September 9, 2021 · 05:53

Lemon of the Century

Yes, you have seen it, we have all seen it in some form, but when was the last time you saw a genuine Lemon? Not to mention a Lemon of the century. You would think it is a near impossible task, but Lockheed Martin, an American company pulled it off. In thee cases it is so much sweeter if the accomplishment is American.

I made a case to sell (as a corporate individual) to sell the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia either the British BAE Typhoon, or the somewhat better match the Chinese Chengdu J-20. Now, this is not on principles, but the US making Saudi embargo after embargo, all whilst it is mere puppet play and there was no direct need to stop the sales, especially as the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was under direct attack by Houthi forces directly sponsored from Iran and the people were eager to ignore that fact. So there I was taking a stab at a 3.75% sales commission, and in light of a $11,000,000,000 sales ticket could bank me $412,500,000 over a few years. Now, I know, am I greed driven? Nope! But I am not walking away from such a massive mealticket! 

All that happened and was mentioned before, but now there are more reasons as ABC news gives us. The article ‘F-35 program’s future uncertain owing to design flaws, parts shortages and cost blowouts’ (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-08/f35-program-design-flaws-part-shortages-costs-opinions-divided/100431664) there we see “He said the combat jet currently had almost 900 design flaws, with seven considered critical.” This is given to us via Former US Marine Corps Captain Dan Grazier. So this is not out of thin air, this comes to us by decently informed people and at what point is anyone accepting a lemon with 900 design flaws? We get it, a plane with a current whole of life cost estimate of $2.3 trillion we need to consider that there is a massive flaw in the entire process. It becomes worse when you see and consider the Naval failure called Zumwalt class destroyers. That is two out of three, so now we merely need to add an army failure and the US forces will be 3 for 3. So how often do major projects on these scales fail? There is optionally the second stage where both China and Russia are not afraid for a war with the US, because the US is lacking in functional equipment. They have functioning 5th generation planes. I cannot tell if they are better, merely that they are. And I am am the mouse who loves that 412 million dollar cheese wheel, whether I retire or eat myself to death is all equally similar and there is a customer base who would want something that actually works so overall there is more than one seller and there is a definite buyer, so I am game.

Yet the article also gives us “It said that would grow to 40 per cent of jets grounded by 2030, if the repair backlog didn’t improve” this implies that the US airforce needs to grow by 250% to keep the effectiveness numbers of 2017, that is one hell of an investment. I am not denying what the pilots are saying, that it is a game changer that it will be effective, we get that, but it has 900 flaws, and there are a lot of questions in the background when we consider the seven critical problems. So when we consider the claim “Mr Grazier said the cost per flight hour in the United States was around $36,000” and the math man in me consider that at present there are (unverified numbers) “1,763 F-35As for the USAF, 353 F-35Bs and 67 F-35Cs for the USMC, and 273 F-35Cs for the USN” it would require the DoD $88,416,000 an hour to get it all in the air, in light of the Afghanistan clambake, which lasted 2 decades, count your losses today. Is someone doing the math here (apart from me)? This is a plane with 900 design flaws. So if China (or the United Kingdom) can beat these costs they have a real chance in getting a new customer in their arsenal and it is one that has money, so that part will be the smallest of concerns.

We could go all (overly) marketing and say:

Chinese
Hellbringing
Equalising
Negotiating
Goalseeking
Defence
Unit

But that might be slightly over the top, what matters is that the US has a real problem and, oh, that reminds me. Is that why they pulled out of Afghanistan? 40% of their flying capabilities wasn’t up to it? I know, it is grasping and it is speculation, but I am trying to get my hands on that 3.75% and that makes me a little giddy. With the Zumwalt it was the principle that it didn’t meet its need, it was too expensive and it was ugly as hell. I still hope to test my new stealth anti naval weapon on it, merely because it is just too ugly to see and congress never approved the shells needed to fire these guns, and a stealth ship with a Raytheon solution is just not a stealth ship. And as a $22,500,000,000 failure it is too expensive for such a failure be allowed. Consider that ABC ends the article with “To respect that dependency, we remain laser-focused on continuing to enhance the capability, affordability and availability of the F-35. With the help of partners and customers, I have no doubt we will succeed.” Which is all fair enough. Now consider that 12 nations have committed to ordering, now consider that if 3 leave that group (Singapore being the most interesting one) and China gets Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE on board as well, the stage changes on a global scale at that point. Now reconsider the military power play where we accept “There are developmental issues that come up because it is a very high technology advanced aircraft. Over time, these issues are resolved.” Yet 900 flaws imply that this will not be resolved until 2029, with spare parts and shortages of equipment lasting until an expected 2036. That implies that these players will not have a real effective airforce for well over a decade, so how many nations will get nervous on that premise and how many will consider a change (please do not change to Russian option, as they give me nothing). So in that light is there really nothing to worry about? And that is before we see the other 9 nations with billions invested all for… what for? 

So whilst I have nothing against Lockheed Martin (I really do not), being in the stage where they are now with 900 design flaws is just too weird. Yes we accept that it is a developing project, but design flaws imply that it is not developing, it was wrongly developed and as such the F-35 should still be in an earlier stage, that is until well over 600 flaws (and the 7 critical ones) were resolved ahead of where they are now. 

So here I am, just a man, a (really) poor man, hoping for his 3.75% before he retires and retirement is not that far away. And in all this, I remain optimistic, because I have things to smile at, especially if I get to test my creative sinking idea on the USS Zumwalt. Yes, it is a gasser (in more ways than one). So feel free to agree (or disagree) but when you see something that should be the lemon of the century, would you not shout that from the tallest building? Especially if it was your neighbour who bought the Ford Edsel. So Ford can now relax, Lockheed Martin surpassed their failure with an impressive larger one.

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September 7, 2021 · 18:41

As banks cut corners

There was news on ABC news, it was not really news, this was a stage that I saw coming a mile away and that was 5 years ago, yet the speed at which this is procreating is cause for concern. The article ‘Protecting yourself from phone porting and SIM card scams’ (at https://www.abc.net.au/everyday/protecting-yourself-from-phone-porting-and-sim-card-scams/100421586) is not just this, the entire COVID registration issues are making things worse. When we take notice of ““At 5:55pm, I got a text message from my telco. It said, ‘Hi, received your port out request for this service,'” he says. “By the time I tried to call them, my phone already went to SOS only. Before I could even react, my number was gone.””, you might think that this is an isolated case, but it is not, when we add ““They had my customer ID [for online banking], and you can do a password reset if you have the customer ID and mobile number,” he explains. “It was really professional. I had daily limit of $10,000, so they sent $10,000. They bypassed that limit by opening another account inside my account, which you can do online, and then they transferred another $10,000.”” There is. massive flaw, the banks refer to this as being customer friendly, I personally see it criminal friendly. All kinds of level of checks and balances are left out of the equation and for now we see banking party-lines that these matters are seldom, the people are protected and it can be reversed. Yet in 5G, within the next 2-3 years the costs will go beyond what the banks find reasonable and we are left with the costs, we are left with the impact and we are left outside in the cold. That is an almost given and matters are merely getting worse. 

The banks (to cut corners) are setting up more and more to be done online, all whilst proper security is lagging and there is a whole range of actions that will not and should not be allowed. I had to check and make sure that online banking was DISABLED, it makes a few issues a bit more hassle, but compared to the damage I could face 2-5 times a year it is a no-brainer. This is a mere beginning when we consider “If I want to change providers, before the [new] standard was put in place, I just had to give my name, my date of birth and my address,”, all whilst the increased made “scammers ask a victim’s existing telco to switch the number to a new SIM”, the effect is the same and because some players are cutting corners the consumer is left with the hardship. There is no easy way here and I get that, yet there is a larger stage of checks and balances missing all whilst cost cutting parties make ‘customer friendly’ needs, whilst parses of verification needs to be at the centre of this all and it is getting worse. 

Why is it getting worse?
Well, There were 5 attempts to scam me in the last 8 weeks, 2 of them were so good that I could not find anything wrong with the information and sources given, more importantly in one case I had to make a separate call to PayPal to make checks to make sure, they had become that good and I know what to look for, yet I have an ace up my sleeve (which I will not reveal here), it stopped numerous scams from being completed.

The first is that YOU NEVER EVER USE A LINK GIVEN! You find the number, the generic number of for example PayPal and you reference the numbers that you write down, they were ready to tell me that no such activity exists. If you click on any link you are causing damage to yourself. But the two (including PayPal) were so well done that finding the differences were close to impossible and I know what to look for. A consumer will have little to no chance at all. 

And matters are getting worse, because 5G will enable the scammers to approach well over 500% in the same time, their revenue goes up and at some point it will cost us, insurances will soon stop paying out and then it will become a much larger problem. You either pay an annual fee, or lose your money. I feel that this is where it is going. 

So whilst we see “to enable to SIM port or swap, scammers will need personal information, like your name, address, and date of birth” COVID give them the name and phone number, the phone number can in some cases link to an address and then only the date of birth is missing and with all these transgressed data bases. Now consider all these places that got hacked, which have a birthdate? Which have a phone number? And the image below completes the picture. 

We see three sources required to get all the data they need and they keep on adding data, data you freely give away in apps, data they captured, data from hacks on the dark web and it is BIG BUSINESS, in the example it is one person with the $10,000 target, now consider 750,000 in the UK alone, 500,000 in Australia, 35,000,000 in the US and consider that $10,000 was a small jab, even smaller would work for them, like a mere $500, with these numbers these criminals become billionaires within a month and these actions need to be done fast. They have per nation 3-4 days at the most, so within 2 weeks they are looking at millions and with 5G they can get more and they can get there faster. Do you still think I am kidding? Take a good look at what data you entered in ANY app or any website, now consider that these people are doing nothing more but to add data as much as they can, at some point (within a dozen sources) they have enough data to port you, to capture your bank accounts and to make changes to your life. They merely needed some time, a $2500 computer and a decent internet connection, the pay off would be a 7 figure number and with the speed they are tracked they would be living large in another country with nothing attached to them. That is the current reality and the level of checks and balances that are missing is just too unbelievable for words.

Enjoy your bank account (for as long as you still have it)

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September 6, 2021 · 21:20

Presented choices

There is a flow in two directions, it is in most of us, it is stronger in the people who actively engage in critical thinking. It is often mistaken as ‘the devil’s advocate in us’ and I have made the same mistake. This is a dangerous place to be, not precisely dangerous, but hazardous. You see, we want to give ourselves time to mull things over and often that is good, nowadays with COVID, vaccines, lockdowns and other things happening at the same time it is hazardous. You see the media is no help, they are in it to create click bitches and stir flames, which gets them digital advertisement funds and traction. When you mull things over too many people are in a stage of making up their minds whilst the media is trying to cross them over to a field that benefits THEM and not the reader. Unless you are able to reject ALL media at a moments notice, that place you are in to mull things over goes from hazardous to dangerous and that is when things fall apart. The doubters get pushed into a place where they are slightly too uncomfortable, but not uncomfortable enough to forcefully take a stand.

This matters as gaming is in a similar place, or better stated the gamer is in an RPG game and is left to mull things over in doubt on what to do. There is a correlation of inaction towards too much signals as well as no signals at all. The brain seems to find the stage of non-signals too unnatural. And that is the stage any new RPG will find themselves in.

In the past it was not an issue for the mere reason that technology was not ready, now that it is too many gamers expect there virtual life to signal them in a similar way and even as technology is there, the game makers are not. 

It is not a setting of what to do to make it fit, it becomes a stage of adjusting the gamer to the ‘new life’. I was reminded of that in the last two days as I was rewatching the Harry Potter series. In the third film we are given the choice between what is easy and what is right, which fits the storyline of Harry and his gang (plus owl). Gaming and real life tend to not have that question, yet I see a larger wave go towards ‘What is easy or what is pointless’ and that is not the bill, but it is a concept of the two choices seemingly given. The mind loves a choice, even a fictive (or virtual) one and that gets us in hot water. 

So whilst we await the Hogwarts Legacy game, we wonder what is in it. We tend to compare to the RPG games that were truly fantastic and there we see Skyrim and Witcher 3 being the larger stage. So will Hogwarts have the Harry Potter CCG as an element? It is extremely doubtful, but there is an internal need to get a new RPG with some Witcher 3 Gwent game. We would want to be able to have our own house decorated in OUR style of choice (Skyrim) and the list goes on. This pushes the needs towards pointless, yet where is the setting on what the line from gaming to pointless becomes and that line differs per gamer and that low range and high range of that line is a gap no smaller than the Gran Canyon and that makes for an awkward programming stage. The opposite side leads to easy and grinding which could spell an early death for any future RPG game, so where to go? Fable 2 had an awesome solution towards vocations (Forge, Bartender, gambling) but the stage becomes how to remain unique, have elements like mini games and larger ownerships without breaking the IP and that is not an easy task. Even Skyrim with its levels of grinding is so close to perfect that people still desire this game 10 years later. I myself had the game on PS3, Xbox 360, PS4, Xbox One and optionally (hopefully) in 9 weeks and 3 days I will have the PS5 edition, optionally a little later as I face all kinds of budgets, but the message behind this is strong, a good game lasts a very long time and that is where the game makers need to be. I believe that the best option is set towards a trilogy solution. We can play, we can alter and we can circumvent. Alter is adding a CCG or mini game option. Instead of looting the same place with consistent time, we can have the CCG to make is smarter, the mini game to make us richer and a combination for investments. It takes the mind of grinding. The CCG element could give us cunning, intelligence and the cards we win could lead to unique items like clothing that are rewarding depending on the class we play. We could get rare items that we need to make special potions (like the golden cauldron in Harry Potter CCG), and the list goes on. In Fallout New Vegas we were given the useless Snow globes that is until we met a person who paid dearly for it. There are the Vault-boy bobbleheads in Fallout, so what can we do to create the part that adds value to the game?  That depends on the game maker, but the objective would soon become a race to avoid the pointless borderline. 

The second borderline is less visible. Metal Gear Solid got there and it was not their intent because the last game was magnificent to behold, yet they got there, the game had gotten too big and soon in the game you felt like you were in a stage where it felt pointless (it was not) the game was too big for its own design and even if you consider revamping the stages, at some point (ACT 3) you started to wonder what it was for. I got there a few times and I loved the game, so we need to design carefully and become weary of what signals we give the player, too many and the gamer seeks the easy route, that same route gets trodden on when there are no signals, so there needs to be enough signals to make it worth your effort.

I believe that we are due for more time based stories and the best way is to let the conversations with NPC’s progress that, but there too too many of those and the game gets to be regarded as pointless. So how to go about the presented choices? One option is to limit NPC’s to optionally give quests in a set of two parameters. The first is the day of the week and the second is a correlation of conversations with other people in town. It gets so that each town has optionally 2-3 side quests a day, so beside the main quests and storyline quests you can score new quests each day in one place, to throttle the over-quest danger we limit the chances we get to the pointless border. By having enough signals we also limit the dangers of people heading for the easy line and on top of that, if we create a random partition that directs all the quests to a day at the beginning of the game there is a chance that two players end up having very different experiences making all players more and more curious on what more is there and how to find it. 

There are more things to do, but this is enough for today, today was to address the dangers of the pointless borderline and that borderline is a lot more dangerous than you think. 

If you do not head that line you could prematurely kill your own game in month one, an eerie setting that no game maker would ever want to face. More importantly, it also shows how we are treated by the media in todays events and that tends to reverberate in us too. So when we escape towards games we really need to get that signal stopped as soon as possible, it is perhaps the one danger any RPG faces, we tend to push ourselves into our RPG games the way we were before we started that game, emotional baggage and all, we cannot really hope to stop ourselves, but we can demand that whatever RPG game we play takes that feeling away within the first 10 minutes of gaming. I reckon it is part of the success of Skyrim.

Have a great day!

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September 6, 2021 · 01:26

Turmoil of doubt

We all have it, at times and some more often we doubt. Whenever I see such doubt I think back to a story that I heard in primary school. It was about Lakshmi and the greedy beggar. You might have guessed it, or perhaps you know the story. The beggar just wants in the end one coin more and ends up with nothing. This is a setting we know where it goes, but now let’s change the premise. I could end up with $3.7 billion over 3-5 years of Google, Amazon or Huawei buys my IP. I could optionally make $250,000 if I publish an idea of intrusion I have. An idea they all overlooked and could give a certain wall street player the insight on certain patents that would be accepted within 30 days. With this method I speculatively could make another 3 million, yet that would also mean that I can no longer rely on the larger amount to ever become mine. What would you do? The small amount now or hoping for the best? I am not breaking any laws, because I am showing a flaw, two actually and the law has close to no chance of finding substantiative evidence. So I am basically in the clear. So what to do?

Well, I am also a story teller, so here goes (it was a simple riddle).

Between a larger technology firm and a patent office is a link, they mail and they take all the precautions. The messages go from router 1 to router 2 via what some might know a router table. Now no matter what the path is, at some point it will go via router N1. That is how the beans take the high or low road. So I got the idea to place a listener to ANY router one jump away from Router N1, so it could be almost anywhere. That place we call Router X0, it was my idea for the Hop+1 solution. There is a second part, this part means we need to get to that router somehow, whether it is internal solutions of intrusion. The idea was to replace the CF card in that router with an identical one, but there is one difference, it might state 64MB, but it has 256GB and one small internal component sets the 64MB apart and the rest is a floating drive. The floating drive has its own dynamic and it installs a small program in the memory of Router N1, that program will copy EVERY packet directed to Router 2 towards Router X0. There is almost no chance to detect it, when someone resets it, the program is gone, the evidence is gone. The memory card will unless dissected not show anything and there too is nothing to show what is going on, the CF card will know when it can forward packets to the end station when it can hide in other traffic, unless a System administrator reads the ENTIRE log, there is nothing to see. The receiver now has a collection of packets of traffic from Router 1 to Router 2, which also includes a message that Patent acceptance was achieved, the Wall Street Firm now has an advantage to place the right options and stock ahead of all the others and when the rest catches on the larger profits are raked in. 

A setting of not so speculative anticipation of profit and when the deed is done, both routers are reset and the evidence is gone forever. There is one remaining part, that is the CF card, yet id that went to an empty mobile station that might not be the problem, the only issue is getting the card back, leave no evidence behind. These System administrators are often underpaid, so that might not be an issue either. 

An idea that I had when I was wondering how Sony was transgressed upon, because there was no way that North Korea had that level of know how. In this setting it was an internal setting, optionally a disgruntled employee, but it was all speculative from my side, it felt more realistic than North Korea with its lack of technology. 

So will I doubt? Yup, I will remain hopeful the three true innovators will take my IP, if not, ah well. Still time to make it all public domain, what Wall Street tends to call pubic domain, not sure why but there you have it. Have a great Monday!

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September 5, 2021 · 06:09

Eradication

There are moments where we are all contemplating it, what if I was alone in the neighbourhood (get work done), what if I was alone in this mall (no queues), what if I am alone in this area (quiet), the list goes on and we have all had these moments. Nothing bad, we merely needed a moment. Yet some have a much larger need. Eco terrorists, extremists and so on. We also have a good degree of extinction movies and my issue is that in these cases (with a few exceptions) it is glued together on the premise of the averting hero. One such exception is Contagion by Steven Soderbergh. It is a clinical view of how bad tit could get and 10 years later we see COVID, the movie is a little more pessimistic yet all the markers seem to apply and it got me thinking. What happens when an eco terrorist sees his (or her) species become extinct, how angry could that person get? So what happens when that person decides to do something about it? Governments make the claim and they are getting us nowhere, but this person sets a new premise. As such I got to think on how that person could succeed. I took the DNA of one woman, one man and one female Bobono and I came up with a new spliced DNA (see image), this is as good as keynote would give it to me and as I have no access to Mathlab, this will have to do. It is merely a premise to a story mind you. 

This DNA virus would be 100 times more efficient than COVID, eradicating 96%-98% of the entire population, but in a stage where we pretend it could happen, what if it plays out, not unlike a story that Dutch writer Anne de Vries wrote in 1951 in her story of Journey Through the Night which is a WW2 story. I loved that book when I was a kid, it was a great book to read and the settings stayed with me. Now it is not in four parts, but three. The start of the unleashing, the ravaging of the disease and the aftermath. A story that gives us close to a decade (or two) on how it all unfolds. How the disease is left to the greed driven and left to the academics, the eco terrorist had done its homework and like the chest of Pandora, someone ends up opening it. Yet nothing happens and the people looking at it find nothing and that was exactly how it was intended to be, the five boxes are sent and four end up getting opened. The infected are unaware of what they had wrought and as they travel from place to place they become the infectors, from 5 spots we get to 25, then 125 and close thereafter close to two million infection spots, the point of no return has been reached and as people go on with their daily life people start getting sick, but at first there are no indications of what is wrong. Cases of Bloom’s and Werner’s syndromes get out of hand, they are moving from one in millions to one in 10,000 and there are other changes as well, explosions of cancer cases all over the globe and it takes a while before someone decides to look into genetic testing. The deed is done and as people are transferring it through touching things, through handshakes and other means, the population is infected before anyone has a real clue what is going on. So whilst we look at some crowd images and wonder ‘Who would be this stupid’ (well, they obviously), we start seeing that it is already too late, the eco terrorist got his or her wish.

As we see stupid people panic and others in the dark on what is going on, we see a much larger stage for part 2, how governments are in hiding, how politicians try to get to that isolated place, all whilst they cannot tell whether they or a family member is infected, as cities die off over the term of years we see the move into part three where the few surviving members are wondering how to survive, a planet with all the goods there reduced to a population of 253,000,000. Suddenly the tailor, the doctor, the farmer and the butcher are worth their weight in gold in any community. 

And that gets us to part 3 which I cannot yet tell as I have been focussing on part 1, the issues leading to part 2 are clear, the parts in part 3 less so. Yet the foundation of a story is set, the foundation of a premise exposing the useless factor of a stakeholder is naught. So whilst we look at some source giving us ‘how a narrow focus on air pollution limits can backfire’, as far as I could tell, none of them took a look at the EEA report from last year and took a hard look at the 147 locations causing 50% of ALL pollution, so can anyone consider that premise? 147 is a real number, an environmental agency gave us that and the media ignores it. They do not attack it, they do not question it, they ignore it. Why is that? And is it then any wonder that someone will think “If 98% of all the people are dead the pollution goes away as well”? It is the premise to a larger story, one the stakeholders do not want to hear about, because in the end they are merely unofficial lobbyists to those who decide where to spend their money and where to keep their profits. 

A stage we enabled and now that it is here, too many are in doubt of what to do next. Me, I merely write stories, like I come up with new games, new TV series and new movies. My mind is creative what others do with it is not my concern. 

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September 3, 2021 · 12:48

When one and one remains one

Two things crossed my path, as perhaps a lot of you too. They are not related, but they gave me food for thought. The first are the floods all over NY city. I looked at a lot of YouTube videos and I agree, we have never seen this before, will we see more of that? Time will tell. Yes, it could be due to global warming, but it is not a given. We have tornado’s and we have storms and this one went towards New York. Now, I am not stating that it isn’t due to global warming, but to point the finger from the start is not a good idea. I do believe that global warming is part of the storm surge and as global warming continues there will be more storms. There is no denying that. One can lead to the other, but one is not the definite cause of the other. That setting is here too. So whilst those with a sub-level apartment, they now have a swimming pool. I am not making fun of them, that would be wrong, but it is important to consider that New York has never dealt with this before and it is now August. It will take months to dry, so we are in a setting with thousands of a basement apartments and when the frost sets in, these houses will become death traps. November and December will be close to unbearable and in January if the frost sets in these apartments will be a different setting. It is also a more important setting, if snowfall comes early this December, thousands of places to live will become close to unsurvivable and New York better get ready for that stage, it could kill a lot of people. Is it a given? No, it is not, but the floods are clearly visible, if the subway is flooded, how will these houses fare? And that is only the start, the water brought all kinds of mud and other health threats, so cleaning these places will be an almost titanic task. Then we get to the damaged electrical systems, and all this is before we realise that plumbing and  water will take a while to become decently reliable again. A stage we saw in part, but how much of these dangers did the people see?

The second is not related, but it had my attention. Reuters (at https://www.reuters.com/article/amazon-tv-usa/amazon-to-roll-out-its-own-tv-in-u-s-by-october-business-insider-idUSKBN2FZ00D) gives us ‘Amazon to roll out its own TV in U.S. by October’, this implies that there is another statin on US minds, Amazon will have more than Amazon Prime Video, they are now setting the stage to TV and there is no attack, there is no issue. Yet the stage of them offering  TV with a twist is not out of the question. It is a clever move from Amazon, they have the option to take advertising to a whole new level and it is THEIR TV channel, so the essential attacks on Amazon will not be as effective as the attacks that Apple and Google are facing. But is that what it is about? No, it is not merely the TV part, it is the shifting economy that Amazon gets to push for. This is not meant in a negative way, but consider that thousands will be dislodged, thousands will need a job, a home and Amazon who is out to hire 55,000 tech jobs and that news is a mere 22 hours old. People have relocated for a lot less and that gives Amazon more than a leg up, it gives them a furlong head start in 2-3 venues and in this setting of bad news they become a shining light and optionally a larger staged beneficial noise to a lot of people. The part that New York might not like is that there is a setting where (depending on Amazon choices) 20-30 thousand people vacate for sunnier shores and in light of what happened in the last few days, with the added workforce taking a step in an optional other direction. We will see a larger stage of the economy changing in New York, one New York never anticipated before. So we see the tech jobs, TV and a lot more and Amazon is at the heart of that. These events are not connected, yet the stage of a larger change becomes apparent, or perhaps I need to say ‘speculatively apparent’. because it is speculation from my side. A stage where Amazon gets to promote their jobs, their positions, their TV, their goods at base pries is an advantage that few ever have and thousands are looking for jobs and that advantage is likely to increase over time. I am merely looking at the pharmaceutical side, the retail side and the job side and there we see Amazon having an advantage thrice over. And as I see it, they are not doing anything wrong. They merely take a versatile set in a post covid era and they are decently ahead of the rest. 

So consider what I write, consider what you think and see where you can prosper, because someone who hires 55,000 tech jobs has a larger plan in place and that is not something you should ignore, especially when Amazon takes that setting on an international level. It gives them a larger advantage over several players who aren’t even close to doing what Amazon is claiming to start over the next 4 weeks.

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September 2, 2021 · 01:15

Two weird moments

This just happened, the second weird moment can onto me, I got woken up from it as someone called me, but it is still shaking me. It started the night earlier, I do not know what set it iff and I did not realise why it happened, so I pushed it away, yet with what just happened, the previous event also plays and now I need to find the words.

Day 1
In day one, I faced some initiation, it was all about a mine-cart (like in Indiana Jones 2) and I was would be taken through a tunnel, pulled on one side, after the corridor, which was made with the use of pallets and smeared with clay and dirt, covered in some writing to the other side, it was about trusting the boss. Yet the boss was setting the stage as the person in the kart would be fed to a massively large snake (not an Anaconda), yet he believed that the snake was related to a snake god (yes, people are that crazy, just look at anti-vaxxers if you doubt me), so as I was unaware I went into the cart, the journey would be around 300 meters and there was a bend, but no track change was possible. As my journey started I saw the writing, the symbolism and I also seemingly saw the imagery change, and as the journey took me past the bend, the massive python like snake attacked and it took its non-poisonous teeth deep into my left shoulder. The pain was hard, but the fear of seeing the snake just over the left shoulder shook me to my core. I woke up and I had to change the sheets, they were drenched in sweat. It was only 6 degrees, but I was sweating like it was a 40 degree sunny day. I woke up and shrugged it away, but oddly enough my shoulder was still hurting this morning, so I actually had to take a pain killer. 

Day 2
Only hours away, it was time for another team building exercise. This time it was against 3 fellow employees and the track which we had to do wearing our Virtual Reality goggles, the rules were simple, never take off the goggles, it would be an automated fail and the winners, the two highest would be in line for management promotion. So as we started at the bottom we had to run up, we had to follow the path and the tunnels and stairs were where the normal stairs would have been, and over the track we were filmed. We saw the tracks change from down to up, to up to down and as we followed the course the land changed to meadow, fog filled meadow with lights. We were on a track that would take almost 30 minutes, and there I was, exhausted at position two. The person in front of me was on her knees and it was the last part, I looked over the ridge and the building was below me, close to 2000 feet below me, the note was clear “fall from here, but do NOT jump”, I had given up, I would rather be dead than lose and I rolled over the ledge falling to my death, I no longer cared and that is when I felt a rush and a slowing fall, it was the virtual reality, I fell into a net from 4 stories high, not thousands of feet, I saw the boss who was walking up to me and then the phone rang. That was it, or was it?

It is a little later and my mind is working things out, you see, Augmented reality and Virtual Reality can dupe the mind, as long as it can acclimatise to the new settings it can be fooled and it can be done so a lot easier then when you are alert in the normal world. So what happens when this becomes an interrogation and torture device? You see, we tend to fear the extremists and their suicide approach. But in Virtual Reality they are a lot more easily pliable. Their conservative values can fall under VR faster than in the normal world, a lot faster and I think that my mind is telling me that this could optionally make for a nice movie. Consider movies like Truth or Dare, and Nerve. We have similar settings where we entice the audience to accept hat is there, yet in VR it is all fake and the mind cannot completely deal with it and as long as no real boundaries are broken, the mind adjusts. So what happens when that becomes a case, it is seemingly small but it is in the core of us and there the small change flips an entirely new track, one we have never seen before and the brain changes from decider to spectator and there the intelligence required is up for the taking. Now 2-3 years ago it would be some sloppy wannabe kiss, yet with the evolutions in VR, Quantum computers (IBM) and deeper learning it becomes a new ball game. We can get the suicide bomber in a stage where he feels to press the button, but it is an augmented VR button, and after that whatever he sees is fake, but in that stage he will divulge EVERYTHING, he accomplished his goals. And now we get the rundown on what we needed to know and this has the option to be one hell of a rollercoaster movie. Even in my sleep my creativity continues and now that this is written, I can look at some information that ABC has for us all, it is all about doubters, but that does not matter.

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September 1, 2021 · 19:41

Would it still be news?

We get that at times. A question regarding the news, not what they bring, but what they are. I was left with a few questions today when I took notice of ‘Saudi news channels start moving operations out of Dubai’ (at https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/9/1/saudi-news-channels-start-moving-operations-out-of-dubai). Just as the BBC is in London, the NOS is in the Netherlands (Hilversum), Swedish News is predominantly in Stockholm. I always assumed that Saudi News was in Riyadh, so to see that they were in Dubai which is a nice and large town in another nation was a little bit of a surprise. So as I take notice of “Riyadh has told international firms to put their MidEast hubs there by the start of 2024 or risk losing out on business” has a certain amount of sense.

The question becomes who offers more, Dubai or Riyadh? I am not talking money, even though for the international stations that will be some part of it. Dubai has its yachts, its connected jet-setting, yet what does Riyadh offer? It is a genuine question. I must admit that I only recently saw Riyadh through the eyes of YouTuber Jason Billiam Travel, and he did an excellent job, if you have never been to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the view that (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk_4wPK6oks) where I got my first glimpse of the Kingdom Tower at the beginning of the video no less. He was able to give me a clear impression that Riyadh, the capital is larger than the entire nation of Bahrein and he gives us a lot more over several movies, more on Riyadh and more on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. There is one element that there is no yacht club in Saudi Arabia. If I had the ability to create one in Riyadh, I would. Even if it is just to set aside my sense of humour as the nearest decent amount of water is almost 400Km away (Sea of Dammam, aka the Persian gulf), so the idea to have a restaurant in the building that represents a yacht would be a fun idea. A place where 8 million people live and most have never seen a boat with their own eyes, so to create a concrete yacht that is a restaurant and optionally an international hotel will get the eyes of a lot of people. But we were talking about the news and Al Jazeera also gives us “Saudi Arabian news channels are starting to transfer operations out of Dubai amid a push by the country’s crown prince to get multinational companies to relocate their headquarters to the kingdom” and it makes sense, although it would have made initial more sense to have Saudi news offices in Saudi Arabia, but that is merely me and it is a thought that is based on the idea that news channels should be local. So when I see “Saudi Arabia has been pressuring international companies to put their Middle East hubs in the kingdom by the start of 2024 or risk losing out on business in the region’s largest economy” I do realise that too many people will focus on ‘pressuring international companies’, yet is that fair? Consider that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia should award business to its local parties, so Dubai has benefitted with its Media centre to the largest degree for well over a decade. And the reason seen in “The move is intended to limit “economic leakage” and boost job creation” makes perfect sense. 

There are actually two additional reasons to contemplate, whether it is all news is in the middle. With that shift the media will get a lot more exposure to Neom city as well as the tourist visibility places that Riyadh has to offer, the Kingdom Tower is merely one of them. The Grand Mosque of Riyadh is according to many another one.  

The entire setting made me wonder why Saudi news was not set on a local premise in the first place. I am not saying it was wrong, I am merely wondering what was the reasoning in the first place. There are many valid reasons that come to mind, yet none of these have been tested at present and with Neom City now a mere 9 years away, the local presence seem to make more and more sense. There is of course more, there is a larger stage to promote Jeddah as well, we can argue that this could be done from either place, but I have seen on how minds get distracted from other places as the distance increases and Dubai is very far away from Jeddah, it is not enough a reason, but it is one and consider that in the last 24 hours globally ‘Neom’ was mentioned 10 times. One in Chinese, three in Arabic and the rest in English, in a world where there are thousands of publication, 10 mentions? Yes the news needs adjusting and perhaps it starts with getting the international news stations local. As I see it it is a lot less about economic leakage and more about ignoring Saudi events, in this the Houthi attacks on civilian Saudi targets might finally get the exposure it deserves. 

Will it still be news after the switch? I hope not, as it had been happening for too long, but that is merely my 2 coins on the subject. 

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August 31, 2021 · 14:53

Behind door number two

I have been wondering about many things, about the next idea, the next creation, the next wave of innovators and with the Epic games court case, a lot are not realising that it will change online stores. My worry is that fr a lot of people things will change and not for the better. This is not on Goole, it is not on Apple. You see I have never ever seen a change for the better when greed was the operative and even as we saw South Korea make changes, we see a wave of actions and it only gets the stage for the greed driven to get a better position, the rest are lost to the waves of THEIR needs. It is a personal view and it might not be a correct one, but in my personal feelings it is. You see, the benefits that the starters enjoyed will soon fall way, greed did that. Not the choice of Google, not the choice of Apple but decisions thrust upon them by politicians that have almost no clue, they ‘rely’ on advising friends who have their own agenda. And when we see on one hand “maker of the video game Fortnite, charges that Apple has transformed its App Store into an illegal monopoly”, all whilst the other hand gives us “Saints Row reboot will be exclusive to the Epic Games Store on PC” it seems a little hypocrite, does it not? And in all this, the media is ignoring the elements that the starting developers are enjoying, the massive costs that they all avoid, because Apple andGoogle do not charge them for the ACTUAL cost that a business faces, and that danger is now more and more likely to be bestowed on the consumers. The customers that others rely on will have another face. They will have their Google Pixel 4A 128GB 6GB, or Apple iPhone 11 Pro, 64GB. Yet in the new stage where we are in danger of buying an infected app, or perhaps an app with backdoors (from other stores), the people will shy away from stores and they will soon thereafter demand protection from either Apple or Google. A stage where frivolous apps are a thing of the past. So the image that I made looking like an NHL player (which were fun applications) are less and less likely to come. No one will get us some populous app that will allow us to pass some time, we will be at the mercy of Candy Krush or some match 3 game, they will be making money, the rest will casually fall away, all thanks to the greed of some (more mainly one). 

So what next?
Well, I do not know, I am not all knowing. But I feel that whilst there is time, we need to get creative. And as ideas pass by more and more, I wonder what will work. Yes, it is nice to have ideas, it is nice to be creative, yet will it appeal to others, will a decent sized group like it? Yes there is a larger group of match three games, a group of people liking Magic the Gathering and that is nice. Yet there is more, or at least there should be. The creators gave us CCG games like Dune, Harry Potter, Illuminati, and many more. Mobiles and tablets are a medium to blow new life into these forgotten games. Yet that is merely remastering, there are the classics like Dungeon Keeper, Gauntlet and so many more that can make the journey too, but the main event will be the new games, not merely newer versions. A totally new game that none have seen. Not some Fallout Shelter 2, but a game no one has seen before. It could be some Battlestar Galactica game where you are human or Cylon, it could be anything that never made it to the gaming industry before. It could be from a book (Animal Farm, George Orwell), it could be from a movie (the Shining, Kubrick) and there are many more options. I do not have them all, that is where you creators come in. It is like the card you see here. I never thought of making an app that allows you to create a sport card style image of you, as far as I know, none of the teams had something like that (unless it is NBA).

That is the beauty of things, it took a simple guy (or girl) with no money in their pocket to make this app, they merely thought it was cool to have something like this and it got them to the next level and when the setting changes due to the greed of some, their creating days will be limited to their own system and that is a sad day. When that happens we will have our mobile for merely LinkedIn, some will also have Facebook, Twitter and some news apps. Mobiles with 95% of its abilities unused because we can no longer trust anything that is not from the Apple of Google store. That is where I truly believe we are heading, and short sighted political players made it happen. 

Door number 2
Yes that is the door we are looking at, but it is a different door for every one of us, it might be a front door, a maple door, an oak door, it could look like the door to your kitchen. The door is where YOU want to go through and for some it is a door that leads to the tool we need, the education app we want (like learning a language), the door to the kitchen where we find recipes, the door to our den where we see the app for our movies, our books, our music or our stamp collection. It will be hindered by the limitations of the designer (not unlike the Xing app). But over time it will be designed so that it fits our needs better and better. It could be wizard like streaming, it could be more open designed so that we can ease into the app in the way we feel comfortable. The setting changes per person, there is a large stage where most feel OK, but the margins are where the profit of the app designer resides. It does not matter whether it is a game, or a utility.
So how do we get to OUR door number 2?

That is a good question but it depends on where we are and what we desire (and I am not talking about money). Any good app is set to a desire, whether it is a CCG, a puzzle, or even drawing. There are so many options, yet the Apple store had a large collection of copies of the same idea, it is like a group of programmers finished a new lesson in programming, saw a few tricks and it resulted in a dozen apps. This is not an accusation, or  some blame game. It is how programmers evolve, how we become smarter and it leads to an idea where desire pushes innovation resulting into something we always dreamt of making. 

Consider a real original game, Command and Conquer (1995), Westwood had an idea and it set in motion a game unlike anything gaming had seen, there were sequels, there was Dune 2, Dune 2000, Warcraft 1,2,3 and it resulted in shaping Microsoft Age of Empires 1, 2, 3 and 4. Even now we see apps relying on that idea. A good idea goes forward and there are designers out there mulling over their idea, but now with the Epic Case the stage changes and it will dim these designers, or leave them at the mercy of greed driven and I do not see the Apple Stores or Google Stores as such. We must find a way to oppose that danger, as I personally see it it will stop innovation as well as the next best idea, an idea that a new, optionally a young programmer has out there. We need to protect that idea, it starts economies and waves of  new inventions. Gaming is the most likely path, but not the only path. Do not look at me regarding the path, it is up to the creators, it is up to them to create that path. We merely need to set the stage allowing them to create, we owe it to the $1800 mobile, laptop, PC or tablet we bought. Don’t you agree?

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August 30, 2021 · 19:28

You call that an army?

I was in disbelieve yesterday, I saw information and memo after memo and I was lost, I really was. The media to a larger extent reported on it, the Times had impressive graphics, the BBC used something similar (or a cut version of it) and others followed on these starts (as far as I could tell), yet the larger stage was left behind the writing and that is not an accusation. They reported on a lot. I liked Forbes most, the cold numbers appealed to me. The article (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/08/23/staggering-costs–us-military-equipment-left-behind-in-afghanistan) called ‘Staggering Costs – U.S. Military Equipment Left Behind In Afghanistan’ gives us a lot. The stage is that the Afghan army was better equiped that several NATO nations, the total cost as some sources gave me EXCEEDS $84,000,000,000. This path implies that a small group of people received OVER $4,000,000,000 in bonuses and commissions. Afghanistan was big business and several made a bundle. Now consider that the Afghan army was 5 times the size of the Taliban, with all this hardware and the Taliban ran them over in a week. As I personally see it, a core in the Afghan forces and politicians (with optional exclusion of the former and running like a jackrabbit president of that place) wanted the Taliban back. Consider that me, my lonesome self could do well over twice the damage any Afghan pilot did. 

source: Forbes

I would opt for the Huey (with Gatlings), I know the Blackhawk is better but it is less manoeuvrable than a Huey and it has about 200 more options on the instrument panel and with my limited flying skills, less is definitely a lot more. And it gets to be a more questionable setting when you see 

source: Forbes

And you consider how many Taliban would not make it with up to 300,000 rifles and 25,000 grenade launchers as well as 2,000 mortars. And the dent in the Taliban was close to non existent and all these weapons are now in Taliban hands, they can now put a serious dent in their opponents. They are now armed to the teeth and no one is asking the harder questions, where the  Eff You See Kay was the CIA? The Taliban ‘inherited’ over 700,000 pieces of equipment and the Afghan army did close to nothing, even as they outnumbered their ‘enemy’ five to one. 

Forbes also gives us “The U.S. provided an estimated $83 billion worth of training and equipment to Afghan security forces since 2001. This year, alone, the U.S. military aid to Afghan forces was $3 billion” and in all this there is a stage for much harder questions and that falls on the politicians, not the military, they were handed a set of orders that should never have been allowed and the media is not asking those questions, are they? Yet Forbes also gives us “Not helping transparency, the Biden Administration is now hiding key audits on Afghan military equipment. This week, our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com reposted two key reports on the U.S. war chest of military gear in Afghanistan that had disappeared from federal websites”, I am not willing to push the blame on the Biden administration without knowing all the players. A small group made billions, they have access to lobbyists and there is an unnamed DoD link in all this, hiding information in plain sight is what they are good at and hiding a link (at https://www.gao.gov/) can be done by any number of people, evidence is key and there is none, as such (even as I am Republican in mind) blaming an administration with that lack this early in their administration seems pointless. The GAO-17-667R Afghanistan Security report that Forbes also had gives light to a few items, but there is a lot that is missing and I wonder if the CIA will hide behind national security for handing over 700,000 pieces of military hardware to the Taliban. And make sure that you take notice of a small footnote. We are given “All equipment described in encs. I-VI is fully U.S. funded, with the exception of communications equipment in fiscal years 2003 and 2004”, so I reckon that the Taliban will not be merely killing US forces, it will killing them using US funded hardware. Are you awake now?

It is also worth noting that there is a chart in the report that shows that the Afghan police got well over 50% of most hardware that the Afghan army received. A stage we need to be aware of. A stage where the army was not alone in this failure and it is a massive failure when you have all this hardware and well over 500% the personnel that you get taken over by a group of insurrectionists. The media (not placing blame here) is not asking the right questions, they aren’t asking that much. The few that did (BBC, the Guardian, the Times, Forbes) are not asking on who got commissions and that is the $4 billion question, I also reckon that the CIA in that area, who got a huge increase in funds and budget dropped the ball, I am actually wondering if they know what a ball looks like, so I am including it at the bottom.

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