Tag Archives: Elon Musk

December 16, 2020 · 21:06

Dangerous conclusions

We all come to them, conclusions that are shaped in the mind, usually they are based on facts making them speculations, some are based on speculations making them pure delusions, some are in-between and that is the dangerous part, are they visionary, are they speculative delusions? The point is that the writer will see them as visionary, but the writer (even me) is not the best judge in this.

For the exercise I need to grasp back to a story I did recently. ‘Trillion dollar Musk’ was written on December 3rd (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/12/03/trillion-dollar-musk/), I there ‘accused’ Elon Musk that his value would skyrocket to $1.2 trillion collars. I also gave the readers “The UK (via the Guardian) inform us of “Britain’s electricity will be in short supply over the next few days after a string of unplanned power plant outages and unusually low wind speeds this week”, the UK has an increasing need for Scandinavian power and soon it cannot be met. I reckon that in the next 2-3 years that shortage will be close to systemic all over the EU”, the stage was set and I still believe that we are 2-3 years away, but are we? Bloomberg (at https://www.bloomberg.com/sponsors/jll/seven-ways-to-retrofit/index.html) gives us ‘7 Ways to Retrofit Buildings for Energy Efficiency’, it is a setting and it is sponsored by JLL, a real-estate and investment firm who gives us “We’re here to create rewarding opportunities and amazing spaces around the globe where people can achieve their ambitions. In doing so, we are building a better tomorrow for our clients, our people and our communities”, I believe that we are about to hit an energy snag, a little sooner than I anticipated. 

So as the JLL gives us 

  1. Upgrade you lighting
  2. Upgrade the HVAC
  3. Optimise Performance
  4. Implement a Waste Strategy
  5. Use Continuous Commissioning
  6. Organize “Treasure Hunts”
  7. Elevator Controls
  8. Added by me: Upgrade kitchens.

Now the Elon Musk battery shows the issues, even as we are now hearing more and more on the need for carbon neutral in commercial buildings, the private places are merely one step away.

Forbes reported in August “At first, the state’s electrical grid operator last night asked customers to voluntarily reduce electricity use. But after power reserves fell to dangerous levels it declared a “Stage 3 emergency” cutting off power to people across the state at 6:30 pm” and this is only the beginning. Elon is about to get a massive increase of value and his wealth might go up well beyond $1.2 trillion. 

It is not limited to California, although they are the most visible one, New York, the United Kingdom, and parts of Europe and Australia will see a drastic need for power sooner rather than later. At that point the rich we can ignore, they will get what they need, the middle income section, that is where the massive gains are made, a lot will add a growing carbon neutral stage with the adapted Tesla battery, the power grid adaptions for lights, Air conditioning, water heaters (boilers), fridges and freezers. There will be a massive option for growth there, the adaptation of AC equipment to DC equipment, a stage where some will buy new stuff and some will need adaption with new power units for both. I came up with a new sort of roof tile, made from recyclable plastics, and each tile will have solar cells, instead of putting panels on top (some will still do that), to tiles where people can grow their power creation stage, two tiles, the highest levels which connects to the second grid and the battery and other tiles that will connect to other tiles and a highest layer tile. The benefit of that is that people do not need to splurge on massive panels, with the battery they get tiles, but it is a basic level, as some need more power more quickly, more sets of tiles can be bought, giving the people months to grow their setting and reduce their carbon footprint. In addition, some will add wind-vanes. It is a stage that is as essential and as clear as traffic jams, we have been increasing power needs with an average of 5% per year. How long did you think that the energy companies could deliver? Consider your fridge, what you had 10 years ago and what you have now. Larger families needing more boiler water and the summers require more and more air conditioning units, all set to a lower temperature burning power away and California can no longer cope with the need. They are the first, but they are not alone. How many devices require a charger? In 1990 that was 1 perhaps 2, now it is 5-8 PER HOUSE, routers, Wifi modules, and the PC went from the ‘high end’ of 300 Watts to the average PC now needing 600-1100 Watts. In 1990 there were less than 700,000,000 globally that were into gaming, now that number is 2,000,000,000 higher (globally), two billion additional devices, the consoles do not use that much, but still 150 watts, times a billion is still a lot, they also need a TV running, now, the TV is actually a massively low energy user if it is a LED flatscreen. But the numbers are not looking good and that is before you realise that PC’s were something a company had in 1990, now, for the most, nearly every employee at every firm has one, there tend to be low energy versions, but they are still there and often they are on day and night. When you see this list and do the numbers, you need to see that energy firms needed to double their options in 2000, that never happened and now they need and alternative and Elon Musk has it, and owns the IP no less.

So is my version so much more visionary because Bloomberg had a sponsored JLL article? I don’t think so, but I believe that awareness is being created at higher levels and we need to catch on sooner rather than later, because the prices of electricity will go up again and again in the next 2 years. Consider your budget and consider your energy costs will go up by 10% in 2021, how much more budget will you not have?

That is the stage I foresaw some time ago, I will let you decide how right or how wrong I am.

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December 9, 2020 · 04:27

Markers of identity

There are several news articles out there. They are not related, not directly, not indirectly, but the underlying events are. The first one is (on the light side) ‘Tesla announces second $5bn share sale in three months’ (at https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2020/12/8/tesla-announces-second-5bn-share-sale-in-3-months), it is the given quote “Tesla’s shares touched a record high on Monday, pushing the electric-car maker’s market value above $600bn”, he has, as one might say, almost reached the midpoint of his directly achievable wealth. The second part is seen in ‘Christchurch massacre: Inquiry finds failures ahead of attack’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-55211468), there we see “correcting these failures would not have stopped the Australian national, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole earlier this year, from carrying out the attack, it said”, as well as “the patchwork of clues discovered by police after the massacre – including his steroid abuse, a hospital admission after he accidentally shot himself, and visits to far-right websites – would not have proved enough to predict the attack”. These issues are unrelated. It is about the markers, whether they are markers of wealth, markers of rage, markers of alleged insanity, the list goes on, but we are driven and pushed by markers, all whilst there is a larger stage where these markers matter not, not now, not ever. It is there that we need to look and we need to identify the pushed markers, the driven markers and we need to hold them out to the light and openly debate them. 

You see, prevention was actually possible (as far as I can tell), now I am not debating the 6 guns, I am a gun person myself and if I had the means and a safe place to put them, I might have them, yet no one is debating ‘more than 7,000 rounds of ammunition’, why is that? Even a gun lover like me, having more then 100 bullets per rifle is a bit of a stretch, so why would he have needed the other 5,400 bullets for and to be honest, I tend not to miss, as such, the 51 people who died, would imply 2 magazines optionally 3 and my one FN FAL (the gun I started my training with in 1981), that is 90 bullets, oh and in the military, if there is not an active war theatre, having more than one magazine is pretty much frowned on, actually it is openly questioned. As such I wonder who looked into this inquiry? Especially as he acquired ‘ammunition online’, I might buy ammunition online, yet I also accept that someone is keeping track of what I buy, and the fact that one person was able to buy more ammunition than the average base has in stock calls for all kinds of questions. The fact that more than 1 box is shipped to one address is also reason for questions. So when I see ‘The commission found no failures within any government agencies that would have allowed the terrorist planning and preparation to be detected’, I have to stop and laugh for a couple of minutes. If one man can do that, what can several lone wolves accomplish? So as I took a look at the report (at https://christchurchattack.royalcommission.nz/the-report/), I get to the setting here, the 4 documents (or basically one large one in 4 parts) is actually quite good, it is a decent piece of work and even as some state no fault was due, issues of improvement are there. I see the failing in the second PDF where I see “not for the purpose of keeping records of these purchases”, it reflect on the ammunition bought. They were seen and approved, and they were allowed. So how many documents were seen? To get this much ammunition, you would need to make purchases several times. The math is not looking good here. We see a Marker of enabling, but the marker of questioning is absent. I see this as a clear failure on some part, especially on the system, it might not have prevented the event, but it would have lessened the damage and lowered the fatality list. Volume 3 of the report gives us on page 476 “To assist staff in prioritising leads, the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service has produced a table that sets out various security indicators and the priority associated with them. For example, “Skills/Knowledge – Research into basic weapons, firearms and ammunition” is identified as a critical indicator of security relevance for assessing whether a person has the capability to carry out a terrorist act”, yet keeping records on ammunition bought (for example 7000+) is not. Who would be the larger danger, the man being able and operate a rifle with a 100 bullets, or one with 7000 bullets? I mean, most man hate their mother in law (some passionately do), but ever we think 7000 pieces of ammo is a bit much. Volume 2 gives more (42.21) “We do not know how much ammunition the individual purchased in total as most sellers do not keep records of the ammunition sold in store. We do know that on 24 March 2018, he spent $1,358.00 at Gun City Dunedin on 2,000 rounds of .223 calibre Remington 55Gr SP.” This is the smoking gun (sort of), in one purchase we see 2,000 rounds at $1,358. I would have chimes every bell possible at this point, especially if this was not a gun-shop or a federal enforcement agency. You still think there was no failure there? A marker of investigation was required and none was found, merely a commercial need to enable a person to buy, buy, buy. He was not buying two Tesla’s, he was buying ammunition. We se even more at (42.22), there we get “we are aware of 11 ammunition purchases made online between 5 December 2017 and 12 July 2018. The details of these purchases are provided in the table below. The individual completed the required New Zealand Police mail order form for these purchases” In December he bought enough to outmatch the entire New Zealand Army, and no questions were asked, failure? I personally believe that is the case. Yes, I cannot disagree with the finding that the event could not be stopped, yet I believe that the casualty list would be a lot lower if more effort had been made. As we look at the markers of identity and the markers of enabling, I feel that we all failed, not just a New Zealand administration. Someone delivered these packages, 1,000 rounds is heavy. When we see delivery from Lock, Stock and Smoking Barrel, Gun City, Aoraki Ammunition Company, Ammo Direct NZ, Ordnance Developments, and Arsenal Limited someone should have sounded the bells of worry, the alarms of wondering and in all this no one seemingly did. Well over $5,000 and no one was seemingly the wiser. He could have rearmed the larger extent of Al Qaeda (or the KKK) and it would only be known after the shooting took place. There was a failure, a larger one. 

Let me be frank, I love guns, I am not a gun nut, but I do not have to be, even I think that this much ammo is just insane. And it was at the top of the pile, there are other parts that I found which were not part of the inquiry, yet I feel that it is important to let these issues lie down for a while, I feel that certain people are looking into matters and me ringing that bell whilst they are near the door is a stupid, silly and all kinds of irresponsible, and I tend not to be any of the three (most of the time).

So why the mention of Tesla in the beginning? Commerce is strong all over, it is essential in too many places and the marker of commerce is too eagerly accepted, all whilst questions are not being asked in too many places. No one is debating that Elon Musk is a genius, optionally a visionary and he is on route being the first trillionaire, yet no one is wondering whether that should be questioned. Consider that any person being the owner of well over 1000 billion has more power than most governments, Elon Musk is about to become that person and s an achievement I wish him well, he did it by building something, as did Mark Zuckerberg, as did the late Steve Jobs (well he set the Apple horse in motion). Yet this stage is supported by a marker that is questionable and we need to see this, or failures like the Christchurch shooting will happen again and again. What if the next time it is not ammunition, what if it is something else? Part of this tragedy was enabled by commerce, I will happily sell the Saudi Government $8,500,000,000 in weapons, yet this is a government, not a person. There is a difference and we need to set the systems up to identify certain markers, if we do not do that the next event will happen and no one is at fault then either, but scores of people will be dead, how does that sound? 

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December 3, 2020 · 21:43

Trillion dollar Musk

I got some questions thrown at me in the last few days, they were pretty much all about me over valuing Elon Musk, but am I? I stated before that in the next 3-4 years his value will increase to roughly $1.2 trillion dollars, or in a less shorthand version $1,200,000,000,000, yes that is where he is heading and he already has most of the IP in his possession to do so. The second part I get is what do I get out of it. Nothing, well, like most I would like a 3.75% commission on the increase with a maximum of €5 B (a man is allowed to dream) and it would amount to less than one percent of his gain, I am not overly filled with confidence I will see a penny, but his increase is almost set in stone. 

Why set in stone?
The UK (via the Guardian) inform us of “Britain’s electricity will be in short supply over the next few days after a string of unplanned power plant outages and unusually low wind speeds this week”, the UK has an increasing need for Scandinavian power and soon it cannot be met. I reckon that in the next 2-3 years that shortage will be close to systemic all over the EU.

Why?
Consider most houses and apartments. Only a decade ago our power needs were not that high, now many houses have more than one gaming console. The fridges are 200%-400% in size, PC’s that had a 300 watt power supply now has a 600-1200 watt supply, if it was one apartment it was a small issue, but this is now covering millions of places all over Europe and millions op places in the US. I reckon that in 3 years the political screaming starts for Carbon Neutral houses and apartments, and Elon Musk has the battery. It is more than the battery, the larger need for an individual solar and wind power base will increase, you see in 2-3 years the power outages will start to really hit, so as infrastructure (like hospitals) will need protection, houses will see power cost go through the roof and political parties will all unite to vie for subsidies on a larger scale and Elon Musk has the larger base of goods. 

Yet he cannot do it alone, DC appliances, like lights is easy and not the larger bulk, yet the fridges, the freezers, the water boilers and heaters, they take up a much larger part and new houses will all be outfitted with carbon neutral settings, as the houses has either via new tiles based on recycled plastic, with the high end having solar cells in the tiles, we will see a growth setting where people have a cell foundation and a growing amount of tiles with solar cells, some will also have wind fans, all generating the house power, all captured in the Musk battery. It will grow slowly, the harder hit area’s first, but it will grow and at some point there will be a near exponential growth for a little while. Germany and France (rural parts) are the most likely area’s, the UK and Belgium. But it will grow into the US as well. Even as the US seems to hide behind “A report by the US Department of Energy site weather-related power outages as the leading cause of power outages in the United States. The report and the Pew research both also acknowledge an aging infrastructure as part of the problem. Some of the US power grid dates back to the earliest onset of electricity”, the actual problem is near systemic, power needs have grown well over 10% annually in the last 5-10 years. Computers, AC systems, larger fridges and the list goes on. TV’s less so, yet in many ig not most households, from 11 Mega Watt a month, we see that many houses are now on 1100-1800 Watt per hour for a larger part of the day, each day and that is starting to add up, as such when the Musk Battery becomes the stretch of time that nations need his value goes through the roof and in that the $1.2T might be a conservative cautious number at present. It is a lot depending on the larger power needs that the EU, UK and US are staging, but the growing need cannot be hidden, even as we see that the weather is ‘apparently’ the larger cause as some claim it, it is not the only cause and when the people see the musk solution as a larger stage for resolving brown out damage, the people will push for that solution as well. So when the GeGaLo Index can no longer supply to the needs the buyers want it, energy prices will quite literally go through the roof and the Musk battery is only one element but it is his IP and it is for too many a solution. 

That is what will soon set the beginning of Elon Musk becoming the first trillionaire, and optionally over time it will make him the first multi trillionaire. I reckon that bad boy Billy Gates never considered being passed to this degree (or would that be bing passed), but I reckon that he will not care. 

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November 30, 2020 · 23:48

A company for an apple & egg

This is the setting I find myself in today, I have been harsh on Ubisoft for several reasons and after Watchdogs: Legion, I thought they had learned their lesson, but no, they never learn and I reckoned 1-2 weeks ago in my blog that if Yves Guillemot would run off with 10 cents on the dollar he would be lucky, the negative setting of AC Valhalla is however adding up and up and up. Its reliance on questionable reviews, NDA’s until day 1 of the game and a misrepresented setting of ‘early release’ is adding fuel to the fire that I see Ubisoft degrade it value to a mere 250 million company, for a firm that used to be valued at 2,000,000,000 a mere two years ago, this is quite a leap and not a positive one, even as Elon Musk is set to twice that, all whilst his value will soon rocket to 1,200,000,000,000 soon enough, Ubisoft goes in the other direction, it goes from bad to worse if we connect ‘Ubisoft’s newest game in Japan censored’ (at https://www.mccourier.com/ubisofts-newest-game-in-japan-censored/) a week ago. There we see “Ubisoft responded, stating that removing blood stains was essential for the game to be validated by CERO (Computer Entertainment Rating Organization), which is responsible for classifying video games. However, CERO declines all responsibility for this choice and confirms that it has not been consulted by Ubisoft”, I am not judging here, but it seems that either CERO or Ubisoft is misdirecting the gamers and if it is Ubisoft, that is a really bad move, in light of squandered options, especially in light of ‘early release’ all whilst the bugs and glitches are adding up, Ubisoft missed its target by miles. Even as some claim that “Cloud saves have also been renamed to Manual Save Cloud to differentiate them from standard offline saves. A notification has been added as well for when cloud saves fail to be pulled from the server”, whether fixed or not, it is again shoddy testing by Ubisoft, will they never learn? A save game is the gospel and bible of the long term player, not properly testing that is an issue , and when we go from a level 0 issue to the several levels of glitches, one so hilarious (unless you are the player), where a Drakar (a Viking boat) is flying and put flying in a video of dragons, that is the stage Ubisoft find itself in, they have regressed towards the level of joke and it will hurt Google as well, its stadia is depending slightly too heavily on Ubisoft games with its new Google Stadia, in that stage with not enough alternatives it could find itself in all kinds of hurt, giving the Apple Arcadia a massive advantage over Google, something they will not be happy about.

And when we see “Visual bugs relating to Eivor’s cloak have been addressed, while player and NPC animation problems have also been improved. Audio, lighting, and texture clipping issues could also crop up, which Ubisoft said it’s addressed. For PC players, shadow resolution set to high will now work as intended”, we see a possible return to the age of AC: Unity. Is that what Ubisoft has regressed to? 

A stage of failure after failure, improper testing, hype creation, boasts and non-delivery. Each of them a massive hurt by themselves, combined they are the nails in the coffin of the cadaver once known as Ubisoft. And they had created an optional safe harbour with Watchdogs: Legion, what a day a software company can make. 

I am not happy, I am actually a little sad, from a decent company, they moved unto legendary, only to squander it away with massive failures, so as I see “a successful start for Ubisoft, but it hasn’t been without its problems. Users across all systems have reported problems with corrupted saves, performance issues, and other in-game glitches”, I see the hand of Ubisoft marketing, a set stage that could only fail over time and now that they think they got a reprieve, I am here with the personal view that it has ended for Ubisoft, all whilst the owners of PC and consoles they are all looking forward to a 45GB patch, I had to download a 50GB patch for Miles Morales, but at least it came with a second complete game (I had the Ultimate edition). So how many games and patches will it take for rural players (which add up to millions) to use up all their bandwidth? We all seem to focus on the cities with unlimited downloads, but consider that Rural France, Rural Germany, non metropolitan UK, Rural Australia, a stage with tens of millions of players, they will feel the brunt, merely because Ubisoft refuses to learn its lesson? How is that for value of software? And this was merely the day one patch, for the latest, optionally fixing your save games you will need to download 4GB more.

Yes that was the early release of AC Valhalla and as I see it a CEO that cannot contain its marketing needs, a sad situation for any firm and those around them are hurting, merely because (as it seems) hypes seemingly creates the need of Ubisoft, not excellence, and when did we applaud mediocrity on that? So whilst McCourier gives us “In light of what CERO said, Ubisoft seems to have underestimated the tolerance of the Japanese authorities. Ubisoft has also apologised to Japanese players, and a corrective patch should address this issue in the coming days or weeks”, gamers will see another patch and optionally more glitches coming their way, I wonder how much more a gamer needs to download before they realise that Ubisoft is done for?

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November 25, 2020 · 02:21

An idea is born

This happens, to some it happens a lot, having an idea is something different from actually having steps towards an IP, those who got there know the difference, so as I was watching the Angel series with Gerard Butler, an idea started to take shape. I thought of the IP I had, some of the IP that I was considering and a third part slowly started to take shape. Even as the stage if the second movie had something a little too incredible, the stage started to form. In the original 5G chart, Domotics is isolated, which is an option but not a given. 

In a stage where we become increasingly workaholics, the need to have some level of connection to domotics parts become increasingly important to the single people relying on domotics. The second chart gives us some level of interactivity, yet the larger stage is still under consideration. There is a larger stage where we are still unwilling to trust certain sources and certain destinations, we prefer it to go through us and that is where the domotics chart seemingly fails. 

It is in some level of understanding that it is all fine with us, but for a lot of people it is not. A sort of central hub is missing, a personalised service agent (optionally a tablet of phone) where we decide what is good and what is allowed. That part is nowhere to be seen. I partially designed a solution of sorts when I looked into an alternative solution to the British NHS. A similar solution might suffice, but it need not to be as large as I initially designed it. To set this up a similar solution to the Google key would optionally work, yet it needs to be a programmable one where the person has a key, which is altered by the key in the software and the tablet or phone, it would be a three pronged key, we think of solutions that are all app, yet in this day and age, an app alone will not set the tone.

Even as smart devices take inventory, the content needs to be available to the owner alone and that is where the setting tends to fail. As I realised that (apart from the news given today), Elon Musk is not merely the second richest man on the planet, he is sitting on $1.2T in IP value when directed in a , as such there is a larger stage to see domotics in another light, especially if the information streams are to be contained. We can contain it in some form with nano dongles added to devices, yet the larger streams will take a little more handling. It is very tempting to try and fit the solution to the options Elon Musk has available, but the stage is larger, it isn’t merely what we see like a smart fridge, it is a stage where we cannot see the parts yet, the parts that need to be invented, so we can set some form of security ahead of time. So we need to look at what we have and what else it can do.   Not merely make contact, but break contacts too, when the connection fails (like burglary) an automated signal goes to the proper places, security firms are looking into it, but domotics can take it a step further. An optional stage is radar, without impairing the privacy of a person, the child of a parent or grandparent can receive a signal if no activity is seen for an extended period of time (like 2 hours), that in combination with a locked door could be a flag for someone to take a look or make a call. In a time when the elderly become a much larger population a stage is created where alternative solutions need to be found, a stage that cannot alway be activated, the absence of signals could do the same thing. It is not a given, but there are a few settings that need checking (like pets), as well as the need to set a stage where their privacy is not trampled on. 

It is funny what idea’s are born when you rewatch a movie, it gives hold to the weirdest thoughts at times, well, it is time to see this angel fall (a reprise as well). As such I bid thee all a lovely evening.

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November 17, 2020 · 17:20

Cursed by choice

It is a setting some will remember, some fondly, some less so. It is a state where you have too much options. Let me try to explain this, for example, your iPod you find after a year and you see hundreds of songs you have not heard for some time, but you cannot decide, or perhaps a choice of 5 RPG games and you have select one to play. The inability to seek between good options if you want.

It is a setting the reflects on to situations. The first is the one, the only, the musk (Elon to insiders). BBC reports “Tesla’s share price surged about 14% in New York following the news it was being added to the index. Given Mr Musk’s 20% stake in Tesla his net worth rose to $117.5bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His wealth has jumped $90bn this year as Tesla’s share price has continued to rise”, I look at the setting differently, some say he has the Midas gene, he can anything he touches to gold, I reckon like Steve Jobs and a few others, he has the ability to turn generic outliers into commercial successes. We can go from the fact he knows what is useful, we can go with he knows where to push, who to push and how much to push. We can look at it in different ways, but in basic “Tesla’s share price surged about 14% in New York following the news it was being added to the index. Given Mr Musk’s 20% stake in Tesla his net worth rose to $117.5bn, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. His wealth has jumped $90bn this year as Tesla’s share price has continued to rise”, and that is before he realises (perhaps he already knows) that he is optionally sitting on an additional $1.2 trillion (meaning $1,200 billion) and the wired has seemingly no caught on, I had a few ideas in support of that, but the IP is already his, so why bother, he will figure it out. And that is before he goes to space, there he might make a few coins more. 

It is one setting and the opposing view is seen when we look at the lovely youthful youngling known as Taylor Swift. That BBC view (at https://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-54969396) gives us “Writing on Twitter Swift said it was “the second time my music had been sold without my knowledge””, here we want to answer in anger, yet the article also gives us “Swift signed a deal with record label Big Machine in 2004 granting them ownership of the master recordings to her first six albums in exchange for a cash advance to kick-start her career”, as such if there is no clause with a mandatory first option to buy back, I wonder if Scooter Braun did anything wrong. The news gives us that she signed over ownership on her first 6 albums, so I understand that she is not happy, but did Scooter do anything wrong? She is not the first, I learned a lot later in life that Paul McCartney has lost ownership of Beatles songs. I actually never knew that. And he is not alone, as such, and especially as we know and have seen that Taylor is very intelligent, why she learned her lesson the hard way. As one is cursed by many options, the other one was forced by a lack of options. The most dangerous part in all this is doing something expecting them to act in another, when we see “US entertainment magazine Variety first reported on Monday that Braun had sold the rights – known as masters – to an investment fund. It said the deal is thought to be worth more than $300 million (£227m)”, I wonder how much the songs were bought for, as such still, one third of a billion is a whole lot of money, I would not sell my IP for that (I would set it to a percentage of the patent value), yet overall I could be tempted. And there is a setting switch, it is about awareness, how many people in the music industry have a real grasp of IP and what it is worth nowadays. Games, movie, TV series, they are all in need of music and there is so much one can compose, it was perhaps one of Ubisoft most brilliant moments in all this, get well known songs or well known artists to support the IP, Imagine Dragons is perhaps one of the more known artists, it propelled the game, not merely the graphics, the music was a large part of it and Ubisoft was exceedingly clever there, they might not own the IP, but they knew a good deal when it was there and musicians need to catch up, especially in this age of Netflix and streaming. Now this is not an attack on Taylor Swift, this might have been her only option, yet the stage remains, what kind of legal advice did she get? I do not know, I am merely asking. So when I see (according to the BBC) “When his company, Ithaca Holdings, paid $300m to acquire Swift’s former record label last year, Swift saw it as an act of aggression that “stripped me of my life’s work”. She accused Braun – who also manages Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber and Demi Lovato – of “incessant, manipulative bullying”” we see a lot of emotion, but the stage is did Scooter Braun do anything wrong or illegal? We might say immoral and unethical but neither is a crime according to law and that is the setting we need to see and perhaps Taylor should have appealed to Elon Musk who has well over 3,000 times what she apparently needed, it is merely food for thought, although, I reckon that Elon gets a dozen of these attempts to contact an hour, and optionally when he figures out where his optional missing $1.2T is even more.

Such is life!
There are two groups cursed by choice, one group has too many, the other has (far) too few. Which one do you belong in? And what makes you think that you are in one or the other, because that contemplation tends to be a solution in itself at times.

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November 9, 2020 · 22:58

Your field of dreams

We are all in a field of dreams, a field where we see the initial turn of the cards in our favour, some of these dreams are a little selfish, it does not make us selfish, but we are at times in a setting where the game needs to go over way. In my case it is Google buying my IP with the start payment of $25,000,000 post taxation, in the second offering it is Huawei buying it (for the same setting). Amazon is allowed to buy it, but I reckon that 5G technology is something that Amazon is not yet ready for, in the 4th is Elon Musk and he is only there because he makes things happen, he pushes boundaries and that works in my favour in this case. Is it silly (read: stupid) to sell $2,000,000,000 (in its least positive setting) for a mere $25 million? No, because the second payment is that I still hold on to 40% of the registered IP, they get 60%, this is not throwing away money, the I setting a page where I get 40% of something instead of 100% of nothing. We need to realise what we can do and what is outside our reach. We need to push for the field of dreams to get towards reality, not to make the golden dream more and more golden and never a reality.

In gaming, I am not a coder, not a programmer, I never was. But I could think ion a whole range of games, of improvements almost at the drop of a hat (any hat). Yet the stage was never there and I was never a Peter Molyneux or a Richard Garriott (real visionaries). Yet that is the one part I shared with Steve Jobs, he was not really a visionary either, but he recognised the people with vision around him and he could relate to that. It sets a different stage. There was a reason I came up with Watchdogs IV, Elder Scrolls VII: Restoration and so on, I saw what was possible, I could think out the stories. In the same way that I am now working on my second short story (with a wink towards Rendezvous with Rama), and my minds keeps on creating, even when I need it to stop (sleep is a pesky thing we need). Two 5G devices, several adjusted solutions towards 5G and optionally a new setting towards 5G mobiles making them extremely private. All settings I came up with in less than a day each. Then there is the Gordian One weapon systems and a solution towards reactors the I (with my sense of humour) called S.N.O.W., it even comes with two new valves, a wasp valve and a piranha valve (different applications), the device needs testing, and it has a positive side and a negative side. The upside is that if I get it to work, Iran can take its reactor and sell it for scrap and concrete chunks, the downside is one I will not discuss here, because I will be honest, it is scary and I do not really combine scary and NBC solutions, it tends to be real crazy stuff. 

In all this, we still feed the field of dreams, I am no exception, in my mind I end up with a nice cushy job until I retire and a really really nice house to live in when I retire and before that. Some dreams are simple in nature, we tend to not need a lot in that setting. I like the quote in the dark Knight the best in that regard, because the application is larger “I’m like a dog chasing cars, I wouldn’t know what to do if I caught one, you know, I just do…things”, we all tend to chase cars, whether it is that large fee, that gorgeous partner (who we tend to hope is still a virgin), that super large slice of Tiramisu, in the end, things are like cars, when we have it we look for the next thing, the house, the cushy job, the dream partner, they are essential needs, they link to our souls, we all want a version of that. And there is the danger and the blessing of the field of dreams. Phil Alden Robinson was right, faith and family have a larger imprint, yet the issue is not merely to have faith, but to have faith in self, that is the trigger, we can all have faith in someone else, but when that person has a larger faith in what I regard to be delusional politics (Paula White), how does your field of dreams evolve into a nightmare? That is the setting the some face, not me, even though I am a Republican at heart, someone like Donald Trump should not be allowed to continue, he damaged the Republican Party more than anyone realises, John McCain or Mitt Romney, either are 50 times the man the Donald Trump could ever be and he is looking towards a $400,000,000 court case involving taxes if I am not mistaken. We can invite into our field whomever we want, but we must take care that this field is about valuing self, not others, that dream partner is about the extension of you, your dream, your field. 

The problem for a lot of us I what we take into the field, for me it is my workaholic self, I know this, it is how I have always been, and in the past there was trust to former bosses, but that is now gone, I accept the choices I made and I made a few by trusting those who shouldn’t have received trust, but it was me, I merely blame myself. I walked in there with my eyes open. 

I now am in the final stretch and it is not a final score, but it is close to one and if I pull it off the balance goes deep into the green, if not I stay in the red, I accept that, I made choices and I accept that. Yet when you set up your field of dreams to propel you to the next idea, the next option or the next choice, be aware of what you took into the field, as long it is just those things and thoughts that are yours, you are fine.

If that does not scare you, consider the political implications that the Galvin report brought “A report, named after Robert Galvin, head auditor, and whose name appears on its front cover, was initially written at the end of 2006 as an audit of the expenses and allowances claimed by a sample of more than 160 MEPs. The existence of the report was kept secret until an updated version in February saw the fact of its existence made public by Chris Davies MEP. Even then, its contents remained secret”, and it is not that this happened, it is the small little part the we see with ‘its contents remained secret’, so in what universe does any government keep the wheelings and dealing of MEP’s a secret, especially when there are a lot of questions that need answering? 

When we see “Two MEPs were found to be paying out full assistance allowance, but neither had any assistant actually accredited or registered with the Parliament”, which I tend to see as some form of fraud, are these two MEPs still in office? We might concern ourselves with our own field of Dreams, and when we see what happens in the real world, we see no other way to live, unless we set a stage where these tools make a lot of money (at your expense), and should you wonder why I have a trust issue, consider that you can only make money if 50% or better goes towards greasing the gears, the is what the politics of most nations tend to fall towards. These people will only act when there is something in it for them. Ae the thoughts I am having so outlandish? 

Part of it is seen with “Huge end of year bonuses are being paid, often simply to use up as much of the allowance as is left over, between 3 and 19.5 times the recipient’s monthly salary”, and we wonder why we cannot get the budgets to fit? I reckon that this is a form that would apply and the governments stay silent, our field is all that remains, it is close to pure and it is seemingly clean, as long as no-one enters we are unaware of.

Philosophy teaches us that trust is risky, the question of when it is warranted is of particular and increasing importance. In case of our own field of dreams, we warrant very little risk, because for some that field contains a life of ambitions, and who would you trust with your lifetime of ambitions? You partner perhaps, your parents perhaps, but it tends to end there, for most that is all there is and the dream is about to shatter, when your field of dreams shatters, will you be safe?

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June 18, 2020 · 00:35

Musings

I am currently awaiting my new laptop. My Lenovo Chromebook just is not good enough (apart from the dodgy spacebar). And as I was pondering a few actions, the BBC article ‘How Elon Muskaims to revolutionise battery technology’ I remembered the idea that his car battery gave me. You see, the solar cell idea was nice, yet the setting to ADD somethig to your roof is where the issue optionally starts. My idea was to replace the roof tile in roofs, in newly built houses. This new tile based on the old one, exists in two versions, version 2.0 and version 2.0 plus The 2.0 tile is made from recycled plastics, and therefore over time cheaper and beneficial to nature, the second one has added solar cells in it and it fuels the car battery.

Now one tile is not going to hack it, yet a roof can be replaced over time with more and more cells. Fuelling that battery faster and giving it more use. Over time that battery will fuel lights, heating aircons and a whole range of appliances. Making the house first carbon neutral and over time carbon negative. Those buying houses will benefit the most, yet apartment complexes can benefit too as it fuels the common usage parts and over time we add to the electricity net making them money too. A stage where we look at a stage where we all become the power suppliers. His battery is the start of something more and in this age of power usage, we can become neutral in its needs. Consider your own needs, how much power does your console use, your TV, the router and optionally the PC, now consider that their power use is nullified by the roof, as well as the two most power intensive parts, the boiler (if you have one), and the fridge which will use power 24:7.

Now consider that usage to be nullified not by one person but by 10,000,000. That would reduce brownouts in places like California and Greece by close to 80%, from the benefits of having, we now see the benefits of providing, the electrical car being one part, you create the power it needs, implying that your personal fuel costs will diminish handing you more money every months for other matters. Consider your bills at present, now take fuel and power out of that equation. The larger benefit is not gained overnight, but over time and the stage I considered was one where we grow the creation and diminish the usage by not adding loans from the get go, but replace at easy steps without having to add loans. In this setting we can have a stage with the initial mortgage, and that makes sense, yet over time (every 2 years) you can add 20-50 tiles with spare change, giving you that in your first decade you are well beyond carbon neutral and that is only the start, as I see it the Musk battery technology can alter lives on a very large scale. His car is merely the start of something larger, benefitting billions of households.

You might think that these are simple musings, and you would be right, yet the creativity to apply someone’s creation in another way could start more creativity, more originality and applied to a much wider field. Lets face it, the weapon I created to sink the Iranian fleet was based on an offshore engineering principle (with some added physics). 

The roof idea would not have had the impact if Elon Musk did not do its duracell manoeuvre. We merely need to look at where else a battery like that one could impact us and how we fuel it, and when you walk through any city and see the billions of inactive roof tiles, consider the amount of power you get when every tile you see becomes a power creator. In this the rural people have an added bonus, they will have access to power on a size they never had before. When that becomes a thing of the past, we can focus on new fields and in other areas, there is plenty of mess to fix and a lot of it can be broomed under a rug (we all do it).

 

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February 13, 2020 · 14:06

Middle of the seesaw

To be honest, I am not sure where to stand, even now, as we see ‘Google starts appeal against £2bn shopping fine‘ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51462397), I am personally still in the mindset that there is something wrong here. 

We can give the critique that my view is too much towards Google, and that is fine, I would accept that. Yet the part where we see 

  • In 2017, €2.4bn over shopping results.
  • In 2018, €4.3bn fine over claims it used Android software to unfairly promote its own apps.
  • In 2019, €1.5bn fine for blocking adverts from rival search engines.

Feels like it is part of a much bigger problem. I believe that some people are trying to stage the setting that some things are forced upon companies and I do not mean in the view of sharing. I personally do not believe that it is as simple as Anti-Trust. It feels like a more ‘social mindset’ that some things must be shared, but why?

The BBC also gives us: “Margrethe Vestager, who has taken a tough stance on the Silicon Valley tech firms and what she sees as their monopolistic grip on the digital landscape” this might feel like the truth, yet I personally feel that this was in the making for a long time, Adobe was on that page from the start. I believe that as the digital landscape was slowly pushed into a behemoth by Macromedia, who also acquired Coldfusion a change came to exist, for reference, at that time Microsoft remained a bungling starter holding onto Frontpage, an optional solution for amateurs, but there was already a strong view that this was a professional field. that stage was clearly shown by Adobe as it grew its company by 400% in revenue over a decade, its share value rose by almost 1,000% and its workforce tripled. There was a clear digital landscape, and one where Google was able to axe a niche into, the others were flaccid and remained of the existing state of mind that others must provide. Yet in all this Social media was ignored for far too long and the value of social media was often ignored until it was a decade too late. 

For example, I offered the idea that it would be great to be in the middle of serviced websites where we had the marketing in hands, my bosses basically called me crazy, that it had no functioning foundation, that it was not part of the mission statement and that I had to get back to work, I still have the email somewhere. This was 4 years before Facebook!

I admit that my idea was nothing as grandiose as Facebook, it was considered on other foundations an I saw the missing parts, but no one bit and now that I know better on the level of bullet point managers I am confronted with and their lack of marketing I now know better and my 5G solutions are closed to all but Huawei and Google, innovation is what drives my value and only those two deliver.

But I digress, the Digital Landscape was coming to be, and as we realise that this includes “websites, email, social networks, mobile devices (tablets, iphones, smartphones), videos (YouTube), etc. These tools help businesses sell their products or services” we can clearly see that Microsoft, Amazon and others stayed asleep at the wheel.
some might have thought that it was a joke when Larry Page and Sergey Brin offered the email service on April 1st 2004, yet i believe that they were ahead of many (including me) on how far the digital landscape would go, I reckon that not even Apple saw the massive growth, perhaps that Jobs fellow did, but he was only around until 2011 when it really kicked off. IBM, Microsoft and others stayed asleep thinking that they could barge in at a later stage, as I see it, IBM chose AI and quantum computing thinking that they can have the other niche no one was ready for. 

When we consider that we saw ‘Google faces antitrust investigation by 50 US states and territories‘ 6 months ago and not 5 years ago we see part of the bigger picture, of course they could have left it all to China, was that the idea? When we get “Regulators are growing more concerned about company’s impact on smaller companies striving to compete in Google’s markets” we will see the ignoring stage, when it mattered smaller places would not act, as Google acted it became much larger than anyone thought, even merely two years ago we were al confronted with ‘companies’ letting Google technology do all the work and they get all the credit and coin, why should Google comply? Striving to compete with Google is no longer a real option and anyone thinking that is nuts beyond belief. The only places that can hold a candle are the ones with innovative ideas and in an US economy founded on the principle of iteration no one keeps alive, but they are all of the mind that franchising and iteration is the path to wealth, it is not, only the innovative survive and that is being seen in larger ways by both Google and Huawei. Those who come into the field without innovation is out of options, it is basically the vagrant going to the cook demanding part of the pie the cook made as they are hungry, yet the vagrant has no rights to demand anything. 

And as we are given (read: fed) the excuse of “Alphabet, has a market value of more than $820bn and controls so many facets of the internet that it’s fairly impossible to surf the web for long without running into at least one of its services. Google’s dominance in online search and advertising enables it to target millions of consumers for their personal data” we can give others the state where Microsoft did its acts to take out Netscape, how did that end? It ended in United States v. Microsoft Corp.. In all,  we see that in the end (no matter how they got there) that the DOJ announced on September 6, 2001 that it was no longer seeking to break up Microsoft and would instead seek a lesser antitrust penalty.

As such, in the end Microsoft did not have to break up hardware and software, they merely had to adopt non-Microsoft solutions, yet how did that end? How many data failures and zero day breaches did its consumer base face? According to R. Cringely (a group of journalists and writers with a column in InfoWorld) we get “the settlement gave Microsoft “a special antitrust immunity to license Windows and other ‘platform software’ under contractual terms that destroy freedom of competition.”” (source: Webcitation.org). 

Yet all this is merely a stage setting, it seems that as governments realised the importance of data and the eagerness of people giving it away to corporations started to sting, you see corporations can be anywhere, even in US hostile lands and China too. That is the larger stage and Google as it deals in data is free of all attachments, as governments cannot oversee this they buckle and the larger stage is set. 

From my point of view, Google stepped in places where no one was willing to go, it was for some too much effort and as that landscape shaped only google remains, so why should they hand over what they have built? 

It is Reuters that give is the first part of it all (at ) here we see: “EU regulators said this penalty was for Google’s favoring its own price comparison shopping service to the disadvantage of smaller European rivals“, yet what it does not give us is that its ‘smaller rivals’ are all using Google services in the first place, and Google has the patent for 30 years, so why share? This is a party for innovators, non-innovators are not welcome!

Then we get “Google’s search service acts as a de-facto kingmaker. If you are not found, the rest cannot follow“, which is optionally strange, because anyone can join Google, anyone can set up camp and anyone can advertise themselves. I am not stupid, I know whatthey mean, but whe it mattered they could not be bothered, no they lack the data, exaytes of data and they cannot compete, they limited their own actions and they all want to be head honcho right now, no actual investment required.

In addition when it comes to Browsers, Wired gives us “I spent the summer and beyond using Bing instead of Google for search. It’s a whole new world, but not always for the better“, I personally cannot stand Bing, I found it to have issues (not going into that at present), so as we are ‘not found’ we consider the Page rank that Stanford created for Google (or google bought it), when we consider when that happened, when was it reengineered and by whom? And when we got to the second part “Google began selling advertisements associated with search keywords“, that was TWO DECADES AGO! As such, who was innovative enough to try and improve it with their own system? As I see it no one, so as no one was interested, why does there need to be an antitrust case? As such we see the Google strategy of buying companies and acquiring knowledge, places like Microsoft and IBM no longer mattered, they went their own way, even (optionally) better, Microsoft decided to Surf-Ace to the finish, I merely think, let them be them.

We are so eager to finalise the needs for competition law and antitrust law, but has anyone considered the stupidity of the iteration impact? If not, consider why 5G is in hands of Huawei, they became the innovators and whilst we are given the stage of court case after court case on the acts of Huawei, consider why they are so advanced in 5G, is it because they were smarter, or because the others became flaccid and lazy? I believe that both are at play here and in this, all the anti-Google sentiment is merely stopping innovators whilst iterators merely want to be rich whilst not doing their part, why should we accommodate for that?

so when we see (source: Vox) “United States antitrust officials have ordered the country’s top tech companies to hand over a decade’s worth of information on their acquisitions of competitor firms, in a move aimed at determining how giants like Amazon and Facebook have used acquisitions to become so dominant” who does it actually serve? is it really about ‘how giants like Amazon and Facebook have used acquisitions to become so dominant‘, or is it about the denial of innovation? Is it about adding to the surface of a larger entity that governments do not even comprehend, let alone understand? They have figured out that IP and data are the currency of the future, they merely need to be included, the old nightmare where corporations are in charge and politicians are not is optionally coming to fruition and they are actually becoming scared of that, the nerd the minimised at school as they were nerds is setting the tone of the future, the Dominant Arrogant player beng it sales person or politician is being outwitted by the nerd and service minded person, times are changing and these people claim that they want to comprehend, but in earnest, I believe that they are merely considering that the gig is up, iteration always leads there, their seeming ignorance is evidence of that.

Yet in all that, this is basically still emotional and not evidence driven, so let’s get on with that. The foundation of all Common Law Competition Law is set to “The Competition and Consumer Act prohibits two persons, acting in concert, from hindering or preventing a third person trading with a fourth person, where the purpose or likely effect of the conduct is to cause a substantial lessening of competition in any market in which the fourth person is involved“, yet in this, I personally am stating that it hinders innovation, the situation never took into proper account of the state of innovators versus iterators, the iterator needs the innovator to slow down and the foundation of Competition Law allows for this, when we see ‘preventing a third person trading with a fourth person‘, in this the iterator merely brings his or her arrogance and (optional) lack of comprehension to the table and claims that they are being stopped from competing, whilst their evidence of equality is seemingly lacking (as I personally see it). 

In this the Columbia Law School is (at least partially) on my side as I found “Scholars and policymakers have long thought that concentrated market power and monopolies produce more innovation than competition. Consider that patent law—which is the primary body of law aimed at creating incentives for innovation—was traditionally thought to conflict with antitrust law. Known as the “the patent-antitrust paradox,” it was often said that antitrust is designed to prevent monopolies and other exclusionary practices while the patent system does the opposite, granting exclusionary rights and market power in the form of patents. Given this framework, it makes sense that scholars, courts, and government agencies have only recently considered antitrust and patent laws to be complementary policies for encouraging innovation.” it gives the foundation and when you consider that iterators are the foundation of hindrance to innovators, you see how competition law aids them. In the old days (my earlier example) Microsoft and Netscape that was a stage where both parties were on the same technology and comprehension level. Microsoft merely had the edge of bundling its browser with the OS and got the advantage there, Netscape did not have that edge, but was an equal in every other way. 

Another name is Gregory Day, who gives us: “a greater number of antitrust lawsuits filed by private parties—which are the most common type of antitrust action—impedes innovation. Second, the different types of antitrust actions initiated by the government tend to affect innovation in profoundly different ways. Merger challenges (under the Clayton Act) promote innovation while restraint of trade and monopolization claims (under sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act) suppress innovative markets. Even more interesting, these effects become stronger after the antitrust agencies explicitly made promoting innovation a part of their joint policies” yet I believe that iterators have a lot more to gain by driving that part and I see that there is actually a lack of people looking into that matter, who are the people behind the antitrust cases? Most people in government tend to remain unaware until much later in the process, so someone ‘alerts’ them to what I personally see as a  ‘a fictive danger’. In this I wonder who the needed partner in prosecution was and what their needs were. I believe that iterators are a larger problem than anyone ever considered.

In the case of Google, Amazon and Facebook, we see innovators driving technology and the others have absolutely nothing to offer, they are bound to try and slow these three down as they are trying to catch up. 

Ian Murray wrote in 2018 (CEI.ORG), “Yet there is no such thing as a dominant market position unless it is guaranteed by government. AOL, Borders, Blockbuster, Sears, Kodak, and many other firms once considered dominant in their markets have fallen as the result of competition, without any antitrust action” and that is a truth, yet it does not give that the iterators merely want innovators to slow down, so that they can catch up and the law allows for this, more importantly, as the lack of innovations were not driven over the last decade, South Korea became a PC behemoth, and China now rules in 5G Telecom land. All are clear stages of iterators being the problem and not a solution, even worse they are hindring actual innovation to take shape, real innovation, not what is marketed as such.

As such, governments are trying to get some social setting in place by balancing the seesaw whilst standing at the axial point, it is a first signal that this is a place where innovators are lost and in that are you even surprised that a lot of engineers will only take calls from Google or Huawei (Elon Musk being an optional third in the carbon neutral drive)? 

It gets to be even worse (soon enough), now that Google is taking the cookie out of the equation, we get to see ‘Move marks a watershed moment for the digital ad industry to reinvent itself‘, this is basically the other side of the privacy coin, even as google complied, others will complain and as Google innovates the internet to find another way to seek cookie technology, we will suddenly see every advertisement goof with no knowledge of systems cry ‘foul!’ and as we are given “Criteo, which built a retargeting empire around cookies, saw its stock tumble following Google’s announcement. Others such as LiveRamp and Oracle-owned businesses BlueKai and Datalogix, as well as nearly all data management platforms, now face the challenge of rethinking their business” (source: AdAge) we will see more players hurdling themselves over Competition Law and optionallytowards antitrust cases because these players used someones technology to get a few coins (which is not a bad thing, but to all good things come an end).

And I am not against these changes, the issue is not how it will be reinvented, it is how some will seek the option to slow the actual innovators down because they had no original idea (as I personally see it). Yet we must also establish that Google did not make it any easier and they have their own case ORACLE AMERICA, INC. v. GOOGLE INC. to thank for.

That verdict was set to “With respect to Google’s cross-appeal, we affirm the district court’s decisions: (1) granting Oracle’s motion for JMOL as to the eight decompiled Java files that Google copied into Android; and (2) denying Google’s motion for JMOL with respect to the rangeCheck function. Accordingly, we affirm-in-part, reverse-in-part, and remand for further proceedings.” in this situation, for me “The jury found that Google infringed Oracle’s  copyrights in the 37 Java packages and a specific computer routine called “rangeCheck,” but returned a noninfringement verdict as to eight decompiled security files. The jury  deadlocked on Google’s fair use defense.“, as I see it in that situation Oracle had been the innovator and for its use Google was merely an iterator (if it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it).

Basically one man’s innovator is another man’s iterator, which tends to hold up in almost any technology field. Yet this time around, the price is a hell of a lot higher, close to half a dozen iterators ended up giving an almost complete technology surge to China (5G), which is as I personally see it. They were asleep at the wheel and now the US administration is trying to find a way around it, like they will just like ORACLE AMERICA, INC. v. GOOGLE INC.  more likely than not come up short.

And one of these days, governments will figure out that the middle of the seesaw is not the safe place to be, it might be the least safe place to be. As the population on each end changes, the slow reaction in the middle merely ends up having the opposite and accelerating effect, a few governments will learn that lesson the hard way. I believe that picking two players on one (or either side) side is the safest course of action, the question for me remains will they bite?

 

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May 3, 2019 · 12:41

The trivial and the not so

First the trivial, although $1.66 billion is no trivial matter, it is now one week that Avengers Endgame is in play (for a few countries 8 days) and it has made a staggering $1,664,151,786 so far, and it is now in 5th position on the list of biggest box office successes in the world right behind Avengers: Infinity War, It will not surpass that before the end of the weekend I reckon, yet by Sunday evening it will surpass both its older brother as well as Star Wars, the Force Awakens, less than two weeks and it will be nipping at the heels of the 20 year standing record of Titanic, the movie is going that fast and there is no stopping it, people want to see it more than once (I would really like to see the 3D version) which was not available to me on opening night. At this point 50% of the top 10 most successful box office titles are all Marvel titles. It made me think back to a conversation I had with some director on how he thought that Fantasy movies had no place to go in the 80’s at the Rotterdam ‘Lantaren Venster’ film festival. That conversation is currently making me giggle, the man was sincere in his belief and that is fine, and just like the Deer hunter is not for everyone, neither is Monster Inc.; we all have different takes on what we call entertainment and what we want to see on the big screen, yet I never forgot his view and me being the eternal diplomat remarking at that point to him on how amazing the movie Krull was (I had a mean streak in those days), and with actors like Liam Neeson (Kegan) how could it not be? He was not stricken with a sense of humour, let me assure you of that.

I never had any doubt that Endgame was going to get where it was now, yet the speed at which it did blew me away, it still does. The fact that during the week, in what is usually regarded as the lull of movie incomes, Avengers: Endgame added half a billion like it was a casual shower moment for Scrooge McDuck inside the United States Mint.

As for the not so trivial we need to take a look at Tesla. The Guardian gave us yesterday (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/may/02/tesla-elon-musk-raise-money-stocks-bonds) ‘Tesla seeks to raise $2.3bn after concerns it is running out of money‘, even as the newspaper is giving us: “Company announced last week it had lost $702m in the first three months of the year and sold 31% fewer vehicles in the first quarter“, that does not mean that we should go all negative on Tesla. Yet the part that does give rise to concern is: “Founder Elon Musk has previously dismissed the idea of raising more money but in the last earnings call said: “Tesla today is a far more efficiently operating organization than it was a year ago. We’ve made dramatic improvements across the board. And so I think there’s merit to the idea of raising capital at this point.”” When I see ‘a far more efficiently operating organization than it was a year ago‘ I wonder what that is based upon. Consider the cost of being somewhere, why is Tesla in two locations in Sydney, have Sydney sales given rise to a second store? They did the same thing for Melbourne, Amsterdam the Netherlands and we could go on, but when you realise that these are premium locations no matter where you are in the city, having an American approach to locations in Europe, your logistical cost will go through the roof and that is what is happening. The same for Sweden, yet there the cost setting might differ considerably and having part in Täby might make sense, although there are alternatives near Solna as well, perhaps it was a good deal. Now there is a second part, are these Tesla ‘owned’ places or are they independent dealers? No matter what, there are larger costs to consider like displays, parts to show and other items, and many of these places are in expensive areas, now we can agree that there might need to be one, but two?

It goes further that; it is not merely about the stores, it is about awareness to a much larger degree. You see charging the car is still an issue and yes there are solutions. Some look at the home charging solution. Yet consider the amount of energy required, your electricity bill will skyrocket. Now, there are alternatives, first there are solar panels and there we see: “This is why pairing a charging station with a solar panel system is a great solution for EV owners and solar panel owners alike“, I am less optimistic. Depending on several factors you could need up to 70 panels (low end 1kWh a day panel), and when we start looking at the options, when we go for a generic 7kWh solution, we get an annual average of anywhere between the numbers of 20 – 29 kWh daily created. Now this is merely one third of your battery, the question becomes, so you need a 100% every day? When we go commercial sized (30 kWh) we see that the production get to be between 86-133 kWh a day, so basically that takes you off the grid and give you a daily 100% charge, yet the price is also there. At prices that go up to roughly $30,000 – $40,000, now this is not to scare you. Consider that the car ‘fuel’ is free from thereon after, also your house electricity bill is reduced to almost zero, even better you can sell your excess energy to the energy provider, so there is that, but is that what you were after?

Why does this all matter?

It matters as I went to see a Tesla a few weeks ago, merely because I was curious and the Black Men’s Corp Jacket looked appealing for the upcoming winter ($120, which I did not get), and the Models looked pretty cool too (so did the Roadster), yet when I looked into charging, there was a little vagueness (unintentional mind you) they showed the charging unit, and it got me to think things through. I got from more than one source relative the same results “the average petrol car in Australia uses 11.1 litres of fuel to travel 100km (Australian Bureau of Statistics). That’s a cost of $16.65 to travel 100km at $1.50 per litre2. Even a very efficient diesel vehicle (5 litres per 100km) will cost $7.50“, most sites were all about how much cheaper the electricity was, not how much it would cost, so I got one result giving me “the average price for electricity per kilowatt hour (kWh) in Australia is about $0.25 and it takes around 18 kWh to travel 100km in an average EV. So, it will cost approximately $4.50 in electricity charges to travel 100km“, now we have something to work with. If you take the average annual driver distance (20K and divide that by 100) we now see that you are facing an optional saving of $900, not something you can ignore, but we all forget the infrastructure and now my panel viewing becomes important. If we see the brownouts that are going on all over, the switch to Tesla means that the price of electricity goes through the roof at some point, a shortage will do that for you, when everyone needs more electricity, prices go up, and that initial 30 kWh solution now becomes a more interesting money maker, but overall it is not the only path or method to rely on. You see, when the price changes we suddenly see that the $900 savings become a mere $420 savings, yet on the other side your electricity bill rises steadily and with the panels you avoid that 100%, optionally adding income to your household. I do believe that for now the 30 kWh is overkill and as we might not need a full battery every day, we could start with the 10 kWh solution, or even better if they have the plus package (double paneling). The initial $10,000 will earn itself back over 3-4 years and more important it will aid in lowering the electricity bill as the panels can do more than just reload the car battery. More important the larger issue will be the 40 panels, so apartment owners are almost directly out of the race for now, more important, when you have a solution that sets the stage for a doubling down the road with minimum extra you would be looking at reducing the bulk of your electricity bill which is not the worst idea in summer (AC’s swallow electricity like sponges) and that is where we need to look at with Tesla, as we can use Tesla battery power in other ways, the solution becomes an actual larger solution.

They are all about the car and rightfully so, but when did you look around for a battery charge point? That matters, because when there are no options and it must be done at home, you need to have the proper electricity contract, even if that is not the case now, it will be in the future. In Australia, we see Energy Australia giving us: ‘first 10.9589 kWh of peak usage per day‘, then we see ‘Next 10.9589 kWh of peak usage per day‘ and ‘Balance of Peak usage > 21.9178 kWh‘, the prices are all the same for now, but when that changes, which it always does over time? When we see that those in the highest range are charged an additional 5-15 cents per kWh? That will change the cost of living picture real fast and real direct. Now the electrical car is another matter and there is no way that these fears are not with every consumer looking at an electrical car the day after they receive their energy bill, fuel is still more expensive for now; yet when we see it against the Tesla that starts at $112,000 and the highest performance model at $137,000, the math does not work for the largest extent of people. I got here the long way round because it is not the buying of a Maserati that breaks the bank account (for those who can afford it), it is the annual insurance and fuel cost that grab you by the tender spot and makes you regret the choice. Now that we see that and we see that a new 2019 Infiniti Q70 is a mere $48,712 and that is not even close to the cheapest solution, so there is a saving of no less than $63K, if you put that in your super and use the interest to pay for the insurance and fuel you’ll end up paying the cost and growing your fortune, and that by merely banking the additional cost for a Tesla. So no matter how ‘environmentally aware’ you are, the entire saving part becomes a myth and when we see that and we consider that Musk is running out of cash in a myth based created car need that shows that there is a market, yet not with the hardworking population that makes up for a little over 65% of all workers, Elon Musk has a car that is supposed to be for those who prefer high end cars, all whilst we see that the new 2019 Jaguar XF Starts at $50,960, we see that there is a market for people, but is it with Tesla? Consider the question ‘when was the last time you could afford to handover $60K for keeping environmental principles?‘ I met two last year, one was driving a Lamborghini, the other has a black Mercedes-AMG, I reckon they will not join the Tesla community any day soon.

So as I took you on the scenic route towards the drive that Elon Musk requires us all to take and the fact that he seeks $2.3bn, implying he might pressingly need $1.5B by quarter end is a matter for concern, not because of the innovation he created, that is clear and down the track he will be the first; where would Henry Ford be if he never created the Model T? Elon Musk might be the next Henry Ford down the line, yet when we see certain steps taken, we need to see that ‘a far more efficiently operating organization‘ sounds as nice as seeing an organisation grow by 100%, yet when the reality is that they grew from 4 members to 8, we need to seriously consider where we are at and that is where I see Tesla at present. It looks great, yet it is for the bulk of all of us too unaffordable and the bulk of those who can afford it can get the luxury Nissan (Infiniti) or a new Jaguar at half the price and that is where Elon Musk is stationed, in a small niche and in all this.

I do not see the market going his way and that remains to be the sad part, because if he pulls it off and creates a large enough market it will be a historic day for him and for America, they need a win like this in the United States of America where they are in a technology drought. They currently lack of true innovation in too many fields and they show a lack of true new technologies, not amendments or mere iterative steps from the old models that exist. Elon Musk has that one true new technology and I hope that the US can stage it to an actual large enough market, I truly do.

 

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