Tag Archives: Eu

May 28, 2020 · 21:26

Down the drain?

Consider the two faced approach to the EU. The stage where we see on the BBC ‘Ursula von der Leyen speaks of Europe’s moment’, which is fair enough. So when we see “A recovery fund worth €750,000,000,000 to help tackle a crises” we would not react, in all this we also see how some of this is divided and initially we see that Germany gets €30,000,000,000 and France gets €39,000,000,000, so far it all seems fine and it would be, however the EU can never align or agree on anything, we see that in the Corona numbers where we see 

Sick Dead
France 182,913 28,596
Germany 181,895 8,533

Now remember one does not mean the other, yet when we see optional misreporting to this degree and the media shoves it under the carpet hiding behind all kinds of reasons (elderly and so on) we see that there is a lot missing. Now the amounts might be needed, I am not debating that, yet the stage of who gets how much and why is now open for debate. The involved players have a lot to explain and they might, yet the situation of reporting is missing a few rounds and the fact that this stage is missing in Strasbourg also implies that the funds are set to what certain captains of industry reports, now what governments are setting to stage. Even as we give weight to ‘France reports less than 100 coronavirus deaths for seventh day’, all whilst we see another matter evolve. Places like theconversation.com give a flim flam explanation of extended testing, and better response rates, yet the larger truth is that Germany not unlike France has an extensive rural population, as such the explanation does not hold water (as I made a note of almost 2 months ago), yet in all the article we do not see the one stage that matters. There is no vaccine, no cure and as such the numbers do not make sense and now their economic impact is taking away 30 billion. So why is it down the drain?

Germany ‘suffers’ just like all the others, yet in a stage of misreporting there is much larger stage in play (as I personally see it) and as we go forward from there, we wonder how numbers are derived and in all that the question on what governments need, as well as what captains of industry need is a much larger debate in al this. Even as some hide behind “The increased critical care capacity is also playing a role in reducing fatalities in Germany” becomes a farce, optionally one that was written by government allies. So if one is a farce, the other becomes very debatable. In a stage where a recession was already on the books, the Coronavirus merely hurried it along, last years numbers were very indicative of it and the EU who had to sit on its wallet has a reason to hand out an additional €750,000,000,000, yet the issue is not resolved, the reporting stage is out in the open andas it seems, media is assisting in hiding that part, there is enough evidence for several weeks that implies that there is either no interest or no follow through and all that is indicative of a stage of ‘playing along’. 

This is a much more important and a much harder stage, and as we wonder what game von der leyen is playing but the questions that need to be out in the open are not and it beckons, Why Not?

Now, there is still the debate, am I merely a conspiracy theorist? The data proves me right, you see once you get sick, the mortality rate sets in and it is set to roughly to 6% (all the way up from the initial 3.4%), and Germany is staged at 4.6% which is almost 50% lower, and it is up for debate, because France seemingly has mortality rate of 15.6%. The numbers do not add up, they haven’t added up for a long time and it is not merely Germany and France, they merely bring it to the surface much better, and when these numbers do not add up, what else is faulty? That is implied in the comment “Many including Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria and Lithuania, won’t commit either way until they read the small print” and even as one states that the devil is in the details, I merely wonder what details are getting obfuscated in other ways? So whilst some set the stage towards “the feeling here is it will need a face-to-face meeting between leaders to forge a compromise” in all this, a compromise was needed? Okay, I will go along, yet the stage where 750 billion was a compromise, what numbers were out in the open, and more immediate, the fact that Spain and Italy required well over 75 billion, gives rise to another set of consideration, especially in light of the fact that Romania and Portugal getting less than 20 billion, this whilst Romania is 6th on the EU population scale and Portugal is 11th. Now I accept that the numbers are set around dwindling economies, but if one set of numbers is incorrect, unreliable and debatable, what else is up for debate?

In light of all this, the people who are setting the stage for all this have other concerns, that is my personal belief, I am merely wondering what other concerns there are?

 

 

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May 24, 2020 · 02:15

In anger

Some say that you should never write when you are angry, I do not know if it holds water, or if it is linked to levels of anger, but for now I am livid. It started with the BBC ‘Leading economist warns of 10 years of depression and debt’ the headline is incomplete, but that is on purpose, I will amend that soon. Nouriel Roubini is warning us of a prolonged downturn. Part of that is true, the fact that the debt in European countries is so high that most require 1-2 generations to fix it if they start now is just the start of it. For Japan and America the news is worse, they have surpassed the point of no return to avoid collapse, Greece is in that stage too, but their economy is not that big. So how that suddenly comes down to 10 years is a joke. Now the BBC started the article with ‘Coronavirus:’ that is the part I left off, but the story remains the same, the virus is merely making it worse. In all this I cannot comment on the Russian and Chinese economie, I do not have enough data on either to make any kind of speculation in that area, but there is enough chatter to see that they are not in a good spot either. And then we see the second jab, it was partially hidden, but it was there “Either you use my 5G, or you are using one of my rivals. Therefore there is going tobe a more divided world” he added things like robotics and AI, but the message is clear, to save our economy, we need to lie down with one 5G solution that fits us the best. There is clear American influence there. The problem is that this stage was to be expected, in the light of the downturn, the US is dead scared that Huawei gets any more positive boosts. We see the first in the Guardian ‘Boris Johnson forced to reduce Huawei’s role in UK’s 5G networks’ The fact that the second line indicates that Huawe’s involvement is set to zero by 2023. So Boris is turning out to be merely the bitch of the White House, the same White House that has NEVER given us any evidence regarding Huawei. In all this there is an upside, when (not if) the American solutions collapses and we see the American whining for delays and we get to tally the hundred excuses that they give, we will see that the EU nations ignoring the US stance, the Middle East and Asia will surpass the other nations to a much larger extent. It will end the EU and as theUS collapses due to technology that does not work, the blamers will demand to see the Evidence on Huawei and as there is none, that stage will end Republican domination in the US for decades to come. Yet that is not the upside, the upside is that technology will be in the hands of Asian players, the EU and the US will have to break up all these bullet point companies and atthatstage the actual nerds in the know will suddenly brain drain towards Asia, we will see a new channel of technology fields rise, merely because the stage will have changed in a much larger field. Even as we see the lies on LinkedIn (for example “In this small world where Human intelligence uses Artificial Intelligence to build our earth a better place to live”)  The problem here is that AI does not exist, you can hype it all you can, but deeper learning is merely a small part of AI if it ever becomes reality, So basically, the person stated “In this small world where Human Intelligence is waiting for AI to build our earth a better place to live when AI becomes a reality”, there is no doubt that AI will become a reality at some point and the IBM Quantum computer (which is in its final stages) is essential for making AI a reality, as such the entire headline by Forbes ‘Can the AI Economy really be worth $150 trillion by 2025?’ is a serious one, but I just can’t stop giggling. Even as we see “Research firm Gartner expects the global AI economy to increase from about $1.2 trillion last year to $3.9 trillion by 2022”, now we need to understand that research on all this is not cheap and never free, but the amount of money being pumped into all this all whilst we are in a collapsing economy and it will hit us long before true AI is ready. So who inherits it all? The Forbes article is good and they give good information, but I see it as a delay point in something the economy can no longer afford. 5G changes that and that is one of the reasons why the US is playing the game they are and as I see it, they are losing it faster and faster. 

There is yet another side in all this, Google is still the one that can mostly keep up with Huawei and it is not getting the resources they need to get ahead of the game, even as Google was on par from the beginning, the entire stage is limited as Huawei has the advantage, that is their benefit as an innovative source. The rest is trailing by 3-4 years, that is the impact that innovation brings and the big wigs in London and Washington are clearly oblivious to that part. The entire delay game will backfire and when it does, those who have fully implemented 5G will get ahead of the rest more and more. In this we see that there is every chance that Asia and some nations in the Middle East will be ahead of the EU and the US, collapsing both groups even further. Consider that side in the simplest equation, if you are a developer, will you set up an office in an ADSL2 building, or in one that has a 64Kb modem? The difference between 4G and 5G is that big and it is only worse for those no longer enjoying a head start. So when we see “My AI is making me build better worlds”, we need to realise that it is a virtual fictive stage in something that does not exist. The media will not properly inform us and we see things getting labelled a something that is not that, we need to see that we are losing a battle as we are driven in directions that do not exist, why is that?

Perhaps if the involved Yanks were not as complacent and lazy as they were, they still had the home field advantage, and we allowed for the drive away from true innovation? Why is that? 

In anger we need to accept that we are getting played by people who want to hold onto their cushy lifestyles, and we are letting it happen. We are allowing a stage of misdirected economy leaving us with less than nothing when it explodes in our faces, and it will explode in our faces.

 

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May 19, 2020 · 23:30

Just say ‘BANG!’

We all laugh and we all seem to point fingers, we all seem to endure the blame game. How governments are bowing to the bully (President Trump) and convict without evidence a corporation and a nation (Huawei and China), yet at the core of it all, we are merely sheep, we bask in the sun as the wolves take one or two sheep, and as long it is not us, we merely watch and remain basking in inaction. The media helps here by trivialising news, by basking in inaction on matters that are reported on, without the need for evidence by howling ‘This was what was told to us, we merely report’. So where are the questions on President Trump, who once claimed that it would merely impact 1.5%? Now that 1.5 million Americans have the disease and 92,000 died of it, where is that 1.5% when it is already at 400% of what was expected, what do we get to see? A president blaming the WHO, stating that China is in its back pocket. Even when we realise that the WHO has no legal rights in any nation, realising that the EU has a massive reporting problem that affects thousands, nope, it is all about the blame game. It worked for Senator McCarthy in 1953-1955, it will work for President Trump too and so far, it seems to work. Yet the problem is expanding more and more. Now we see how people are more often in jeopardy. We see hackers and scammers with Covid-19 agendas, we see 5G blamed by short minded people and again we see EasyJet getting hacked and 9 million people just lost their credit card privacy, but there are voices that are trying to calm us “There is no evidence that any personal information has been misused”, yet they are doing more! “We are communicating with the approximately 9 million customers to advise them of protective steps”, yes how about one singular step? “We have instigated a death squad to hunt down the hackers and put them to death!” Not accepting any excuse from parents that their 17 year old did not know what he/she was doing, not some excuse that it was their first time. Nope, we set a gunto their temple and blow the brains out and televise the event so that others know, their time for cheap thrills is over, they become the cheap thrill. And we will all get notified by the media that this is too harsh, too inhumane, yet that is not the real deal is it? The shareholders and stakeholders pushing the media know that at some point THEY become the sought targets and they fear this.

When there are no targets, transgressors fear what will come and that is the fear they have and we need to drive the dagger home, drive it towards the targets that matter.

Politicians will shout ‘terrorism’ at any event, the media will report that, but they will not report and investigate the proper format of accusations, just like they refused to investigate the accusers of Saudi Arabia. First on a missing journalist no one cared about, after that on a mobile phone of a person who was too rich for his own good and no one properly vetted the evidence, they merely dropped it on the desk of a UN essay writer. The Guardian (and many others) hid behind ‘high confidence’ mentions and other media did similar actions, yet they never investigated it, did they? It was a week of jabs and then it quietly went away, that is what we signed up for and I for one have had enough of this media driven BS.

If we can’t direct them, we can tell them to be quiet whilst we fix things and the benefit of my approach is that in a depression, hackers and abusers don’t really get to have any voice in the matter. Hackers and profiteers in a stage where there are 320,000 dead people, it implies that well over 500,000 are affected and they do not really care about the life of a hacker (well their mommies and daddies do), who cares about them?

That is the stage that is in question, the stage where governments will not set a proper stage, where too many industries abused the situation towards their bottom dollar and in all this a new stage of McCarthyism is created by the current administration, all whilst the media reacts towards shareholders, stakeholders and advertisers. In this the public have had enough and they want to see real action, not what the media and politicians call actions, but something tangible and that stage is now out in the open. 

And whilst the news is all about the Covid fears, we get to see how people like Morgan Wright, a former senior adviser to the US State department as a member of the anti-terrorism assistance program, sees similar issues, he reported yesterday “He is seeing the exploitation of human behaviour on the dark web, mainly through the TOR browser, which allows pwople to obscure their identity, it is a privacy driven status now used by criminals to do with impunity” and in all this it is clear that normal jurisprudential methods are not working, so a death squad is what we need. Perhaps you like the original term better “a CIA wet team” a wet team because of all that blood, and the amount of people demanding this solution is increasing by thousands on a daily basis, this is the result when there is no longer some form of balance, when the checks and balances are taken away and the people are settled unjustly with the invoice that should have been properly taken care of. As such we are bound to see a much less appreciated group of people demanding solutions. This is what the politicians and governments are now facing, a new form of terrorism and it is based on the lack of actions by too many. 

So whilst the media is all about privacy whilst we know we do not have any, we see the larger picture, we demand to see factual evidence, we demand repercussions for the transgressors, a stage we haven’t faced ever before, those who put us in this situations forgot that checks and balances requires some sort of balance, and as that was taken away from too many, we demand evidence on the validity of gravy trains and in that absence these people better show long term results, or a lynch mob is all that remains, McCarthy never learned that lesson, in 1950 6,000 miles was a lifetime away, now it is merely a click and nothing more than a few mere seconds. That will become clear soon enough, it comes with every additional Covid death and every lockdown hindering us, the media forgot about that too, in all this the forgotten parts will weigh against them all, and something will have to give, especially with the US in a $25 trillion debt and one in four Americans out of work, it is a situation that is worse than the combined negativity that the great depression and 2008 meltdown showed, but both together will force a new reality, it is in this setting that a loud mouthed republican was possibly the worst of the worst scenarios that the US has to content with, I am not stating that Russia and China are in better positions, but they can sit on the sidelines whilst the US and partially the EU burns down, their inactions allow for all this, there is no enemy to smite and Saudi Arabia was never an enemy, and the people love a real enemy and as such the hackers will have to do. I think that none of us saw this coming, it was never in the books, but ‘New Terrorism’ will soon become very real and the media is out of bounds on this one, their inactions helped create it. 

 

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May 6, 2020 · 18:47

New World Order

You might not realise it and some hope that most don’t, yet there is a shift this week, there is a new global ruler on the planet. Some will deny it, they will sugarcoat it and some will use carefully phrased denial, they will not give any answers, but the world changes this week. It was always going to happen and I saw this event coming towards us with certainty no later than 6 years ago, it was like watching a bull shark trying to break free, cut the line that hooked him, yet this wire was too strong, there was no evading the obvious, the new ruler is here to stay. The new superpowers are Russia, China and the Bank. This week as the US borrows another $3,000,000,000,000 dollars the stage is set, the interest will now spiral and the US can no longer pay its debts, it is even worse, the annual income will not cover the interest on the outstanding debt. Even t 1%, the US will have to hand over $25,000,000,000 in interest, and there the setting is stage, or better yet the stage is set. The BBC reported that “The government has also extended the annual 15 April deadline for tax payments adding to the cash crunch” it is the final downfall acts through a consumer based economy and we will all feel that crunch as the US governing table will now mandatory include a representative of the banks, not some ‘political commission’, no a stage where the banks set the stage of what is allowed to be done. It is a new stage and even as we think who that is, my speculated view is that it is a representative that both the Rothchilds and Wall Street approve of, there is no need to wonder on which side of the political isle they fall, they will be above that and both Democratic and Republican parties will have to adhere to this. Are you scared? You should be! This is no longer a stage where the citizens are heard, it becomes a stage for consumers and enablers only. So the rights of the elderly and unemployed will fall away, they will have to make room for enablers and users. Their rights will be sullied more and more. It is not something that will happen overnight, it is something that will happen over the next 3 years. Political decisions, hard budgets and economic stages will be set. The fat of the body remains, the unessential parts will be cast aside to whither and die. This was the stage I foresaw in 2013, now it is no longer avoidable. Even as we see “Last week the chair of America’s central bank, Jerome Powell, said that he would have liked to see the US government’s books be in better shape before the pandemic”, in my view he is saying “You need a miracle to keep us out of the decision stream”, and he would have been right. As I see it, this is the direct impact of irresponsible politicians acting and spending a credit card that does not impact them and leaving the next group to fend for itself, that has been the stage for well over a decade and now the bill is due, no 5G economy to save them, no IP innovators to up the value of the US, the game is pretty much over and after the US falls, the EU will follow quite soon. The banks played the long game and they won, I wonder how much mercy and humanity their spreadsheets show, because for a lot of us it will become a much harder world. We either show value or we are done for, this is what sitting on the sidelines brought you all. The direct impact of “It will work out”, it will not and now we will face a much harsher situation and as the media plays towards its shareholders, stakeholders and advertisers, the people will finally realise that they have been played. The bank bill is ALWAYS due, there is no escaping it. I wonder if there is truth in the matter of an independent California, because they represent the largest group of enablers and consumers, No matter how we see it, the US has no stage to pay for the interest on $25,000,000,000,000. Their economy will not allow for that, so what will drain first, their pension plans, or will they pay out of the unemployment funds? The banks will get their pound of flesh and they do not care how the US brings the numbers, as long as they bring them, when this new bill comes aross, the numbers are reached and the needs of the banks can no longer be ignored. Aneconomy by comission driven people, the almost ultimate nightmare towards an economy you do not want to consider.

A new world order that crept under a cloud of inactions by those who should have acted and the people are alas out of options, they voted the inactionable collective in and now we can merely watch on the sidelines how it all unfolds before our eyes. You thought the Coronavirus shut down was bad? It will get a lot worse, now consider that not only supermarket aisles are empty, add to that the services will at some point fall away, see where a lot of us are then. 

We all let it happen, we only have ourselves to blame.

 

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April 23, 2020 · 01:31

Opposing the light

There are several things happening in this world, yes there is a Coronavirus happening and last monday I lost a friend to that. I had not seen him for months and he had his own life (a good life mind you), he was a friend, a friend I could not see too often for all kinds of reasons (not all mine). Such is life and we need to realise that at times, we reach a point where all that changes overnight. 4,950 died in Australia, one of them was my friend, in a population of 25 million, it is a mere 1% of 1% that I am personally connected to. I should have bought a lottery ticket last week with these numbers!

The BBC gave me an interesting update as numbers go. A lot of it was not interesting, it was a been there done that. The entire situation takes a turn when we are given the realisation that France included the deaths at  care homes, England does not, as such the numbers we are introduced to are flawed and incomplete. In all this we have a group of EU nations who decide on what is reported and what is not. Apparently a corona death in a care home is not a corona death at all, how is that for today’s tuna bake?

Yet the realisation that his is happening, how about Germany and France? France had 158,000 and 20,796 non living whilst Germany had 149 thousand and only 5,117 deceased, as I state in previous blogs, the numbers just do not add up, and it gets to be worse when we compare the deceased in France and Germany 20,786 versus 5,117. That is not merely care deaths, that (in my personal opinion) constitute another factor, the difference is too big. If this is not the case, if this is truly about reporting, then we see that the case for ending theEU has been made, after all this time, billions squandered, there is no correct protocol for reporting? And the entire pandemic, or uniqueness does not count. The numbers are squandered all over the place and the people are kept in the dark, in all this the EU has become somewhat of a joke. 

And when it comes to ‘rescue packages’ the sun really lashes out. Now, I get it, there is a good case to push for some relief and I would not disagree, yet there is a strong sense that this is just a jacked up dal that was denied when there was no coronavirus. As such we see Austria, Denmark, Finland and the Netherlands are opposing any deal for the mere reason that they are held liable for repaying the debts of the irresponsible politicians in the south and that case had been made a few times over. A stronger case for ending the EU is right there.

As long as nations are not held responsible for their acts, their ability to push their gravy train on the other members has now reached the size where several nations are strongly pushed towards ending the EU and there is the larger problem for the EU, they should have stepped in when Greece went over the side and they did not, they let it fester for over a decade and now we see that the pull to remove the EU is now a much clearer path, the UK got out in time, but only just. Due to the Coronavirus we now see a possible escalation that would give a much stronger rise to Frexit and Nexit due to the political strife they face. To be honest, I never saw Nexit happen as Geert Wilders (a Dutch politician) fell short by a larger amount, yet that time is gone and renewed options are in play. Is their path the best for them? I actually do not know, I feel that it was the best course for the UK, but that does not mean it was the best for all. I think the Netherlands has strong enough ties to survive that move, France as well, yet in that light Italy and Spain face much larger hurdles. Even as the French economy is in the drain, they do have options, Spain and Italy much less so.

Will it happen? I do not know, but the Corona setting is allowing for a much larger setting of anger in the populations then we ever thought possible, as such the stage changes by a lot. The entire lockdown will only fester it worse, that is how I see it. Even as Geert Wilders sees the Corona escalations to push Nexit, his strength is waning and he cannot bring it about, yet in all this the EU and their approach to their gravy trains are another matter, millions of Europeans have had enough as inequality is rising, Spain and Italy will set another stage, one that the EU cannot face, and whilst the EU will not show responsibility and forces politicians to be accountable, the entire matter merely escalates. A lot of Europeans no longer see the EU as the light and some are actually opposing that light. The Corona mess in Europe is bringing a festering wound to the open limelight that was previously only slowly festering before. In all this the EU breakup was always going to happen, the Coronavirus is merely escalating matters. 

Can it be worse? Yes! Will it be worse? That depends on the EU and its greedy politicians, even as we saw the media report on all these people their is still the flaming income and gravy train matter that is out in the open and the people who are scraping by are getting more and more angry, now that we see that even a simple cadaver tally cannot be relied on, the dam is breaching and that festering issue is merely blanketed and optionally misrepresented by the connected stakeholders. 

People are opposing what was once seen as a solving light, it took a mere case of the flu to bring it to the surface.

 

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April 21, 2020 · 01:27

Vote Ogre

Even I, on my best day can get duped, we all have it in ourselves to fall like a little guppie taking in hook line and sinker and then wiggle like today is the last day you ever do the macarena. I will not go to deep into details, for several reasons that have nothing to do with my ego, but I fell like a crackwhore falls for a brick of pure H. There is no denying it and there was no gold at the end of the rainbow. Even I, Mr Doubting Anyone can be gotten to. As such the fake coronavirus details out there, are the worst kind of details to follow and to belief (not that I do). In this there are always exceptions. In the first rely only on a real newspaper for the actual and factual events (like the Times, the Guardian, the LA Times, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe) the list is not super long but it is renowned. In all this the source matters. Yes, even in these forms some will ‘misrepresent’ the cases and elaborate on a percentage whilst the cases are abysmally small, but they will not lie, as such reading the entire article is important. In that same trend The presentation on the Covid virus by Governor Cuomo was exceptionally good. He was clear on issues and explaining the numbers. It is a 50 minute presentation, so it is long, but you see the goods. As such it is a little upsetting to see that it had 950 thumbs up and 1400 thumps down ratings. As such there is a chance that more and more people ignore the well brought news. The press conference was covered by several sources as such searching ‘Cuomo’ on YouTube will get you there. His view is important because New York represents 1/3rd of ALL US corona cases. New York has a massive population packed together and it is only a first indication of the issues that Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and Houston could face and if the mobs are pushing to end lockdown, the worst is yet to come for the US. 

There is no guarantee where it hits, how it hits and how many it hits, but there is every chance that the greater cities will need the NY numbers when their deuce is up. 

We tend to go by the deceitful part of the numbers, on how the US is the largest place to get hit (and that is still true), yet the truth is that the US is half the size of the EU and they are at present in an abysmal place. Like the nations of Europe, the US states will have to stop everything for a much longer time and that realisation needs to set in,and it needs to set in fast. 

I could go into reverse psychology and tell them to continue the current path, because 2 dead full time workers in the US means that optionally one in the EU or Commonwealth is regained. I wonder if they ever saw it that way. They are all booing the 22 million jobs missing, but a lot of them are tems and hospitality. Consider what happens when the dead jobs of IT are replaced by EU jobs. The IT field is much more global, and these bosses mostly consider their bonus check, at present I have received 4 international offers, the move towards Europe is already starting by some. In a more greedy setting, as Google runs dry in the US, Huawei can buy my 5G IP, it is that simple. Big business pushed for mercenary tactics when it suited them, now they are not the choosing side and I go where the money is, they taught me that, and they had no problem with short changing loyalty when it suited them. 

There is a larger issue in play, even for the ‘pros’ like me, it becomes ever easier to mistake news and fake news, the difference is often no longer visible and the media when they hunted clicks and views are in part to blame, so when they cry ‘foul’ over fake news, whilst they opened that stream themselves is a little hypocrite, don’t you think?

And it gets to be a lot worse, the speeches from the White House are giving the indication that one elected official is more interesting in setting his ego to a good place, than consider the health and safety of his fellow Americans, I myself have a Republican side and I have never been so ashamed of anyone doing the acts we see, merely to look good whilst over 40,000 Americans are dead and a lot of them have not been buried yet, in addition, there is every indication that the total of non surviving American will double, optionally even triple. In addition to all this there are all the voices shouting on how we were not ready. It is true to some degree and to some degree governments all over the world will hide from the responsibility that these administrations and the ones before them had, yet what we all forget is that this situation has not happened since WW1. The Spanish flu would kill as some numbers give between 40 and 100 million people and in those days only the rich could afford to travel, nowadays we have been spreading the virus all over the planet, in that regard, the damage could end up being worse. Yes, medicines available are better now, but there is no vaccine, there is no real treatment, the strong will live, others will not, that is the short and sweet of it.

In all this, we need to realise that we either stand together or accept the loss of a neighbour, as such the protests in the US are completely out of whack. Will I be wrong? I truly hope so, but most of the factual information I rely on gives a much darker future. We need to change the mindset we have and tht is shown as we face the setting in India which is currently unknown, the numbers are incorrect and there is a much larger stagewhere we see that the Indian government has no idea what to do. They are smaller than the US having to deal with a population close to 600% of what the US has, consider the entire US packed like Manhattan and you get the idea just how uncontrollable that setting is. The Mumbai region alone is 55 million people and there is no way that this can be contained as soon as cases become visible. One will infect 25-50, as such the 12,000 cases stated cannot be correct, yet the setting is that there is no way to find all the infected, there are not enough resources in the EU to identify the cases that require treatment in India and as such the curve goes from bad to worse. In my mind there is also no way that the US is so far ahead of India in cases. It takes one person to travel from region to region (on a train) to end up infecting most of the train and we are shutting our eyes to that danger.

As such, when you see the optional troll stepping in and telling you that everything is safe, step back and vote Ogre! Do not believe him/her, and in that mindset, do not believe me either, find out what is true from factual sources like renowned newspapers (preferable not one owned by Rupert Murdoch).

 

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March 20, 2020 · 15:02

Insensitive Me

Yes, at times I tend to be truly absent of empathy, especially when I see small items like ‘as companies struggle with debt‘, so as I am given ‘Experts warn companies that have gorged on cheap money for the past decade face going out of business‘, some of them relied on the famous sales quote ‘Fake it till you make it’, and now we see the ‘warning’ sign “A worldwide credit crunch triggered by the coronavirus will set in motion a wave of corporate bankruptcies that will make the global financial crisis look like “child’s play”, investors have warned.” In this my sober response would be ‘And? Why (the eff) would I care?‘, these people relied on the debt, money they never had to get beyond the point of faking it till they made it and one small flu event is now driving them out of business. So as the world is throwing trillions against it all, I wonder just how short sighted they are. The EU spent 3 trillion on an economy to start it and it never did. As such there will be a much larger toll to everyone involved. There is no upside in “The sudden loss of revenue faced by airlines, tourism-related businesses and carmakers make them extremely vulnerable” OK, we get it, it is not their fault, but we have seen an economy giving out ebts, loans and cheap travels all over the world. Now that there will be an actual cost, there is always an impact we did not see coming. And as we are treated to: “many companies will struggle to refinance debt due to a repeat of the sudden change in credit conditions that sparked the 2007 credit crunch, banking collapses and then the GFC. The prospect of no revenue for months meant creditworthiness had plummeted in exposed sectors and cut off access to funding” we see the shortsigted issues that not having reserves bring. There is now a larger cost to rolling over debts and the stage that zero revenue brings will kill off the smaller players, those players thinking that they were in the same league of the big boys and the big boys are indeed wondering if they survive this age, as such the small fishes have almost no chance. 

As such as we consider the impact of “$2 trillion worth of corporate debt is due to be rolled over this year” all whilst we see no validation of debt rolling over, and the absence of paid off debts, we see a much larger field and everyone is in a stage ‘but why me?‘, as I personally see it, it will affect everyone who did not take the option to reduce their debts. I get it, some will be in a shabby situation and none of this is on them, but to give a rise to 5 out of 500 is a little shallow, is it not? It is the station that we see with “Lindsay David, of independent consultancy LF Economics, said the coronavirus shutdown had exposed longstanding imbalances in the financial system that had been disguised by more than a decade of ultra-low interest rates and trillions of dollars from quantitative easing schemes in the major economies“, we see the stupidity of ‘longstanding imbalances in the financial system‘ and the question attached to that ‘Why was it unattended for so long?‘ is a station that no one wants to be at, no one wants to answer that part of the equation. 

As such, the quote “We know everyone is overleveraged, full-bore, full-risk,” he said. “All we were waiting for was a trigger and unfortunately that has come in the form of a health crisis.” As such it is not the fault of the Coronavirus, any trigger would have sufficed, as such being the one adhering to some Wall Street need, is set to zero and the house will take it all, it is in that light that some see players like Virgin Australia who needs to roll over $5 billion whilst it is in a stage where it cannot bring more than $500 million to the table, a mere 10%, even in the better stage where it would have been double that, rolling over is a doubtful stage for a few lenders, yet this health trigger is not the one anyone hoped or even wished for, it is a stage that was well over 10 years in the making and greed driven people filled their pockets and walked away with a multi million bonus, enough to live in luxury for the next 10 years. After which the market will resettle and their stage of profit comes again, that is what we have catered to.

So as we are introduced to “A full repeat of the post-Lehman Brothers crisis was on the cards, he said, as banks scrambled to hold on to liquidity” a lot of people have not considered the stage we see where the panic driven people first bought out all the pasta they could and after that take out their ATM and saving balance before the bank runs out, at that stage the initial point leading to the worst of the worst will be a much larger stage for everyone.

And the larger issue is seen at the end of the article with: “Let’s say you are a pension fund in Canada and six years ago you gave a bank $1bn. Every year you roll over that bond and the deal remains in place. But now you’re saying, ‘you know what, can I have that money back now?’. So the problem for the company is, where will I find $1bn? Not from its deposits or its liquidity because it’s now got more money going out than coming in.” and that is not where it ends, in October 2019 we saw “regulators should be ensuring the strength of the financial sector to withstand future risks, not weaken it, but that is not what is happening in the U.S.  Recent moves to ease regulations suggest financial stability risks are at an inflection point. Incentives to leverage will continue to rise as interest rates remain low amid a global search for yield.  Vulnerabilities that have been “moderate” could escalate quickly to “elevated”, as they did in the lead up to the 2007 – 2008 crisis“, as such some tried to ‘ease’ the Basel 3 regulations as fast as their greedy needs required, as such, we see “Phase-in arrangements for the leverage ratio were announced in the 26 July 2010 press release of the Group of Governors and Heads of Supervision. That is, the supervisory monitoring period will commence 1 January 2011; the parallel run period will commence 1 January 2013 and run until 1 January 2017; and disclosure of the leverage ratio and its components will start 1 January 2015. Based on the results of the parallel run period, any final adjustments will be carried out in the first half of 2017 with a view to migrating to a Pillar 1 treatment on 1 January 2018 based on appropriate review and calibration” (at https://www.bis.org/press/p100912.pdf), now that was then and it got a little more time “The leverage ratio1 and the Net Stable Funding Ratio (NSFR), which took effect in January 2018, and the supervisory framework for measuring and controlling large exposures, which took effect in January 2019, have yet to be adopted by all jurisdictions (Graph 1). The leverage ratio is now in force in 16 jurisdictions (one more since 2018), while 11 jurisdictions have final rules in force for the NSFR (unchanged since 2018). Only 10 jurisdictions have final rules in force for the large exposures framework.” (at https://www.fsb.org/work-of-the-fsb/implementation-monitoring/monitoring-of-priority-areas/basel-iii/) as such it is not required until 1 January 2022 (as some stated), and now that it is too late, we will get the larger impact. So how happy are you with those people making 6 figure numbers and delaying it all again and again? You will feel that part soon enough when internal systems start to buckle. We might think that President Trump $1 trillion dollar bailout is a good thing, but when that money dries up (and it will dry up a lot faster than you think) he will a scared little mouse, as he will see firsthand what 300 million angry Americans look like and corporations will see the impact of their delay and rollover tactics. Even now as we are told ‘Trump administration is asking states to hold off on releasing unemployment figures as economy plummets‘, we might start to see a much larger failing. We are in a stage where we set ourselves up for a much larger stage, one that outstages the great depression of the 30’s, it merely took a case of the flu to get us there.

Should you think I am exaggerating, consider the Bloomberg headline (at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-19/goldman-sees-deepest-australian-downturn-since-great-depression) a mere 2 hours ago. It might have the sobering ‘Goldman Sees Deepest Australian Downturn Since Great Depression‘ headline, but in part the overp[aid delaying factors are to some degree cause of it all and they are hiding behind “Most of the contraction is expected to be driven by a collapse in ‘social’ consumption“, the essential part of ‘the stage of reserves is not what it needed to be‘ is not mentioned anywhere, you have to distill that from other parts and read through the emptiness of what they claim, they might claim facts, yet they do not give any part of the whole story and it will hit the US, Australia, the UK, France, Spain, Italy and to some degree even Germany. That is what we have to look forward to, at least as the Covid panic continues. It seems to me that the makers of pasta and pantry items are in a much better position. Until a month ago, the idea that San Remo ends up being one of the richest companies in Australia would have been laughed at, when you look at the empty shelves almost everywhere last week, that stage is a lot less laughable at present, I wonder in all this whether the new economic superpower will include San Remo and/or Barilla, as there is a chance that the seat of Virgin Australia on that board will be up for grabs soon enough.

 

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March 18, 2020 · 15:03

Points that are proven

I made several accusations yesterday and today I find a few of them proven. The first part is expected in a setting that is giving us an additional 28,000 cases in 24 hours (globally). I also made statements and denials, and for now I stand by them, Even as we today see that the mortality rate is going up to 4% (it went from 3.4%, 3.6% and 3.8% yesterday).

The map shows the exploding number of cases and it does not explain how two people in Mongolia and Mayotte suddenly got exposed, the track does not make sense. There are questions, and clearly that the medical field people should not get blamed, but the fact is that they do not have answers, which is not their fault.

The governments behind it all are shouting and pointing but they are (as I personally see it) pointing away from the problem. There is a speculation within me and it is not a proven one. Even as the people were infectious BEFORE they got symptoms (which is proven) there is a larger feeling that those who got over the disease are still carriers infecting others (the unproven part), that part alone might explain to some degree the explosion of cases in Italy and a few other places all over the EU.

The stage is a setting that might to some degree (not all of it) explain the explosion of cases in Italy, Spain, Germany, France and the USA. If that part is true then places like Canada, Argentina and Mexico are in for a much harder time then they ever considered. And there is another part in all this. 

As the mortality rate in San Marino (almost 10%) and Belgium (0.8%), the numbers are too far apart. We need to consider that the disease is acting in another way too. The ‘excuse’ of underlying health conditions is too convenient an excuse (personal view on the matter). 

I am not pointing at the cause, I do not know and I want to avoid giving out false information, but any disease is at a stage where it optionally kills a group and the larger the population, the more accurate that number will be. This is not speculation, this has been fact for the longest time, as such we need to look at the Chinese mortality rate, which is 3.98% at present. From that point of view the people in Belgium have a lot of bad news to look forward to, in that same context Italy also has a stage that is at present unvisited. With a 11.19% mortality rate, the numbers seem skewed, even as Italy has less than half the amount of cases that China has, the difference is almost astounding and there is no factual explanation to that. We can think that China was on top of it, but they were not, their reaction was slow (with acceptable cause) and still Italy ends up with twice the amount of mortality cases in percentage, which fuels my underlying thoughts that there is more to the cases than meets the eye, in that setting it does not matter how infectious the 2,941 cases remained, the percentages tell a different story and the people who are fueled by fear will keep on buying and hoarding long term food sources in all other places. In all this the foremost thought will be how over 24 hours 28,000 people got the disease, something is not working and I tried to tell some of the somewhat abusive responders yesterday, in that light it is (to me) apparently clear that there is no containment, not to the degree that there should be. Even as Europe went into lockdown mode, we now see well over 10,000 new cases in 24 hours. We see the news giving us how famous people are in the glare of catching the disease, we see how sources use President Trump as a punching bag, and it goes on, yet there were two information givers that did hand out the news we actually needed. The first is Science Daily (at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/03/200317150116.htm), they gave us “New research finds that the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is stable for several hours to days in aerosols and on surfaces. Scientists found that severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) was detectable in aerosols for up to three hours, up to four hours on copper, up to 24 hours on cardboard and up to two to three days on plastic and stainless steel“, so why is this news from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases not globally released by the media? How many cardboard boxes did you handle, how many stainless steel or plastic on public transport did you touch in the last day as the people around you were coughing and sneezing? Are you still off the mind that this is a standard flu? How many viruses can set themselves in that environment?

It becomes even more apprehendable when we see “The study information was widely shared during the past two weeks after the researchers placed the contents on a preprint server to quickly share their data with colleagues” all whilst the media is to a larger extent not informing you, it makes no sense, on the other hand, every dead person implies a cheaper house and a better paying job for me, so let the media continue (if it kills me I will not worry about the other two elements).

There is also the Washington Post who gives us ‘Coronavirus looks different in kids than in adults‘ (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/03/17/coronavirus-looks-different-kids-than-adults/). As such we see the quote “A paper released this week in the journal Pediatrics, based on 2,143 young people in China, provides the most extensive evidence on the spread of the virus in children, and there is bad news and good news. The study provides confirmation that coronavirus infections are in fact generally less severe in kids, with more than 90 percent having mild to moderate disease or even being asymptomatic. But it contains worrisome information about one subset — infants — and suggests that children may be a critical factor in the disease’s rapid spread.” In this we see the first optional clue on the issue on how the disease has a skewness, even as the kids will recover, they are implied to be a spreader of the disease as well, and I still believe that those cured are still spreaders as well, it does give a much larger rise to the numbers, but not completely, the kids and surfaces as a factor might cover and even overlap the numbers we see, yet the media keeps us little or not informed on the matter (with a small amount of exceptions).

As such we need to consider that bosses are panicking all over the world, as we see that the number of cases will surpass 400,000 cases by the end of this month, some can rejoice on the optionally given fact that 16,000 jobs become optionally vacant all over the world and as the jobs are in tech and high tech, we will see them jump for staff members. I actually got an invite yesterday with “We can discuss which employers are hiring during the Coronavirus outbreak“, there is always a dollar to be made by someone. Is there anyone in denial out there?

In all this the proven points are still outranked by the things we do not know and we cannot blame anyone for that, as the disease is out there, it seems to be largely driven by unknown factors and as each test and trial takes time, we will be in unknown surroundings for some time to come, the only thing we can do is not to give in to our fears, especially as fear drives useless acts. The fact that a supermarket giant like Woolworths (Coles too) gives us “Woolworths will no longer provide refunds for toilet paper, tissues and paper towels if customers simply change their minds” is grounds for a much larger stage and as the people now slowly realise that they set their budget to spend 40% on these items as well as rice and pasta, we will see the need for cookbooks on pasta and rice menus as that self-austerity driven diet gets to be tedious after day 5, some people have close to a month of pasta and rice in the house, so there. 

Even now, we see the reaction regarding ‘outbreak reaches every US state‘, all whilst we are forgetting that the US is one US, the spread through other means is driving it across state borders, in this we also get ‘Australia says measures could last six months‘, yet which measures? All of them, the ones that work, the ones that are based on fear? So whilst Steven Mnuchin decided to speak (7 minutes ago), we see “U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin warned Republican senators on Tuesday that failure to act on a proposed coronavirus rescue package could lead to U.S. unemployment as high as 20% and lasting economic damage” in this my point of view is ‘Really?‘, non actions will propogate the disease, more deaths, less unemployed and housing prices down, is that a bad thing? It is possible that Steven forgot that there is a difference between unemployed, UN employed and dead. 

I merely wonder, but that is not for me to say, is it?

 

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February 24, 2020 · 15:18

Change the question

If the answer does not fit the situation, change the question. It is one one of the oldest concepts in political sciences and Microsoft needs to hold onto that thought. Even as we saw a little over two weeks ago ‘Xbox exec insists that Microsoft is no longer competing with Sony and Nintendo‘, we see the setting, but we forget that the Xbox One, the most powerful gaming system was surpassed by the PS4 in the early beginning and has been surpassed by the weakest gaming system (Nintendo Switch) as well. So as Microsoft people are making some claim of “we see Amazon and Google as the main competitors going forward“, they are leaving out that Google Stadia has the option of beating Microsoft as well, leaving Microsoft in 5th of 6 positions. And as I see it, there is no guarantee that Apple will remain in 6th position, implying that in the console war, Microsoft will end up being the massive loser of the lot. 

Reasons (as I believe them to be)

I believe that stupidity (read: non-comprehension), deafness (the lack of listening to gamers) and the short sighted Azure stage all interfered with the Xbox. And that is before people realise that bullying people to go online as well as having a 1TB system and the lacking the options for gamers to replace the drive without nullifying the warranty. All solutions that Sony adhered to in a much earlier stage, after which the brilliant execution by Nintendo (with their Switch) pushed the console to third position, two elements that could have been fixed upfront in 2012, is now the massive anchor chain around the neck of Microsoft games and I believe that it was the board of Microsoft that pushed stupidity, not Phil Spencer, issues that could have been fixed in the month of release never was and now the people are a little fed up with Microsoft and left for happier shores. More importantly, Sony and Nintendo are actually not rivals, they both have packages of software that are not competing, in a more drastic light, the group that has the larger console next to the docking station of the Nintendo Switch is growing fast.

And in all this, the PS5 is coming (as well as the new Microsoft console) leaving Microsoft behind even further, even as some might bite towards the hype creation video’s, there are a lot of gamers that are not willing to trust Microsoft anymore, implying that Microsoft is heading for even more news of dread on a large scale. It is still too early to tell, yet the video’s we see are still part of the hype creation whilst essential facts are left out. For example (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Nl9Aj8N7ew) we see the hype of SSD, yet the size and size options are left out of the equation, all whilst the hype is hiding behind all those lovely downloads, it is interesting how size (which actually matters here) is left untouched. Whilst we see ray tracing and 4K, everyone is forgetting that this implies the need of 50Gb-100Gb per game extra. for example Fallout 4 required 100GB install sizes as a minimum in 4K, so with a 1TB drive it will only hold 8 games like that, or the essential need to reinstall games, especially in RPG, size will be an issue, yet not only that Gears of War 4, for example, required a chunk the size of 103GB so count your chooks and smoke those! And that is before you consider the storage that 8K gaming takes. 

This is merely one source, yet the amount of sources (including Microsoft) is vague on the space available, they give “NVMe SSD (we’ve heard read speeds of anywhere up to 2GB/s)“, just the size of their bloody drive is avoided as much as possible by everyone. Even at this stage, several sources make the claim that the PS5 will have 2TB (which is not enough) yet in the past we could upgrade that drive to our content without invalidating the warranty, and at present you can get 4TB for $650. Yes, I understand that not everyone needs that and that is fine, there are however plenty of gamers who want to upgrade and as the price is now $650, there will be every indication that this price within the first year will diminish by a lot (as it always does), the idea of 4K gaming without space restrictions is a lot more realistic in 4TB than in what the Xbox has done so far (1TB), as such the issues will become cumbersome sooner, not later. 

Microsoft never learned that lesson, all whilst Sony told the users what the needs were and they could upgrade at their own leisure. Microsoft did not see a reason to offer that, because you could buy a second drive, which means more stress on the machine, another cable and more devices, whilst most people merely wanted one device.

The Nintendo (Sony too) never had the demanded requirement to be online, you could sync when you were online and that was a gift to many, Xbox demanded to be online with their little issues (like achievements). So, whilst the Tech Insider gave us last week ‘The price of the PlayStation 5 may top $450, and that could cost Sony the next major battle with Xbox in the console wars‘, I personally have a hard time believing that this is the actual case, the drawbacks that Microsoft pushes for and the benefits that the PS5 give you leave us with the reality that $450 (perhaps $499) is not the worst feeling for all the benefits that Sony offers. 

It is in that same article that offers “More than just a high price, the history of video game console pricing dictates that charging over $US400 for a new game console is likely to result in a sales flop.” Really? When was that? Perhaps you all forget about the Xbox 360, I paid $699 for that one and it was a hell of a lot more successful than the Xbox One ever was, almost 100% more successful. And that was with the 20Gb drive, the 120Gb drive was an additional $119, an amount I was happy spending, giving me all that storage space. The PS3 was initially $599, and that was before I replaced the 60GB for a 300GB solution ($79 extra), Yet, we now need more storage, but that is the consequence of resolution, and that is all before we consider the offline issue. You see in many places internet is a drag, not all the customers of a console live in London or New York, as such there are places where the broadband is an issue (the places are more and more rare nowadays), yet when we consider that the EU gave Belgium (the entire nation) a fine because its internet was too slow, how much fun will streaming and downloading of games bring? And they are not alone (but the group is not that big either), yet these are all issues that Microsoft does not seem to ‘care’ about, they still bully (as I personally see it) people to be online. Good luck!

The Dutch give us that around 180.000 houses will get 9 MB.sec maximum, so there is that, and I believe that there is a group that is between that and the 30MB/sec minimum of streaming, and that is before we consider the additional issues of going online and updating your profile or download patches. Or perhaps you want to consider “Many rural areas of France have slow and unreliable internet connections” and lets not forget that these are the better places in Europe to be in. We still avoid Germany and a few other places, so in all, there is a group of Europeans that are not regarded as gaming material by the Microsoft standards, they can be happy with the other two players, as such they will not be unhappy, but it shows just how far behind Microsoft is, they could have fixed their issues a long time ago and for them issues will be harder soon enough.

So as we change the question from the price of a console (‘Xbox Series X Vs. PlayStation 5: Microsoft Is Still Holding A Huge Wild Card‘ source: Forbes), to who will have the infrastructure to enjoy their console, Microsoft is not doing that great at present. So even as Forbes gives us: “Sony has been struggling to get its build price for the PlayStation 5 below $450“, all whilst we see that the PS4 Pro 1TB (on Amazon is $319), whilst the launch date was set to $399, in a stage where we now see a new console, well over twice as powerful with an SSD drive and a few other issues, in that setting $500 is not the weirdest price and even as Microsoft beats that, the downside that the issues that Microsoft has not fixed is still dragging their gamers down (as I personally see it).

As I see it, Sony has over time done what Microsoft seems to refuse: ‘How can I include the most gamers towards our Sony console‘, they achieved this to a much larger degree by allowing for larger drives (at the need of the gamer) and set the policy towards off-line gaming without having to mess up achievements or other needs, Microsoft never properly fixed it, all whilst the Xbox 360 had that in perfect working order (like the Playstation then). So whilst Microsoft needs to consider a switch (pun intended) from the board of director choice of console towards a gamers need for a console, we see that their need to change is massive and at present missing, they are much more in the need of some hype creation whilst the gamers miss out too much and that is not including the lack of exclusive console games.

No matter how we slice it, the Sony consoles have an advantage and Microsoft has too much to catch up on, we will see how 2020 ends and as both systems gain traction over 2021, we will see who ends up being the winner, my money is on PS5, price difference or not, when the first issue hits the Xbox Two (or Scarlett), the people will start running towards the Sony solution fast and hard, there will always be those who worship the Xbox and that is fine, dedication is part of the gamer credo and as such there will be enough people going for the Xbox Two, yet the population of the Sony system is well over twice as large, with backward compatibility on both systems, the numbers on the Sony side will unlikely be the one dwindling down, the fact that the PS4 games work and they will now work in 4K mode, will imply that there will be a dozen games that will be replayed under those conditions. The idea of my replaying my Fallout 4, God of War 4, Skyrim, Horizon Zero Dawn and several others can now be admired in 4K is appealing. Yes, I know that the Pro and the Xbox One X had these options, yet buying a new console and a 4K TV was not in the cards, in addition, I was really happy with my PS4 original edition, now I will (have to) upgrade both, especially as I can now get a 4K TV for well under $400, which is a lot cheaper than it was in 2016 (almost 1/3rd the price), so well worth the change.

When we change the question we can look at the old axiom, we can have something cheap, fast or better, but we can only select 2 of the 3, I believe that in gaming, most people will select fast and better quality and accept the price that comes with it, because when the numbers pan out, I will have used my PS4 for almost 7 years and in all 7 years without any issues at all (one small one in the very beginning), only now 7 years later am I in a more essential need to upgrade my 2TB drive, that is a very good run (and deleting 1-5 games makes sense in this day and age). All whilst I had that issue on and off with the Xbox One since I had it past 2 years, so as such the PS4 was efficient and banked on my needs, other systems should take a lesson from that.

Cheap system – Expensive system

Fast system – Slow system

Good Quality – Bad Quality

What will be your needs? And in the end, will the two choices you make hinder or help you, in finality, how will you feel when the choice you made hit you in a less nice way?

When I look at those questions, I am left with the personal conviction that Sony wins, which is actually a large issue when you compare the PS3 and the Xbox360, Microsoft gave up the benefit that they had and they only got surpassed near the next gen console release dates, an advantage they lost completely in one generation of console, we seem to forget that. Which is weird because even today, the Xbox 360 is still played by some and the games have always been decently amazing, even by today’s standard in gaming (not referring to resolution). It took Sony nearly everything to keep up with the Xbox360, a field they need not worry about with the nextgen systems and optionally even less with what comes.

Now Microsoft needs to wonder if they can get close to the Nintendo Switch, an issue that the PS5 is less likely to have, that is how I see it and whilst Microsoft hides behind ‘Xbox exec insists that Microsoft is no longer competing with Sony and Nintendo‘, all whilst the reasoning should be how can we become part of the larger population again, we see the optional stage where Microsoft is no longer worthy of real consideration, a sad day for gamers indeed.

 

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February 18, 2020 · 14:33

Some small bits

We all see them, we all face them and even as there is no overwhelming story out there, I think it was time to set up a look at the small bits, the parts I have already given view to and now I am adding to them. 

Huawei

The first part is ‘Huawei row: Trump chief of staff to meet Dominic Cummings‘, here we see another media driven attempt to ban Huawei from the UK, the UK is now as much a bitch as the Australian government. So far the US has not given any evidence that the Huawei hardware can be used to spy on people by the Chinese government, so far the US is not even sending that person with a really bad haircut, so that he could compare barbers with Boris Johnson, no he is sending his acting White House chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney. Even after Richard Grenell gives us “to make clear that any nation who chooses to use an untrustworthy 5G vendor will jeopardize our ability to share intelligence and information at the highest level“, in my response ‘what intelligence?’ at present the CIA is regarded as one of the least trustworthy intelligence providers, we could argue that Facebook has better intelligence than the CIA does (hurts doesn’t it?)

Now, if the US had provided intelligence on Huawei several Cyber experts would nitpick that intel, yet the setting is out there, there is no evidence whatsoever, the US is fearing for its life and its economy. The backdraft is also there, any nation will get an advantage over whatever paperback spinal cord is supporting the US without evidence. All because the US cannot control its national corporations, we all must pay.

We can treat “A group of backbench Conservatives also wants Johnson to commit to remove all Huawei kit from British phone networks over time” with optional disgust as well, even as there is no stage set on ‘over time‘, as I personally see it these acts are profit driven, not national security driven, even as some will make a claim in that direction. 

Jeff Bezos

You know the man, the intelligent man with the really long forehead (read: bald), was hacked, it happened in 2018 and the media keeps on blaming the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, yet there is no evidence. In light of all that had happened, the idea that any Crown Prince is THAT hands on with an issue is overlooked on several levels. The FTI report reads like a joke and personally, if Mr. Bezos pays THAT much for what I personally see as trash, than I have optionally 4 IP stages, one unfinished book and over a 1000 articles for same for the mere price of $50,000,000 post taxation (50% for the IP and the rest is a gimmick), you see at least I am willing to say that upfront. In addition, his own paper gives us on January 28th “Indeed, in October 2018, Michael Sanchez and AMI entered into a nondisclosure agreement “concerning certain information, photographs and text messages documenting an affair between Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez,” according to three people who have reviewed the agreement. The existence of the contract was first reported by the New York Times. One of those people also confirmed a Wall Street Journal report that federal prosecutors who are investigating whether the Enquirer tried to extort Bezos have reviewed the text messages that Lauren Sanchez allegedly gave to her brother and that he then provided to the tabloid.” as I personally see it several parties owe Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud a few apologies and all kinds of Saudi catering hoping that it will appease his royal highness. On a personal note, I reckon he will be jealous of my yacht by the CRN ship wharves, so as we see the wealth of Jeff Bezos, he might just want to say ‘Sorry!’ to his royal highness and spend 0.5% of his wealth to appease that rather rich party with a yacht (so that mine will remain optionally safe, when it is completed). And no matter how it all get spinned, the UN report needs to be nitpicked and rather quickly, too many questions remain and even as we see that a person with knowledge of the investigation who was not authorized to speak publicly about its progress, or as the Washington Post is skating around the trandsetting term ‘anonymous source‘, which would place them on the same scale as the Enquirer, they give us “It’s possible that the Saudis hacked Bezos’s phone and Michael Sanchez independently got the photos from his sister and some people were trying to get paid and some people were trying to get Bezos,” all whilst there is no actual evidence that the hacker was Saudi, I did away with that quite nicely in ‘6 Simple questions‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/02/03/6-simple-questions/), whilst the 6th question ‘Why on earth is the UN involved in an alleged Criminal investigation where so much information is missing?‘ was never answered by any media EVER! (OK, as far as I know).

Yet there is a reason why we bring this all, it is seen (at https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/facebook-says-apple-is-to-blame-for-hacking-of-jeff-bezos-phone.html) where we get introduced to ‘Facebook Says Apple Is to Blame for the Hacking of Jeff Bezos’s Phone‘, with the optional part “Nick Clegg, said that the hacking of Jeff Bezos’s phone wasn’t the fault of WhatsApp, pointing instead to the Apple iOS that powers the iPhone X Bezos was using. Or, at least, that’s presumably what he was trying to say, though his answer when asked by the BBC was largely incomprehensible“, as well as “he argued, “It sounds like something on the, you know, what they call the operate, operated on the phone itself.” To be clear, he didn’t specifically mention Apple by name, however it had been previously known that Bezos was using an iPhone X at the time he was hacked“, I find it debatable, but it takes the court away from the Saudi Crown Prince and a few others, if that hack is not one that NSO Group’s Pegasus or Hacking Team’s Galileo uses, then we have a much larger issue, one that is not identified and even as it takes the Saudi players off the board, it does not take the issue away. The NSO group has loudly denied the entire issue and this gives them the option to do that, so far the FTI report is too shabby, it does not seem to warrant or deny the optional allegations. So as we see: “someone actually took advantage of a vulnerability that WhatsApp itself has already acknowledged was an issue and issued a fix. It’s even more confusing that he attempted to pass the blame to Apple“, I personally feel in agreement with the writer, the entire WhatsApp feels like to comfortable solution, yet that vulnerability was out in the open and there is still no evidence that it was done by Saudi hands, even now, the list of perpetrators is growing, pushing the optionally (and alleged) Saudi players to the bottom of that list. I would advise Brainy Smurf Jeff Bezos that he pays up as fast as possible (and sizeable) before it becomes a behemoth of an issue that a mere sorry and a box of chocolates will not solve. 

Yemen

You might have heard of that place, apparently there are a few humanitarian issues playing and even as we now see ‘UN Condemns ‘Shocking’ and ‘Terrible’ US-Backed Saudi Coalition Bombing That Killed 31 Yemeni Civilians‘, we are given “Those who continue to sell arms to the warring parties must realize that by supplying weapons for this war, they contribute to making atrocities like today’s all too common“, yet the EU and the US are happy that this all continues. My evidence? Well consider that we see today ‘The EU has agreed to deploy warships to stop the flow of weapons into Libya‘, all whilst a similar action in Yemen would have diminished the dangers over two years ago, so how many ships had the EU to set up a blockade to stop weapons going into Yemen? As far as I can tell, there is an unwritten consensus to give as much freedom to Iran as possible. I gave that part in ‘Media, call it as it is!‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/11/03/media-call-it-as-it-is/) almost 18 months ago, so why exactly is Yemen not an issue and Libya is? It is oil and everyone is dancing around the stage hoping for a barrel full of the substance. Yet the Yemeni don’t matter, if you doubt that you merely have to read the articles, all about complaints and condemning, not about action packed events, are they? And in all this Xavier Joubert, director of aid group Save the Children Yemen is equally to blame, does he give the stage in a proper setting? Does he give any information on the actions that Houthi forces have been eager to take forward (including those on children)? Nope! So when we see “after Houthi rebels claimed to have shot down a Saudi Tornado jet Friday in Al-Jawf province“, as well as ““possibility of collateral damage”—a common euphemism for civilian deaths“, yet how many enemy troops were there? that part is not given as it takes the power away from their own story, yet the story they give us is out of whack. So whilst people like Lise Grande come up with “it’s a tragedy and it’s unjustified“, all whilst for well over two years a blockade could have optionally limited the damage that could have occurred, yet no one is willing to skate that track, are they?

All whilst we see (at https://www.timesofisrael.com/pompeo-calls-for-action-against-iran-after-us-navy-seizes-weapons-sent-to-yemen/) ‘Pompeo calls for action against Iran after US Navy seizes weapons sent to Yemen‘, a stage that was set this week, we see the laughingly entertaining ‘World’s silence has emboldened Saudi-led war crimes in Yemen: Iran‘, all whilst we see Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi giving a speech on what he calls War Crimes, at the same stage where they send hundreds of missiles into Yemen, there is only so much hypocrisy I can stomach and Iran is handing us way too much. So whilst the Islamic Republic of Iran continues to defy the UN Security Council, we need to start being honest about the Yemen situation, the EU does not care about Yemen, it has nothing to offer, yet the US has on this occasion stopped one of several Iranian supply ships. I wonder how many were missed, the ongoing war clearly gives rise to the fact that this war will not be over soon and as such more civilians will die, it is the clear consequence of a war.

These are three of the small bits that I am adding today, there have been a whole range of issues I touched on in the last few days, yet these small bits are important parts to other information I gave out. 

Have a great day, see you all tomorrow

 

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