September 9, 2020 · 16:37

A no-go is not a failure

It happens, things especially in science take a little more than we think it does and it also takes more attempts than one, this was a given from the very beginning, so when I mentioned issues in ‘The worst is yet to come’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/09/06/the-worst-is-yet-to-come/) this wasn’t it. Yet I did give mention of it in a previous article, it was going to take time. So when we get ‘Oxford scientists: these are final steps we’re taking to get our coronavirus vaccine approved’ at September 8, 2020 8.04pm AEST, yet less than 1 hour ago we are treated to ‘AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine trial suspended: Live news’, here we see “AstraZeneca says it has suspended trials of the coronavirus vaccine it is developing with the University of Oxford after one of the trials’ volunteers fell ill with an unexplained illness”, this is not a reason to panic, science will hit bumps and optionally this is merely a bump. Yet this bump translates to time, time that most governments no longer have. Yet it is the nature of things, so as we see “More than 27.5 million people around the world have been diagnosed with the coronavirus and 897,383 have died. More than 18.5 million people have recovered”, we see what some call dire statistics, yet in a population of 8,000 million, is it really dire? 

We also do not need to see ‘CSL unfazed by vaccine trial hold-up’, yet the text “Blood products giant CSL is pushing ahead with its preparations to manufacture the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, despite the multinational biotech halting its phase three trial on Wednesday” raises questions. Preparations make sense when the situation has been resolved, or the issue is not a real bump, but the text “This is a routine action which has to happen whenever there is a potentially unexplained illness in one of the trials, while it is investigated, ensuring we maintain the integrity of the trials”, gives a larger worry, and when we see governments eager to push out a vaccine is what might be regarded as a false sense of security, who would benefit? Now this is speculative because the situation is fluid, and even as we get the news from several media sources, they tend to have their own agenda and 7 hours ago, ABC gave us ‘Oxford coronavirus vaccine trial on hold over ‘potentially unexplained illness’, AstraZeneca says’, we are treated to the word ‘potentially’, this is actually fair, especially in light of the quote in the ABC article “AstraZeneca said it “voluntarily paused” the phase 3 clinical trial — which kicked off in July — to allow a review of the “single event” by an independent committee”, an action triggered by a single event, the setting of AstraZeneca makes perfect sense. It is a safety setting and here the no-go (for now) is not a failure. There is every chance that we will see the found explanation in the very near future and that makes AstraZeneca the winner.

In the setting of any normal timeline, we got lucky, if (and we emphasise on if) it becomes the cure, we will see that AstraZeneca has broken records in finding an optional cure for a disease that had no cure, no vaccine and that within a year is pretty spectacular. Especially when a timeline up to 18 months was an expected setting. So even if the bump implies that there will be a delay, AstraZeneca is well ahead of schedule, and before we go out on a limb and get crazy, less than a million died, in a setting with 8,000 million people, there is room to manoeuvre.

 

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September 8, 2020 · 21:56

About lights and tunnels

If we take the change of new technology (like 5G), we need to feel to be in charge. We tend to forget that part (I surely did at some point) and whilst I was considering a different form of new IP, I considered the small status that the thought came from a direction where my knowledge is not that great, I am no expert on technological 5G, I never claimed to be that. So when my mind grew towards a new form of mobile security towards 5G+ or even 6G, my mind set an image, yet the stage of routing, ciphering and deciphering waves are not the stages I am an expert in, yet forms of the solution come to me. I am not a mathematician, so I see images, images of clockworks, clockworks of gun cylinders and they intersect. 7, 9 and 11 shooters, cylinders of different properties are intersecting, what do you set when there are n 7 cylinders all with different time settings, n 9 cylinders and n 11 cylinders. Setting a larger stage of frequencies and cut stages that are linked, all set in an algorithm via a new form of routing, the result is a new stage of mobile communication that cannot be hacked, until true AI and true Quantum computing are a fact, the shallow circuits cannot cut through the mesh, a new stage of true privacy and at present Google and Huawei are the only ones even close to setting this up, even as they have the juice, they will need someone like Cisco to pull some of the weight. 

It would also seem a different stage to the mobile phone. I remember the old walkie talkies in the 60’s. The more advanced models had several crystals so that there was a unique signal. I wondered what we could do to emphasise on privacy in today’s mobile setting. In stead of crystals, we have a mobile phone, it is a transmitter, but what happens when it is not set to a band, but it can be set to 7,9, or 11 separate frequencies. A sort of time slice and that is the beginning, the carrier will give you the connection with the slices, their routers will set the connection and unless the hacker has the set, they can never get the entire conversation, unless they have every connection and then they would need to unscramble thousands of phones depending on the hardware whether they used 7,9 or 11 parts. If I get it to work in my mind, it could signal a new age of real privacy for people with a mobile phone.

But in the end, it is merely a sideline towards more interesting IP. The idea hit me when I was looking at a real estate site, which one does not matter. I was merely curious. It all started with a spec pal by Piers Morgan, he made a special on Monte Carlo and I was curious, as I had never been there. So as I got curious, I took a look and I noticed that speed was an interesting flaw, even on a mobile, a place where well over 50% of all searches are done, it took nearly forever. Yet when I took the Google Tester (at https://search.google.com/test/mobile-friendly) the site passed the test, it made perfect sense, yet the delay was real. I do not think it was them, or me. But it got me thinking of a different approach.
Google has had that setting for a long time, they call it the Lightbox ad. I had another use for the ad, or as I would call it, another media container. But the media container would require a different use, it would require the user to use a different approach, not that this would be bad, but it would optionally reduce the bandwidth that they use. If the app links to the toppling on the site, yet when we look, the app gets the link to the media container on the google server, the real estate data needs are not going via the offerer, it goes via the seeker and hey are either really seeking, or merely browsing, the browsers will no longer impede on the business, the seekers will not notice and these media containers can all be used for advertising all over the place, it is up to the realtor which ones are ready for advertising all over the place, and there is the larger kicker, it is a setting that (as far as I can tell) no realtor has considered and that is where the larger stage comes, because when 5G hits, the realtor will see a much larger benefit, they would not need to update (other then optionally an app), they will be ready, and they will push towards both their needs via their site, an app and via Google Ads, three directions instead of one and it will be a larger stage when no one was thinking ahead. 

There is light at the end of the tunnel, I switched on the lights, and no one cares who switched on the lights and that is OK, it is just that no one realised that the lights were not on, that should leave you with the consideration why no one realised that.

 

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September 8, 2020 · 18:01

What are we fighting for?

It is a question we get to ask ourselves a lot, especially when we are serving. I served but was not confronted with that question, yet the line came to me in the Paul Newman movie ‘The Secret War of Harry Frigg’ which was a hilarious comedy and it introduced us to Sylva Koscina. The movie is not the issue here at present, but the line is. When the papers give us ‘US veterans and soldiers divided over Trump calling war dead ‘suckers’’, a setting that gives us “Donald Trump was struggling to retain support of active US service members, according to polls, even before last week’s bombshell report that the commander-in-chief referred to fallen and captured US service members as “losers” and “suckers””, I wonder how delusional he was when he gave us what he gave us. This is not some typo in the stream cast, it was a massive blunder, one that should never have happened. No matter how we see the wars that the US got themselves into, I a setting where almost 1.4 million people lost their lives going back to the Civil War, and in this, I estimate that roughly somewhere between 30-70 million people have a family member who lost their life in one of the wars that the US was a part of. So we have up to 70 million people that are in a rather large stage where the Commander in Chief of the US calls the people who died for their country ‘Losers’ and ‘Suckers’, so from my point of view that is a setting where the bulk of those people will not vote in whatever is in the White House at this time, and he only has himself to thank for that. Or as some will say, he got himself properly fired on that one.

And the news is not over, we see dozens of news media giving us denials, and fallout of the setting and there is more and more coming and all this 7 weeks before the election. As some see it, for Joe Biden Christmas came early, anyone who was on the fence on how to vote, with relatives who served in any US war, they are now going (more likely than not) Democrat, those who were deeply Republican are more likely than not on the fence, especially is they have relatives who served. If we go by the previous election with 128,000,000 voters, there is now a chance that from those, between 20%-40% is optionally not voting Republican, implying that the vote is more likely than not going to Joe Biden. 

It is not a given, I need to tell you that from the start, but his actions against the coloured (see any Black Lives Matter stage), the women (the ‘I grabbed her by the pussy’ statement), his attacks on Kamala Harris, now we get the Military statement, it adds up, it is slightly speculative, but except for the Klan and the ultra right, he basically upset every demographic possible. This relates to votes and all the votes voting ‘the other guy’ instead of him. I myself am for the most Republican in nature, but his setting is just too unacceptable to me and it has been so for well over 3 years. To be honest, I did not chose Hilary Clinton for the simple reason that she made a mess of Benghazi, it is the only reason why I did not select her (OK, she is not a republican, which was my my second reason). We have a setting that we have a liking for a side and I am not against Democrats, I am against the way they push certain matters. Let’s not forget that both sides did way too little in the tax laws setting, which is a first that needs fixing and after 4 terms, we need to fix it. I am not sure which sides picks it up, but big tech is much deeper in the Democratic pockets, as such less will be done in that setting. 

And this is not the end, this administration has made a massive mess of high tech and 5G, it gets to be a lot worse when we consider (2 weeks ago) ‘Europe’s 5G plans in limbo after latest salvo against Huawei’, and I believe that this is merely the start. We want to look at the headlines, but there is too much out there to support the stage that the media is being talked to by other parties. 

In all we speculate left, right and centre, yet the stage is not a given. Nokia is shouting on 5G New Radio, yet the stage that ZDNet gives us is “Standards for the first and second phases of 5G are moving towards completion, and early deployments can piggy-back on 4G LTE infrastructure. But there’s plenty of work to do before the technical advances in 5G’s radio spec can support new use cases”, as I personally see it, this is merely 4GLTE++, not 5G, and that is the larger stage, tomorrow Nokia is not even on par with today Huawei and the media is seemingly avoiding that issue. So as we get “If mobile technology were a long-running TV series, 5G is a mid-season reboot, with new characters introduced alongside the old, new plot arcs complementing existing storylines, and a publicity drive that rather overstates the case. However, the possibilities for future development are much enhanced”, I am remembering Adler (the typewriter) once decided to go into the PC world, it was early days and the 80286 became affordable, so Adler decided to enter the market with a 80186 processor, it was not a win. Having 4G LTE++ is a temporary solution, but in the end to get ahead the people will need true 5G, just like some telecom companies making a marketing claim of 4G, whilst in 2010 they could offer no more than 3.5G, and we are now seeing it again, but on a much larger stage. So when the people finally figure out that what is now Nokia, they will be on the slippery slope of what they cannot ski, but others can and that has been the issue from day one. I have nothing against Nokia, I have nothing against the others, yet the issue was that Huawei has a massive advantage and the stage is being set by a bankrupt America, an America who is afraid of what they are about to lose and they are using whatever they can to stem the tide and as the stages are washing away we will be given less and less facts.  So what are we fighting for? I honestly do not know what they are fighting for all whilst their IP is debatable. So as I am weighing the options available to me, I wonder where my IP will end, to be honest, if the money is there, I do not care (Deep Rising). In my case it is not greed driven, it is a drive towards those relying on bullet point presentations and making sure they miss out, even if I miss out on a million or two. If it allows me my house in a nice warm place, I am fine, it is optionally a stage where I say no to 5 billion when 500 million will ample suffice, the bullet point people will never get it, when is enough enough? 

It comes with the answer to ‘What are we fighting for?’, merely a corner of my choice in a place of my choice. It is a simple setting and one that those who embrace ‘Greed is good’ can never understand, because that is their weakness, just like loss is the achilles heel of the greed driven and the corrupt. Until they face the ultimate loss (the loss of what they truly love) they will remain delusional on what they can make happen. Only when they face it will they finally wake up, but if all goes to plan, I will be long gone by then. 

We all fight for something, and we are entering the stage where the truth is what the powerful say it is, it is no longer set to scientific measures, it is set to subjective terms, and that slippery slope is sliding, so answer yourself, what are you fighting for?

 

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September 7, 2020 · 15:37

Software as a salad

Yup, we all have our moments of creation, although this is a redesign, the idea is out there and it is set to be an open invitation to the owners of the game Clue, to take it to a next level. What happens when we change the tally? It dawned on me when I was walking in a mall and I laid eyes on the Harry Potter edition of Clue, it looked nice, it looked revamped to be as close to the Harry Potter world as possible, but it was still the classical game of Clue. It was funny, because around an hour earlier I was sitting down sipping on a coffee and try to wake up (well a fair attempt anyway), I noticed two tables over a gorgeous young lady (19-21) and she was talking to her friend (no idea what about) and she was getting slightly over enthusiastic over pictures of Professor Snape (Alan Rickman is cool). I had to giggle internally and I would have given anything for Alan Rickman to be blushing one table over, but that was not the case, yet it started a thought and after the coffee when I noticed the HP Board game, when a thought started to take hold, what if one game could lead to another? What if we take the EA original Murder on the Zinderneuf (yes, it was original in 1983), make it a first person adjustable mystery, yet every game unlocks specific randomised new options. What if the game unlocks the game clue, but what happens when the game, a game that is different every time (apart from the stage). The game offers a challenge already, but when you get a different murder mystery every time you play it, in addition, you get the board game Clue to play at home or online with opt in players or a computer character, as well as a stage where you could optionally unlock the HP edition, the Downton Abbey edition, the Walking dead edition, the Asterix edition, a Scooby Doo edition and so on. The idea of opening a game an unlocking the other skins one at a time sets a larger premise, sets a drive to play the game, especially for those who love the game. The game would not alter too much, but the location, people and object skins do and that are cosmetic items. The option to seed the game like a minefield with other cards (like the ones in the game), but with different outfits, so the game keeps on looking fresh. Then there are the stage where the initial game when replayed will offer a person to find objects, like a Golden Snitch, the Resurrection stone, An Asterix flask, Scooby Do’s bone and so on. A game with a long lasting half life, because there will be options to unlock for a long time to come, yet who took on considering that approach in gaming until the Google Stadia became a fact? Let’s face it, I never saw this for the years that Steam was out. 

There is no end towards what is possible, but what should concern you is why the makers of current games aren’t thinking the far ahead, or that much out of the box. This is my 7th game IP concept in under a year, and in the gaming industry, these so called captains of industry haven’t come up with 50% of that amount of IP. So I leave you with that thought, will you buy software, or will you mix it up like a salad, it might not taste the way you think it does, but it is more likely then not an original taste and that counts in gaming. The stage of ‘I never had that before’ and it remains true, it is not for everyone, but when you set the goal to make a game for everyone, you merely make a game that pleases no one. 

 

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September 6, 2020 · 20:01

The worst is yet to come

Have you ever watched those old ‘thats Entertainment’ shows? The ones where we see the start with old blue eyes singing ‘The best is yet to come’? Well, in these days we get the new version where the worst is yet to come. In the Coronavirus numbers we see yesterday that a new number is reached, 300,474 new cases, a new height. We are only one day away from the US with 3% of its population with the Coronavirus, 50% of all cases are in the USA, Brazil and India (based on the numbers), yet there are several indicators that we aren’t even close to knowing how many cases India actually has. Even as ABC gave us last month ‘India’s biggest slum has so far nailed coronavirus. Here’s how they did it’, I am not convinced and the data is siding with me. That is seen 4 hours ago in the Indian Express where we see ‘State crosses 20,000-mark in highest single-day spike of cases’, in this we see part, but the article (at https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/maharashtra-mumbai-pune-thane-coronavirus-live-news-updates-covid-19-cases-deaths-unlock-guidelines-6582475/) also gives us “The state on Friday reported 19,218 new cases, taking the tally to 8,63,062 while the death toll rose to 25,964. The spike in cases broke Thursday’s record of 18,105 cases” (there is in the article a typo at the 8 million mark. Yet other numbers give us “4,114,773”, the number is 50% off and that is merely the beginning. India might be the most visible one, but there is no way that they are the only one. There is yet more, it cannot be given full credibility (apart from the fact that it comes from Nine News, the headline ‘Coronavirus is the number 3 killer of all Americans’, I find it debatable, but OK, such as it is they did give me a part that was interesting the article (at https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/coronavirus-u-s-map-where-virus-has-been-confirmed-across-n1124546) gives us the part that matters. The first is the death rate; for California it is 1.8%, for Arizona it is 2.5%, for Texas it is 2%, for Florida it is 1.8%, for New York it is 7.6% and for Pennsylvania it is 5.4%. I only looked at the states with well over 100,000 cases, below that I ignored it, but the setting that the percentage is fluctuating between 1.8% and 7.6% does not add up, One of the more usual fluctuation setting (amount of cases) was circumvented by only looking at the states with well over 100,000 cases. I believe that the setting is off, I believe that these states, optionally in New York as well, is short of numbers, I believe there is a whole range of those with the Coronavirus and those who died of it are not counted for whatever reason. There is no blame here, the US and other nations had not been confronted with this situation for 100 years. The stage was never ready for this and with the bulk of all nations in a budget crunch it will not be resolved. 

Consider (speculatively) that nations are all going towards the 7.6% stage, it is not impossible, as Melbourne Australia is going forward in a new lockdown, the opposite is achieved with the anti-lockdown protests in several countries, they will get more people killed, it is a good way to drop the unemployment numbers and optionally making housing cheaper. The stage is propagated at the highest level, we see this with “They ranged in size from a few hundred people to several thousand, and spread on social media with encouragement from U.S. president Donald Trump” (Source: the Washington Post), and in all this we see the stage go forward with more and more Coronavirus cases popping up. Even as some lines are in decline, I reckon that the entire Labour day celebrations will chance it to a much larger degree. And it does not end there, the CDC is giving us that there are no numbers for the state of New York, merely a total, with no confirmed number, which w2e can understand, but if there is a larger hole in confirmations, there will be every chance that the number is incorrect and definitely incomplete. (at https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases)

There are too many markers out there and they all give us the same message: ‘The worst is yet to come’, when you see what is reported on, what is seen as missing and what is not reported on gives that larger stage and the people are so ready to have ‘anti-lockdown’ protests, how stupid is that?

 

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September 5, 2020 · 15:21

It was never about you

We get it, some players work on a multitude of levels. That is fine, but when a company makes hay through marketing that they are all about the consumers and we get ‘Apple delays new anti-tracking privacy measures’, we see how (what I regard to be) deceptive conduct is the alleged foundation between a company and a $2 trillion company. There is no upside for the consumer, there consumer was entitled to protection and we get “Apple said the changes were being delayed until the start of 2021 to give app developers and websites more time to adapt their services”, which makes us wonder why Apple designed the anti-tracking part in the first instance, a solution made and delayed to give trackers another way to do so, does that make sense?

So if it is a setting and we get “once the change is implemented in 2021, it will be off by default and advertisers will have to ask permission to access it”, at what stage is it in our interest to delay the change? I get it Apple needs a stream of incomes and my personal view there is one in betraying your customer base, that is the simple setting.

The other quote that matters is “Facebook has warned that Apple’s privacy plan could make one of its advertising tools “so ineffective on iOS 14 that it may not make sense to offer it on iOS 14””, which is fair enough, but I reckon that this will optionally cost Apple a few coins. The question becomes: what is the cut-off point and what is the trade off point for Apple and what ‘enhanced security’ will remain for the consumers? 

I reckon that there will be a massive decrease in free apps, it is mere speculation but yes, as mobile data becomes less available the pool for free apps and games will decrease. And let’s be fair, these companies did nothing illegal, but in the end, remember it is not about you, it is about the money you bring in and when was the last time you got that advertisement properly handed to you?

And in this it is Apple who states ‘Think different’, which is what we are doing, we want to see what deals Apple is making with the advertisers, which is NOT illegal lets be upfront about it. As such when we see “It is a world of consumers only”, “The market stands on the shoulders of consumers”, “A life of consumerism revolves around all that you want” and “Markets are built as per the taste of consumers”. We are getting misinformed, the world today is monetary based, so it becomes about the enablers and actively those who push it. That realisation is key in today’s world, the temporary setting of consumers is yesterday’s news and we only move forward when we learn that lesson, until then we are marketing tools and spending fools (an exaggeration I agree). To get ahead of the game we need to accept that marketing will happen, data captures will happen, but we also need to agree that our data is not a third party tool to be handed around the campfire. We might have woken up in the age of Cambridge Analytica, but this stage was not new. A Dutch entrepreneur and politician named Luc Sala already gave visibility to this setting 25 years ago, I was not the first (and I never made that claim). So as the haves and have not people are being segregated, we see a new form of discrimination, not on sex, religion or colour, but on the setting and longevity of your bank card (and the Credit Rating connected to this). Not your credit card, debt is not the equaliser, it is a timeline of how long you can service the organisation that wants you to service them. It is the power of the bank card that makes you a ‘Have’ in their eyes and that is where all the data is priming towards, because the firm who has the data most complete to distinguish the ‘Have’ people, that will be the winner and the US has been in the running the longest and now that China is surpassing them, now they cry in every direction, but as the remarked the ‘status’ of their reason for crying, we merely see the BS that they hide behind, just like Colin Powell and his silver briefcase (Iraq anyone?).

And the US has another problem, the stage was partially going smooth that is until the 45th President made a mess of the entire setting and the entire playing field, not only did he set the stage to a visible perspective, in his utter lack of intelligence he set the stage on ‘national security’ and ‘China’ whilst the evidence would not support it and as this is getting more and more visibility, Huawei is gaining momentum outside of the US and considering that there are less than 350 million Americans, and a growing customer base outside the US surpassing billions of ‘have targets’, that is the stage where the US is losing grip, that is where a lot of the Have’s are. And the stage to find them will soon change, the stage will be about uniting those who have and in this the US is behind, and the lag is increasing. 

There is no stage to make any kind of a reliable prediction who will win, but as far as I can tell, it will not be the US. The stage in the EU is still fluid, several banks were in the running. I first took notice of Credit Agricole in 2018 in that regard. The quote “Acting within the framework of a regulated activity, we offer you and provide products and services requiring the collection and use, as data controller, of the personal data of individuals related to you (for example: employees, shareholders, agents, legal representatives, beneficial owners, family members, third-party representatives, etc.) (the “Data Subjects”)” is set to a larger stage and it is important to realise that Credit Agricole never did anything illegal or against the European GDPR. Yet I took notice of ‘the personal data of individuals related to you’ and I found a little more than bargained for. So when we realise that there is more to life than being identified as a consumer and that the truth, but did you consider that you are optionally set to a different spectrum?

 

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September 4, 2020 · 14:04

The face carrying the egg

Yup, I woke up giddy (a good meal will do that) and I have been thinking about new IP when the BBC made me giggle with ‘One of Europe’s biggest brothels goes bust’, now this is bound to happen, yet the situation reminded me of an old slogan: ‘Due to a death, the cemetery will be closed for 3 days’. Now I have nothing against the ladies of the night and the business people counting on the mattresses being used day and night, yes they will have a larger issues with a pandemic lockdown. It is nice to see “Some 120 prostitutes usually work at Pascha. It employs around 60 staff including cooks and hairdressers. Mr Lobscheid criticised the German authorities’ handling of the pandemic – particularly their ability to be clear when the business would be allowed to resume. He said officials would tell them every two weeks that they would not be able to reopen”, I am not judging mind you, but the effects of a lockdown implies that you cannot work, not even on your back and when your clients are in lockdown, so will you be. That is the low down on the issue and to see “We can’t plan like that. We might have been able to avert bankruptcy with the help of the banks if we had been promised that things could start again at the beginning of next year”, OK, that is fair, when a brothel is run like any business, that includes paying tax, it is fair to say that it should be allowed governmental protection, and lets face it, if the governments protects its politicians, why not its hookers, there are plenty of situations when most people cannot distinguish one from the other, as such the humour is increasing. Yet the other side is also in discussion, we see this with “Mr Lobscheid criticised the German authorities’ handling of the pandemic – particularly their ability to be clear when the business would be allowed to resume”, I wonder if Mr Lobscheid has all his ducks in a row, you see this pandemic is unique, we haven’t faced anything like this in 100 years and the last time we did it there was a little picnic called World War 1 which had just ended, as such nations were largely in disarray. We have been lucky so far and if governments had taken a longer look at their infrastructure the mess might (i emphasise might) we smaller, but optionally not by a lot. So in all this, as businesses are in lockdown, are in a stage where larger businesses cannot run, we see a brothel, but we also see Airlines, hotels and a whole range of companies losing out of revenue, so in part a business that is properly set up and is paying tax, should be entitled to some form of protection, yet the statement ‘their ability to be clear when the business would be allowed to resume’ is a bit of a stretch. It is almost like the hooker who goes to the doctor because of a symptom and the doctor tells her to stay out of bed for three weeks. yes, it is unfair that businesses like airlines and the one mile high club needs to stop functioning, but I wonder if people have any clue what the impact of a pandemic is. The Spanish flu set the need for 20 million to 50 million tombstones, at present that need is a little below 874,000, so we are only at 5% of the previous caper, now we can toss and turn, or we can adjust. I am in favour of the second, but that too comes with a risk. You see as long as we lockdown the disease remains a risk and the steps make sense, because the more time we have, the more time will be set towards finding a vaccine, and optionally a cure. We are given all these options, but the short, sweet truth is ‘There is no cure or treatment to prevent COVID-19’, as such until there is a treatment, lockdown is what there is and that is it. In this, I accept that the BBC gave us the article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54016791) that there is more to life then awaiting death and the setting of Pascha is what it is (as a priest once told others), but the setting that we see with ‘criticised the German authorities’, is to be honest a little insane with the larger stage of unknown variables and minimum distance of 2 meters. I know that some call it a long john, but it’s not that long, not by a long shot. Yet I am still pondering “We might have been able to avert bankruptcy with the help of the banks if we had been promised that things could start again at the beginning of next year”, I know that over religious types go into a banter, but at least it is a business that pays taxation, and if rumours are correct a lot more than a speculated member of FAANG does, so there! 

So when we consider the face carrying the egg, we can point at Lobscheid, or we can look at ‘‘The venues are packed’: Labor Day parties cause concern for another COVID-19 spike’ (at https://www.11alive.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/labor-day-weekend-covid-19-worries/85-e320d391-da34-49e7-b8c0-1ebb35061367), with the added quote “Georgia health experts are concerned Labor Day weekend could usher in a new wave of COVID-19 infections just as the state’s cases have started to slow down. Despite the warning, large parties are scheduled over the next few days in metro-Atlanta, as state and local officials are doing little to stop it”, so whilst we see one person in denial of clarity, we see a whole group of people in denial of the actual situation. For the unemployed it is good news, as 874,000 move towards 2,000,000, we see that jobs become available, houses become cheaper and it will be all over the US, the EU and a few other places as well. For governments there is another upside, as people get jobs, the cost of governing goes down and as such it starts the end of a recession, positive news all around.

I do agree that the lack of clarity breaths confusion and aggravation, but there is no real solution; until the people realise and clearly realise that the last pandemic took well over 20 million lives, only then will they realise that there is a larger setting and they are taking risks with their lives, the clever people will not. The situation is that at present, new cases are set around 290K a day and that has been the case since July 24th, so well over a month, and since July 17th the number of non living increases by 5,000 a day. These two numbers are not a given, and things will get better, but do you think it gets better when hundreds are together in a bar celebrating labour day? It gets to be a lot worse when we see ‘CDC’s autumn vaccine hint fuels fears of pressure from Trump’ (source: the Guardian), there we see “the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had instructed states to prepare to distribute a coronavirus vaccine to healthcare workers and vulnerable populations – just in time for the 3 November election”, but at present there is no reliable news that there is an actual vaccine, several sources give us that there is one coming, but when we look at the Sydney Morning Herald (at https://www.smh.com.au/national/how-is-the-new-covid-vaccine-designed-to-work-20200819-p55n33.html) we see “That letter of intent is contingent on the vaccine working – and, scientists have emphasised, we don’t yet know if it will” and that is not all, that was on August 19th, so far we do not see a daily update that there is an actual confirmed vaccine and when we consider “among the more than 165 COVID-19 vaccines under development around the world”, so everyone is racing to fill their pockets with a working vaccine, but so far none is in existence. I do accept the setting “ChAdOx1, the vaccine Australia’s government has signed up to buy, is one of the leaders”, and I know it will take time to confirm, but in all, the stage we are about to see is one that is a dangerous one and too many people have decided not to sit still and ponder the impact of ignoring what is in front of them, time will tell, but the setting is a lot more dangerous than before, the Guardian gives us that with “critics of the Trump administration have worried that the White House would pressure the Federal Drug Administration (FDA), the CDC and other agencies to rush a hasty coronavirus vaccine to market before the election” and that is merely the larger stage, the idea that a place like the CDC could be pressured implies that the lives of the people that they are supposed to protect are not protected at all. This is seen with “a key agency in the process, the FDA, which would have to grant emergency use approval for any vaccine candidate to be distributed before the full completion of trials, has shown itself vulnerable to political pressure”, and it is ‘distributed before the full completion of trials’, is the part that should hit you. If that happened, people could be confronted with a vaccine that is optionally worse than Covid-19. I need to be careful, because I will not speak out against vaccines, but we need to realise that proper testing is needed and that requires time. And in this time is the one element that the people are not willing to give, and those on that train will be wearing egg, and a lot of it.

Time will tell us what was the proper course of action, time will tell us what the effects are of lockdown, because that can only be seen afterwards. I am merely nervous that in the end a lot more people will die of the Coronavirus than was needed, merely because governments were too lazy (or too late) to act. And it is not all their fault, that is seen in the Australian Financial Review with ‘Masks are pointless, says Sweden’s maverick chief medic’ (at https://www.afr.com/world/europe/masks-are-pointless-says-sweden-s-maverick-chief-medic-20200730-p55gre). Here we see “With numbers diminishing very quickly in Sweden, we see no point in wearing a face mask in Sweden, not even on public transport”, and we are surprised that people follow this, he is an MD, he should know and all whilst we see hundreds of medics all over the world give us all kinds of images, but a lot give us something like the image seen here. So when we see that and we see the statement by Sweden’s chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell. So when was ‘better be safe than sorry’ not a golden rule in an age of Pandemics? 

We still have ways to go, but in all this, I predict that a lot more people will be the careers of egg on face than we think there are and when we learn that lesson it will already be too late.

 

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September 3, 2020 · 12:21

Overkill anyone?

There is no going around the news that Alexey Navalny did not slip on a bar of soap in the bathroom. Yet the news ‘Nerve agent Novichok found in Russia’s Alexey Navalny: Germany’ given to us (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/09/germany-nerve-agent-novichok-russia-navalny-200902135330447.html) and other sources needs to be evaluated on a few levels. The media is of course eager to give us “Novichok – a military grade nerve agent – was used to poison former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the United Kingdom”, that event had a few issues and this one has even more. First of all, I do not really know the man, so my information on him has a few dubious sides. Consider his life in Moscow, on his walks in Moscow there are well over a dozen vantage points where his life could be snuffed out with a cyanide tipped bullet (or Ricin), two much more stable compounds than Novichok ever was. From each of these vantage points, I would be able to get to 1-2 streets over and after that simply vanish, the M24, or DVP Druganov equivalent I would leave behind, as a present for the eager beaver. As such Navalny would be dead. There are alternatives with Lithium, and several more opportunities that end life permanently, so we do have options. In this we now get another stage. This is the third known Novichok attack where the person does not immediately die, or does not die at all ‘Comatose Russian dissident Alexey Navalny arrives at Berlin hospital’ (source: CNN). And even as the media hides behind ““Only the state [FSB, GRU] can use Novichok. This is beyond any reasonable doubt,” Ivan Zhdanov, director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, said on Twitter, referring to the FSB internal security and GRU military intelligence services”, I had shown in ‘Something for the Silver Screen?’ In March 2018 (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/03/17/something-for-the-silver-screen/) we see that the statement ‘Only the state [FSB, GRU] can use Novichok’ is not true, there are at least two instances where reach of Novichoks are outside of state actors, that is separate from the issues shown in the OPCW papers and in this, there are more questionable acts by Vil Mirzayanov in this. And let’s be clear, if the FSB or the GRU wanted Alexey Navalny dead there are over a dozen of ways to do that. If you need to get rid of the neighbour, you don’t resort to nuclear weapons, it is a level of overkill that is apparently accepted by all the media whilst no one is looking at the larger picture. Novichok is massively unstable and way too dangerous. These are known properties and no one is looking into the matter or asking questions. 

Is that not really really weird?

And it does not end there, Al Jazeera also gives us “Sergei Nechayev, who was summoned to the foreign ministry on Wednesday, asked for evidence and received “no answer, no facts, no data, no formulae”” as such, we see the accusation, we see no facts and no real evidence, and even as I am willing to accept that there was something real here, there is still a larger car where this is not a state operation, but another setting where Russian organised crime is involved. This does not absolve the Russian government but it does show a much larger setting and optionally a case where the Russian government is not guilty. The act of one corrupt official does not make a government guilty, and is that not a nice surprise “In December 2010, Navalny announced the launch of the RosPil project, which seeks to bring to light corrupt practices in the government procurement process”, it seems that Navalny has been dipping his feet in the pool of corruption hoping to see what is swimming there and who the sharks are (a West Side Story reference). Yet the media is not looking too deep there, because someone mentioned the word Novichok. In this the very first setting in this situation is that the use of Novichok is a massive overkill, and no one is catching on, why is that?

And if the west is so about freedom and about being nations of laws, why are they all negated in several cases? 

 

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September 1, 2020 · 17:56

Just the facts?

Isn’t that what it needs to be in media? Just the facts? The issue is that media in general and in this case the BBC specifically is setting a different stage and I am not sure why. Now, I will give up front that it is my opinion and perception against that of the BBC and the stage is up in the air. For the most, or basically nearly always, the BBC is on point and is highly reliable. In this case, some facts are debatable and one factor is that I do not have all the inn’s and out’s (pun intended). That is also a factor and I am trying to keep that in mind. So the article ‘Saudi king sacks defence officials’ would initially be something I would have glanced over. Merely because even if I would be applying for the position of Defence official for the Saudi Arabian government, I do not speak the language and I reckon that there are plenty of Saudi nationals eager to get that position. In the second, the role was until recently in the hands of Prince Fahad bin Turki, and I am no prince (no matter what the ladies say). In addition we are given “The men, along with four other officials, face an investigation into “suspicious financial dealings” at the Ministry of Defence, the decree said”, implying that this is all about the politics, and I never cared for politics. It all starts with “critics say the high-profile arrests have been aimed at removing obstacles to the prince’s hold on power”, my first question becomes, who are those critics? In the second, in light of how things are in Yemen, I see no real setting that Prince Fahad bin Turki is any kind of obstacle in the current power setting in Saudi Arabia, now I will admit immediately that I have no real idea on who is in that power cycle, yet I wonder if those ‘critics’ are aware of what is and who are, or are they merely setting the stage for others to set a presentation stage? You see the accusation is given speculated strength via ‘critics say’ yet we do not get any mention of who those critics are, do we? Yet the BBC article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53980115) goes off the deep end when we see “However he has been embroiled in a series of scandals, including the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi embassy in Istanbul in 2018 and an alleged murder plot against a former Saudi intelligence agent in Canada”, this is achieved in a few ways. In the first, the entire Khashoggi debacle is set to flawed intelligence, especially the ‘added’ intelligence by UN essay writer Agnes Calamard, I dealt with that in several articles, especially in ‘Demanding Dismissal’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2019/07/04/demanding-dismissal/), so not only can we prove that Jamal Khashoggi is murdered, we can merely speculate on that, and that is before we need to realise that there is absolutely no evidence that there was any directive from Saudi Arabia to allegedly kill Jamal Khashoggi, if there was it would have ‘leaked’ to every newspaper in the world, all we got was a level of emotional outbursts devoid of evidence. And there is the alleged plot against Dr. Saad Aljabri, the allegations went so far that they try to convict Saudi Officials in another country, how is that for failing evidence? Yet that same court has no real intentions to seriously look into “Saudi officials accuse Aljabri of leading a group that misspent $11 billion of government funds and skimmed $1 billion for themselves, the Wall Street Journal reported, an allegation he denies” interesting is it not? 

So it seems that the critics are all about spinning yarn, if not they would have been out there supported by actual and factual evidence, they are not. And the implied situation in Istanbul, which comes up in every Saudi story is this time linked to the sacking of defence officials, all whilst the evidence attached is drowning additional events is disbelief and more credibility is removed from the situation. That was not hard, was it?

 

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September 1, 2020 · 05:36

The stage I partially ignored

We all have that, we hear and see something and partially ignore the small print (if it is stated at all), she deals are good. I have made no secret of my aversion to Microsoft, that remains, yet I thought that the Game Pass was a great idea, so when I was shown ‘Xbox Game Pass is a steal — so why aren’t people using it?’ (at https://www.laptopmag.com/news/xbox-game-pass-op-ed) two days ago, I was a little confused. I might not be a Microsoft fan, but there are plenty who love Microsoft and Xbox, it is their choice and they are welcome to it, in that part I would think that they would love the Game Pass, yet the article give me a few items that I was not aware of.

The first part is “If you’re in the middle of a long RPG like Final Fantasy XV and it is removed from Game Pass, you’ll have to buy it. In Game Pass’ defense, the service gives you a month’s warning when games you’ve downloaded are about to leave. You also have the option to buy the game at a discount”, as well as “Some players feel more comfortable buying and downloading games individually rather than getting them through a service like Game Pass. It sounds like semantics considering you’re downloading games regardless, but perception is key, and to some, knowing they are getting a game through a service turns them off. In their eyes, Game Pass removes ownership” it gives a stage where we basically never own games, we merely rent them and there is a plus side and a down side to that, it is slightly more clear when we set the Microsoft store quote next to this “Get 2-4 free games every month and save up to 50% on game purchases”, so basically you pay $15 a month and that gives access to some games, whilst buying a game is up to 50% cheaper. So imagine Assassins Creed 15 (whatever version) and any AC fan wants to own them, so that month the bill could be at least $65. How long until the basic setting of the game pass is no longer a real sweet deal? 

And that is not the end, the more people are hit with the temporary setting ‘removed from Game Pass’, the gamer gets the setting of an expensive pass. I am actually amazed that Microsoft did not do a better job there. How long until we see that the games that they offer have a mere 1 year (or perhaps even 2 year) shelf life? It is not a path I expected Microsoft to make and when we see “Game Pass is $9.99. For $14.99, subscribers get Xbox Game Pass for Xbox and Windows PC along with Xbox Live. This also includes access to play online games. An additional $5 on top of the $10 for Xbox Live doesn’t sound so bad, but to some gamers, it could very well be a deal-breaker”, which is not news, but when we see the temporary approach to ‘renting’ games, the entire matter changes. There is no denying that $15 is a good deal if the games are forever yours to play, in a temporary setting and the obligation to buy some games afterwards the setting becomes a non-deal for a fair amount of gamers and when we see this on top of the other stages that Xbox gamers have been exposed to since 2012 we see a stage where Microsoft might only have its Cloud and mobile gaming left, they squandered whatever advantage they had and now we see a stage where Xbox ends up in fifth position behind the Sony PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, Google Stadia and Apple Arcade, that might be a setting I get to see in 2022, as such if Microsoft does not adjust its path they will end up dead last in a game where they could have been in second place.

That is the price of setting a business stage in a world where you do not comprehend the participants.

 

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