The joke on any corporation

Yes, there are corporations that are comfy and good and there are corporations that due to hiring practices and whether they rely on hiring teams or recruiters are soon to be seen as a joke. It all started with ‘The over-qualified workers struggling to find a job’ (at https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20220705-the-over-qualified-workers-struggling-to-find-a-job). There we see several connecting issues, but what caught my eye was “In some instances, recruiters can see workers applying for positions apparently ‘below’ their current career level as a red flag”, you see there are two problems with that. The first is their subjective view, one that is often given to them by superiors who have lost all connection to a working force that is now beyond their comprehension. The second one is that I had been looking for something for almost 8 years. The fact is that this boss is a lot better than the previous two. I had actually forgotten what it was to be treated like a person. That last part is on me, but it is still unnerving how the workaholic setting took over my life and made me less than human. So there are issues all over the field and as this work force is experiencing a new breath of life. Bosses that treat their staff good (like mine now) will suddenly find an abundance of interest, because everyone wants to work for such a boss. 

So it is a new sight to work for, in an age of shortage a lot of people will have learned that more pay is second best to nice treatment. The second issue is seen in ““In hiring, you have to act paranoid,” he says. “If someone is coming down a level or two, and they’ve likely already achieved what the role offers, then you have to ask questions about their motivation.”” The recruiter is again in short supply of brain matter. It is old way thinking, the idea that a good boss with prospects in 1-3 years is preferable than a new challenge with no future in sight is beyond their scope of vision. Knowing you can do the job matters, it always did, but the Deloitte idea of a bigger future is still on their brains, even though beyond Deloitte and half a dozen firms that idea will never be delivered on, merely speculated on. I reckon that a player like Deloitte is one of the few that actually delivered on their mission statement. The rest will hide behind “It is a complex situation and we are feeling the market right now” is an excuse that was acceptable 10 years ago but it is obsolete now. And it is worse when you see the impossible way where Amazon is burning through  the global workforce. There is every chance that they will become the first undesirable employer for the working class (packaging and shipping). Fortune reported less than a month ago ‘Amazon’s warehouse problems? It’s running out of workers to hire, and has too much space’, it had become a place where proper robotics and automation would have made all the difference, but there is a chance that they could buckle before that point is reached. So in all this as we see temp agencies and recruiters seeking people, they had ventured on the wrong highway and when we see “In turning down such workers, employers may say they’re too experienced for the position. Sometimes, they inform them that they’re simply not the best fit for the company.” We suddenly see the failure that Apple stores engaged in, to seek the average person, not the inspiring one that is handled by a senior to get that person on board for the Apple frame of mind. Look in any Apple store, all young, dynamic and in some cases clueless past the Apple articles they promote. Some will try to adjust their way of thinking and that is good, but those who wrongly assessed a person will not just lose that person, it will lose that persons friends as well. You see in this atmosphere of hiring shortage the recruiters relying on capturing resume’s with fake jobs will not survive for long, the ones who did a fair job and adjust to a new working atmosphere will be around a lot longer. You can watch it happen in the short term at a recruiter agency near you. As I personally see it they all had the same flaw, instead of collecting resume’s they should have engaged with the candidate and whether it was their boss who told them, or their own insight that 500 resume’s will get them their bonus faster than engaging with 50 candidates is a numbers game, but I reckon that any recruiter that engaged with 50 candidates will have a much better 2022 than the other one. Mark my words.

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Today in the price is right

Yes, that is at times the question. What is something valued at and what are the reasons and facts of this valuation. The Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/08/elon-musk-buy-twitter-withdraw) gives us ‘Elon Musk withdraws $44bn bid to buy Twitter after weeks of high drama’ Yes, it was high end drama, and it was high end drama because the media doesn’t like Elon Musk and because they should have known better, but in their race for digital dollars, they really do not want all the facts to come out. Even as we are given “Mr Musk is terminating the merger agreement because Twitter is in material breach of multiple provisions of that agreement, appears to have made false and misleading representations upon which Mr Musk relied when entering into the merger agreement, and is likely to suffer a Company Material Adverse Effect” yes legalised porridge this is, but it is a setting of a truth, one that the media was clearly aware of. And we see the dice roll high when we are given “Musk and his lawyers accused Twitter of withholding information about the number of “spam” accounts on the platform. This week, the company revealed that it was suspending more than 1m spam accounts a day.” As such we need to take a much stronger look at “This week, the company revealed that it was suspending more than 1m spam accounts a day”, and this has been going on for a while. I saw some data that indicated that not 5%, but well over 20% was fake, a reliable source (which I discussed) earlier gives us (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/06/08/what-the-media-silences/) ‘What the media silences’, a setting that is closer to 50%, that is a really high number, but with the Ukrainian war, Covid and Chinese trolls the number of fake Twitter accounts is going through the roof. And this source has ACTUAL data, data that they collected over years. And when that is proven, even if the evidence shows that it is only 30% (speculative) it implies that either Twitter was incompetent as they see only 5% fake accounts, or they were intentionally fraudulent. I cannot tell which of the two it is but the media had a much larger sight on this FOR YEARS and they did nothing. Now they try to use it to flame for a little longer, but consider that the media was lying to you for years, knowingly keeping us in the dark, I reckon that Twitter might be safer in the hands of Elon Musk. And in this Jack Dorsey has a lot to explain, no matter how the cake knife falls. As I personally see it, he was either incapable of keeping Twitter safe, or he was intentionally grossly overpricing Twitter.  I am willing to let him explain what it is, I feel certain that Elon Musk is dying to hear that part of the equation as well. Either way, he wins, a setting that was never in question.

So when we see “Musk stood to take control of a social media network with more than 200 million users. An avid, but critical user of the platform, he had vowed to push through various reforms, including relaxing its content restrictions, ridding the platform of fake and automated accounts and shifting away from its advertising-based revenue model.” Is anyone wonder if this is including the fake accounts? You see, this would amount to a maximum of 100 million users and if we are to believe some facts, Nicky Minaj has 25,449,548 follower at present, this amounts to 25%, so I reckon that Elon Musk could buy that account for less then 10% of what Twitter is asking. That is one way of doing it, and consider that of all the users one in four is following Nicky Minaj, what is the actual value of Twitter? You merely have to look at it from another side. But that is merely my view on the matter.

 

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The dream that teaches

This is not some article, this is a story, a story about a dream, a dream I had. In this dream mankind was done for, greed finally won and this planet was going down fast. But there was hope, a ship was made, a ship that looked a lot like the one we saw in the movie Titan AE (yes, the cartoon). Anyway, the ship was loading. The people were boarding through 8 gates each quarter of the ship got two gates, a high and a low one, and they all went to different floors. I was walking down one floor, the gate had two trenches, the normal one and a first class one. I was in the first class one, not because I was a VIP, but because I think I was a crew member. As I was going through the gate the doors started to close, there was a door every 100 meters and I had passed the 6th or 7th door and I saw the 8th door slowly closing. Just for a second I hesitated, then I started to run as fast as I could, I got past door 8, I had to duck for the 9th door and the 10 I got by diving and rolling just before the door would close. I ran over the gangway into the ship.

I was in the ship, and I saw confusion everywhere. Then I felt the shudder, the engines were preparing a launch. I shouted people to get into any cabin, any room with seats and buckle up. I ran towards the hatches, they were closing too. I saw the panic of people still outside. There was nothing I could do. I ran to a comm board, I tried to raise the alarms, but my security clearance was not high enough. I felt the strong shudder, it was lift off time. I saw a chair ran to it, sat down and strapped in. On the other side of the room was another man with three women, all strapped in, all looking confused and all but one passengers. One of the women was a deckhand, or steward. I could not tell, but her rank was decently higher. Lift off and the g-forces were pushing me in the chair, the ship was taking off, leaving well over half outside and who knows what supplies never made it onboard. I felt the acceleration and I lost consciousness, or I drifted away in some sleep like statement. It was four minutes later when I came round, at least that is what my watch indicated. I looked at the others The officer was already on the systems trying to look for an explanation. I introduced myself. Engineering assistant Lazarus, Ma’am! She nodded. Do you know what happened? I shook my head. Not a clue, I was before door 8 when they started going down. I ran as fast as I could and here I am. She nodded. We need to get to the bridge, follow me engineer. I followed her, she seemed sure and determined. Just the I like my officers to be, knowing what to do next. We got to the central ring where the elevators were, my ears started to hear something odd, I could not put my finger on it. But she opened the door and entered, she looked around and as I entered she seemed to be speaking, but no sound came out. I suddenly remembered the white noise. I grabbed her arm and yanked her out of the elevator just as the doors were closing. We got out, but barely. She looked almost haunted. Tried to shout at me, but still no sound. I pointed at her mouth and shook my head. I pointed at my ears and shook my head. I think she got the message. She was still silent, this was going to take some time. We walked to another elevator a quarter of the ring further. I heard almost the same sound, my ears were affected as well, not as much as the voice. The elevators were rigged, but why? Then I remembered, the AI will monitor any usage. But its camera’s would pick up our gestures and voices. It could lipread as well, so the action made no sense. But for now we were stuck on this floor. 

This was the first part of the dream, the dream took me forward instantly (by a lot), the AI was partially hacked, not the AI itself, an AI cannot be hacked, but the AI was Arabic, the hackers did away with the profile parameters, they disabled linguistic options, gestures and lipreading. The AI would not know what was going on. In the end the AI was hacked, not by attacking the AI, but by hacking the access ports to the AI and disabling access to it. Each port was replaced by a simulated null: port that streams data and numbers, but the numbers would make no sense and as the AI took more resources to figure out the data given, less resources, other than the bare minimum would be available for all other duties. A hacking achievement never seen before and the hackers ended up with nearly all planetary goods and not much people to dump into space. The biggest heist in history and the witnesses that were still around were floating in space, not alive at all.

As I said, greed won, in the end, it would infect other places too, that is the outcome of greed, it never ever stops. 

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Timing is not always a good thing

That is the stage we at times debate. Corporations are all about timing and getting the timing right so that they can profit the best. OK, that is to some degree to be expected as corporations are depending on their shareholders to keep them employed, so they want the best deal possible. It is the price of doing business. And what about governments? You see Al Jazeera gives us ‘UK warship seized ‘advanced Iranian missiles’ bound for Yemen’ (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/7/7/uk-warship-seized-advanced-iranian-missiles-bound-for-yemen), for the most we would think yowza and happiness to all who sail here. Yet that is not the larger issue. The larger issue is “A British Royal Navy vessel seized a sophisticated shipment of Iranian missiles in the Gulf of Oman earlier this year”, it seems simple, but what happens to your opinion when I give the added part that this optionally happened in April. So three months of either dragging their feet, or trying to get something out of it. Is that really “work in support of an enduring peace in Yemen”, or is it opportunism. You see, there is more to this. I had several questions BEFORE I posted ‘The questions not asked’, which I posted on December 27th 2021, months before the UK Navy vessel finally was competent enough to find weapon smugglers from alleged Iran. The article (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/12/27/the-questions-not-asked/) gives us some of these issues, together with a very frustrated Colonel Turki Al Malki. 

Frustrated because the western media remained largely willing to ignore a decent amount of evidence, apart from the fact that there is no place to properly manufacture missiles and their electronic parts in Yemen. But the media was happy to ignore that fact, and now we see in Al Jazeera “Despite a United Nations Security Council arms embargo on Yemen, Iran has long been suspected of transferring rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, missiles and other weaponry to the Houthis since Yemen’s war began in 2014.” Yes, and in other news “Water is now proven to be allegedly wet” We can consider two parts. In the first, the west has had enough of Iran, or two the west is becoming too desperate for oil and will suddenly find the evidence that Colonel Turki Al Malki has been voicing loudly for a very long time. Of course there could the setting that common sense takes over and people are finally realising that they are at least 4 years late to the party, and in this case better late than never does not apply. Nor the stupid or the less so are allowed to hide behind this. Too much has happened and it is time for the media filters to be properly examined by open sources (not the ICIJ) and from there we might get some names that are also on some Iranian oily do gooders list, but that is merely speculation from my side. What is a given is that Iran will soon see that their games have an end date and some parties will stop whatever they can beforehand. They are realising that the time of filling their pockets are over and they will try to make a clean break, in the end there is no telling, but some will get away with it. 

In the end it took 8 years for the evidence to reach the media, are you realising that the media that speculated over a columnist that no one cared about seconds after each event with more and more wild conjecture, but the clear setting of missile transfers to a terrorist organisation doesn’t make the cut? Wake up, will you please? And this I give you before others will come with the excuse “The time was never right”, the time was always right, it was the NOW of that moment, that was the right time, especially in journalism. And they are every bit as guilty as I personally see it.

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A gamer darkly

That is what we are at times, a dark player in a field of poppies trying to remember where we were in the first place. It is not some riddle, at times most of us (including me) are clueless on where we go, yet we know we need to get there. It drove Ubisoft to fame, and even now as Ubisoft becomes less and less relevant to the gamers of today players like Guerrilla take over with their Horizon games. What was the world of Mass Effect and Assassins Creed became the world of Elden ring, Horizon and the heroin Eloy. Tomorrow it seems to be a stage of the last Horizon part, Hogwarts Legacy and Gotham Knights. And it is important that we address ‘seems to be’. You see, I have heralded moves to the streamers and there is every indication That they did not listen and Tencent did. You see, even as some state “Chinese tech giant Tencent is apparently planning to launch its own handheld gaming console, going by a patent spotted recently. (2021)” I do not think that people have any idea what gamers are about to get. You see this looks like a handheld Switch lookalike, but it isn’t. 

Jumping to the past
In 1989 Astral Software launched Archipelago. The game was decent enough, the graphics were not the greatest but with 1000 levels there was enough fun for everyone and in the end there was. Some called it ““one of the most original games I’ve seen, both in gameplay and in original concept”, with an “odd and eerie setting that works despite an eminently forgettable scenario”” Now consider that this was a game that was less than 1MB. Now reset that game with todays graphics, make it an offline game and when you consider that this was originally a 92% game, consider that this game (and well over a dozen others) could end up being 88%+ games. Now all the other streamers have a problem. They relied on ‘has-been’ Ubisoft to cater to their needs. A player that could not keep its eyes on the price and with what we were given this week

We now have two streamers that need to adjust image, adjust course on their streamers, or they will be surpassed by Tencent. Another field here China ends up getting the mustard (my 50 million console idea is still safe, I checked). And now that the facts are slowly seeping, I wonder what Netflix will do. Microsoft is not a player in this (merely a marketing idea), and if Tencent makes at least two steps in the direction I expect, before the end of this year Google Stadia will be a forgone lost solution to a direction gamers are not interested in, that leaves the Amazon Luna, it has options, but Tencent is seemingly directed into a field to capture the heart of gamers, something the others needed to have done long ago.

Even as Google is seemingly using the media to give us quotes like “After debuting to middling reviews, it had to suffer through a slowly growing library, a limited user base and the shuttering of its first-party studios. But Stadia is still alive and kicking, and Google intends to prove it next week.” They are in more trouble than they think, they relied on Ubisoft to solve their issue, but Ubisoft only tries to solve its own issues and now the earlier article makes more sense. Techspot gives us “In a nutshell: Ubisoft will decommission the servers of 15 games in the next two months, including some of the most popular entries in the Assassin’s Creed franchise. Most of these titles are about a decade old, so there are likely not that many people still playing the multiplayer components. However, users also won’t be able to download DLCs they previously bought for these games.” Gamers hate to loose parts, including DLC’s, and for the “so there are likely not that many people still playing the multiplayer components” could be translated into a stage where the 2-3 games per server idea was cast aside. Now, in many cases I do not care about the online parts, but Ubisoft made it part of the game (to embrace people), and now when revenue is king players are pushed out. Gamers will see this as a betrayal. In a time when Tencent is looking for gamers to push its IP forward, Ubisoft plays right into their hands and if they considered what I put online, gamers will get dozens of golden oldies. They will feel catered to and that seals the fate of Ubisoft and optionally Google too. They decided not to develop games and now that decision will bite them. 

We now get a new pool and the streamers (seemingly) are Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Netflix and Tencent. They will vie for a slice of the entire pie that includes Sony and Nintendo. These two will see the impact, but will not lose players, if anything these players will have a streamer on the side and that is where Tencent becomes really visible, over time they could get a much bigger slice of the $200,000,000,000 that is stated to be the pie of next year. Yes, we know that a lot of it will go to mobile games and that is exactly where Tencent will see the profit, catering to gamers, catering to online players, mobile gamers and their console can store it all, they played a beautiful hand. I personally hope that Amazon gets the push it needs, I do not care either way whether Tencent gets it, as long as Microsoft does not. There should not be any award for stupidity, should there be?

A stage I emphasised over two years ago and it is coming to fruition in the next 12 months. Although to be honest, I merely saw Microsoft as the loser and I did not see Tencent coming two years ago, now they are a much larger concern to the other players. But perhaps the Tencent console will be seen as spy equipment by the CIA, they still haven’t presented any real evidence on Huawei, so why should we expect to see any on Tencent?

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Interestingly unknown

It was the BBC that got me here. Their article ‘Arabs believe economy is weak under democracy’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-62001426) has a few debatable sides, but these debates come from a preset mind that did not have access to all the evidence (read: raw data). Yes, that would be my mind, but the setting is interesting. And the mental race get tarted with “Michael Robbins, director of Arab Barometer, a research network based at Princeton University which worked with universities and polling organisations in the Middle East and North Africa to conduct the survey between late 2021 and Spring 2022, says there has been a regional shift in views on democracy since the last survey in 2018/19.” And when we get to ‘Rise in people who agree the economy is weak under a democracy’ we see that nearly all of them went up, only Morocco remains under 50%, the rest is higher and Iraq gets up to nearly 75%. It is interesting that a question ‘This country needs a leader who can bend the rules to get things done’ There too Morocco is in a doubt, but so are the Palestinian territories, the rest is largely in favour of that statement. In most cases, the economic challenges are on most minds and that makes sense. Only in Tunisia, Iraq and Libya is corruption a much larger fish than other nations. It is when we get to the question ‘More than one in three people ran out of money to buy more food’, the question seems trivial, but the fact that it is 68% in Egypt seems OK, it is the fact that the same question scores below 50% in Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, and Palestinian Territories when we see the News from all kinds of sources the fact that food prices and hunger is not on the forefront in at least 2 nations comes across as weird to me, yet as I stated. I never saw the raw data and these results should be scrutinised. The lack of an N is several charts give rise to debate, Also, it seems nice to see percentages, but if Jordan has an N of 3500 and Libya has an N of 12500, the setting becomes slightly warped and weighting data is dangerous, especially when you compare different groups. There is a lot more, but that is not up for discussion without seeing the raw data and the complete report. But I am speaking too soon, you see at the end we see “The project interviewed 22,765 people face-to-face in nine countries and the Palestinian territories” yet the one thing I do not see it that the cultural stage towards government changes per region. You see Tunisia, I see Kibili, Sfax and Kef. And we can do that for each of the nations. Now it is possible that the Arab Barometer took all that in account, but I cannot tell at present and lets be clear. I am not attacking the article, or the results. I like the setting, but at all times I keep a skeptical mind awake. The setting that clearly shows the desire for strong leaders is nothing against a democracy, it is that democratic nations have largely shown nothing more than indecisiveness and ‘corporate corruption’ to coin a phrase. There is a lot more going on and the fact that the media is part of the problem is also a debatable setting in all this and the Arab nations have seen too much of that too, but that too is a debatable side in all this. In the end, the article is good reading and it does refer to sources and methodology. If only the BBC had thought a few matters through and added a few more parts, but as I stated, these thoughts are debatable, so I am putting myself under similar scrutiny, because I would hate to judge anyone on items that seem incomplete. And it is one of the final parts “It is of Arab world opinion, so does not include Iran, Israel or Turkey, though it does include the Palestinian territories. Most countries in the region are included but several Gulf governments refused full and fair access to the survey. The Kuwait and Algeria results came in too late to include in the BBC Arabic coverage. Syria could not be included due to the difficulty of access.” So the question is raised with “several Gulf governments refused full and fair access to the survey” Did that include Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Yemen? Yemen might be excluded for a few natural reasons, but the others? 

A setting that requires scrutiny, because the Arab voice with 6 missing voices? It does not make the other views invalid, merely debatable and optionally one sided as the UAE, Oman and Saudi Arabia are Monarchies, but that is merely my view on the matter.

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The responsive thinker

I got called out again. It happened during the day and there was a little too much profanity in the words, as such I assume it was an American. It was in regards to an article I wrote in April called ‘Creating magic’. The article (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/04/07/creating-magic/) is about the ‘magical drink’ called Giggle-water that mades its first appearance in Fantastic beasts and where to find them (2016). At some point (after the third movie) it dawned on me that this drink might not be wholly imaginary. You see, in the past Nitrous Oxide (laughing gas) was used by dentists. Now we have fruit-sugar (or fructose) with the formula C6H12O6. Now if we can connect a nitrogen to one of the oxygen parts we are in the clear. But it will not be that simple. 

I reckon that we need something like a strawberry of raspberry vinegar to get traction and that is me assuming a whole lot. I haven’t looked at chemistry since 1987, so its been a while. But if we can get that link working than this would be the added element to an alcoholic drink and we have the making of Giggle-water and with the hundred of millions of Rowling fans out there, there is a definite market for this drink. A drink that hundred of millions will try just for the hell of feeling less muggle? Oh you won’t need an egg timer to watch that line form. It is a little fun, because it was the Butter-beer bar in New York that gave me the idea of a printable display, so it is only fair I do something for that audience. 

As such the created idea for Giggle water. And it is only that, an idea. You see I was a decent chemist when I was young, but I saw the appeal of explosives a lot more than I saw the interest in Esther (a COOC joke), any chemist will get that one. So the idea of giggle water seems sound, but in the end only a real exploratory chemist will know (the offensive writer was no chemist, that is a certainty). As such I felt that a response was essential.

I never claimed it would work, if so, I would sell the idea to a player like Coca-Cola or Heineken. And I never did that, but perhaps someone over there in their free time can make the idea work. As such if one of these two players comes up with a workable solution, will their stock double or triple overnight? I honestly do not know, but then I did not care in the first place. I am still busy considering a new data format, a new database structure (an open one) specific for Augmented reality registration and searches. You see, when this market comes to a race, someone would want all that data protected, not everyone mind you, but corporate players would want that and that requires a new data format. I reckon it would be a combined matching system of MySQL with a Btree+ thumbprint, optionally with a linked blockchain element. As the number of AR elements increases the Btree+ element will become more and more important. Consider the benefits of the Btree setting and it foundation (it has downsides too), but an iterative search that illiminates 50% with every step. In year one this does not make sense, but by year three you are looking at a database with millions of AR elements. So consider 1,000,000 – 500,000 – 250,000 – 125,000 – 62,500. In 4 steps (less than 0.03 seconds) the database would have reduced the search by 99.93%, as such 0.07% remains to be searched. I think that is worth spending a little time on, don’t you think so?

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Polyphonistic

Even as I was writing the articles of the past few days, my mind was working on something else. I am not quite sure what it is working on, but it started as I saw the video of Eaton Mall and I mentioned that I had an idea for the jewellers to make use of Augmented reality as well. The application was actually quite simple and could be done on any AR enabled device. The idea was completed even before I wrote that article, but the brain kept on going in the background. You see, the idea was not merely to create a new market, it was to create an enhanced market drive that is not depending on revenue, but on knowledge. Consider the idea that I spouted yesterday. I feel certain that I am not the first to have that idea, I reckon that any greed driven American industrialist was on that page months ago. It was when the bookshop met the jeweller that the coin went to the second anvil (any neurologist can explain that one to you). The idea that started with the jeweller took a turn. You see, what happens when we create AR codes of a Faberge egg. Not one, but a dozen over pages. And we have a booklet So here are two images. 

In the first image we see merely see the covers and a small plastic screen. 

We open the book close to 90 degrees and then we can connect the plastic screen that was connected to the back, and also connect it to the front. And it might not be a book, merely an accessory that we can purchase once. The inside will have the printed page and when we look through out mobile or AR glasses onto the screen we now see an image of (for example) a faberge egg. And as we go through the pages, we can look at detailed shots of that egg in many ways and as we rotate the screen (and book) we see the 360 degree representation of that egg. And this could be any object, any piece of jewellery, specific jewellery we cannot normally see. As we see the image below, we see that side and that side alone, yet with AR we can do more and we could see more (and in 3d). We could have different codes for every part of the egg, showing us just how sensational these eggs are.

So as my brain was working out some of those details it was looking at all the other options that were out there and the idea to set AR to a much larger audience, outside the mall and inside the classrooms. It just took me until now for my brain to alert me that I had created a new idea. I will not call this my IP, this should be set to classrooms, all over the world. 

Enjoy!

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Everything must go

Yes, it is a term we see in fire sales and in all all kind of desperate needs. But lucky for the Ukraine there is a solution. After the war, the EU and US take possession of EVERYTHING in the hermitage. It might not be enough, but it should be enough to cover well over 50%, and the Russians could redecorate it for all the oligarchs who are not that welcome in Europe or the US. To some degree I feel for them, because there is no way that they were all aware, or all agree what is going on, and after they lost everything (thanks to Putin), they will need to stay somewhere and it better looks nice, so the Hermitage is a decent solution. It will be a bit barren after we take everything from it, but there are a few other museums, as such the Hermitage could be decently decorated as a refuge for oligarchs. If there is one oligarch I feel for, it would be Roman Abramovich. I do not know the man, but he was nuts about his Chelsea team. I personally do not care about football, so I cannot relate, but I can relate to loss of something a person worked on for that long. He became owner in 2003, and in that time the club won 18 major trophies, that is some achievement, you cannot deny that and a person that vested into a football club has his minds far away from the war machine of Putin. I reckon many will disagree with me, but that is how I see it. And his actions on keeping the club safe were highly commendable. 

It needs to be said, we cannot rule out all oligarchs, but if there would be even one, this man would be it. And this also relates to what comes next, the Russians might think that this is over, that this is going their way, but the EU and US are ready for them now, they are willing to take over Saint Petersburg as a breach for Russia. As we can see the Russians who were supposed to have the largest and most powerful army (they would be in first or second position) Now they are nowhere near that and as such Russia is about to face an army a lot stronger and better trained than the Ukrainian one. They were 21st on the military power list and they stopped and fought back an army a lot stronger than them. Now that the damage is all over the place, they have no reserves left for NATO making it also a very dangerous stage. It reminds me of the cornered cat and the weird jumps they will make. The problem is that Russia is also a nuclear state and even as they know that it will be the last move they ever make, Russia will not handover the treasures of the Hermitage, they are already in a stage of stealing grain, as such we will see that their position is sliding from bad to disastrous. And when you consider that the Hermitage has 3 million art pieces from all kinds of era’s, the idea that 2,755 billionaires would want to buy a piece of art (at discount) is not to be disregarded. And now as the BBC gives us “We need $750bn to rebuild country – Ukraine”, is see a simple sum. If all these billionaires spend $345 million, we end up with $963 billion. Solving the repair issues. I reckon that the costs will increase, so if we could get the upper echelon of these billionaires spend twice or three times that amount (with a little more discount) Ukraine would be in a better place. There is still all the confiscated oligarch materials, but I am actually not sure if that will all go the proper way. Some of this stuff is properly registered in trusts, so we might not get that much from that group. Yes, I heard all the noise, but in the end legal settings prevail and as such some of these oligarchs have their stuff securely set in paperwork. As such, I thought out of the box and I am setting the stage of confiscating 3 million pieces of art from ONE place. I do not think that anyone else had thought of that, or at least not in places I read materials. 

Russia has a few more places like that, but the Hermitage is perhaps the most famous one of them all. So let the bidding begin. I want an omelette tomorrow, So I am bidding $0.35 per faberge egg, 6 eggs make an omelette, so where would I deposit the $2.10 (plus shipping and handling)? You think that this is a joke, and it would be a bad one. I reckon that the ‘true’ friends of Putin are securing their hold on these art pieces even now as I am typing this. In the end, in 2023, what do you think the Russian state will be worth when new years day 2023 comes calling? You think it is long, but it is a mere 25 weeks away and at present the Ukrainian war has lasted now almost 4.5 months is nowhere near one, yet the Russian machine is running out of generals, colonels, fuel and a few other items. What do you think will happen when NATO knocks on the door at the border of Poland and Belarus. I reckon that they will not put Finland in a bind by going there to invade Saint-Petersburg, but the NATO navy could sail straight through to Saint Petersburg and use it as a beachhead (whilst confiscating the art in the Hermitage). These are pure speculations, I have absolutely no data supporting this, but I would take that route. Belarus will have to put up or shut up and from there it becomes a simple race to Moscow. With the Russians having so much damage, the rest of their equipment might not in a much better state. Just a thought!

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Awaiting new life

That is what we at times hope for. Some want to play the Last of Us on every Sony console, some want to return to the years of glory of master sergeant, we all have these moments. I am no different. I reckon my love for Spy vs Spy started in the 70’s when I discovered Mad Magazine. It took on new heights when the game came out on CBM64 in 1984, I think I got the game in 1986. I got an amiga version much later, but always the game was pretty good in embracing those who loved the comics. So when I recently learned that a later edition was cancelled because someone forgot to “ask the rights from DC Entertainment which owned the Spy vs. Spy IP.” OK, that was stupid, but it could be a windfall for DC Entertainment. Consider what we can do now. We can Make the game 3D, we can offer multiplayer on pretty much any system, we can select the intelligent NPC and above all, we can see the fun that the comics brought. We can have several modes. Starter, intermediate, Expert and actual Spy. We can set the stage a little different, we can have 6 and 8 options. With optional second window. The 6 and 8 options are different. We need to have at least one active trap and up to 5 or 7. We need one disarm scanner with options up to 5 or 7. So you can play offensive or defensive. And it becomes a challenge with 8 traps, so one trap is optionally never detected or used. The player decides and by selecting the NPC to be aggressive or passive it will select its traps and detectors (machine learning), then we can add the option of location and even if we include the levels we had in the past, we can add (or unlock additional stages). There is an option to play with two and the screen will be similar to the one we had in the past. We could offer a wink to Splinter Cell and add the Russian embassy level (adjusted for the new Spy vs Spy game experience), and there are so much other options to add. This would work great on the Nintendo Switch too. So this could be a new DC title on Sony, Google Stadia, Amazon Luna, Nintendo Switch, Netflix and whatever contraption Microsoft has. To be honest, it has been a while since we saw a game that was out on ALL hardware and the game does have options in my mind, but I am biased as my love for the characters never faded, not since the early 70’s. I reckon it merely awaits new life for the person with the guts to try this, optionally DC Entertainment might add this to their to-do list. There could even be a screensaver mode. Just select both sides to be NPC and watch how the machine learning mode kills itself. I wonder if anyone ever considered that?

Another day, another game in the limelight. And there is so much more good stuff, almost forgotten, but not by all, I hope to introduce you to some more. Yet soon it will be time to introduce the grandson of Hades to the adulterers and the punishment that could still exist today. It was not merely the fact that Medusa took the vow of celibacy, the fact that she committed adultery against Athena and the duties bestowed on her. And as we move, we return to the cave that still exists, but not in Greece, it is a cave on the mainland of Turkey, north of Cyprus. Sarpedon, now known as Incekum Burnu. So what happens when a new adulterer is added to the fold? What if the shortsighted lust of a girl, making one claim and then sleeping with another man. What happens when her reward is immortality as another Medusa? I wonder how dark I can make that story and what additional handles I could create.

Have fun. Oh and I apparently upgraded my house, the rains in Sydney gave me a free swimming pool, oh joy!

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