Tag Archives: Facebook

July 19, 2024 · 19:18

A second visit

Well, it might have been a third time that I take a view towards an altered IP. This isn’t mine, it’s actually the property of Microsoft. The first game (Mass Effect) was released in 2007 and Mass Effect 2 was released in 2010. Mass Effect 2 is still regarded by many (and me) as one of the greatest tactical shooters. Mass Effect 3 is good, but it also gave us the greatest multi player shooters ever made. These two elements are the grounds of the massive fanbase of the series. 

The present we got at the launch party is still regarded by me as the coolest ever (see above), all the guests got one with themselves as the SPECTRE agent. 

At the end of game 3 there were a lot of complaints. I think that one was shoddy to some effect and it should have been set better, but the story was awesome. There were 4 endings (I never found the 4th, but I saw it on YouTube). And whilst going into this I accidentally found out another part which I will illuminate soon enough. It seems that Facebook is catering to Microsoft with accusations of spam. But I have my response for Facebook ready. Anyway back to the story. 

The new setting I created was set on the citadel. It happens after the slaughter starts and before Shepard makes its entry. In these weeks (optionally months) we are on the citadel. It has the familiar places (Embassy module and the stages from Mass Effect 2, yet there are a few hundred more places. This is a stealth game.

The story is that an engineer had smuggled his family on board, as such it he/she had a hiding place. As the slaughter (read: ascendancy) continues, this engineer needs to sneak its way around. The first thing that needs to be done is to secure water and sustenance. Also oxygen is needed (for the long haul).

Every place has three versions. The dirty stage (with bodies), the cleaning stage (with keepers) and the clean stage. They all have their own issues. 

One of the stages is to secure personnel manifests (with local celebrity locations), locations of interest and local artefacts. 

The races are Asari, Drell, Elcor, Hanar, Humans, Keepers, Salarians, Turians, Volus, Batarians, Geth, Krogan, Quarians, Vorcha, Yahg. The races in bold are the selectable races. In the citadel the Batarians, Quarians, Vorcha and Yahg have no embassy. As such they are the harder species to play. The Quarians (when found) will have information on the Geth. The Turians have data on Vorcha and Yahg and so on. As the game progresses once you have the data, you will face a setting where you have to install monitors all over the station to record what is happening as well as to set alarms so you can sneak your way around the station. You need to get a electronic shroud (a sort of digital cloak), enhance your hiding place as well as creating a few others where you can heal and rest in safety. In normal play the game will ignore several issues, but in hard more it will ‘see’ recording devices and start a hunt for you. Once this starts, you will have to set up a decoy to reset the alarm, the hiding place will be lost forever. 

To set this up it is more then a simple matter. The keepers are thorough in cleaning, as such it will be important to remain invisible. The largest issue I see isn’t merely locations, This place is huge. 

As you can see it is quite big. One idea is to set the stage by race (and most of the game on one of the platforms. It requires one huge LLM with deeper machine learning to create the levels. As I see it, per race you will need up to a dozen buildings (skyscrapers) to cover essential needs for the game. You will have to get the hardware you require for the tasks. The shopping district (ME2) should give you a camera and digital storage. No weapons in this game, however an idea comes to mind to get something like a mining laser (to cut through matter) and tools to open other areas.

Although the game seems straight forward. The idea came to me that the maker optionally have loads of other lore and concept art that they never used in the game. There would be use for them here. Also, other races would have data on humans like the illusive man, Shepard and so on. 

The larger setting I see is how to create a sphere of thrill and suspense that makes a stealth game, a stealth game. You see in ‘cheaper’ stealth games you carry everything making you a bulkier version of you with a backpack 15 times the size of you. So it is important to set the ‘sneak factor’ to find upgrades and better hardware to do the job. The shopping district will have a version one or two of an essential tool, but better versions need to be found. In addition to that, to set the tools to a random location requires a more spiffy setting. Or as they say, to be placed in ulterior locations where we have 1000 places it could be, but with references on items in logs (embassy and security). Then there is the idea of replayability. So as the citadel has hundreds of buildings per pillar, the stage comes that in a second game (with the same race) you will get confronted with different buildings. Similar but not identical, which gives new vibes to the game.

So, whilst we all see what Microsoft is up to with more rehashing the same idea. I took one look at a great game and created (optional) new IP in a day. This is why I see Microsoft as an agent of mediocrity. Now I will accept that this is not enough. More is needed to make this a great game, but I got them this in under a day (it is basically Microsoft IP). So feel free to to wonder what Microsoft is blundering around. If I can get this done in under a day, what are they seeking to rehash the old days? Don’t get me wrong I played Age of Mythology when it released in 2002 and it is a great game, optionally to play again. But considering all the IP they have (or should have) this is not enough. Lets face it they have GREAT IP. The Flight Simulator (2020) has truly become a great game (it was always great). It is a niche market, but for those into flight simulators it is the bees knees. Bioware had many great games. My personal favourite in D&D (Neverwinter nights, 2002) is still one of the greatest fantasy games ever. Both Dragon Age and Jade empires (not my favourites) are good games, where are they now? The problem is that some games need their scope readjusted. To coin an idea, the Multiplayer version of Mass Effect 3 could have been launched on the Xbox series X as a free to play game on that console. And free to play is important is important. They can still offer the loot boxes in the same way they did. For points fought over, or for a few dollars. And there is a market. This game is still played after 12 years. The is one hell of an achievement for a game released in 2012. So why didn’t Microsoft act? I got to the top 1% of players in 2013, there were over 1.2 million players at that point. Considering that the PS5 outsells the Xbox-X by 5:1 I would think that they squandered their markets. And this is a game that can flock hundreds of thousands to the Xbox (in addition to any other system), and no one thought this was a good idea?

As I personally see it Phil Spencer was all about capturing the player base (read: legally stealing), yet the the idea of bolstering its player base by offering playability was seemingly lost to him. And his hard times are yet to come. As I see it I might not have another option but to hand my IP to Tencent technologies. Partially this idea comes as Facebook removed my previous post under the fake guise of spam, which was not the case. The idea has merit as within two years Facebook would lose millions of advertisers. Troll farms create a lot of traffic, but not a lot of commerce, merely fake locations to advertise to, when retailers figure that part out, they will find another place to go to and there is my solution. I saw this three years ago, Whilst everyone was diving for digital dollars any way they could. I saw that the power of it all relies on engagement. And a troll farm only ‘seemingly’ engages. True engagement is seen elsewhere. That is the achilles heel of Facebook and the strength of Amazon (Tencent optionally too). So as I see it Microsoft lost out two times. Didn’t you wonder why Chrome has a market share of 65% and Edge a mere 5%? They aren’t looking in the wrong direction, they aren’t looking in the proper place to begin with. And I added my gaming idea as optional evidence part N. 

A setting overlooked due to the principle of spin. So whilst Microsoft relies on ‘The most powerful console in the world’, Sony and Nintendo are relying on the factor of fun and play and they are winning This year Nintendo had 123,000,000 players. Sony has 118,000,000 players. Now compare that with Microsoft and their 27.7 million consoles. And Tencent technologies is knocking at the door taking optionally more market share away from Microsoft. That is how bad it will get and I saw this 3 years ago. This is why I tried to get the solution to Kingdom Holding (so far no luck). In this environment Al Waleed bin Talal Al Saud could score big, optionally the largest gain they ever had (speculative thinking by me). 

My weekend has stated, in Vancouver the day is only starting. Enjoy!

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December 11, 2023 · 12:32

Tomes

This is a word that has held a magical sway on me since 2000. It was I reckon the first time the word struck a chord with me. You see, there are two ‘version’ for the word. The first is “a large, heavy book”, nice, but as I personally see it inaccurate. The second version is “Tome is often used to refer to a scholarly book that is unusually important” and this is the version I am partial and taken to. You see, Tomes can be used in a few directions and this morning I considered a second direction. You see, my new IP is all about traction. I see (and hear) the giggles and the statements of my delusion. Yet when you consider the application of traction consider something like YouTube. It was launched on February 14th, 2005 (yes, Valentines day) and it went from a few million to 2.5 billion monthly users. It was bought for $1.65 billion. Now it annually makes $29.2 billion. It starts with traction and all the big wigs laughing at what I proclaim forgot about traction. When this sets off (still hopeful that Amazon, Tencent Holding or Kingdom Holding buys it) they get more than the start that leads to 50 million users. It has the option to take away close to 10% from Microsoft and Facebook in the early days. By the way, Apple is still an option too. Now consider that Microsoft just spend close to $100,000,000,000,000 and they lose 10% of their population, how much hardship will they face at that point. I heard all the howling, but consider that they made a swing and a miss five times over, now consider that Facebook is about to get hit in similar ways. Now, Facebook will shrug this off, they have no issues. But it starts with traction and that was what my solution offered. Traction to grow a new business and now based on something new, some hype. It was based on sound practices all the other runners forgot about and now I have the opportunity to walk in sit in the centre of the trade hall stating “We are open for business”. When the betrayed people get another option, what do you think they will do? They will not switch to me, but they will add me on their side and over time traction becomes a serious setting of numbers and that is when traction becomes its own perpetually driven engine where the people, those who the big wigs forgot about curt their losses with the other players. You see presentations only go so far and now a new setting opens up and within a few years that engine will become a power player. It will not surpass TikTok or YouTube. It was never meant to do so, but these three players losing around 10% is a different setting. I made the ‘boast’ that in stage two it could grow from 5 to around 20 billion, now consider $9.4 + $116.8 + $198.3 (in billions), and beyond its own abilities it gets an additional $32.4 billion, surpassing my phase two prediction by 60% that is what traction will do and as I stated at first Microsoft is clueless on what is about to happen and now with the new Tomes setting that engine will become even more powerful and it got there by remembering the actual users of a system, not the advertisers. And in all this there are several income sources that are not considered at present and when this becomes a reality, I wonder how many sniffling little sales shits come to a limelight stating that they were cheated and that it is all so unfair. I merely have to point at my blog and show their inactivity for well over three years and howl laughs of deriving laughter whilst doing so (sorry, Monty Python).

In Robocop (1987) the character played by Kurtwood Smith states “Good business is where you find it” and he was right, too bad the bigwigs who wanted to be everywhere all forgot that lesson. It was a simple enough lesson not to forget.

What a lovely Monday this is.

 

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October 24, 2023 · 01:23

Digital coins anywhere?

Two articles came to my attention, all about the same subject. The first one was from the BBC (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67161638) where we see ‘Top crypto firms named in $1bn fraud lawsuit’ this article includes the two favourite in the Facebook (or META) realm. They are Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. There we see the accusations by New York attorney Letitia James who gives us “Gemini, a crypto exchange, had lied to customers about the risks of an investment account it offered, which paid high interest rates on crypto.” To be honest, I have yet to see any honest presentation of digital currency, but that is another discussion and we aren’t having that one today. It was the partial setting “Genesis, a crypto lender, and its parent company Digital Currency Group were also involved in the programme. It was halted last November, cutting off customer access to funds. That came shortly after the collapse of FTX, the cryptocurrency exchange run by Sam Bankman-Fried, who is now fighting fraud charges of his own. Genesis, which had loaned heavily to his companies, filed for bankruptcy a few months later.” You see, the term ‘heavily loaned’ is loaded. How much EXACTLY was loaned to Bankman-Fired? It is the stage of “In the lawsuit, prosecutors said Gemini was aware that Genesis had shaky financials from the start of the programme.” It implies that there was some under the table dealings between Genesis and Gemini. It doesn’t say so outright, but that is what I am picking up on this. So when we get to “Prosecutors said Genesis and DCG tried to hide the situation with financial manoeuvring and false reports, including to Gemini, while claiming publicly that its balance sheet was strong” we see a second cog in action. It is seen with “false reports, including to Gemini” if true enough it could allow Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss play the victim card. We get more emotion as w usually see in these kind of cases, but the chocolaty centre is there. It is when you consider the second article from Financial News London, who (at https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/goldman-sachs-crypto-firm-bitgo-dubai-hiring-expansion-20231023) gives us ‘Goldman Sachs-backed crypto firm BitGo eyes Dubai expansion’. They aren’t related, but when you consider the amount of issues that digital currency has, the stage changes. I reckon that neither Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss or Sam Bankman-Fried would accept extradition to the UAE if they get to be investigated for fraud or something as trivial as misplacing a few billion? So when we get to “The crypto firm, which is headquartered in the US, has applied for a Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority licence to operate in the Middle East’s key financial hub.” I tend to worry. You see, the moment things go pear shaped and they will, there will suddenly be a lot of tug and pull issues with getting extraditions being completed. These people (the three mentioned) will cry foul, will cry victim and they would not want to face Emirati courts. But that setting will come to full fruition when Goldman Sachs will have to face the music, so when we see “We do have some hiring to do in Dubai as well” I merely wonder if people like Mike Belshe have any clue what they are in for. When you see the FTX setting, the crazy setting that now involves Genesis and Gemini the entire setting is a disaster waiting to happen and no matter how many media will play orchestra for alleged criminals, there will be a larger play in motion and as such when the United Arab Emirates will demand the extradition of the board of directors of Goldman Sachs, how many will have left the firm hours before that request hits the tables of the Department of Justice in America (or London for that matter)? 

And when you consider that the US and the UAE do not have a formal written extradition treaty, we see why people want to skate on that ice rink, but until America can actually successfully prosecute these people I wonder if it is a good idea to allow this evolution to begin with. I don’t think that anyone in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is willing to hand over real created revenue to American cowboys in the setting of billion dollar frauds. There is a fool born every minute and the UAE people don’t strike me as fools. Personally I would never allow this to happen, or at least not until we see proper prosecution and a real extradition treaty in place, but that is just me and as always, I could be wrong.

Enjoy Monday. 

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September 25, 2023 · 06:13

A habit is an issue

Yes, that is true, a habit is an issue (when you are not a nun). Yet the first part of any issue is recognising this. And here the CBC comes into place (at https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/political-advertising-parties-meta-1.6972446) where we are given ‘Some parties have cut back on Meta advertising — but experts say it’s a hard habit to kick’. It is here that we are given “Federal political parties have diverged in their approaches to advertising on Facebook since legislation meant to support the news industry touched off a public brawl between the federal government and the social media giant.” This is fair and there is a lot more (read the article. Yet when we get to “For the real players here who are attempting to really influence voters on a mass scale with real budgets, they’ve just invested so much money into these platforms over the years, they’ve collected so much data, that starting from scratch with something else is not realistic” This might sound seem true, but the overall issue is set into different stages, it is set into an optional stage of imagination versus awareness, awareness versus perception and perception versus reality. Now we have always known that there is a gap between imagination and awareness and for teenagers that gap is massively larger (if in doubt ask Canadians Laura Vandervoort, Blake Lively  and Kim Cloutier). 

The problem is that this difference is massively large with advertisement too, not just photo models. The unspoken problem is that with advertisement that gap reaches a lot more groups, and the more groups are affected (age, gender, social status) the larger the problem becomes. Facebook might have over 3,000,000,000 active members each month, but how real are they?

This is not anti Facebook (or META), I have liked my Facebook for over 10 years, but I have limited use, as I see it is a dangerous place. I have had dozens of fake people trying to interact with me, I see attempt of interaction from places that I have never been to and I do not know anyone who has and for the most I use it to keep people from my past all over the planet informed. That list is dwindling down as over 30% is now dead. Time catches up with all of us. 

You see, the issue isn’t merely time, it is ‘they’ve collected so much data’ and in this data just for the sake of data ends up being a really bad joke. If I have a day of sifting through that mess, I will find all kind of data issues, data verification is no joke and it tends to show that ‘data investments’ tend to be a form of shifty sand and it will drown you. The setting of time is that EVERYTHING evolves, all data collections are based on a stage of hierarchical settings and they change, sometimes twice a decade. Facebook avoided that part and now the wrong people see that as gospel, but that is the most dangerous step of all, relying on the wrong people. In all this the media holder is also a stage we need to understand. Weirdly enough it was a Canadian who did just that. His name is Ryan Reynolds, you might not know him, he was an extra on the X-Files season 2 (I looked it up to be certain). He is into booze (Aviation gin) he likes his football (Wrexham) and he has his phone calls (Mint mobile).

He also sees that media has larger options and through that he is linked to MNTN (https://mountain.com/) as they call it themselves ‘The hardest working software in television’, you see, the stage of creating awareness is just that ‘creation of awareness’ and that is NEVER set to one channel. In that stage I mentioned earlier Imagination, Awareness, Perception and Reality. How much verification has been done. What methods of verification was used? I know, the META presentations are good and every data seeker is getting a hard on (read: boner) on the presented granularity. Yet in it in what some Google Ads people call impressions versus clicks. Not every person that got the impression will click and there is no realistic number to get that, not even a notion of one. Now you can live through impressions and that is OK. I will overlook 97% of all impressed onto me and forget it before I am half a page further. Sometimes I take notice but I do not click. So where do I fit? And I am merely one of many millions. Whatever table or chart I became part of is already incorrect and like me millions fit that bill, so how hard a habit is something to kick when the numbers do not add up?

So there is in the first an option to ‘return’ to television marketing and there are more options, but it does require a different view to data and perhaps the notion of returning to different data is not great and it will give nightmares to this who are faced with it. Yet, when others start questioning the data presented, the data in hand and demand verification. What will they say? META (or Facebook) says it is so? Did you become that much of a teenager overnight? You might want to give Kim Cloutier a call asking her feelings towards the teenage boy population, you might not like the answer, although you might see a reason to invest in tissues at that point. Advertisement goes with the times, we have seen that for almost a century, like Yellow pages, Facebook is facing hard times and they will get harder over the next 3 years, it is the consequence of evolution. Facebook has had a really good time, much better then most, but they either evolve (and meta is trying that too), or they end up fading like the yellow pages did in too many places.  

True data is the just capture of data of an evolving system in motion and it is not a 4K film, it is a snapshot of THAT moment, that is what data has always been. Thinking it is more is the danger, that is the dangerous event we all have to avoid. When someone tries to sell you a polaroid moment stating it could be a 4K scene of Laura Vandervoort and it is not film, but real, you are getting conned and you get what you deserve. An empty hand with data that has no meaning and at that point there will be no meaning, because there is no way to verify the data you have and that was the second trap. The second trap was always verification. Did you really think that the Nigerian prince is real? In march we saw that a record figure of approximately 2.2 billion fake profiles were removed from Facebook. Now, were they all removed from the very moment of creation, or were they found to be fake? If the second is true, how many data tables are they inhabiting? Now consider that a place like Nigeria (just an example) has 215 million people. Do they all have internet? So really, where were these 2,200,000,000 from? Verification is an ugly business that has been pushed to the background where it can be ignored. Kicking a habit starts by knowing you have a problem.

Enjoy the new week.

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August 15, 2023 · 19:04

When the marketshare is murder

That is the setting and at first I would not really believe it. It sounded correct, but to be honest. I did not think that a place like Microsoft would intentionally target victims, but then there was a second source, the Guardian no less and that’s hen the disgust set in.

You see we know advertisements, we know advertisers, but for a system like Xandr to intentionally target people with gambling problems is a new low, even for Microsoft. This is what the article (at https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/aug/15/tab-gamblers-betting-australia-targeted-microsoft-xandr-advertising-database) gives us. The article heads the accusation with ‘‘Heavy TAB gamblers’ among groups targeted by online advertising database’, there we are told “The dataset of 650,000 international “audience segments” was discovered on the website of Microsoft’s advertising technology platform Xandr by Wolfie Christl, a privacy researcher at Cracked Labs. It listed dozens of data providers looking to offer advertisers the ability to reach certain types of people online”, so not only does the law seem unable to deal with drug pushers, now they are enabling a place like Microsoft to hit the internet by ‘gamble pushing’ victims of this event. As such we get “Of the more than 40 categories identified as related to Australian gamblers, the majority were split into subsets related to gambling interest, sport interest or a particular venue: “Gambling at Pub / Club”, “Spring Carnival Punters” and “Online Gaming – NRL”, for example”. I think it gives a new meaning to the slogan “Long may we play”, perhaps it should be “long may we exploit the gamer”, even though gamer is a stretch, the fact that I have seen scores of these advertising on on Apple, my thought might not be too far away from the reality that people face. Then we go into the unknown with “Everything from our location to our purchase history are data points that can be packaged and used to serve advertising, often through the creation of profiles based on assumptions about our demographics or potential interests. But we know remarkably little about how the ecosystem works.” So not only were we served all kinds of BS against Facebook and Google Ads. These same BS servers have no idea what Microsoft with its Xandr is up to? How is that for slow minded investigations? 

Even the excuse was ‘outdated’ and moronic. What we get is “Microsoft said in a statement to Guardian Australia that the document was inadvertently published on its website and was outdated. The spokesperson said Xandr’s data privacy practices were regularly evaluated “to ensure compliance with applicable data protection laws”.” The words inadvertently and outdated are stop words into nothing. The fact that this data existed was wrong to begin with, they were going after a marketshare, the desperate (as I see Microsoft) are so hungry for revenue that they are willing to look the other way in too many cases. I believe it was 10 years ago when I wrote an article with data that Microsoft was uploading xbox data in excess of 20GB in a month. So, why was that? It was also on dates when I never touched a multiplayer game, I checked the data and the amounts and they did not add up. Was that to feed Xandr? Was that to feed other needs? So what would have happened when Microsoft got to complete the Activision Blizzard deal? How much data would Microsoft get access to? I wonder how many people took a hard look at that, because in March that was 368 million gamers and all that data would be going somewhere, would it not? It might be nice for Activision, but I have some hardcore reservations when Microsoft gets involved. And now that we see the accusations by the Guardian, the show changes. The fact that Microsoft would allow to hammer the people with a weakness to gambling makes me wonder how they are getting the other $198.3 billion in 2022 with 6.8% more in 2023. So how many victims did Microsoft approach? All questions, but there is a downside there, the questions should not even exist and that it the disgusting part of this setting. Until today I never thought Microsoft could sink that low, but there is space to think they could do worse and that is an unsettling stage. So where are these high and mighty senators now? They were all willing to grill Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg. Where are they now? Does Satya Nadella have too many friends in the senate? Is that why they think they could avoid this? Inadvertently is not an excuse, outdated is no excuse, that dataset should never have existed in the first place and that is now the larger question. Why was that dataset created in the first place. One source gives us “Xandr is used by 0.8% of all the websites whose advertising network we know”, yet what we need to realise that there are (according to some) 1,986,154,062 websites, even at 0.4% that amounts to 7944616 websites and if even one of them is Yahoo or any media site, the damage gets to be astronomical. But I reckon those senators will gladly pass over those numbers, won’t they?

We get it, advertisements are part of our daily life, but what happens when victims are intentionally targeted on their soft spots? Did you think that through?

Enjoy the week and remember the next gambling advertisement could be a mere click away if you are being targeted by Xandr.

 

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August 13, 2023 · 20:56

Discrimination Legislation of America

This is not new and I have talked about it before (some time ago). This all started with a Tweet, not the most academic source, but it gave me somewhere to start.

Then I went out and looked for something more reliable and Forbes handed me (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/alangassman/2023/04/07/bidens-war-on-billionaires/) a story from April. 

The setting given is ‘Biden’s War On Billionaires’ (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/alangassman/2023/04/07/bidens-war-on-billionaires/) it is there we see “All American earners are subject to federal income taxes, but not everyone is subject to the same tax rate. While middle-class Americans pay, on average, roughly 14% in federal taxes annually, the wealthiest American families frequently use loopholes to avoid paying these tax rates.” This is one point of you and it is not an invalid one. Yet, in black letter law the US has tax laws. The law is what nations rely on and I agree it is not a fair one, but guess what. This is the fault of the US Congress and the US Senate. I have been talking about fair taxation for over 10 years. But the law is the law and there is an additional setting, the reason why people focus on Jeff Bezos, this is merely a first step. You see, that 20% will do nothing, America is in too deep, it is a sinking ship and the only thing these political people want to do is step out, so they can say not was not on their watch. It is too late for that. You see when that first law is passed, they might get a chunk of Bezos, but they will also get a chunk of Marc Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Marc Benioff, Larry Ellison and that list goes on. My issue is that this is discrimination, Ageism (age discrimination), economic discrimination is also discrimination. So they are going after the real innovators, real inventors and what America wants is not their money, it is their IP, or at least part of it and co-controlling it. You really want all these systems to be co-owned by the USA? Whatever freedom you thought you had would be gone. The US has been playing stupid since the Clinton Administration, it was the last time that the US had green numbers, since then the allotted a debt surpassing $31,000,000,000,000 dollars. The US is broke and they are now in it to delay for whatever time they can. The USA has become a sinking ship, they are patching holes by cutting pieces out of the same leaking hull, it never ends well. I have pleaded for tax law overhauls for well over a decade. I noticed the slippery slope close to 25 years ago and it impacts the EU and Japan as well. China is growing, China is becoming the next power player in its lonesome position. BRICS is becoming an inner circle with China in the lead position, the moment it sheds Russia, their geese will be count as well. BRICS went from the elite of 5, to a group with 40 nations interested, the lead of the US is gone. No one follows the broke person who can no longer feed itself and with the the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates added to the BRICS group the US has very little left, so now they are setting the stage to go after the billionaires and whatever more they can get. Yet in all this the numbers of what Apple (Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft too) paid in taxation. That would have ben the fair setting, but no one is really digging into this, are they? Fair taxation starts with the corporations that was the first step and that has been overdue for decades, the loopholes had to be dealt with and that never was, that is the real story. Jeff Bezos et al used the legal options like tax lawyers to avoid paying more taxation than was required. Tax avoidance means “the use of legal methods to minimise the amount of income tax owed by an individual or a business”, which is perfectly legal, tax evasion is not legally stated and a crime. This is the stage that brings in the players like PwC, they are one of the leading experts in tax avoidance, this is why a tax overhaul had been essential for about 25 years and now it is too late. The us has its opponents knocking on their gates (BRICS and their members). So we get another populist call for taxing the rich, but it is the tax system and IRS who needed to clean their houses, they never did. I am no friend of Jeff Bezos, I do not think I ever was but that man took an online bookshop and turned it into something huge, then he went against the biggest tech company of all and created an equal if not a better version with his Amazon Luna (against the Google Stadia) which made Google leave the field (leaving billions on the floor), it almost destroyed Microsoft with its Azure through Amazon AWS. Two clear wins by (an online) bookshop. That is what Jeff Bezos did. You have to respect that and the others made their own innovative futures. Now the US wants to go after these innovator? So what happens to the US when these places resettle in BRICS territory? Good luck with that idea. So consider the Discrimination Legislation of America, the DLA, which by pure coincidence (LOL) also means Disability Living Allowance. The pay setting that most Americans are about to get towards to. Consider that the DLA ranges from around $1,000 – $5,000 depending on the member’s pay grade and dependency status. You can normally only receive DLA once each fiscal year. So a maximum of $5000 a year to make ends meet. Where in America can you live of that? I am not certain there is any place that will make America liveable and when the larger corporations leave that will be close to all that is left, until the money is gone. That is the future and I tried to warn you all, not to bite the hand that was feeding the US (Saudi Arabia) and when the tech players leave billions on the floor, why is that? I will let you decide.

Weekend is entering the last hours of the day, it is at the end of Sunday in the East (New Zealand) and at its start in Western Canada, enjoy.

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August 3, 2023 · 13:43

Envoy of Coca Cola

This all started with a weird dream. In the dream I was meeting up with a marketing friend in Sweden who had become the new Marketing director of Coca Cola. He was bringing me gifts. There was a box with 12 bottle of cola (4 classic, 4 cherry and 4 vanilla cola). There was a second box with all kinds of swag, embroided polo shirts, T-Shirts, and the piece the resistance a metal model of the original cola delivery truck from 1927. We were talking in a seating corner in what I think was supposed to be his office. We were going over some details and then I woke up. I might have woken up, but the elements were already in my brain and I went to work.

The Envoy system
You see social media has become unreliable, even unpredictable at times. As such I came up with the envoy system. To see the larger frame, lets take a look at its Twitter profile. 

As you can see 3.3 million people follow Coca Cola, not bad. But the untamed fields are there and the larger corporations are the first who can wield in the results. To see this lets take a look at the envoy system. There is the company and their server(s), the envoy and the instance. Every cycle the envoy needs to make sure that their instance is up to date. Their instance is a personalised setting for every social media setting. As such the instance will cover Facebook, Threads, Twitter, Instagram and whatever else is out there. As such one person can have well over 4 connections and in that one instance all five are reached and inform so that all their friends get the message. This is not direct marketing or mass marketing. This is personal marketing and it is set in a new light. This is not some blanket setting, this is one department optimising the message, their mission statement and the envoys are the way to get there. 

So as I see it, the the aware person sets the instance (the unaware person), both message the server (a verification of A and B) and from there the message starts and now those people lets say 100K envoys will give message to 1-50 million people, none of them following Coca Cola, but they are still getting the message. No advertisement money used and it will have larger impact. Would you believe a company stating that they are good, of a friend or influencer stating that this company is good? This is not an easy track or the small or the faint of heart, but I reckon it could send a much larger message than we currently see and I reckon that at some point all the larger players will some kind of system like this.

Well that is another nice day, all ready to go towards an evening of gaming and perhaps a movie, enjoy yours and remember, tomorrow is Friday. 

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July 15, 2023 · 22:07

A 2 minute warning?

Yes, we can relate. Yet some will think it is about the 1976 movie, and they are not entirely incorrect. It has a different relationship. It is about a BBC article (at https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20230712-consumer-brands-leave-social-media-meta-threads) where we see ‘Why your favourite brand may be taking a social media break’. It is here where the speculations start. We are given “Like many of us, big companies are struggling to keep up with the number of social media platforms vying for their time and attention. They’re faced with the important choice of which apps to choose, in a market where social media can be an important brand-building tool and enable them to target consumers where they are most active.” You see there is more than one stream in motion. It goes beyond sniping (or shotgun marketing for that matter). It is about amount of considering versus smart considering. It was never far of my mind. You see my IP was set on a premise and even as it had options for advertising, or sniping. It was never about the timeline. Facebook overplayed its hand. Not initially, but over time people are starting to resent this approach. And like that 1976 movie, you could take a sniper rifle into the LA Colosseum and seek your target. One building with packed people, the chance to find your target is decently high. Now consider that Facebook was the Gatling gun and people started to shy away from that building you see that building holds 77,500 people. The Gatling gun (modern version) shoots up to 6,000 rounds a minute, as such the entire stadium is covered in 13 minutes. A sniping rifle can never get there, but its usage is different, each shot is a kill. It is precise and takes time. Sniping advertising is the same. It take time and effort (and causes less alarm). Yet the return on investment is almost always there and that was the approach I had in my new solution. It allows the ‘target’ the choice and that is the operative word. I do not think that brands are taking a social media break. They are (finally) figuring out that you can either market more and more, or you can start being smart about how you market your brand (almost like SPSS Answertree, 1998). And brands are figuring out that they start need to become smart about there approach (which would work out nicely for me as well). The article mentions Lush cosmetics and “The beauty company initially dropped off the platforms in 2019, due to concerns about fighting with ever-changing social media algorithms as well as the company’s worry about the potentially negative impact of social media on young people.” I reckon they were ahead of the pack when they decided that and they were considering what was wise, what was clever and how to be smart about it. Meta cares about its own bottom dollar first and that is where the users see the impact of a free service. I got there in 2021 and my models are looking very awesome, and their view is improving by the month. As such I mentioned a few months ago that I would indirectly be taking business away from Meta (and others), now if Amazon wakes up, they could end up with the home and away advantage all at the same time. If not it will fall to Tencent Technologies. I reckon that they are about to realise what I found and my mind would be worth a lot overnight. Apple is still not out of the race I reckon (if they have the answer to the qualifying question) but it is too much speculation. This is about marketing and that is only the start. You see, no matter how we see it. Whether we consider shotgun marketing, sniping marketing, blanket marketing and a few other methods. In the end these are the old ways and when the new ways come to pass a lot of granular discussions go out of the window. You all saw Meta (or Facebook), YouTube and Instagram marketing as the next wave, it was never that, it was a digital approach to Direct Marketing and SPSS shot that to smithereens in 1998 when they gave the audiences on global level Answertree. When you realise the simplicity and the connected improved results of that solution, that is when you realise that the age of Meta is nearly over. They had a good run mind you. They ran marketing into new directions for 19 years, just like Direct Marketing did 2 decades before and whatever came before that. This doesn’t mean that Meta is ending, but it will see a reduced interest and others will push the next wave. Who it will be? I have no idea, I am not tapping the vein of marketing. I merely saw another option that could have benefits for me, merely a benefit and that was enough for me. The next marketing wave is for whomever has a life dedicated to marketing, it is not me.

So there might be a 2 minute warning, although in marketing terms it is most likely a 2 years warning, as such someone will be raking in new solutions somewhere in 2025 and I reckon that this is when other options will be drowning out the voices of fake news and real news and create a new setting of what consolidates the marketing and advertising surrounding it. But that is my speculated view on the matter.

Enjoy the weekend, just 48 hours at best to go.

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July 6, 2023 · 22:39

Threading the needle

Yup, we all try to strike a balance, well, mostly all. You see the greed driven have no balance, they adhere to scales and only for as long as the scales are set to their side. To see this more clearly I will have to quote a previous article. In that article I wrote “Whatever they are spinning here, make no mistake. This is about DATA, this is about AGGREGATION and about linking people, links that too often Twitter has and LinkedIn and Facebook does not” and I wrote this on March 11th (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2023/03/11/one-bowl-of-speculation-please/) in the article ‘One bowl of speculation please’. I made a few more speculation there, but they do not matter, it is not important if they were correct. You see, I took a look at thread today (or at least try to). And the first hint was given below.

We could not create an account, you can only login with an instagram account, Facebook is optionally that desperate. It was always about linking data, about the granularity of their advertising population. That is all it was and Elon Musk opened that door by ruffling the feathers of his population. It gets to be worse as the ‘solution’ does not even work. 

Their servers are in for a rough pounding and when these services are united, your freedom is pretty much over. 

So there I was pondering a few issues and suddenly it hit me, you see when you when you look at the Tencent Technologies solution below, you might not see the options. 

But there is one and Tencent Technologies is now in a pretty good place to set a new stage themselves. It was always possible with cloud streaming, but I wonder if anyone had thought of it. It seems that Google did not, they dumped their solution. Amazon is clearly still in place in a few ways, but I wonder how far they thought ahead and now Tencent Technologies is nipping at their heels. I reckon that by late 2024 they might have figured out what I was seeing today. In the end Tencent and Amazon are in the running for a new side of cloud technology that is about to hit both doors. I wonder who will open their door first, because if I am right (and I have been correct more often than not) then the revenue from that technology will set them in a captains seat for years to come. And it was so simple, the greed driven people were overthinking their revenue and missing the turnpikes that gave them additional revenue on a long term scale. It is the consequence when you cater to the ‘fake it until you make it’ and their pupils have all turned to dollar signs missing innovation left right and centre. Come to think of it, I forgot another player. The third player is Apple and they could stand to gain a lot more (as does Tencent Technologies). I reckon that if Apple supports unreal engine 5 they might be slightly ahead of the other two, I reckon they need to get past the Epic Games launcher as those dodo’s will ruin a lot more than they make, but that would be up to Apple. A stage now set aside as Meta did not prepare properly, they did not copy the accounts setting because the shortcut was too easy, the fakers did not think things through and that will hinder a lot more than they think. No mater how they go about it, as the people realise that more and more data will be linked, the moment that they realise  that their freedom is now set to enabling advertisements on every device they have, that will be the moment that these people will shun away from Meta and whatever they offer handing a large field of opportunity to the ruling cloud streaming players like Amazon and Apple, with Tencent Technologies following soon thereafter. I am a little surprised, did Google not see this coming? I for one to some degree did not, but this is and has been a Google stage and they missed it too, even as they have some of the elements ready (with the Unreal Engine 5 engine as an unknown). A setting that was out there as I have written about it for at least a year. So what else are these people missing out of? Elon Musk opened the door, but the door also leads to places that Twitter and Musk were never in, as such what comes next and who will cater to that pioneering stage?

I honestly do not know, but I will see it come soon enough. Enjoy the day before the day before the weekend. 

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June 24, 2023 · 10:11

Path of a slippery slope

We all have that at times and this time it is me on that slippery slope. You see I made reference to the loss that Facebook would be facing, and yesterday I decided to dig deeper into that. You see, I have nothing against Facebook (or Meta), I am not after their channels. Yet my new design will give a larger stage and it will cost Facebook 10%-15% (a rough estimate), I doubt it will go beyond that, and if it does, it will not be for many years. Still according to the numbers I am finding (2022), that would mean a loss of $11-$17 billion to Facebook and there is no other side to that. It will not become my revenue (the revenue of my IP). It will trickle down to me to a small degree at some point and I was contemplating how I could enlarge that trickle effect. But I am deciding against it, because it will impact the bottom line which implies that the negative effect is a lot larger than the positive effect. And as I was looking deeper, I saw that the other branch has additional positive effects. Not more money (perhaps over time), but it sets the stage that the revenue of stage one will be met quicker, which is absolutely good. It is the third branch that has a few items, no negative sides, but I have been looking into getting a more positive impact, positive revenue stream sided. Still there is time for that and perhaps as the third branch is executed, more options become available. In the first I am looking into the option of the Tomes that are connected. There is a stream coming there and it is positive, but there are no numbers, no numbers from any reliable source that would give me this stage to be considered quicker. 

As such there are more sides to consider, especially as Facebook is coming with its own Twitter, there is nothing realistic yet, but I have been considering on how this could be accessed. As Twitter is playing games, I see no real benefit at present, but Facebook has other goals and there more options could evolve. 

Still I am on a slippery slope. I was feeling content and safe when it was all about the IP, as such I am not focussing on the revenue streams (other then a return on investment). You see, here we get Microsoft (who is not allowed near my IP). They are a 5 time loser. The first was their Tablet approach (that Surface thingamajig), which is nowhere near Apple, not even a dent in their revenue stream. This was their first loss. Then they lost their cloud solution to Amazon (that bookshop) which is loss number two, then they lost the console war to both Sony and Nintendo. This beckons the laughter that the strongest console in the world lost to the weakest of them all. That gives us loss number three. They are losing market share to both Apple and Adobe in their core office setting which is loss number four and the streaming war they will definitely lose it to whomever ends up with my IP. And in addition to that, they will lose to Amazon for sure and they will lose to whatever Tencent Technology will bring and they are likely to lose to Apple Arcade (I do not know enough of that solution) as well. This makes Microsoft a loser five times over and as such the implosion of Microsoft is still on for 2026. Which after all those billions invested in keeping Sony smaller is just hilarious on many sides. These elements matter because it places my IP in a premium spot. The idea that I have the ammunition that boots Microsoft in the ass makes me happy, no matter how little I get for it. Still, I need to focus. You see, getting overly happy on one side is not good. I require a critical mind to consider what could be done in three stages.

The first is what I must have (Unreal Engine 5)
The second is what I should have (a clear population with a mission statement)
The third is nice to have (A Foxtrot Uniform to Microsoft and optional additional revenue streams to moi)

These three streams are always considered in the short term, medium term and long term. Americans hate long term, the often lack focus and vision. Yet the long term is always important. It matters towards whatever mission statement you cloak yourself in and how you present the solution. It matters a great deal. Only spreadsheet users focus on the next quarter, but it is not about the next year, it is about the next three years (at least) and that is how I saw that Amazon and Google were leaving billions on the floor (Google more than Amazon). It is a realisation on where one could be heading where the real profit is, because the bulk of all revenue seekers are focussed on the next quarter (where their bonus is). And because of that they leave larger revenue options untouched. Feel free to oppose me on that, but when you do, look at your boss and their bosses on where they are focussed on. It is always a next quarter stage and you tend to lose a lot of revenue that way. Even now we see all the tech companies and places like LinkedIn shedding hundreds of jobs, all whilst a place like LinkedIn had options, they had in their niche options to diversify and keep to their niche. Others are in a similar stage, and when we realise that, other can have a go at finding their option. You see when you the delimitation of a corporation (that next quarter thing) your options open up, not merely mine. All those willing to dream and design past a next quarter will have options they never considered before and that is when you see the meadow with lost revenues. A meadow that Microsoft, Google, Amazon, LinkedIn, Meta, Salesforce, and several others. They are all shedding jobs and perhaps for them it is a valid setting, but that also means that they aren’t able to make critical adjustments when people are needed and that is where the visionary comes in. I was lucky that my IP started well before they shedded jobs. I was in a pristine place where no one was looking and I have that advantage now, an advantage that will not last. I get that. But for now they aren’t seeing what I am and with the tens of thousands of jobs gone, the manpower to seek around is also faltering for them (which is good for me). Still I know I am on a slippery slope. There are elements that I am most likely to overlook and I do not know which ones (because if I knew, I wouldn’t be overlooking them). 

Still it is a nice weekend for now, I will see what tomorrow brings. Time is not one element one tries to anticipate, it is too tiring an exercise and you tend to overlook more and more elements, they say a stitch in time saves nine, but for the most you tend to live on borrowed time instead of enjoying life and that is a big no no in my book.

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