Tag Archives: google

November 8, 2022 · 14:05

The anger within

We all have it, something sets us off. It is not always fair and just, but to some extent, the buttons pushed are getting to us all, and I am no different. It all started (again) this morning with 

Here we see a retweeted Tweet. We get to see dozens a day and we cannot verify the truth on most of them, people with hatred of Elon Musk whilst no one is asking that procrastinating wanker (Jack Dorsey) to properly explain himself. If Musk has a case to fire thousands, then the previous custodians fucked up, they screwed it all up royally and it is all about floating the value of the company, but the media (with less credibility than a crack pusher) refused to set the stage of asking serious questions and it is the bulk of all media, the little who asked seemingly critical questions asked too little of them and they never followed up on them or reported on the simple fact that Jack Dorsey did not elaborate. His feigned apology was all we got and the media helped him massively. We still have no clear stage of the bots, a clear stage of fake accounts and hen this comes to light it will be too late, Dorsey took the billions and ran, with massive help from the media. Media is now slapping Elon Musk every chance he gets and he is waiting time on answering whilst setting the stage for a trimmed and optionally more profitable Twitter. This sinking ship came with a $45,000,000,000 cost. Did you think that it was a hand off to get Dorsey to buy a more luxurious coffin for himself? 

Then we get the Financial Times with the claim that Twitter use went up. OK, fair and also a lot seemingly (what I saw) based on people spouting negativity regarding Elon Musk and no one asking clear questions on the changes that came AFTER Dorsey left. Some things do not add up. Several accounts losing hundreds and some claim to have lost thousands. Why would changing the guards have such a setting? Yes, a few hundred might have bailed to an alternative, but when the alternative does not deliver, they will come back. Their ego’s will make them come back and then we will see the excuses of ‘Lets give him a chance’ all whilst that should have been the starting position. I get that some might create a Mastodon (or was that a Megaladon, sorry Jason Statham) account. Makes perfect sense, especially if that person is an influencer, they will go where the masses are, but the right influencer would have a Mastodon already. The stage of one person having a dozen accounts to butter the conversation are in a stage that they do not know where their ‘powers’ are going. That makes sense too, but I would need clear data to identify that part. I do know someone who has that but he is too busy looking after other things. 

I do not get the stupidity of the attacks on Elon Musk, even the clearly presented lies and misrepresentation. It goes nowhere, in the end we merely cut ourselves. It is clear that Twitter needs time to get itself on  a new path and the media seems very driven to not let this happen. Especially when you consider how much leeway they gave Jack Dorsey, months of reporting constitutes that evidence. You merely need to Google search ‘Twitter’ and see how much critical questions were asked of Jack Dorsey and how much non-accusation based questions were asked of Elon Musk, the numbers should scare you and most people  with their attack on Elon Musk are part of that trend. I? Well I do not know what will happen, so I will await until the dust settles and see what happens next. I will fall several steps as I see no need to buy a blue checkmark and more important will be reduced in the seek algorithm. I will not care, I will see the people I follow and I should see their tweets. Only if that fails will I consider moving. We need to take care who we follow with their loud mouths and their needs for attention with failing evidence. Yes there are parody accounts, but we either follow them or we might not care. The anger within is fuelled by the loud making statements that evidence does not support and why is that? It is their ego, or their need for attention as they try to become influencers. There is of course the singular person seeking the limelight for self, but they are seemingly a huge minority. Happy to see them go into the dusk of yesterday. Oh and that statement of government making statements regarding Twitter. I think we should seek these people and their links to Jack Dorsey. Because the loudness of that equation does not make sense, it only makes sense when we consider who they cater to, especially in the beginning of a new equation, they never did that in the age of smoking or anything else, only two hours past the 11th hour did we see the government react to smoking dangers. They had filled their pockets s much as they could and that is a dangerous stage, I get that. But to filter Elon Musk in hour 1 seems adversarial actions that seemingly have no foundation, especially as they never bothered asking Jack Dorsey several serious questions, but that is merely my speculative view on the matter. 

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November 5, 2022 · 07:36

The financial model

It is a model I always had great issues with, in part because I do not totally understand it. I do understand the basics, but not the intricacies. That is not a great loss for me as my work and other events never touched on those parts. Yesterday as I was watching ‘meta spaces’ I saw that there is an opportune moment. It is still too early, but my third IP bundle is now eager to get started. Unfortunate it seems that Amazon and Google remain silent regarding interest. Fortunate for me Alibaba is now entering this race and is moving to pole position. The IP is seemingly at best $5-$8 billion from my point of view and for the longest time Amazon had preference as it was able to go in two directions with this. The first IP bundle is now offered to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and I am pushing the old threat I had. I would sell it to Saudi Arabia for 35% of the value before I hand it to Microsoft for 165% of the value. Now I see a different setting for bundle three. I have no idea if Alibaba will answer that call and more importantly what they are willing to shell out, but that makes the loss for the American economy 2 out of 2, and personally I do not care. They made their own bed. The financial model is nice when all the players are nice to one another, but after 35 years I have seen how American companies are driven by greed and now two players get access to an area that they had little access too and America if it wants a slice of that will have to play nice now (with whomever buys my IP). There is still an inherent risk with bundle three and that is fine, well I think it is fine at least. The issue is not 2024 or even 2025. Whomever has this solution will laugh to the bank on a daily basis in 2030 and it is the long game that counts. I reckon that if one of these two hits pay-dirt, the others will be coveted by all who see it and for a lot of them it will be too late. The KSA (optionally Alibaba too) will have first choice when they buy one of my IP’s and I reckon that Microsoft will shout and scream foul play, but they did this to themselves. The other two would have placed them outside of he options through inactivity. 

Could I make more? Yes, but if these two buy my IP I will make enough and that is what matters to me, the greed model was never appealing to me and I am driven to make it work for the other two so that I can tell the non-options that they had years to listen, but they knew better. In a constricted economy letting $500 million a month and another totalling to $5 billion, how is leaving that on the floor a good idea? I can find nothing but the ego of some and their need to leave the impression that my ideas are foul. I wonder what the first victory will make some state after that. Well, it is time for me to try and decipher part of a financial model. It does not affect me, but overall, it influences the assigned value to me and that would be nice to know too. 

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October 31, 2022 · 10:28

The path not trodden

That is something that has been with me a lifetime. Even when I was little, being a passenger in a car, I always wondered where the exits led that we passed. Over time, as my knowledge of geography grew I knew where they led, but it was not that simple, although I never realised that at the time. So when I got accepted into Uni something started to stir and I got myself degrees in internet-working and legal studies with a master of Intellectual Property. That did not open the doors I hoped would open, yet it opened up doors inside of me. A much more rewarding part. I started to question almost everything and it led to over a dozen pieces of IP. UTS opened a doorway into how other people were thinking and that was utterly rewarding, because the exits I saw pass by were now in the open for me to explore and a dozen of IP pieces are now mine. Google never looked there, Amazon did not look there and wherever Microsoft is looking and not looking is not something anyone needs to be bothered about. Especially as some give us only 15 hours ago ‘Microsoft warns that October 2022 security updates can cause problems joining domains in Windows 11 and older’, I wonder if Microsoft can actually properly test security updates, they have become too big and the cracks are showing. In all this I found billions in revenue and to be honest, I do not trust a whole lot of wannabe tech firms. You see them on LinkedIn with fortune cookie wisdoms, getting their friends to like their post and liking the posts of friends hoping they gain traction. It is one of the reasons I handed the first part of my IP to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and if part 1 comes through they get a shot at the rest as well. As the large firms contract into the billions, I found additional billions as well as a few more options, because I explored the paths not trodden. Not only that, I found a few new sides that were ignored for longer than anyone would be happy about. When I started to meditate on these parts, my speculation (perhaps presumption) was that they either did not understood what they were looking at, or they didn’t fit it with their ‘marketing’ revenue. And that is the larger station. They are all trying to cash in on advertisements, and as they do that, they left billions on the floor. The certain telling of a limited field of view, like Microsoft. It is still a mystery why dopey googly Google would miss out and for that same reason Amazon, but there you have it, by looking where other race by, you tend to find the gemstones. The problems is which party could want and would pay for these gemstones. I am banking on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the UAE is an option but too far from Sydney at present and there are too many unknowns there too. The fact that the tech firms in the US, UK and EU have the same failing implies that they are all connected and optionally a discriminating source to some, as such I went the other way and now that there is a real chance to take a slice of the marketshare that should have been Google and Amazon (or wannabe Microsoft too) is a larger concern. I did not forget about Apple or IBM, they have focussed areas and they focus on these places as any tech firm will. So they never faltered (not to that degree), and in all this when you start digging and you see how they are all in the same mindset you will see that they miss the same opportunities again and again, which is now amounting to billions. So when you see ‘Google reportedly spends $100 million on avatars to take on TikTok’, or ‘Google making disinformation profitable via ad business: Report’ you get a first view that they are all looking at each other, optionally coveting the piece of pie the other one has and I found a new pie that I would not need to share (well whomever buys my IP). And now we have a new ballgame. The IT representing hundreds of billions of value is ignoring the few percentages that I found and no one else is aware (for now), I actually wonder when they will wake up from their dog eats dog momentum to realise that the dogs fighting over the same bone left half a dozen bones still covered in meat alone. Me as the little chihuahua got those bones as they were seemingly too small, but at 2%-5%, these billions are a lot to a little Chihuahua like me and I am happy with the spoils that they bring, I reckon that Saudi Arabia will be equally pleased. They get to sit at the big tech table and the other players will wonder how that happened. It happened because they followed each other and they all ignored the few exits that made me wonder, they all thought it went nowhere, which tells you more about them than me. And after my first win, the other IP pieces will become interestingly easy to sell, but I am also loyal, as such Saudi Arabia gets to pick first. The others never wanted to show interest, now they do not have to. That is only fair, is it not?

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October 28, 2022 · 23:21

Two things

They are not connected, not in any way, but the first part is too short to make a blog by itself as such I connected the two in separate parts.

Zeus Awakens

I have been brooding on the entry for Zeus, there is no way he can be omitted from the story, it is in one part as he is father to Ares, he is the other grandfather and he will emerge. In part that as our main character is gaining strength, the main character is now becoming a larger concern to the big three. As such I had to add Zeus to some degree and the second season was a decent moment to introduce him. 

It was a nice summer day in France, Nice to be more exact (as it is a nice town). I was sitting on a balcony on the esplanade of Nice, looking at the sea a mere 122 metres to the south. I heard a woman’s voice in the back asking me if I wanted any tea. ‘Yes please Lucia’ I responded and a few minutes later she came with a pot of tea. I saw her shiver and I took a gaze at the thermometer to my left. It was odd, it was slowly going down from the 28 degrees it was a minute ago. In one minute it had cooled down to 19 degrees. Grab the cat I said, I started to close the windows inside, she came in with Charcoal who was clearly feeling the lack of warmth and we closed all the windows. I moved towards the gas heater and turned it on. I didn’t need it, but she would definitely need heat soon enough. I looked at a contraction in the cupboard. It had thermometers, barometers and they were all going nuts. Air pressure was down to 950 and the temperature had gone down to 9 degrees. I looked out and I saw people run for entries wherever they saw one. It was definitely a larger problem, but I had never seen anything like this. The clouds in the air were dissolving, the sky was deep blue and the thermometer was now at 6 degrees. The sea looked calm, the air was quiet and the thermometer kept on declining. Within a minute it was down to 1 degree and it seemed to stop there, in the two minutes that I looked outside, I saw people grab coats. I saw a shopkeeper hand sweaters to some women in bikini as well as to men wearing shorts and t-shirts. The cold was felt everywhere. I noticed that the cat was keeping his body against the heater, it as not used to the cold. Then Lucia screamed, I looked at her and she pointed to the room. A man with long silver hairs was standing there. He was wearing a Victorian suit and he looked at me. I had never seen him before. He raised his hand and sparks flew out of his fingers towards the glass table, he then vanished and the heat came back, I looked at Lucia in puzzlement. I smelled a distinct Ozone air and I looked outside. The heat was coming back and I turned the heater off. I looked outside and the sun was there, the heat came gushing in everywhere and within a minute the temperature was back to 20 degrees. I looked at the table. The glass was there and so was a text, in the glass ‘Ελάτε στην Ακρόπολη, πρέπει να μιλήσουμε’. I got that message loud and clear. So this was my grandfather? Time to learn more about the other branch of the family. I send a mental note to grandpa Hades. “Zeus summoned me, will update you later” I looked at Lucia “It seems I have to make a business trip”, she nodded. She did not understand what was going on, but I got the impression that she was eager to go into denial. “Break the table into small parts, keep the cat away and be careful. Get a new table please.” I walked into the bedroom and got a small bag and from the living room fruit bowl I got my keys, wallet and some small stuff. Time to see Athens again.

Time squandered, time wasted

That was the first thought I had when I saw the Guardian article ‘Profits at world’s seven biggest oil firms soar to almost £150bn this year’. It is not their fault. The article is not what I am commenting on, not really. We get (at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/27/profits-at-worlds-seven-biggest-oil-firms-soar-to-almost-150bn-this-year-windfall-tax) “Mathew Lawrence, the director of Common Wealth, a think-tank, said Shell’s zero windfall tax bill for 2022 showed the levy introduced by Rishi Sunak when he was chancellor in May was “not fit for purpose” and needed significant change”, yes. That is how it starts and I am not saying that the comment is wrong, because that would require me to be an expert on taxation, and that is definitely not me. But consider that I wrote ‘Heating at what price?’ On December 3rd 2018, almost 4 years go (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/12/03/heating-at-what-price/).

I mentioned tax overhauls before that, years before than and now we see the impact of inaction and I get that Shell is not wavering, because tax laws were never properly overhauled and now there is a problem. So in 2018 I wrote “It is the first time in history that a Middle Eastern nation has the ability to put the US and EU to shame with their lack of technological progress. They claim to have it, yet Saudi Arabia is making a move towards ‘showing to have it‘, changing the game for both the US and Europe. This is where we see the difference. China and Russia see this as an opportunity, whilst Europe and the US are seeing it as an inconvenience” and now it is no longer an inconvenience, now it is an actual problem and the UK, EU and US are not ready. I warned of these dangers 4 years ago, but they all knew better. How do you feel? Did they know better? Did they know more are were they merely playing stationary, optionally licking stamps. And the opportunity that Russia sees and the opportunity that China sees are different. Russia is out of the equation, but China is now fulfilling what I saw 4 years ago and it will get worse. As China has more and stronger ties with Saudi Arabia they can get more oil and America? They can play indecisive politician, play the pariah game a little more. The UK has its tea grannies (CAAT) messing things up and Europe has little options from the start. All things I wrote about in 2018. And the UN is useless in this case (as I see it). Two things can be seen in very different things, in different ploys. In players and receivers. In actions and lack thereof. Two things almost half a dozen times over and I made clear mention of it in 2018. So as I prepare to sell my IP, I can now see that the timing is near perfect. The players will overreact and by the time they figure out what they could have done I will be retiring. In this it will be either Google versus Amazon, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia versus all others. If one acts the other loses and it will be billions that they lose, if one accepts they will have billions in a direction they never considered before and as I see inaction upon inaction I am wondering if their inactions is why they never saw what they could have gotten. I know it I speculation, but when was the last time anyone left well over 5 billion a year on the floor? And it plays out in the same way that Shell and others are coaching their fortunes. The inactions of others is making them rich, I deeply hope that I get that same bonus, my retirement kinda depends on it. 

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October 28, 2022 · 03:36

Two linked events showing trouble

Yes, that I how it started for me today. It all links back to the Optus failures and a few other matters, but cybersecurity is at the heart of it. Initially I saw the second article, but I will get back to that later. First we look at ‘Sydney teenager accused of using Optus data breach to blackmail indicates guilty plea in court’ (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-27/teenager-accused-of-using-optus-data-breach-to-blackmail-court/101584078), a simple deception. Yet one with a few sides. The first part “Australian Federal Police (AFP) charged Dennis Su with two offences earlier this month, claiming he sent text messages to 93 Optus customers demanding they transfer $2,000 to a bank account” sets the guilty party up, but in more ways when we consider part two “The charges were laid after a bank account belonging to a juvenile, which Mr Su allegedly used, was identified”, so he used a third parties account and wholly Moses, it is apparently of a minor. How the bough breaks! Well it actually doesn’t break. It seems that there was a serious amount of thoughts and planning here. Well, for some it is not a serious amount, but he had to know what was planned and he got a minor to be the front to some parts. It all refers not to the second article that as the first on my eye sight. It was ‘Medibank and Optus hacks spark warning over identity theft risks from former victims’ (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-10-27/identity-theft-warning-after-optus-medibank-hack/101576992). Here we get “The first thing the victim knew about her identity being hacked was when a man turned up on her parents’ doorstep asking for the sexual services he’d paid for online.” It is the start of a new steeple chase. When we consider “Former identity theft victims have shared how their details were used to steal luxury vehicles, take out personal loans in their name and hock fake goods online, because criminals got hold of the kinds of information millions of Australians are believed to have had compromised in the latest Medibank and Optus hacks” and this is not nearly the end of this. When we see “While living in Melbourne, she sent a photo of her licence to a real estate agent applying for a lease, and that image was somehow then uploaded into a gallery of property photos featured on that agent’s website” especially in the Australian housing market, can we please remove this bozo’s character from the housing market? How can anyone be stupid enough to ‘upload’ identity details? There is an unacceptable lack of common cyber sense in Australia. It goes from the big banks to the most stupid of housing players. They have no idea what they are doing and the excuse ‘we made a boo-boo’ just doesn’t play here. First Optus, then Medibank and that list keeps on growing. That is accelerated by alleged cowboy institutes that make money offering cyber degrees. Australia has a serious problem and it needs to be dealt with starting with a lot better protection regarding ID’s and identity documents.  

And we do not blame Google here, but “Probably the most shocking and stressful part was just seeing my licence there on Google for anyone to use” should be seen as evidence that a much larger issue is in play. When we see newspapers give us “The federal government has promised to dedicate millions of dollars to “investigate and respond” to the massive cyber attack which rocked Optus” which according to some amounts to $6,000,000 over two years. I reckon that in two years the problem will be a lot larger and two years to investigate what I in part did in 5 minutes is a joke. Something needs to be done NOW and lets start by holding corporations accountable to cyber security and lets make sure that a certain housing agent is an Uber driver in 48 hours and not a housing agent any more. Yes, I agree that I am overreacting, but uploading ID details? To a photo gallery? I think we hit rock bottom on the village idiot scale and that needs to be addressed well within 2 years, within 48 hours be more likely. I think that my optional IP move to Canada might be a good thing. It is not out of the question that these players will set my IP on a server with a connected router that still has the password ‘Cisco123’, that could be how my luck goes and I have seen enough bad luck to last me a lifetime. 

As I see it Australia has a lot of problems, not in the least the larger absence of Common Cyber Sense, I raised that in ‘The Bully’s henchman’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/01/31/the-bullys-henchman/) which I wrote on January 31st 2020, almost 3 years ago, it is that much of a failure and if I raised it then, it was already an issue. As such we see a failure that surpasses 3 years and now they want to debate it for two more years? These people are out of their flipping minds!

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October 27, 2022 · 06:58

The day After

Yes, I am a little slow today. The giddiness and Cheshire Cat behaviour in me after yesterday’s article slowed me down considerably. It is not everyday that you realise that you have a corner that tech giants like Amazon, Google and Microsoft (optionally Apple too) are overlooking. You want to shout what they aren’t seeing from every rooftop, but that gives them the idea and leaves me out of pocket, so I am refraining from this. And at the moment the commercial manager from the Saudi Consulate is already 4 week late, as such there are (hopefully) more gains for me.

But it is not about that, but there is a link to some degree. Several give it to you, but I am going with the South China Morning Post who gives us ‘Saudi Arabia reaffirms energy ties with China amid US fears over oil cuts’. The article (at https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3197218/saudi-arabia-reaffirms-energy-ties-china-amid-us-fears-over-oil-cuts) also gives us:
 

  • Saudi and Chinese energy officials agree to expand links in energy.
  • Riyadh’s relations with Washington have long been unbalanced and the kingdom has more options now, Chinese analyst says.

And I warned for this some time ago, and there is a second speculative setting. A second decrees is not entirely fictive. The stage where Russia will push for this is decently large, Russia has a voice in OPEC+ and America has made enemies, especially by not dealing with Iran. Any win they get here reflects positive on Iran, it leaves a positive light on Russian acts and leaves America and the EU with negativity. I warned about this around February 10th 2022 (well over 10 months ago) when I wrote “The US has a massive disadvantage especially when they were all huffy and puffy on Saudi Arabia, reality bites and that presentable stage will have to be stopped at the earliest convenience (not for me, I am happy if the BAE takes over), yet these stages (also the one the CAAT forced) are all stages that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia took notice of and China will be happy to show that with every presentation they bring.” The stage with tea grannies (image was there as well), and now we see the deployment of that stage and of course Russia wants every pound of hardship given to the EU and the US. In this OPEC+ is a much larger stage where Saudi Arabia is a strong voice, but not the only voice and Russia has other allies. The problems here is that this stage works for China, so not because it helps Russia, but because China has a lot more to gain, especially when the EU and US are slowed down. I did not have a view on the stage a day or a week ago, I saw this danger 10 months ago. So when we are given “Riyadh’s relations with Washington have long been unbalanced” we are given a much larger truth. The Biden administration has options 10 months ago, now not that many and China’s grip is growing, Washington allowed it to be that way. Washington has a delusional stage that reflects on ‘We can have our cake and eat it too’, it is delusional because you cannot have or do two good things at the same time that are impossible to have or do at the same time. You can have cake, or eat cake, but the ‘analysts and theorists’ come with that example, yes we can and where are those dopey’s now? Now that the ball is handed to the other party when you are deep into defence? 

That is a stage that is becoming increasingly hard for the US. They lost the option of being a super power a long time ago, they forfeit what they have because they believed the wrong people and now that is becomes a game of spin, we see the larger stage that ABC showed in the beginning of the month with ‘US ammunition supplies dwindle as Ukraine war drains stockpiles’, yes they were willing to hand it out, but they aren’t replenishing stocks, as such the Ukraine will soon be dependent on the EU and the US cannot afford to replenish its stock at present and the makers of ammunition are all about the green, they have profit margins. As such the day after looks less and less appealing. So they are losing provisions on one side and are losing revenue and resources on the other side. An unbalanced stage from the beginning and that is the larger folly. But the US can revisit those theorists with their ‘You can have your cake and eat it too’ and ask for an explanation. They will not get anything useful, but that is the problem with these theorists on inactivity. I gave the world this view 10 months ago and reading between the lines there was a lot more, but the US doesn’t pay me, so I see no reason to spell it out to them, they pay massive amounts to people to do that for them.

Giving the stage to every Tom, Dick, Harry and tea granny with a cause is now costing too many players too much and the invoice will be due, in this case the invoice is most likely offered to China who sees several reasons and several benefits. If you want to warn us of the Chinese danger, handing them billions in revenue is not a good idea. It diminishes your danger message and it leaves you with empty coffers as well. Wasn’t the Huawei story enough of a warning? 

I will let you mull that all over today, have a great one.

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October 26, 2022 · 14:17

When you can’t see it

This happens, we all cannot see things at times. I am no exclusion to that equation. We all look in directions and we see things, but we also miss things. Things in front of us and things outside of our peripheral vision. This happens to us all. But what does it take to miss a larger stage? This is the thought I giggled about when I saw (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63394516) ‘Google and Microsoft hit by slowing economy’ a mere 4 hours ago. There we see “Alphabet, which owns Google and YouTube, said sales rose just 6% in the three months to September, to $69bn, as firms cut their advertising budgets. It marked the US firm’s weakest quarterly growth in nearly a decade outside of the start of the pandemic”, and it made me giggle because it implies that they have no idea what they are missing. The fact that I am holding on to a $500M revenue stream per month implies that there are options and they go beyond the KSA. Now that Google sees the shores of recession implies that they will seek (hauntingly) for new revenue streams. A larger stage that works for poor little moi. And a stage that holds a little more than I suspected. More because if Amazon and Google remain in the dark, they are hindered by blinkers, or they are just not wake. In an age of recession they remain unchanged towards focal needs and revenue needs. It boggles the mind, but my share just increased 1% and that is not a bad thing, it implies (not guarantees) an optional $5,000,000 a month extra, and an optional additional commission more. And that is merely the second pay-cycle. It is weird, but it implies that for once timing is on my side (which is a perfectly lovely consideration to receive). And to be honest. I do not care about Microsoft, they made their own bed, yet Google is another story and even as I think that Amazon has a better stage, Google is not out of the race (Microsoft can live with their wooden spoon for all I care). So as timing goes on and we consider “Profits at Alphabet dropped nearly 30% to $13.9bn in the quarter, as YouTube ad revenues declined for the first time since the firm started to report them publicly. Sales growth at the firm has slowed for five consecutive quarters” my solution could add well over $6bn annually and that I not the high point, merely the lowest median. So there is plenty of room to grow. And I am smiling like a Cheshire Cat because the big wigs at Google and Amazon are still in the dark, lets hope they remain ignorant until one of them pays me.

I am allowed a small victory dance this morning.

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October 25, 2022 · 21:11

Questioning the drawing board

That happens at times, we all have a drawing board, we have an idea or IP and it goes swimmingly and then the floor drops. Not because of the idea or the IP, but the floor drops because you forgot, or were unaware of certain parts. This happens and there is no real blame here not in any direction, it is merely what is. This is currently happening to me. In this my IP bundle 3 was knowingly with some risk, because it is depending on certain Meta evolutions, but over time there would be the stage. Yet in event number one we are confronted with a video regarding Modern Warfare 2 Amsterdam Mission. (At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_LlSR6-ibA) this is so close to real that the metaverse cannot be that far behind (when they figure out where to put their data centre). This is part presumption (a better from of speculation) and the fact that certain players want a benefit now in the metaverse and that works in part in my favour. Yet my idea was set to a stage where the takings were set to somewhere between two and three billion. In part because of the Meta risk, in part to how things tend to evolve. That is in part the name of the game. Now with the evolution stage being that far pushed, the takings of my IP could be 5-10 times higher and there still is a risk. So what gives? Well there are three cogs in that machine. The speed of adapting to the metaverse. That cog is now a lot smaller (hence quicker adaption) because of some of the Modern warfare 2 imagery. Cog two is personal evolution, this remains steady at the same size, it will go quicker because of cog 1, but not that much faster. Cog three is technological attachment. That one remains a little bit of a mystery. Because of what we see in Modern warfare two, we can assume that the rest will be as great, but that is not a given, there will be congestion and there will be overlap, but it matters as the whole image is now a presumption of what Modern Warfare 2 brings. And that matter as the adaption goes quicker, more will adapt and that quantifies the 5-10 times larger growth then I had foreseen. The risks remain the same, as the adaption is more complete my solution will find a home in a lot more cases than I can anticipate, but that is less presumption and more speculation. Amazon is still the frontrunner, but Google has options here too. Amazon has a few extra benefits (if they adapt), but that does not take Google out of the race, not by a long shot. And this matters in other ways too.

You see, these thoughts raced through my mind when I saw the three day old article ‘90% of schools in England will run out of money next year’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/oct/22/exclusive-90-of-uk-schools-will-go-bust-next-year-heads-warn) there we see “Nine out of 10 schools in England will have run out of money by the next school year as the enormous burden of increased energy and salary bills takes its toll, the Observer can reveal”, I do not completely agree with this. I can agree on the entire energy setting. The UK and other nations are dealing with the Russian part of the equation, as such we are given “electricity and gas costs for schools in his chain had rocketed from £26,000 a year to £89,000” and there is no way that any organisation can foresee a rise of well over 300%, as such other solutions need to be found. We can return to covid stages and shut the schools down for now. This could work in my favour, but I prefer not to go there. Amazon will have a much larger benefit there and both Google and Apple are close by. In all this Apple could trump Google, but that too is speculation. What does matter is that these two elements have similar solutions and we need to look at solutions. The concepts of schools are now more and more outdated. Outdated might not be the right word, but the drain on energy needs to be stopped and as such schools in winter become a no-no. But that same setting gets pushed to homes and they are equally not entirely on the mark for dealing with this. The reality is crass and not that nice. But you need proper isolated warehouses where you can place a few hundred students all with proper internet access, all with power supplies. Well, that or properly isolate schools which should have been done decades ago. The lesser evil needs to be found and I am not sure what the best for education is. As such we have a drawing board, but we need to question that one too. That drawing board is set to old standards, new standards are required and I am not sure where to find them, and I need not worry as it is not on my plate, but that stage is altering enough that we all need to think what is possible here. There is a larger stage and that is on the politics (of the UK), the stage that 90% runs out of funds is only in part on energy, the rest is the consequence of inaction. We want to give blame but the Covid era was a year and too little was done there, the Russian invasion of the Ukraine made the mess complete but that too is only in part (for western Europe). I believe that Strasbourg and London should have had large debates with Elon Musk on the energy issues and that could have been started well over two years ago, now it is seemingly too late and one generation will get the mess of inactions. That is almost a given. I could be wrong, but see of what is happening and see what was not done, not merely in the UK, in most of Western Europe. The early bird that hesitates gets worms. An expression seen in 1988, so this is not new. I will let you mull over what could be a solution for schools, but I am not sure if there is a good one at present, it might be a little too late for several solutions. 

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October 23, 2022 · 00:29

Wheels are for sleeping

Yes, that is the indication. So far I have been busy redesigning over half a dozen games and I get the impression that asleep at the wheel is a common factor at both at Amazon and Google, might be at Microsoft a well, but I do not care about them, they can become obsolete all on their own. The redesign is essential as there are factors for a larger audience and one does want to entice that audience as such I started with half a dozen games, kept the overall appeal, kept the foundation of the game, but the rest got upgraded to the improvements we got the last decade. And 3 of them had 90+ scores, so they can be remade into something better fitting this decade and this generation. Even as I am looking into Unreal engine 5 (where applicable), we have a much larger optional setting and this I did after having a sandwich, before I had a cup of milk and I am merely waking up. We have had a lot of games that were contemporary, we had games that were in the stage or the age of the arcade, but why are they abandoned? They were good games and even as we see everyone go nuts for some goat simulator (for some reason Microsoft got that right and it is massively addictive to some), they forgot a game like Soul Edge (1995), the Dreamcast had it as Soul Calibur (1998) where it scored a whopping 97%, a game that close to perfection was partially forgotten and what was rereleased was nowhere near as perfect and the makers decided they were more clever and created a lesser product. The lines in those days were that this game alone was reason to buy a Dreamcast. Why are these gaming executives so short of memory? Soul Calibur was all about fun and they created a game that did that and more. There are a lot more examples and more could be done to make it changed enough to get a new IP registered. One day and I come up with half a dozen games that could be upgraded and Google (deciding not to be a developer and dropping the Google Stadia coming January) is letting $500 million a month slip by, well they must have the corner on something. I for one am willing to guess that they got the corner on Melatonin (sleeping ingredient). And that is merely one part of one branch. I  truly wonder what Tencent is up to, because if they are more awake then there is every chance that Amazon will lose their share as well. And these two got that done in under two years. Good going guys (girls also). 

And as I am vamping a few more titles, I remembered a game from 1991 called Streets of Rage, a simple game, but addictive and a game that could entice plenty of people. You see, this new ‘gaming’ industry is a lot less about making money. It is about the microtransactions, that is where they think the real money is and when my solution is accepted and 50 million subscriptions start cancelling the other options, these people will learn the hard way what an empty IP looks like. They all ignored that gamers want to have fun and for some it is racing, for some it is stealth, for some it is bashing and in these groups none of them are overly excited of microtransactions. So when they get a micro-transaction free environment, they will move. I am completely convinced of that. These people also are not interested to pay by watching advertisements. So there are two elements that would fall away pretty quickly and in all that the current ‘champions’ would end up being tomorrows losers. I reckon that is here Tencent is heading as well, so they will get two tiers of advantages of all those who haven’t figured it out yet and that will cost the wrong people a lot of marketshare. But not to fret, they are willing to lose that marketshare, I know because I cannot  see them making any alterations, so they are definitely waiting until it is too late. But that is big tech for you. So whilst they are asleep at the wheel, I will continue embellishing my IP for the current customer line. And there it will stay, especially when the right people figure out I wasn’t making a funny, and that my part in gaming since 1984 implies I actually know stuff. But feel free to disagree, it is your right and when you come up short, you merely did it yourself.

As such I do hope to have a field day. Because hope is still part of that equation, we all hope, we can do little more. And lets give Microsoft a hand, only yesterday we were given “Many enterprises continue to leave cloud storage buckets exposed despite widely available documentation on how to properly secure them”, and the hand was not in sarcasm. You see ‘despite widely available documentation’ implies that this is a Layer 8 ID10T issue (aka: idiot users). So when we read “SOCRadar, the threat intelligence firm that reported the issue to Microsoft, described discovering the data in an Azure Blob storage bucket that was publicly accessible over the Internet. The data was associated with more than 65,000 companies in 11 countries and included statement-of-work documents, invoices, product orders, project details, signed customer documents, product price lists, personally identifiable information (PII), and potentially intellectual property as well.” Yes, it gets to be that bad and it is NOT all on Microsoft, some is, not all. But keep screaming that Azure is fine, especially when 65000 companies are placing their data on the internet. As such the China and Huawei issues are not an issue, people are placing their data online all by themselves. Cisco was also a factor, but they seemingly fixed the issues they had. In all this it matters, because streaming opens a new can of worms and I am opening a separate one as well, especially when the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia buys my IP. In all this we see that there is a much larger need to stop being the inclusive wanker. It is time to call out the larger flaws and stop messing about, or buy a Jaguar (a Crazy People 1990 reference).

This is one of the reasons I do not want Microsoft anywhere near my IP, and that is in part why I offered it to Saudi Arabia. These tech players might bully me, but they have a much larger problem if they mess with Saudi Arabia and when the Saudi party realises just how big the IP can be, Microsoft will be kept outside, of that I am convinced. It was also in part why I hoped that Amazon would have called earlier, but they slept for months, so I am happy to head to plan B. And as I embellish my IP the chances will increase and increase. Some wheels might be for sleeping but my cogs rotate unrelentlessly and they keep on rotating, I owe that to myself even if it is merely to show where all the others went wrong.

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October 16, 2022 · 22:16

There are many roads leading to Rome

It is an old expression and when I was young I never understood it. It is simple, I grew up in the Netherlands. For us it was take the road that leads to the E35, which takes you to Rome. Those in Belgium and Germany had a similar direction. Of course that is not the explanation of the expression, but I was 7 at the time, there was time to learn. And for the most I learned how to learn, so I ended up with two benefits. One, the road to the best Pizza and two a manifest on how to learn. So when I saw the BBC article ‘Office time is not for video calls, says tech boss’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63217973) I was taken aback a little. You see, there are many roads on how to manage a workforce and some marketing firms learned through Covid, that a home founded workforce is efficient, terribly efficient. It also reduces the bottleneck of networks. It might not be enough, but in some cases it is enough to keep the workforce. Also the corporations with a high turnover saw a turnover reduction, not a big one, but large enough. I myself prefers to work in an office. I prefer my home and work to remain separate. That is easily explained. I am for the mot a workaholic. Work comes first and it has done so for decades. To go home is on one side to take the pressure off, on the other side to see if there I anything else that can relax me. So when I see “But being in the office should be an opportunity to do things that cannot be done at home, argues Stewart Butterfield, Slack’s chief executive. Sitting at a desk with headphones on is not one of them, he says.” But sitting in your office with a headset (or plugs) listening to music as you work is? I am not opposing his view, because there is merit in his view, but for a lot of companies so is the homework or hybrid setting. I am not one of those, but plenty are. He is a friend of “He champions Amazon’s idea, introduced by Jeff Bezos, where each attendee reads a six-page memo at the start of a meeting as a briefing note, rather than sitting through PowerPoint presentations.” OK, fair enough but not unlike Google, they too left $500 million a month on the floor, so there is improvement available all over the field. I do like the approach as I have an active dislike of meeting PowerPoints. There are plenty of times when this works, but the size of the group where it does not is steadily rising. 

There is a growing need to adjust the workforce. I see a weird traverse of approaches on an international level to find workers and I see the flood on LinkedIn on how great they are instead of properly informing who they are and what they do. A social approach on steroids and they fail to see the point, but it is equally possible that I fail to see their point. I get that, but it is the workaholic in me that take that point of view. And when you filter out the fortune cookie marketing in LinkedIn, how much value do you get? I see offices where video calls are not merely the workforce, it is also the office meetings. Instead of 8 people vacating to a big office, they sit in their offices, at their desks listening to meetings and that is the weird part. It seems that in these meetings people are more intent on listening, the responses are seemingly more clever, but I could be wrong. And this was part of the settings whilst I was contemplating a few new versions of older games, I contemplated what could be possible to take that into a game. Yet I was cautious. You see that as the narrated stage of a game called System Shock. A great game that is (as far as I know) still upgraded to todays gameplay. The game (through videos, messages and voice) give us the backstories on several floors between all kinds of people giving us a setting of what was going on when things were going wrong. I miss that game, it was so close to perfect and its successor (System Shock 2) was equally overwhelmingly as addictive. This too gave me pause to consider. You see when you think back on the original planet of the apes (with Charlton Heston), the idea of a survival game in that setting is interesting, but a game that follows the movie, without copying it is equally appealing. Having a new IP is intriguing, although a week before Gotham Knights not the most illuminating one. And these issues all strike back to the office. All these thoughts take a backseat to office work. In the office it is about work and at home (or anywhere else) the other thoughts come to the foreground, they always do and a hybrid setting is caging off those thoughts, or allowing them to be everywhere and that is how blunders are made. I get that and I was young once (nudge nudge wink wink). We all have things that occupy the brain and it happens. Consider working next to a bakery with fresh cheese rolls being baked every other hour. It doesn’t happen too often, but it happens and now you are working at home metres away from the warm stove making muffins, rolls and all other goods. How long until the homework is driven by rolls, hotdogs and icy cold beer? What we separated for decades (some merely years) does not stop the brain. We still have a load of lessons to learn and until we can shut off work or shut off the home in the brain, we will get issues, we all will. So I have issues with the BBC article, but nothing wrong is stated or presumed. We are all individuals and I believe that I where Stewart Butterfield failed. He had his point of view, which I consider valid, but there are many roads that lead to Rome and there are solutions there too we all need to realise that part of the equation.

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