Tag Archives: Amazon

April 24, 2022 · 09:29

Gapping data

I did take notice of the story, but there were other considerations. So what is the issue with a two week old story? Actually there is nothing wrong with the time gap, it actually works out nicely. Yet before we go anywhere, lets take a look at ‘A data ‘black hole’: Europol ordered to delete vast store of personal data’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/10/a-data-black-hole-europol-ordered-to-delete-vast-store-of-personal-data) there we are given “The EU’s police agency, Europol, will be forced to delete much of a vast store of personal data that it has been found to have amassed unlawfully by the bloc’s data protection watchdog.” Here I have an issue with the stage of “amassed unlawfully”, then we get “The unprecedented finding from the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) targets what privacy experts are calling a “big data ark” containing billions of points of information. Sensitive data in the ark has been drawn from crime reports, hacked from encrypted phone services and sampled from asylum seekers never involved in any crime.” There we get “hacked from encrypted phone services and sampled from asylum seekers never involved in any crime” You see, the biggest problem in any data set are the data gaps. MISSING VALUE analyses will not get you anywhere and data cannot be analysed on data that is not there. As I see it, the commercial world amasses worlds of data and the EDPS (European Data Protection Supervisor) does next to nothing. We could start an argument that the EDPS is catering to organised crime, but that might be a stretch. I know my data has been collected by CIA, FBI, GCHQ, Mossad, DGSE and at least two other organisations. You think I care? I live my life and keep doing what I am legally allowed to do. The data merely reinforces this. So why is there such a rush to maim the mobility of Europol? I have nothing against laws, I believe that laws are important, but how stupid is it to set up the laws to hinder the law? When our data is all over Microsoft, Google, Amazon, GTCOM and whatever Russia has. The 4,000 TB that is to be deleted will serve organised crime and criminals, no one else. And more importantly it will not protect refugees, if anything, the data shows them to be innocent. Did no one make that leap? You see I oppose “Europol had worked with the EDPS “to find a balance between keeping the EU secure and its citizens safe while adhering to the highest standards of data protection”, the agency said.” I oppose it because data does not protect or endanger lives, it is the one wielding all that data does and whilst commercial enterprises are given a wide berth avoiding their ‘legal’ teams, the EDPS has to prove its existence by having a go at Interpol.

Yes, it is their job, but in what job do you hand opportunity to criminals, organised crime and terrorists? 

And the Guardian is appeasing the stage buy giving the simplest of examples, the example that makes you go ‘awww’. But the example “The political activist, whose only serious run-ins with police amount to breaking a window to gain entrance to a building and create a squat for homeless people, was removed from the Dutch watch-list by authorities in 2019. But a year prior to this removal he had moved to Berlin, which unknown to Van der Linde at the time prompted Dutch police to share his data with German counterparts and Europol. The activist discovered his entanglement with Europol only when he saw a partially declassified file at Amsterdam city hall.” So a criminal, guilty of breaking and entering, that is the simple truth. But we are not supposed to see that, are we? And when the next assault is not in London, but Amsterdam and the gapped data will show to have been an option to stop this, what will the EU give as a response? 

 

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April 21, 2022 · 20:04

Tweeter and Sylvester Musk

Yes, it seems like an animated fest. But there is a lot more under the hoods called media. Even there battle lines are being drawn. The problem is that this war is a little more annoying than other wars. T?he media is making sure that every statement is checked. And still there are multiple sides in this war. 

Forbes
Forbes is one side and gives us “Now, four years later, Musk’s desire to purchase Twitter may to be tied, at least in part, to his still-burning desire to correct what he perceives as media bias generally, and toward him and his companies, which is amplified on social media. Twitter’s board of directors has unanimously rejected his offer and vowed to fight the takeover bid. Whether or not he ultimately succeeds in purchasing Twitter, his views about free speech and social media are ill-conceived in at least three ways.” This is a fair point of view. The added “he does not acknowledge that rules pertaining to free speech in the United States are intended to constrain the actions of governments not companies or private actors. The First Amendment to the Constitution provides that Congress shall pass no law abridging free speech, significantly limiting government action. Over the last 230 years, U.S. lawmakers and courts have carved out a few carefully crafted exceptions to this absolute prohibition on government action.” Is equally fair, yet the missing part is that “U.S. lawmakers and courts have carved out a few carefully crafted exceptions to this absolute prohibition on government action” is that this is a statement that the media exploited to a large degree for the push of self. The media has its own media filter systems. They are called stakeholders and they have been around for over a decade, most likely longer. In a TV series called Torchwood, we are given “Harry Bosco was a man who would alter information fed to the public during the Vietnam War. In the words of Esther Drummond, “He did it by mistranslation. He couldn’t censor or change, but he could manipulate the English translation. Change one word, change the entire meaning.”” It is not far from the truth we see today. People are given filtered information, one sided stories and intentional mistranslations and it is EVERYWHERE. The Ukraine coverage by internet trolls on Facebook and Twitter. Filtering by deleting accounts on Twitter and the intentional one sided coverage in Syria and Yemen shows that this is going on and in the media certain stakeholders are as I personally see it filling their pockets. 

And when the additional “In the U.S., these free speech standards were never intended to apply to private companies. It would be especially counter-productive to apply them to social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube or TikTok. It is in both the commercial interest of these firms and the best interest of our society for them to moderate content on their platforms actively and responsibly. If they do not do so, their platforms will quickly be overwhelmed by spam, pornography, hate speech and violent incitement, misinformation, and conspiracy theories, which would drive away both users and advertisers”, and when you see “If they do not do so, their platforms will quickly be overwhelmed by spam, hate speech and violent incitement, misinformation, and conspiracy theories, which would drive away users” you know that I am right. The media is exploiting every digital dollar via flames, hate speech, misinformation, and conspiracy theories. We see them on pretty much ALL social media, so I reckon that that ship has sailed already. 

In all this, I cannot say whether Elon Musk will be a force of good, or bad for Twitter, it is interesting to note that there is a downside to Twitter and if Elon Musk will launch his version of Twitter, some version of Social Media, I will take notice get hop on board to see how good, or how different it will be. And whilst you are all so emotional on Elon Musk, consider that this might be a good thing. When you see the amount of seesaw data (either really good, or massively bad) news on Meta is handed to people via hundreds of sources. We see a slow but certain form of polarisation coming. These people will watch from the sidelines and they will see that whatever Elon Musk has might be an alternative. And it would work for Elon Musk. When he adds Hybrid to his system he would be able to steer in multiple ways and it should give him a larger benefit, especially when his cars have it and others do not, the bough breaks and the car industry will lose a massive chunk to Tesla. All sides that might, that could happen. But it is equally possible that certain sides will fall for him but not completely so. Basically the 50/50 split could become 70/30 with 30 going the Musk way and that is good news for Google, Amazon and Meta. Yet they will have to accept that Musk Social Media could become a powerhouse all by itself and at that stage whatever the Forbes people will say was bad news will get a really quick rewrite. That is how I see it.

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April 18, 2022 · 23:02

800,000,000 failures and a home-run

This is what I faced today, but the two are not connected, well not directly, optionally even indirectly. They are connected by the smallest sliver of thought. To start, the first part comes from the BBC. The article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61080536) gives us ‘Sanctioned Russian oligarchs linked to £800m worth of UK property’, which sounds nice, but lets take a deeper look. We get “Some of the individuals deny ownership of the mansions, which may mean they are beyond the reach of the sanctions. To get to the bottom of who owns what, we carried out a detailed trawl of leaked offshore documents, the Land Registry and court papers – as well as previous reporting.” It comes down to the first part. There we see “Because of the system of secrecy here in the UK and in relation to the Overseas Dependencies it’s really easy for people to hide their assets and their funds in the UK and not even the police necessarily have sight of where those assets are,” these people are skating around the central issue ‘What they did was perfectly legal’ a setting of creating actual tax laws is at the heart of this and this is decades overdue. It should have started in the age of Gordon Brown (2007), there is a stage where we could agree that Tony Blair (1997-2007) should have started it, but the pressure was not on for the UK at that point, the meltdown in the US should have been a clear signal, but from 1997 onwards NOTHING was done to rewrite tax laws into the laws the UK needed to have in 2010, and now a decade later we see “To get to the bottom of who owns what” and there hiding behind the Panama Papers is jut a farce. This should have been adjusted in the EU, UK and US by 2010 but none of them did ANYTHING to clear the waters. They merely pretended to do so to appease political friends, they all did. And now when we see the laughingly weak “We are coming for your ill-begotten gains” this implies that laws were broken, so is he just incompetent, stupid or both? And this matters, because it is all linked. 

Roman Abramovich, has a vast property portfolio in the UK with more than 50 luxury residences, most on Fulham Road in west London. Through his UK company Fordstam Limited, he owns dozens of apartments in Chelsea Village, plus the hotel and residential complex around Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium, according to the Land Registry. On Roman Abramovich we see “He has a vast property portfolio in the UK with more than 50 luxury residences, most on Fulham Road in west London. Through his UK company Fordstam Limited, he owns dozens of apartments in Chelsea Village, plus the hotel and residential complex around Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge stadium, according to the Land Registry. His most expensive London property is a 15-bedroom house on a street that is nicknamed Billionaires Row. With its vast stucco-faced Italianate mansions, it is home to royalty and ambassadors – as well as oligarchs.” The one element missing (two actually) were any laws broken? More important we see sanctioned by UK and EU, not the US. Then we get to the main event. It is Alisher Usmanov, sanctioned by all three and the desert of all this is more than a Medovik. We are given “a spokesman for Mr Usmanov said most of the billionaire’s UK property, plus a $600m (£456m) yacht, had already been “transferred into irrevocable trusts”, potentially putting them beyond the reach of sanctions.” A stage that is perfectly legal and the laws were never rewritten making this a sliding scale of discrimination, a scale of injustice and no laws were broken. The law makers were too stupid, too lazy to do anything about it. In the UK, the US and the EU. The lawmakers appeased THEIR friends as I personally see it and the oligarchs merely used the laws available to THEM TOO. A stage we need to accept and respect if we are a nation of laws. More important, which of these oligarchs ACTIVELY supported the war by Putin? I am asking, I actually do not know and the media merely surrounds itself with emotional BS, not a fact in sight and it is time to call these media players out on that too. The BBC article is actually quite good, but where do we see ‘Laws were broken’? We see “Ravenmorrow Limited was set up in December last year and no individual is identified on UK company records as the beneficial owner.” A clear failure of UK Laws, a setting where it was allowed to do this and no one is to blame but British Parliament and the House of Lords. The BBC does not really state that do they? As. I see it I see not the acts of Oligarchs, I see the failures of governments not overhauling tax laws when they could and as I see it all parties are guilty (except the greens), unlike the others the green parties all over the world seem to be oblivious on what a rudder is or does, so they are going Hades knows where at a speed no one can predict to arrive at some location no one knows.

Home-run
Yes, like the side we saw before there is another side and it makes more of a case towards the end of Microsoft, all whilst Adobe is getting more and more in place of taking over 25% of their office business. It is depending on two elements, and when these elements are out I will happily hand them over what I have if Google or Amazon buy the other IP and give me permission to hand that over to Adobe, I will gladly do that, just to see Microsoft squirm a little more. 5 markets lost to stupidity, 5 markets lost to shortsightedness and Adobe will be one of the winners. The setting that comes has been out for a while and the lost sides (four at present) are things that Microsoft should have seen years ago, their inaction is now more than enough. If you are asleep at the wheel you lose the ship, it is that simple and unlike the Ever Given, others are not in the Suez Canal, we can go around this Microsoft vessel and let it sink. A home-run out in the open and Microsoft just will not wake up, well let them sleep, I reckon that Adobe is more than ready to take over a chunk of the Office users. Consider that after all this time and all these follies, people do not merely gain a program, they gain a suite of options to tantalise their creativity. 

There is no telling where the creative people are going to end, but it will be ahead of where Microsoft hoped they would be, a lag that only intensifies the losses they will face. The setting reminded me of an article I saw in LinkedIn. 

There we see a person objecting to the discrimination of scouting. There we see “The announcer labelled the boy scouts as ‘Future leaders of America’ and the girls scouts as a group that were ‘just having fun’” This is what we see as a setting for Adobe and Microsoft. Adobe instills and propagates creativity, whilst Microsoft merely sets a mediocre foundation of presenting. Yet if there is one thing I have seen from Adobe, it is a clear stage where presenters can create works of art, whilst Microsoft sets a stage of mediocre joyous presentations, but in this day and age presentations are serious business, it sets the tone for corporate stories, sales events, propagating new projects and products. Joy gets us nowhere and Microsoft joy is close to a decade old. Adobe is on the verge of setting the next generation of presenting tools. So where do YOU wanna be when your idea is ready to be shown to the world? At the edge of what is possible, or in a joyous looking meadow, one that we have seen a million times over? I will let you decide on where you want to be and be honest, do you really think that Microsoft has any serious relevance left?

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April 16, 2022 · 21:36

Economic arrogance of Achieving

This is a station I recently came to and it has nothing to do with the bravery of Ukraine, or the stupidity of Russia. Even though that setting might have touch-points the larger station is NOT war. The thoughts came from the Art of War by Sun Tsu. There we learn ““The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.” “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.”

Yet this quote was subverted by economists and wannabe economic strategists into smething like: ““The supreme art of profit is to gain profit without cost” “If you know the final cost and profit, you need not fear the result of 100 investments” If you know the profit but do not know the cost, for every profitable endeavour achieved one will fail.” This is a side I feel is going on in business, but now also in mobile gaming. A stage where games work but only if you watch advertisements. I tried a game and even as it has repetitive sides, it also has campaign sides and those sides are limiting, but if you watch 37 advertisements you are on your way to get to 50% in a three day event. Consider that 37 advertisements. To game, to play a free game, but it is hindered, not by repetition (well that too), but to get anywhere you need to watch that many advertisements. Now you can limit yourself by BUYING ad free settings, by buying elements in EVERY campaign. And I am not against these settings, just the statin that to get anywhere in that game will require you to invest in advertisements. Now this is not against any rules, not against any law and the makers are not doing anything wrong. Now consider the advertisement. The advertisement in SOME cases will allow for you to play a level, or part of a level, but in many cases should you touch the mouse or the pointer, the install screen is called for. A side I call deceptive conduct, but that could just be me. What is seen is iteration after iteration of “The supreme art of profit is to gain profit without cost” and it is deceptive, there is always a cost, in this case at the expense of the game.

It is the idiocy of “The supreme art of profit is to gain profit without cost”, it is a fictive state of exploitation and nearly all the larger players are involved in that. Do you think that I would have so much IP? Some people at Google, Amazon and even Microsoft should be running circles around me, around people like Elon Musk. But they are all in that pretentious state where “The supreme art of profit is to gain profit without cost” is the solution to everything. It is not, it really is not. 

My stage of 5G comes from a state of rejecting the obvious and inverting the funnel and then looking the other way. The stage of gaming came from looking in a direction no one was willing to look towards and none of them adhere to the stage of “The supreme art of profit is to gain profit without cost” And that is where I found optional billions, one of them has question marks, but if done right could amount to a lot more than even I had in mind and it does depend on a stage, but that stage is being catered to. So when it all comes out, I can look at players like Microsoft and laugh out loud. Consider that the wealthiest corporations are Apple (1), Microsoft (2, for now), Google/Alphabet (4) and Amazon (5) and I am the one with the IP? Consider that they should be ahead of the curve, but they are not, because I am speculating that their economic advisors told them “The supreme art of profit is to gain profit without cost”, and because of that Tesla has a mobile phone coming, a market that Microsoft pretty much lost to Google and Apple and now there is a third player. There am I with my 5G and gaming IP and a few more IP options, one directly opposing Sony and Fujitsu and it is based on technology of the 90’s. So how much did these companies lose by relying on “The supreme art of profit is to gain profit without cost”, I merely go by the old statement “You cannot make an omelet without breaking eggs”, a truth that has been out in the open for centuries. What else did these players overlook?

I will let you figure that out, I at least saw one additional failure, but no spoilers, it is up to you to see what they cannot see.

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April 16, 2022 · 17:33

What’s the name, what’s the game?

I saw the news a few days ago, and for the most it does not matter to me, but there is an awful lot of hypocrisy going around and the media is (as I personally see it) as tainted as anything else. The stage is set to Elon Musk, or better stated is set against Elon Musk. Why? Don’t really know the man, but he seems the modern day Midas. Whatever he touches turns to gold. He made an upheaval in the battery market, the mobile market, the energy market. The man is (allegedly) an inventor like me, or he can see proper innovation just like Steve Jobs. How is this a bad thing? Consider the news that he was getting involved in social media. Why not? I do not know if it is a bad idea. But he has the dough to become part of it. Yet the Sydney Morning Herald gives us ‘Elon Musk launches $58 billion hostile takeover of Twitter’ (at https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/elon-musk-launches-hostile-takeover-of-twitter-20220414-p5admv.html) as such lets take a look at what constitutes a hostile takeover? The definition gives us “A hostile takeover occurs when an acquiring company attempts to take over a target company against the wishes of the target company’s management. An acquiring company can achieve a hostile takeover by going directly to the target company’s shareholders or fighting to replace its management” is this true? CBS gives us ‘Elon Musk offers to buy Twitter for $43 billion’, so who is giving us the truth and who is giving a stakeholder a blow job? You think this is rude? You ain’t seen nothing yet. We can argue until the sun goes down, but the setting of finance is clear. If a company is worth it, or could become worth it, you buy it. This has been the case in many occasions. Yet no one is saying that about Microsoft and Blizzard. There we get ‘Activision Blizzard/Microsoft Deal Discouraged by Letter Penned by SOC Investment Group’, how quaint.

So it was today when I saw (at https://www.reuters.com/technology/twitter-adopts-poison-pill-fight-musk-2022-04-15/) ‘Twitter adopts ‘poison pill’ as challenger to Musk emerges’, it is the Guardian version where we see “The method, known as a “poison pill” in the finance world, suggests Twitter will fight Musk to prevent a hostile takeover. It would go into effect if a shareholder were to acquire more than 15% of the company in a deal not approved by the board and expires 14 April 2023.”You see my issue is with the ‘hostile takeover’ part. The guardian gives us those goods with “Jack Dorsey, Twitter founder and former CEO, noted in a tweet on Friday that such surprise purchases are always a risk for the company. “As a public company, Twitter has always been ‘for sale’,” he said. “That’s the real issue.” Musk is already facing legal action for his Twitter purchases, with one investor suing the Tesla executive in a potential class action lawsuit for failing to disclose his buy-up of shares before the required deadline to do so. The lawsuit comes as Musk faces a number of investigations by the Securities and Exchange Commission for his investment activities, including insider trading allegations related to his own tweets.” So we see ‘insider trading’, we see ‘hostile takeover’ but we are given no real evidence of either. Merely the word ‘allegations’ that everyone is overlooking. 

The stage becomes even weirder as we consider the actions that Microsoft unleashed on the gaming industry and it is casually trivialised by too many media outlets. 

In all this the statement “he wanted to release its “extraordinary potential” to support free speech and democracy across the world.” Is trivialised by “Twitter’s board on Friday unanimously approved a plan that would allow existing shareholders to buy stocks at a substantial discount in order to dilute the holdings of new investors”, there is no real setting of who these board members are, the media seemingly forgot about that part. These members that include Bret Taylor (SalesForce), Parag Agrawal (CEO Twitter), Mimi Alemayehou (Mastercard), Egon Durban (Silver Lake), Martha Lane Fox (House of Lords), Dr. Fei-Fei Li (Stanford), Patrick Pichette (Google), David Rosenblatt and Robert Zoellick (AllianceBernstein Holding L.P.) there was a unanimous objection to the purchase by Elon Musk and no media outlet had anything from these members with the simple question ‘Why oppose?’. There might be a very valid reason, but I and all others were not informed, so what gives?

We can speculate on why it was done. Elon Musk sees that the US is going after the billionaires. As such he might be buying anything he can to drop the tax rift, and lets face it, he has been turning things to gold and Twitter is a golden idea. So whilst we see all kinds of objections on how analysts see (and say) things like “KeyBanc Capital analyst Justin Patterson downgraded the social media company in the wake of Elon Musk’s buyout proposal. Patterson cut his rating to sector weight, after being at overweight since January 2021, saying that the potential for the Musk bid to “go up in smoke” will turn investor focus on a more challenging macro environment that elevates downside risk to financial estimates.” I personally honestly do not know what will happen, but when a person buys a company, a person that has transformed several companies into powerhouses, I wonder what really is going on. It could be simple, it could be complex, yet the larger station is that people laughed at Tesla and now we see “As of April 2022 Tesla has a market cap of $1.018 Trillion. This makes Tesla the world’s 6th most valuable company by market cap according to our data.” So as I see it, the joke is on them. What was an idea is now 6th on the most valuable companies on the market and that is behind Apple, Microsoft, Aramco, Alphabet, and Amazon and as I gave voice to Microsoft, there is every chance that it will head of Microsoft in the next 3 years. And that is whilst no one has a clue where Meta will end, because they will become part of the top 7 soon enough (2024), and that too is out into the market. So I have questions and the media is not asking the board members of Twitter, or Elon Musk a clear set of questions. And all that before someone decides to ask KeyBanc Capital a few uncomfortable questions. So what is in the name Twitter, what is in the name Elon Musk and what is in the shares game being played now. No matter what is happening, I feel certain that the media will not properly inform us, that mush seems a personal given. Yet in all this we see the approximation of “to support free speech and democracy across the world”, it seems to me that Elon Musk is giving us options, options in mobile technology and energy technology. Who else has been giving us that? I see questions and no one asking them, it is weird, is it not?

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April 15, 2022 · 03:31

Abbreviations

We all see them, we all use them and we all think we use the same ones. Yet when we take a look at ‘Games as a Service (GaaS) Market to See Huge Growth by 2028 | Netflix, Microsoft, Sony’ (at https://www.digitaljournal.com/pr/games-as-a-service-gaas-market-to-see-huge-growth-by-2028-netflix-microsoft-sony) we see a decent story and it all seems to fit, yet when we see the list “The study includes market share analysis and profiles of players such as Blizzard Entertainment, RIOT, Netflix, Microsoft, Sony, Tencent, Activision Blizzard, Sega, Electronic Arts & Ubisoft” with the optional ‘attached sample PDF’ did you think you were getting the goods, or did you think you were catered to with “If you are a Games as a Service (GaaS) manufacturer” and at every turn you are seeing the mention of ‘digital journal’. So what gives? Well in the first instance this Games as a Service ploy is that, a ploy (for now) and it sets the largest upheave long before 2028. The largest settings will come to blow in 2024/2025. And the entire station of market share sets a longer approach. You see, there is still no way to see where Netflix is going at present. Their ‘stated’ indications are nice, but when you also hear sounds like “Research firm Ampere isn’t convinced that subscription services like Game Pass are taking over gaming.” We need to realise we are hearing merely one voice, and I get it, but it is the setting of what some call ‘dog eat dog’ that matters. Microsoft, Ubisoft, Netflix and EA will head for a fight, a fight for population and subscribers. Some have advantages, some have potential overzealous fans and some have merely hope. The issue is that these players will fight EACH OTHER for market share. And yes some of the mentioned players are all Microsoft, but that does not make Microsoft the larger player, it makes for a splintered one and in the end they all fight for ones self. Sony and Tencent have their own worries. They are both a lot stronger, but there is a station that polarisation will happen by 2025 and these two will have the numbers and the share. The second issue is not merely the setting here.

Consider the following names Games as a Service, Games as a System, Software as a Service, Systems as a Service, and all this before we consider Function as a Service (FaaS), Container as a Service (CaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS) and it is more than some ‘hyped’ and quick mention of names towards a category. The larger stage becomes when the players start mixing the terms to get the audience to ‘flip’ in space to be part of such a community. It sounds nice, but it is not, it merely makes the water muddy. Tencent and Sony are not part of this because they have a setup, they have the setup, the hardware and the population, more important they are not in each others way. You see Ubisoft is on its way out, that much has been visible for almost two years. When Ubisoft did not deliver on quality they were going for their GamePass approach and they are coming up short, now that they are all over Google Stadia, Amazon Luna and the consoles they are merely running a steeplechase of patch after patch and they are coming up short per game and per system and it is taking it toll. To get ahead of the game they need near flawless games. Three at the least and they need them before 2023 and that is not in the cards, so they are merely one bad release away from death. EA has its own following and it is a decent following, but their games have issues, larger issues, not deadly ones, but serious ones. The problems for EA is to manage service levels to a higher standard and they seem to come up short (for now), their largest issue is clear communication and to FOCUS on games, one at a time to make them all better, more stable and less ‘issue prone’ that part is hard but doable. If their board does not fold under pressure from the other dogs they could be in a good place by 2024. By that time EA and Microsoft will be contemplating what to do with Ubisoft, because it is too far behind. At that same time Tencent and Sony will have the advantage and neither will have a clue where Nintendo will be, because if Games as a Service becomes a thing, Nintendo will be the quiet one gathering population with a strong system. Microsoft might want to trivialise them away but the rest will not. They lack the larger station that Sony and Tencent has, but Nintendo is creeping up on them and this article has no mention of Nintendo, do they? Yet by 2025 Nintendo will be a powerhouse and Netflix is nowhere near ready to take on the large three players. Microsoft is about buying whatever is out there, but from the 90’s onwards that approach has been devastating on all who attempted it. Yes, it makes for headlines but it lacks results and that is what we have been seeing for a little too long with Microsoft. It cannot maintain its posture in the current setting and when it starts its GamePass as collateral for population, we are more than likely get to see the downturn of it all and it does reflect my position of ‘dog eat dog’.

And these are the players vying for the attention of the gamers, all whilst they cannot decide who is the better provider or what gamers actually want and there too the big three (Sony, Tencent and Nintendo) will have the advantage. The problem I see is that a lot of this will be decided long before 2028 and in all this Amazon is not mentioned either. They too have a stake and could become on of the big four leaving Microsoft in fifth place at best and that is if everything goes their way, which so far has not be the case. And whilst most of them are hiding behind abbreviations the big four (Tencent, Sony, Nintendo and Amazon) will grow its population and cater to the one element that was central in all this, the gamer, not the process.

That is my issue with this article, that was my issue with some of the players. They stopped catering to the GAMER and started to cater to the image of SELF. I will let you make up your mind. There is time, this does not need to polarise in any one brain for at least a year. The largest game in all this are the players and the game they play, not the games they produce that too is an advantage the big three have over the other players at present. 

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April 14, 2022 · 02:51

Directions

We all do this, we take a direction, we choose a heading and most of us do it for emotional and sentimental reasons. I am no different. Yes, I still enjoy every moment in Horizons: Forbidden West. I hope I will enjoy Hogwarts Legacy well over half that much (more is always good). I try to have a realistic mind and the movie of Hogwarts Legacy blew me away, as it did most of us. Yet, some of us also hope for other IP to be made into games. Some go nuts for Marvel or DC games. Some of us love the Lego games. Yet I wonder what is possible if someone takes a gander and grabs a series like the Magicians, Babylon 5 or Battlestar Galactica into a game. Hogwarts and the writings of JK Rowling shows that there is massive appeal in the arcane. As such the writings of Lev Grossman could make for one hell of a game. Babylon 5 always had its own following and 5 seasons as well as a few movies opens the doors to a larger game. And there is a benefit to a space station. The same could be said for the Galactica, but I wonder what happens when we try to set a much larger station by opening the gameplay on a dozen worlds. A game that covers Icarus, Picon, Caprica, Gemenon, Tauron, Leonis, Virgon, Libran, Scorpia, Sagittaron, Aerilon, Aquaria and Canceron. A game that is too big for consoles, but not for streamers. All options that are forsaken, overlooked or just too big to contemplate. That last reason is a decent one. It is one hell of a challenge to get one world done right, to get 12 done good would be folly and I recognise that. A state of gaming we sometimes overlook. Just like the hungry man whose eyes are bigger than his stomach. In the latter case we waste some money on food we never had and that is OK, when you make a game and you make THAT much of an oversight bankruptcies start, so the game needs to be played careful and cautious. I get that, but if we always play it safe a game like The Darkness on Xbox360 would never have been a reality. A game that scored 82% (better than some Ubisoft games). There are other games with that setting and they were good games. Some would state not great games and I could go along with that. There are other games that scored not as much and were great games to play. So I am at time cautious on looking too hard at some rating. A game is what captures us, and for different people it is a different game. It was different with the approach for 50,000,000 consoles, which is weirdly enough based on small numbers, because it has never been done before. And if one program can lead there, what else are designers not looking at? I made the mistake of listening to the wrong people when I had my idea for Facebook 4 years before Facebook. Now, my version was not as slick, not as good looking and limiting, but I was ahead by 4 years. I will never do that again. I will go my own way and for now I have 5G IP in directions no one considered, optionally with extensions in several directions. A lot of them based on seeing the plans of Neom (Saudi Arabia). I came up with the IP for streaming consoles in a direction NO ONE considered. And it is ready for development. And the game is not even close to over. Only a few days ago it gave pressure to another IP, an IP no one seems to be considering and I reckon it could amount to billions, but it will not be overnight. A simple thought brought it to the top and in that same light I want to be positive on the IP of a TV series, a mini series and a movie, but they are not the real moneymakers, they are there for my ego (I think). And that is for some the rub. They are all about the profit, optionally the Adobe solutions that will bring Microsoft to their knees, but I believe that the small gains of TV ideas are no less than the other much larger amounts. The creator believes in his creations, not the value it represents. It is a path the creator walks and he (or she) hopes to see all the sideways that are connected to it, or the hope that new sideways are opened because of one IP. I believe that this happened in one case, but not in all cases. And there are other considerations. In my case Ego is one situation. I considered the evolution of the Amazon Luna, giving it all kinds of side uses, for the mere reason that Sony left them on the side and I want to be there to pick it up before Microsoft does. I want to make sure that they are seen as copycats, a former titan that is now merely a follower, not a leader, no matter what their marketing department advertises, but you saw that, did you not? ‘The most powerful console in the world’ is a considered statement of fact, but the fact that it was surpassed by the weakest console of them all is regularly overlooked. A stage that we ignore because some want us to overlook it and through that we overlook a lot more. But I do not mind, as I am alone on a path gives light to other options and it take one (not Microsoft) to take that jump and see their portfolio of revenue grow and when that does, the rest will sell itself. And when that happens my ego will be happy and shouting with glee showing all what Microsoft left in the dust and that was before the previous article where I saw more parts and places that Microsoft left lying on the floor, all ready for Adobe to pick up and make a move on what should now be considered a mediocre solution no one needs anymore and as people seek deep within ones self, they will understand that ‘They are the only advanced solution’ is no longer good enough and when that changes Microsoft loses the field on a 4th tier. They lost gaming to Nintendo and Sony, they never achieved anything in Tablets (Apple), they are a browsers joke (Google) and they will lose even more to Meta and they are about to be surpassed in streaming consoles by Amazon who also surpassed them on Cloud computing (Amazon AWS) and that is when their office solution passes over to Adobe, they will be the loser of the decade and I cannot wait to see those articles make headlines way too late. Microsoft took a direction to a cull de sac in a place no one wants to be all whilst others copied their failings. 

And I am so close to the victory I dreamt of, I can almost taste it, whether I get my IP sold or not, I will be around to see Microsoft fall to such a degree that the media can no longer ignore what has been in front of them for years. And when the people catch on the mess will be complete. 

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April 13, 2022 · 19:55

Inclination of letters

We tend to act in certain ways. I am no exception (as you are about to find out). Yet, before we have a go at the BBC and another go at the ICIJ, lets take another look at how Microsoft has FAILED its audience. Now, this is not out in the open and I do not really reveal what has happened, but I am making a jab at it as it will set fortunes to Adobe and this is for their eyes only. So, there I was watching several presentations in the last 24 hours (from several sources) and something occurred to me, it was the third time when I heard something. My mind started to race and suddenly I wondered why Microsoft had left all this in the open, unsolved, unattended for a DECADE. It was so out in the open that I was wondering what on earth they were doing. Yes, their 365 solution is all about making sure their customers pay, and that I fine, but to leave gaps in their office solution out in the open for over a decade, how stupid is that. Yet, no fears. Adobe will fill up that hole nicely with their adjusted suite of programs which will start a new age in corporate needs and Microsoft will be looked at with the look of ‘How could you have been this stupid to such a degree?’ Yet I will not care, I will be giggling in a corner. Watching the wannabe’s seek jobs and seek solutions. 

So now we get to the main event. It is the BBC article ‘Hidden wealth of one of Putin’s ‘inner circle’ revealed’ (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-61028866). There is so much wrong here, I almost do not know where to start, so the beginning it is. 

We see from the start “They reveal how a Swiss tattoo artist was falsely named as owner of a company that transferred over $300m (£230m) to firms linked to Suleiman Kerimov. They also show how $700m of transactions – and the secret ownership of luxury properties – went undetected. The investigation exposes failures of the banking system and the obstacles impeding Western sanctions.” It sounds nice, it really does. But lets take a closer look, shall we? 

“Transactions worth $700m linked to Suleiman Kerimov and his closest business associates were reported as suspicious by banks between 2010 and 2015” So was anything done? Were ACTUAL crimes committed? ‘Suspicious’ is merely a word that shows no side towards legality. Then we get “Swiss accountant Alexander Studhalter posed as owner of properties actually owned by Mr Kerimov” So were laws broken? Was anything illegal done? The BBC shows itself to be as big a loser as the ICIJ shown it is. And when we get “Mr Kerimov was the secret owner of properties on the French Riviera and in London, including the most expensive terraced property ever sold in the UK” we see again the small setting ‘If he was a real secret owner, how did they find out?’ But the larger stage is whether LAWS were broken. The BBC does not really inform us of this, do they? They merely illuminate how useless journalists have become. Who is Suleiman Kerimov? I actually do not care. He is not part of my life, I never expect that to happen. But the BBC, the player claiming to be so trustworthy, where are they? Where is the list of broken laws? Where is the EVIDENCE showing us that laws were broken in Switzerland, the UK, and France? We can grasp at the Oligarch foundation all we want, but if we are a nation of laws we need to be shown the laws that were optionally (and allegedly) transgressed upon. So when we are finally given “Experts say Western countries have a lot of work to do because, for years, they have taken a lax approach to the fight against dirty money and failed to hold banks to account.” We see a clear path to something I have been stating for DECADES. Internationally tax laws need to be overhauled and politicians were lax, politicians were all about inaction and now we see the BS tap turned open all whilst we are not given the real deal. What laws were transgressed upon? I reckon that the answer will be none. I cannot tell because I am not a lawyer, I am not a tax lawyer and I am not an attorney. I have my Master of Intellectual property and when (or if) Amazon (or Google) buys my IP, my ship will arrive and I can retire nicely. Yet in this I have questions and the BBC answers none of them, so when we are finally given “In 2020, Swiru Holding accepted its involvement in evading the tax and was fined €1.4m and made to pay another €10.3m to settle the case. Mr Kerimov’s lawyer put out a statement saying that the French courts had “officially dismissed the allegations made by the former Nice Prosecutor against Suleiman Kerimov of having carried out money-laundering operations.”” We basically see a fine less then €12,000,000 for avoiding a taxable amount of €127,000,000 so as it seems crime pays and that is the part we do get to see. So when we are given how $700m of transactions were seemingly ‘undetected’ were laws broken? We are shown the transgression of 20% which was dealt with, but we have no information on the large amount and whether laws were broken. How come? We are given “The transaction was just one in a series of wire transfers carried out from 2010 to 2015 totalling $700m reported to US authorities as suspicious”, yet there is a large gap between ‘suspicious’ and ‘criminal’ and neither the ICIJ or the BBC give us anything on that, merely the alleged indignation. So is the BBC as useless as the ICIJ is showing itself to be? That is my question and I feel that this is not on James Oliver, Nassos Stylianou or Steve Swann. I believe that it is Francesca Mary Unsworth, chief editor of BBC News that needs to come forward and do some explaining on what should be seen as reporting and what should be seen as trivial filtering of news. 

I will let you decide what is what, but I reckon that the entire ICIJ mess needs a long hard look by a few people in all kinds of business walks.

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April 9, 2022 · 22:22

Trust, who you gonna trust?

Trust is something that is always out there. Some give it, some give it a little too freely. This is not to be confused with loose women, they merely do not care who to trust, they want a good time and 99.9963% of the hetero sexual men out there agree with me (and loose women too). 

Yet, in gaming trust is a dangerous thing. To see this we need to take a gander. In the first to the setting of Microtransactions. I am not against Microtransactions, it is merely an addition to the game and it is not free. Some are $5, some are $50 (and some a hell of a lot more). I believe that a fool (or a dedicated fan) will spend what they can afford and sometimes a little more. It is hard to keep the dedicated fans and the fools apart, but that is a very subjective view. 

Some wanted to go out and get the $5 for swords in Assassins Creed on day one, because these people start the game with a 5/5/5 sword (if you played the game, it will make sense). To the credit of Ubisoft, they CLEARLY stated that this is an item that could be earned in the game, and it was. Just not in act1, scene 1 of the game. There are a few other settings too, but Ubisoft clearly stated that with any item bought, that if it was obtainable in the game, they would let us know. Well done Ubisoft (I kicked them often enough, the good sides should be shown too).

I never accepted the loot-box stage. You see, for it to be gambling you need to lose it all, without anything to show for it. And tell me have you ever opened a loot-box and got the following ultra rare card?

No, you did not. So loot-boxes are not gambling. Neither are microtransactions, and it needs saying. Stop complaining. Buy it, do not buy it, just stop bitching about it. Now, some games are clearly upfront about it. The Hogwarts Legacy makers have stated that the game will not have any microtransactions. A good choice! There are others who are not that ‘elevated’ I have heard and seen some news on Gran Turismo 7 and there is some mess out there on microtransactions. I am not judging at present as I know too little, today is not about it, but it is linked. 

You see, to consider that we need to take a look at Reuters. I wrote about this setting in a different way, but they cover what I wrote. So (at https://www.reuters.com/technology/crypto-gaming-collide-high-risk-play-to-earn-economies-2022-04-08/) we see ‘Crypto and gaming collide in high-risk ‘play-to-earn’ economies’ and there we see “The 28-year-old from Bangkok was playing Axie Infinity, one of a new breed of blockchain-based online games, dubbed “play-to-earn”, which blend entertainment with financial speculation. These games can make for lucrative businesses amid the hype around NFTs and virtual worlds, attracting millions of players plus billions of dollars from investors who see the games as a way to introduce more people to cryptocurrency.” This is nice, such a sweet way to set the stage to playing youngsters (age 28) and the lucrative stage of investors. But when you take a gander to what I wrote on March 15th in ‘When is a slot machine not one?’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2022/03/15/when-is-a-slot-machine-not-one/) where I set the premise “The bottom of the slot machine fitted a credit card, some kind of crypto card. The slot machine also fitted USB-C sticks. The slot machine was a laundromat for crypto currency. And let’s face it, in todays world, who raises an eye on seeing a slot machine? I think my ‘associates’ had stolen a decent amount of crypto currency, which they laundered through the slot machines.” A stage where the slot machine becomes a cryptocurrency laundromat and the nice part is that it is also a slot machine and when the padlock is removed, it is merely a slot machine. The padlock was the second key of the chain to launder. You did figure that out, do you not? And even as I created some optional billion dollar IP (for Amazon) there is a much larger stage, because the current stage requires the oligarchs to launder whatever they can and there are solutions, some are not out in the open, but give it time. That need will surely come and my option is one that comes with the gamble option, launder the money or take a chance in gaining up to 75% in cryptocurrency by gambling. It will get the eyes of too many soon enough. 

My idea is clean, but some will subvert it, like some subverted the clean Mass Effect loot-boxes whilst they tried to fill their pockets. How long until someone figures out the 5G part that is NOT out in the open, until someone figures out its secondary stage? And all this is before the Hybrid era, the era that Meta will open up for EVERYONE. I wonder who will try to fill their pockets and how many will try to figure out something I put here months ago. I have time, I can wait, two of the events are now on 4Chan, so whomever breaks the codes has a clear path to a lot of revenue. I’d rather leave it out in the open for free than give it to some idiot at Microsoft. And if Google and Amazon do not want it? Then freeware it becomes. The person who is willing to destroy a thing, controls that thing. Ron Hubbard wrote that in the 70’s, the greed driven never understood it, for them it was always a  stage for compromise and negotiation. Lets all have some of it. Not me, I would rather see them squirm as a vagrant in agony than give in to the weak minded iterative spreadsheet users of this century. Let them return to the dust they came from.

So who you gonna trust? Trust and believe in yourself and only that. It is the stage that leaves wannabe friends outside. True friends will accept that and that is the difference.

P.S. I just finished my 2301st article, cool!

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April 5, 2022 · 23:37

In preparation

We all prepare, but how do we do that? There are games, there are tests, there are challenges and we seem to accept some, we reject others. I see how many reject the setting of what the Russians are up to, I even see how Americans would prefer Putin over Biden, with settings that is in denial of truth, in denial of facts. A way of thinking totally impossible 40 years ago is now the foundation of failing in America. Yet, I wonder not about that. To be true, I wonder what parts are real and what are not. Not in the case of the Russian slaughter in Ukraine. Bellingcat put online the Russian actions of shooting a person on a bicycle, on a bicycle no less. But what tests do you rely on? I for one took the Pottermore test whilst waiting for Hogwarts Legacy.

In this I will be wielding a Hawthorn wood with a Unicorn core 14 ½” and a Hard flexibility wand. I have a hedgehog patronus and I am in house Ravenclaw. So for the game I am ready. Yet what happens when the next game comes along? What happens when someone takes the Divergent series and creates a new world looking like something you see in the Last of us (without the altered enemies). To create that world the 5 factions become reality, yet here you are a different person, here you can take over (possess) any Candor, Abegnation, Dauntless, Erudite or Amity. Yet the choice allows for progress like a dungeon keeper, to let the dungeon take care of itself. The people unaware of you, you are merely a hand in growing a community. Finding places in a discovered city. Showing knowledge, exploring weapons, so the city cannot be safe in the beginning. Animals that are hungry and even as slaughter seems the only option in the beginning, later on it seems like one of many solutions. The guardians, the intelligent and the honest setting a stage for the peaceful and the selfless to grow to unparalleled greatness. 

It seems we have a likeness of tests, especially from movies or books we enjoy to set a larger station for ourselves. Something we can brag about to our friends. Like the master of their Minecraft, ready to show others what you have done and the group never stops growing. As you find people with likeminded goals you share and that pushes for other sides too. Sides I am not entirely ready to reveal here, because I want Amazon (Luna) and Google (Stadia) to have the advantage (and to show Microsoft their inability) to show what others cannot see. And it is here that we see the larger station of streaming growing, not merely by playing, but by embracing that what the gamer loves. What the gamer drives and even as that is not the setting that grows the amount of people to any console, it does give the world the image that the gamer wants to show the world. All this is set through streamers and their station towards perfecting their profile, the gamers presentation to the internet. I do not think that Sony ever realised how close to perfection they were and then with the PS4 and later they dropped it completely. Unaware what they lost and now in the next phase it seems that several players have all the options at their corner. 

We want to look prepared, we want to be the one in the middle and we forgot that there are several ways to get there. Not all of them requiring the slaughter of civilians, not all of them require to be a fan of everything, yet in case of some games, the option to be more than a player of the game is expected. But who will accomodate? Who will do that to a larger station than it is now? Sony bungled it from PS4 onwards, but it is not too late, it is not completely lost, and in the stage we see online with splinter groups, for the consoles to keep THEIR splinter group safe is becoming increasingly important.

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