Tag Archives: Amazon

December 4, 2021 · 11:07

Merely a dream

I had a decently weird dream last night. It might be a movie, but I think it is not good enough for that. It might be a popcorn movie, merely for streaming and DVD sales and that would be fine too. The setting is that the dream started a few other things and I wonder where we are in less then a year.

It started in Toronto, I was there for whatever reason. There was a lot of chaos, a lot of shooting and a lot of damage. It was primarily in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal. It is around February 2022, the US has defaulted on its loans. The people lost almost everything they ever owned and the stage is that ultra right angry people are whipping up the others who are coming to terms that their politicians are as useless as everyone expected them to be. Canada suddenly has to deal with 30-50 thousand invaders all angry and all taking whatever they can, they have nothing left. I saw police officers in Yorkville getting shot, store windows were getting crashed and houses are overrun. The American had turned into rabid dogs. The army was trying to create bottlenecks but an army spread over Canada having to deal with three clearly way to large fire points and a lot more in the rural areas is not an army that can get a whole lot done. And nearly all Americans were wielding firearms. It is then that I see the army starting to shoot to kill and I wake up.

Now, that was merely a dream, but the larger station remains. Everyone is in this ‘lets hope’ phase, but America has been utterly broke for well over three years. And every time the debt ceiling is raised. A political system that cannot take responsibility, that uses the blame game and points at the previous party if it is a different political party. They both failed and they both refused to overhaul tax laws for well over over 25 years. In the 90’s the idea of a trillion dollar firm was ludicrous. Now they have 2, maybe 3. These firms did NOTHING wrong. They adhered to tax laws and they did what the tax laws demanded that they would do. So every time I see another tax the rich, whilst these people look at three parties (ignoring 15 others), I get nervous. The larger station is not that they refuse to overhaul tax laws. It might be that they are too stupid to overhaul them.

And this too is nothing new. What will be new is that the US government will take a look at their patent office and make (forced) deals with any isolated (registered in America only) patent and demand a financial deal with that owner. So lucky my IP is not registered in the US. A setting of grab it whilst you can will start soon enough and whilst the US will be in denial, there will be behind the scene deals with Google, Apple, Netflix, Amazon, Alcatel-Lucent, Microsoft and IBM. All to get a little more use and traction out of the failing US economy. All whilst it has been clear for decades that the tax laws need a complete rewrite, a setting where everyone is taxed fairly. But that will not likely happen. That will upset the large donators and political friends they have and they would lose them, so nothing will happen and the dream that I have will come closer to becoming an optional reality. 

Is it a wish or a dream? No one wishes for this. Not when you consider all the innocent lives struck by American stupidity, but the larger station is that a lot of Americans are close to desperate and the default will push them over the edge, I feel certain of that. Even as the news (mainly media) is now flaming their need for digital advertisement, hiding behind the announcement that the US of A could default next week, we also get a mere 16 hours ago that ‘U.S. Senate passes bill to avert government shutdown, sends to Biden for signature’, but that is not the same is it? A shutdown is one thing, a default is something else. There are paths that they could walk, set up a massive loan with JP Morgan, Blackrock or Morgan Stanley, the turnaround will need to be massive and that is how the slippery slope becomes a diagonal sheet of ice. A timeline extended and extended, all whilst the premise of stopping this going from bad to worse is ignored.

It was but a dream, I realise that, but perhaps my brain is working out a few financial items covered in nightmares. 

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December 1, 2021 · 13:07

Ego versus tax dollars

Yes, that is the setting. It is not a new setting, we have seen it before and it comes with a surprise, just like the Ferrero kinder surprise.

It is a chocolate egg, but in the middle there is a toy, a surprise. And ego versus tax dollars also have a surprise for the people. Yet in this case it is a little less nice, in this case the people, the tax payers pay either way and optionally they get to pay both ends of the equation. This is seen in BBC article ‘Multi-billion EU bid to challenge Chinese influence’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-59473071). Here we are given “It’s regarded as part of the West’s efforts to counter Chinese influence in Africa and elsewhere. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will present the “Global Gateway” initiative on Wednesday. The EU is looking at how it can leverage billions of euros, drawn from member states, financial institutions and the private sector”, now consider the setting:

  • member states
  • financial institutions
  • the private sector

And here is the rub, here we see how the tax payer gets that bill twice. Or a speculated once for the duration of twice the timeline. The member states sounds nice, yet the credit cards of France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy are severely overdrawn. So who will pay? Poland? Austria? Hungary? Estonia? Gimme a break please.

Then we get the second setting the ‘financial institutions’. Yet they will BORROW you the money for an interesting percentage, which means that a load with up to 15% interest is still payable by the tax payers. 

The private sector? Who has that kind of cash? I reckon that Webuild SpA (formerly Salini Impregilo SpA) will take the job, as long as they get the job with a few long term tax benefits, optionally at cost + 3% + tax benefits. And who do you think pays for it in the end? Yup you got it, the poor poor taxpayer (you). 

As such when I see “It has been criticised as a means of providing “predatory loans” in what is labelled “debt-trap diplomacy”” I am not opposing this (as I never looked at that data), yet the wording is almost exactly like the big tomato of MI6 (you say potato, I say tomato). Isn’t that a nice coincidence. Almost orchestrated. Now, I accept that it might be true, but in that same way Iran has been doing all over the Middle East and the same parties were eager to avoid shining the limelight there, and now that Huawei has a much stronger case (made in Saudi Arabia) and their 5G is 700% faster then anything the US has. The link here us that both Huawei and Saudi Arabia have a larger case for Egypt and that matters. With Neom city smack in the middle, they are likely have an operating 5G network long before the US figures out that marketed speed is not the same as real speed, but they will and they will see the cost involved. In that same light the BS approach to the arms deals with Saudi Arabia, China has a larger stage now, a stage that will cost the US well over 9 billion with a nominal maximum of $23,000,000,000 over the next 5 years, revenue handed to China and we see European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen getting ready for a presentation that is as I personally see a joke the EU cannot afford. Not with the US handing business over to China as they did over the last 12 months alone. 

So when we consider “Mrs von der Leyen said in her State of the Union speech in September: “We want investments in quality infrastructure, connecting goods, people and services around the world.”” We need to see the word ‘investments’, which is nice, but does that not imply that you have the funds? If not (which is the case) it ends up being a mere ego loan and that is not what is supposed to happen. I am not against it, as long as CORPORATIONS are properly taxed and that has been a horse no show for over two decades. I wonder what happens if Huawei and not Amazon decided to buy my 5G (and a few other matters). We then get a setting that shows that the European ego race was over before it even began, it was over when the ego driven tailored to stop the innovations because it did not give them a nice percentage, that is the larger stage we need to see and that is merely one of 4 elements stopping this ego driven presentation that is coming in hours. So even as we are given “Wednesday’s 14-page document isn’t likely to explicitly pitch itself as a rival to China’s strategy.” A setting that gives us the not explicit, it is relying on implied settings, a stage that can be revamped any given stage and there is the second rub, if you cannot go out and say what you mean, you can never mean what you say. That has been a truth for a lot longer than we had the internet. The EU relying on nudge-nudge-wink-wink settings (sorry Monty Python). When was the last time time you saw that going well? And now it involves multi billion euro plans that they cannot even afford. So in the end you the tax payer (if you are in the EU) get to pay that bill too. So hows that going against the rising prices of energy, Gas and petrol? Oh and how about the food prices, inflation of food which was 0.1% in April 2021, which is 2.3% in October 2021. Which is nothing to what I saw at the supermarket. I saw minced meat go up almost 20% in the last few months. So enjoy that extra tax bill with all the expenses you have in Europe. You elected what is there, so you get what is coming. 

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November 27, 2021 · 21:41

Hindered by bias

I am in a few cases hindered by bias. I will admit this, there is no denying it. To throw diplomacy on the side, it is my personal opinion that the average crack dealer on a schoolyard tends to have more credibility than the average journalist. The media world has become that bad. Not all mind you, but the larger group has lost credibility.

To show you an example, I will take you now to Reuters, one source that is actually good (for the most), but the story they give you (at https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/amazon-privacy-lobbying/) gives a few items that I have a problem with and it might merely be me. I will let you decide.

The article ‘Amazon wages secret war on Americans’ privacy, documents show’ shows a few sides I have a problem with and even as Reuters tends to be a good source, the article shows parts that do not fill me with confidence, you might feel different.

It starts with “This story is based on a Reuters review of hundreds of internal Amazon documents and interviews with more than 70 lobbyists, advocates, policymakers and their staffers involved in legislation Amazon targeted, along with 10 former Amazon public-policy and legal employees” In the first, how did Reuters get a hold of these documents? The word ‘documents’ is shows 14 times, not one of them gives a stage HOW the documents were acquired, and how these documents, these internal documents add up. We see one mention of that word with “The premise of this story is flawed and includes reporting that relies on early, incomplete drafts of documents to draw incorrect conclusions” in the second, we see the mention of 70 lobbyists. Which lobbyists? We see the names Anthony William, Meade Spotts, yet there is mention of 70 interviews, if only 2 were set in some light that comes over as optionally as debatable, it becomes a simple equation of statistics. And to be more precise, there is no mention that these lobbyists did anything illegal. It implies an optional debatable situation with 2.8% of the interviewed lobbyists, that is when you consider that the article gives us that in 2020 Amazon had registered at least 180 lobbyists in 44 U.S. states, the percentage is a joke. We are most likely to get more criminal behaviour from Catholic priests. 

Then we go to “Consumer advocates considered the resulting law essentially worthless, said Shankar Narayan, a lawyer at the time for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington state. “It’s riddled with so many holes; it’s like a Swiss cheese,” Narayan said. “It falls in the category of bills that try to make you feel better about biometrics without providing meaningful protection.”” Here there is one direct issue. Lobbyists do not draft laws, Amazon does not draft laws. Lawmakers do that, and which lawmakers were investigated in that bill? Then there is the small setting of “Amazon dominates U.S. smart speaker sales. An estimated 69% of smart-speaker users, about 64 million people, use devices from Amazon, according to research firm Insider Intelligence” Here we have a few issues, one is debatable, but I am a stickler for the small stuff. So what exactly is a smart-speaker? There are 4 mentions, yet none give us a definition. And where does the 69% come from, how was 64 million people assessed? Consider that there is Google, Amazon, Sonitrek, Harmon Kardon. You see, one source gives us “Global Smart Speaker market shipments hit 154 million in 2020” that number does not come with any drill down in brands and 64M from 154M is not 69%, more importantly the 154M number was 2020 only, so when we go back to 2018-2021, how many were sold? That gives a light towards the shoddy practice in the article as I personally see it. If it was all on the up and up (not relying on creating emotions) the 64 million would be specified in a few ways. 

And then we get to “only after lobbyists for Amazon and other firms had chiseled away at its privacy protections by convincing lawmakers to insert alternative language, often verbatim, according to emails between lawmakers and Amazon lobbyists obtained by Reuters through public-records requests”. Other firms? What other firms? And if lawmakers were convinced to change the language, what was done by Amazon lobbyists and what was done by ‘other’ firms? Google perhaps? Google has a decent share of this market, so why is that part not chiseled out with some precision? And when we see “often verbatim, according to emails between lawmakers and Amazon lobbyists obtained by Reuters through public-records requests”, why does the article not give us examples? No names of lobbyists and lawmakers? There is (as I personally see it) an issue here. At this point I get to “Amazon representatives never took a public position on the bill, relying instead on trade groups the company funded to oppose it at hearings, according to Amazon documents and public records of the debate”, so as it stands, who were these trade groups? And what evidence is there that these trade groups were funded by Amazon? The lines become blurry in several ways and I am willing to bet that Amazon never broke any laws, they never did anything illegal, but Reuters gives us “Amazon wages secret war on Americans’ privacy”, they never give us “Amazon uses legal methods to undermine privacy” (with specific evidence presented), ass such I wonder where this article will ever be taken and who will they take into the limelight? 

Finally we need to consider “The reporter’s data request revealed that Amazon had collected more than 90,000 Alexa recordings since 2017 – averaging about 70 a day”, so over a period of 4 years, there are 90,000 recordings. All whilst in 2020 alone 154 million smart speakers were sold? And the earlier quote “An estimated 69% of smart-speaker users, about 64 million people, use devices from Amazon”, 90,000 recordings over 64,000,000 people is a mere tenth of 1%, did anyone do that math, so what is this article? A mere slap Amazon around article? Perhaps I can help Reuters out here. You see, I discovered how Jeff Bezos got to be so very rich. I saw that Harrods sells shampoo at $240 per bottle, Jeff Bezos does not need to spend that on shampoo. Actually I have lived in apartments with a lower monthly rent, so that is how he allegedly got to be this rich. So there! 

Am I biased? I personally feel that I am, but this article shows too many shady sides, too many shoddy approaches to slap the rich, this is all the premise towards another joust for ‘taxing the rich’. I have nothing against that as long as it is done fairly and that requires an overhaul of tax laws. And in regards to ‘the secret war’? If it gets to be in Reuters, it cannot have been that secret, can it? And in all this Google has similar goals, so where is Google in all this? You see lobbyists tend to have an open hand to the masters that pay them, are any of these lobbyists paid by Google? Was that checked, or investigated? 

All questions that beckons an investigation on what the holy bloody hell Reuters has been up to, and with the lack of actual and factual information, the article becomes a mess, with an aftertaste that represents a bad joke, but that is my personal view on the matter. So what gives?

What do you think this was really about? Creating flames or handing over information?

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November 26, 2021 · 22:14

Stupid people never learn

This is not an accusation, it is merely a setting we need to accept. This all started half an hour Aho when the BBC gave us ‘Protesters hit Amazon buildings on Black Friday’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-59419572), with the setting “An international coalition of unions, equality and environmental groups called “Make Amazon Pay” is staging a day of action, demanding concessions”, it is like the approach of a hurricane, and making the one person who left a window open giving him (or her) a bill for the draft damage. People just do not get it, and I am at a loss why that is. It is not hidden information, it is not secret information, it merely is information out in the open for anyone to read.

The setting is not “Amazon takes too much and gives back too little”, the setting is that governments would not overhaul tax laws for the longest of times. I first make a case for overhauling tax laws in 1998, now 24 year later none of it EVER happened. Amazon did not take too much, it took what Amazon was entitled to take. Amazon (only) gives what it is mandated to give. There are las out there and Amazon, Netflix, Apple, Facebook and Google adhere to these laws. All the rest is merely discriminatory bullshit. So when I see “Worldwide, nearly 50 organisations have signed up to a list of “common demands”, published by the Make Amazon Pay coalition”, so I wonder who they are. And it does not really matter as they cross over from one into the other. Consider “A global union federation representing 50 million workers in 140 countries in a range of sectors”, this implies less then 350.000 per nation, which includes the US, which imply that they basically amount to nothing. Then we get “A global union federation of journalists’ trade unions, representing more than 600.000 media workers from 187 organisations in 146 countries” I merely wonder whether they include the same essay writers that grace the ICIJ, a fair question, because journalists are supposed to be smarter than this. All the flames, the bullshit and the need for click bitches that spike digital revenue, all to have a go at a company that struck it big by being actually innovative. 2 years ago Amazon would not be on the mind of console gaming. Now the Amazon Luna overtakes what Google and Microsoft have and that is just for starters. They equal Apple in a few ways and there is no end to Amazon at present. All that and they adhere to laws, or lets just states that they adhere to what their legal department states that they need to adhere to. And no one is putting actual and factual pressure on the politicians that need to get shit done (like overhauling tax laws) but then people get quotes like “It is a really complex situation”, so complex that in 24 years nothing was done, so the utter nonsense of 50 organisations that have call signs making them close to ludicrously useless. If they were not useless, they would put pressure on politicians overhauling tax laws. 

The lesson has been out there for almost 25 years, the facts were out there for almost 25 years and still the people will not learn, the politicians do not want them to learn, because they will have to do something and over time it might amount to something pissing of the rich friends they have. In all this, the setting is much larger then the FAANG group. It includes people like the Walton Family, the Green family, the Koch family, the Yuan family and as such several dozens more. All billionaires, all doing what the law allowed them to do. The feigned anger against Amazon is just pointless bullshit and we need to wake up. Flames and emotions will not get us anywhere and that is the problem with Grassroots people, all about anger and emotion and when the anger subsides, when they realise (if ever) that the law was adhered to we see the pointlessness of the situation and stupid people never do so, in this, how come the journalists are part of this? Who do they serve? Because in the end they serve the shareholders and advertisers. But what of their stakeholders? Who are they and why are they embracing pointless actions? Did you ever consider that part of the equation? 

As such will you learn, or will you just pointlessly embrace a coalition that wastes another two decades going nowhere? It is up to you, you can chose and making the choice that goes somewhere is always better, even if the destination is not better, sometimes things get worse before they get better, that is the outcome of change, the changing process is never better, the outcome can be, it is up to us to make that so, and it is not an easy fight, that much is an absolute given.

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November 25, 2021 · 21:25

Height of the threshold

We all have thresholds, one allows for choices, one bars choices, one allows, one denies. You can go on with that premise for a long time to come, it is how we roll. I saw (on YouTube) some of the NHL22 video’s. I also saw a few complain video’s and a few other videos. I understand the complaints, they do not bother me (I am no NHL player, alas), but I get that some of the issues are there and they will not be resolved any day soon. 

I gave my largest attention to the PS5 version of NHL22. Now I need to be clear. I am not certain if this was a final release version, or a beta. What one states is not always the case. But the thought came to mind as I was considering a few items.

Pro
The look and feel is awesome, presentation has taken a large foundation and it looks good. The previous version I has was NHL19, so over three years there is bound to be some improvements. And as we see the way things present, it looks good.

Con
I saw a whole heap of glitches. Now, I might have missed them if I was playing, but compared to NHL19, the glitches are a lot more profound and ugly I might add. The unnatural skate movements that players make, the way the fallen player gets up and the unnatural skating done at that point. It was riddled with glitches and that is why I wonder whether this was a final version. The look of the players is really good, the rink looks good and the names are nice, but no everyone will like them. I cannot vouch for controls as I was watching and not playing. 

I saw more video and more complaints about puck dynamics and puck response, I also saw a few more glitches and a few that are not really glitches, but it did not add up. This can be my view on the matter and I prefer to say that upfront. The game on the PS5 did look decently amazing. So it did not quite blow me away, but it did impact. And I have not seen all the modes, so there might be more good news that I missed out on.

Threshold?
For me there was a threshold. You see my team (Capitals) won the Stanley cup. So I was eager to get the new edition with Ovechkin on the cover, but EA Sports decided that for Australians, it was digital only (bloody bastards). I am not paying $89 for a digital product and I am not interested in some digital subscription. As such, a threshold of frustration was reached. 

What will happen to NHL22? Well, apart from budgets in play. There is still the issue of a physical copy. I get it, NHL is not on the Australian mind, it might have something to do with water not turning solid in almost all of Australia, so I get it. But the fact that it cannot be ordered, that it is digital copy only is a problem (for me). This is how it is, plain and simple. 

It also related to another setting. As I was brooding over two pieces of IP, a third option came forward. Now, it is too early to comment on it, because there are a few sides that need ironing out, especially on the privacy side of the matter. Yet an idea is starting to take shape and depending how it irons out, I will put it online too (too busy with other options at present). 

It is how we see the digital world that matters. Or perhaps not see it, experience and feel it at present. I have been brooding on making domotics and wearables a larger stage, but that too is fraught with obstacles. We want to have it all, we want to offer it all, but how long until a third party exploits it? As the law fails its citizens, I feel that the threshold of publication rises and raises a lot more questions than I am happy with at present. Can we in all honesty fight for revenue in domotics when it endangers the privacy and safety of people? I feel that it is wrong to push for one setting whilst ignoring another side of that very same coin. As such we see thresholds. 

You see, to get back to the beginning I need to push towards a program called SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences). They had a procedure called PLANCARDS. The simplest stage is “PLANCARDS produces profiles, or cards, from a plan file for a conjoint analysis study”, this is all fine. But the problem is that today that data is used in very different ways, often in ways that the ‘targets’ were never made aware of. An optional context could be “By using a fractional factorial design such as this it was possible to get the information for each of the sixteen sport event product profiles displayed”, now we need to see this as a clever way to get insight, but it can nowadays be warped. You see, the setting of Fractional Factorial design is seen as “A fractional factorial design allows for a more efficient use of resources as it reduces the sample size of a test, but it comes with a tradeoff in information”, the problem here is that ‘efficient use of resources’ still relates to the 80’s-90’s setting of computer resources. These computations would take hours. Now it becomes a very different field, but the people using that often forget the part ‘a tradeoff in information’, or even more accurately stated ‘a tradeoff in lack of data’ one glove washes the other would be cruel and unjustified, but that setting is actually the one that matters. You see people with a less clear intent towards your good choice, they will be all about exclusion, not inclusion which was the initial PLANCARDS setup. The intentional creation of thresholds. Almost what Microsoft did by buying Bethesda. That amount was the hope that their failed console would be bought by Sony players who were missing out of the next Elder Scrolls and the next Fallout. It is a brilliant strategy, but I decided to make a new RPG, an optional new way of playing RPG’s online and make it public domain for Sony and Amazon Luna. The reality is that this approach does not really stop Microsoft from using this, but the visibility that they paid for Bethesda whilst the new game has many parts that were online and free would be a decent reason for firing the board of directors of Microsoft. Yet that is not the point, the point is that any iteration or innovation towards inclusion can also be used to do the opposite and push for exclusion, a side we all (including me) seem to forget until it is too late. It is for that same reason that I published a way to sink the Iranian fleet, whilst not putting online the solution to melt down their reactor. Not because it shouldn’t be done, but because I figured out that the ramification are a lot larger than I initially considered (I was happy that I did in time). 

We can look at what exclusion does and what inclusion does and see how our solution impacts all. And I for one failed that considerations a few times in the past. We all do because it is in our nature. It is (as programmers state) the dangerous setting that THROUGH and THROUGH TO tend to have a little different impact, but do that a few times and you end up losing an entire population cluster. We all faced that and when we do we go ‘Oh bollocks!’ We can redo the setting, or if we were stupid we get to redo it all, it is not that you make a mistake, it is the impact of forgetting about rolling back data, that is when you end up getting royally stuffed. 

Thresholds are a way how we keep issues we care about in check and they are personal thresholds, yet in domotics it is not merely about your house, it will be (for the wrong kind of people) to learn where YOUR thresholds are, we all have them and for the revenue greedy people it will be about finding the exclusion threshold, because that is when they can offer THEIR package and you will vacate your old provider. As I see it large players have seen them and they are looking at the setting where they are most likely to entice you and that is in part on what makes you dump your current solution and select THEIR solution. In this domotics and wearables will change the game as the larger true 5G network rolls out on the global plain and its solutions are accepted by most of the people looking at more ease, more comfort and less hassle. Yet there is the danger, like the tradeoff we saw in one part, here the tradeoff is less hassle means more outspoken data of what you want. Did you consider that?

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November 23, 2021 · 23:30

With a capital ‘S’

Yes, it happens, we all find tuff and wonder how it was possible to make that mistake? It is called Sloppy, sloppy with a capital ’S’. In this I am referring to Skyrim PS5. Now, lets be clear. This is a free update. Yet this is also the 5th iteration of the same game. In this I am ignoring the Nintendo Switch edition. So there was the Xbox 360, the PS3, the PS4, the Xbox One and now the PS5, I did not get the new Microsoft console as it is soon to get the wooden spoon award (dead last in the race), that is if Amazon accepts my offer which will set them back $25M, but it will give them 50M additional consoles sold and that is a careful cautious estimate, it might get a lot higher in 2023. So after 5 iterations I played it again and in this I tool the stormcloak side. It was fr the mere reason to get Hjerim earlier in the game. I also took the Vampiric side, because I needed those 11 perks achievement. So when the Stormcloak campaign starts and we take Whiterun (as we do), the city marker is removed from the map, as is dragonreach and the personal housecarl of the old Jarl remains in the castle, the music is now set to battle music all the time and that is merely what I found. All these glitches (not really bugs) are here and update 1.001.001 does not solve them. So why is that? The PS4 edition did not have this, as far as I remember. The updates fix something (I reckon) yet issues remain. Now lets be clear, it is a free edition, yet it should be better. I did not buy it because if I spend A$80, it better come with a physical PS5 disc, that is how I roll. 

And there is more, but I want to make sure that this is not some bitch against Bethesda who gives away a PS5 edition free of charge (you still need the PS4 disc). I also recognise that the game is so good I never had any second thoughts about the 4 versions I bought, the game has brought 10 years of joy and in gaming time that is more than a lifetime. Yet the design I made of my new RPG as well as the initial TESVI: Restoration was a continuation of the excellence that Bethesda had brought. And there are options of making it TESVII: Restoration, but to be honest it was never with Microsoft at the helm and with them ‘sort of’ announcing that TESVI will not be a PS5 title, the option of Restoration will fall of the map as well. I get it, there was a tactical reason for Microsoft to dish out $8,500,000,000 for Bethesda, but that does not mean that I like it. A brilliant strategy but a flawed one. So should Amazon take the offer I will make it my duty to hand Phil Spencer the Wooden spoon (with golden engraving of ‘Microsoft’), that is what is required. This is not against Phil Spencer. He was given a lousy hand and he is still standing. Giving us that this man could have reached legendary status if the coins did not fall where they did. And consider that their marketing division will have to spin the setting that ‘the most powerful console’ will end up being dead last in a console race. And before Microsoft did what it did, it was never a consideration. I was not mulling over options and hardware opportunities. Anger did that and when I found what I did, I also did not expect to find the option this open. How could no one see it? And even now I am still in awe of the oversight others made. The question for me to me is whether the show of ‘sloppy’ in others had anything to do with it. In a total time that was smaller than a week I came up with TESVI: Restoration, Watchdogs IV, Far Cry VII, Mass Effect 5 and a few more games. Even a new approach to board games on streaming systems. Another week for a film setting, a mini series and a TV series over three seasons. I need to be careful not to blow my own horn but I did this, I found this, I created these elements, so why could they not? 

And the issues is not merely the setting of what is and what could be, the idea that can propel the Amazon Luna has never been done before and that is merely the first wave, the second wave will offer a hell of a lot more and that is when the big bucks come rolling in (minus 10% for me, I hope). And that is all before you realise that the bulk of gamers would really want another Marvel: Ultimate alliance, not version 2 or 3, but version 1. Why? Because it was close to perfection. It brought joy back to gaming. They took the 1985 game Gauntlet and made some serious upgrades and Ultimate alliance was the result and it was awesome. But after that the wrong people got involved. With their ‘what if’ and ‘if only gamers could’, and they never checked with actual gamers and the result was sloppy. The first one I played over and over (I never found all the figurines the first time) and it was awesome to finally find the 5th daredevil figurine (I think it was daredevil). No matter what, the game was awesome and I wonder what would happen if DC takes a shine to Gauntlet, or a Diablo minded game. There are plenty of options for loads of games, yet the setting is up to the designers. I am not a game designer, I am a storyteller and in RPG I have value. I do not feel that I am a great asset towards a new version of Ultimate Alliance. 

So whilst we are criticising Sloppy with a capital ’S’, there is a rather large lack of ‘Standards’, ‘Supremacy’ and ‘Superbness’ all with a capital ’S’, gaming should embrace all those needs as well, not the old discussion of ‘What if we only please 80% at launch date?’ It might sound nice, but that sets the stage of pushing 1 out of 5 to another platform that does not embrace it and so far the Sony exclusives embraced perfection (as close as it is possible), so after three games the other consoles face the risk of having lost three out of 5 gamers. Yet it is a slippery statistical slope, but it is not unrealistic. It is the danger of pleasing 80%. And that is why Microsoft is in danger of getting the wooden spoon (well, my idea is still part of that danger for Microsoft), so it now lies with Amazon (Google does not create games), as such they are absent of the discussion. 

A stage of gaming that required console makers to listen to their gamers, Microsoft blew that stock royally in a few ways, but that is what they signed up for. Angering gamers was the one mistake they could not afford to make. 

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November 21, 2021 · 18:22

Going through the motions

I have been playing Skyrim yet again. I saw an old glitch returning and two new glitches I had never seen before. Hilarious (to some degree). But it also gave me pause to rethink parts of the RPG game I discussed over time in this place. You see, those who played the game might identify that the cupboard in Breezehome has 143 ingots of metals, 15 wolf skins, 4 goat skins, 8 pieces of armour, 12 necromancer robes, a few great-swords, swords, a dozen daggers and a dew more items. This cupboard is twice the size of a night stand. So do you guess that it will all fit? Then I remember the way it was done in Neverwinter nights and my mind went to town on designing a new system. 

Part 1
Int eh first part lets take a turn back to the middle ages. Cupboards were not discarded and new ones bought. Cupboards in those days were a sign of wealth, they were upgraded, they got new functions and taking that in mind. I thought of setting a new premise. 

Any cupboard has a size and use, yet when the wood sort changes, the maximum load also changes. The same can be applied to ‘runing’ the furniture. In this I used a Raetic approach (it makes sense when you know more on the game), We can upgrade any furniture UNTIL you apply Raetic sigils. When you do that this piece of furniture can no longer be adjusted. So as we have furniture, we can add sigils to add space in the cupboard. So if standard a cupboard can keep 6*10 squares. A rune could add (2-5)*6*10.
Sofa’s and chairs can be given sigils to improve regeneration, rest, healing and other matters. It changes the game. Apart from the rest required, regenerate mana is a lot longer process, we think in Bethesda and other terms towards mana, but what happens when that too changes? What if the recuperation is depending on rest and sustenance? 

Part 2 

We seem to feel that the IKEA approach in these games is OK, but is it? We have become so attached to consumerism and that approach needs to change. Also the cost of what we have in our houses. It is like the Pokemon rage. We have to have it all, and that is wrong. I saw that coming a mile away, so the replay factor is diminished. The learning curve changes. And the need for furniture shops, sigil deployers for wood, stone and metal are a larger stage to add to any game. 

In all this we need to set that part and it gave me the idea of an old concept, the bard!

Part 3
Who remembers the comic books of Asterix? Remember Cacofonix? So what happens when we add a bard to the village we live in? The type of bard we find and the type of bard we invite could change the way the village harmony runs. Some bard are good ay creating a fighting atmosphere, se are for feasts and parties, some instil horror (in the invaders). All parts of a game where we have no real control, but the impact is still seen and felt in the game as a whole. Why have we forgotten the second tier influences in games and in gaming?

So as I am going through the motions I see a whole range of changes and updates that Bethesda does not have at present, and with the choices that Microsoft made for them, there are a few more items that could be added to a system like the Amazon Luna, slipping the Microsoft solution further to the back and as optionally Sony and Amazon pair up, there could be a much larger gain for some, more than the additional 50,000,000 consoles sold that Amazon could have at their horizon. There would be a much larger gain and in this fight these two could get a much larger slice of the $200,000,000,000 gaming revenue that is predicted to be at the end of 2023. Personally seen, if Microsoft only gets 10% of that, I would be cool with that. Anything to make them pay the price of short sightedness. 

I is just a stage, but consider what I designed over the last two days alone. Microsoft may make all the claims they have, but I am pushing it out here (as it is not 5G). And all this is optional freeware for Sony and Amazon consoles. So there!

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November 17, 2021 · 01:49

Imagination is king

Yup, I had been busy brooding over a new story. In this case the foundation is an eco warrior who is sick and tired of his government. He is sick, dead sick and he is willing to share his disease with the rest of the world, all the world. 

To get there there needs to be the way to get there and that is the rough path, you see a story is dismissed too often because the setting is just too far fetched. So I had to grasp at history. And there I found an interesting story. In the original setting the story is a sort of cyano salt. All cyano salts are extremely poisonous. The trick is that treatment needs to start IMMEDIATELY. So doctors do have the immediate questions like do you have rat poison in the house, if yes there is a clear path, but if not the test takes too long for treatment, but if the disease is slow that path is often to easily fixed. So I came up with a DNA solution, a portable genetic disorder. A disease caused in whole or in part by a change in the DNA sequence away from the normal sequence. So I started to tinker and I found an interesting setting. It would cause the same stage, it could not be immediately detected and when it does it would be too late. I touched on the subject on September 5th 2021 in the story ‘Eradication’. The story (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2021/09/05/eradication/), the story had some of the parts, but I was nitpicking it now, see if I could find flaws in the stage, you see, the lie (the story) is so much easier to swallow when people believe it to be an option, or perhaps Mary Poppins said it better with “A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down”, and that setting matters. A good story has the elements that drive the persons mind. For a lot if minds it tends to be sex (but those stories already exist), so I had to go into other corners and the eco warrior did the trick, but how to set the stage when we have had so many delusional minds bend on destroying what is around them? And as the young tend to be driven to do the right thing, no matter how wrong it is, as long as they believe that they are doing the right thing they will not care, until it is much too late and there in that setting I had the actual solution. He spread the story that he had found a new way to stop pollution, which he had to test, so he headed of to India and then to China. The larger industrials saw it as a cheap solution to get what they wanted so they pushed officials to apprehend them. A stage was created where he was in India, the Indian government trying to stop people getting to him (allowing him to infect more) and when they got to close to him, he raced off to China where he repeated the stage and then he allowed himself to be captured and raced to the US where he completed the circle. Three hotspot areas where the population pressure would do the work for him. A stage where the initial dangers are not seem, but when you realise the stupid people with the covid setting, the stage becomes believable. Like a chess board where the first square has one rice grain and it doubles every square onwards. So you get one, two, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32768. After that it spirals out of control fast and consider the healthcare options that India and China have. Now consider that these are the infected, how many will they infect? A chess board has 8 rows, so in the second row we have 32768 and there are 6 more rows to go, by the end of row 5 you surpassed the population off the planet. It also reminded me of a image I saw yesterday. It might be the push I needed. The image gave me a chalkboard that stated “I guess we have to retire the expression ‘avoid it like the plague’ given how little effort people put in avoiding an actual plague” I do believe it gave me the idea to let things rise to the surface and now that the elements are at the surface we need to set the second story on how efforts are thwarted into capturing the person as the greed driven industrials want the ‘invention’ before the government can get their fingers on it. Greed tends to be a great motivator, if you doubt that see the lobbyists at COP26. 

A disease that is man made also has a few other parts to it, it calls for all kinds of taboos to be brought to the surface and that too allows for other sides. There needs to be a ‘flaw’ but what if that is an intentional side? What if the original pure people have a dormant immunity? Like all Native Americans, all pure Hindu’s and so on, what if the multi cultural side allows that disease to flourish? That idea is not out of the blue. 

I thought on this when I was brooding over peanut allergies. You see, when I was young (long long ago) I had never heard of it and I also never heard anyone at school have it. It came over time. So what if the allergy comes from multi racial, multi cultural parts? I reckon most people in Indonesia are immune (their peanut sauce is the best in the world) so what when we combine thoughts and see how quickly the medical world goes insane with fear? You see, if they believe it could be done the story will catch on and catch on a bit quicker. 

Imagination is a fearful thing. It allowed me to create new 5G, it gave me the idea to set a new concept stage in television. A direction optionally never thought of before. Not by Sony and not by DARPA (I think). It allowed me to create stories for TV series, mini series and movies (see the other stories I wrote), it gave me the insight in creating sequels to games and I create a new RPG game to piss of Microsoft as I made it free to anyone making a Sony or Amazon exclusive and I set the stage where the Amazon Luna could optionally sell 50 million consoles more. Yup, it is not merely the imagination, it needs a realistic foundation and that is gained by being able to see in a direction and from an angle others are not considering. Now if I can just find the right angle to another story which I have not put online yet (as I am still mulling things over) I feel that I will have had a productive life, plenty of people never get to this stage and now I have another story on ending mankind and optionally save the dolphins, perhaps they will tell me on my deathbed (somewhere in the future) the same thing they told Douglas Adams: “So long and thanks for all the fish!”

Not the worst epitaph to consider.

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November 15, 2021 · 19:03

Pricing of choice

There is always a counter side. It does not mater how good anything is, it does not matter how large the win is, there is an opposite it is the price we pay, the price we accept, because on the whole the deal is actually rather good. There is no opposition, this has been a given truth for decades. At time you need to be ruthless, at times you can be compassionate, at times you have to cut the deadlines, at times you can extent deliveries. They are choices, there are always choices. Some good, some less so. It is the way it has always been

The price of lame
It is a side we see and often ignore. In many situations it means crappy, I would say it merely means crappy but that would be wrong. In this example we look at Bethesda and their latest iteration of Skyrim. Some will say ‘Lame’, ‘more exploitation’, and ‘more of the same’. I say when a game is this perfect you would want to have it as you move on. I have played the game on Xbox360, PS3, Xbox One, PS4, and PS5. The game is so large and so near perfect I would want to keep it and there is an upside. The PS5 is free as download if you have the PS4 version. There was alas no physical version. We can state it is lame, it is less, but this is a game that millions have enjoyed for 10 years. So yes, parts are a set A$80, yet the game gives you a lot more, the free edition gives you less new stuff, but I have seen my share of free parts already, after 4 days I see that the game is renewed, it has more and it feels great getting these achievements again. In 10 years the game never disappointed. The price of lame is perhaps a lack of innovation, the opposite is that the players want this game, not another game, it is a tough balancing line and so far Bethesda has done OK, apart from selling their soul to Microsoft (for $8,500,000,000).

The price of tame
Weirdly enough it is Google who gets that part. On the one side they have shown great innovation, they have shown massive strides in many areas, from searching to advertisements, they were there, they were first and they keep on rocking, on the other side their console (Google Stadia) is tame, they are not developing software, they are relying on Ubisoft to push that crate (and it will cost them). The other side is that two innovations will pass them by, the innovation I worked out (and are now meant for Amazon Luna) could bring Amazon an additional 50,000,000 consoles to the market. I know, even with shortages it will be a stretch, but that is the setting of tame, you can be non-aspiring, to be non-exciting yet that too comes at a price and in this setting Amazon would be in second place (temporarily overtaking Nintendo). On the upside, it makes Microsoft the wooden spoon contender, with the most powerful console in the world they end up in 4th position and I like that. Microsoft needed to be taught a lesson and I intend to bring it (If Amazon accepts). And that is not a high number, it is massively conservative, because this has never been done before so I have no data to rely on, the numbers could end up being decently higher. And that is merely the first wave, the second wave relies on another player, so I cannot say at present, but that could end up pushing the Luna even more, but I have no idea how much more. What is a certainty that gaming will alter and in the first stage many players ant a piece of that, not all, but plenty.

The price of game
It is not easy to look at people as game, but these anti-vaxxers are taking their toll. We can be as social as we like to be, we are unable to properly set up taxation, but we will tax the health system to the max. We see people dying of heart conditions in ambulances, because the ICU’s are filled with anti-vaxxers who now have covid and they are crying like little children. I say that unvaccinated people are not eligible for ICU unless they pay upfront, the reckless endangerment of life is not a cause for healthcare, it needs to become private care. The umbers are staggering. Of all the hospital admissions 80%-90% is unvaccinated. This evidence is ignored too much by too many. There is a slight difference per nation, yet that is understandable. We can treat these people like kids, but then they claim they have rights. OK, you do and with that you get the right to pay for it yourself. 

We see three examples where we price choice, price is not always monetary, but often it is, yet the opposite of that coin is often not monetary. It tends to be quality, quantity or quest like. There is no clear formula either, it is not a neat package, yet there tends to be some red line forming in the sand. The underlying part is that some accept the cost of doing business, others are in denial and they want it all, and guess what. You cannot have it all, there is no way. It is like the old equation of a house. Price, Quality and speed. You can only select two of the three, the third will go in another direction. A sales division will state that you can have all three and then they task their marketing department to set the premise of the third to expectations. Yet that is a figment in their imaginations, and when the data comes forward we get some ‘miss communication’ excuse. 

All neatly wrapped up, yet when we dig we get to see the price more clearly and we often see a party in denial, but what happens when it is YOU who pays that price? What happens when YOU need to make a choice, can you? Choosing is often hard, especially when the price is clear. But what do you do when it is not? It happens and not always intentionally, how can you decide the price then? 

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November 11, 2021 · 10:08

The hesitant choice

It is a stage we try to deny, but it is there, we all face it at some point. You see, there is (especially in business) a danger to go ‘gung ho’. There is benefit in awaiting the right moment. Yet what to do when that is in a vacuum? This happens. There is an option to make a decent amount of coins, but it relies on others making a move, or not to make one. But no matter how you slice it, you are in a vacuum until that happens. 

You see, what I predicted is close to coming to pass. The console wars will be settled and the outcome will be  

  1. Sony
  2. Nintendo
  3. Amazon
  4. Microsoft
  5. Google

Google ended last because it is not creating games, it is relying on Ubisoft and indie developers to get there. Microsoft screwed the pooch a little too often and with my help I will gladly push the suckers to 4th, I preferred them at 5th but Google made that impossible. Third is Amazon and that is because the solution I see will fit the Amazon Luna, more importantly in the setting at present they might get to 2nd, but only temporary and with conservative numbers Nintendo will catch up again. Sony will not be surpassed and what they have going for them will keep them in charge there. I do find it funny that the most powerful console in the world (as Microsoft seems to remind us) will be a system at a mere 4th position. The weakest console defeated them and the Luna has the option to do the same.

All because stupid people will not learn. The greed driven will be all about pushing Azure whilst they cannot play the blues. A sad setting that gets Microsoft exactly what they deserve (answer: zip, zilch, nada).

So why is this a hesitant choice? Well in the first I still have time and I do hope to get my share of well over $400,000,000. Would you not do the same? Only when I see that the battle is over, I will make it public domain allowing indie developers make a bitch out of Microsoft. 

What surprises me is that the makers still do not see what is out in the open. It is not rocket science, the clever people should see what I noticed well over a month ago, it was then that I decided to crunch a few ideas and what I see represents well over 50,000,000 consoles. Am I delusional? I will let you figure that out when I set the bar and the visibility of the solution to all. I will of course use the same method to 4chan and a few other open places. You see, the longer Microsoft and Ubisoft are unaware, the better the chances for the indie developers. In a rat race these two will win and I feel a little better if they lose, I am wired that way.

What if others figure out what I saw? That’s OK. If they did it by themselves they earned what is coming for them and I still believe in my 5G solutions to give me the pennies (read: bag of gold) I deserve and there is only so much a person needs. I see greed as an underestimated delimiting factor on creativity, and I do not like delimiters, except in data files. They are essential there.

So whilst you are enjoying coffee, oh no, that would be me and coffee is almost ready. Enjoy the day!

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