June 16, 2020 · 11:55

Murdering innovation

It started with the BBC about 30 minutes ago, 30 minutes after they released ‘Amazon v EU: Has the online giant met his match’, the title intrigued me and anyone who wants to go after Bezos and his haircut is allowed to do so, yet the EU tends to not care about anyone’s haircut, so I decided to have a calm read of it. 

Certain things made sense, yet a much larger part does not anto illustrate it, I start with a quote on the article: “The EU now looks set to charge Amazon for anti-competitive behaviour. This could cost Amazon a lot of money and could alter the shopping experience it offers customers.” To understand this I need to take you on a little time trip, my initial stage of Amazon was seen in 1994, I heard of it in its beginning and to me Amazon made no sense. You see, I grew up in the Netherlands, and for the most, any shop, in any retail area was never more than a hour away, optionally up to 2 hours if it was an exotic item (weapons, drugs) I had access to most items ever needed, as such Amazon made no sense at all. In 1997 I visited the US for the first time and Amazon started making sense. You see there are massive differences between the US and EU in certain ways and most people in the EU might not have gotten it. Amazon was an innovative player and came up and matured a retail direction. So when we get  EU’s competition enforcer Margrethe Vestager stating “We never accept in a football match that one team was also judging the game”, I merely wonder what her game is. And the setting of anti-competition law makes no sense. It makes no sense, because for close to 25 years others refused to go into the Amazon direction, as they remained in denial of what could happen. They remained in denial because they were iterative and small minded, they want the technology of others to come to them for free. And that is a thought that murders innovation. We see it in almost every area of technology. I worked for a company that stopped Facebook innovation 4 years before Facebook was created. Bullet point spreadsheet users who rely on the mission statement and the bottom dollar. They are left on the sidelines guarding iterative traffic. They feel that their option grants them more personal wealth. Now, anyone who has read my blog knows that I am no Jeff Bezos fan, but this he got right and the entire Covid-19 issue worked for him and now the champions of iteration (like EU’s competition enforcer Margrethe Vestager) are setting up shop to murder innovation a little more. You see the others now want the Amazon system for free, they want to enjoy the decades they were not working on innovation and merely (optionally) fucking their mistress whilst they claimed they were hard at work guiding their commision like it was a taxi meter. 

When I gave the stage of setting tax laws properly in 1998, people accused me that it was too complex and nothing was done, now that these firms are raking in the billions, those same people are staring at the sky stating that there was nothing they could do, but they merely ignore their own inactions.

Yet the larger concern is the stage that erupts when we see “It runs an online store and also sells its own products on that platform. The criticism is, that it’s both the player and the referee.” Yes, Google and Amazon innovated retail traffic, after the Netscape issues Microsoft hid in the IE cloud they created and IBM never showed interest, they merely did their own less profitable thing and now they want to push in on a market that had evolved for well over a decade and does fine without them. Microsoft came up with Bing a decade after Google and still has no proper way to set the algorithm for ranking, and misses out on a decade of data, which is how I see it. IBM has its own innovation (Quantum computing) and is still 2-5 years away from innovating that field, the rest of them are innovation candle holders at best. 

Yet I cannot completely ignore that the EU has optionally a case to bring, yet their own inadequacies regarding the mapping of the other players that never showed any interest in innovating the field Amazon is in is also food for thought. Those iterative players that will only step in on the second tier after the innovator has proven their case, how is there any level of fairness to give them the playing field? 

So when we see: “is the company using that data to give Amazon’s own products an unfair advantage?” I cannot completely disagree, yet the larger issue is that Amazon created a level of data collection that other data dogs refused to bark at. Now we all can agree that not every retail shop can wield such data and they should not get hit, yet this stage that Amazon has was in the UK going on for a long time via Dunnhumby did for Tesco and in The Netherlands it was Albert Heijn (et al) and their Air Miles. If you go after one, you need to go after all and that is not happening is it? Yet there is a size difference, but none of them came with an overlay of algorithm and made sense of it, they all wanted their own little corner, the innovation of Amazon was larger than that and everyone was in that selfish stage until they all learned (the hard way) that their way was the losing one. 

In all this Amazon is not completely innocent, yet that does not mean that they are guilty. The question we see: “But does Amazon unfairly promote its own products at the expense of third parties?” is woefully incomplete. The issue (just like with Google) is not on what is offered, but what EXACTLY did the searcher ask for? It is a huge part in all this and it is left on the sidelines, optionally intentionally and that hurts, because in all this the central side is not the sellers, or the implied sellers, what did the buyer exactly ask for and that matters, especially in the case of Amazon. The buyer did not ask for “A western where we see Talulah Riley naked with loads of added violence in the highest resolution”, they asked for “Westworld season 2 bluray”, and those two searches are not the same. We can come up with a lot more examples, but I hope that the point comes across. We forget that the largest issue is what the buyer seeks and the bulk want the latest products, they want the ones that ship immediately and can we honestly say that the founding setting of the product sought has all the elements in place (like shipping and overnight shipping options) are these elements properly set to those other sellers? You see, the backwash on what is optionally possible is one thing, the fact that these shops set up the parameters of what can be done in comparison of what is done are two different universes. 

For example, I cannot get to ‘there’ from ‘here’ in Google maps. These two locations are not defined, so when someone is looking at the Sombrero galaxy, it does not mean that there is a path getting there. 

It is the innuendo and the missing elements that make some strike out, optionally murdering innovation. Whilst we see: “The general defence is that there are plenty of companies that act as both a shop and supplier. Tesco and Sainsbury’s both sell their own labelled products in their stores, for example.” a setting duplicated in NEARLY EVERY OTHER country. Pretty much every supermarket chain has that setting, and it is ignored, because they are ‘too small’. I believe that the stage is different, as I stated, the others refused to adhere to the needs of the seeker, the consumer. As such they are out of the online game and that part is surprisingly overlooked. It is not the business of Amazon (or Google for that matter) to fill in the blanks, if Bing does that, perhaps it might have a future to some. 

It is our task to protect innovation, there is too little of it (not what a marketing manager claims is innovation, but actual innovation) if we do not, we merely end up fuelling the EU gravy train and those people need to focus on actual issues, not their gravy train. In this I am not stating that Amazon is completely innocent, I am merely stating that there are a few sides that some people left in the dark. To illustrate this I entered “buy arkham knight ps4”, the results in Bing and Google are very different, bing seems to be all about ebay, that same search in Google and Amazon give a much better result, they gave me what I was looking for. I personally was not looking for ebay options, yet was that part of the equation given? 

The buyer is the larger part in all this and most screamers forgot about that part.

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June 16, 2020 · 01:34

Donkey Balls!

The explanation is actually almost too simple, I am writing this whilst I am rewatching the Expanse on Bluray (thanks to the awesome sale JB Hifi had 3 weeks ago). I was watching and browsing whilst I got exposed to ‘Media rules must help news providers harness digital platforms’ value’, the link was on LinkedIn and came from Facebook. I do not disagree with the setting, but the entire issue is much larger and has traps on a few levels. That issue is a little less complicated when we consider the news on the daily mail where we see ‘Top Facebook exec says it DID help Donald Trump win but only because ‘he ran the single best digital ad campaign I’ve ever seen. Period.’ And NOT because of Russia’, the claim was apparantly made by Andrew Bosworth and it was in the Daily Mail on January 8th. It is not the claim that is the issue, it is the linked advertisements that the viewer gets. I ended up with advertisements by Telstra and Microsoft. Now, there was nothing wrong with that, yet if I had not clicked on the story, the advertisements would not have come. That is the issue, even newsmakers need to rely on clicks and there is the first issue. Basically the (short) story has the following 2nd headlines:

  • Andrew Bosworth is a longtime senior Facebook executive and confidant of Mark Zuckerberg
  • Bosworth wrote a 2,500 word memo shared internally with Facebook employees that was published on December 30
  • He claimed the Cambridge Analytica scandal was a ‘non-event’ and admitted the Russians did manipulate the U.S. election
  • Bosworth also essentially branded criticism of the company as fake news because the press ‘often gets so many details wrong’ 
  • The memo was initially leaked to the New York Times on Tuesday before the top executive published it in full on his public Facebook account 

5 times to get the clicks, 5 times to get advertisements and the news channels are in the setting to get CLICKS, making the quality of news debatable and there is the larger issue. When the news becomes a commercial vessel, how can it be trusted?

SO when I looked at the news (according to the Sydney Morning Herald) we get: “It would allow news publishers and digital platforms that distribute news to continue building on existing commercial arrangements, and support the development of a Digital News Council to advance cross-industry collaboration. It would also encourage more transparency for significant changes to the ranking of news content in News Feed and guarantee to publishers we’ll continue to share measurement data on how their content performs on Facebook as well as insights on their audiences, without sharing personal user information.” Here I see that there are optional ‘agreements’ on the sharing of revenue (which I do not debate, or wonder whether that is wrong), yet I do wonder about who has the stronger pull. Revenue based decisions, or news quality decisions and the ambiguity of it deepens the innate mistrust in me and the mistrust of the optional news that it breeds. So the quote “It would allow news publishers and digital platforms that distribute news to continue building on existing commercial arrangements” sets the steps for commercially inclined news, not neutral based and news baked news. It ends up not getting the clicks and that is the larger problem. The digital problem is that there needs to be space for news to set the parameters, yet the click is what gets the revenue and they tend to be on opposite sides of coins of different currency. Better stated was the Expanse response, which was ‘It really is Donkey balls’, the settings a larger one and those relying on click based revenue would not be interested in slaughtering the goose with the golden egg and I get that. But we need to move the news into another stage of the media, now making it revenue based, all whilst those participating should require to pay these newsagents something, it was their material used.

So whether we accept that the previous elections used a much better digital profile, we need to take the news out of it, and give them their own digital channel, not set to a click based system. It requires new levels of innovation on digital media and we all better accept that fast. 

What is the solution?

I actually do not know, but in part it will be creating awareness with the people, they need to realise that they are part of that problem, they are the inquisitive types and usually that is not a problem, yet the push the click based activities forward and at the point they become part of the problem. As I see it, the news might be part of social media, yet they should not be part of the click based equation and until the news starts realising that, as well as the fact that their shareholders, stakeholders and advertisers are part of the problem and not part of the solution, this issue will continue.

So those who have seen the Expanse season three and know that the initial weapon was something more might realise that in the digital media that click is the something more towards a weapon, all thanks to the shareholders, stakeholders and advertisers. We need a much larger change and until cash is taken out of the equation it cannot continue, yet that too is a dicey position, because the news has every right to cash in on materials they created. We cannot ignore that part of the equation.

 

 

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June 14, 2020 · 19:34

What others decide

We see it every day, there is a side that withholds resources, because it is theirs to do so, and there is a side where people decide to keep resources away from others for reasons like margins, profit and needs. They are at times not nice decisions, but the decision was theirs to take, at times we have to accept that. Now we need to consider what the wisdom is in keeping information away from us. Not intelligence, that is up to those grim boffins to decide on, butthe events that have taken place and the news decides to not inform us, so what is the wisdom there and how does that reflect on them? 

ABC seemingly does not inform us, yet the BBC gives us ‘France’s ancient burial brotherhood’, Reuters has no mention of it as far as I can tell, yet the BBC gives us ‘What will clothes shopping look like’, and as I mention the BBC a few times, they have nothing either.

It is Al Jazeera that gives us ‘Saudi-led coalition says it destroyed missile targeting Najran’. The news 17 hours old gives us that Houthi forces are still targeting Saudi civil population and the people in charge of bolstering peace (or so they claim) are seemingly making sure that this news does not reach us. In that news given to us we get the words from the coalition spokesperson Turki al-Malki gives us the part that the missile was launched from Saada, all factual given. What Al Jazeera does not give us (for decent reasons) is that there is still uncertainty how much support the Houthis get from Iran, how ‘supportive’ Hezbollah remains in all this. Elements that matter, but too many sources are intentionally blind to that part of the equation. In Yemen the bulk of all UN support will falter due to a lack of funding, as such the stage of humanitarian aid will close down leaving the Yemeni population to die.

Even now as Iran makes claims that the Iranian-Russian ties serve international security, we see a faltering level of information by the newsgroups. Even as the source can be debated, the information lacks scrutiny because the public was not informed, it has not been informed for months at a time, as some ego driven politicians had the nuclear accords carrot and they needed that carrot to be looking as sweet as possible, and keeping people in the dark on what was actually happening was a first. 

Yet the Russian collaboration with Iran gives Iran the nuclear parts that they need and the Yemeni pressures are almost an insuring valve that the parts are to be used, Saudi Arabia is between the sea of Dammam and a hard case and its so called allies are floundering the support in the empty air. A stage where Iran is the larger evil and the news is either embargoed, or stupidly keeping the people in the dark on the actual setting. Because shopping for clothes is where the actual newsworthy part is at, or is it? 

We can point and blame all we like, but the Houthi events are a larger stage and the news is not covering it, why not? The largest humanitarian collapse in history is about to happen to a nation and the people are left in the dark, optionally merely because of the resources.

A stage we all made happen, and we now need to be blind of the actions that follow, why will we never learn?

We might not have resources, we might not have power, these things happen, yet when we accept that information is filtered to what others decide what we need to know, that is when we give up our own personal power, when did we decide that this was ever going to be a good thing?

 

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June 13, 2020 · 16:57

To knowingly intentionally ignore

There is a state in any person’s mind to ignore anything that does not fit the need of the receiver. This is not a bad thing (at times), and we can ignore all we can, yet to deceive ourselves that it does not exist is another matter. 

To look at the station we need to look at the consideration of two settings. The first is ‘an organized effort to gather information about targer markets or customers’ this is the foundation of market research. After this we consider the second part, which is ‘the process or set of processes that links the producers, customers, and end users to the marketer through information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems’, as I personally see it, some do not see the difference (or ignore that there is one), or as I would imply, to knowingly use one as the other. The first difference is the population. In market research we investigate a population and we set our hypothesis based on the station of it. We dabble, we slice and dice this population, and we draw conclusions. The problem is that some hide behind the slicing and dicing, calling it the arbitrary process. For the most I have no issues with it, or better stated I do not care one hoot about some of these analysts. Yet lately I see the impact of decisions and business processes and I wonder if the people accepting the marketing stories whether they are in the dark, they do not care or if they are clueless. 

It started with Microsoft, then Ubisoft, after that there was a stage at Apple as well as a stint in the US administration. All acts based on what some would call ‘a market research into the people and the impact of view’ yet it seems like the marketing research of passing a bitter pill to the extent of surviving the action. That is clearly how it feels and the first act on my side was remembering a previous conversation, a conversation I had roughly 20 years ago. The premise was that a board was cutting expenses and setting the stage of having the environment where they stopped getting a 90% approval on their product and settling on an 80% approval. It is a dangerous and slippery slide. Yes it seems cheaper and it might in the beginning be cheaper, yet the station as we see it is dangerous as the degrees of freedom diminish (intended pun). As a product drills down in different areas, the 10% shift implies that on three fields the danger grows that the overall approval rate is optionally down to 60%, especially if the 20% missed rate hits any consumer 3 times. This is where Ubisot is at present and that is where Microsoft was in the last few years. In that stage we see “to develop technology that will enable them to stream games to whatever piece of tech a person is holding – be that a smartphone, console, or something yet to be invented”. It is the Ubisoft statement and that is fine, yet with the testing and inadequate versions over the last two years alone gives the consumer (the player) a much larger lag, especially when these players are only relatively happy and get hit again and again with downloads that tend to exceed 20 GB, how long until the player has had enough?

It is nice to drill down unto a group of satisfied players, yet the larger issue is that the non players are too often disregarded making the story told one that is largely built onto a shallow base of shifty sands. My view is supported by one small detail, as the PS5 was viewed, we saw an absence of Ubisoft games, the station of that 20% is now growing is it not? One of the largest software makers in history had no business not being present at this Sony show, whether they are going forward on both systems or not. It seems to me that this is not a small part, this is a much larger part and it seems to me that the predictions that I gave last year is slowly coming to fruition. 

Could I be wrong?

Absolutely! I cannot state that there is certainty, that would be short sighted on my side, but the symptoms are there, the lack of excellent gaming, dozens of updates that are several GB in size, there is a lack of testing there is a lack of listening to the gamers and the ones setting the stage of listening are rolling the dice which they optionally loaded themselves. They look better that way, yet the consequences for Ubisoft seem better, until the gamers move away, when you set the stage of a non-assassins creed game to call it that, something they did once before, the stage changes. Even as we were given last year “Ubisoft didn’t provide numbers, but said that it had made a “sharp downward revision” in the revenues expected from both games, which it blamed on a failure to differentiate Breakpoint from its predecessor, an overall lack of interest in sequels to live games, and excess bugs for the game’s failure.” (source: PC Gamer) There are two parts in this, the first is that the game sucks, the basic failures seen only yesterday by myself give a larger rise to that Ubisoft has much larger issues at present. The fact that I ended up with the game at 20% of the full price only 6 months ago, and the fact that to start the game I needed a 38GB patch shows that the issues are close to massive. It is not ‘to differentiate’, but to ‘properly code’ a game that is at the core of it all. The difference of Market research where Ubisoft investigates their game against ALL gamers, to a stage of Marketing research where Ubisoft merely investigates the Ubisoft players is part of that optional setting. When anyone hides behind the message and not behind the quality of product, we have a much larger issue and in the next console war, it would optionally set the deck to a very different stage. 

This is not about Ubisoft, Apple and Microsoft have shown similar failings for too long, and the stage where the US administration is in shows similar flaws, even as it is not a product, trust is, and it is faltering on several levels in the US. We can blame several stages in this, but it is not the blame, it is the investigation into the analysts and the conclusions drawn seems to be a much larger stage of marketing research, not market research. One optional stage is the way evidence is rejected and optionally completely ignored. We might look at the Coronavirus, it is not the point, that element merely brought it to the surface faster. Huawei is the first one that matters, no evidence was ever brought to light, it shows a stgs where the US is close to economic collapse, at that stage we see the greed driven marketing research where the actions are at disposal to the US assets, not the US citizens. This matters because it shows that the slicing and dicing of data is not getting the attention it is due, it is happening on corporate and political levels and elements like ‘How Austin Tech Is Democratizing Data’ might seem nice in theory, yet the larger issue is that some views are now seemingly solely supported by the topline makers, not actual academics with the education required to make some conclusions based on data, not the presented views that those in charge of governments and corporations would like it to be. So when we learn that “Imagine business analysts, marketing teams and even the C-suite having the power to interpret data without the help of the entire IT department”,consider that we are now in a phase where those who have are about to decide the fate of those who have not and those people are in for a massive rough ride, or so they believe. When we see the corporate players like Ubisoft and Microsoft folding on strategies as they lose larger and larger market shares, we will see destabilisation of a much larger degree and there the game is up for grabs. Even as some resorted to terms like data democratization, it is a much older principle, it is the discrimination between those who matter to some, against those who do not. Corporations will find out the hard way what their choice brings them, in politics it is a different story and the impact there is nowhere to be seen. We cannot predict it until it is too late and there I expect (or is it dare I expect?), is the stage larger, even as places like YouTube is flooded in some positive light, the negative impact is much larger. The US riots are merely a consequence to part of what happens in data, it is not the cause but there will be much larger and much more defining then we ever expected, the problem there is that after the fact, repairing damage is close to impossible. You see it is not ownership of data, it is the fact that decisions are made on a level where too much data is disregarded. Hiding behind entrepreneurial action is close to a farce. The largest danger of misinterpretation and as the sources are less and less trustworthy and that is disregarding any ethical consideration, or to make it slightly more simple, as data democratization moves forward, the essential part of comprehensive information will be filtered and optionally disregarded too often, a such a full view is not available, implying that the decision makers are merely looking at a limited scope and consider that action when it is done by a billion Euro company. 

We are only seeing this because the surrounding scope was pushed to the forefront, as such those reacting are doing it too late having to disregard increasingly larger consumer markets. When was the last time that such an action was an actual benefit to that company?

 

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June 12, 2020 · 07:27

Playing the fifth station

I am watching what is to come and even as the first part was not my bag of tea, the New Spiderman game definitely was, a new Gran Turismo and now I stop with shouting titles, a lot more publications will do that. What was interesting was the response the game makers had (the man behind Insomniac games to name one), the additions that the PS5 enabled, and so far I am watching actual gameplay and it is blowing me away. The presentation is giving new titles from franchises we love and new titles from origins we never saw and so far it is pretty mind boggling, but Sony is pretty good in that respect, so I am not overly dumbstruck, yet the graphics and the environment as we see it in the game Stray leaves me with thought, Sony, not unlike Microsoft is going in a direction we expect, as such I see a gap that players like Apple and Google can touch on. Sony has well over half a dozen exclusive titles that players want, and there we see the first part that I sort of expected. We see the exclusive and the likely less exclusive games, yet after 30 minutes still nothing from Ubisoft. I am certain that Ubisoft will be on the PS5, no doubt, but the stage where the small software houses are taking the limelight and sharing it with Sony shows just how bad the stage of Ubisoft is at present. Then we get to see Ghostwire, a game teased before, now we see it on the PS5 and this game alone is reason to get the PS5, and even as it is not the most expected game, it is certainly taking the limelight and that is a new feeling. When we see what comes with Hitman 3 I feel certain that no Microsoft Hype has a chance at present, I am cautious because their show a few years back was really good, but they have to take all the stops out to even equal what Sony is bringing. And that is important here as Hitman is most likely coming to both systems. With a lot of titles handing out the Holiday 2020, the expected image that PS5 will come with an overwhelming amount of launch titles (or first month titles). At the end of the presentation it is clear, there is no Ubisoft, they are in trouble, because there is no way that they want to miss the event, Bethesda was there with 2 titles, so why not Ubisoft? 85 minutes after the start, we get the power hammer, Eloy is back and what we see on PS5 blew me away, Horizon 2, Forbidden West is a PS5 Gem andI can’t wait to get my fingers on this console, which was shown right after, it is gorgeous, you should see the video on YouTube yourself and see what is there, words cannot describe it. No matter how some Microsoft fans shout that their system is the biggest and the strongest, without good games it does not add up to much, so far they are 3 million systems behind Nintendo and that is not all, 4 reviewers were completely blown away, it is that overwhelming and most of us will be waiting with bells on for the next 20 weeks. 

Sony, you’ve done it again!

 

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June 12, 2020 · 01:18

Between fact and speculation

There are two parts in all this. The first is fact, the second is speculation, the facts come from what we know and have seen. First fact given by the BBC is that the PS4 has so far sold 108 million worldwide, the Xbox 49 million, which is 3 million less than the Nintendo Switch, The PS4 and Xbox both started in 2012. The Nintendo in 2017, surpassing the Xbox in half the time. As such, that so-called strongest console was surpassed by the weakest console and in 4 hours we get to see what the new PS, the PS5 will bring us. In all this there is no surprise for me, I saw this coming in 2016, and as the Xbox One X showed us the face of Microsoft and their short sightedness, I saw how they would lose the market more and more, even as Microsoft is trying to create hype after hype, selectively giving us missing information, the consumers are waking up to the colossal error that Microsoft has become and I firmly believe that it is about to get worse. If it was up to me I would direct Google and Apple towards alternative paths making Microsoft the system in 4th or even 5th position. I am that mean at times. 

Speculation

Speculation is another path, yet that is not about the hardware, that is set to the business practices of Activision and Ubisoft. To give you the example, I have been an Elite fan since its release in 1985, In 2016 it was on early release on the Xbox and it was pretty much the ONLY reason I got it. The game is still fantastic and since that point, over 3 years, the game has had a speculated 53 updates, the last one 3.4 GB, Ubisoft released AC Odyssey in 2018 and has a speculative 54updates, the last one 24 GB, almost 800% of the Elite Dangerous one. Activision seems to have a new record, Call of Duty has seemingly a 85 GB patch. That is way too massive and games on the PS5 will end up being larger, a lot larger. Under that given situation, the entire patch system needs to change. Ubisoft especially (Breakpoint 38 GB, AC Odyssey 2 GB) is a setting that gamers will no longer accept, it is a little bit ridiculous that Ubisoft cannot properly test its games. The AC series especially has shown a lack of proper testing, yet that will dwarf in both the PS5 and Xbox X series life. Under the new setting, the makers can hide behind ‘everyone has broadband’ and ‘there is unlimited download’, yet it is clear that rural Germany and France are not on the big internet page and the entire Coronavirus work at home part with congestion all over the place, in the same setting whilst players like Netflix is pushing 4K series more and more, the entire mess of congestion will only increase. Players like Ubisoft will not survive the quality they have brought so far and there is no doubt in my mind that both Sony and Microsoft will have to protect their player sooner rather than later. This is the speculative part and we will hopefully learn more in 4 hours when Sony gives us the works on the release of the PS5. The time of  release is nearing more and more. As I see it, it is a mere 22 weeks away and some will have to save up for both a 4K 125Hz TV as well as the PS5. As I see it, Sony is extremely likely to have a massively great 2020 soon enough and an even better 2021. None of this matters to Nintendo, it will work great on the new TV and they have already surpassed Microsoft, who will need the largest part of 2021 just to break even with the weakest console. They are not in a good place and whatever hype they create, it will not look good, yet that is still speculative of me and I hope to be proven right no later than March 2021. 

Gaming is about to change and we are only hours away from seeing it ourselves. 

 

 

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June 9, 2020 · 21:11

Paranoia vs Delusions vs Megalomania

We all have that situation, Am I paranoid? Am I delusional? Is it me? We see these parts in ourselves, at least most balanced people have that side in them, it is part of the checks and balances we build within ourselves. So, when we see the BBC article only 10 hours ago stating ‘Satellite traffic images may suggest virus hit Wuhan earlier’ we need to take a long hard look at the matters that play. TheBBC makes the endgame clear (just to cover themselves) with “The study has not been peer-reviewed”, yet that is merely the part that matters the least. A number of serious questions and levels of scrutiny are required on both Harvard University as well as Dr John Brownstein. Now, I am not stating that the study is wrong, I have not read it, as such I am in no state to comment on it, but I do have thoughts. The first is all that satellite traffic. We might throw that thought away, but I have other issues. For that we need to go back to 2013 (March and August) at that point we had issues with Chemical attacks in Syria and no one knew anything, not even the Americans, so they cannot identify a mass extinction event with Sarin, but they can give a larger view on the flu? Consider the idea that the US has been actively PROTECTING the user of a chemical attack, did you consider that? I had that thought the day it happened, but they all hid behind “The UN mission found the likely use of the nerve agent Sarin”, in all this we accept ’likely’? In that stage we now see all kinds of speculation by people a lot will not care about and I am the delusional one? Added to that the online surges? So what data is used, where did the data come from? Added to all this is the stage of the way it is presented, and linked to all this is data that requires a lot of scrutiny. Consider that someone makes a paper like this whilst we also see “But if the infection was present – undetected perhaps – some people could have been leaving Wuhan” all linked to people searching for flu symptoms? And someone made a paper out of that? 

I reckon it is time to massively scrutinize EVERYTHING coming from the US, yet too many listen to the words from Wall Street and they need a scapegoat or all these losses, all whilst we see that the lack of resources is the number two bad boy. 

Is China innocent?

I do not know that, and to be honest, I do not care. They had the Swine flu over there and a few other issues, yet it is and has always been clear that Wuhan was the start. The fact that the flu went to so many places left me puzzled from the beginning. I admit that I know nothing of Wuhan, as such I have no idea how much international traffic it sees, yet in february there was a clear picture and even then it took the media 10 days to give a clear Pandemic message, even though I had clearly shown that the dictionary meaning of Pandemic had already been passed and the global governments did close to nothing, their economies would not let them and now they are crying like little girls. All starting their own blame game. So whilst we are all looking at China (which partially makes sense) no one is wondering how governments and the people reacted when the WHO gave us all on January 30th “A Public Health Emergency of Global Concern”, yet what did the governments do? They underestimated the issue again and again and we see very little of that, do we? In this the South China Morning Post gave  “that China’s first confirmed Covid-19 case traced back to November 17th”, we can set the stage that there was an issue earlier, but there is also the stage of identifying the disease and in all that the larger issues is not blaming China, as I personally see it the lack of actions by governments on a global scale is a much larger issue, with the winner being President Trump making wild claims going back to March 2020, instead of closing the borders he let it all happen and now we see that the US has an optionally underreported number of almost 2 million cases infected whilst over 111,000 people died of the virus, 111,000 people that died of the flu. In all that less than 50% in the US are registered recovered cases. I reckon that this so called paper on a virus with wild statements like “they could not always compare satellite images taken on the same day in consecutive years due to cloud cover in some of the photo’s”, as I would like to call attention to the 2013 fiasco where implied wind and optionally dust too prevented the Intelligence agencies of seeing what was happening, it made all the difference to the dead people. 

 

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June 7, 2020 · 21:51

The choices of a greed driven nation

I had to consider a few things today, they are essential as they would impart a much larger setting, do I give way to optional millions, or not. I decided that I need to find a path in between, but the larger wealth that the US voraciously implies is off the table, I would have preferred to work with a player like Google, but the situation in the US is too unsettling. We see the impact of harassment, pressures, discrimination and a lot more, all under the administration of President Trump. Yet, they are not alone, the other side is also baiting the masses and some are falling for it. This entire setting has the origin of debt and poverty, that setting was more and more on the forefront. I made notice of that danger well over a year ago, yet the Corona pressure brought it to the surface much faster than anticipated. The impact is on too many fronts all at the same time and the US has no escape plan. Whatever path was optionally there had been taken away by Wall Street executives, not merely Wall Street, but their minions that are all over the world, squeezing the markets again and again, setting a stage of unreachable expectations. We heard it in the last few years on how ‘analysts expect this firm to reach revenues well over 18%’ answer all silently accepted this. America is now in a stage of debt that exceeds $25 trillion, all whilst big business seemingly stays afloat. Yet that too will change a lot faster than most realise, what happens when the US goes into a full Civil War? That is not a joke, that is the reality that this America Administration faces. It either bursts the Wall Street balloon, or there will be a civil war. The escalations in the US even now point to that. Some merely call it the ‘Nixon playbook’, others watch the toppling of statues, people in police outfits without insignia and without proper discipline. ABC7 Chicago shows intimidation of a dozen white people with rifles as African Americans walk with boxes on the streets, how will this go right? This will escalate and I am not willing to set the stage of my IP in that environment. That so called ‘Chinese oppressive regime’ seems a lot safer to leave my IP with at present than any American based corporation, I had some hopes for Google, but it seems that they are in another stage of self preservation (which is their right), in the stage where the Trump administration goes overboard to quell whatever civil war erupts, California will not be out of bounds, it will get hit hard and it will dampen my value, something I am unwilling to do. It is not about my value, it is about the business impact that my IP will have and I want to watch it growing to the height of its ability. I think long term, I always think long term, the Wall Street boys never got that, they were never able to look beyond the next quarter or the next spreadsheet. 

That is the stage that will hinder and hamper the US, not me, but in the US there are thousands of inventors, thousands of idea makers and they are in a stage where they can no longer trust their own place or their family value. As such, when this comes to blow (and it will), the US will face the largest brain drain ever, they have never faced this before. A lot of people will return to family homes in Western Europe, linking to larger businesses in France, Germany, the Netherlands and Scandinavia, and the Patent shift we see then will be one the US has never faced before, they will go from a number two after China to number 4-9 (depending on the brain drain), as such the US and its debts will implode as their economic value will dwindle, it was a setting that was clear to happen and as that happen, a larger part of the US will become a dead zone, a place without future. The states New York, Texas and California could end up carrying the entire US on their shoulders, which is more likely than not ending healthcare and social services. As these escalations become visible to a lot of people the brain drain will only increase and as some will try to hold on to the brain value of some, the larger population which by the way is well over 40% non-white, will listen to other nations offering larger premises, with optional start up bonuses and houses. It is their cheapest option.

So as a larger shift is happening, we will see a desperate America trying to find a solution that all can live with, if only they didn’t have that pesky $25,000,000,000,000 debt hanging over their heads.

And what about me?

Well, I am uncertain how it will end, but I have set the wheels in motion that over time will hand to the public domain my IP, no corporation will set that stage or can prevent the stage. I have set activation and deactivation codes in motion, I am not willing to trust some corporate goon ever again. Yet the stage I am looking forward to is also an appealing one. Those greed driven people forgot, I was never rich and I am not seeking it (hoping for is still on the table), yet the larger setting is not of what is, but it is one of what is yet to come and the US has no real 5G strategy, it gives its idea’s to the media, blatantly hijacked by some senators needing the limelight and in the end, it all stands still and when we see the standards from China winning over corporations in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia we see a setting of isolation for the US, propagating values via the media that are less and less certain before 2022, the 5G workforce will seek larger leaps into other areas. And it is only one of several fields where the brain drain will hamper the US.

For me, it does not matter, who not to trust is only a first step, the next one is the idea and how it will come to reality. I will end up with a fair share of coins, I will end up in a better stage than I ever would have considered and whilst I await that stage, I will have time to finish writing the story that will male a lot more wonder what on earth they were thinking. 

We are watching the choices of a greed driven nation unfold and whilst we see them celebrating wealth, they seemingly forgot that well over 80% is not part of that and almost 11% was under the poverty line, with the unemployment rates the US now sees, that line will shift, it will shift to a much larger degree than any administration ever faced, yet this administration has a massive debt to deal with too, a debt it largely inherited. As such life in the US will become unbearable to a much larger degree soon enough, and the US is not ready, it merely advertises it is ad others are taking advantage of that difference, even now, even as the US remains in denial, they are merely opening the door more and more to be cast from the room of being a superpower. Inviting others to the G7 doesn’t re-affirm their stance, it merely makes it obvious that the American dream died, it did so when greed became more important than innovation. A lesson too many American had forgotten about, the power that innovation brought, not the innovation that large corporations advertises, but actual innovation, the version of innovation we saw all over the 90’s.

 

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June 5, 2020 · 20:19

A handjob at twice the price

It started 8 hours ago, the stage that we have been watching on Hydroxychloroquine, an anti malaria drug. The article ‘Influential study on hydroxychloroquine withdrawn’ leaves me with a lot of questions. The quote “An influential article that found hydroxychloroquine increases the risk to death in coronavirus patients” should leave us all with a lot of questions. That is even before we get to the data concerns. Consider that the coronavirus had its initial cases last december (optionally a little earlier), so in January we knew that there was a problem, we also knew that there was NO vaccine at this stage. This was 5 months ago, now we see “Research for the article, published last month in medical journal the Lancet, involved 96,000 coronavirus patients across 671 hospital worldwide. Nearly 15,000 were given hydroxychloroquine – or a related form” In this light, we need to consider that there were enough patients in April, around 3 million, yet as we realise that reporting of Corona cases have been all over the field, so getting 671 hospitals to set up treatments, testings patients and reporting to a source takes time, the incentive for a vaccine started in january/february, and even as they might be on top of their game, the entire setting would require time. As far as I can tell, the situation does not add up. Consider for a moment that there are 4008 forms of approved medication (to coin amere small fat), someone decided to set the stage where hydroxychloroquine was an optional solution, I will not fault that reasoning (as I never studied medicine). So the medication is ‘offered’ as an optional partial solution, there is no vaccine, so still we are all OK. Consider that this started in January, so any negative feedback would not be there until February the earliest. As such, it takes time for possible patterns to form, as such February/March is the start. Now consider that in a period of 60 days, a report was filed with the foundation of ‘hydroxychloroquine increases the risk to deaths in coronavirus patients’, and keep in mind the ‘increases risk’ part, it matters.

You see the timeline to assess and identify ‘increases risk’ is not done in 90 days, the entire path would require all kinds of data on multiple levels and under larger scrutiny, the entire matter should be under scrutiny and should be up for debate in many places

Now we are in a stage where in under 90 days 96,000 patients are measured, 15,000 are documented on the effects of hydroxychloroquine on these patients and the effect and evidence of death due to medication. The timeline does not make sense, so personally, I would state Yes! I very much want to test and scrutinise that data. I would in addition make a memorandum with critical questions to Surgisphere, the timeline leaves me with questions and the data and evidence path would require investigations (in multiple ways), as such when I see this article, I am left with several questions, I also have questions in the direction of Harvard professor Mandeep Mehra. Not in a hostile way, but the entire setting leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth and the professor could end up answering questions. 

So in all 96,000 patients over 90 days at the max, gives us well over 1050 patients a day, after that we have the stage of 166 patients on the drug a day and over a period of 90 days, not all have been properly tested, the stage of data gathering and data collection with tests and setting the proper stage of analyses, verification and reporting. I see a whole range of issues from a distance. Oh, and with the lockdown, how many resources would have been available? We see nothing of this entire field in the BBC article or anywhere else. 

Did someone look into the matter on an empty stomach? 

These managers chasing quick wins are shown to be be lacking in a few ways, I hope that the professor has a good explanation, he most likely does, and perhaps Surgisphere, but the entire data matter is not as I personally see it some ‘client agreement’ issue, I see it as something a lot more serious, and if it was up to me at this stage, unless Surgisphere cannot answer all questions to the satisfaction of all, they should never ever be allowed near medical data ever again. I am not alone in this, some people have been asking serious questions for days, some have has question marks on a few items that I mentioned and most include issues of data collection, it is time for serious organisations to step in, we would ask the WHO, but it seems that America is not paying that bill, so who would properly vet data of this magnitude?

 

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June 3, 2020 · 22:34

30 cents to the dollar

Yes, we all have moments where it is about the discount, and I had a promise to keep. So when I noticed that Breakpoint was available for less than 30 cents to the dollar from opening night 7 month ago, I decided to give it a go. There was a good point and a bad one. The bad was the bug I noticed last october, was still not fixed, it is seemingly part of the system, even after the 19GB patch (which was to be expected 7 months later) the game still has a lot to be desired. The bug I saw was that when you enter a bunker in the first mission, it immediately leaves you 4 hours later, it is suddenly late morning daylight. A lot of the reviews still applied 7 months later, and to some extent it is to be expected, but let’s be fair, do we need a mission for every bloody handgun? It is my personal expectation that I will still be able to end the lives of a lot of people with a trusty HK Model 23 (1991), that handgun 29 years later will still correctly end lives, it has a laser targeter (I never used one) and it also has an excellent silencer. So going onto missions to find some HP USP, even if it is 2 years younger, does not really load my canon. Now, I get the option that soldiers (non military) have their own preference to what is the most deadly solution (if they can aim) and YES, this is a video game, but Ubisoft could have thought it through. Some reviews of ‘they added everything, so you end up running for nothing’ and it applies to this game. I get the loot part, I get the lets look fun part, but a game that has more chopper and drone support then the entire US army had in both Afghanistan and Iraq is a little over the top. Oh, and the amount of opposition outnumbers the US army as well, as such there are more questions, but this is a game, I get it. 

The good

The good are the graphics and the environment, yet the game has its share of glitches (I personally only experienced non essential ones) like winelines in midair (a meter above the ground), yet that is a non-essential glitch. The graphics are pretty good and I felt like I was in the middle of nowhere shooting people I never cared about, just like some people in real life. Th sounds were good, yet debatable, if soldiers talk that loud for real, they deserved to get themselves killed #Justsaying. So, the area was brilliantly selected (read: designed).

The Irritating

Yves Guillemot, you bloody idiot, every time I got killed in action, I got the ‘join and invite people’ yellow blinking part. You idiot, I don’t like others joining me, I don’t want to join other players either! It is a personal thing, learn and switch that bloody part OFF! The second irritating part is the Ubi Club redeem part, especially as the Ubisoft server was apparently not working, even though I was online. There was the issue of redeeming in game perks and for some reason that jut did not work, so when we consider that some published 16 hours ago ‘Ubisoft Making Accessibility Part of Company DNA’ all whilst I cannot redeem Ubisoft club points, clearly lost the plot. In the light, I reckon that David Tisserand needs to clear his speaking points with the Ubisoft internal IT department #JustSaying.

The past

Yes, we have seen the references to other games from within Ubisoft, yet the island made me remember the 1989 Rainbird achievements Midwinter. I keep on remembering this game towards that game. One review did give me that Wildlands is a much better buy than this game, but I felt it essential to try this game, especially as I reviewed parts of it on someone else’s dime (it was their game), so whilst I see the point that some reviewers made (boring and repetitive for example) I see that the biggest issue is that it had to be released to a closed circuit of testers and after that look at the final version, I personally believe that the Marketing non gaming department at Ubisoft has too much power. This game required 4-6 months more of testing and development. The second part (which was nice) was the gunsmith, yet in the middle of nowhere, there is no space to improve my rifle, add a silencer on a rifle I took off a dead person (headshots are an effective way to remove hardware that a person will no longer care about). I would have limited the gunsmith part to the base between the waterfalls, but that part did look pretty awesome. For me it was an interesting two days, but in the end, there is a stage where I accept that the game is optionally not for me, others will like it, I get that, but when I like a game mode and I see that there is still a dubious level of acceptance even at 30 cents to the dollar, the game has more than flaws, it has essential issues, especially when you get to a wharf and you are suddenly surrounded by 3-4jeeps, all with heavy miniguns and around 10 opponents, all triggered by talking to a person about a boat, we see the oldest flaw of all, event triggers, all whilst the army needing that much to stop one person (optionally four for someplayers) has a lacking trust in their own army. 

Conclusion

In the end the games has good and bad sides, there is just that feeling that it still has too many bad sides and the fact that it is at 70% discount does not take that feeling away, that’s just sad (read irritating), I personally believe that Ubisoft should have done a lot better, it angers me because the stage of an open world of this size should have been more inviting, it makes me sad. And yes, I get it, I might be accusing their marketing department on a personal feeling, but where is it stated that Guillemot needed the money desperately enough to let a game be released before it was ready is a much larger nightmare than we would like to consider. Half a dozen games and all of them released before they were ready, that is how I see it, look at CD Projekt Red, they merely keep people waiting until it is ready and the perfection that Witcher 3 brought is still heralded 5 years later, that means something and it is time for Ubisoft to catch on, preferably before they waste every bit of IP they have. 

 

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