Category Archives: Science

January 12, 2022 · 22:43

Commencing Crazy

This all started before ‘Call for change!’ Which I wrote on October 25th 2021 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/10/25/call-for-change/), I saw the numbers and the idiocy of non-vaccination. I do not care what they call it, it is their life, but in that it is their life and they also need to accept the consequences. So as I wrote “The first port is that anti-vaxxers and those not vaccinated with a good provable reason will have to pay UPFRONT for any hospital admittance for COVID. So there are no stories about “Anti-vaxxer Kristen Lowery”, or those radio hosts and stories on how sorry they were lying in a comfortable hospital bed. They can tough it out at home and optionally die there.” I saw a station we were all heading to and today (11 hours ago) the BBC gives us ‘Quebec to impose health tax on unvaccinated Canadians’, the story (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59960689) is not the first one, others have reported on similar settings, we also see some of these facts here. Singapore took my advice (seemingly) which requires Covid patients to pay for their own medical bills if they are not vaccinated. Greece imposes a fine and others will follow, when their national health care systems collapse due to those non vaccinated, this is a result and it was always heading this way. I do like the response that Premier Francois Legault gives. He states “I think right now it’s a question of fairness for the 90% of the population who made some sacrifices,” Mr Legault said. “I think we owe them this kind of measure” and I agree with him. Even as some news agencies are hiding behind positive flames like ‘Omicron may be set for rapid dip in US, UK’, I merely wonder how stupid these people are. They are (clinically speaking) telling a truth, but behind that facade we see numbers that globally went from 1.7M cases on January 1st to 2.4M cases on January 9th, All whilst the cases were 50% to 65% lower a week before. This is not going away soon or quietly. It has become a numbers game and in that game the numbers are overwhelming a stretched health care system on a global stage. All this whilst one source gave us 20 hours ago ‘Intensive care doctor reveals EVERY critically ill Covid patient being treated at his hospital is unvaccinated’, that is the reality and it is not the vaccinated people who are the larger danger, they do get sick but their symptoms are seemingly mild to really mild. And in the UK with so many unvaccinated people the dip as some might call it will not matter, a lot of them will die (which brings down housing prices), so there will always be a silver lining. Just not the one the media or anti-vaxxers rely on. And still the the issue is not as good as you think it is. The numbers from India with 1.3B people does not add up, so there will be a lot more coming all our ways. So whilst CNBC gives us ‘U.S. sets fresh records for Covid hospitalisations and cases with 1.5 million new infections’ today, we see the need to vet the journo’s who give us ‘Omicron may be set for rapid dip in US, UK’, as the data show us it was not directly a lie, yet the underlying issues we are already seeing, the people catering to that article are out of their minds. And in all this I reckon that the US and UK will soon follow the path Canada is taking and it will happen to people who cannot afford to pay, so they are denied access to hospital health care. It is one way to cull the herd, but it is not one that comes from choice, it is one grown through necessity and that is a much harder lesson to face. When the systems buckle, when the systems that gave us the protection we expected, when they collapse the real crazy starts and it will be some sight to behold, that much is an absolute given. 

So, as I personally see it. Things are about to get worse and it will come with populist claims, it will come with the blame game and when the reality pulls through and we say the unvaccinated people do not get a voice in all this, that is when matters get worse fast. People are all about complaining and not about taking responsibility of their acts and their life. It is the nanny state on steroids and now we will see just how strong the nanny state vibe will be in several nations. I reckon the next two weeks will be decently exciting ones.

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January 7, 2022 · 00:39

Intentional Procrastination

All whilst my back is killing me, I decided to write a little more (sleep is going bye bye). You see, there was an article plaguing my mind on TV’s that would enable taste by licking the display. I honestly cannot tell if that is wishful thinking, an April fools joke or real. If it is real, I wonder how long it will take for the adult entertainment industry to catch on and we see advertisements like ‘Does He/She really taste like Chicken? Find out!’ So how long until 1,546,768,114 teenagers of both genders will have a few of those movies hiding with some of their other ‘treasured’ possessions?

It then dawned on me that there is a side setting that I had forgotten initially about. Perhaps you have too. When I was young I was in the Netherlands and they had something called ‘snoep papier’ (candy paper), it was paper and you could actually eat this paper. So why not add something like an inkjet paper, but instead of colours, it will print tastes. Cherrie, Chocolate, Banana, Orange and so on. But not a normal inkjet, but one of those older plot printers, with up to 16 tastes. You can print a message that can be devoured, you can print advertisements and the people will get a taste of what you have. I am a little surprised that I have never seen something like that. Did I miss it? 

Now we seem to hold on to the pastry tastes as they tend to be the most outspoken tastes, but there is nothing stopping a player like Coca Cola to push forward their needs. Would there be a market? I reckon there is and with covid lingering on for another year at least, marketing departments will have to make do with what they can and novelty does tend to bring in the bacon.  Yet that could be merely my shortsighted view on the matter. And even as we take notice of 3D food printers, there is a larger need to print something that can be laced in an envelope, as well as the small fact that it might be (for now) a whole lot cheaper than 3D food printing. 

So whilst we take notice of any idea, we tend to tinker with these ideas to see if it fits the need WE have and that is fine. But so far I see people trying the newest ideas and they are forgetting to look behind them, that is where I found all kinds of ideas that did not fit then, but now those ideas that were rejected could actually bring about a new era. It is how I got the idea of printable displays (no joke). If is founded on an idea from around 1988 and people forgot to look there because there was new technology. Yet the old ideas can be rewrapped in all kind of ways, in some cases even in new innovative idea’s. So is it intentional procrastination, or is it the foundation of new and innovative intellectual property? I will let you decide, and consider looking behind you, there is all all kinds of stuff there that the wielders call junk because it is 15-30 years old, but it could be a lot more, reinventing the wheel is nice, yet reengineering a wheel tends to be more productive, more feasible and more profitable.

Have fun!

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January 6, 2022 · 17:48

The Community Nexus

This is not the first time I get here, but it is not a repetition either. Some things struck me and I reckon it is time for Sony, Google (Stadia) and Amazon (Luna) to wake up. To be honest, when I saw the earliest presentations by Sony I reckoned that they would be the first to take social networking to a new level, but no. I do not know whether they wanted Facebook to chip in, but after all the settings we saw pass by our screens, the setting is changing that either they start thinking things through, or they will be surpassed by others and it will cost them. Not unlike the Cocoon Network, it needs to have limitations, it needs to be advertisement free and it needs to service the gamers. Anything different might be seen as treason by these gamers and that would be disastrous. In this the idea that mimics Google Plus the most is the most appealing, yet it is not set in stone.

They need to consider a few things. Copy/Paste should be disabled, so that something stated on that cluster stays on that cluster (there will always be workarounds), but that is not the goal. You see the A-social network (Facebook) is full of flamers, trolls and shit stirrers and these networks can do without those. It needs to be clusters where gamers INVITE other gamers, and until the invitation is accepted no one has access. A person can only see other conversations in that cluster, they can copy what THEY added to other clusters, but it is cluster based. Then there are ‘commercial’ clusters. People who keep track of the game-makers like Microsoft, Ubisoft (if it still exists by them), Bethesda and so on. People want to keep track of their favourite games and game makers. People can add achievements and so on, but there needs to be a filter where we only see the achievements by a person that we also have. There should be more, but it needs to be a push station, if we include other means of social networking. It is the one flaw that is still not dealt with and no one has decent option. I reckon that Amazon has the greatest need, so that they can grow faster, but Google should not be sitting on their hands, not on this one. The visibility and growth of a console is versatility and Google dropped the ball twice already. In the first they decided not to produce games, it is not a real failing, but it is a weakness and therefor a threat. Then they let Amazon get close, in a field where they should have had a superior setting they ended up merely on par with Amazon, it still strikes me as odd. And in all this I do not care what Microsoft does, I simply do not trust them. 

And when we think about it, a console with community clusters leading to a nexus or a collection of nexuses was simply the next step and when Facebook screwed themselves over with Cambridge Analytica the others should have made a larger effort, as such Sony dropped the ball with the PS4Pro and the others are till not there, they need to because then Facebook launches Meta all over the place it will be too late for the other players to start and sitting on ones hands in a $200,000,000,000 market is folly even in the most conservative setting. In this Amazon clearly has advantages, but we should not rule out Sony. They need to do something and so far there is no indication that they are getting ready, making their advantage shrink, not by too much, yet any lagging lead is a win for the number 2 through number 5 consoles. That has always been the case and now will be no different.

That station is on the roll, and I reckon that the lack of that choice will hurt the players not ready in 2024. And when we see the carefully phrased denials, as well as the cautiously stated ‘We are working on it’ will be seen by gamers as a negative side in all this, do not take my word, merely watch how the gamers will ask in flammable ways why they were ignored (yet again). I cannot stress this enough. It is time for the consoles and streaming systems to consider what gamers need and where gamers would like to be. In this Twitter and Facebook might be nice, but the people are more and more weary of both of them and that is not a good place to set your console.

We all want to talk about our games and our achievements, but so far the people trying to flame what we do is running into the thousands, and that is causing a larger stage of doubt with gamers. Giving them a safe space is becoming increasingly essential. I see all over Facebook pages where a 17 year old proudly brags what he got done in FIFA and I see dozen hammer that person seconds later. Wouldn’t it be great if that person had a cluster with school and gaming friends and that person could share it just to them? That is the station for an invitation clusters only, and that need is fast and vastly growing, so why Sony never picked up that ball is a little beyond me. The streamers will not have that luxury, that much is clear to me.

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January 5, 2022 · 00:21

Cyber Security Impressions

Here I am, a little after 23:00. I am in a decent level of agony as I hurt my back and the painkillers do not work, at least it is having no effect. In this I also have been forgoing sleep since Saturday (pain levels tend to do just that). Yet I just had an idea. I just figured out another usage for my 5G devices. A setting to limit and downsize credit card fraud and identity theft. I saw some of the damage a few days ago and it kept it in the back of my head. 

Now, let’s take a little detour to anti viral solutions about two decades ago. In those days one solution was to create thumbprints of every file, the checkmarks would give an indication that a file was optionally infected. 

Now let’s take a step to tomorrow. Most people are wage slaves. Often working from 8am to 8pm, and their routine changes to the smallest degree. Now consider that you could create a thumbprint of your day, not in detail but to some degree. Now consider that the credit card thief would try to make a purchase somewhere in town, but the thumbprint of you will not match up. More important when you set up your daily station and upload that (encrypted) to your bank server your bank can check whether you were anywhere near the purchase. Consider that credit card fraud surpassed $24,000,000,000 in 2018 and it is only getting worse. Yes, you can wait for the bank to return your cash or you can be proactive and that is the station where the daily file is encrypted and it does not have specifics, merely connect points, yet those points will not fit the credit card thief and that is where we can stop him proactively. More important, it could also give banks clues on HOW and more important WHERE the credit card theft was done. Why did no one think of this earlier? Perhaps before 5G the system would be overly taxed. I do not know, I am merely  trying to see if this could be the optional solution and my hardware is already on station to make a mark, yet I am not the only one. Mobile phones could easily have a similar function, so there are alternatives and that is good. This is an issue we should all try to solve, not to simply see if it is a moneymaker. On the other hand preventing loss is also a moneymaking solution, it makes money for banks and it stops YOU from losing money you might optionally not get back, or get back after a long delay. And as this solution gets better it would be near direct resolutions making the thief the loser as we all want it to be.

Now at first it will not be the perfect solution, yet as the people submit more and more thumbprints, deeper learning systems will be able to tell more rapidly and more quickly if the purchase was for real and done by the actual purchase. It could even set the stage where kids cannot go on a spending spree with mommy’s or daddy’s credit card. So far I can only see upsides and that is always nice. I am still trying to see if there are downsides, and perhaps I will find 1-2, but at present there are seemingly none. 

A simple (and painful) day and I found another way to stop credit card theft, what a lovely way to start Wednesday, which started 18 minutes ago.

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January 3, 2022 · 19:51

The virtual quarterback

We can consider me being the Monday morning quarterback, it would be fair to call me this. I have been for the longest time a champion of science, I believe that not unlike evidence in law, science is the cornerstone of all daily life decisions. So I tend to take sides with science for nearly all cases. Yet today, in opposition of a piece in the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/02/britain-got-it-wrong-on-covid-long-lockdown-did-more-harm-than-good-says-scientist) I take another side, the non-scientist setting. I oppose the views of Professor Mark Woolhouse. So feel free to oppose my views, which would be fair enough. But in all matters take a long hard look at some of the things we are handed here today. I believe that not unlike some wannabe journalists who wanted to cash in on Jamal Khashoggi with their fiction view of ‘Blood and Oil’ this professor might be trying to find the same rabbit in a different hat with ‘The Year the World Went Mad: A Scientific Memoir’.

So where do I oppose?
It starts with “I am afraid Gove’s statement was simply not true,” he says. “In fact, this is a very discriminatory virus. Some people are much more at risk from it than others. People over 75 are an astonishing 10,000 times more at risk than those who are under 15.” In March 2020 there was a lot we never knew. Do not forget that the disease was out for only 2-3 months, and it had not spread to the degree it has now. China had no answers, and the people who were responsible for calling this a pandemic did not do so. In addition, the media gave us “This might become a pandemic” all whilst the points of calling it a pandemic had already passed. I wrote about it on February 3rd 2020 in ‘Corona?  I Never touch the stuff!’ (At https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/02/03/corona-i-never-touch-the-stuff/), a month before we see given here. I already saw the pandemic threshold passed, yet most media were in denial with “This might become a pandemic” as such, it seems to me that Professor Mark Woolhouse will have to explain a few things. Then we get to “We did serious harm to our children and young adults who were robbed of their education, jobs and normal existence, as well as suffering damage to their future prospects, while they were left to inherit a record-breaking mountain of public debt” in this is resort to the blunt ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ In the first there was a lot we did not know, and for the longest time there are still questions, so the response I see with “We did serious harm to our children and young adults who were robbed of their education, jobs and normal existence” is something I would like to refer to as bullshit marketing. You see the first peak of daily deaths did not start until April 13th 2020, with 6916 dead people (aka the non-living). 

I found a table from April 2020 from New York. In this table we see 6839 died, but the interesting part is that 5151 cases had an underlying condition and in that case the older you get the higher the chance of an underlying condition, and in that up to 44 years old 312 died. Most with an underlying condition, but there was a lot not known in that setting. More important, there was no vaccine, there was no protection. The Pfizer solution was still in clinical trials in November 2020. And when you start looking at the facts as they were known, I believe that Mark Woolhouse is trimming his own trumpet for the sake of book-sales (a speculative view, but it is my view). 

Were mistakes made?
Yes, of course mistakes were made, they were made all over the world and with the US having an idiot as president in those days did not help much. There was a large void of knowledge and there was a large void of experience, so looking at the facts after the fact does not help much (apparently it might help a certain professor with a book to sell). And in all this the professor does not take into account the anti-lockdown idiots spreading the disease, the ignorant anti-vaxxers adding fuel to the fire and then the people who were ignorant of the way the disease spread going to relative, friends and so forth needing their social moment. 

And in London that is a large powder-keg waiting to explode and now that it is doing just that we see the blame game in effect. So consider the anti-lockdown protest, it only 10 people had it at that point, at least 1000 could have it 3 days later. And everyone remains in denial, oh boo hoo hoo!

So when we get to “the country should have put far more effort into protecting the vulnerable. Well over 30,000 people died of Covid-19 in Britain’s care homes. On average, each home got an extra £250,000 from the government to protect against the virus, he calculates. “Much more should have been spent on providing protection for care homes,” says Woolhouse, who also castigates the government for offering nothing more than a letter telling those shielding elderly parents and other vulnerable individuals in their own homes to take precautions.” Where is the time line? When did we know what we know now and that is before we add the complications of Alpha, Delta and Omicron. And with the last quote “By contrast, we spent almost nothing on protecting the vulnerable in the community. We should and could have invested in both suppression and protection. We effectively chose just one.”

In the first, the government could not afford both paths (slight speculation), there were too many unknown factors and with Omicron raging now, anti-vaxxer idiots and anti-lockdown dumbo’s, how can you protect a community? You can claim you can but stupid people will do whatever they feel like, the vulnerable be damned. That is how people tend to be. 

So this is my view on the matter and it is a rare event when I oppose a scientist, especially a professor, but here I feel it was needed. And I had a few more views concerning covid over that year and last year too. I kept it low, because I am not a medici (ha ha ha), yet the larger stage is also ignored in the story. The media was fear mongering all over the place and that too resulted in negative actions. There were several factors and I believe that too many factors were unknown, or untested for the longest of times. 

So, if you decide I am the Monday morning quarterback it is fine, I gave my reasoning and my views that go back to February 2020 when it was in the earliest stage. So I am not exactly the Monday morning quarterback, but I am definitely a virtual one. Consider the facts and consider the blah blah from Professor Mark Woolhouse and draw your own conclusions.

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December 30, 2021 · 16:59

The drop-off no one saw?

Yes, that is one of the settings that could be seen. A drop off no one saw coming. Yet, is that true? I wrote about if a few times, and even as I was not in agreement on all counts, I was clear about certain dangers. So as we are given (at https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/dec/30/covid-hospitals-england-asked-look-4000-emergency-beds) with the headline ‘Hospitals in England asked to look for up to 4,000 emergency Covid beds’, I merely wonder if it will be enough, there is every chance that they will need at least twice that amount before the UK is at the end of January. 

I wrote two stories ‘Cross here to die’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/12/11/cross-here-to-die/) on December 11th and ‘The double check’ on December 16th (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/12/16/the-double-check/) the second one gives us “There is another side that I actually did not look at, the idea of “175,000 hospital admissions”, even over 5 months (Dec 1st – Apr 30th) that implies 1158 admissions a day, which is almost double of what is at present the case, And consider that the average length of stay in a hospital is 8-9 days for non ICU patients and 12-18 days when ICU is required. In that setting the numbers reveal that before the end of January all hospitals are beyond breaking point and no hospital in the UK will have any beds available with optional settings that London patients might have to be  be transferred to Wales, which is hilarious on a few levels”. So, basically I saw the setting we see now two weeks ago, as such well over a week ago actions would have been required, but were any taken? At present we see that the UK has “another record rise with more than 183,000 daily Covid cases”, this now gives is the speculative 1,830 speculated admissions a day, and treatment in hospitals will (if you are lucky require 8 days), as such my numbers were cautiously optimistic. So the stage of 8,000 additional beds might be short. This still does not mean that I agree with the mortality numbers, but they are not as unrealistic as they seem when I initially saw them. 

The danger is that there are still unknown parts, there is no clear stage of how dangerous Covid Omicron is and I am not debating that it could remain a mild version, the case is that the mild version replicates faster than a bunch of horny rabbits. So the smallest group that does need medical treatment in hospitals is growing too and over days we are now already where I expected the situation to be at the end of January, a month earlier and that bites (especially if you need hospital treatment). 

And this gets me to the second stage. You know that bunch of wankers (the labour party), aka the people who thought that Jeremy Corbyn was a decent human being, that group! So when the Guardian gives us ‘Johnson blamed for Covid test shortages as cases hit record 183,000’, the article (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/29/johnson-blamed-for-covid-test-shortages-as-cases-hit-record-183000) that gives us “Labour criticises PM over ‘total shambles’ of some essential workers being unable to access test kits”, my subtle sense is wondering in what room the were tossing off their Johnson when it was clear that people needed lockdown, that people needed to keep distance, needed to keep masks on. That group that had ex-Labour members put on a show in the Daily Mail so that there would be some form of deniability. Did the tories make errors. Yes! There is no denying it, yet the clarity was that there wasn’t enough information 3 weeks ago, and even as it was more transmittable, the PEOPLE had a clear stage where they COULD avoid contact, but they thought that covid would keep the holiday spirit as well, so how did that end up? We can push for blame, or we can accept responsibility of avoiding contact. I myself was lucky, my family is either dead or on the other side of the freakin planet, so avoiding was easy. I did not take time to have a festive holiday at DisneyWorld, or HarryPotter town for that matter. There is a pandemic and it is wrecking havoc on the world. Did anyone catch that news? 

We all knew there would be more cases, but even some scientists are reeling from the 183,000 cases a day and that is not even the worst, the world is facing 1,000,000 cases a day at present, a stage it never had before and even as I was right to see the healthcare systems collapse, it is happening a lot sooner than I expected and I take no fun on that, because doctors and nurses are collapsing and that means that if you need medical assistance, you can check yourself in and lie in some corridor, the hospitals will be out of beds a per today I reckon, the fact that they needed close to 8,000 beds almost a week ago implies that the NHS will not be able to deal with the pressures for much longer and if hospital staff runs home to care for their loved ones, I will not blame them. The news as we saw it yesterday ‘Police appeal after ‘appalling’ attack on a test and trace centre by anti-vax protesters’, my point of view is simple, you can all go home and die for all I care. Hospital staff can leave you to rot wherever you fall down and the unvaccinated are (as I personally see it) not allowed covid hospital care unless these people pay privately upfront!  When I see “Video footage from the scene of the Milton Keynes Theatre showed that children were frightened while the rioters abused staff and appeared to be stealing equipment”, I am bloody well losing it. Let these wankers die of covid, let them pay for covid hospital care and let everyone know who they are. So far I have taken delight in over two dozen obituaries of anti vaxxers, they all died of covid, so I like my odds and I would like it better if you all protected the hospital workers from these idiots. 

In all, is it true? Did we never see the drop-off coming a mile away, or were we trying to avoid staring at it. I get it, and I do not lay blame if this was your position, the issues becomes larger if you avoided what was clear in sight, went through life ignoring covid, masks, vaccines and distancing, when you ignored all those factors I believe that you are in a stage where you did whatever you could to die earlier in life. Do not get me wrong, it is your right to do so, but at that point you need to accept responsibility of what you decided on and not blame all the other parties that could have seen some things coming (Boris Johnson), yet there was a scientific absence of actions, political people delaying votes. It is hard to understand that, I get it and I feel needy to blame them, but then we get those pesky scientists giving us that this is a mild version. No one did the proper number games, which is why I saw issues all over the field two weeks ago and I was also in the believe that there was a little more time than we actually have and that is on me, I take responsibilities for my choices, but I kept at least 4 out of the 5 elements in check, so I feel fine (unless I get covid, then I will feel miserable for a few days). 

There is plenty of blame to go around and politicians are not free from blame and they need to be asked serious questions, questions from serious people (aka the labour clowns are out of bounds). To be honest, if anyone told me that I would end 2021 by holding Ed Davey in higher regard than Jeremy Corbyn or Keir Starmer I would have called them bonkers, but apparently miracles to happen, and there you have it. All kinds of drop-off points, some we saw, some we saw a mile away and some creeped up on us. 

So when we see more politicians starting their blame game, we need to consider that this is a setting we have not seen in 100 years (Spanish Flu) and now there is a vaccine, those people never had one and we are all skeptical on vaccines? Really? And when the UK crosses the 200,000 cases and family members are left to die, do you still think that being an anti-vaxxer is about you living or you betting coached to die? What is the clever move? I am going with living longer, but I am an incurable optimist, and I will happily join the people wishfully thinking that a female Hollywood star is knocking on my door hoping that she can stay warm in my bed, yes at present that is a lot more realistic than the spouting of BS by anti-vaxxers, and that is saying something.

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December 28, 2021 · 04:42

Card or Con? Friend or Foe?

Forbes got my attention, just as I was reconsidering part of something that happened a few months ago. It was the article https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/03/20/i-need-medication/ titled ‘I need medication!’ It reverberated in me as I took notice of Forbes (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2021/12/27/is-it-time-to-disrupt-your-call-center/)there I got served the quote that matters, it was “I recently received a letter from a major credit card issuer. To process my application, they needed some additional information and verification. The problem? I had not applied for a new credit card. The letter was valid, but the application was fraudulent. The letter instructed me to send the required information for verification or call a toll-free number, with no option to text or chat. I opted to call the toll-free number. This was truly a call center, not a contact center.” The setting where we have “Monday morning, I navigated the maze again and got into the hold queue where I was informed my hold time was one minute. Success! Two hours and twenty minutes later I hung up. I looked up the credit card fraud phone number for the provider and called them. Within moments, I was connected to an agent. Yes, she would be able to help me. Before I could speak, I was transferred to — you guessed it — the same number I had called previously.” Here we get a setting, a setting that takes hours, in that time all kinds of fraud could have been commenced. Of course there is all kinds of chances that Forbes was adding the spice of drama, but I think it is simpler than that, there is a failing in Fintech as a whole. It seems that it is about revenue and for the most they will not care about the people, no matter what claim they make. If there was a true customer service then there would be checks and balances, there would be more than “To process my application, they needed some additional information and verification.” I believe that this is not an American issue, it is a European, a British, and Australian, a Canadian and several other nations. A massive failing in Fintech and the policy makers and lawmakers are falling behind, no matter what the excuse, they are falling behind. 

We see some laces giving us numbers (they call it statistics).

  • In 2018, $24.26 Billion was lost due to payment card fraud worldwide
  • Identity theft makes up 14.8 percent of reported fraud
  • 69 percent of fraud starts with a consumer being contacted by telephone or email, such as overdue loans or prize scams

Those were the numbers, now we see: 

  • Instances of identity theft by credit card fraud increased by 44.6% from 271,927 in 2019 to 393,207 in 2020
  • Identity theft by new credit card accounts increased by 48% in 2020.
  • From 2019 to 2020, the number of identity theft reports went up by 113% and the number of reports of identity theft by credit cards increased by 44.6%.

This shows (to some degree) that the larger stage is Fintech and a much better system is required, a much larger check needs to be in place. The fact that a consumer got “they needed some additional information and verification” could be seen as evidence. Overall systems are designed as ‘customer friendly’ all whilst it is (as I personally see it) a system for automated credit allocation not allowing a person to take time to reconsider, a straight push for credit and spending sprees. What happens if credit cards are treated like the acquisition of a pet? To set the stage of a ‘cooling off period?’ Is it that weird to let the person going for the credit reconsider for 24 hours? 

In this day and age there is a larger concern, it is not merely that we see the passing of 5,419,538 people, a large amount of them might be facing all kinds of fraud and hardship and that passes on  to the next of kin who are already devastated. 

However, it is not all Fintech. Forbes also gives us “I received a phone call from another card issuer’s fraud department. Their question was simple: Did I apply for one of their cards? When I responded no, they immediately flagged it as fraud and advised me to check my credit reports for other suspicious activity. Their systems analysed the same data available to the first bank and flagged it as possible fraud.” So some are better than others, the question becomes, how can the system be improved? That is the real conundrum and the customer service part is essential in all this. Whether we look at a Friend of Foe solution, whether we have a connected bank or not. I reckon that there is a solution to implement blockchains that allow for a much more secure station, a setting that is not propagated. What if the block chain is in two parts? A part that only the consumer has, one part that the bank has, one can check the other, yet a new bank will not have that part, only the current bank has it, a setting that could limit the damage we see with 

  • Identity theft by new credit card accounts increased by 48% in 2020.

It is not a perfect setting (yet) but when we consider the part I wrote about in the earlier blog. “To make sense, I need to take you back to the 80’s. There was a fab in those days, radio’s had a sort of enhanced METAdata part, so when a song was playing, you saw the band and the title in your display. It is almost like someone took that idea and put it on steroids, I cannot think of another explanation, what is more, I have no idea what my brain was working out. It is like someone figured out to hide more than a FoF (Friend or Foe) message in the radios broadcasting, with some cypher that gave the relevant information to any visor it faced. Yup, quite the ride and it went on for some time in my dream, the arrows had numbers, but the numbers made no sense to me, but to the co-pilot they made a lot of sense. They were following along the path of a canal with several branches, and the arrows were pointing along the canals they were on, several (not all) pointing in some sort of flight guidance setting.” So what happens when block chain meta data points at the actual person, not the applicant. There might be a station where we see that the 48% increase dwindles down by a lot, optionally arresting a lot of fraudulent players in the process. This is not a given, it is a mere thought, but I am trying to consider a new approach, one that a lot of players are not making, I am not saying that they weren’t doing anything, because I cannot answer that question, yet as I see it a lot of issues are ignored due to ‘customer friendly’ issues, whilst it tends to benefit fraudulent behaviour a lot more. 

And it is essential, because in 5G this station will get a hell of a lot higher and the Law, Big Tech and Fintech are not ready, none of them seem to be. However, that is merely my take on the issue.

Enjoy the day.

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December 24, 2021 · 20:04

Google and the militant woman

I was underway to consider and learn about the Chengdu J-20 Mighty Dragon. I am till focussed on getting my 3.75% bonus from China and selling a heap of these to Saudi Arabia will seal the deal. I reckon that selling the goods amounting to $2,000,000,000 will seal my retirement deal, I will get a few additional services sold, but I am not greed driven. So whilst I was setting up the presentation on the versatility of the stealth systems, it was then that I saw the flaw in the Indian Indian Air Chief Marshal B.S. Dhanoa presentation on the Sukhoi Su-30MKI. I rechecked the files several times, someone there was tying the cat to the bacon! I reckon that unless the Chengdu was flying right in front of that Sukhoi, the Chengdu could never be seen, for me and my capitalistic nature, this is good. You see, Iran is all over those sexy Russian beasts and so they should; America and the UK will not do business with them, as such two remained and they chose Russia. Now the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia will end up with the better racehorse of the sky and I should get the bonus of my desire. So it was around that moment when my memory took me back to 1987. I got exposed to Framework 2, it was an interesting and short lived introduction. I was already on board with Ashton Tate, dBase 3+ was revered by me and in the two years that followed I created database systems, container systems and I found out how people in Rotterdam were cooking the books. All with one program and it was running on an IPM PC XT. Two years later with the Nantucket Clipper compiler I went off to the races to a much larger degree and that is where my programming skills stayed. I only blame myself, there was too much infighting, to much politics on software decisions, who had the best friends, not who had the superior software and in that era Frameworks 2 was lost to the crowd, what had the potential to crush Lotus, set limits on Microsoft Office and a few other beasties was drowned in marketing disasters. 

This matters, you will catch on soon enough. It was then that my mind took a leap. You see Apple, Google, Amazon, Disney, HBO and a few others are on the fence. They are in a spending setting that goes nowhere. They think it is, they claim that others will solve it and they are ignoring the larger danger that is staring them straight in the face.

You see they all make the claim that Final Draft is the bees knees. I agree it is good, it really is but it is set to the singular writer, I had version 6 at some point, it is now at version 12, so improvements will have been made and the industry calls it the standard. But what decides that standard? Final Draft, the writer or the industry and its needs? 

There is the rub, when you see that they are all relying on larger series, all hoping to be the next game of thrones. In that era you need a better solution, a much better solution. You need something that has the abilities of Frameworks 2, a Microsoft successor (OneNote) and take it all to the next level. A system where the writer writes and can set the backstory to any person, any object and any event. You can then set the view to a moment and see where everyone and everything is. The power is to add to the writer, not limit the writer. So the writer can or his writing to set text segmentations. He can flag people, he can flag objects and he can flag places, and so on.

The story book now gets an upgrade, the stage of 3+ people keeping track of it all one system does so and when that system passes the industry standard, places like Netflix and Disney will jump at the chance, you see whomever has THIS advantage gets to shape the industry. It is the one who is the most efficient and it is the one that shows that savings are made, As long as the producer sees the magic moment of 189% profit being passed that is the one who wins, you can make more money, or limit expenses and in this world the one who limits the expenses has the clearer field to win that game, go look for yourself, the knowledge is out there. I am simply amazed that no one thought this through. Not the militant woman (Amazon) and not Google. 

Me? I do not care, this is not the place where my strengths are, but if it is you take this idea and make it the new industry standard. My Christmas present to you. So enjoy the idea or throw it aside if it is not for you, which could be fair enough as well. And it is now 19:41 (pure coincidence), so it is your early Christmas present for the year. 

Getting back to my (upcoming) bonus, I just realised that intelligence analyst Robert Gates copied to some degree the deception that Air Marshall B.S. Dhanoa started in 2018 by downplaying the significance of the Chengdu J-20 by questioning how stealthy it would be, they all forgot how stealthy it could become and by downplaying that part, they optionally squandered funds to keep equal. That made me realise that it is possible that the fuel tanks were upgraded, consider two hardpoints that are weapons or auxiliary tanks, now consider a new kind of hardpoint that can have both. A fully armed J-20 with an additional 12% range, a side none of the adversaries considered. I cannot prove this part, but it made sense, and the images I saw 2-3 years ago gave me unwittingly the idea, the shapes were off, this was a way to have both, not aerodynamically reasoned, but a tactical choice. A side ignored by all, oh I hear the sleigh-bells ringing for me too (I am allowed to delusional at this point), for me it is about to be Christmas too. 

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December 23, 2021 · 23:16

Getting a mute to lead the blind

Confused? Good! It has been going on for a little while, but Al Jazeera heads the setting of others with ‘Is the US crackdown on spyware firms just getting started?’, the article (at https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/12/22/is-the-us-crackdown-on-spyware-firms-just-getting-started) gives us “The Biden administration blacklisted Israeli spyware firm NSO in November, but experts say more needs to be done.” Well, that might b e nice, yet the absence of evidence means that they take to the streets with the stupid and flammable people. It becomes even worse with “a collaboration by Amnesty International and a coalition of media outlets – revealed that NSO’s software was sold to authoritarian governments that used it to spy on political leaders, journalists, executives and human rights activists, including people close to murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.” As I personally see it, it was a collection of wannabe’s and fakes. They are that because evidence was not ever presented. And now the plot thickens, you think it does not? Well hold on, we are about to really up the throttle on this.

You see Bloomberg hands over the evidence I claimed all along. I wrote in several articles that if that list of 10,000 numbers was real the NSO Group would have a $400,000,000 piggy bank. But Bloomberg gives us ‘Pegasus Spyware Maker NSO Group Throws Cash at New Ventures to Survive’, where we are treated to “Israeli spyware firm NSO Group burned through most of its cash this year in a desperate bid to move past the scandal surrounding its phone-hacking tool Pegasus, according to a person with knowledge of the matter and private financial documents seen by Bloomberg News”, this could be seen as implied evidence that the money was never there, as such the list has to be (to a larger) part fake. Something I saw in less than 5 minutes, but all these wannabe essay writers You know, the one the Guardian has in Washington DC, as well as a wannabe essay writer at the United Nations with an outspoken hatred of Saudi Arabia. All going on flames and friends, but not a lot of evidence. Last Week at Wired we also get ‘Google Warns That NSO Hacking Is On Par With Elite Nation-State Spies’, but I will get back to that. You see the Bloomberg article (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-12-21/nso-group-burned-up-most-of-its-cash-to-shift-away-from-pegasus) also gives us “Two American funds have expressed interest in NSO’s Eclipse technology — which can detect, commandeer and land drones — and in its new big-data analytics platform, for which the company signed its first contract this quarter, the person said. Pegasus would either be shut down or brought under the same umbrella as the other businesses in a bet that U.S. ownership would improve its standing, according to the same person.” In this I personally think that these American Funds can go and get fucked (apologies for the language), you see if the NSO is on a blacklist, the Americans can go try and make it run on a kite. 

Although, there is every chance that China, Russia and optionally Saudi Arabia might want these technologies. So as we consider Wired giving us “The exploit mounts a zero-click, or interaction-less, attack, meaning that victims don’t need to click a link or grant a permission for the hack to move forward. Project Zero found that ForcedEntry used a series of shrewd tactics to target Apple’s iMessage platform, bypass protections the company added in recent years to make such attacks more difficult, and adroitly take over devices to install NSO’s flagship spyware implant Pegasus.” You see what Google (Apple too) isn’t telling you is that the transgression was possible to begin with. This is not some nerd in his mothers basement. This is the kind of person that can equal if not surpass both the NSA and GCHQ. More importantly both Google and Apple were not prepared, so just how many gaps are there in mobile phones? You want to complain about Huawei and their security dangers? Google and Apple are doing that all by themselves, just like Cisco did, but you probably missed those articles. Credit to Cisco of alerting everyone to this, but the media was eager to ignore it, much sexier to accuse Huawei without evidence.

So whilst the White House idiot gave the people a blacklisting, we get:  “NSO issued a statement at the time saying it was “dismayed” by the Biden administration’s decision and that its technologies “support US national security interests and policies by preventing terrorism and crime”” So now the parts are here, we get to my use of ‘White House Idiot’, fair enough! You see, as the finances show that members of the media have been lying (optionally by not vetting information). We also see that the members of the NSO Group might sell to anyone BUT the Americans. A stage that will cost America greatly, especially if China acquires this technology. So after they squandered weapons sales to Saudi Arabia (I am still hoping for my 3.75% bonus on sales to China), the setting is now that one of the most sophisticated pieces of intrusion software might end up where no one wanted it to go, it reminds me of the old saying regarding ‘A cornered cat’, and it serves the mother goose brigade as I personally see it and you can see it too, you merely need to look at the actual claims and the fact that we see words like ‘alleged’, we see ‘might be infected’ and we see no clear number system. No dashboard that gives optional validity to the claims by wannabe essay writers. 

You know what? I am slightly too angry. First the yanks go all out on Huawei whilst evidence was never presented, now we see that the 5G networks are AT BEST a mere 50% of what Saudi Arabia has and in case of the US it is a mere 1.4% of 1%, it is THAT slow. Now we see the same exercise and it will be anyones guess who ends up with the NSO group software. It will be up to the NSO group to decide, yet I feel strongly that it should never end up in American hands. A person should not be allowed to be THIS stupid and being given a slice of cake, if it does happen, it better be valued at several billions. If you are THIS stupid, you cannot be much of a software maker, so pay you will, optionally Google could buy it to make their hardware more secure. It is a stretch and it is a steep price, but it could mean that the Apple supremacy ends and that might be worth a bag of coins to Google. 

Yet the best moment was when I saw that the media nailed their own coffin (the finance bit), so whilst Wired and the Washington Post did the right thing, the others can take a long walk of a short pier as far as I see it. Oh yes, the Wired article was at https://www.wired.com/story/nso-group-forcedentry-pegasus-spyware-analysis/ 

One day until Christmas, I reckon it is that time of the year when we take a little more time to see what weapon systems are out for sale. I need a new hobby!

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December 21, 2021 · 20:38

When will people learn?

This is not the first time time that I go all out against a Guardian essay writer (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/20/un-backed-investigator-into-possible-yemen-war-crimes-targeted-by-spyware) So lets take you through this track of what I regard to be stupid bumbles. The title is fine ‘UN-backed investigator into possible Yemen war crimes targeted by spyware’, it is what is reported on, but the stage quickly changes with “a panel mandated by the UN to investigate possible war crimes – was targeted in August 2019, according to an analysis of his mobile phone by experts at Amnesty International and the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto.” Why is this important? Well we are not given an iota of evidence on how that was established. More important, we have heard of the experts of Citizen Lab, but who has heard of the experts at the UN? More important, why is this shown 2 years later (aka roughly 840 days)? So then we get to be off to the races. We now get the French Fairy tale division giving us “Jendoubi’s mobile number also appears on a leaked database at the heart of the Pegasus Project, an investigation into NSO by the Guardian and other media outlets, which was coordinated by Forbidden Stories, the French non-profit media group.” This is an issue as I had shown (source: Washington Post) in my story ‘Retry or Retrial?’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/07/28/retry-or-retrial/) with ““reporters were able to identify more than 1,000 people spanning more than 50 countries through research and interviews on four continents: several Arab royal family members, at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists, 189 journalists, and more than 600 politicians and government officials — including cabinet ministers, diplomats, and military and security officers. The numbers of several heads of state and prime ministers also appeared on the list”, no evidence mind you, merely statement and boasting. I call it boast, because we see there that the Amnesty’s Security Lab examined 67 smartphones all whilst close to 50% had an inconclusive test. If this is 67, what about the other 49,933?” In this there was another side that no one considered. The list represented $400,000,000 in revenue and the NSO Group never had that, more important, none of these essay writers EVER published a dashboard showing where the 1,000 people were, there the other 9,000 were. If there is a phone list, there is a location and a dashboard on these numbers was never released, something I would do in the first few hours. 

Then we get the other clown (at the UN) with a clear hatred of Saudi Arabia “Agnes Callamard, the secretary general of Amnesty International, who previously served as a UN special rapporteur, called the news of Jendoubi’s alleged targeting “shocking and unacceptable”” It is that much of a setting, the article goes longer into blah blah mode, but no evidence is ever given to us. And it is then that we see a pie in the face on the clowns involved. We get “It suggests further reprehensible evidence of the Saudi authorities’ utter disregard for international law, their willingness to do anything to maintain their impunity, and it demonstrates yet again a complete disrespect for the United Nations, multilateral instruments and human rights procedures.” And why do I state it like that? In the previous article we see “In this Shalev Hulio is right that he is “continuing to dispute that the list of more than 50,000 phone numbers had anything to do with NSO or Pegasus”, I would too and I found a lot of the disputable issues within an hour, I wonder how shortsighted the media was when they decided to reprint what the Washington Post gave them.” This does not mean that the NSO Group and Saudi Arabia are innocent, but it calls in question the evidence presented. The verge and the Washington Post had issues with that list and I found another issue that could have been verified, as such we see a Stephanie Kirchgaessner who in 3-4 articles reduced the Guardian to a mere level of the Daily Mail, what a lovely way to end 2021, perhaps its editor Katharine Viner might do well by internally vetting what is being published, and perhaps she is part of the setting. Let well, I never stated that Saudi Arabia was innocent, but the fact that the NSO Group cannot see WHO infected (if that was the case) the phone of Kamel Jendoubi’s mobile phone, what other matters did these essay writers ignore to get a nice little hate piece against Saudi Arabia?

When will people learn that evidence is where it is at and several sources have debated the validity and the correctness of that list, and in all those months, no. one decided to look into the list and give us all a dashboard, weird is it not? I am not stating that Shalev Hulio, or Saudi Arab ia is innocent, but there is no presented evidence that they are either, as such the Daily Mail 2 (the Guardian) has a lot of making up to do, but perhaps they are merely doing what politicians and stake holders are telling them to do.

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