Tag Archives: Apple

March 17, 2021 · 06:59

Somniare atque in posterum

It was a weird dream, even as nothing really weird seem to happen, the dream was weird. It was my first day at Sony, I was given a cubicle. A man spoke to me ‘We liked how you responded to your previous boss’, even as I have no idea who or what response they were talking about. There was a start package on what seemed to be my desk. There was a new watch in 4 parts. It seemed an almost identical fit to the Apple watch, but it was something we had to put together. There was the housing, the band, the battery and the electronics. It was an employee watch. The electronics were specific Sony, the rest generic. The watch kept us informed, seems to keep the company informed of our every action and it was the lifeline of the employee. A future I predicted in 2013, but not to this degree. Patents fuelled to generalisation, to set parts into a stage of some sort of jigsaw combining and partial usage made no difference, the patents caught it all. From mass produced straps (mine seemed like a transparent cheap looking plastic, but tough and resilient. The housing was a generic product, like it was made to fit a million users and the electronics were specific, it gave the Sony display, time, messages, internal (departmental) information. It is a future we are heading for, instant access and companies having instant access to us, it is not a Sony thing, it will be a global corporate thing. The question is not how it will happen, because it will, when it will happen is also not the question, the issue will son become, how complete will this digital transformation be? The introduction will be clear, the stage will be set, but I wonder how it reflects on us. I see generic housing’s to become almost a fashion statement, some will be smooth metallic, some will be titanium, some will be silver, or even gold but they will all house the generic watch given to us on day one. The corporate mobile tether that can reach us from 4G and beyond. 

A stage where managers can be contacted at home, a zoom conference from their Sony Bravia, all as the need of their global bosses require. A sort of time management per cycle, every cycle. 

I didn’t see much beyond that, but the setting threw me, not what was shown to me, but how casual I looked at the watch, like it was in use everywhere, a technology in a stage where it is the one corporate-employee link that all larger corporations rely on. A new stage of technology that we all accept, those who do not will not remain in any workforce for long. A set service that most corporations will rely on, the larger have their own solution, the others use a cloud based SAAS setting and in this day, with cloud transgressions set to 90%, the larger stage is not where we work, but how secure we can work. In all this, some technologies, the law and politics are running behind all the matter that is being hurdled against us. So whilst we are shown on how ‘New German IT law raises hurdles for Huawei’ to set the hurdle for one, but not the other we see “A key question with any cloud computing service is: “where is the data stored or processed?” It is a key question because location is not fixed in the cloud. Unlike a fixed server in your office or at a data centre in Australia, data in the cloud could potentially be located anywhere in the World and even in multiple data centres in multiple copies worldwide. In fact, a cloud service provider may not even know where the data is residing”, with a reference to “Some exceptions to this rule are provided, for instance, when the controller itself can guarantee that the recipient will comply with the data protection rules” and that is a larger stage where we see personal data in clouds where organised crime uses a system like their personal highway to information and the law doesn’t have a clue what to do to protect people, although they had time to figure out how to stop Huawei. Thi stage is about to explode in all our faces. Whilst we see marketing give the clarion call to ‘AI’, a stage that at present does not exist. The marketeers are feeding the legal minds in a stage that is disjointed. As I personally see it, the law is steered by the greed driven to stop some and clear their way to more profit, all whilst the changes will impact billions and no one is looking into the flaw that we ourselves create.And it is happening in a stage where Times Daily reports ‘Nokia to cut up to 10,000 jobs to ramp up R&D in 5G race’, an article (at https://www.timesdaily.com/business/nokia-to-cut-up-to-10-000-jobs-to-ramp-up-r-d-in-5g/article_5c02981a-a87e-5a02-8bcd-3efac378852f.html) that gives a larger premise. If you have to fire 10% of staff (10.000 jobs) to ramp up Research and development in 5G, how far behind are you?

All this, whilst Huawei is already far beyond that point, how desperate have people become? You need not accept my words, but the numbers by Statista shows that Saudi Arabia (one player that embraced the Huawei solution) is at present over 700% faster than the US, it is the number one 5G place to be, so how far behind will we all be in 2022? If the watches are seemingly the place to be, how many developers will divert to a place like Saudi Arabia to make that part a reality much quicker, all that whilst the EU and the US are nowhere near ready, so how long until others realise the bag of goods we are offered by those not able to deliver, will we hold THEM to account any day soon?

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March 11, 2021 · 19:10

In your face space

It happens, something is staring me right in the face and I lay it beside me. It happens, it happens to us all. This trip started in 1992 (I believe), at a consumer electronic show in Amsterdam (RAI) we got to see the first Mini Disc, the first thought I had that it would be a great digital system for computers, it was roughly 4% of a Bernoulli disk whilst being able to store 600% of what a Bernoulli could store. The idea was rejected by Sony, too incompatible they claimed, nowadays we know more, it would have been a great option, it would have pushed players like Apple to the limit 5 years ahead of the curve. Yesterday I was confronted with that thought as my DVD was acting up (the disc, not the player). Now consider the new players, the new way to watch TV. All whilst the telecom companies want you to use more and more bandwidth, the more they can harvest, the more dependent you get to become.

What if we take that away? Consider this Compact Flash, one card, not 26 discs, merely one card and it is not even the start, in a time and place where collections are complete book cases and we can replace it in almost all cases with one card per TV series. The fans have a perfect copy per card and there is still the option to upgrade over time, in the age where 4K will define new boundaries, the retail side also needs to adhere, a setting where we can drive innovation, not merely follow it. Battlestar Galactica, Smallville, Babylon 5, Teen Wolf, Games of Thrones, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit, Dexter, Midsomer Murders, the Star Wars saga and so on, one card per setting and the technology is already here to set the stage to a much larger degree to meet the customer beyond halfway, a customer that can watch their series in perfection, one card that can last a lifetime. I reckon that players will have larger settings, they have the space, open up any blue-ray or 4K player, most of it is space and adding a CF, or SD card reader (optionally both) is the easiest thing to do. Not walking back and forth to the player getting the next disc, merely one card and all seasons are there. Yes, newer series will likely go per season, but at present there are hundreds of series all well above a dozen discs, and the fans have needs, they want that card on their mobile, on the road and the card can take a lot more than any disc could, so what stopped a player like Sony? Another ‘too incompatible’ mention, or the fear of piracy? Piracy is already there, the disc allows for newer protection and even in store upgrades. Go to any store where you buy movies or TV-series, now consider a box (like GoT) and that box will be able to contain a dozen of your favourite series, now consider the space it is taking up and consider that one card could have all seasons and you keep it in your placer at all time, to be able to play it at your hearts content. So why is that solution not here now? Consider all the telecom players trying to be clever with their 5G, all whilst it is just not ready and do you really want your bandwidth to depend on your 5G router? Consider that IT Pro gave us a week ago “as they promote Kubernetes as the secret ingredient for closing the gap between 5G’s promises and 5G problems. Kubernetes does indeed have some potential to make 5G actually work well. That said, it’s not necessarily the holy grail of edge computing and telco networking that it is sometimes made out to be” (at https://www.itprotoday.com/hybrid-cloud/can-kubernetes-solve-5g-problems-partly-not-soon), there we are told “They make promises like “5G networks will one day offer peak data rates of up to 10 Gbps” and “5G’s hyper-fast speeds will revolutionise the way we live.” If you read statements like those carefully, you’ll notice that they’re predicated on theoretical future developments, not what 5G is actually delivering to the typical user today. That’s because, to date, 5G network implementations haven’t been all that impressive. They turn out to be slower than 4G in many cases, not to mention less reliable. 5G, in other words, has become “a bad joke.”” A setting I have been mentioning for close to two years and the joke gets to be worse, at present Saudi Arabia has a 5G network that is well over 700% faster than anything the US can offer, their BS marketing drive is that bad and it will get worse, as such do we want to rely on congestion, or do we want an option where we can watch what we love unhindered, optionally in a better setting than now? So whilst we take notice of “it won’t address all 5G problems, and it will take a long time–several years, most likely–before Kubernetes is a full-fledged 5G solution”, which I predicted a few times in the last two years, I made no mention of Kubernetes, I merely observed the greed driven stupidity of some and watch these ships wreck left right and center. So whilst American politicians are blaming China for their own lack of innovation, I created the setting of a 7th device that can push innovation and change. And when we consider that innovation drives creativity, I wonder what someone else can come up with tomorrow, I already set the design of a new device for IOS and Android, that is how I roll. All whilst Microsoft is pushing Forza on your mobile, I came up with two new pieces of hardware, yup, I feel decently good, especially as we see Microsoft falter again and again and now it get to pull the wool over the eyes of Apple and Sony too (life can be satisfying). Did I figure out everything? No, I did not, but if I had done so I would make life for 1,000 researchers at Microsoft impossible and that is not fair either, oh wait, I really do not care about that, sorry!

All this in a day, so what is stoping these moguls of achieving true innovation? #JustAsking

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March 8, 2021 · 12:00

The wide net

We all have the idea to go phishing, we want trout, we want salmon and we use the biggest net possible to get at least one. So when AP gave us ‘Casting a wide intrusion net: Dozens burned with single hack’ (at https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-politics-europe-eastern-europe-new-zealand-f318ba1ffc971eb17371456b015206a5), not only was I not surprised, I had been warning people about this for a few years, that setting is apparently upon us now (or at least some are admitting it now). There we see “Nimble, highly skilled criminal hackers believed to operate out of Eastern Europe hacked dozens of companies and government agencies on at least four continents by breaking into a single product they all used” this does not surprise me, this happened in the late 80’s as well when someone used Aston Tate’s DB3 to introduce a virus, it is simple find something they all use and hamper its function, a basic strategy that an Italian (Julius Caesar) introduced 2000 years ago, there he hampered the roads and not servers but you get the idea, the classics still work.

When we are given “The Accellion casualties have kept piling up, meanwhile, with many being extorted by the Russian-speaking Clop cybercriminal gang, which threat researchers believe may have bought pilfered data from the hackers. Their threat: Pay up or we leak your sensitive data online, be it proprietary documents from Canadian aircraft maker Bombardier or lawyer-client communications from Jones Day.” It might seem rash but the people relied on others to keep their data safe and whilst we see more and more that they cannot contain the bacon the clients are suffering, this is not a simple station and we get it, but package solutions tend to come with flaws and that has been a truth for 20 years, so why are you all crying now? It is the final part that has more bearing “Members of Congress are already dismayed by the supply-chain hack of the Texas network management software company SolarWinds that allowed suspected Russian state-backed hackers to tiptoe unnoticed — apparently intent solely on intelligence-gathering — for more than half a year through the networks of at least nine government agencies and more than 100 companies and think tanks. Only in December was the SolarWinds hacking campaign discovered by the cybersecurity firm FireEye. France suffered a similar hack, blamed by its cybersecurity agency on Russian military operatives, that also gamed the supply chain. They slipped malware into an update of network management software from a firm called Centreon, letting them quietly root around victim networks from 2017 to 2020.” This is important because of what happened in the last two years, remember how ‘stupid’ American people started to blame Huawei for all the bad whilst offering absolutely no supporting evidence? Huawei does not need to bother to aid whichever government there was, silly software developers are doing that for them, we see an abundance of intrusion problems that include SolarWinds, Accellion and Cisco. A stage where thousands of systems are at risk, but no, the ‘silly’ people kept on blaming Huawei. Even I knew better and as Sony gave me the idea for an intrusion method called ‘Plus One’ (a viable way to drive the Pentagon nuts) with an alternative direction that I call ‘Vee One’, but that one has a few hiccups I reckon. Then I got creative and saw a new parameter in play. One that is based on a little part I read in a Cisco manual, the text “When You Add A Hard Disk To A Virtual Machine(VM), you can create a new virtual disk, add an existing virtual disk, or add a mapped Storage Area Network (SAN) Logical UnitNumber (LUN). In most cases, you can accept the default device node. For a hard-disk, a non default device node is useful to control the boot order or have different Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) controller types. For example, you might want to boot from an LSI Logic controller and use a Bus-logic Controller With bus sharing turned onto share a data disk with another VM.” You see that small text indicates that there is a nice workaround in Cisco CMX and it opens up a lot more than they bargained for, that in conjunction with the share issues thy were already facing gives out a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘Copy me I want to travel’, n’est pas? (for the French victims)

It is a much larger stage, most laws aren’t ready for this, prosecuting the guilty parties is close to impossible and any quick fix they make will only make things harder, the setting was and has for always been the makers of software, time constraints and lack of deep testing makes for a lousy solution and in most cases these players have a pushy marketing department (example: Ubisoft), and yes ‘You be soft!’ because the small tidbit that AP gives us with “Attackers are finding it harder and harder to gain access via traditional methods, as vendors like Microsoft and Apple have hardened the security of the operating systems considerably over the last years” yet it is a small stage and not a correct one. Weaknesses in Azure, issues with advertising in apps and a larger stage of programming, we see it clearest in .NET, but it goes way beyond that, for example “The problem of memory leaks is not uncommon in any technology. Simply put, the framework doesn’t release the memory that it no longer needs. .NET is frequently criticised for memory leaks and memory-related issues. Although .NET has a garbage collector for this sort of problem, engineers still have to invest additional efforts into proper resource management. And the leaks keep on growing as the application scales.” (source: Altexsoft) and it shows the smallest part, if there is a leak in one place, there will be in other places too and the leaks are not the real problem, getting it to semi-crash and taking over its right on a network are a quick way into any system, I saw the example with an accounting program (censored name), I got the program to crash (took about 20 seconds) and I ended up with the administrator rights to the entire mainframe from ANY location running that software. I get it, there will always be a bug in any place and the makers were quick to fix it, but for a few weeks there was an entrance point that took minimum efforts and that setting is only increasing with routers and cloud systems, these companies rely on marketeers that are ready to push for the investors sake and leave the client swimming in a swamp, I have seen it more than once and it will happen again, and this setting has been going on since 1989 and over the next 3-4 years it will grow to 150%, the push to billions and to quickly get to billions will be overwhelming for too many players all whilst the law will not be able to protect the victims, they will merely point at torts law, even though that you are the victim, most contracts are offered as an ‘as is’ solution and for the most software makers can avoid prosecution for the longest time, long enough for the hackers to get away with your data and sell it, what a lovely system you bought. Oh and before I forget, organised crime is way ahead of me, so for some it will already be too late.

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March 7, 2021 · 02:00

Science in art, deception through science

Just as I got past the first female night-horse (read: nightmare) I got into another one. I am not sure why, but for some reason it matters, in this there is a CIA wet work operative played by Graham McTavish, there is a spotter with him, he minds the listening system. They are watching a man seemingly talking to himself, but it is too much of a one sided conversation, the sniper (McTavish) changes the scope to thermal, now he sees a shimmer, one he had seen before, it was digital cloaking. He signals the spotter, who starts changing the dials on a small box and after several seconds he nods, he listens. He says ‘the other person is whispering Greek’, and he listens, they are looking at an almost surreal setting, it is almost 30 seconds until the spotter states ‘I cannot be here’ McTavish looks around, the man is absolutely pale with fear “I cannot be here” he states again, puts his sidearms in his mouth and pulls the trigger. The sniper gets out fast, they were both using suppressors, as such there was too little sound to set the alarm off. He grabs all the gear and he gets out as quickly a possible, all whilst sending the alert signal.

The scene was weird, I do not remember seeing it on TV or in the movies, but it got me thinking on communication, and soon thereafter encryption, do not ask why, I have no idea, but the slithers of one, connected to the idea of another. To show this here is an image

As you can see, it is in foundation a sudoku setting, an 81 figure number (nine times nine), yet the stage is to some degree predictable, every number used once, per square and no number the same in a row or column, even as there are only nine combinations, there is a larger stage for encryption systems to work on, but what if we look at killer sudoku?

As you see in the image, the stage becomes a little different, we get a combination of puzzles and it is that combination that could give reality to a new encryption method. A stage where the sudoku itself is merely part of the puzzle, it is the other part that gets us the encryption. Is it a 2H box, a 2V box and so on, but in that stage it becomes a lot harder to figure out the numbers. The shapes can be anything, a letter, numbers, any combination. The numbers are numbers but there are ways to encrypting that too, and as every level is larger the computer undoing the cypher will take more and more time, all whilst there is an optional setting to reset that setting, a solution in apps that makes any high end encrypted system a much larger option for diplomatic staff to keep encrypted data with them, without them knowing what they are carrying, or anyone for that matter. If they are not part of it, they are merely the vessel that the channel carries.

Or in humorous terms (an ode to Danny Kaye) “The pellet with the poison’s in the vessel with the pestle; the chalice from the palace has the brew that is true!”, as such the issue is not the servant, that person has no idea what they are carrying, a new stage where 2-3 apps set a larger stage and with the security out of the way (thanks to Microsoft and Epic) anyone can be a courier. Yes, when you (optionally) saw ‘Microsoft sides with Epic in its fight with Apple, promises a more open MS Store’ with the text “Microsoft filed a declaration in support of Epic’s request for an injunction against Apple’s plan to remove its access to iOS development tools. The company said in the filing that the Unreal Engine is “critical technology for numerous game creators,” and that taking away Epic’s ability to support it on iOS and MacOS devices “will harm game creators and gamers.”” Most people do not see the larger picture, all this was merely a way for Epic to shun its duties, duties that allow smaller players to avoid larger costs, yet once greed sets in there is a larger stage and they paved the way for organised crime to take much larger steps for people to be tempted to quick cash only to learn at a much larger stage that they became mules. It is that stage that also allows for a new encryption systems, with people having 1-2 apps, that the person with the third app will be able to capture what they need, sometimes it will be with the persons consent, but not always, and that is where we are at. The rich taking what they want and not wanting to be held responsible, no matter what damage they are at the head of, what a world we live in, it seems that my nightmares are a much more pleasant place to be soon enough.

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February 25, 2021 · 11:45

A repetition of events

This is speculative, this is my view on the matter and it might be very very wrong, yet I see events take place and I have seen it all before, this is not a first. It has happened and it will happen again yet to be true I never expected Apple to be part of that equation. No matter how we consider the stage, no matter how we thing it will be alright. As I personally see it, it will not.

My insight started well over 30 years ago with a Dutch Company called ‘Infotheek’, an IT company when IT was a mere myth, it was rising and in that air it started to believe its own marketing. I saw some service person air anecdote after anecdote but never really managing anything, merely pushing the expectations of its boss unto the staff member on his watch and anyone not meeting presented and assumed expectations, that person was done away. They started buying companies and keeping the few stars that a company had and the rest, you guessed it, over time they were done away. It was slow enough not to raise flags, but the centre core was that they were purchasing revenue. I saw a pretty amazing sales star walking away from that. Even if I never realised it at the time, his name was Oscar, he had a sales routine and a calculator and he was doing tricks with the calculator and he was good, he really was. I never understood him, all I saw was some slick suited person with expensive sunglasses, but I was in services and happy to be there giving technical support. It was the golden age of Tulip Computers and I was aiding those users. Yet I saw Infotheek buying company after company, I saw people go faster and faster and it was my first view on ‘buying revenue’ but there were more later, when it became more common ground. These thoughts went through my mind as I took notice of ‘Apple buys a company every three to four weeks’ (source: BBC). The stage is similar, the problem is what path are they taking? Are they buying revenue “Apple recently delivered its largest quarter by revenue of all time, bringing in $111.4bn (£78.7bn) in the first-quarter of its fiscal year 2021”? Or perhaps it is a stage here they are accumulating cost to lower tax brackets? Are they merely looking for a cheap way to get the real jewels in a company, get the revenue and do away the rest? In this we need to consider the number one part, they are not doing anything illegal, yet the stage remains that the bought companies have a population of X, when within 2 years the population goes to X-45%, and when you see that this involves 100 companies, how many people will become unemployed? Even if we see “Most often, Apple buys smaller technology firms and then incorporates their innovations into its own products” we see a half truth, it is not the whole story. Yes, we accept that sometimes it is straight revenue like “Apple’s largest acquisition in the last decade was its $3bn purchase of Beats Electronics, the headphone maker founded by rapper and producer Dr Dre” and there is nothing wrong with that, but there is a larger risk that some people lose the foresight (or is that hindsight) that the Apple egg becomes like an actual egg, a hard outer exterior, but behind that it is space, empty space, not all of it is the joke (sorry read yoke) of the matter. A larger stage and in this case not some presented larger Dutch IT firm, but an actual behemoth that I set somewhere between $1,000,000,000 and $1,500,000,000 when that comes crashing down what will the impact be? And any firm that I in the stage of buying revenue is always heading for disaster and when it becomes someone buying another firm almost every month for 6 years that crash is close to a given.

You see, on paper it all looks nice, but incorporating new companies, re-schooling staff, educating staff on a new set of ideologies is a much larger task and the stage is alway in motion, the stage of confirming and checking whether the new people are on track of becoming images of the old people is a setting that takes time and when you buy a company every month the pyramid becomes unstable a lot faster than anyone realises and when that happens, good luck with finding support and services to your Apple product. In this there is one given, the sales people tend to forget about the services required and when they learn that their sales pipeline is stuffed because they forgot to give trust the larger stage of corporate valour it all goes pear shape rather fast.

In this I am speculating on the past, perhaps Apple will be fine. Perhaps I am all wrong and my experience does not count. So basically I could be wrong, however GeekWire gives us ‘Chromebooks outsold Macs worldwide in 2020, cutting into Windows market share’ (at https://www.geekwire.com/2021/chromebooks-outsold-macs-worldwide-2020-cutting-windows-market-share/) a week ago. This does not mean that I am suddenly right. A 6 year tactic is not the stage that is seen in one article over one year that is optionally the weirdest year of the century. 

One does not imply the other but we need to take notice of both, especially in a stage where the 5G future is more and more likely to be a cloud based one and we cannot deny that the Chromebook is a pure cloud based solution. It is up to us all but when we consider that we need to realise that we too are wage slaves and service slaves and whatever hinders or threatens us will threaten all, a small truth that goes back to the age of Gaius Julius Caesar and for those who remember his name from the history books as a politician and a ruler, he was a general first, so he knows a few things, come to think of it, he set in motion some of the tactics that are till used 2 millennia later, all set before he became Dictator Perpetuo, think of that before we dismiss all of the facts and in this there are more facts, some are hidden in the story, it will be your puzzle of the day. In this I give you one small clue ‘Is Iteration in similarity the same as iteration and does that warrant consideration of the title iteration?’

Have a great day!

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February 5, 2021 · 02:25

Am I the hypocrite?

It is a fair question and it has been asked before. You see, I hate hypocrisy to the largest extent. And thanks to the Australian Arms Control Coalition (AACC) there is now a larger chance that I will be able to sell the Chinese Chengdu J-20 to Saudi Arabia. The planes are around $100 million each and I will try to start with 6 planes, with a service setting and training that will add up to almost a billion, as such 3.75% of $1,000,000,000 is still 37,500,000, with the option of two more sales tracks it adds up to serious money. To be honest, I would have preferred to sell the BAE Typhoon, yet the idiots t the CAAT made an end to that and as I want my commission, I will sell Chinese goods if I so please, so not only did the CAAT and the AACC not achieve anything, they dislodged their governments for a billion in taxable goods, as such things will go from bd to worse rather quickly. And as the ACCC is so about “Instead of exporting arms and military equipment to Saudi Arabia and the UAE for use in Yemen, Australia, the US, and other nations should be pressing these governments to end their unlawful attacks in Yemen and hold those responsible to account” (at https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/02/04/australia-freeze-arms-sales-saudi-arabia-uae), we see the stupidity of Elaine Pearson, Australia director at Human Rights Watch in action. You see they have absolutely nothing to stop the Iranian/Houthi side of things, and they started this mess. So the entire she said/she said mess that both the CAAT and the AACC are revolving around, the stage where we see is thwarted and made useless because they are focussing on one side and no one has the balls (especially Elaine Pearson) to do something about the Iranian side of things and it will get hampered more as the EU does not want any anti-Iranian intervention, they are still in that delusional stage where they think that they can offer some kind of nuclear pact that no one will heed, especially the Iranians. 

And in a one sided setting, I still whole heartedly agree that Saudi Arabia has a right to defend itself, in this the attacks by Houthi forces on Saudi civilian targets should enable Saudi forces to strike back, and if you do not know about the attacks on Saudi targets, it will be because the bulk of the western media remained silent on it, probably a stakeholder issue.

And as I have to eat at some point, I see no issue selling the Saudi Airforce the Chinese Chengdu J-20. In the first we are not at war with China, in the second it will be delivered to an established government, I feel that I am in the clear. 

So when I see “especially those who have committed grave violations against children”, I wonder just how Archie Law can continue with a brain that much lacking in insight, breathing should be the challenge he is facing. Houthi forces in Yemen have been systematically depriving food from Yemeni children. This has been known for well over 6 months, headlines like ‘Houthi militias attack humanitarian organisations, block aid to Yemenis’ are not new or unique. A one sided stage against the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it is time that those shortsighted voices are given a new level of opposition, as such I see no reason not to aid Saudi Arabia in acquiring the weapons they need to keep their nation safe. I reckon China will not object, especially if the end result is that they churn close to 9 billion from the EU, UK and US. I hope to get up to $2,000,000,000 in sales which will get me a nice retirement funds, but I am happy with just the one shipment (two is always better) and it gives me a larger stage to show just how shortsighted these people are. 

I know, I am slightly too angry, but that happens, we all have our short stages,, and mine is the hypocrisy of others. Just like that they are all about the actions against certain Chinese groups, yet the setting that Apple is accused of using slave labour is quickly silenced, I reckon that Apple and Nike are as advertisers too big for the newspapers to really take a look, it is my assumption that these two do not advertise on ABC, or am I wrong?

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January 25, 2021 · 23:18

Perspective

We all need it, you, me and all around us, it is essential to set a stage where we are able to set dimensionality of what we know, what we think we know and how it relates to everything around us. There are to benefits, the first is the ‘blinker’ effect. In the old days (and ever today) horses were given blinkers as to not get alarmed by what was happening around them, we too need blinkers. If we take in everything around us we might get anxiety. Now, we do not need actual blinkers, we day dream, we focus, we set the view to what we (at times) need to see. Some focus too much and get this tunnel view where the larger image would have been useful, but that is not always the case, it is at times arbitrary.

How about an example. There is talk of Google search leaving Australia, so here we see ‘A Google exit could open door for publisher deals with smaller players: ACCC’, a quote by Competition tsar Rod Sims, my somewhat less diplomatic view is “Is this Sims out of his fucking mind?”, you see the media has almost no credibility left, if you need an example of that, consider the news (by Dutch NOS) on December 25th (at https://nos.nl/artikel/2362024-leids-onderzoek-veel-gebruikte-sneltest-minder-betrouwbaar-dan-gedacht.html), I wrote about it in ‘The lull of writing’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/12/28/the-lull-of-writing/), in that time, which media format gave us any information? In light of todays news (at https://www.smh.com.au/world/oceania/what-we-know-about-the-new-zealand-northland-case-20210125-p56wre.html) a month after the Dutch situation we are given all kinds of filtered information, including a new South African version, with the added “but there’s no evidence to suggest an increase in disease severity or fatality rates”, and there we have it, no mention of ‘False Negatives’ at all, something that was out for a month from reliable sources mind you. In addition, we see the NewScientist giving us ‘Covid-19 news: UK variant may be 30 per cent more deadly’ (at https://www.newscientist.com/article/2237475-covid-19-news-uk-variant-may-be-30-per-cent-more-deadly) and here I accept that one source does not validate the second part, yet Sky News gives us that it ‘may be’ more deadly, which indicates that there is no proof, and other sources do not gives us anything, not even any form of opposition of the two elements, which could be valid, but the news is no longer about informing us, but giving us filtered information (which is their shareholders, stake holders and advertisers version of censorship), as such are we confronted by censorship or scenesoreship? I let you decide, yet the stage that the media gives us in opposition to Google, all whilst they have little to no credibility at present (well most of them anyway) leaves us out in the open wondering why we pay for that level of news anyway, are the shareholders and advertisers not paying them? So whilst Bloomberg gives us ‘Australia Says ‘Inevitable’ Google Will Have to Pay for News’ (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-24/australia-says-inevitable-google-others-have-to-pay-for-news) people like Australia’s Treasurer Josh Frydenberg better realise that they are now walking with a target on their backs, you see, they might hide behind “it’s “inevitable” that Google and other tech behemoths will have to eventually pay for using media content”, all whilst that pussy refused (read: was unable) to overhaul tax laws, tax laws that impact all (including Apple, Netflix and Amazon), and in that setting, we will hold HIM accountable for filtered content, all whilst these news players give us links on Twitter, Facebook and Google Search that leads to advertisements to pay for reading their news, these advertisements are in the news sections, so where do we get OUR money back? So whilst we see “Frydenberg said Australia could either be a “world leader” in pushing for the code or wait to follow others in passing similar legislation”, or Australia becomes option 3, namely irrelevant. A nation with 25 million people is not that relevant, especially when it is as isolated as Australia is. And in that light, when Google moves out, what will Australia do when it realises that there are cogs to digital advertisement and commerce falls down and down, rely on the yellow pages, or a yellow solution (Chinese e-advertisement options). The news dug its own hole, it catered to Murdoch frenzy who pushed towards glossy pages, which is nice in the UK where there are 25 different newspapers on every corner, that is not the setting in Australia, so when the Australian Epoch Times overtakes any of the Australian papers, I will be howling with laughter, these people dug their own graves, relying on entertainment TV (channel 7, channel 9) to give us the filtered information (read: Australian news) all whilst the people were never considered in the first place. 

Now, there will be peope out there that my perspective is wrong, and I am fine with that, so the best thing to do is to investigate, the news that BBC, Reuters and Al Jazeera gives all, whilst we take a look at local newspapers and see what information is missing, as well as from their online versions. I saw the start well before 2012, but in November 2012 the news agents filtered out what gamers needed to know, there we see the larger issue. Trivialising a setting with ‘there is a memo’ whilst the terms of service are a legal setting between consumer and industrial, the memo was not, any meeting could destroy the memo, it could not diminish any agreed terms of service and 30 million gamers were about to get hit, the filtered information bringers left that out, and they have been leaving things out for a decade, the ‘False Negative’ issue as reported  by Frits Rosendaal from the Leids Universitair Medisch Centrum (LUMC) gave us this a month ago, and it impacts a lot more people than 30 million people, so where was this news? If you do not read Dutch you might not know this and you all needed to know this, which is opposing the view of Shareholders, stake holders and advertisers. So why do we pay for filtered information?

It is a stage of perspective, I will let you decide whether a false negative in a corona viral issue could affect you, your mum or nana. Have a great day.

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January 13, 2021 · 15:46

The contemplation

We all have things to contemplate, for me this all started a while ago, but it got to the forefront yesterday after a call with a friend. We disagree on something and it is not about right or wrong, even if I believe I am right, I see that he in NOT wrong. My setting is data and I have been around it for decades, I have been in specific fields, he has not, but he has a real good grasp of data. So as I made a joke about not forgetting the population of zero for Parler, he dismissed it as zero data groups do not matter, and for a lot it does not, but it actually does.

So how to bring it to the forefront? In this (as a Republican) we can look at the stupid, stupid left and can coin a few phrases. There was the Washington Post ‘Parler, a Platform Favoured by Trump Fans, Struggles for Survival’, my by-line? ‘Rebekah Mercer just got a $23,000,000 tax deductibility option’. USA Today gives us ‘Parler goes dark: Amazon suspends the social platform from its web hosting services’, there is a lot more, but the setting is made, no more Parler and now we get to the zero part. You see, the one thing that President Trump achieved was a larger polarisation, the left thought that they had won, but players like Rebekah Mercer, one the people behind Cambridge Analytica and Parler have settings, they have larger plans. You think that she gives away $23 million without a larger gain somewhere else? It was the nightmare scenario, a unified place for right splinter groups and extremists. You think that people like John Matze will sit still? Uniting right wing splinter groups can be massively profitable, when no one will do business with you, losing 10% on the one who does business with you is still appealing, and splinter groups that cumulatively surpass the 50 million member marker is  still worth the effort.

How does this relate?
Even if Parler is at zero, its members will go somewhere else. There is Telegram, Signal and these people need attention and they will go where they can find it. Even now we see the Financial Times give us ‘WhatsApp fights back as users flee to Signal and Telegram’, and even as we see the quote “Facebook is scrambling to deal with a sudden competitive threat to its messaging platform WhatsApp after a change to its terms of service sparked privacy concerns and prompted users to turn to rivals such as Signal and Telegram in droves” (at https://www.ft.com/content/ee1b716d-4ed2-4b26-8da1-40c98db7b9b6), the stupid stupid left just doesn’t learn, presenting that a thing is doesn’t make it so, and the setting that the media cannot be trusted is out there in big letters. So when I say that Parler: n=0 is important. These people find other means and even as not all will go over, and not all will go to the same solution, if Parler had 100,000 voices, we need to find where at least 80,000 went, we need to tag and identify the extremists, I reckon the US Capitol setting made that clear. 

In this we could consider the work of Marina Soley-Bori ‘Dealing with missing data: Key assumptions and methods for applied analysis’, it was written in 2013, but it is quite good and we start with the premise “the precision of confidence intervals is harmed, statistical power weakens and the parameter estimates may be biased. Appropriately dealing with missing can be challenging as it requires a careful examination of the data to identify the type and pattern of missingness, and also a clear understanding of how the different imputation methods work”, it is a decent starting point. In this stage, the report gives us a group NMAR (Not missing at random) that is the stage we have and it is an important stage. In the report she quotes Allison, 2001 “They lead to an underestimation of standard errors and, thus, overestimation of test statistics. The main reason is that the imputed values are completely determined by a model applied to the observed data, in other words, they contain no error”, the NMAR group is largely ignored and we can accept that in this work, yet in real life, the QAnon group and the Parler users are a larger stage and those who do not flee to 4Chen are in the wind and that is where we do not want them to be, so pushing these people to the dark-web was a silly move. Perhaps some might notice that I bolded one word, one word made the difference. Bias is the setting in missing values that is the dangerous one, most who know what they do see that, they tend to call it ‘arbitrary decisions’ but it remains a form of (whether good or not), of bias and that is where the train goes of the rails (without it being a maglev). The stage to find the NMAR is becoming increasingly important. It is not merely those that move there, it is the group they drag along that becomes a lot larger. You see, they might only gain the interest of an additional 2%, on a stage of 50,000,000 extremists, that is one million votes, that much changes an election, the silly democrats making presentations should have considered that in a much earlier stage. Yes, we see that pornhub can no longer use credit cards, but as these so called hypocrites will still cater to child labor and implied slavery, how much was gained? Especially as one stage was founded on consenting adults, the other was not. We see one side of the story, and the left keeps on hiding the other side, that does not mean that the other side does not exist. The democrats have an ‘out-of-sight-out-of-mind’ approach, that is unless they get hit directly, then they become vindictive. That was never a stage that would ever work, but they will learn at some point. The problem is not their mindset, it is their inability to follow through and people like Rebekah Mercer have the goods to unify one side and get rich in the process. All whilst players like Google pull up their nose at a $25,000,000 bill for a 60% share, they say that they can solve it themselves (they wish), and when they rely on ‘EVERYONE LOVES GOOGLE TV’, all whilst the consumer, when the $65 bill is due and the people see their budget melt away, do you still believe that everyone stays happy and loving? So when I make my solution public domain, do you think that there will be zero cease and desist messages? 

In this the stage is rather large, the splintered right have moved somewhere else and now the larger stage cannot be predicted, when the Parler group goes dark-web, the stage changes even further and earlier some had days to prepare, now hours, how is that a better stage? 

There is no population zero, unless they are all dead they merely vacated somewhere else and that somewhere else is the problem. This population is not missing at random, they are shunning the media and as we are given ‘An Absurdly Basic Bug Let Anyone Grab All of Parler’s Data’ by Wired (at https://www.wired.com/story/parler-hack-data-public-posts-images-video/) a mere 11 hours ago, do you think that it will be that easy, a person like Rebekah Mercer learned from Cambridge Analytica, was at a bug or an open backdoor? So when we see “The truth was far simpler: Parler lacked the most basic security measures that would have prevented the automated scraping of the site’s data. It even ordered its posts by number in the site’s URLs, so that anyone could have easily, programmatically downloaded the site’s millions of posts”, anyone thinking that things where that simple are out of their mind, this is a setting where some had the lowdown on millions, and as Wired gives us “I wouldn’t even call it a rookie mistake because, as a professional, you would never write something like this”, they touch on the stage that matters, when someone has the lowdown on a group of millions of people and they can unite them, do you think that no one looked at something out there for 2 years? Do you think that this is merely seen 11 hours ago (plus a few weeks to write the article), this issue has been out for a while and now that these people go to other means and other voices (the same voices in other accounts), the problem becomes a lot larger and more real. The people of Parler did not stop being an issue as Parler has population zero, now the people who needed to keep informed need to go back to square one and find them first. So how silly was the move we see now?

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January 9, 2021 · 21:23

What is a weasel?

Well, a ‘weasel’ that imply deception and irresponsibility include: the noun form, referring to a sneaky, untrustworthy, or insincere person. Yet this is not complete, the words person and company are interchangeable. That is the feeling I see at present (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55597840), they label themselves with “It comes amid a Big Tech purge of the online platforms used by Mr Trump and his supporters”, and it comes now AFTER congress ratified the win of president elect Biden, AFTER the stage and settings that American endured for years. The BBC is fair enough to give us “Some lawmakers and celebrities have been calling for years on Twitter to ban Mr Trump altogether. Former First Lady Michelle Obama tweeted on Thursday that the Silicon Valley giants should stop enabling Mr Trump’s “monstrous behaviour” and permanently expel him” we are seeing the price of enabling and facilitation and the people are catching on, it is a bad day for Facebook and Twitter altogether. For years they facilitate and there will be a price down the lane, they will pay it because they see it as an essential price for doing business. Yet is that enough?

The BBC gives a quote that is out there is it is debatable with “as mere mortal, repeatedly spreading disinformation, fake news and inciting violence will get you thrown off mainstream social media platforms”, you see what constitutes ‘repeatedly spreading disinformation’ and when exactly does it become disinformation? It is a serious question because it optionally shows the initial inactions of big-tech, the message that President Trump gave on ‘landslide victory’ is one, his views and his statements on ‘black lives matter’ is another. To see this we need to take you back to July 2020, there we see “The US president tweeted on Wednesday about New York City’s decision to paint “Black Lives Matter” on Fifth Avenue, calling it “a symbol of hate””, what clear evidence is there to call ‘black lives matter’ a symbol of hate? All whilst the people behind it state clearly “builds power to bring justice, healing, and freedom to Black people across the globe”, we might agree, we might disagree, we might not care, but it clearly is not set as a symbol of hate, and that is merely one of many examples and big-tech did not act, only after the next guy is ratified  do we see “after close review of recent Tweets from the @realDonaldTrump account”, as such I ask you, what is a weasel?

Those who follow my blog know I am not anti big-tech, I am not against Google, Apple, Amazon or Facebook, but that does not mean I will not hold them to account when the time is there. And in this case, after close to 4 years of facilitating it is time to hold them to account. In this, I do have a sense of humour and state that I am against discrimination and Microsoft devices, so there! 

In this I wonder if these weasels will act on a global scale as ABC gives us ‘Victorian Liberal MP Bernie Finn posts Trump election conspiracy theories to Facebook’, we need to accept the freedom of expression, but I wonder how much freedom is in jeopardy when elected officials are spouting conspiracy theories, especially on elections that they seemingly have a lack of knowledge of. 

And locally ABC covered their ass by also giving us “The ABC is not suggesting Mr Finn supported the violence or rioting at the Capitol”, consider that when the power players in this world start to wield actions based on facilitation and return on that investment, in that premise consider personally how much facilitation would happen towards you personally and when you realise that you do not matter, what will facilitation cost you?

I wonder if you tallied that part of the equation yet, if not you have some work to do.

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January 8, 2021 · 04:03

Wanna be rich?

This is a setting that is not for me, I am not a programmer, I do know my limits. I had a need and on the iPad (first generation), I had a data vault, it worked perfectly, but not anymore, now that I have a 4th generation iPad Air, I found the funny side of Apple apps (it is an actual joke). When investigating the new apps, I found well over two dozen other ones, yet they are all copies of one another, all giving us pics of sexy ladies and the owner of the app (most likely a man), that person needs to keep the images of his neighbours daughter a secret. Most of them all having the same idea, none of them acting on business principles. 

You see, an actual data vault have 2 elements, the first is the iPad, that is the vault that needs to hold the data, the provider (any laptop) needs to synch and there the issue starts well over 50% relies on a camera roll, the rest on other means (all equally useless), then there are a few apps that require a monthly fee, none of them get it, all of them in the naughty picture mode, yet there is a whole range of consultants that need an actual vault.

As you see in the image, there is a USB stick (or network location) that the computer or laptop can access. That links to the iPad. Yet there is no good link and the links that are offered, so far none of them properly work. And there the foot becomes even more uncomfortable. You see, it is not merely images, the folder needs to contain JPG, PDF, MP3, MP4, MOV, XLS, DOC (optionally), es well as TXT files. Consultants come in many forms and directions, from accountants and actors through to X-ray Technologist, they all have projects that need to be kept ‘hidden’ only shown to a chosen few. It can be any sort of project, but the people (like me) do not trust anyone and there can be no copies out in the open, so we need a data vault, we need to load USB sticks (or network directories) and there is no trust in the cloud (not with well over 90% of cloud transgressions). 

And none of these data vaults seem to understand that, so there is not one app, there needs to be two apps, one on the computer, one on the iPad, the computer links to the iPad and that is the setting of an actual data vault, the app makers that act on cool are missing millions in revenue, I would happily pay the $10 for that and hundreds of thousands of consultants as well. Consider the tens of thousands of real estate agents who settle the deals for dozens of houses and apartments going well into the tens of millions of dollars. New York at any given time have well over 4,000 places and most of them are set to ‘Price on request’ and a few other restrictions, and those estate dealers are merely one in a very long line of consultants that have an actual data vault need. Customer and client details that they need to keep hidden, so that a stolen iPad leaves the thief with nothing. 

That is the app that is needed and no one figured that in Apple land, so who else is missing parts in all this? Oh, and I know that there are other tablets, but most of us all use iPad.

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