Tag Archives: LinkedIn

March 15, 2023 · 22:13

Remembering things

This started when LinkedIn was the source of a question. I suddenly remembered another setting, I wrote about it (when is not important), it was around a year ago, but the part that matters is that this was something Adobe could have used in a number of ways (especially when it decreases the impact of Microsoft). The idea was… let’s start at the beginning.

Above you see the question that shook my mind.

Now take a look below.

Now we see a simple setting towards a project. There is some version control and perhaps Adobe upgraded that part, but too often we see people howl with despair when their version control gives out. USB and Laptop issues are the most common issues, but they are not alone and some go with cloud solutions, yet there are times when connections are lousy, there are cloud security issues, thee have always been cloud security issues and some have more than others, the latter side is that some people tend to rely on local versions, that is fine. Now consider the addition of blockchain to a project file. A file that keeps track of all versions and optionally with Adobe we see actions as well in each version. So now the initial question becomes a mere exercise. A project that gathers the versions and optionally puts them in one place. In this I still like the old DEC (Digital Engineering Corporation) who had VAX/VMS, in the late 80’s they already had version control. At the end of EVERY file there was “;xx” the x’s were a number, as such we could have 99 files called image.jpg. It would take decades for other systems to catch up, DEC was ahead of its time. Now this solution will no longer do and we need to seek alternatives, so how about an alternative use of Blockchain? OR a Blockchain like solution? In a previous article I took that to a whole new level, but that was then and this is now. It was a question that got pushed back to the front of my mind. 

I wonder if anyone else is on that bus ride. Have a great day and please stop crashing drones, they might only be $700K, but it is a waste of good material.

Advertisement

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

March 9, 2023 · 21:11

Afford versus Effort

They are apart, but not in the mind of some. You see the old expression “You get an A for effort” got corrupted. I reckon it started after the 90’s when effort was no longer the main dish. It became not what we can do, but what we can afford so that the fat cats can get their bonus, whilst meeting all other obligations. It wasn’t wholly unexpected. I had spoken to some McDonalds people in the Netherlands in the 80’s. They told be about meeting expectations and not overrun it past the 100%, merely meet the expectations of their bosses. Do not be the ‘surprise’ no one sees coming. At the time it was an utter alien thought. I did not catch on to that exercise until mid 90’s. It was weird. You were hired to do your best, but that became you are to do your best as THEY expect you can be a nothing more. I touched on this slightly whilst writing ‘It was one keyword’ 5 days ago (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2023/03/04/it-was-one-keyword/). This must have stuck in the back of my mind, because it came out yesterday with a vengeance. Two things bubbled up. One reflects on LinkedIn and Facebook. They have (for the most) been all about the quantity and not the quality of stuff. They will give you some runaround on complexity (with loads of yada yada yada), but the foundation is that this was out there years ago. I never mentioned it before as I was designing IP to meltdown Iranian (and Russian) nuclear reactors. I did find a solution with the use of a snow globe (how is that for effort?) But the larger stage is not that, it was the story from some girl with a huge smile telling us how people died. That is how it reflects because that is how her profile picture was set. Big smile, no matter what. I do not care that some people can add emoji’s, we can stage ‘emotions’ like they were sad or angry. It would have been so simple to give any person several profile pics, one solemn, one happy (default), one angry and so on. There I a limit, but I reckon that most are covered with less than 9 profile pictures. There are plenty of accounts that have one picture, these are neutral pictures and that is fine. But showing someone how mines impact the human body with a big smile gives the wrong message. And Facebook and LinkedIn could have done something years ago, there is your A for effort right there, no effort because we get some technology babble on how they could not afford it.

This gets me to the second part. The image gives us a mothers day gift. OK, nice, optionally caring, but why? Not giving the gift, I am all for that (even though my mum died almost half a century ago), but see the second image. 

Now consider this a mockup, set to about 4 inches, optionally in merely in greyscales. The edge has the battery, and an option for an micro SD slot. There would be an USB charging option with the more expensive model having some kind of dock. And we include the one cool thing Microsoft did 30 years ago. We get the about screen to give the holder who it was from and what for (like mothers day). The screen could have not merely a calendar, which the simplest UNIX command (cal), but we could add a dot around important dates, like birthday’s mothers day, fathers day anniversary days and so on. The LCD has a clock option so that they can place it anywhere where they need time and optionally showing images, like pictures. And yes the colour version would be more expensive but that is on the buyer. So why are we looking at some acrylic heart that is reduced to a paperweight within a year? It is a nice gift and the emotion behind it is most likely real, but giving something that has long term impact, is that realisation wrong? Is that now beyond achieving? Why is that? This setting came to me in mere seconds, so why isn’t a player like Amazon all over that? They have pretty much all the technology required, the digital transparent LCD clock is decades old. No one took that for a ride to the next generation? 

That is what shows effort versus afford. We forgot to go all the way, we forgot to take the train to the station past the last station. Technology is cheaper and gets to be cheaper still. In 2005 I bought a 2GB card for my camera for $850. Now that same card is $8, in less then 20 years. So what about the other technology? We forget that our bosses need us, we don’t need them that much, the Covid era made that clear, so go all in, show your maximum effort and you will soon see that the ‘fake-it-till-you-make-it’ people will try their luck in Uber or they become barbers. You need to shine and as such you need to make your maximum effort so that you get noticed by the right people, because the greed game is unrelenting, some boss will notice this and they will see YOUR value, something your boss was eager to trivialise for HIS needs.

Just consider that for a moment.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

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.

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 26, 2022 · 19:27

You forgot something!

As was looking at a few matters, Reuters gives us an article (at https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-says-shared-network-costs-is-10-year-old-idea-bad-consumers-2022-09-26/). The article named ‘Google says shared network costs is 10-year-old idea, bad for consumers’, it seems fair from a distance, but it is not. You see the smaller detail is seen in “a push by European telecoms operators to get Big Tech to help fund network cost”, so first we get misinformation, mistreatment and mismanagement form players like Orange, Vodafone, KPN, BEN, Deutsche Telekom and several others. And not THEY want big tech to pay for their stupidity? You have got to be effing kidding me. And as stated, it is a 10 year old idea, as such we see another stage where the European Commission shows itself to be useless, lacking creativity and a mere populous that enjoys the gravy train and gives and produces nothing of value. It seems harsh, but this setting was clear from 2009 onwards when we saw the gaps all over Europe and now that 5G is becoming more and more important, the mobile players in Europe are onestep short of becoming useless and pointless and when Elon Musk’s Star-thingamajig becomes active, these players are done for. So when we see “Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica and other big operators have long complained about tech rivals free-riding on their networks, saying that they use a huge part of internet traffic and should contribute financially.” And my issue here, is it really free-riding? I have a certain bandwidth, it is used for Google, LinkedIn, Twitter and a few other parts. I PAY FOR THIS AS DO OTHERS! So how is Google Free-riding? How are other big-tech free-riding? Will we get a clear explanation for that? The article also gives us “Google, owner of YouTube, has done its part to make it more efficient for telecoms providers by carrying traffic 99% of the way and investing millions of euros to do so” and there is also the part that I am willing to accept that they did these investments for selfish reasons, but that is not against the law, is it? I reckon the moment Google makes a deal with Elon Musk and we can all ‘freely’ use that network these telecom companies will cry like little chihuahua’s, the los of data they were capturing will end a few matters and that is not what we see here, are we?

Matt Brittin, president of EMEA business & operations at Google also gives us “In 2021, we invested over 23 billion euros in capital expenditure – much of which is infrastructure,” OK, fair, but I still believe that this was slightly selfish for Google business anchoring. I am not complaining and neither are many others, but that is part of the setting, the Telecom companies are realising that they are about to go the way of the Dodo (like newspapers last year) and now they cry and they require the European gravy train to fix their shortfall, their shortcomings and their lack of innovation. And they are losing more, if Saudi Arabia buys my IP, the evidence will put them in prime position to get my 5G as well and then the market changes even further. It makes sense, as Neom was the inspiration for it, should they not enjoy the benefit? 

It is at that point the clown comes to play. We see that with “EU digital chief Margrethe Vestager urging them to ensure that companies generating the largest traffic on network infrastructure should contribute in a fair and proportionate manner to the costs.” And exactly why to I make the clown reference? You see, most of the traffic is generated by USERS, by PEOPLE who want to know things and most of them seek it on Google, these PEOPLE PAY for that bandwidth, so let hope the clowns in Strasbourg wake up and smell the waterlilies. The generation is made by PEOPLE and they paid for that right, the rest is not on Google, but I reckon that Margrethe Vestager is part of the gravy train that needs to satisfy the needs of the exploitative telecom companies. And is it not strange that the people who paid for this service now see that Google must pay for this? I am certainly surprised, aren’t you?

But that is the shortsightedness of politicians for you.

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Media, Politics, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

May 18, 2021 · 11:04

When is a job not a job?

This is not a farce or a joke, it is a serious question. So at what point have you seen a customer service role, paid $400K a year with the following:

– You will receive an email with a link to start your self-paced, online job application.
– Our hiring platform will guide you through a series of online “screening” assessments to check for basic job fit, job-related skills, and finally a few real-world job-specific assignments.
– You will be paired up with one of our recruiting specialists who can answer questions you might have about the process, role, or company, and help you get to the final interview step.

This is my view of a really silly approach to data collecting!

We get more when we seek deeper quotes like “(name redacted) has turned down high profile tech roles in Europe, preferring to be near his family in Egypt. Crossover enables him to work remotely as a Senior Software Engineer for Trilogy – a role in which he gets to learn new things every day” and it is all possible via a place in Austin Texas (a big city in the USA).

So it took less than 2 minutes to find ‘This company is a scam. Become your own contractor’ This was one source, there were more, the larger stage is found (at https://www.glassdoor.com.au/Reviews/Employee-Review-Crossover-for-Work-RVW11216098.htm). 

Now, normally I do not give a fig, I really do not care who they entangle and how they go about it, but in today’s market to find these so called ‘scams’ going on in places like LikedIn is a larger concern. And to make matters worse, they now have over 2.8 MILLION followers. When places like LinkedIn and Indeed cannot keep their offer database clean, the actual people desperately looking for a job will not ever succeed. Places like Australia have to deal with age discrimination for too much, getting data clowns thrown in the mix does not help and the pot of where to find decent and real jobs is getting slimmer. You see, there are all these people that claim that SEEK is the real deal, but consider that they have (today) 9,761 technical support jobs and 484 UNIX jobs in ONE metropolitan area, do you think that adds up? I can give you a guarantee that it does not, I used SEEK in 2012-2014 and I got ZERO returns, not one job was real, they were all recruiters gathering resumes, a fail rate of 100%, pretty impressive is it not?

As I see it, when these ‘providers’, who came in from nothing and offer a decent service, they need to make sure that their service is clean, if not their value goes straight into the basement and it has larger repercussions. So when I see messages that they cannot find people with Digital experience and some people have been applying for years, I merely giggle. One is not looking in the right place (the one who cannot find applicants), they all claim to be in a global economy and they see “Today’s top 1000+ And Digital jobs in Saffron Walden, England, United Kingdom” someone is clearly losing the plot and it is not me, it really is not. For me that part lighted up as my great grandfather came from Saffron Walden and for the viewers, see the image below. Do you really think that place has 1000 jobs to offer?

Saffron Walden

So when is a job offer not a job offer? As I see it when it is a ruse, a scam or mere data (CV) collection. That is my view on the matter. 

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, Media, Politics

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

June 16, 2020 · 01:34

Donkey Balls!

The explanation is actually almost too simple, I am writing this whilst I am rewatching the Expanse on Bluray (thanks to the awesome sale JB Hifi had 3 weeks ago). I was watching and browsing whilst I got exposed to ‘Media rules must help news providers harness digital platforms’ value’, the link was on LinkedIn and came from Facebook. I do not disagree with the setting, but the entire issue is much larger and has traps on a few levels. That issue is a little less complicated when we consider the news on the daily mail where we see ‘Top Facebook exec says it DID help Donald Trump win but only because ‘he ran the single best digital ad campaign I’ve ever seen. Period.’ And NOT because of Russia’, the claim was apparantly made by Andrew Bosworth and it was in the Daily Mail on January 8th. It is not the claim that is the issue, it is the linked advertisements that the viewer gets. I ended up with advertisements by Telstra and Microsoft. Now, there was nothing wrong with that, yet if I had not clicked on the story, the advertisements would not have come. That is the issue, even newsmakers need to rely on clicks and there is the first issue. Basically the (short) story has the following 2nd headlines:

  • Andrew Bosworth is a longtime senior Facebook executive and confidant of Mark Zuckerberg
  • Bosworth wrote a 2,500 word memo shared internally with Facebook employees that was published on December 30
  • He claimed the Cambridge Analytica scandal was a ‘non-event’ and admitted the Russians did manipulate the U.S. election
  • Bosworth also essentially branded criticism of the company as fake news because the press ‘often gets so many details wrong’ 
  • The memo was initially leaked to the New York Times on Tuesday before the top executive published it in full on his public Facebook account 

5 times to get the clicks, 5 times to get advertisements and the news channels are in the setting to get CLICKS, making the quality of news debatable and there is the larger issue. When the news becomes a commercial vessel, how can it be trusted?

SO when I looked at the news (according to the Sydney Morning Herald) we get: “It would allow news publishers and digital platforms that distribute news to continue building on existing commercial arrangements, and support the development of a Digital News Council to advance cross-industry collaboration. It would also encourage more transparency for significant changes to the ranking of news content in News Feed and guarantee to publishers we’ll continue to share measurement data on how their content performs on Facebook as well as insights on their audiences, without sharing personal user information.” Here I see that there are optional ‘agreements’ on the sharing of revenue (which I do not debate, or wonder whether that is wrong), yet I do wonder about who has the stronger pull. Revenue based decisions, or news quality decisions and the ambiguity of it deepens the innate mistrust in me and the mistrust of the optional news that it breeds. So the quote “It would allow news publishers and digital platforms that distribute news to continue building on existing commercial arrangements” sets the steps for commercially inclined news, not neutral based and news baked news. It ends up not getting the clicks and that is the larger problem. The digital problem is that there needs to be space for news to set the parameters, yet the click is what gets the revenue and they tend to be on opposite sides of coins of different currency. Better stated was the Expanse response, which was ‘It really is Donkey balls’, the settings a larger one and those relying on click based revenue would not be interested in slaughtering the goose with the golden egg and I get that. But we need to move the news into another stage of the media, now making it revenue based, all whilst those participating should require to pay these newsagents something, it was their material used.

So whether we accept that the previous elections used a much better digital profile, we need to take the news out of it, and give them their own digital channel, not set to a click based system. It requires new levels of innovation on digital media and we all better accept that fast. 

What is the solution?

I actually do not know, but in part it will be creating awareness with the people, they need to realise that they are part of that problem, they are the inquisitive types and usually that is not a problem, yet the push the click based activities forward and at the point they become part of the problem. As I see it, the news might be part of social media, yet they should not be part of the click based equation and until the news starts realising that, as well as the fact that their shareholders, stakeholders and advertisers are part of the problem and not part of the solution, this issue will continue.

So those who have seen the Expanse season three and know that the initial weapon was something more might realise that in the digital media that click is the something more towards a weapon, all thanks to the shareholders, stakeholders and advertisers. We need a much larger change and until cash is taken out of the equation it cannot continue, yet that too is a dicey position, because the news has every right to cash in on materials they created. We cannot ignore that part of the equation.

 

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

December 11, 2019 · 16:32

Lying through Hypes

I was thinking on a Huawei claim that I saw (in the image), the headline ‘AI’s growing influence on the economy’ sounds nice, yet AI does not exist at present,not True AI, or perhaps better stated Real AI. At the very least two elements of AI are missing so that whatever it is, it is not AI. is that an indication on just how bad the economy is? Well, that is up for debate, but what is more adamant is what the industry is proclaiming is AI and cashing in on something that is not AI at all.

Yet when we look at the media, we are almost literally thrown to death with AI statements. So what is going on? Am I wrong?

No! 

Or at least that is my take on the matter, I believe that we are getting close to near AI, but what the hype and what marketing proclaim is AI, is not AI. You see, if there was real AI we would not see articles like ‘This AI is a perpetual loser at Othello, and players love it‘, we are handed “The free game, aptly called “The weakest AI Othello,” was released four months ago and has faced off against more than 400,000 humans, racking up a paltry 4,000 wins and staggering 1.29 million losses as of late November” this is weird, as we look at SAS (a data firm) we see: “Artificial intelligence (AI) makes it possible for machines to learn from experience, adjust to new inputs and perform human-like tasks“, which is an actual part of an actual AI, so why do we see the earlier mentioned 400,000 players with 1.29 million wins whilst the system merely won 4,000 times shows that it is not learning, as such is cannot be an AI. A slightly altered SAS statement would be “Most AI examples rely heavily on deep learning and natural language processing. Using these technologies, computers can be trained to accomplish specific tasks by processing large amounts of data and recognizing patterns in the data” The SAS page (at https://www.sas.com/en_au/insights/analytics/what-is-artificial-intelligence.html) also gives us the image where they state that today AI is seen as ‘Deep Learning’, which is not the same.

It is fraught with a dangerous situation, the so called AI is depending on human programming and cannot really learn, merely adapt to programming. SAS itself actually acknowledges this with the statement “Quick, watch this video to understand the relationship between AI and machine learning. You’ll see how these two technologies work, with examples” they are optionally two sides of a coin, but not the same coin, if that makes sense, so in that view the statement of Huawei makes no sense at all, how can an option influence an economy when it does not exist? Well, we could hide behind the lack of growth because it does not exist. Yet that is also the stage that planes are finding themselves in as they are not equipped with advanced fusion drives, it comes down to the same problem (one element is most likely on Jupiter and the other one is not in our solar system). When we realise that we can seek advanced fusion as much as we want, but the elements requiring that are not in our grasp, just like AI, it is shy a few elements so whatever we call AI is merely something that is not really AI. It is cheap marketing for a generation that did not look beyond the term. 

The Verge (a https://www.theverge.com/2019/1/28/18197520/ai-artificial-intelligence-machine-learning-computational-science) had a nice summary, I particularly liked (slightly altered) “the Oral-B’s Genius X toothbrush that touted supposed “AI” abilities. But dig past the top line of the press release, and all this means is that it gives pretty simple feedback about whether you’re brushing your teeth for the right amount of time and in the right places. There are some clever sensors involved to work out where in your mouth the brush is, but calling it artificial intelligence is gibberish, nothing more“, we can see this as the misuse of the term AI, and we are handed thousands of terms every day that misuse AI, most of it via short messages on Social Media. and a few lines later we see the Verge giving us “It’s better, then, to talk about “machine learning” rather than AI” and it is followed by perhaps one of the most brilliant statements “Machine learning systems can’t explain their thinking“, it is perhaps the clearest night versus day issue that any AI system would face and all these AI systems that are dependable growing any economy aren’t and the world (more likely the greed driven entities) cannot grow any direction in this. they are all hindered what marketing states it needs to be whilst marketing is clueless on what they face, or perhaps they are hoping that the people remain clueless on what they present.

So as the verge ends with “In the here and now, artificial intelligence — machine learning — is still something new that often goes unexplained or under-examined” we see the nucleus of the matter, we are not asking questions and we are all accepting what the media and its connected marketing outlets are giving us, and when we make the noticeable jump that there is no AI and it is merely Machine learning and deeper learning, whilst we entertain the Verge examples “How clever is a book?” and “What expertise is encoded in a frying pan?“

We need to think things through (the current proclaimed AI systems certainly won’t). We are back in the 90’s where concept sellers are trying to fill their pockets all whilst we all perfectly well know (through applied common sense) that what they are selling is a concept and no concept will fuel an economy that is a truth that came and stood up when a certain Barnum had its circus and hid behind well chosen marketing. So whenever you get some implementation of AI on LinkedIn of Facebook you are being lied to (basically you are marketed) or pushed into some direction that such articles attempt to push you in. 

That is merely my view on the matter and you are very welcome to get your own view on the matter as well, I merely hope that you will look at the right academic papers to show you what is real and what is the figment of someone’s imagination. 

 

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, Media, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

November 3, 2019 · 13:01

A National Brand

Today’s story comes from LinkedIn of all places perhaps that is not quite correct, the story got a foothold there; it is His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum that gave the story the light it deserved. His call to form a team, 7 from each emirate, 49 in total and that gives us light to a part most of us did not ever consider, the UAE, the United Arab Emirates is indeed truly a union, a unions between 7 Emirates, each with its own flag.

Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras al-Khaimah, Sharjah, and Umm al-Quwain, each with its flag, its capital and all united under the UAE with its capital Abu Dhabi. Four of its voices are less than 5%, Umm al-Quwain (0.8%), Fujairah (1.6%), Ajman (3.9%) and Ras al-Khamain (4.3%), these 4 represent less than 20% of the UAE population (10.6%) yet they will be fully represented and the UAE went as far as local, global and social media to spread this word for a gathering towards a national brand.

It is interesting to see such a wide announcement to make proclamation towards an idea that will take months to fulfil. We are so used to social media being a vat for dishing out information that such a call is a nice change of pace.

I hope that this gets all the attention by national subjects on Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and so on, because it seems like a worthy cause to give out such recognition in the end to 49 artists, an assignment to ‘to design the UAE’s new nation brand logo, before the end of this year‘, something that is usually in the hands of a chosen few, a chosen group of people high in the ranks of some government or corporate side.

And it was equally nice to see the usage for social networking being used in this way, it is not often, it is actually way to little that we see a request like that from any government to its citizens far and wide, perhaps that was the part that hit me first, a global stage created for a national product from its citizens. I for one hope that this will be the start of something beautiful, not for me, even though I would prosper in finding out how knowledge in this way would push boundaries.

I would love to see the connections and the creation that the UAE called for, to see what the nationalistic intentions are towards created artwork, towards arts propelled in such a way, I reckon that the creations that this call made, even though it would be on a national floor could get a global exposure, optionally propelling the artists aiming to the national floor on a global floor. In my purview for no other reason than to see the mindset of someone connected to the arts and a national frame of mind.

I personally am as curious as can be to see the results of such a call. There is a pride, a nationalist pride in anyone who is working abroad, it does not matter whether you took up another nation to fly your wings, a career in another place or merely a student that is out of once nation, the bulk of them will remain proud towards their station of origin. It is different with refugees at times, but they too will have a personalised setting towards the place they come from. You can ask any Armenian outside of Armenia (well you can ask nearly anyone), a lot of them will always keep the flag of their original country high in mind and soul.

 

 

 

 

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

October 18, 2019 · 12:25

When we are merely given a paragraph

It happens, we get offered a paragraph and for some reason we wake up, we think: ‘That’s nice! Tell me more!‘ It can be for the strangest and least connected reasons out there. No matter that the push or the reason, we only get that one paragraph and are left hanging. That feeling came right off the bat when ABC gave me ‘ASIO warns of ‘hostile intelligence services’ using social media in annual report‘ (at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-17/asio-warns-of-hostile-intelligence-services-on-social-media/11609726) a day ago. Now, let’s be fair, ASIO is not really the one to play games of open communication, as its employees and governing staff were educated by the people of Sneaky, Peeping and Backstabbing incorporated, they have other markers to work with. As such as I was fed ““hostile intelligence services” using social media to target people across business and government“, which basically is a continuation (to some degree) of the quote we saw at ABC in July 2017 when we were given “help Australian security agencies get access to encrypted messages from suspected terrorists and other criminals“, in itself not an issue one would think, and there is exactly the problem, one did not think. I made references to private chat groups in Social media and extremism before 2016, just nice to know that someone gets around and wakes up every now and then. Or as I would phrase it as ‘What else is new?‘, Yet as Jade MacMillan takes us by the hand in this ABC article, we see: “A report in the New York Times earlier this year claimed China was using LinkedIn to try to recruit foreign spies“, again we go with the ‘What else is new?‘. There is nothing new under the sun as MI-6, CIA, DGSE and optionally ASIS have been using that very same tool to get information. The honey traps, the enticement parties and the stage where you are a winner, the tricks are as old as the very first sign stating: ‘Authorised Personally Only‘. In this the larger issue is avoided, you see financial entrepreneurs have been using these paths to gain information on how to find people with debts and some of them have (allegedly) been reporting those people to international whisper divisions, so that a deal could be struck. So whilst some look for foreign agents, they all ignore the debt collectors mining every bit of social media to gain a momentary advantage to collect on one debt and gain another bonus, and those people will always look for investors, especially investors that have a fluidic opinion of ethics and how to be working towards rewards.

It all comes across as silly and as mindless as “Attorney-General George Brandis said encryption was potentially the “greatest degradation of intelligence and law enforcement capability” in a lifetime“, he could not put gamers in a proper dimensional view, so why would he get this right? It is an easy enough question and there is a link. There was a reason why Facebook suspended and ended all group chat options (there were a few actually), they were off course way late, now that Lone wolves and others have found new means to get this started, they need to be more careful, but the state remains. Mining is the only way to do this and you need resources for that, as well as proper staff who comprehend data and not let some silly deep learning algorithm fix it. For example, consider that a facilitator created an auto fill chat system; it has 250,000 lines an hour, whilst the system has one anchor word, a word you can select. So as we see the chat go through, we make no sense on it, yet the users have set the word ‘الدراجين’ (meaning ‘riders’) even as the initial part makes no sense

WE now get:

يتيح للجميع وقتا طيبا والحزب

الهذيان الكبير في واحة في منتصف الليل

جميع الدراجين سباق اليوم

معلومات السباق في اللعبة

تسجيل جميع الدراجين بعد صلاة الفجر

يجب أن المؤمنين اقتبس مرور البقر

جميع الدراجين يعرفون أن السيارة مائة مؤهلة

 

Even in this setting the programming cannot make sense, and unless you knew that ‘riders’ was the operative word good luck in finding what comes next. a system like this has been in place for years, now there are dedicated programs, yet in the past there were 4-6 in a group of 100, so those 4 guest gamers would not be noticed and by the time someone woke up, it was already too late, the meeting was over and more secure conversations had taken place, this system worked global and now that Facebook chat groups are a thing of the past other means are used for all kinds of groups to find a way to pass a message along.

We get it, the employees of Sneaky, Peeping and Backstabbing incorporated are not supposed to put it in the open, yet the annual report seemingly ignores one part. Instead of having a dozen systems creating a small solution, we need to find the agencies actually working together to avert “ASIO has limited scope to redirect internal resources to address the increasing gap between demand for our counterespionage and foreign interference advice and our ability to furnish this assistance” and partially find a solution that will take care of the extremists, the organised crackpots and the corporate facilitators, if you do not consider the third group to be important, then you have remained asleep for far too long at the wheel.

So when I mentioned Brandis (never the sharpest tool in my personal opinion) we might consider the 2017 event and the quote: “If the laws are passed and technology companies comply, they could help with investigations into paedophile networks, major organised crime or terrorism”, the man is transparent as glass as he hid in the past behind ‘violent gamers’ and now he uses ‘paedophile networks’. Yet the larger issue not seen here are financial services, there is no oversight and there is no telling what an approached debt collector could find out without setting of ANY red flags. And that is with the players who are on the up and up and playing a proper game taking all the proper guidelines and consumer protection laws as noticed and complied with, this wild west group has a truckload of groups all willing to do what it takes to get the score and a foreign player is a stakeholder in finding needs. That group has been able to remain off the books for at least 2 years. They all seemingly forgot that places like Experian, Equifax, Dun & Bradstreet, have their own customer base and who checked out those credentials?

Yes, we can agree that the entire matter is too large for ASIO to deal with, but there is also the flaw that the scope of what they face is not dimensionalised in the proper fashion, it is openly misrepresented and that is optionally acceptable, as long as they know what they face in-house.

And it is not a rocket science deal; the FBI, MI5, BRGE, AIVD, MAD (yes that is the acronym for the German Intelligence Services) and the FSB all deal with these issues. OK, these players will not be calling the FSB but you get the idea. There are players that are about data and proper intelligence mining (Palantir Technologies), yet the field needs to widen but in another direction. If this is Business Intelligence then Palantir is SAS, whilst we need a more IBM statistics and IBM Modeller based solution rolled out, we do not need a solution that fits all, we need to feed clusters of investigators with power tools that allow them to surf data and mine activities to a much larger degree. We need to set server milestones with collected raw data that different clusters can attack. The intelligence branches have wanted to do it the wrong way around for too long (often pressured by wannabe politicians), what we need is a treasure trove of data that all players can have a go at and actually report findings. We create almost 3 Exabyte of data every day, and we need to find 1% of 1% in that, whilst all this happens before 5G, it is about to become 20 times worse and they cannot even handle what is out there now.

All whilst we know that the 1% of 1% remains a group of 98% which is merely misdemeanours playing around, as such we need to change the premise towards collected data, that is what we face at present so the entire matter of “greater awareness among our stakeholders of that threat — has increased demand for our advice and support”, which is misrepresentation in its own right. The stakeholders have their own needs and their own game to play. Consider the IP needs of Telstra (Australia), the Inside protection and mandates of Novartis (Pharmaceuticals), Insider trading on HSBC (Banking) and their needs are their financial protection needs and in this fearless leader Duncan Lewis (ASIO) has to optionally look out for the needs of Telstra (as some claim that hat Telstra needs, Australia needs) whilst hunting those wanting to harm Australians, in this the Stakeholders are more about the revenue and debatable a source of good (they allegedly merely want their bonus safe), as such we should optionally wonder about the needs of the stakeholders and the difference about their claim and their needs.

So whilst we see another batch of mobile swipe and pay solutions being rolled out whilst there are a few concerns on how that data is processed all over the world, we forget that those out to harm national needs are also out looking into all those apps and finding out that for the largest extent the IMEI number of any smartphone is a much easier anchor to work with and mapping the usage also gives a larger content on data and where the target might be, yet most forgot about how the old is still beneath the new, did they not? So even as we consider the title ‘ASIO warns of ‘hostile intelligence services’ using social media in annual report‘, we need to consider that ‘hostile intelligence services‘ is merely part of a much larger problem and that those services use all kinds of methods that the local knights of the round facilitating table (FBI, MI5, BRGE, AIVD, and MAD) are still not looking at (as far as I can tell).

In all this we were merely given a paragraph and whilst people wonder how to find resources, the matter on how to properly apply those resources so that they can have an impact was left off the table, and that was actually the delicious cream that should have graced the Strawberries, or are those Blackberries? I’ll let you work on that little last line conundrum yourself this weekend.

So have a nice day and let’s not forget that the weekend ends in 48 hours! #JustSaying

 

Leave a comment

Filed under IT, Media, Military, Politics, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 21, 2019 · 11:50

The first changes

We have arrived at the point of the first changes; the next 12 months will give a much larger view of the consumers and the changes that they are willing to accept. The Huawei P30 Pro is the beginning of this; at $1249 this choice is a lot cheaper than its competitor Samsung $1849 (a difference of 32.5%, whilst the Apple at $1999 will set you back an additional 37.5%, this adds up to a lot! Yet the price is not the issue, the fact that the Huawei now comes without YouTube, Google Maps and Gmail among other software, it also does not feature Google’s Play Store. It is an Android game changer; Huawei has pre-loaded new alternative apps of its own. It was the step we expected, the trade wars with China and the persecution of Huawei and the discrimination against Huawei was actually THAT stupid. Now that we are confronted with the changes we will see a new optional change. When an equal mobile is well over $500 cheaper we see the changes that matter. As the people get accustomed to other apps, apps that replace social media solutions we see a shift of consumers, I personally believe it will be a lager change. I do recommend that there will be an upgraded LinkedIn and a new Facebook available, yet there is a situation where the Asian population in Australia will embrace the Chinese solutions, there is in addition a larger need for affordable phones, so there will be a larger shift. Yes, most will hate being without Facebook, yet the credibility Facebook has lost in the past, the people might just keep these solutions on their laptop/Desktop. Yet there is already word that Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp would all be available via Huawei’s own store, called the Huawei App Gallery, so all is not lost, but the fact that Google will lose millions of people who will now go via the Huawei App Gallery is almost a given. The BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49754376) also gave us: “He added that the firm had set aside $1bn (£801m) to encourage developers to make their apps compatible, and said more than 45,000 apps had already integrated the firm’s technology. But he did not name any of them“, so $1,000,000,000 to corner a market and get a handle into the Chinese app user market. It will be found and it will create momentum. I changed my mobile less than a year ago, so I have no need to change for now, yet there is every indication that the upgrade to a new Android version will see me change as well and why would I not do that? Perhaps I am part of the population that thinks “Maybe they’re just trying to ride it out in the hope that they eventually get access to those Google services later“, I am most likely on that fence, however when I check the amount of options that I desperately want on my Mobile, I am limited to WordPress and LinkedIn, and they are not essential, merely a nice to have on my mobile. I can do either on a desktop. I am not alone, as thousands will shift from one side to the other month by month, Google will feel the pinch. Consider that there will be a close to immediate shift on YouTube metrics, implying that the Google Ads department will start requiring new metrics to keep their push going, we see a larger impact on Google, it will not be immediate, but it will be there and growing from the beginning, even as Google and the US will debate on how wrong the metrics are, they too realise that the American corporations will see the impact on their business, it will be visible and direct, merely because a war on greed by flaccid politicians and surpassed technologists was stated to be in denial.

The US did not to its homework, it neglected the choirs they have and are now pushing their losses on other markets. Even as we contemplate what the impact of “side-loading” Google’s apps onto the handsets and that phone store staff would advise customers how to do that. They are wondering how it would limit its impact as long as the usage impact remains close to 100%, when that falters a few times the consumers will be offered alternatives that are 100% and that is where we see the shift towards Chinese commerce.

Now that Huawei has been informed on my 5 parts of IP (hopefully bringing me decent funds too), there might be a larger shift as the issues in 5G cybersecurity and propagating 5G commerce is still lacking at least 3 elements, I feel that I will win in the long run. All the players that are behind ‘T-Mobile gets closer to launching nationwide 5G on low-band spectrum‘, I have seen that Sprint, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Telstra, as well as BT have not implemented certain parts and even what they designed lacks certain small business needs, as such I feel a lot more confident on my IP. They had 3 years to look at it and they have the same short minded and shallow approach to business ignoring the Small businesses (a little over 400 million of them) to the larger degree. All elements that were clearly visible moved from the 4G premise of ‘Wherever I am‘, to 5G ‘Whenever I want it‘, that failure alone gives Huawei an additional push. As the numbers rack up towards Huawei and Chinese innovation, we will see a larger change towards the business needs and so far none of the non-Chinese solutions have addressed these changes.

As the Chinese app user market explodes in activities between now and December 2020 we will see a larger shift. With Huawei market share at 19% and Oppo at 9.5%, we see a larger growth towards 5G, as Apple is now declining to 37%, we see that Apple in 5G will lose close to 15% all these parts matter, because it does more than increase the market share for Huawei, it actually gives China a larger option to grow in a few directions that it had no real option to grow in previously, the anti-Huawei steps were THAT stupid and now we start seeing the impact. The only way to stop this is for American brands to start offering their phones at the same price as Huawei is. And that is how we see it, Google took that step and offered the Pixel 3XL at a mere 16% extra and that might be a reason to switch to Google, but in the end the others are now pushing themselves out of the race quicker and quicker.

There is a larger need to consider, as the US is getting its thanksgiving and as we are all facing Christmas (and the Dutch will get Saint Nicholas as well) the consumers will have a limited option, yet an essential need to tickle themselves, when you consider that place, would you accept the $1249 that gives you what you need, or would you spend 37.5% for what others market you towards your needs? When you realise that the essentials can be done on the smaller budget, in a time when budgets are still tight and the dangers of recession remains, can you really afford to spend those hundreds of dollars more?

The bulk of the people I know cannot afford them, they often will accept a more expensive contract, yet in the stage when 5G is about to come, would you really want to tie yourself down? And when all the small business owners realise that the current stage will hurt their business for 2-3 years, would they really want to take that chance when the commerce slice is the one everyone wants, at that point can they tie themselves down?

The first changes are here, but they also signal larger changes towards a stage where commerce will be the deciding factor and the bulk of them merely looked at their needs to sell, they to a much larger degree forget to consider what their consumers needed in the 5G environment, that failure will rear its ugly head soon enough, as I see it, Huawei is finding themselves ready for that shift. In the end that is the third stage of innovation that lazy Americans ignored, I wonder how much that will cost them this time around. As I personally see it, 400 million small business owners was too large a group to leave in the cauldron of non-decisions, yet that is exactly what they did in Europe and the US.

Forbes

So as Forbes gives us ‘Shock New Google Warning For Anyone Buying Huawei Mate 30‘, we see how the writer Zak Doffman gives us (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/09/20/shock-new-google-warning-for-anyone-buying-huawei-mate-30) “Despite impressive hardware innovation, the media write-ups went straight to the lack of full-fat Android, the lack of YouTube and Gmail and Google Maps, the lack of the Play Store” which opposes the BBC, who did give clear mention and as implied so did Huawei. So there we are, already we see issues with the media bringers. After that we see the barricade “24-hours post launch, the reality of the Mate 30 is firming up. It seems highly unlikely there is any Google workaround” yet the reality is that these users get a first glimpse that it is possible to be without Google on their mobile, we do not have to get bothered every minute on news we did not need. In addition with a functional browser we still get what we need, we just will not get it via an app (for now), and believe me when the numbers start slashing into the Google needs, they will want a workaround as desperately as possible. The writer even ends with: “And so for any of you enamoured with the Mate 30 hardware who can live without Google for an unknown amount of time, maybe this is a risk worth taking” which is at the heart of the matter, not the heart we choose and not the one Google choice, because when the numbers start proving that there is real life after google, those numbers will give growth to an exponential growth of people accepting Chinese apps and accepting non-Google solutions. I feel certain that it will happen, merely because the browser is still going to be there and it will show that there is a larger need in people, even if it is to show that the want to prove that dependency on Facebook and Google is a solution, even if it is a mere point of ego, they want to prove that they are not the slave of their mobile. That alone will be a driving factor as well.

No matter how we slice it, within the next 12 months we will see an almost polarised population, those who want the best and fastest and those who need some Google solution, both will have their own validity and merits, yet in the end as small business owners see that Huawei 5G solutions can cater to both, they get to win and that is the real victory, soon thereafter the US will change the blacklist, the moment that there is a clear invoice to the losses and Google will hold the US government accountable to these tax deductible losses, at that point will we see a strong push to find some middle ground, the US will have to give is with every additional billion dollar loss and market shift towards China. They basically have no options left, their inability to deal with Iran is one view, their inability to deal with Syria is a second stage of evidence, and within the next 12 months we will get several other pieces of evidence get released to the larger audience. And that is not the end of it, as the cases regarding Pacific Gas and Electric Company, Purdue Pharma, OrbCare, Insys Therapeutics Inc and their bankruptcy issues are rising, they matter to the regard that the US government is seeing the pinch from 3 directions at present, and that is only whilst California is able to keep its head above the waterline. All these impact are also the impact on 5G propagation, installation and implementation. When you doubt that, consider the Government tech source hat gave us “5G won’t roll out to much of Southern California for a few more years, but companies such as Verizon and AT&T are beginning to install the necessary infrastructure, including those small cells pole by pole, across the region” last April, the fires and other calamities only made things harder, so whilst we see the FCC stepping in, we only see more hindrance for these people, not less and that is the impacting issue from Pasadena to Huntington Beach, and that is only the most visible one. The infrastructure is getting a second hit as we are shown that “the Federal Communications Commission is now restricting how much cities can charge the companies to install equipment: $500 for up to five cells, $100 a cell after that and a $270 annual access fee for each cell“, it is a loaded issue no matter how you slice it and whilst they are trying to figure out how to resolve it, the truth of the matter is that Huawei had this issue solved already and that is how California (and other states) end up getting limited 5G for 2-3 years, all whilst the Huawei case is growing more and more outside of the USA. It is a situation where the technology is not up to scrap and the diminished amount of funds available allows for no alternatives either; now add to this the consumers shifting to some degree away from Google who relies on Google Ads more and more and a near perfect storm is created, a storm that slams the US and gives growth upon growth to China and Chinese interests.

As the EU is accepting Huawei and as Huawei is now embracing a shift towards cloud systems, and as it grows the needs, and sets the growing stage towards 21Vianet, we see a much larger shift and in all this, the first changes brought a push in directions we never considered before. It was only a day ago when Microsoft President Brad Smith requested that the United States should end its blacklisting of Chinese giant Huawei Technologies, we might not realise it, yet the changes allowed for Huawei to look into a partnership with 21Vianet, which will directly impede Microsoft Azure business that is not in Chinese hands (outside of China), in this stage 21Vianet will have a direct option to offer services to European players, as it will not be their solution, but a Huawei solutions and the group of small businesses that are in Europe (a nice slice of 400 million companies) they too will select ‘the other’ Chinese solution. All instigated by a Huawei war that was not based on facts or on reality, it was to address the need of greed and now that it bites back, the US will find itself at the dinner table where only humble pie is to be served. When they buckle (and they will) the shift becomes larger and faster, because at that point the consumers will have the additional questions that will be met with denial on every level conceivable.

Huawei would need to do one additional thing to make that wave a lot larger, I wonder if they will do just that before the end of this year.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under Finance, Media, Politics, Science

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,