory (1986). Another person who talked about this was Iliya Valev (around 1998). 

Now I have to make a side jump. It is an old setting for a tri-sided dagger, or a Jagdkommando knife. The response on it is “The tri-dagger’s problems all begin with that godforsaken twist. It lacks a proper cutting edge, and it’s wide shape means that, as a slashing weapon, this thing is about one step up from paper cuts”, so how does this connect? Well, I have always ben a fan of a tri sided blade. It is forbidden as an actual weapon, but in my view I see it as something with three sides. Presentation, Perception and Principle. They support and reinforce one another. Perception is reinforced by Principle and Presentation, Presentation by Perception and Principle and Principle gets support from Perception and Presentation. No matter how you wield it. We see the opposition we read earlier, but we see it as a knife. You need to realise that the origins of the stiletto was invented in the 15th century to be an anti-armour knife. Not meant to slice but to stab and it went straight through leather and most metal armour. The ‘recipient’ basically bled to death on the spot. Now, hindered by its own armour it could not get any bandage applied before he bled to death. The jagdkommando knife is similar, the wound becomes to hard to heal or apply first aid, which was why it was forbidden. But the application of it is still valid. It was meant to kill with certainty, plain and simple.

Out of bounds
This is exactly why I never wanted Microsoft to get involved. They can spin whatever they like, and as they waste 69 billion on some call of duty solution, I am in the process of taking their population away from them. You see, you can spin innovation, but when the results are absent. You become part of the problem. This is supported by two part. In the first part one source gave me that 75% of the Xbox population is the Xbox series S, as such they already lack next generation solutions. The second one is harder. This was seen two days ago (at https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/20/investing/premarket-stocks-trading/index.html) where we are given ‘US debt rises to $33 trillion as government shutdown looms’, we know there will be some last minute ‘solution’ but that is now becoming increasingly less and less likely. Microsoft has a system that ‘thrives’ on US government and its allies and that is a massive chunk of its business. So when that machine starts going idle more and more, their goose is cooked. This is why I speculated on a 2026 fall of Microsoft. Google decided on another path, so they are out and Amazon doesn’t seem to be waking up. Now China has three sides of a square nearly ready. The media is happy to spin that this is merely three sides of a heptagon and they too are pretty spiffy on presentations. Yet there I am with the other solution.

Why Canada?
Canada was part of the solution from day one. Even as I had no idea on the impact Microsoft was facing at that point, for the simple reason that I never cared about Microsoft. They merely were. But on the 5th of November 2021 I wrote ‘Egg-timer please’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/11/05/egg-timer-please/) there I wrote about Randy Lennox, CEO of Bell Media. There were two reasons, one he was Canadian (Americans were starting to get a global bad rep), he would not have that against him, which mattered to me to progress my IP. In addition he had sides of a documentarist which would be important for part of my solution and as a CEO he had international access (something I will never have). In addition Canada was a commonwealth nation and as a commonwealthian that mattered to me. 

So why the numbers?
You see, the numbers sound nice, but to get to the 50 million subscriptions I need a acceleration curve, anti clustering shows that acceleration a lot quicker. The simplest example I can give you is the difference between ‘You need to be a biker and you need to be a painter and you need to be a technologist’ and ‘You need to be a biker or you need to be a painter or you need to be a technologist’. It is not that simple, but it shows the difference the quickest. If acceleration is key, the ‘or’ group is the acceleration you need. 

These factor made me realise that Microsoft would never be the solution, they keep on buying and missing the innovation. They will state that they are the innovation that works like an anchor, but the innovation of an anchor is not because it is working, but because it didn’t work and we see plenty of that at Microsoft, but they never improved their models and I spoke about these failures too often to rename them now. Amazon was for the longest time the larger option to get it all done, but they decided not to wake up (I actually gave them the heads up). As such Andy Jassy and Jeff Bezos struck out. Now we have a new option. You see, I considered Apple, but they had their own niche. I respect niche players, but they come with blinkers. That is optionally not a bad thing (as long as they pass the qualifying question) but without that I am giving away the play to them and giving Apple something for nothing is just too unacceptable to me. Hence I contacted the Saudi Government in September 2022, I admit it did not go the way I had hoped, but not all was lost. If the Kingdom Holding group would accept the stage I presented, all would be well (I am still waiting). A new player that reared its head in January 2023 was the Tencent Technology group. They had the drive to make it work, but I believe a lot more could be achieved if Amazon or Apple were part of that deal (and I do prefer to get paid). It was also around that time that the secondary impact became visible. Meta would lose more and more market share and as such, so would Twitter (read ‘X’). Their losses would not be immediate and would take some time, but their granularity would be lost as my IP gains speed. So when these two lose 30 million people it would hurt their bottom dollar to some extent and from there the damage merely increases on a few fields. It was the advantage a player like Amazon could use to really impact global business. 

Mister X
Mister X does not relate in any way to Twitter. I considered the second person in that equation and I suddenly realised that this person could put the media out of business to a larger extent. The media that has been spinning for the need of their stakeholders and advertisers as well as their digital dollars would suddenly lose a massive amount of revenue over the short initial time. They would not be able to correct for this and they would have to bend over backwards to become anyones bitch. That works for me as the media has become a much larger problem and I suddenly realised that this could be used to wield information in a different direction and lets be clear, these two people stand to make a nice slice of the initial $5,000,000,000 annually. And I am not forgetting about little old me, I stand to make a nice retirement fund as well (which was my initial reason). I care more about my IP being successful but that will hand me a very sizeable retirement parachute too. As such I do hope that certain people will see what they are about to get, not in the least CEO Talal Ibrahim Al Maiman and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud. The second one doesn’t need the money, but when his royal highness gets to stick it to both the US and the media at the same time, he might do it just for the fun of it. In the meantime I wonder how fast the US shutdown would affect Microsoft. It will not initially do so, but this is the second shutdown danger in as many years and the third is not far behind and when that becomes a threat a third time, the chance of a last minute resort becomes less and less likely. So when the US government shuts down, how will Microsoft receive its cloud revenue? Its 365 revenue? So, how big is the actual Office 365 Government service description? When that shuts down, who pays for the $35 a month, per employee? Did you consider the amount of revenue Microsoft at that point will miss? 

Consider the slippery slope the US is on, consider what they sacrificed for the good of ego and you will realise that I was correct all along, optionally I was correct going all the way back to 2021. 

Enjoy the upcoming weekend.

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The joy of a sleepless night

It all started a few hours ago. The neanderthal hate mail came in regards to the previous article. I was delusional, this never happens. If you receive hate mail, you probably have heard it before. I do not care, but I think it is nice to tell their mommies just how stupid Junior is, as such here goes.

The military have been stupid, very stupid. We see this shown Reuters (the New York Times is behind a paywall). The story (at https://www.reuters.com/world/us/man-suspected-leaking-secret-us-documents-appear-court-2023-04-14/) gives us ‘Airman suspected of leaking secret US documents hit with federal charges’ where we see “Jack Douglas Teixeira of North Dighton, Massachusetts, the U.S. Air National Guard accused of leaking top secret military intelligence records online was charged on Friday with unlawfully copying and transmitting classified material.” In addition to this, The BC gives more, gives links to gamers and a service named Discord, which has 150,000,000 active users. As such the military link is proven. What is unknown is what other stupid things he has been doing. For that we need to await the full investigation of the FBI. Although it is increasingly likely that the NSA will wield the national security flag. I would totally get that. 

Then the second setting the gaming part. For that we go to Kaspersky. They give us (at https://usa.kaspersky.com/resource-center/threats/coronavirus-gaming-scams) a rather nasty part with warnings. The important ones are:

  1. Only use official websites for any purchases related to the game.
  2. Use a strong password for the game login.
  3. Never click on any links asking you to reconfirm your password.

There is a lot more, but if a gamer (especially one in the military) has ignored 2 of these, the damage is likely done. There will be one stupid person in any airbase (the US does not get to be that lucky) as such there are phishing and data capturing dangers in most of the 59 of them. The Army has over 300 of them. You still think I was kidding? As I see it Teixeira is merely the tip of that iceberg. I have no idea what the danger is with the Marines, but it is likely very low, not as low as the navy, but it is still better than the other two. That is the realistic danger that the US faces and if Russians were watching Discord the US has a massive problem. You see, it is not only what the US (or NATO) knew, it is what they didn’t know that will become the achilles heel. That is two of the settings right out here in the open and the Teixeira might seem new, but the New York Times implied that this had been going on for a lot longer, as such the damage is real. 

As far as I am concerned when Teixeira is thrown in prison, they can cover the door with concrete and forget about him. The idea to put classified materials online to look cool is even more stupid to fall for a Russian 17 year old honey trap. With the honey trap we get it, hormones take over, but to look cool? I am at a loss what that man ever did in a uniform and even less why it took so long to find the link. 

But it wasn’t merely about the person Teixeira, it was about the setting for a movie or TV episode. You see, phishing has been going on for decades and the lack of Common Cyber Sense (especially in the military) was covered by me over the last few years. I have articles that go back to at least April 2022. So this is more than a loaded canon, this is the making of more (in what direction remains open and not discussed). It has all the makings of the nightmare scenario. You see you want your data to be safe whilst not using a password, or perhaps one of the routers at the pentagon which had been implied (by an anonymous source) to have been Cisco123 for the longest of times. So how is that security going? It is a sliding scale from non existent to a revolving door for anyone that wanted to read some. It might be my point of view, but the released facts seem to fit the profiles I set.

In addition, for some weird reason, I seem to dream up all kinds of advertisements. One was for AA, where I used the phrase (with a nice animated bottle) “It is fine to have a drink. Make sure the drink does not consume you” I also got a girl to pose partially undressed, dancing is a slutty outfit, in a hospital bed and one more. You do not see her ‘details’ as I used a very interesting way to filter the view. The bottle has a label “Cemetery premium 45%”

The second add was about healthcare, I will spare you the details, they are not important. The weird part is that my mind designed both of them in mere minutes. I still need some things (like software) to get it done, but it is a weird setting. Especially as I never had any real intent to go into filming. Ah well, another mess to overlook I reckon.

And how do these two relate? They do not, but consider all the gaming ads you see on mobiles and tablets. Do you know the sources? Do you know what is collected? You see the FBI gives us that in 2022 $10,300,000,000 was lost due to scams and I reckon that number is low. Too many are ashamed to admit that they have been made the fool. As such all elements I mentioned yesterday were covered and anyone who had read up on the subject would know this. 

So enjoy Monday and consider how safe your data and details are. 

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Lining

That is the setting. You see, you might not be aware. You might merely see one negative article and dismiss it. That is fair enough, for the most I would have dismissed it too. Yet when you start using Google Search on topics like (for example) “Neom” the negativity list starts adding up and they all have something negative to say. 

A long time ago
So lets take a small sidestep towards the young days of your grandfather. It’s 1886 and plans are made for the world fair 1889. An architect named Gustave Eiffel ends up constructing the Eiffel Tower. It was met with ridicule, criticism and a fair amount of hatred. It is now the most recognised building in the world drawing almost 6 million visitors last year, and they all have to pay. The prices vary, but it amounts to about $75 per person. Do that 6 million times over. I reckon that that so called ugly building has earned its investment back a few dozen times over. 

So back to today and this time I am not using the media. This time I am relying on Popular Mechanics (at https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a44966174/saudi-arabia-line-city/) where we are given ‘Saudi Arabia Is Building an Entire City in a Straight Line. It Makes Zero Sense.’ I wonder why it makes zero sense. You see the start gives us “mathematicians broke down the numbers and calculated what the typical commutes in such a city would look like, discovering that it’d be better the built the city in a circle rather than a straight line” and there I am wonder for whom it would make sense to have a circle?

For the inhabitants of the Apple frisbee? For the Pentagon? Consider the life of most of us. We start at home (point A) and we go to work (point B) we travel from A to B to A and in between on that route we get our shopping done. A straight line makes perfect sense to some, not to all, but to some and the most important part in all of this. This has never been done before, just like the Eiffel Tower. I reckon that by 2050 any web satellite camera will have zoomed in on the line a thousand times a day, because as webcams and YouTube satisfies our needs now, a camera version of Starlink will most likely satisfy the curiosity of our grandchildren. 

The question
What I do not get is the massive amount of negativity around this. Neom and the line are two places that have never been done before and has never been contemplated in history. Neom might become the first megacity that writer John Wagner and artist Carlos Ezquerra erected in the comic book Dredd in 1977. A city 22 times the size of New York and Saudi Arabia (not America) is making it a reality. And they are doing it all whilst they have the fastest and most complete 5G network on the planet. As such I am giving them the benefit of the doubt. I have to because in my young days I studied ships engineering, not civil engineering (long before my IT and law degrees). In California a circle makes sense, a circle surrounding a park, but Saudi Arabia has a very different eco system and it is a fir bit longer too. 

Then we are given “The city—stretching from the Red City to the city of Tabuk 110 miles away—along with its estimated 9 million inhabitants would be entirely car-less, and instead be tied together by a high-speed rail system that could travel from one end of The Line to the other in just 20 minutes.” Another thing pops up. America and Europe have entire micro economies based on cars and transportation, they would not exist in the Line. Then the train system. A 20 minute ride from end to end. Consider that this line is 170Km long. In the Netherlands that covers Groningen to Utrecht and it takes that train 2 hours to get there. 600% longer and OK, they stop a few times, and it isn’t high speed, but that is what there is and you cannot make high speed trains work there under those conditions. 

The one part we are missing is that the line is 500 metres high. As such the building is significantly higher than Central Park Tower (longer and wider too). It raises even more questions, questions I can merely grasp at, but the others are merely coming with negativity. I wonder why. What I like about it is that no one has ever done this before and here Saudi Arabia is leading the way. If they pull this off (and I hope they do), the west needs to take a long hard look at itself. We might see all the experts talking the BS they do, but when this is done we get to see the excuses, the blame game, the lack of insight and the media would be regarded as culprit number one. 

Popular mechanics also had a few good idea’s as they tend to do. They give us “Although the paper mostly focuses on the mathematical shortcomings of The Line’s design, it also brings up some good practical problems. If the city’s main train line malfunctions for any reason, for example, it could effectively cut off residents from millions of people—an idea that’s unthinkable in today’s modern metropolises.” And that matters how? I have two best friends. I haven’t seen them in decades as they live on another continent. I have video chat, phone and email to keep in touch. Beyond that my connections over the last two decades have been work and social events around me. I never had the need to meet up with millions and the train is a realistic idea, but things break and things get fixed. Perhaps the train line will have a spare line? Just a thought. In todays world people have become self isolating, it is a result of all kinds of reasons, perhaps the line will offer an alternative?

If there is my need for realism, it becomes the setting of the 500 metres height. There might be all kinds of reasons why it is that high, but on what levels will people be? And then the idea that this one line will house 9,000,000 people. The largest three cities are Tokyo, Delhi an Shanghai, still a fair bit larger than this line, but what area do they cover, what pollution do they create and how much of the ecological side are getting destroyed in the process? This is the consequence of old day thinking. As such the line is starting to make more sense, but it is also a place with more questions. I reckon time will take care of most of them, just like in the days of Gustave Eiffel. Evolution will take care of itself and when one is done the next will come and then one more and for now Neom, the line and Mukaab (which will be 400 by 400 by 400 metres). All in Saudi Arabia and all dwarfing most other architectural achievements. Three places clearly visible from space. So why the negativity? Perhaps the EU and US are realising that they are done for, but who instigated that part? Was it their lack of evidence (small 5G reference), their inability to create because they are now too broke to get anything done? You tell me, I am not sure of any of it. But no matter how these three are completed, it seems to me that Saudi Arabia has its focal point towards the future, all whilst America in true Excel style merely looks at the next quarter, a time frame that does not allow for projects that we are currently seeing in Saudi Arabia. 

There was one final thought that hit me at the end of all this. The article gives us “If its 9 million inhabitants are homogeneously distributed in the city, each kilometre will have roughly 53,000 people” from that point of view it is denser than Manilla, the most dense city in the world with 43,064 people per kilometre. You see, it isn’t the fact that Manilla isn’t the densest city, it is that these metrics would no longer matter because based on the EIU’s Global Liveability Index for 2023, Manila placed 136th among 173 cities. Then we get that the current metro area population of Delhi in 2023 is 32,941,000 almost 400% higher than the Line. Certain metrics would become obsolete and I reckon that there is every chance that a place like the Line would grace the top 10 of the EIU’s Global Liveability Index from the very start. Did anyone consider those metrics?

Enjoy the upcoming last workday of the week.

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Folly and opportunity

Yup, a setting that has both. You see yesterday I offered the quote “I made mention of Deeper Machine Learning. This is awesome, it is not AI (AI does not yet exist) but it got me thinking. You see, we now see mention of AI in construction. This is about to go bad, really bad and Trusting these buildings will become folly soon enough. I will try to explain that soon enough” and that soon is now. To see this we need to make a few sidesteps, but it will be clear soon enough. For this I selected ‘Building a smarter future: The impact of big data and AI in construction’ (at https://www.pbctoday.co.uk/news/digital-construction-news/big-data-and-ai-in-construction-trimble/132005/) there are several sources, but this one got a few things really right and that matters to me. They give you “Because computers can be programmed to analyse questions and situations using thousands of parameters in the time it takes most of us to type them in, they’re an incredible tool that we can use to do complex calculations in a fraction of the time it takes any human, and because they approach every situation with logic, they can make the most rational decisions even when we can’t. Artificial intelligence in construction simply takes that to the next level, applying machine learning, which allows those same computers to learn from situations they’ve encountered before and to adjust their results accordingly.” I do not fully agree, but they give a better explanation then most others and they made the big good one by giving us ‘applying machine learning’ this is correct. 

Why is this what?
That is the setting, you see to see this I will need to take you on a little time travel. That is after you realise that machine learning depends on data, loads of it. But in all this the right category is also important. We are about to overlap best practice and best results onto the cheaper way, the cutting corners way. We might rely on movies like the towering inferno (1974) where the movie based on two books namely the Glass inferno and the tower. In the movie we see the bastardly electrical engineer who cut corners (played by Richard Chamberlain) and the architect played by Paul Newman. There we see the little conversation that the electrical engineer Roger Simmons kept to building codes and that the demands by the architect Doug Roberts were outlandish and to cost driving and fair enough, the building burns down on opening night.

Children of Mediocrates
The previous one was a story, fiction. But reality is not. In the 90’s captains of industry shook hands with politicians and a lacking drive was introduced. Almost like the philosopher Mediocrates who introduced a new life lesson ‘Meh, good enough’. I was actually in some of those meetings where we were told. “What if the strive of excellence is not 100%, but 80%. What had is it to be still really good. How much easier is it to build your bonus when we expect a 80% line?” I was there, I heard it all and I was told to adhere to it all. And yes the bonus for me was easier and I was merely in customer service, but it felt wrong. 

Nowadays
So back to today when we look at the application of what some call AI (a wrong term). The data it relies on cannot tell the difference because best practice and cutting corners are all the same thing and it will set a flawed recommendation and the larger folly is that the people in control of that data will not distinguish between the two fronts either. They are to young to tell, or they cannot tell the difference, because those filling their pockets are no longer around. It is a recipe for disaster and when was the last time when construction disasters went without casualties? 

This is the setting I see coming and there is also an opportunity. You see, those cutting corners did not protect the original path. As such these patents and IP points are now open and unprotected. As such these options are there for the clever people to create new innovation patents based on the open original patents, the ones the cutting corners people let be and there should be a fair amount of them all over the field. This is merely because best practice was too expensive for them and now those options are open. An example here might be the Reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete (RAAC). We are now seeing all the issues and the hundreds of buildings that have them. It was an invention in the 1990’s, making the timeline fit. And now we see “Concerns were amplified in 2023 following reports of an earlier roofing collapse at a British primary school, which fell without warning in 2018” Now, one does not mean the other, but there is a premise that fits and as such we see the larger danger. Consider that this all gained popularity in the 50’s. So how many new patents were created based on this idea, and what was left behind and unprotected? I will let you do the math, but whomever has those innovation patents will have the option to fill there pockets with the best practice approach whilst too many are merely in it to make a buck. As such the folly of hiding behind AI is about to hit a lot of people squarely in the face, all whilst the clever people will be able to turn a coin as they have the patents and they will be the only player to be considered soon enough.

Hiding behind hyper words suddenly gives others a chance to become serious players where the big boys never wanted them. How is that for poetic justice?

Enjoy the day, most of the week is still in front of you.

 

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Media Markets

That was what stuck in my mind when I saw the Guardian view of Starfield. The writer Keza MacDonald crying like a little girl, giving us view and “Along with several others, including the greatly respected games publications Eurogamer and Edge, we were left waiting until the game’s early access release last Friday to play it.” Yes, there is seemingly some cherry picking happening, but that has been the case for years. What does matter is that Starfield is not that great release. Some ratings are as low as 70%, that is a massive miss for the budget and alignment of stars. Skyrim with one exception was a 90% plus all across the board. There is a reason that this game has been heralded since 11.11.11, not because 11 is the crazy number (yo figure that part out). Skyrim is no matter how critics see it mind boggling. It still rocks the current generation hardware based on a previous generation console specifications. So when the Guardian gives us “It is very much like No Man’s Skyrim, as much about menus and mining and navigation as it is about finding interesting quest-lines and exploring planets on a whim”. For me this is funny as both Skyrim and No Man’s Sky are ‘earth’ shattering products, they are both unique in their own way and it seems that Starfield is neither. The reviewer gives us “Starfield has had a mixed but broadly positive reception so far”. The article reads like a cry song on how the Guardian is not one of the chosen few, but does it give a good view of Starfield? Nope, it does not. No we are given “Negotiating all this is part of the job for games journalists” all whilst the title ‘Bethesda chose not to give us early access to Starfield – and it’s readers who lose out’. My view? Nope, the readers lost out as you whined like a little bitch. So when we are given “I am reliably informed that this is one of those games that might get its hooks into you after the first 10 or even 20 hours” with the added “though, the forthcoming fantasy Elder Scrolls 6 might be a more worthwhile investment of time” and that is a review? Go cry me a river. Oh, and before I forget the new Eder Scrolls 6 is (for now) not expected before 2026. Does that mean you will whine another 2 years? So the Guardian shirked their duty (as I see it), when the floodgates go away they could have given us the goods. What is good, what is less and what sucks. No, we get a ‘I am not a chosen reviewer cry song’. 

Early access is marketing and I get that and Bethesda, Microsoft and pretty much EVERY game developers will hand over their cherries to the best source of gaming news, which is in this case anyone with the right following that will sing praise of their game. A YouTube reviewer called Parris gave the game four out of five, which translates to an 80% game. He gave us the goods why it is great, on things that are not great and things that need improvement. His review (for a lack of better term) was stellar. That is the review that makes me buy a game and that matters to Bethesda, that was their goal and he delivered on that with  (what I believe to be ) a honest opinion. I see and in this case saw way too many reviews. Plenty of haters there too (not sure why). You see an RPG is rather specific. It is a niche game which grew from small to huge in less than 10 years and Bethesda has been the major driving force in that growth. I believe that they opened the floodgates with Oblivion and the flood never stopped since 2006. Bethesda pulled that off and the added water damage that Fallout 3 brought just kept on going. So we all might have set our views to high after Skyrim, a true crowning achievement for any developer. 

So what went wrong?
I believe that the media is part of that problem, the digital dollars made for a new kind of writing and games are not part of that equation. The media now relies on self proclaimed hypes and that does not sit well with the current developers. Portkey games is a mere example (Hogwarts Legacy) and now Bethesda. So will the media adjust, or will we see another cry story when Guerrilla Software selects their reviewers for the third Horizons game? There is no indication, but that might come before Elder Scrolls 6 (speculative wishful thinking). In the meantime there is a lot more coming and it is not on some developers. You see, I have been trying to keep tabs on the new Tencent Technology handheld console which they are doing with Logitech and how much media have we seen? Not that much. Is it an anti-China thing? That new console will bite into the marketshare of Amazon and Microsoft for sure. It will support Microsoft gaming and as such it will grow fast, but the media seemingly ignored it to the largest extent. I keep tabs on it as it could facilitate my IP and if Tencent wants the 50 million new subscriptions, it can. Amazon seemingly doesn’t want it, Google dropped it Stadia and now Tencent has the option of getting in excess of 50 million new ‘gamers’, surpassing Microsoft within a year, just like Nintendo did with its Switch. Should this come to pass, Tencent technologies will come close to Sony, closer than Microsoft has EVER been. This all matters because the media is keeping gamers in the dark. So when we reconsider the headline part ‘and it’s readers who lose out’ it is not that, it is the media who changed the way they wrote, to adhere to digital dollars, to adhere to emotional flames and that is what most readers are a little sick of. It drive me to create an IP that pushes Facebook and others out of the way. Gamers want to game, but the console has other options too and with streaming that now comes to the surface and a player like Google should have been on the front lines there, not dumping their stadia, but that might merely be me. 

So there will be an upside for Bethesda/Microsoft. Even as their console is no longer the bees knees (it never was), Tencent Technologies could fill a gap that Bethesda might assist filling. Yet I do believe that they need to have a very hearty conversation with reviewers like Parris Lilly (gamertech radio) to upgrade Starfield to ‘Starfield More’. It could propel Starfield from a average 70%+ game to the game that it needed to be (85%-90%) and that would be a massive increase and gamers will applaud that setting. What is funny is that streaming allows for this and for Bethesda to push that envelope to a new setting might be a way to go (merely one of a few) but the crying Keza MacDonald (at the Guardian) didn’t think that through. No, crying and waiting for a 2026 release was the answer that the reader was given. Within an hour I offered a new destiny, a new horizon and a new hope (yes, a Star Wars reference) which in this case applies in more than one way. 

And for me? Well if it comes to the Tencent handheld I might actually play Starfield as well, it might even be a reason to get that handheld (My Switch just died). And that is the gamer field, the gamer field is forever in motion. We might hate Microsoft, we might hate Sony, but we are always looking on that next fix that gaming provides for. All gamers seek it and we are minds forever voyaging (yes, a gaming pun). 

So what next?
Well to be honest, I had closed the Starfield book, mainly because I am not playing it. Yet the Guardian opened that door again with that pathetic article and blood needed to be drawn (I sharpened my Yanagiba knife for the occasion). As stated in earlier articles, I believe in fair play and being honest with shedding blood and tears. Simply put, I will not shed a tear when shedding Microsoft blood, they did it to themselves, but the media doesn’t get that consideration. The media market changed and even as it is not always visible, it tends to be overly visible in gaming. Gamers are a funny lot (I am one of them), pushing their buttons comes at a price, which Don Mattrick learned the hard way on May 21st 2013, now a little over 10 years ago and Microsoft is still bleeding from that event. More-so if Tencent surpasses them by December 2024. Still it is not merely Microsoft, it is the media spin that is pushing gamers into new fields and even as Starfield was to be that force, it is not to late for Starfield, they still have options. I believe that Bethesda has a hidden diamond there. Am I right? I am not certain, but a game that took this much time, energy and resources cannot die on an average setting, Bethesda has created too many great titles for a new IP just to sizzle and that is my view on the matter.

Enjoy the day.

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When the competitor launches cloud 9

Yes, that is the setting and it does refer to the previous two articles as it involves Microsoft, but this is not about Microsoft. You see, Microsoft exposed its jugular and I am always looking for a new job (a new challenge is more like it) and as Microsoft screwed the pooch (the Chihuahua and their customers as well) I decided the take a look. 

Google
With Google (a preferred first) there is a initial first, a bungle of sorts. You see a small quirk. Google dropped the ball (not the first time) and it is shown in the image below.

So when I search ‘IBM Cloud’ and ‘EVROC cloud’ I get the option ‘news, in the case of Google, I do not, I actually have to enter ‘Google Cloud News’ to get the news option. So how is their (so called) AI? You do know (and I have been explicit about it) on the fact that AI does not (yet) exist. It is all machine learning and deeper machine learning and it is all awesome, but it is not AI. To be a little frank. I usually search for topics and seek out news and for some reason my Google search does not catch on, so how is that AI? It is all data based and as such it is flawed, the fact that I still have to enter the search more than once adding the word ‘news’ is indicative of that. 

Beyond that we get (when I got it) ‘Google Cloud spearheads a revolutionary shift in cloud tech with generative AI’ which we got on the Next’23 even where we are given “We are in an entirely new era of cloud, fuelled by generative AI. Our focus is on putting gen AI tools into the hands of everyone across the organisation—from IT to operations, to security, to the board room. As the industry’s most open cloud, our goal is to help companies use AI and other cloud technologies to streamline their operations, increase productivity, and create entirely new lines of business.” Yet from my point of view all this needs to be data driven, and as such (as Microsoft opened the rift) their data centres and especially their worst case scenario better be upgraded (daddy needs a new pair of shoes). And when you consider the blunder of a previous mentioned participant, that review better be done yesterday. 

EVROC
Now we get back to an article the BBC gave us 4 weeks ago (at https://www.bbc.com/news/business-66310714) where we learned ‘Why it matters where your data is stored’, and here we are given “Evroc has secured €15m in seed funding and plans to build eight data centres in Europe in the next five years. The first will be a large pilot data centre in Sweden next year.” And the ‘silent’ setting is that they want to secure a chunk of Amazon business and that is fine. Yet, I already highlighted that their option was the Middle East (Riyadh and Dubai), they have billions in vested interests and EVROC could make a nice coin on the side for these two places alone. I mentioned that, but that was before the the massive bungle that a certain company (with the same first letter that MacDonalds has) made, so now EVROC has additional options to clear business thresholds. That does not take Google and IBM out of the race, but it does open the doors of business opportunity for Evroc, as it does for Amazon, but that is for later.

Amazon
And later is now, you see ARN also gave us ‘AWS hints at partner program changes for AI and partner engagement’ and their selling point could include ‘We do not go down for over 24 hours’ but that too requires an overhaul and testing for its operational stations and even as winter is coming to Europe (no dragons in sight), the setting changes a little. You see one company exposed its jugular and three other players are now out for blood and they will secure some of it. Not all, but it will hurt the other bungler their business. I did not mention Apple and IBM, they have their own settings and they are solid in what they offer, but there too is the warning that their operational settings better be tested immediately. You see a night shift with 2 extra workers might cost a company up to $300,000 a year more but that is earned with adding less than 10 small customers. That was the bungle, and some customers are charged a lot more than these two employees cost and when you realise that part you see the massive bungle I described a mere 17 hours ago. That was visible on many fronts and now others get to step in to make the damage to that one player worse. 

All this is a setting that could have been avoided by the simple application of checks and balances. Now does the stupid response ‘We lacked staff’ make sense, or better does it make sense how stupid the response was? I never bothered reading the report, it is a document to appease customers and shareholders and I am neither. Common sense told me what I needed to know and now that I am adding these elements I hope I satisfied the over enthusiastic fan that responded with “What do you think you know?” You see, then sarcasm backfires it becomes irony, so I hope that todays article was loaded with the irony he (or she) needed. The cloud field will not change too much, but one player will likely lose a lot more than they are comfortable with, but that is my personal view on the matter and I might be wrong, but in a stage where nearly every customer wants to cut corners on cost and staff, it is a pretty safe bet that I will be correct. That is all apart from the fact that places like Amazon and Google (and now EVROC too) are always seeking more revenue.

Here endeth the lesson, enjoy the day. If it gets too sunny, know how (and be able) to restart the cooling fan.

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The yoke is on Microsoft

Yup, this is a ‘create howls of deriving laughter’ on Microsoft, but not in the way you would expect it. So, this all started a few hours ago when I saw an unknown party called ARN  give us ‘Microsoft blames Aussie data centre outage on staff strength, failed automation’ (at https://www.arnnet.com.au/article/708608/microsoft-blames-aussie-data-centre-outage-staff-strength-failed-automation/) where we see “Microsoft has blamed staff strength and failed automation for a data centre outage in Australia that took place on August 30, disabling users from accessing Azure, Microsoft 365, and Power Platform services for over 24 hours.” And my (first) thought was ‘Is Microsoft really THAT stupid?’ You see, to see that thought you need to be aware of a few small issues. The first is “Microsoft confirmed Monday that it’s eliminating additional jobs, a week after the start of its 2024 fiscal year. The cuts are in addition to the downsizing announced in January that resulted in 10,000 layoffs. The software maker also disclosed a small number of cuts this time last year.” With the additional “US tech giant Microsoft has axed more Australian jobs after the company made major staffing cuts across the globe earlier in the year. About 50 Australian employees are believed to have lost their jobs this month, Nine newspaper the Australian Financial Review reports.” Now, job losses happen everywhere at this time and we get it. There are all kinds of issues and Microsoft is one of many shedding jobs. But to see ‘Microsoft has blamed staff strength’ after they shed 10,000 plus jobs is just the joke of the century. I get it, one job is not another job, but when you have shortages in a place that is riddled with ageism and wannabe hires (dynamic young people) whilst your operational settings are below par just doesn’t work for me. I see the same fake jobs from providers like Hays and they will not respond and often ignore you. That is the party to be for players like Microsoft and they now claim that there is no coverage does not hold any water with me.  So when ARN gives us ““Due to the size of the data centre campus, the staffing of the team at night was insufficient to restart the chillers in a timely manner. We have temporarily increased the team size from three to seven, until the underlying issues are better understood and appropriate mitigations can be put in place,” Microsoft wrote as part of the report.” I wonder if their cost cutting stages are merely a joke and what company would have trust in such a system when “Azure, Microsoft 365, and Power Platform services” were down or unreachable for over 24 hours. That point is clear, is it not?

Consider the simple math. How much traffic and how many companies rely on that data centre? How come that there are only 3 people at night? So consider “Microsoft said that the cooling units could have been restarted manually, which was not possible due to the unavailability of enough personnel at the data centre” with the added “the staffing of the team at night was insufficient to restart the chillers in a timely manner” so do you think they royally screwed that part up? And in that setting how many data centres (all over the world) are understaffed? When the coolers cannot be manually started in these places, how much revenue will Microsoft miss out on, because these affected firms might optionally have a case to sue Microsoft for damages. No matter how that report phrases it, the lack of data centre labour (especially after they sacked well over 10,000 people) will not be met with a friendly judge and for Microsoft there is an additional danger. When third parties like Evroc start getting business from companies that once held Microsoft high in its banner, the walk-out might become a lot more severe and that could spell more bad news for Azure (something Amazon AWS will love) and there is a decent chance that some will optionally switch to Google or IBM. All losses for Microsoft who thought that keeping 3 people at night in a data centre was enough, all whilst THEY THEMSELVES give us “the cooling units could have been restarted manually, which was not possible due to the unavailability of enough personnel at the data centre” and that is the stage all those using a Microsoft data centre face? It is my personal opinion that someone bungled the minimum staff at a data centre during the night and even as winter is now coming to the northern hemisphere. The southern hemisphere is going into summer. So what about the Data centres in Riyadh and the UAE? In Riyadh it is around 45 degrees Celsius and in Dubai it is only 3 degrees cooler. So what happens when they need a manual restart of the cooling units? All simple questions and we could say that Microsoft has that covered, but it seems that according to ARN they do not. A simple operational question: ‘What is the minimum required staff coverage at night in a worst case scenario?’ As far as I can tell (trusting the ARN article) they were not ready and the fact that they upped it by over 100% shows that Microsoft was simply clueless on this issue. Feel free to disagree and I expect you want to talk to the corporations that lot Office and Azure for over 24 hours, but I reckon that we will not get access to those names, and that is fair enough. But do the companies who had to go through this feel the same way? I doubt it.

Enjoy the warm Tuesday coming to you.

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A casually added cog

This is a stage that has taken time. I wrote about parts of these settings as early as 2021, the last part was I believe in February 2022 (see image below). 

I never stopped thinking about it, but it is all related to the design I made for Elder Scrolls VII (it was 6) called Restoration. Of course as they are now part of Microsoft helping them is a big no-no. Yet the setting could be used for Amazon Luna and Tencent console developers. And lets be clear. Chinese developers are hungry for profit, the question is can they responsibly develop the next generation RPG games. Not, some copy of Bethesda, but a new unique IP? I have too little experience there, so I cannot say. But when you consider the overhauls I designed for RPG, including parts Bethesda never touched. A new NPC combat system making the next generation an entirely new challenge. Yet in all this, my mind was set on looting. I needed to make it new and optionally unseen before. You see most RPG makers took the lazy way, most copied ideas from Bethesda and the early developers. As such I had an advantage. No one had taken this road before, all because I believe in checks and balances. And as such the cogs helped me and at that point I added a cog (optionally two) and that stage could end up having more options. A setting where we see the stores in places like Chorrel, Bruma, Riverwood and no one saw the missing element. As such there are a few options to develop making the stage larger and there might now be an optional requirement to make the map larger still. You see, developers have good ideas and they have bad (or non-workable) ideas. I get that. But how many got irritated in Far Cry 4 when you heard another eagle warning? That game has more eagles than Tibet has people. It just doesn’t work. The idea was great, but it should have been limited to a handful of encounters, not a dozen eagles each hour. It was at that point that my mind wandered into the loot system and adjusting and redesigning it. That also led me to additional shops. Some might be in general stores, but the larger cities could have these two stores, offering more options to make cash. This led to a new artisan that could adjust your gear and items. 

And the funny part is that Bethesda should have been ahead of me, they were not and now others get to benefit from this. I still hope to sell my other IP to Amazon or Tencent Technologies and if they want the other parts added, I might not complain. The reason for me writing this here is that players like Bethesda might shout that they had the idea too, but I wrote about it now, so where were they? Launching Starfield? Yes, I have seen some video’s and I wonder what will happen. I am not commenting on them as I cannot verify the validity. There are plenty of haters around and I am not one of them, I will not feed their hate hunger. And that gets me to the hunger stage, another setting that has been explored in a few ways and plenty of them in good ways, but one side they all neglected. I wonder if someone catches on or if that idea will be added to the pile for Amazon and/or Tencent?

What is clear is that if I am correct the future holds the greatest RPG year we have yet to explore and that will be on the developer waking up. 

Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

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Sentimental journey

We all have these. It usually is about something personal, something we are passionate about and mine for the longest time has been gaming. I took a sentimental journey by replaying Far Cry 3. It still had all the flaws (replaying on the PS5). One was a design flaw, one that massively annoyed me, one was a ‘weakness’ and one was open to debate. I replayed the game 4 times and in order were the PS3, Xbox360, PS4 and now PS5 and this time I stuck around to get the platinum achievement. Three I never had, one was due to me not looking at the issue, one was because I never found it (that Hollywood star with his head above the sand). The toxo thingy (because I never realised that you could do those with explosive arrows and the gamble bully as I never cared for poker. This time around there was just the poker part missing as such I ended doing a side quest I merely shrugged at and now I have it. OK, I looked up that Hollywood person. I initially thought it was one in my party to save. So when I found the solution I had to giggle. This is one of those moments I applaud the makers for such a sneaky achievement. 

This also stirred a few other things. You see, there is a game I want remade, but remade different and now it might not come to consoles because this is a streaming option. I also have been rethinking a few settings in the original games and how it might be done differently and that got me to a new approach to ‘family’ trees. Whilst everyone is rethinking ChatGPT and taking swings at their version of ‘AI’, I have been considering another use. A use in gaming not used before, not to ‘extent’ the gamer, but to extent a system that allows for ‘shoddy data’ and is set to parameters where we decide what to include and what to filter out. I considered it for a while and I suddenly that in some trees pruning is not the reward, but correctly pruning leads to a bigger reward and that is merely one stage to enhance an old game 30 years later and create a very new game. As such I now have 2 out of 4 stages of that game thought through, the third one is also there, but I believe that we need to tune that a little more. So whilst Microsoft is spending billions and billions to acquire IP, I merely thought it through and have a setting of close to half a dozen games ready to add to the Amazon Luna and Tencent handheld stables. I just can’t stop giggling at that premise. They (Microsoft) is trying to spend $69,000,000,000 to buy Blizzard and an idea that could be seen as outdated, I am about to hand Amazon and Tencent Technologies IP at less than 0.1% of that and they end up with half a dozen games that Microsoft does not have and will not have. In the meantime thanks to a brisk idea Vint Cerf had when he was an old-boy at DARPA led to an idea to a new approach to NPC enemy intelligence. Yup, Microsoft really played that part in a boneheaded way. And now (after they spend $7.5 billion for Bethesda) all eyes are on Starfield. I am not focussed on it, because I refuse to get the new Xbox and should that title fail, the goose of Microsoft will be sorely done. I honestly hope it will go well, because hoping for someone’s game to fail is just a dick move. I will merely never play it (unless it comes to PS5, which is a not going to happen). So I am not a starfield hater, but Microsoft placed a bar too high for normal games and now all eyes are on Starfield. I however decided to be more creative and designed several games exclusively for Amazon and Tencent, several of them I placed in the Public Domain for exclusive free development for these two systems. Yes, I know that this was a stretch, but the more I design and the more Microsoft fails, the bigger the loser they are showing themselves to be. It is a stage of lose some and lose some more. And now that my first IP is close to completely redrawn, Tencent Technologies stands to make a fortune on the space that Google Stadia once had and that spells out more bad news for Microsoft. 

Still the sentimental journey played its part. I have been driven (over time) towards games like System Shock and stealth games. Now I see that these stages are also drivers for new IP, not a copy of an old idea, but completely new IP, and as I personally see it Microsoft has nothing to counter it. Yes, Starfield will be new IP, but that is one IP on one system and they are still feeding the Game pass. I have several pieces of NEW IP, new that is never used and to a degree never seen on consoles. As such not only does Microsoft have contenders, but with their Call of duty fetish, trying to counter Epic and its software, they left too much lying on the floor and Tencent Technologies is starting to catch on where Amazon, Google and Microsoft decided not to look and now they are about to become the competitor Microsoft never banked on and as such they have more contenders to fields they never completely understood. First there was Apple with their iPad and the Windows Surface giggle never got close, then there was Amazon with AWS in the first (eat your heart out Azure) then with the Luna and there is Microsoft losing the streaming console war all whilst Netflix is a new contender costing Microsoft even more. Then there was Sony beating the Xbox version X (or was that the Nth degree). And now Tencent Technologies is about to enter the field giving more and more competition to Microsoft in streaming solutions. Making Microsoft the loser 5 times over. So Bethesda has an abnormal amount of pressure on it to make Starfield a lot better then good and after the epic failure that Redfall has become with additional promises not met 3 months later, all eyes are on Bethesda and I do not believe that is fair on Bethesda, but the premise was pushed by Microsoft and they will need a scapegoat should things go south, no idea how they will do that, but there you have it and I am handing over IP for free to anyone that is not Microsoft. You see, to avoid fish getting caught, you can either take the fish away, or make the pond a lot larger. I opted for a combination of both and when my initial premise of 50 million gamers is met, Microsoft will have to hand over the field yet again. Because it is not merely that I gain these gamers, Microsoft will lose those people in a few ways and that was the initial stage. It might be delusional, but I believe that giving gamers pure gaming pleasure is one way of gaining their trust. Not the trust of some analyst and some bing stage, but a stage where gaming for the sake of fun will endure long after Bing went the way of the dodo. I had hoped it would be an Amazon/Google win, but there is every chance that it will now be an optional Amazon/Tencent win and that will lead to a lot more damage to Microsoft over time. 

So whilst some will throw all this to my delusional side, I decided to blog the ideas so that they became open and Public Domain and I there is no regret here, I just came up with another part to an idea that could please a whole cluster of gamers, how large the cluster is is unknown. I understand that this is not some Call of Duty clone and as such plenty will not care for that game, but I believe millions will and that opens other doors and close the doors of Microsoft all at the same time. Why use energy twice, right?

I just have another idea. I think I wrote about it before. I should give it to Netflix as soon as possible just to piss Microsoft off and the more streaming gamers out there, the less is left for Microsoft and lets face it they have 238 million subscribers, so giving them IP merely slows the Microsoft cattle and diverts some of them to other places, a stage Microsoft cannot control and they lack ability to coach. Yup, now just to hand it over to Netflix and another loss for Microsoft is coming their way.

What a lovely way to start Friday (in 9 minutes).

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