May 3, 2021 · 11:59

And the case is?

ABC shows us an article, which I saw yesterday and even as it is fine, even as it is nothing new, it is brought to us like it is an exclusive look at what has been happening for a long time now. The article (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-03/video-games-you-play-are-using-sneaky-tactics-four-corners/100098826) gives us “Persuading players to pay for advantages or extra features is a key part of the gaming business model”, yes that has been happening long before Candy Crush was a thing. And then we get the part where stupid takes over. With “Kat McDonald lost track of how much she was spending when paying with an in-game currency” we are given the taste of how she is an innocent victim, she is not. We also get “I wasn’t sure how to work out an itemised account, because on your bank account, it just says Apple”, from my point of view this is not a victim, this is an extremely stupid person. Even as the writers are trying to hide it all behind “Game developers will sometimes use multiple currencies to make it difficult for players to keep track of how much they’re spending”, we are being told a story for some reason that has not been revealed yet.

Whats up?
So to give you the lowdown, most games use two currencies, the normal one that everyone has and the premium one that only some get and needs to be paid for. For example Bethesda’s Fallout shelter has credits for all users, but you can buy Nuka Cola to get the advantage. They do give out Nuka Cola to all players in missions, you can find them and there is a chance Cappie and Bottle leave some when they visit you. I have at present 350 Nuka cola bottles, I have never spent a cent on the game. The game Gems of War has a few options in that regard, however like Fallout Shelter, I have never had to spend any money to get ahead, I merely had to play a lot. These two are for the most exceptions to the lot. Some games use gold bars, some use diamonds and so on. The important part is that ‘THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FREE GAME!’ The two exceptions I mentioned offer to sell you stuff and it is appealing, but it is up to you the player to either take the grind road or take the spend road, take some responsibility! So when I see “Kat became so immersed in the game she lost track of how much she spent on multiple small purchases” and “I sat down with a notepad and pen and wrote out every single transaction and added it up to $4,000”, at this point I wonder how stupid the journalist actually is. You see $4,000 amounts to 400 to 1000 purchases, and that is not merely ‘she lost track’, this is one of these (as I personally see it) stupid people who should not be allowed near a credit card, just like the person spending $12,000 on FIFA purchases. We need to accept that either you are responsible, or you need to be, never near a credit card ever again. This sounds harsh but that is how it is. Yes we see that gaming makers have a business model, some are revolving around your data and advertising, some are about selling items and some are all of the aforementioned. This is not new, this is no rocket science, this merely is.

So when we get to “Or you or me could just spend some money then and there and get all the advantages that come with having progressed”, which is true and in many cases that advantage can be gotten in the beginning by spending $3-$10, depending on the game. The important realisation is to do this only once, the initial grind is the longest one.

I had this once with a game called Castle Age, I spent in the early 10 hours about $5, it got me a character (and gear) that gave me a huge leg up in the beginning. I did not feel guilty, this was in the early days of Facebook and Castle Age was a cool game to play. I played the game for about 2-3 years about an hour a day, so it was $5 well spent. That against $4,000 is a larger setting. We all get the vibes to dole out money if we have it, but to spend about 40 times the funds for a PS5 game is just ridiculous. And the ‘getting hooked’ is only part of the setting, when someone spends that much money it is not (or at the very least debatable) addiction, it is stupidity and some excuse like “But I was still participating because it was still giving me that dopamine rush” it becomes my personal conviction that anyone relying on ‘dopamine rush’ should have stuck with comfort food (and chocolate is cheaper too).

There you have it
And that is when the article is showing its actuarial part, the McDonalds were as I see it merely used to bring the goods towards “In loot boxes … you don’t buy the game for the reward mechanism but the reward mechanism is there. You purchase access to this … and you get a random outcome, that might be very valuable or not at all valuable”, yes another go at the loot boxes, which in my point of view is not gambling. Some games hand out loot boxes on a daily basis, some give them out when ‘milestones’ are reached, or specific circumstances are met and some use them as well as those that can only be bought, but the ones you buy tend to have more valuable cards, items and options. And in all this, no one is responsible, it is the poor poor player and the evil maker of games. Please go cry me a river, when you spend $12,000 on loot boxes you are absolutely bonkers, more important, the main part of the game does not require these loot boxes. In some games (Ubisoft) they offer them, yet they also CLEARLY state that these items can be gained by normal play without spending cash, and such items are a mere few dollars. Then there is the view of game influencer Laura Gilbert, which I actually love (her point of view, not her, before you get the wrong idea)  “Gaming influencer Laura Gilbert refuses to buy any loot boxes”, I agree, to be more clear, if a game cannot be played without loot boxes, it should not be allowed to be released. And even in FIFA, the part that uses loot boxes is not the foundational part of the game, or it was never originally so, I do not know how it is now to be honest, because I loathe soccer, I am a hockey player (the real version on ice). 

Two more things
There is “Video gaming has grown into one of the most lucrative entertainment businesses in the world”, that is true, there is a hidden gem (for the game makers). In the first there is the need for short term satisfaction, we are all OURSELVES guilty of that, you, me we all are, I might be clever enough to avoid certain traps, but I see that they are there. The other side that there are games that have a pay to win foundation (candy crush like games, any game with a match three approach (Gems of War excepted), there is a pay to play setting, this is harder, we see the Idle games, where we can play the foundational games, but when there are competitions, the only way to reach the ranks is to pay for special items, special managers, more powerful miners, the list goes on, it is never a lot, but in the beginning be ready to pay $3-$7 to get the better people in the game. There is the option to watch ads to continue, yes you can avoid them, but it slows you down, so to get the leg up you will be watching 5-15 ads per hour, so how is that satisfying?  And they also offer options to get the really rare cards, but they tend to cost a few $$$. All this is out in the open, so the entire “They kept messaging me, telling me to come back and play” as well as “so immersed in the game she lost track of how much she spent on multiple small purchases” are as I personally see it, parts of the BS foundation, it is time to take responsibility, but the writers of the article are in part making statements, but to the larger extend it to bring loot boxes out to another round of finger pointing, all whilst the players need to take responsibility for their own actions. 

The article does however end with “Gamers are now starting to realise how they’ve been played”, I find little to oppose this, and the larger state was achieved by me in the beginning. There is no such game as a FREE GAME. There is ALWAYS a price to pay, in all the games I have seen two exceptions. Bethesda gave us Fallout shelter, even though it was initially done to give larger visibility to their Fallout line and they made a lot of money out of the other games, which had to be purchased. There is an optional truth that they hoped that the microtransactions would give them more money and it did, yet I have played it on 4 systems, and I never had a need to make any kind of purchase. The other part is Gems of war, there it was a new game with no link to anything else, and they offer options for purchase, but they never push for it and I never had to buy anything, there is no pay to win, or pay to play. Perhaps in higher stages, but on one system I made it to level 150 without spending a cent. They might be the two exceptions, and I am not new to gaming. I started testing and reviewing games in 1989, so I have been around for some time (I started with a VIC-20 in 1983). 

There is one part I stepped over (intentionally), it is the quote “Microtransactions started appearing in games in the mid-2000s, encouraging people to repeatedly make small purchases to keep them involved”, I do not oppose it, but I wonder which games had that first? I noticed it first with Candy Crush, they were not alone but the math gave me the speculated insight that it was designed to ‘almost make you succeed’, it was very clever and I deleted the game the same day. There is no way to beat an algorithm, that much was pretty clear to me. We can go on for a long time, but the larger setting is the irresponsible spending of people and that is left on the side of the road, it is equally irresponsible to do that. I believe that the ABC article fails to a much larger degree at that point, from my point of view it was about the push on loot boxes and to help out Senator Jordon Steele-John (Greens), but that is my take on the article.

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May 2, 2021 · 21:11

Brain what?

Today I stopped (via YouTube) to watch one movie that I had not seen for some time. Who could pass up the chance to watch Natalie Wood again, in this movie with Louise Fletcher and Christoper Walken it is all about recording the brain. The movie Brainstorm (1983) is all about what is not possible and it is done well, the story takes a little dip when the military gets involved (like it was in the 80’s) but overall still an entertaining movie. I wondered what would happen if some young upstart (new director) gets to talk to a decently financed producer and makes this into a mini series for whatever streaming service takes it. A friend of mine (yes, I actually have those) wondered why I am not going that distance myself. Well, I turned 59, I am not a director, I do not feel that I would make a decent director and starting a new career as well as getting schooling at 59 is not my idea of retirement preparations. 

So as I was pondering that field we were not meant for show business, apart from the optional new anime by Ridley Scott where I am considering to do the Dutch voice over, there is no real flame to go that distance. Yet, in that same setting I was wondering the advances that Electroencephalography has made (if any), you see that is still an important part, if there is to be any real AI in computing, a better recollection and parsing systems is required and Electroencephalography might be the only technology that gives (at some point in time) a more human (or is that humane) setting towards AI. That drive could be part of the brainstorm mini series. It is not the weirdest idea, the writer Bruce Joel Rubin did make a real good script, he was also behind Ghost, Jacob’s Ladder, and Deep Impact (and a few more), as such this man has earned his stripes. But the nagging feeling that the movie left behind beckons exploring. The 80’s was a great era for loopy ideas, but not one for deeply thought through options. I reckon that these movies are all under investigation by the streaming houses as remaking IP tends to be a lot cheaper than making new IP. The fact that this movie is almost 40 years old gives it the forgotten tender group.

Yet in all this we need to wonder if this all we are, are new IP settings (Harry Potter, Game of Thrones) so rare that remaking is all we can do? There are almost 130 million books out in the open, is finding new IP that hard? The producers seem to clamp down on the bestseller lists and when the going gets tough they fold (example: Percy Jackson series), yet in all this the world has so much more to offer. It had one additional thing to offer, because my mind got the better of me. It started with me reading a part wrong ‘One idiot abroad’, this was accentuated with the slightly ‘psycho’ look of Stephen Merchant. It showed two additional people and the thought came ‘One won’t make it out alive’ and I giggled. That is a popcorn moment, it is reality TV that I would watch, especially when death becomes a factor. Consider all these celebrity survival games. We all get it, there needs to be a winner, but let’s be honest, should the losers survive? 

There is no way that you haven’t had  similar thought at some point. It is almost as corny (and perhaps essential) as letting an anti-vaxxer Twitter influencer die of Covid-19, some things are just meant to be and should that person be allowed to deprive actual victims of essential oxygen? We are setting the stage that the makers have given us and we twist that setting a little more. It is almost like walking into a bookshop and placing some of the Stephen King books ‘the Stand’ in the non-fictional section, there is a little demon on our shoulder whispering “You can do that, do not be the pussy you usually are”, and at some point we just give in.

If we are out thinking patterns, is it not equally so that intelligence will be shaped by the quirks we give into? Yet what is the stage where we record these impulses and can they actually be recorded at present? If electroencephalography is the way to that, is it not also the way towards an actual AI? If a biochemical computer can be mapped and truly be understood, is that not a first step in creating a silicon version to do something similar? Yes, I understand that they are not the same, but to get the other version working, it needs to be able or an effort needs to be made to mimic the other version, that has been true for the longest time. You see, mimicking also shows what goes wrong and when we understand, truly understand why it is going wrong, we can work towards new levels of innovation.

The path to innovation is never a straight line, only according to some person with a business degree and basic knowledge of Excel, they think it is a simple formula, but the rest, those treading innovation will tell you it is something different entirely, perhaps a new Brainstorm might reveal a lot more scientific paths than we give the art credit for.

Speaking of credits, those who follow me, let it be known that a certain counter is at 21,447, as such certain revelations will not take much longer.

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May 1, 2021 · 12:54

What did they not see?

You think it is simple, but if you have been in photography like me (1975), that question becomes easier to comprehend, but explaining that becomes harder, I get that. Distractions, obstructions, light and focus are 4 basic elements of missing a detail, optionally several details. Yet the professional photographer learned not to be hindered by obstructions and to adjust for focus and light, which leaves the focussed photographer and the photographer. So the focussed photographer can make the ‘snatch’ shot and the photographer merely looks for a tissue. Seems bland and crude but this example matters.

To see one application, we need to turn to ‘Telstra, NATO and the USA’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/06/20/telstra-nato-and-the-usa/), an article I wrote in 2018 “unless you work for the right part of Palantir inc, at which point your income could double between now and 2021”, the shares were at $9.69 and ended last night at $23.18, basically I saw that coming a mile away. And that is not all, there are several avenues where their value should at the very least double within the next 19 months. It is the flaws we set ourselves up for and when the stupid people (loud mouthed politicians) realise that their loud mouths will require data, Palantir is close to the only option they have.

That article has a few more connections to what is to come, the most important part if 5G and there is a lot going on (at https://www.gadgetguy.com.au/australian-5g-speeds-truth-revealed/) in Australia. Gadget Guy gave us last week one take (not the highest quality source), but they do give us  “There are two issues for Australian 5G speeds. The primary is that despite Telstra insistence that it covers 50% of Australians and 75% of the population by the end of June, it does not! nPerf (based on real 5G user’s) shows minimal reception. The second is real download and upload speed. While the average is 240.9/15.5Mbps Mbps, it is well short of Telstra’s hype – so fanciful we won’t embarrass it by mentioning it’s up to 20Gbps claim debacle when first introduced”, oh hold on, did I not give you “The problem is that even as some say that Telstra is beginning to roll out 5G now, we am afraid that those people are about to be less happy soon thereafter. You see, Telstra did this before with 4G, which was basically 3.5G” with a reference to ABC in 2011 on how Telstra was BS’ing the population on the 28th of September 2011. So thats two elements where we see that their ‘photographers’ ignored obstacles, blamed the lens makers for focal points, the sun for shining to brightly and they all went running for their tissues. They audience got distracted (as I personally see it) by all the baubles that they were offering. It worked in 1700, so why not in 2021? Yet CMO gives us 2 days ago (at https://www.cmo.com.au/article/688024/tourism-australia-7-eleven-telstra-balancing-data-driven-engagement-consumer-consent/) “Panel of digital executives share the role of first-party data and personalisation in their customer experience approaches against consumer consent and control of their privacy”, a setting where we might see that a panel of 5 are slicing the new currency (data) cake in a way that THEY are happy with, all whilst we are told “the key is to balance data sophistication as a business with consumer controls and transparency. He also noted the varying levels of control and regulation around using data across geographies such as Europe versus the US, which the tourism bureau is operating in”, yet the answer which was not really an answer is about ‘balance data sophistication’, all whilst ‘consumer controls’ (for the consumer) will be as nonexistent as possible. We might not get that when we see “invest in first-party identifiers as well as a unified ID for the tourism industry that can be leveraged”, yes but to what extend it is leveraged is never stated, merely implied, the additional ‘unified ID’ would have a much larger impact, but that too is never stated, they all want as large a slice of that data pie and Cambridge Analytica has made them very very cautious. 

These two elements are merely that, elements. Yet the underlying data there will require analyses and whilst some will claim that they can, Palantir is close to the only source that actually can analyse the whole lot and that is what I saw coming a mile away. 

A linked small digression
You see it takes a massively large level of stupid (and greed) to cater to this, but I believe that the EU (Margrethe Vestager) is trying and optionally succeeding in pulling this off. She is all about “European Commission anti-trust regulator Margrethe Vestager tweeted that “consumers are losing out”. It relates to charges brought two years ago by music streaming app Spotify which claimed that Apple was stifling innovation in that industry”, you might think that, but I do not. You see the article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56941173) gives us “It relates to charges brought two years ago by music streaming app Spotify which claimed that Apple was stifling innovation in that industry”, no it had set a premise to all (which it does not), all 23,000,000 Apple developers. It set a premise where they could develop whatever they want whilst having zero deployment cost and they would be charged as they gained incomes, so not the $75,000 upfront to get started, but after the fact and with no time limit. As such wannabe innovators flourished. It never stifled innovation, it limited greed. So whilst we see the painting of bad bad evil Apple, no one is looking at the fact that Spotify is paying artists HALF of what Apple and Google pays them, it amounts to $0.0032 per stream, so to make 1 cent, the song needs to be requested 3 times. This is why I still buy music, at least the artists I care about will get a much better slice. 

And when we see the image where they are now CHARGING for algorithms, all whilst they made a brute gross profit of $575,000,000 in Q4 2020, I think that the EU commissioner is massively loopy. You see, this is about consolidating greed plain and simple and in the process it will endanger consumers (the ones she claimed to protect). 

The image is merely one element of greed, it goes further. That part is not directly seen, but the BBC does give the goods with ‘The ransomware surge ruining lives’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56933733), there we see “Ransomware gangs are now routinely targeting schools and hospitals. Hackers use malicious software to scramble and steal an organisation’s computer data”, in this the larger stage is not merely the theft, it is how they use larger systems to spread across all the internet and with 5G that danger becomes 5,000%. You see people like Spotify, Epic Games et all want to be outside the Google and Apple store, but they will limit protection (they will call it something else) and when the consumer ends up paying for that, we will get to see all kinds of apologies, but it was not entirely THEIR fault. As such I say, when you get hit (and you will) make sure that as you sue Spotify for damages, you add Daniel Ek and Margrethe Vestager to the culprits of your damages. Organised crime is getting better and better in walking away and as such their greed must be addressed in courts and their approach towards a ‘too big to fail’ setting must be answered, the data will be out there and s such players like Palantir will make even more money, it will be all about the data from 2022 onwards, in this the OCCRP their 2021 serious organised crime threat assessment where we see “The threat from cyber-dependent crimes is set to further increase in volume and sophistication over the coming years”, and in this stage Margrethe Vestager is willing to open the floodgates towards greed driven idiots setting the stage for organised crime getting more? You think that will ever be a great idea? I think not. 

And it does not stop there. The fact that the exchange hack was hard to detect for a long time, some hacks were out in the field for years and now we see greed driven idiots scale away the two decent bastions of protection that consumers have (Apple and Google) and let others skate around them? How long until we see some corrupted Amazon like app via a phishing spree be offered to millions. By the time some will have a clue billions will have been shifted and who pays for that? Insurers?  I very much doubt that. As such these two will be required to sit in the dock explaining their catering to greed. You see if Margrethe Vestager was really about the consumers, she would also be about protecting the artists and where is it acceptable that they get one third of a cent for a song? Is there more? Yes, but I will admit that this is part speculation. The BBC article gives us “The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre, also a member of the Ransomware Task Force says it handled more than three times as many ransomware incidents in 2020 than in the previous year”, you see paying a bitcoin is only one part, the data can still be shared with others and as data become currency the damage setting goes up by a lot. The dangerous part is that commissioner Vestager knows that the law and policing are not up to the task and she is catering to someone with dubious greed needs? One that underpays artists by what I consider to be as close as criminal levels of renumeration? And in my mind, some excuse ‘If we get this they get more’ does not float, in that setting their business model was wrong from day one, in addition, the entire algorithm setting shows a larger exploitation to kindle greed and leave an artist with less. So how accomodating to EU consumers do you think Margrethe Vestager actually is, that in opposition to catering to greed driven players? Apple and Google might not be god, not great but they agreed on a format to keep their consumers safe all whilst giving an option for starting developers to score big, the fact that these players were not as good as they hoped they would be and as they relied on advertisement to push the players is a mere side effect, but without these store protection, the mess will be close to unimaginable and players like Palantir will have the data  and the greed driven players (as well as some not too bright politicians) get to defend themselves in the dock against lawyers with massive class actions. When that happens, be sure that you have  stocked up on popcorn, because it will be worth watching. It will be reality TV with lots of fake tears and CEO’s claiming that they did not know certain things and watch their fortunes dwindle. It will be a much better class of reality TV for some time to watch.

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April 29, 2021 · 23:04

The stage they forget about

I said it before, and we are now approaching the moment of doing. I had hoped there would be more time, but after another so called ‘whisper’ stating ‘just give us the idea and we will do right by you’, I basically have had enough. They forgot that those who are not rich and never were will not bow to those eager to use greed as a tool to spike their own bank account. So as I prepared the stage, I had already uploaded the documents on other systems to a dozen Chinese and American distribution channels, when these places get well over 50,000 hits I will publish it here, it should not take long, a 5G IP that no one has and becomes public domain is a greed driven person’s worst nightmare. IP that they cannot claim and 50,000 hits (over a dozen) places like 4Chan and a few others makes any claim of that IP non-existent. My dumb smart device is first, after that two other devices with outreaches into several IP will change the balance and in all this anyone who is not up and running true 5G is out of the race. The most dangerous setting is one where the maker have nothing left to lose. I have pretty much hit that point and it is time to show the world where everyone forgot to look, so as such it is a nice stage of peek-a-boo, showing where the greed driven were not looking and when all others state how obvious that was, my work will be done. 

A stage where others will all make claims, but as the stage of non-evidence explodes into the internet, we will see just how stupid some were. And that stage was out there well over a year, I mentioned a few parts on my side, but not all and no key elements were mentioned, as such these people (et’s call them clowns) are in a stage where none of them can defend themselves with originality. For once I get the jump on some captains of industry who decided to listen to bulletpoint memo managers and they will be proven to be wrong, and all in a stage where my systems will slow down cybercrimes (to some degree), they will decentralise retail and open a wide are network of new opportunities, what a lovely way to show that making a buck was better then to make claim on IP that was never theirs. The stage where we now find ourselves on is a path where the maker would prefer to see his idea to become public domain then to see vultures grab what was never theirs. 

Too bad for me, but I saw no other way and if I cannot have that nice apartment in location X, they will not have anything of my IP’s they were after.

I know that is sounds selfish (according to them) yet all that technology in public domain will make me feel rather nice, such is my conviction on the matter. It might not make me the political highlife, but for the others their political highlife will end right quick, their bosses and greed driven connections will take it out on them which is fine by me as well.

I see only upsides in this and even as I do not get paid for these thoughts, I will come up with new ones and now (as I personally see it) my value will be established.

So keep your eyes peeled, soon you can judge for yourself whether I was plain crazy, or a hidden savant (genius sounds too arrogant).

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April 29, 2021 · 01:32

Is stupid really as it does?

It is a question I got myself in as I was reading an article. It refers back to Forrest Gump ‘Stupid is as stupid does’, for the most we laughed, we giggled and we accepted. Yet is that stage always true? For the most I think that anti-vaxers are on the same train as conspiracy theorists (as well as some really over the top Star Trek fans). So when I saw the BBC article ‘Miami school bars vaccinated teachers from seeing students’, I shrugged and thought that stupidity comes in all packages. Yet the article does bring out the stupid and the questionable. The article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56905752) gives us “A Miami school has discouraged teachers from getting the Covid vaccine, saying any vaccinated employees will be barred from interacting with students”, lets refer this to as ‘stupid level one’, but no no no, this is not enough, we also get “Centner Academy leadership cited debunked claims of non-vaccinated people being “negatively impacted” by contact with vaccinated people”, which we will call stupid level two. The leadership of an academy is relying on debunked information? How are they allowed to be a member of leadership of ANY academy? So when we get “Co-founder Leila Centner informed parents on Monday that, when possible, the academy’s policy is to not employ anyone who has received a Covid-19 vaccine at this time, CBS Miami reported”, which is as I see it not covered by discrimination law, but it shows that the co-founder relies on debunked information and sets the policy to hire people that are more likely to spread the Covid virus, how does that make sense?

There is one part that does raise questions ““We cannot allow recently vaccinated people to be near our students until more information is known,” Mrs Centner wrote”, she does have that one point. We raced to getting any form of vaccine, and even as there are some issues (minor ones) the long term impact is not known and might not be known for some time (1-3 years). Should people not get vaccinated? No, the vaccine is clearly the better choice, but there is truth in the fact that long term issues remain unknown. As such the stage “Teachers who wait to get vaccinated after the school year ends will be allowed to return only when clinical trials on the vaccine are completed” is not a nice one, but there is some logic to ‘only when clinical trials on the vaccine are completed’. It might not be the one we see as solving matters, but there is a stage we need to accept, yet the reality is that we just do not always know. 

The Conversation (at https://theconversation.com/how-do-we-know-the-covid-vaccine-wont-have-long-term-side-effects-155714) gives us “For starters, serious side-effects are very, very rare. And, together with what we know about previous vaccines, if side-effects are going to occur, they usually happen within a few months after getting a vaccine. This is why international medical regulators, including Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), require the first few months of safety data before approving new vaccines. This, plus information coming from vaccine recipients in the northern hemisphere, gives us confidence that COVID-19 vaccines are safe”, as such the chance of long term impact goes down further and with “What’s more, checking the safety of the vaccines doesn’t just stop after they’ve been registered for use. Once a vaccine has been introduced, ongoing monitoring of its safety is a crucial part of the vaccine development process”, this all makes sense, I wonder if Leila Centner has any clue in this. Yet it is the United Teachers of Dade that gives more goods “We are horrified by the unsafe conditions and labour violations that colleagues at schools such as this one have to endure due to lack of union representation and contract rights”, the emphasis on ‘due to lack of union representation and contract rights’, it makes me wonder when that academy was thoroughly investigated by proper officials. You see, some might give weight to ‘Centner Academy Founders Gave More Than $1 Million to GOP in 2020’, even as a republican I wonder if the school had no real use for that money. Schools tend to get short on funds all the time. So when one has a million to spare I wonder what is up. More importantly when even one student is infected, how will the school react? If they bar vaccinated teachers from working, should vaccinated students not be repelled as well? Or is that the name of the game that they accept? The idea that 100% of all students have parents, all bend on not vaccinating is too big a leap for me. I wonder if the media took that stance as well?

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April 28, 2021 · 04:54

The French way

We all accept it, but at times we are blind to the setting. The French do things different, it is as basic as rain is wet. There are parts I do not agree with. French secularism is deeply overboard. We get it, there is history there. Hugh Jackman sang about it in the Incredibles 2 (the miserables). Centuries of deep cultural impact is not wiped away and I believe that is not needed. Yet the BBC gives us ‘Anger as ex-generals warn of civil war in France’. The article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56899765) also gives us “Two immutable principles guide the action of members of the military with regard to politics: neutrality and loyalty,” tweeted the minister in charge of the armed forces, Florence Parly”, yet the power players are forgetting that there is a problem and the military are not willing to stand by, you see these same power players will use the military as canon fodder just for them to look good, and which soldier ever signed up for the function of ‘cannon fodder’? France faced the Hedbo event, the November 2015 Paris attacks, and now ‘Killer of French Police Officer Was a Radicalised Islamist, Prosecutor Says’ (source: New York Times). There we see “The attacker watched videos ‘glorifying martyrs and jihad’ immediately before the stabbing, the official said”. France has a problem, one from the past (secularism) one from the present (political indifference and pussyfooting around the issues that are too serious). It results in a military system that is not willing to see their country to go to waste and in all this they are getting political support from Marine Le Pen. The situation for Emmanuel Macron is turning from not so good to deeply dire in in swipe and the political grounds are shifting. So as other newspapers give us “French President Emmanuel Macron’s government reacted furiously to an open letter from 20 retired generals warning of a possible military takeover and bloody civil war in response to what they characterised as the disintegration of a country under Islamist extremism”, you see we tend to wipe aside the soldiers complaining, because the political power players will make claims like ‘You do not understand this’, or my favourite ‘This is a complex situations and we are walking the best path as the party sees it’, yet a general, or 20 generals in this case is a different matter, generals know what goes on in their nation and 20 of them is a powerful voice and now the dire part starts making sense. You see some will adhere to government created flames regarding ‘discrimination’, yet when we see “Members of the French military, whether actively serving or reservists, are forbidden from expressing public opinions on religion and politics, and Ms Parly has called for those who signed the letter to be punished” and we realise that these 20 are retired, we see a military consensus and that is bad breakfast, which will be followed by lamebrain lunch and dreaded diner. I am not judging the military, a consensus of 20 retired generals is a big thing. So when we get back to ‘Ms Parly has called for those who signed the letter to be punished’, Ms Parly needs to realise that the matter is a lot larger than she is making it out to be. The stabbed police officer might also draw in the police services, even as they will not openly revolt, they are in a stage where they feel that the present French government is no longer to be trusted. It opens all kinds of avenues for Marine Le Pen and in a setting that she did not have before, the larger parts of the police and military on HER side, how many votes is that? Do you think that these 20 generals stay quiet? That is 370,000 military votes, optionally taking family and friends with them and Emmanuel Macron was not in a safe political position in the first place. As such, when the police joins that group his retirement from the Élysée Palace will be close to certain.

So how will this end?
That is unclear. Ever since 1961 (Algiers) when President de Gaulle faced a coup d’état. It failed but that was 60 years ago, now it is not a civil war, 20 retired generals will have the ability to change the minds of millions of French people, which will start to favour the path of Marine Le Pen. From my point of view, the stage of secularism and islamic insults due to secularism is a stage that cannot be won, France will have to make choices and none of the paths are nice to observe, but is there an alternative? Emmanuel Macron will have to make choices and having a serious conversation with these retired generals might be the path of least resistance for now. head banging would result in Marine Le Pen becoming President of France and I am decently certain (roughly  99.54476%) that the path trodden then will be a lot less enjoyable. 

Can it be avoided?
I am not sure if this is possible, the power players sat on their hands for too long, the fact that 20 retired generals in a stage where they embraced neutrality and loyalty their entire life is not to be underestimated. How much did this political group let things waiver? That is the question, and it is not about 1 or 2 generals that have issues, 20 of them have issues and that is a group that represented the French defence forces for well over a decade, that matters, these people know things, they see things and they are objecting. Something that has not happened in 60 years and as I see it Florence Parly and Emmanuel Macron need to take this seriously, as I see it that signal is a sign that time has run out. As I see it having immediate consults with Directeur-Général Général d’Armée Christian Rodriguez (CEO of the French Gendarmerie) might be a first step, optionally seeing if he might be able to start a conversation with the 20 members. If the military in France is in distrust of politicians to the degree that this globally plays (exception Myanmar), it might be one of the few steps he has left, but at this point neither of these two can afford to sit on their hands. And the claim by Florence Parly to “those who signed the letter to be punished”, she could better forget about that part. If this goes any further she will have a mere one year until she is out of a job and you better believe that there is no place for her in a Le Pen cabinet. 

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April 26, 2021 · 14:36

Consider the question

We always have questions, we all do. Some are based upon curiosity, some are based on acquisition and some on compilation. The people tend to have questions in the range of one and three, businesses on two and three, with an optional need for the first group to see if a creation towards awareness is required. And in this we need to see ‘Facebook v Apple: The ad tracking row heats up’, the article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56831241) gives us “The IDFA can also be paired with other tech, such as Facebook’s tracking pixels or tracking cookies, which follow users around the web, to learn even more about you”, yet the question no one seems to be asking is how much is an advertiser entitled to get? I have no issue that Facebook, within Facebook measures and ‘collects’ it is the price of a free service, but did we sign up for a larger stake (or is that steak) at the expense of the consumer? Even as we tend to agree and accept “Apple co-founder Steve Jobs acknowledged that some people didn’t care about how much data they shared, but said they should always be informed of how it was being used”, in this the question takes a few steps and has a few exits in where to go next and we tend to remain in the dark about our needs, and what we are comfortable with. This is not new, but digital marketing is new, we have never faced it before. Even as we accept the quote by Tim Cook, the setting given with “If a business is built on misleading users, on data exploitation, on choices that are no choices at all, it does not deserve our praise. It deserves reform”, we forget that this is not merely misusing, it is a much larger stake. I some time ago refused to play a game because it collected my religion. Since when is a game’s requirement the religion I have? So (its Catholic by the way), even as we decide to not use an application, consider the price we pay and it goes further as app’s and their advertisements strategy on nearly EVERY device is set to showing us advertisements (to further the financial setting of the maker), in this I have no real problem, but what information is collected by the advertiser? And we all like the steps Apple seems to be making and as we ‘revere’ “Apple is baking privacy into its systems. Its browser Safari already blocks third-party cookies by default, and last year Apple forced app providers in iOS to spell out in the App Store listings what data they collect” we are forgetting what all advertisers are collecting and no less the issue becomes what happens when 5-7 games collectively are collecting and for the most we have no idea where this will end and it is important to take that in mind. It is there where Facebook is getting the largest negative wave. With “And it argues that sharing data with advertisers is key to giving users “better experiences””, precisely what is that ‘better experience’? And in what setting should ANY data be shared with an advertiser? We get that the advertiser wants to segment WHO gets to see their advertisement, we get that and I reckon no one will object. Yet why share our details? How is that priced and why are we not informed? OK, we are not told that Facebook is getting money of us, it is after-all a free service and as Mark Zuckerberg told the senate in a hearing “We sell ad’s”, yet he did not say “We sell ad’s and user data”, you all do understand that there is a fundamental difference between the two, you do get that, do you? And we see that given in the BBC article when we are given “Facebook appeared to accept the changes and promised “new advertiser experiences and measurement protocols”. It admitted that the ways digital advertisers collect and use information needed to “evolve” to one that will rely on “less data””, but that now gives us a much larger problem (optionally), when we see ‘new advertiser experiences’ we should be concerned on what it will cost, in pricing, in experience and in data segments. It does not make Facebook evil or bad, but when we are given “Technology consultant Max Kalmykov wrote in Medium that advertisers had to “prepare for the next, privacy-focused era of digital advertising””we accept change, we accept evolution, but in the stage of digital marketing most can be achieved WITHOUT sharing data of any individual level with the advertiser, the setting we see come might be good, yet I am concerned with their view of ‘new advertiser experiences and measurement protocols’, a setting for sales, not the consumers and optional victims, because to some degree that matters. Do I care when I see another advertisement by MWAVE.com.au? No, I do not, and for the most I do not care about that part, it is basically the cost of a free service, but no one accepted sharing data and that I what Apple is bringing to the surface even more than Cambridge Analytica brought. 

There is a larger setting in all this and we optionally see that with “Device fingerprinting combines certain attributes of a device – such as the operating system it uses, the type and version of web browser and the device’s IP address to identify it uniquely. It is an imperfect art, but one that is gaining traction in the advertising world”. You see I made the personal choice not to link devices, not to link services of any kind, it will not stop aggregation, it will merely slow it down, yet most of the people did not have the foresight I had a decade ago, as such the apps that have a identifier of hardware, they will get a lot more information on non-Apple devices in the near future. When the people realise that all others will take a backstage, it is a powerful advantage that Apple is creating, I wonder what Google will do next, because their market is in the middle of Apple and Facebook, they need to side one way or the other and it will have deeper repercussions in the long game. As such we see that Apple made its choice, it is one the consumers will embrace, some will accept the scenario that Facebook offers, and laughingly they oppose the data governments have and give it to whomever else wants it. In this Google has an opportunity (or a burden), but only if they change the game they are playing. When the consumers see this, they will wonder where to go next and they are all about flames and biased options through the media. 

It started last year and got to be serious in December 2020 when we were given (at https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/17/22180102/facebook-new-newspaper-ad-apple-ios-14-privacy-prompt) ‘Facebook hits back at Apple with second critical newspaper ad’, in one form we are given “Forty-four percent of small to medium businesses started or increased their usage of personalised ads on social media during the pandemic, according to a new Deloitte study. Without personalised ads, Facebook data shows that the average small business advertiser stands to see a cut of over 60% in their sales for every dollar they spend”, is that true? When you pick up the newspaper, how much is personalised? There will remain a level of personalised ads within Facebook, but the following outside of Facebook (within Apple products) stops and that might be a relief to a lot of consumers. As such I have a much larger issue with “the average small business advertiser stands to see a cut of over 60% in their sales for every dollar they spend”, I would be interested to investigate the data that brought the statement, and I have some reservations on the application of the data used. We could optionally say that the digital marketing that relies on such a 100% application is also to some degree unfair on printed media, but that is a very different conversation. 

And in all this the question will soon become “What should you (be allowed to) collect from me?” And now with the upgrades Apple has created a massive advantage, Google will need time to define an answer and direction, because Google will need to make a choice, and this is not a simple one, their business profile will alter accordingly and as Facebook is setting its premise, we see a larger stage, one with the option where Google Plus might be re-introduced in a much larger application of personal and non personal data, you see they are all about the personal data all whilst the hardware fingerprints in 5G will be a much larger setting then it ever was and there a much larger gain could be made by the proper makers in all this.

Did you see the new world where your mobile, tablets, laptop and domotics are linked? I can see it and the application of one of my mobile devices, yet the stage that it offers (or not) is still open to a lot of the players, so as I see it the next year will see a rapid evolution of digital marketing. Those who adjust will see 2023, those who do not ‘Goodbye!’

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April 24, 2021 · 19:21

The Chicken Vindaloo paradox

Yes, it might be seen as a paradox, or it could be seen as a setting that created itself, it created itself through the lack of checks and reports. On October 31st 2020 I wrote in ‘As jobs become available’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/10/31/as-jobs-become-available/) “Even as India has well over 3 times the population of the US, there is no way that the numbers add up, with the US having over 9 million cases and India barely passing 8 million, the stage is not completely seen. The population pressure and environment should give India a lot more than the US, so the stage is not clearly seen”, it is that short sightedness that is taking the cakes and the lives of those in the middle.

I saw this situation coming a mile away half a year ago, so when we now see “India has recorded nearly a million infections in three days, with 346,786 new cases overnight into Saturday. At the Jaipur Golden Hospital in Delhi, 20 people died overnight because of a lack of oxygen, an official said. The government says it is deploying trains and the air force to transport supplies to hard-hit areas”, in this, if the Indian government did not care, why should we? Is that not a fair (yet inhumane) question? The numbers were not adding up 6 months ago, even before that I made a few mentions, but it seems that the Indian government like many other politicians know the expressions ‘be an ostrich’ and ‘play possum’ with the best of them. So it is not ‘recorded nearly a million infections in three days’ it is a stage that the Indians let evolve over a setting of 6 months. It is one way to stop the exploding population in ones country, it might not be the solution I would have deployed, but I applaud their ingenuity.
So as we now see “They will die. Within minutes, they will die. You can see these patients: they’re on ventilators, they require high-flow oxygen. If the oxygen stops, most of them will die”, this disease was not and was never on its final legs (as apparently stated by Harsh Vardhan), it was not monitored correctly in the areas where population pressure is the largest, now there is no oxygen, the vaccine will come months too late and the pressures of civil unrest will grow by the hour. And do not take my word for it, check the numbers that were reported and compare them to the US and European numbers. In a nation with 1.3 billion people these numbers never added up, especially when you se some of the Indian images. It was a fester ground for Covid on a 24:7 foundation. Yet I reckon that the governmental people (and their family) have now been inoculated (a small assumption from my side). So the time is now to go as public as possible to get all the bleeding hearts to donate the oxygen, extra vaccine and other materials depriving that government of a few more bills. Well, that is how the political game is played if you are heartless enough.

So when we see “A virologist at the Christian Medical College in the city of Vellore in southern India, Gagandeep Kang, told the BBC more action was needed to stop the spread of the virus” we interestingly do not get to see “A virologist at the Christian Medical College in the city of Vellore in southern India, Gagandeep Kang, told the BBC more action was needed by the Indian government to identify and slow the spread of the virus”, a message that would have been essential no later than the first week of November 2020, now 6 month, or 26 weeks, or 262,080 minutes later, it is too late for thousands of them. Plain and simple, these people will die. 

It was not my choice, but it was someones choice, I merely wonder if the family members of these thousands of needless victims will take the rage to their government. That would be equally fair too.

So as the BBC is now crying out of the SOS emergency (not an ABBA hit), they too need to realise that the numbers were right in front of them for 6 months, so why did not more media officials ask the right questions in the right areas? It was not brain surgery, it was the simple analytical approach to numbers that have not been making sense for too long, especially in a nation with the population pressure that India has. 

If you think I am heartless, you might be right. Yet the investigation into these numbers take common sense and distance, both elements the larger group of media players have been lacking to a way too large degree. It is the mere application of cause (not reporting) and effect (dying people), it is not that hard a formula is it?

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April 24, 2021 · 00:22

They just will not learn

Yes, that was the first thought I had when I was confronted with ‘Google and Apple attacked on app store ‘monopoly’’ today (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56840379). So when I see “Representatives from Tile, Spotify and Match also gave evidence, accusing the two tech firms of charging exorbitant fees and copying their ideas. Both Apple and Google’s app stores charge fees of up to 30% for in-app purchases.” This is just the latest iteration of stupid. Yes, to them it seems NOW to be a large chunk, but when they started it was not. Security and safety were the cornerstones of this setup, yet them (EPIC too) are now are enough to complain, so what about the 30,000,000 other developers? They cannot afford what is needed but these players do not care, they merely want to open setting so their greed is more satisfied. Yet, I will demand that the other side is also set. When they win, they must also accept responsibility for the consequences. I get it that “The Senate Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel focussed on claims that Apple’s App Store and Google’s Google Play are anti-competitive”, I will add that Amy Klobuchar, the Minnesota Democratic member must accept the cost and the consequences of this for the American people. Just so you know, the current scam gives us: “APK files are a way of installing Android apps outside of the secure Google Play store. By default, such applications will be blocked for security reasons, but the scam page includes instructions on how to allow the installation”, these scams will increase by factor 50 and the people will be allowed to claim expenses from the US government at that point. It is the consequence of short sighted greed. This is not unique, Apple has a play store, Google has one too, for the most, 99.99% of all apps are safe and in no time the 0.01% missed are taken care of, that falls away, nothing to do with Anti-competition, it is all about greed and these players are knowingly ignoring the 30,000,000 startup developers. Yes 99% is a waste of time, but the 1% gives us new mobile technologies, some of them are actually truly innovating. Yet they only got there by launching it via the Google or Apple protected system, if not their changes would have been a mere 0.1% of what they became and that matters to the new people. So when I see “Developers claim that because of a lack of competition Apple and Google can charge extortionate rates”, my view is that these developers are full of shit. When they get the initial bill of $35,000-$55,000 to get launched in a safe environment, they all fail to launch. But these developers used the cloak of Google and/or Apple for 14 years and now they want to claim ‘extortion’. 

As such, I wonder what will happen when organised crime will use the open options available to them, I also wonder what excuse people like Amy Klobuchar will use to not get tainted with the consequences of their action, in this the victims in the EU will have a much larger stake in proceeding with class actions against these American companies, because I feel certain that this is going to be the consequence if this farce becomes a fact against Apple, Google an Microsoft. Did you think that Microsoft is free from this? It will be the consequence and the dangers of Xbox Cloud Gaming on a mobile. You think that it is safe? I do not know, but Exchange was trodden on, as such so will Xbox Cloud Gaming, the amount of targets will be too appealing for hackers and organised crime. And any system transgressed on will add to the enormous class actions that will follow, there is no other way, not in this world and its need to sue large corporations. And when we fall back on the old consideration of “Since mp3 or video files are not self executing programs but just data files, so even if a virus puts it code inside them, they would stay harmless”, yet 4 years ago, someone gave us “it is possible to craft a malicious media file to exploit a specific bug in a media player or media library. Causing a buffer overflow or similar, which could lead to memory being overwritten with malicious code. These would have to be very specifically crafted though, and you see them more on consoles with more closed ecosystems compared to traditional computers.” As such I will happily make mention of Microsoft Exchange anyone? Yes it will have to be specific, but at present specific problems are harder too detect, especially when it is trans-system and that person could become a point of infection for a long time to come and in 5G where everything goes faster and uses more data, a small exploit attacked the Marriott in 2014 and was not detected until 2018, 500 million customers over 4 years, so what do you think happens when a game like Fortnite gets infected? What information can the criminals get from 350,000,000 players? Fortnite will make statements that THEY can protect themselves, but a lot cannot and the consumer will be the victim, but the greed driven players will wash their hands from that consequence. The US government will not get that option, they vied for decreased security, and it will needs to come with consequences.

It is fine if they won’t learn, but the setting of a multitude of multi-billion dollar class actions will be the consequence of all this and at that point Apple and Google will be free from prosecution, that too will be the larger stage the government and the victims will face. I reckon that the first two cases will cause the stock of players like Spotify, Tile, Match and Epic games to drop like an anchor. It will be a panic to behold.

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April 23, 2021 · 19:25

Hubris versus Practical limitations

This is not unknown to us, the ego versus reality. We saw it in the US (the age of Trumpism) on how anti Chinese events were hitting Huawei. I have forever opposed that. Huawei is one of the really few true innovative companies and as such they pretty much owned the market. I have never weight to any accusation of Huawei is taking orders from the Chinese government, because all these wannabe makers could not present evidence, and are we not a population of evidence? There had been 1-2 claims that were decently made, but for the most it was a joke. Yet today the BBC gave us (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-56851558) ‘GCHQ chief warns of tech ‘moment of reckoning’’ which is a different setting. Here we see “Jeremy Fleming said there was a risk that key technologies on which we rely will no longer be shaped by the West. “We have to keep evolving our approach if we’re going to keep up,” he said of the growing challenge from China”, here I agree. There is a harder need to evolve matters, but that issue needed to be given to the larger players in 2018 when they decided to sit back, relax and watch their bank account fatten overnight. That play was a bad one and governments had to step in years ago to make it happen, as such the next 3 years will be about catching up. British Telecom, Telstra, KPN, they all hd the same flaw and they pretty much all were sitting back and let third party evolution decide the future. It is a choice, but that old story of ‘when you hand over the reigns you lose control of direction’ was too easily forgotten. So when we see ““The risk, as I see it today, is that we lose control of the standards that shape our technology environment,” he told the BBC. “The things that make sure that our liberal Western democratic views are baked into our technology.”” We see that Jeremy Fleming (fearless leader of GCHQ) is right. A national interest is having national products, I do not disagree there, but the players were lazy. Even now (a short time ago) on November 14th 2020, in the article ‘Tik..Tik..Tik..’ (At https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/11/14/tik-tik-tik/) I gave the quote “as Gerhard Schindler (no relation to Oskar) is giving us ‘its technology is now so advanced that Germany cannot tell if it is being used for sinister purpose’, we see the first truth, technology in the EU (and the US) is massively behind Huawei and Chinese IP as well”, this was Gerhard Schindler, former President of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the German Federal Intelligence Service. If they are technological in the dark, how bad did it get? 

So, I am on Jeremy’s side when it comes to the fact that such technology needs to be in national hands, I never opposed that, but the next three years we are all blatantly behind and we either buy the current IP from Huawei, or we accept them, or we lose the 5G war right here and right now. Even as the US is screaming alternatives (Nokia among them) and we see a months ago (source: the Guardian) that ‘Nokia to cut 10,000 jobs worldwide to bankroll new 5G drive’, we should wonder (with stress) just how far they got behind on the other players. That is seen in the quote “The Finnish telecommunications company Nokia has unveiled plans to cut up to 10,000 jobs worldwide in the next two years, and wants to use the savings to catch up with rivals on 5G technologies”, so how can the UK (Australia and Canada too) expect to get ahead of Huawei in the near future? Lets not forget that the denial of existence in the EU, Commonwealth and the US of Huawei technology implies that Chinese companies will have a massive leg up winning the 5G race and as such the larger stage of the IoT will be in THEIR hands, there is no other way to see it at present. Then we get a part that is important, and partially surprising. “Mr Fleming said it was vital to ensure all the technologies were not from one place and to understand how data was being processed. There were only a relatively small number of areas where the UK would need to completely control a technology, he said, and more broadly working with allies would be essential to shape international standards and to defend itself in cyberspace. At home, the UK has to invest in skills and innovation.” In this I agree with all part, the surprising part is ‘the UK has to invest in skills and innovation’, in this the surprising part is that this cannot be done overnight, it is the recognition that skills and innovations towards 5G are 2 years away, close to my predictions a year ago, so nice for GCHQ to catch up on this. All whilst we see overly clever puzzles all over the place, the setting of skills go further than that. My previous article involving ONT gives rise to a developing need and there is nothing at present, the evolving need for digital forensics is blatantly yesterday’s approach and they will need people thinking in other area’s as well. The digital future is not where they expect it to be, they need to consider that it is in directions that aren’t even considered today. Even now as they are contemplating the need of where organised crime will be, the setting is not dissimilar from disorganised corporate crimes and most haven’t even worked out that part, it is a large amount of billions a year, but they are still pondering what is important. When you ponder that for 3-5 years, we tend to call it sitting on your hands. It is a close relative of ‘waiting for the other shoe to drop’ (AKA waitstate). And when was the last time that this worked? You can initiate actions on the spot when it is football, but not when billions in costs are found that does not hit the revenue of the media, UEFA, or FIFA? How is that even possible?

We all understand practical limitations, yet innovation is found in directions where limitations were evident. Consider asking Wilbur Wright, Igor Sikorsky or Jacques Cousteau that question. Even with the limitations (practical or not) we got the plane, the helicopter and the aqua-lung. Can you even imagine this world without any of these three? And even as the west used to be the rulers of technology, China and South Korea have the bulk of all patents in that regard today, as such it will be extremely expensive, or we need to work with a different set of rules. Nothing else will quite serve national interests, wherever that is. And consider that I came up with two weapon based IP’s in a matter of days (a few months ago), one was a novel way in making a nuclear reactor meltdown, as such, we need to consider looking in other directions for the ideas that truly innovate the future (I used a posh snow-globe for one of them) and in the process came up with two new valve systems, not bad for a simple IT support guy. Even as the article ends strong with “The UK should not be “fatalistic”, he said, and had a “very strong track record” of meeting technology challenges”, the failure here is that the decision makers tend to have a ‘what can I get out of this’ approach, and when did THAT ever lead to innovation? It merely created a setting of distrust and a group of people who sat on ideas instead of pushing that idea in a group that truly pushed innovation, not a group that grabs the idea and transforms it into a partial iterative idea for long term gains. That is what is killing nearly all innovation, especially the innovation we need now, it is the only way to get ahead of what is now, we need to create what will make it tomorrow and that comes with flaws and failures, there is no other way, but in that setting people did come up with the true innovations, not unlike the Montgolfier brothers in 1783. It took 8 years to get ready and even as we dreamed of flight for many centuries that was the moment reality stepped in. It would take 120 years for the Wright brothers to take it into a new direction, now we become the watchers as Huawei is leading the 5G race, the others are all eager to catch up, but some have to let go of 10,000 employees to fund the events. So how long will be be the spectators instead of the actual pushers? I will let you decide, yet in this, the larger problem is another unmentioned one, there is a ring of decision makers who want to be ‘included’ in whatever comes next and that is stopping way too much. The era of those joining DARPA leading the fight of innovation is nearly over, you remember that group of nerds? They invented the internet, you might have head of that.

It is all part of one currency, hubris and practical limitations, but we need to see through both to understand where progress is possible and seeing through practical limitations is hard, I know that, I understand that. I wonder if Jeremy Fleming does. 

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