November 4, 2020 · 21:03

Pointless versus useless

Yup, consider that part and consider just how useless government oversight really is. To show this we get to the articles about three weeks ago, I noticed them, because I had the aggravated issue with deceptive conduct in advertisement for a while. Several sources give us ‘Ban for annoying puzzle ads which don’t represent the actual game’ (or a version thereof), with the sub-line “The Advertising Standards Authority has banned ads for Homescapes and Gardenscapes”. I have nothing against the game, but any match three game is rigged from the start, it is a clever way to get you to try and perhaps you will make a small purchase, and then she are caught in the addictive need, some just quit. I am ahead of the curve and I steer clear of all these match three games. Yet, The people behind these games (not just these two, others too), made an actual brilliant advertisement jab at the games giving us a DIFFERENT game where you have to select a solution, as such we see “Paid-for Facebook posts advertising games with puzzles – but which did not represent the vast majority of actual gameplay – have been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)”, this is what got to me too and when I saw the news, I was happy. So what happened today? Gardenscapes advertisement (the bad one) now shows up in Fallout Shelter in the iOS version, as such it seems to be bloody pointless. Perhaps it is the price for $8.5 billion, perhaps it is the price of joining Microsoft, yet these so called banned advertisements are back, or they never left. Sometimes vacation does not end, it merely changes location.

This gets me to the Financial Times (at https://www.ft.com/content/8593c8b5-5a98-4002-ac5a-68b59fbb6463) which was given to us in May with the headline ‘Russian brothers behind ‘Gardenscapes’ emerge as lockdown winners’, and we also get “Two Russian brothers living in London have emerged among the big winners of the lockdown, with their mobile games Gardenscapes and Homescapes making $200m from in-app purchases in April alone”, which sets the station that when you are rich, the ASA might not do anything, OK that is just speculation, but the stage is clear, and nothing seems to be happening. Don’t get me wrong, I am happy for Igor and Dmitry Bukhman, 200 million in a lifetime is nothing to be sneered and they are making that each month, I merely wonder if the deceptive advertising was essential to make that much money. 

So here we see the stage of pointless (having little or no sense) versus useless (not fulfilling or not expected to achieve the desired outcome). You might think it is the same, but it is not. The difference was seen in my Pencak Silat classes when I was a young lad (when I was 63.8% smaller roughly). Defensive systems (like Judo) are pointless, you are under attack, only countering doesn’t get the job done, there are pure attack based styles which are useless, if you are under attack, one needs defence, so the best martial art is one that decently covers attack and defence. Yes, we have seen all those movies on how great defence is, yet those grandmaster have been at it a decade or two and that tends to be far away from those starting some form of martial art. It now gives rise to the same setting with the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority), they can go after Facebook all they like, yet when the advertiser moves to advertise via Bethesda games (Fallout Shelter) how useful was the jab at Facebook?

And when the advertising server moves to the USA, or perhaps Canada, or Saudi Arabia, how will that affect the verdict? It seems to me that the leading man, Guy Parker who has been chief executive of the ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) since June 2009; living of £120,000 a year might be able to keep up his income and fruitless actions, yet I merely wonder at present what he achieves, do you not feel the same way? When I see advertisement (the deceptive kind) move from place to place, I wonder why we need a man making well over $250,000 a year, it seems a pointless action and a useless way to spend that much money. Feel free to disagree, but there is a massive digital failure in that regard and I reckon I am not the only one thinking that. 

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November 3, 2020 · 23:31

A streaming war

Yup, this is about to come to larger blows, you see, there is Netflix (of course), Apple, Amazon Prime, Canal Plus/Foxtel and Disney Plus. There are a few more, but in many cases HBO is added to the film channels of Foxtel, and so on. Yet these players never took a serious look at the treasure of the east, Japan particularly. Yes they all look at the manga, yet there is a lot more. The Zatoichi series, which was followed by an amazing movie with Takeshi Kitano. There are a lot more, and even as there are some really good movies around that are done in
Japan (Earthquake bird with Alicia Vikander), Japan has a lot of original non manga material to offer. In the horror section there is the Audition and Oldboy, the second one is also seen as a remade English version, but it is nowhere near as good as the original, perhaps it was the atmosphere. There is of course the setting of Ju-On and that video that kills within 7 days, but those are the visible ones that made the press. A lot of people got interested in Japan as a provider of entertainment after Kill Bill part 1, that is fair enough, we all have our moments. For me it was the 1980 TV-series Shōgun with Richard Chamberlain, based on the novel by James Clavell with the same name. A series where we see giants like Toshiro Mifune, Yoko Shimada, Frankie Sakai, and Hideo Takamatsu (and many more). Not just that, even the Middle-Earth trusted Gimli (John Rhys-Davies) was already amazing 40 years ago. I reckon it might be time for a remake, if only the 1980 version was not so darn perfect. Yet there is more in Japan than just remakes. To see that we merely have to look at the Playstation 4 and the almost perfect Ghost of Tsushima. Until the game was there, I know nothing of this place and the setting it had. And I know I am not alone. We might want to travel back to 2006 when Clint Eastwood release the second part, Letters from Iwo Jima. As Flags of our fathers showed us the American side, Clint took a gander and showed us the other side as well. What we ended up with is a near complete view of a war no-one really wanted, but we were all forced to fight it, because there was no other way. 

Yet as we see the roll call of movies in Japan, we see the western view of it and some of it is really good, there is the Forest with Natalie Dorner who is pretty amazing (for those who merely know here from her ways to excite Henry VIII, or be the sweet dear in GoT), this is the movie to watch her in). We need to acknowledge that a movie about Japanese in Japan can only be made by the Japanese. We do not deny that Lost in Translation is a gem, yet who knows of 100 Yen Love, and before you think that this is mere love movie, think again, in this particular case it is Billion dollar baby on steroids. A slob turning her life around and it is that underdog fight that for some reason is a lot better when it is done in Japan. There is another example, The Ramen Girl, underestimated and a little shallow, but it shows us a side of Japan we rarely see, their strife for excellence, a spiritual side perhaps, perhaps not. But there is a multitude of sides to Japan we always seem to ignore. The technologists look at Japan, because what we see there now will hit our borders in about 5 years. Yet in all that, we seem to forget that Japan has a soul and even if we do not understand it, some wall parts are shown in their movies and TV-series. With the world wanting more and wanting something different, there is every chance that Japanese entertainment goods will b e fought over by the streaming giants. And if these parts do not convince you, take a look at Gokusen (2002) and I can tell you right now, the plot twist that hits you at the end of season one, is one you we’re never ready for. 

You could say: Only in Japan!

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November 2, 2020 · 22:56

Institutionalised Positioning

Yes, we can take IP in several directions. For me it started yesterday at 17:15 when I got home with my new iPad, after 6 months, minus one week, my iPad finally arrived. So happy happy joy joy. Yet the story is not that simple. I was able to get mot of the apps from my iPad 1st generation onto my iPad Air 4th generation, in a few cases I bought the program again (the $5 will not kill me I assume). And for the most, these programs held up for a long time, so I am happy. 

Yet there the issue started. You see, there was a problem with one program, the program no longer existed. It was a data vault, this data vault kept projects in directories, and they were all hidden. When I needed it I could open one of the folders and I was ready for the presentation. This was the first hurdle. There were all kinds of programs, I must have liked at a few dozen of them, all with cloud backup, all with options to hide all these secret pictures, WTF do I care? I needed a specific application and the 2-3 dozen are all copies of one another, all copies of an idea they all had at the same time. With the exception of two, a massive waste (in my specific case). I got one of them working first with two projects, that was the one I got. Some will think that I am all about the fuss, all about paranoia. So consider January 2020, Forbes gives us ‘Microsoft Security Shocker As 250 Million Customer Records Exposed Online’, with the two additional quotes “Paul Bischoff, a privacy advocate and editor at Comparitech, has revealed how an investigation by the Comparitech security research team uncovered no less than five servers containing the same set of 250 million records”, as well as “the researchers say that many contained plain text data including customer email addresses, IP addresses, geographical locations, descriptions of the customer service and support claims and cases, Microsoft support agent emails, case numbers and resolutions”, as this point, do you think that I am trueing any cloud with my IP? Do you think that I will give any reliability to any firm handing control of their cloud to the NSA? The IP wi worth a pretty penny and there is no way in hell that I trust anyone with that. Especially when you consider “A new report from the National Security Agency (NSA) titled “Mitigating Cloud Vulnerabilities” identifies what the agency considers the top cloud security issue plaguing organisations: misconfigured privacy settings” (source: unconfirmed), so according to the source, not only is it a cloud solution, but the makers cannot properly administer this, so the NSA is needed? I have question marks, but more so in the direction of Microsoft who had been shoving this solution down our throats like it was the second coming. It reminds me, there was a comedian who had this story: “I apparently had a rare disease, but my older brother knew the cure, just eat a handful of sand, thank god for older brothers”, I think you can relate this to both Azure and Microsoft, can you? So as my trust is close to zero Kelvin, I have my IP in a secure location, and I have an encrypted version that I can access via Webmail and then into the Vault. It takes a few steps, but the chance it gets hacked is less than 2%, this in light of Business Insider giving us “Seventy percent of companies using cloud computing vendors get hacked or leak data, Sophos found”, so I am rather picky on how and where my data goes. The fact that almost NONE of the data vaults took that precaution, r allows for it is the larger stage that needs addressing. Apple gave me 4 confrontations in that regard, and let’s be clear, this is not the fault of Apple. Their app store has limits and abilities and as such we are confronted with the larger evil, and evil Apple did not create, the developers are optionally also unaware of the stage that they are on, but the stage we do see is that things need to change, a new IP, one that has the foundations of a 30 year old program called DBMS/Copy, with the foundations of something that resembles ODBC. A setting where WE decide what the source is, where the source is and how we get it to the point of destination, if the cloud can no longer be trusted, we need that solution fast and we need it to be clearly controlled and set in a station where the user is allowed to make the decisions. Now, let be clear, this is not for all, this is not a solution we all need to consider, but enough need to consider it, for one, all those with bankable IP. 

So when we are in a stage where we have 25-50 passwords, and the setting is now that we can’t rely on these passwords because the rainbow tables of today are more and more efficient, in some cases we added simplicity to the working of these tables, as such, in a stage where we enter 5G, where dat travels 10-25 times faster, a rainbow table becomes a lot more dangerous to a much larger group of people and when you see the alleged Microsoft Blunders, we have a lot more to fear. And let be clear, Microsoft might be the clearest example, I for one am unwilling to believe that they are the only one, especially when you see the Sophos numbers. 

In all this, the institutionalised positioning is that there is no issue, there are no glitches and there is no lack of safety. I will let you decide whether I am right, or whether I am wrong, type is enough out there to form your own opinion, yet when you do and you get it wrong, do not come crying. Consider that IP can only be sold once (if it is done right), do you really want to take a chance on something that could be your life’s work and sets you up for retirement? I will let you decide, because that is your right.

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October 31, 2020 · 21:37

As jobs become available

Yup, there is always good news if we know where to look, even as we see a setting where over 50% of all coronavirus cases are in the USA, India and Brazil, we need to think hard of what numbers are not shown. 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. I have less doubts (but some) with Brazil, there are over 5 million there and that number seems off (I am emphasising on seems), when we consider the 211 million people there, the pressures in Rio and Sao Paolo, the number seems low, more important, the mortality rate on Brazil merely seems high, in my personal view, either there are a lot more cases, or the mortality rate is skewed, optionally from connected complications. So as more people die, more jobs open up (one would hope). In this stage we could say that every silver lining is the foundation for a new dark cloud.

These numbers are important, especially as the EU goes into a new lockdown. There is the larger issue. We see Spain and France being at 1.2 and 1.3 million. Nothing wrong with that, but a similar setting of populations is seen in Germany with only 510K sick, these numbers do not add up, especially hen you consider that Germany has 83 million, France has 65 million and Spain has 46 million. The German numbers are as I see them off. This matters, because if the numbers are too surreal, the lockdown will merely be a pro forma exercise that does close to nothing in too many places. The problem is that I can see that these lockdowns are the best we can get until there is an actual vaccine, and there is not date on that. One source gives us “On Tuesday, front-runner Pfizer revealed in an earnings call that the first interim analysis in its Phase 3 clinical trial has not yet occurred. That means there hadn’t yet been enough Covid infections among the trial participants to take a first stab at analysing whether the people randomly assigned to receive vaccine were infected at a lower rate than people who were assigned to get a placebo injection”, so consider that phase three is not done and this needs to come and be confirmed before we have a setting where manufacturing can begin. And it is even earlier ‘the first interim analysis in its Phase 3 clinical trial has not yet occurred’, that implies that we get to a stage where any solution would not be here before January 2021, and that is if the second analyses of clinical trials those who precede towards ‘a vaccine is working’ is well over 8 weeks away, making the earliest stage of manufacturing would start on January 2nd, if a solution if found by coming Monday. Are you feeling frisky yet? And all this before the realisation starts that 2 billion doses will take more than a few days. I got (from Vaccine Europe) “On average, it takes between 12-36 months to manufacture a vaccine before it is ready for distribution” and on top of that Sanofi is one source stating that they can make 2.5 million doses a day. This gets us to the 2 billion shots, taking 800 days to make and that is if everything goes right the first time. So there will be a waiting list that is well over 2 years and that is WHEN a vaccine is a reality. Now consider it takes another 12 months before a vaccine is a reality, implying that Covid-19 will be around until January 2024 at the very least. At what stage will we learn that masks are a good idea, and I am happy to set the stage that lockdowns are some proof, but what proof remains the issue, do you still think those Swedes were nuts? 

And in this, consider the news that CNBC gave us in June ‘AstraZeneca is aiming to produce 2 billion doses of a coronavirus vaccine — and it could be ready by September’, do you still think that I was crazy saying that the media is a much larger cause of all the fake news we get?

I am not stating that I know when there is a solution, I am not proclaiming that I have all the answers, yet the numbers are clear and they tell a few stories, and in all those stories we see that some of the reflections offered to us are incorrect, incomplete and dazzled with issues. On the upside, my 5G IP has benefits under Covid (and lockdowns) but they were not designed as such, it is merely an upside to it all. And when we look on, we might see the corporate needs, but they are merely in it to keep their heads above water, and I do not begrudge them that, but a lot of the actions are made on incomplete views and more incomplete data, that much is certain. 

I get it when some state that there is an overreaction, yet some setting (like face masks) are never a bad idea, it makes sense that some lockdown measures are essential, yet how will that ever work in Mumbai, which is 4% the size of Sydney, but has close to 300% of the population, and people under why I doubt the Indian numbers? They test 500 a day, even as they had until recently 100,000 new cases a day. That it’s why the numbers make no sense. And this is merely getting worse, as economic barriers collapse, the setting will continue to degrade. I believe that India is in a much worse state, but that does not absolve Europe (or the US), this will get worse and those governing will be seeing the inside of courts, defending the stage, the setting and their actions. The media (even those with ludicrous headlines) they all want their digital media coin, so they will rely on hardline after headline and it will be about creating flames, not information. That is how I see it and feel free to disagree.

And as November is a mere 2 hours away, consider the time line I gave. Then consider the headline that the Guardian relied on yesterday ‘‘It’s possible’: the race to approve a Covid vaccine by Christmas’, unless the vaccine is properly tested by Friday, that deadline cannot be kept. So when you see “Kate Bingham, who heads the UK’s vaccine taskforce, said the UK was in “a very good place”. But there are still hurdles to clear in the coming weeks” (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/30/its-possible-the-race-to-approve-a-covid-vaccine-by-christmas), and when we see “It could be Oxford University, partnered with drug company AstraZeneca. It could be Moderna in the US. Or it could be Pfizer and the German company BioNTech. All three have either recruited the last of the tens of thousands of volunteers they need for the critical final trials or will shortly do so”, in this I merely wonder whose trumpet she is blowing. I am not blaming her or the three, they have a hard job, yet unrealistic time lines are hard on us and they are facilitating for those trying to manage bad news and that is not right, not in this case (well, most often not in any case).

So if you are hoping or relying on a vaccine, think again. The numbers do not add up, on several sides and the media is not asking questions, so I am.

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October 30, 2020 · 18:49

Can You tell?

That is the setting that I am faced with, a setting where we get the news and whether it is a story or a setting of wishful thinking (some might say fairy tale), when we cannot tell, is it on us, the lacking credibility of the news or something else? I have been to some degree Apple minded for over 20 years, I had hits, I had misses, and I was confronted with blunders (by Apple), yet overall, the Apple feeling is good, steering towards decent. That is set in a few stations, first is the iPod, when it came out I got the 20Gb and it was heaven, at some point I had to upgrade and I got the 80Gb classic, I still have it today, it never stopped working for close to 13 years, that is the setting I crave. I also had other Apple stuff, first the question mark, I had to get an Apple (partially for work and on the edge of Powermac, I ended up with the Performa 630, part of me was unhappy that Powermac was not compatible, yet the Performa did its work and it did it well. I learned a lot in those days. That was until the new updates were no longer helping me, but I could still use it to surf the web and a few other things, I was not unhappy. The next one in my route was a clear miss, the G4 MacBook, I was happy as anything the moment I had it and it did it work and got me through my Unix classes, but after 15 months the display had one line, then 5 then 30 lines and I had no Apple care, the laptop ($5,200) had cleaned me out and when the bad setting hit it was too late for me, I think I still have it somewhere in the box, it was a sad day for me. It was after I got the G5 Mac Pro which was an absolute delight, it still works (I think), it was one of the first 68020 and it never let me down, it could edit photos (25MP ones) in a heartbeat. So here I am now, listening to Jean Michel Jarre on my iPod, whilst typing on my MacBook, which is outdoing most of the expectations I have on it. I actually got some naughty 4K footage and the display was unbelievable, I don’t really have it for that, but I wanted to see if it could hold its own and it does. So here I am looking at Reuters giving us ‘Apple’s late iPhone launch temporarily wiped $100 billion off its stock value’ (at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-results/apples-late-iphone-launch-temporarily-wiped-100-billion-off-its-stock-value-idUSKBN27E3FP), so is it wishful thinking? Let look at the quote “Since 2013, Apple has delivered new iPhones each September like clockwork. But pandemic-induced delays pushed the announcement back a month, with some devices still yet to ship. Even as booming sales of Macs and AirPods boosted overall revenue and profit above what analysts had expected, iPhone sales dropped 20.7% to $26.4 billion”, in this where am I? Well it started with the entire Coronavirus part and the fact that we were allowed to get some of our retirement funds early, I got the first one, but not the second one. It paid for a truckload of bills and there was enough left to get the iPad. You see, when I went to get my two graduate and master degrees, I treated myself to the iPad, the very first one and it has been working 24:7 since I got it in 2010. I got the 64GB version with cellular and I was happy, in classes as I watched everyone run to a powerpoint, my iPad got me my notes and I was happy. Even as most options will not work because support stopped for it long ago, some basic usage was working and earlier this year when I started to wind down more and more, I was sad, so with the cash, I went for an iPad Air in may 2020, my iPad would have worked 10 years a achievement well worth it. And that is where I am now, still waiting for my iPad Air, I had to resubmit the order, but the basic setting is that Apple cannot deliver, now the latest (partially unconfirmed) is that I will receive my iPad this coming month, after 6 months waiting (and not just me, others have this issue too). So as you might figure, the headline Reuter gives a warped setting. Is it true? The setting might be worse, in July I got a hold of information that the delay was ONLY the iPads with cellular, I have no decent sources to confirms that, but that would indicate a chip shortage, if that is so the iPhone has additional issues, as does any Apple mobile device with cellular. So when we see “But the flagship iPhone 12’s announcement was delayed until Oct. 13, several weeks later than usual, meaning no opening-weekend iPhone sales are included in the fourth-quarter results” and when we realise that some devices that were supposed to come out in the beginning of October are still not here and optionally not until the 15th of November, the damage is larger and worse. If there is a chip shortage (still unconfirmed), we are looking at a 4th quarter where it sucks to be an Apple (not that oranges have a better chance). Yet in all the hundreds of advertisements on the new iPad Air, who has seen any kind of article anywhere that these iPad Air are still delayed? When we seek it in Google, ‘iPad Air’ gives us 31,000,000 hits and the first few hundred links give nothing on delays, so why is that? And when we get to “Apple said revenue from its accessories segment was up 20.8% to $7.9 billion, compared with analyst estimates of a 13.5% rise to $7.4 billion, according to Refinitiv data. Mac and iPad sales rose to $9.0 billion and $6.8 billion, compared with estimates of $7.92 billion and $6.12 billion, according to Refinitiv data”, the question shapes. I paid for my device, I just haven’t received mine yet, so where are they? As far as I was able to tell, here in NSW there were 85 outstanding orders, so how many are missing and if they are all the cellular versions, what chip shortage is Apple facing and when we learn that part, how come Reuters did not have the goods (or pretty much any other newspaper). In this, I wonder what else we get to learn before the year ends and if that delay is the cellular chipset, where will we be when the year ends. Fortunately, my mobile is Android driven and for now I am in a good place for most matters technology based. And my mind goes on racing, even though it is more for the movies than real life (as one might hope), I just had an idea where the Fitbit could be part of a detonator, but then so could a Wear OS device, I merely need to test if I can silently ping the device, oh the inhumanity of it all. I got the idea as I was considering another chapter in my Rama story and when “This type of sub-dermal implant usually contains a unique ID number that can be linked to information contained in an external database, such as personal identification, law enforcement, medical history, medications, allergies, and contact information”, it is not merely that, the Fitbit has a similar path and when it is close enough, boom (big badaboom). Although the setting has been seen in the movie Wedlock, the implementation does not need to be that visible, you just need to person to pass the box and the result is gained (might be that Ubisoft Watchdogs Legion) got my devious side up and running, yet the station is there. And how does this affect Apple? It got to me whilst I was remembering the Guardian who gave us in 2018 ‘Fitness tracking app Strava gives away location of secret US army bases’, yet it does not need to be that simple, simpler settings are enough. Someone gives us “Find My Fitbit finder app for iOS and Android helps you find your lost Fitbit in minutes not days”, yet the setting of minutes lies with the provider, one app adjustment and we see seconds instead of minutes, now the only thing we need is the proper app. 

I am willing to bet that the CIA (and its counterpart on 2 Bolshaya Lubyanka Street) already have a version, and that is if we think simple, 5G allows a setting that is worse, it is targeted fund relief, lets face it kids love the big badaboom, the rest prefers the ka-ching sound, and why does it matter? You see when you help out a person like Jeff Bezos with the weight of 154,667,332 dollars in his wallet (one of his Credit-Cards), people will find you, unless you were never there, as a silent drone can be placed on that path to release a specific person of a number represented by 28 bits, we see that the Leo’s are at a loss, it is not their forte, yet the technology is already here. The thought of that made me create my dumb-smart device, but this stage is a lot larger than I gave it credit for, and as governments are bitching on what big-tech can do whilst they have larger issues than Section 230, it is time for them to smell the instant Waco, it is almost like coffee, but set to gunpowder tea (yes that really exists). 

So as we see the Apple setting, it is more than a see chip shortage, the question becomes, who has them and how can they possibly be used. All whilst you are thinking you have a cool foldable phone, I see it for what it is, it is a personal data server and I found three additional uses you were never aware of. So, how cool is that?

So when you run and you hear a large boom, it is not some explosive, it is the other shoe dropping.

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October 29, 2020 · 19:09

Is it me? Perhaps it is!

Yup, we need to look into matters and I am willing to concede that I am the stupid one, yet the BBC is setting a stage that is not set to the proper players and it shows (well, to me it does), so as I look at ‘Facebook, Twitter and Google face questions from US senators’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54721023), we see ““[It] allows digital businesses to let users post things but then not be responsible for the consequences, even when they’re amplifying or dampening that speech,” Prof Fiona Scott Morton, of Yale University, told the BBC’s Tech Tent podcast. “That’s very much a publishing kind of function – and newspapers have very different responsibilities. “So we have a bit of a loophole that I think is not working well for our society.”” You see, the stage is larger, even as we see a reference towards section 230 with the added quote “some industry watchers agree the legislation needs to be revisited”, so can we have these names? 

Section 230
Section 230 generally provides immunity for website publishers from third-party content.
Section 230(c)(1) provides immunity from liability for providers and users of an “interactive computer service” who publish information provided by third-party users: No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.
The statute in Section 230(c)(2) further provides “Good Samaritan” protection from civil liability for operators of interactive computer services in the removal or moderation of third-party material they deem obscene or offensive, even of constitutionally protected speech, as long as it is done in good faith.

Yet the stage is a lot larger, most common law nations (civil law nations too) have similar protections in place, and ever as we see the repose by Professor Fiona Scott Morton giving us “we have a bit of a loophole that I think is not working well for our society”, most parties refuse to hold the posters of the online information accountable. It is too hard, there are too many issues, but in the end, I call it a load of bollocks, the avoidance of accountability has been on my mind for close to a decade, the lawmakers have done nothing (or close to it). These lawmakers do not comprehend, the politicians are mostly clueless and the technologists cannot abide to the lack of insight that the other two are showing they lack.

So as we see “both sides agree they want to see the social networks held accountable”, yet neither is willing to hold the poster of the transgressor accountable and that is the larger issue. So even as we see the so called political ploys and no matter what the reason is, when we see “Both President Trump and his election rival Joe Biden have called for the removal of Section 230, though for different reasons”, yet both ignore the obvious, the posters want a medium and outside of the US they have all the options to continue. Basically the only thing that the US will accomplish is isolation, all whilst the dreaded posts from those who seek to harm society will never be stopped, they merely change location, and now that the US is ranking 8th on the 5G speed lit at a mere 13.29% of the speed of number one, things will go from bad to worse, limiting big tech is the larger error in their thinking pattern. 

Any form of censorship strangles freedom of expression and freedom of speech. Holding the speakers accountable is not censorship, it merely sets the frame that these social media speakers will be held to account, optional in a court for WHAT they say. It was never that complex, so why push the side that resolves nothing? So whilst we see all these media articles on AI and how AI is NOW the solution that one can purchase, the factual reality is “experts have predicted the development of artificial intelligence to be achieved as early as by 2030. A survey of AI experts recently predicted the expected emergence of AGI or the singularity by the year 2060”, a stage we seemingly forget whenever some short sighted politician makes a twist towards AI and the solution in social media, the reality is that there is no AI, not yet. Forbes (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/cognitiveworld/2019/06/10/how-far-are-we-from-achieving-artificial-general-intelligence/#389ade286dc4) introduces us to “Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) can be defined as the ability of a machine to perform any task that a human can”, you see, commerce couldn’t wait for AI to come, so they pushed it into AGI, and the AI they all advertise is merely a sprinkle of AI, scripted solutions to singular tasks and even that part is debatable, because the application of AI needs more, I wrote bout it almost two months ago. I wrote “until true AI and true Quantum computing are a fact, the shallow circuits cannot cut through the mess”, I did this in ‘About lights and tunnels’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/09/08/about-lights-and-tunnels/), you see, IBM IS THE ONLY PLAYER that is close to getting the true Quantum computing up and running, Shallow circuits are still evolving and that matters, because they only launched their first quantum computing solution a year ago. When they complete that part we see the first stage when a true AI can become a reality, only then is there an actual solution available to seek out the perpetrators. So as we look at all the elements involved, we can see to a clear degree that 

  1. There is no real solution to the problem (at present).
  2. Section 230 is doing what it was doing, even as there are issues (no one denies that).
  3. As such we need to hold the posters accountable for what they post.

As I see it these three parts are only the top layer, and in no way is adapting or editing section 230 the solution, it might if all nations adopt it, but what is the chance of that? The only thing that the US and its senators achieve is scaring business somewhere else, when that happens the US and its data gathering stage will take a spiralling downward turn, one their economy is certainly seen as a near death experience. I think that these senators need to stop selling shit as peanut butter. To realise that part we merely need to turn the clock back to April 2018 and consider Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) asking Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg how he is able to sustain a business model in which users do not pay. The answer was simple “Senator, we run ads” (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2H8wx1aBiQ). A stage where someone was allegedly this unaware of the stage of digital media, when they rely on questions that are a basic 101 of digital media, how can we take the efforts, or the presented efforts of both the democratic and republican houses serious? 

It is a stage where you will need to take a deeper look at what you see, it is not easy and I am not asking you to believe me, I for one might be the one who sees it wrong, I believe that my view is the correct one, but when all these high titled and educated people give sides, I am willing to go own faith that I need to take another look at what I believe to be correct. And wth that, I get to my very first article. The article ‘The accountability act – 2015’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2012/06/19/the-accountability-act-2015/) was me seeing the change in 2012, seeing the need for an accountability act, an essential need in 2015, it never came to be and people more intelligent than me thought it not essential. So whilst I wrote (in 2012) “I believe it is time for things to truly change. I believe that the greed of some is utterly destroying the future of all others. Who would have thought in my days of primary school, that an individual would be able to have the amount of power to bleed entire cities into poverty? It was never in my thought, but then, GREED was always a weird thing. It is the one utter counterproductive sin. You see, greed does not drive forward. Competitiveness does. Innovation does. Greed does not. Greed is the foundation of slavery and submission. It drives one person to get everything at the expense of (all) others”, as such, I saw a setting that we see now more and more clearly, I was ahead of my time (well, my ego definitely is). 

We need a different setting and we can blame the big tech companies, but is that the factual setting? When we use the quote from the AFP giving us “Capitol Hill clashed with Silicon Valley Wednesday over legal protections and censorship on social media during a fiery hearing a week before Election Day in which Twitter’s Jack Dorsey acknowledged that platforms need to do more to “earn trust.””, yet the big tech companies do not write laws do they? Yes they all need to earn trust, but trust is also lost through the newspapers using digital media to set the stage of ‘click bitches’ reacting to THEIR stories, as such, how guilty is big tech? So when we are confronted with the ludicrous headline “Kim Kardashian is accused of having SIX TOES in snaps from THAT controversial birthday getaway: ‘Why is this not trending’”, something that comes up apparently every now and then, yet this is a NEWSPAPER, as such as they also use digital media to push forward their economic needs, the stage of section 230 is a little larger, and the fact that what I personally would see as fake news, we see fake news coming from news agencies, so when we consider that some talk about “earn trust”, I think that we demand this from newspapers and see how long they accept that stage before greed takes over, or should I say the needs for clicks on digital media? A stage we saw in the Leveson Inquiry and as greed took over, I wonder whether these senators have any clue on the stage that is before them and the size of that stage. A stage that has additional sides and I am willing to wager that they haven’t got a clue how many sides they are unaware off. The US (and some others) need big tech to be as it is, if I can innovate 5G beyond their scope, that matter will merely increase when they break up, making the US more and more of a target against innovators they have no defence against, because the innovators are no longer in the US, and those they thought they had are moving away to greener pastures.
It might not hurt the big tech companies with offices outside of the US, but I reckon those senators thought of that, didn’t they?

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October 28, 2020 · 21:37

The failing of others

We see this, others fail, we all do at times. My management position is different. I do not care about mistakes made, we all make them and anyone who claims that they do not make mistakes is either a liar or one who is about to make the whopper of all mistakes, history has proven me right again and again. You see, for me it is not about making the mistake, it is how quickly can you fix the mistake that was made, and if it is too late to fix it, what processes do you have in place? It is as reasonable as anyone can get. It is the application of realism. In all this there is the stage where others leave the door open, the door which you can come through. There was a setting earlier, now the setting is more defined. It is seen in ‘Saudi Arabia condemns republication of blasphemous caricatures’ (source: Arab News), they are not alone, all Islamic nations are opposing the farce France allowed for. A stage of ‘secularism’ versus ‘Intentionally insulting religion’, I feel certain that the Islamic nations are feeling a little less academic about it than I am. But for me there is an upside, I wanted to retire in Monaco (when you dream, it better be a good one), and the stage that we see in the Human Rights Watch, one with the headline ‘France Should Halt Arms Exports to Saudi Arabia’ (at https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/06/10/france-should-halt-arms-exports-saudi-arabia-egypt) where we were treated to “After Qatar, the governments of Saudi Arabia and Egypt received the greatest amounts, accounting for €1.4 billion and €1.0 billion in arms, respectively”, so lets take away the €1.4 billion from France and give it to China with a small finders fee, lets make that 3.75% for two years, with 5.3% for any additional sales over the €1.4 billion. I reckon that the stage will give me a retirement fee of € 105,000,000 and that is if there is no additional sales, but I reckon that I can pul that off to, I still have Gordian One in my back pocket and the first bonus will allow me to test it before setting it to the market. Everyone is all s up in arms and all about the evil that Saudi Arabia does, yet the simplest respect or tolerance for Islam is not to be found. So, why buy from them? An in this France has a $4.3B, Italy a $3.8B and Germany a whopping $7.5B, so in all this I would be in a position of a really nice retirement, can anyone blame me? I am upfront on my reasons, most others are not, most others hide behind their secularism to allow for right winged hatred, they are too afraid to be replaced and the worst thing is that replacement will happen at some point, so doing it whilst hurting your coffers to support your nation makes no sense at all, and as I am proving, there is always someone else ready to deliver what the customer needs. If party to is hungry enough, he or she will find a way and there are several nations that need to be aware of what comes next. France is only one example, the US has through its own actions endangered close to $10 billion in sales and in that case Russia and China are fighting on what they might deliver, at that point we see the shifting of the Middle East options that the US (the EU too) has left. A stage that will happen, the stage is too loud for it not too happen and several actions are already in the past, with Saudi Arabia having by far the fastest 5G setting, we see that there are additional setting for the KSA to embrace and China is seemingly increasingly willing to pick up that baton, two batons dropped by the EU and the US through acts of increasing stupidity and that setting is not stopping anyway soon, as that continues more and more additional offers of goods will come from other directions, and in this we see a larger stage, if the sales fall away the drop in jobs come pressing, it will result in additional economic stagnation, all whilst their larger opponents will get economic boost after boost. How will that play out? Well, I am speculating, not too good for the US and the EU, but if it goes my way I will have a nice golden parachute, and as such I will not care.

The station of acceptance is not merely giving the consumer what they want, it is accepting that they work with other values, it is the simplest of rules in the setting of larger sales and that is a mistake at least 5 nations have made, thinking that their values would be blindly accepted on a global setting. In this one source gives us “The Trump Administration has degraded environmental enforcement, favouring polluters over citizens’ interests”, as such, if for these people the environment is so important, why do we see shallow levels of acceptance? Hypocrisy is a dangerous form of ammunition, it can openly be used by shooter and target and there is no guarantee that it goes the way they think, in the end the hooter could end up getting shot by their own bullets. This is not a new setting, there is an entire dimension of sales systems banking on the failing of others, they refer to it as their pipeline, the pipeline of opportunity. So in this, what is wrong by resetting that pipeline to me? It is the way they do business, as such I can too.

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October 28, 2020 · 20:35

The BS from players

When is a gamer a player? One could argue that many players are gamers, yet not all gamers are players. It is looking at a set of collections with two unknowns, yet the media to a much larger degree will not care. The BBC shows this with ‘Cyberpunk 2077 delayed until December despite developer crunch’, they also give us “A letter from the developers said there would be “many emotions and questions” about another delay, and asked fans to “please accept our humble apologies”” and here we get the first setting: ‘Why?’ My setting is given in a station where we see that their last project was The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, a project that was rated at 100% by some, others gave it ranging between 91%-95%, only the Nintendo Switch version did slightly worse, but the largest range was overwhelmed with the perfection of gaming offered, only GTA-V had a rating on that level. When we look at the best ratings EVER, on the PS4, it is on 13th position, on the Xbox One it is on 10th position, and on PC it got 18th position, so when CD Project Red thinks it needs more time, we should just give it to them, Witcher 3 was so lose to gaming perfection that we should accept it and when we see players like Boss Hunting giving us “Referring to what we’ve filed under “Tweets which have aged like unrefrigerated milk”, CD Projekt Red promised that Cyberpunk 2077 would face no further delays earlier this month. But delayed they have, and now, like an absentee father during the summer holidays, a promise has been broken; and everyone is sitting on the curb with their swimmers on”, so let them sit on the curb, actual gamers will accept that it will be ready when it is ready, the entire BS game of flaming whilst these same players were too often silent when it mattered. 

I will grant you that I was looking forward to playing the game, yet I would much rather wait until late January for a game that is near perfect, than a game that needs the amount of patches Ubisoft treated us to lately. I get it, most do the perfect game does not exist, not games this big, yet we can limit the issues and that is what we see now (at least I hope it is). A YouTuber MrMattyPlays gives a decently good view on the delay (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYU1lv8WqWk), but he does more, as we see the game play on the screen, the driving, the actions, the choices we get to make, we see something that is so much better than anything presently released, yet CD Project Red sees an issue and delays. MrMattyPlays mentions ‘perception’ and that is true, yet anyone having issues is off their rocker (as I see it), the only mistake MrMattyPlays makes (as I personally see it) is the fact that he compares CD Project Red to Ubisoft, CD Project Red is a relatively small player, especially compared to $2 billion Ubisoft with well over 18,000 staff members and over 14 Ubisoft locations. Not to forget the fact that they produced the worst game of 2019 (Breakpoint), I admit that it is not overly fair to have a go at Ubisoft, but we need to accept that CD Project Red at present is the creator of one of the most perfect RPG games ever (in 2015) and that achievement has over the last 5 years not been broken, will it? We will see, but that milestone give es them credibility and we better acknowledge that part in the equation, and it has nothing to do with John Wick being in the game, I’ll take him on with a pencil if need be (the John Wick fans will get this).

Is there an upside? Yup we are only 12 hours away from the official release of Watchdogs: Legion and so far it seems that they made a amazingly good product (Watchdogs: Legion), so I get more time on that (and Pikmin 3 too).

Yet the larger stage is not the makers, it is the media, always hounding for half a sound byte, half a quote, and then when the stage fumbles, play the blame game. We saw this with the non stop hounding of Hello Games and No Man’s Sky, even christian digital media were implying release date knowledge, begging like little bitches for clicks. The media is the larger problem, they want to ‘appease’ the avenues needs of gamers, but cold consideration is not on the table. And as such we get a warped expectation, yet in all this no one will hold the media to account will they? Just like the BS wave of flames around loot boxes, I am no fan of EA, even less now that I cannot buy a physical copy of NHL 21, as my favourite team is on the cover now, so I am in a ‘Fuck EA’ mode, or is that mood? Yet the setting of loot boxes is seemingly misreported, how many free loot boxes can be earned? How many packs a day are given free, how many milestones are rewarded with packs and cards? None of the media reports on this, I had a truckload with NHL 19,  I do not know how it is now, and even as several sites clearly reported on the free packs that FIFA 19 (or FIFA 20) had, I see no reporting on the FIFA 21 part, so will the gamers get an actual real view? I doubt it, it is seemingly not in their interest to cater to EA, but it seems that opposition of EA is catered to, I wonder why. It is the simplest stage of players versus gamers and as I personally see it, a lot of these players have never gamed on any decent level.

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October 27, 2020 · 19:28

Freedom to insult

That is the stage that we see reopen an hour ago on Reuters. The article ‘Saudi Arabia condemns cartoons offending Prophet Mohammad’ (at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-security-boycott-saudi/saudi-arabia-condemns-cartoons-offending-prophet-mohammad-idUSKBN27C0FE), which pretty much repeats my view given in ‘Creation of doubt’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/10/18/creation-of-doubt/) almost 10 days ago. Even as the BBC gives us ‘France targets radical Islam amid row with Turkey’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54692802), the larger issue is avoided by almost all. In a stage where we see ‘freedom of expression’ versus ‘disrespecting religion’ how can this ever be right? We see it in Hedbo in their view of christian values and in this there is no real setting, there is no doctrine against an image of Jesus, or an image of cardinals or the pope. Yet there is a clear directive on images of the prophet Mohammed, and Islam is quite outspoken of that part and that is ignored again and again.

The Reuters article gives us “Freedom of expression and culture should be a beacon of respect, tolerance and peace that rejects practices and acts which generate hatred, violence and extremism and are contrary to coexistence”, yet we see a lack thereof by the teacher Samuel Paty, in this I believe that the action against him were wrong, yet I wonder what drove a teacher to intentionally insult Islam, yet the media is driving around that question, driving around it by well over a mile. In this the BBC gives us “The government believes the response cannot only be about law enforcement. They also need to manage social networks and associations, because this tragic case shed light on a whole network which spreads hate speeches within the population. The system needs changing”, an interesting quote, yet if we look at ‘a whole network which spreads hate speeches within the population’, yet that applies to a schoolteacher as well as the person who beheaded that teacher, and that part is largely missing. And by the time we get to “Marine Le Pen has also cast the peaceful public expression of Islam as a threat to French national identity”, in this it is not about “peaceful public expression of Islam”, it is the intentional disrespect of Islam that is the larger part here, and ever as some state that this is the need of Macron to win a reelection, the stage of intentionally insulting religion has a much larger stage all over Europe, and as far as I can tell the big newscasters are all in silence there, they will skate around the subject and most of them are doing just that.

Even as the Guardian gives us yesterday ‘Macron’s clash with Islam sends jolt through France’s long debate about secularism’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/26/macrons-clash-with-islam-sends-jolt-through-frances-long-debate-about-secularism) we get a set stage, and as such we need to look at that stage.

First there is secularism, which means “indifference to or rejection or exclusion of religion and religious considerations”, as such we need to see “rejection of religious consideration” when it is set against ‘insulting religion’. In an age of discrimination laws where some might accept “The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on Thursday that insulting Islam’s Prophet Mohammed is not covered by freedom of expression” (source: Al Arabiya), the stage is not that clear as France rejects the Blasphemy Law, as such France is in a different pickle, yet the stage of ‘insulting religion’, and until that part is dealt with, the stage remains and might actually get worse.  So whilst we all accept and see that beheading a teacher is wrong, no one is wondering why a teacher is allowed to openly insult religion, insult Islam. Even as some papers give us “some of them caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, during a history lesson about freedom of speech and freedom of conscience”, I would have had the same stage in 2015, I protested like others Je suis Charlie, yet at that point I did not know why the action was taken. I believe that the protest was valid, but the lack of validity that goes with openly insulting religion is not addressed, not by any news paper. Why is that?

Now that I know that images of the prophet Mohammed are taboo, why would a teacher repeat the same insult? If it truly was about freedom of expression, why not use the christian examples (we christians do not object to this) and refer in that same lesson that Islam has specific rules on idolisation, yet the papers and plenty of other sources steer clear of that part, I wonder why?

It is clear that there is a gap in secularism, as such we need to take heed on how we openly insult the religions around us, why do this, what is there to gain? 

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October 27, 2020 · 16:19

Deadline or death line?

I said it before, and I stick to my view, Ubisoft is in a large stage of near death, they might be denying that part, but their setting is not good, or is that was not? Let’s be clear, today I went through Watchdogs: Legion and I am decently impressed, it is an absolute jump forward from Watchdogs 2, To be fair, this looks really good and after an hour, it still looks good and plays well. As I stated, the next two games define the future of Ubisoft and at present it seems like they got this one right. I saw issues in earlier editions, but as this was before beta, it does not count and I have every intention to take another look. No matter how we try to slice it, a few things show up, first of all, those angry (read: anti) game reviews are not as present as before, some people had plenty to bitch about Watch Dogs 2, yet I enjoyed most of the game (a few weird parts), the story was decent and the intro to WD3 is a lot better than the second one, the game has a few issues as I spotted them in WD3 that is, but it is not a disabling one, some of the conversations are really too unreal, but that could be a US view on British accents, I do not know, but it flaws there, yet two elements, the first is that this is a video game, second any voice can be regarded as flawed, it is how you look at it and does it hinder the game? I think not. One review I liked can be seen (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9kEuTyKufo). It gives a few things away, but not too much. In light of my earlier statement (regarding Ubisoft), it is important to note that this game shows a first sign that Ubisoft is addressing the stupidity we saw in earlier releases. I believe (at present) that AC Origins is still the best game that Ubisoft has released in the near past and this game is making a serious approach to breaking that achievement, something we had not seen for much too long. I might add more on the weekend as I progress through the game, yet so far I have to admit: “Well done Ubisoft”, which in light of my earlier views of other games is important to notice. 

I have nothing on AC Valhalla, What I saw earlier turned me off, yet I will admit that it was an early beta version, so lots to fix and even as some parts seem nice, there is a more apparent stage of addressing, which I believe is flawed, but it is based on incomplete views, as such I am refraining of actual criticism against the game at present.

Even as I still believe that Ubisoft is optionally on its last legs, the fact that the systems that WatchDogs: Legion is released on the big two consoles, with additions to PC and Google Stadia should not be underestimated. At present it indicates that Ubisoft could get its footing back and if the game turns out as good as it seemingly is (I honestly cannot say at present), the fact that a title like this is making it to Google Stadia as well is important. It could end up being a desired taste for EVERY Google Stadia player and that is important to Ubisoft as well. For Google it matters as it is not out on the Apple Arcade (as far as I can tell), and that will matter to Google in this upcoming race. It actually got me to one (small and insignificant) flaw at present, if I am wrong, I will be the first to apologise. When you consider that this game is in London and it was made by Ubisoft Toronto (that village in Canada), it suddenly dawned on me that the game is lacking NPC backpackers. London is filled with them, you know people with backpacks speaking in a Canadian, American and Australian accent (and plenty more dialects), they could have made that into a game achievement ‘Getting around: possessed a backpacker from every commonwealth nation’, just something to consider down the DLC road. Still, the fact that I am thinking of things to add, is important, as I am not thinking of things that required essential fixing. I might be too early in the game, but I have not felt this invigorated since AC Origins and that is a good feeling to have, Ubisoft is seemingly getting it right, if I attack them, I must also acknowledge that they are doing the right thing, it feels important to do that too.

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