Tag Archives: Mark Zuckerberg

December 21, 2018 · 12:01

Three privacies walked into a bar

It is not merely the beginning of a bad joke; it has become a distasteful one. Now, for the most I have never really been against social media like Facebook, as it was free and nothing comes for free. Yet in this, I have always advocated and expected certain levels of decency. The Guardian revealed two days ago that large levels of decency have been trampled on to a much larger degree than ever contemplated, and the people remain silent. The people are so uppity uppity on possible transgressions by governments seeking criminals and terrorists, yet they will allow for any transgression towards greed and exploitation, how can we accept any of it?

  1. Show us your tits

It is an old expression, and I heard it first somewhere in the early 80’s. It broadly represents: ‘What have you got to offer?‘ Mostly used by people with absolutely no adherence to either diplomacy or good manners (unless a guy makes the joke to a good male friend). It is the first part in the stage that the Guardian offers in an article (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/19/facebook-shared-user-data-private-messages-netflix-spotify-amazon-microsoft-sony) where we see not merely ‘bending’ the rules; it is the breaking of basic rights towards privacy that is now out in the open. Even as we accept to the smaller degree: “making user data available through loopholes to companies including Amazon, Microsoft and Sony“, can we even contemplate the impact that we would have to face through: “Facebook gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read and even delete users’ private messages“, the fact that these two were allowed to ‘delete’ messages is crossing a line the width of the grand canyon and the fact that those fruits and nuts on Capitol Hill (aka Senators and Congressmen) are clueless in their interviews, showing one stupidity tainted example after another and questions like ‘giving away rights to delete private messages‘ remained largely undisclosed shows just how useless the elected officials have become towards the larger fields of technology.

  1. Merely the tip, or can I shove my whole penis in there?

A small reference to the comedian Jimmy Carr, who once stated: “I can’t get a word in there, let alone my cock“, and that setting gives us the New York Times view of: “Facebook allowed Microsoft’s Bing search engine to see the names of virtually all Facebook users’ friends without consent, the records show, and gave Netflix and Spotify the ability to read Facebook users’ private messages” (at https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/18/technology/facebook-privacy.html#click=https://t.co/p565d1TX5L). As we contemplate: “Acknowledging that it had breached users’ trust, Facebook insisted that it had instituted stricter privacy protections long ago. Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive, assured lawmakers in April that people “have complete control” over everything they share on Facebook“, we see a much larger field opening up. We can think on one side that Mark Zuckerberg had become clueless on what is going on, or he remains intentionally silent on what he believes are personal rights of privacy, the mere realisation that Facebook acknowledges that not one user on Facebook has any rights to privacy is at the core of this stage. It goes further with: “the deals described in the documents benefited more than 150 companies — most of them tech businesses, including online retailers and entertainment sites, but also automakers and media organizations. Their applications sought the data of hundreds of millions of people a month, the records show. The deals, the oldest of which date to 2010, were all active in 2017. Some were still in effect this year” there is a clear transgression going on, and it is merely speculative on my side when we considered the impact of Bing and Microsoft. They have become so afraid of what Google has become that they are willing to stage new settings of alliances against whatever fictive war they face, the innovations that Google has brought and the innovations that Chinese player Huawei is bringing is scaring these large players beyond belief. If they cannot get up to their imaginative version what it means to be ‘on par’ they feel that they will be considered as derelict and considered as merely trivial in the 5G field. That is a much larger realisation and people need to be aware that as they contemplate of what it means to be a major player in the 5G field, the mere perception that they are not that, that they have lost the trust of the people is a much larger hurdle.

The NY Times shows that part in their article with: “Mr. Zuckerberg was determined to weave Facebook’s services into other sites and platforms, believing it would stave off obsolescence and insulate Facebook from competition. Every corporate partner that integrated Facebook data into its online products helped drive the platform’s expansion, bringing in new users, spurring them to spend more time on Facebook and driving up advertising revenue. At the same time, Facebook got critical data back from its partners“. We could contemplate that this is optionally the Ponzi version of a data scheme, but it is as I personally see it more sinister than that. You see, the lower levels would never advance to a higher level and the data would merely flow up to the tip of the pyramid, leaving the rest as mere exploitable facilitators in all this.

  1. Supply Filofax’s to the Russians, it is very organised crime

There is one additional part in all this that could be the beginning of the end for Facebook, as the NY Times gives us: “Facebook, in turn, used contact lists from the partners, including Amazon, Yahoo and the Chinese company Huawei — which has been flagged as a security threat by American intelligence officials — to gain deeper insight into people’s relationships and suggest more connections, the records show“, we are introduced to a much larger issue. Not only has the US been unable to prove the lie (read: non-truth) that Huawei is a National Security danger. We see the makings of the fact that American Corporation (read: Facebook) has been handing over the data voluntarily. As a business solution, Huawei had been able to see where the interactions were the largest and also predict where hardware and software would make it a much better regarded update for consumers, the fact that this data became available gives the first rise (after shown levels of non-comprehension) that technology firms are replacing politicians, politics and policy making them useless as these technology firms have been setting the beat of who gets what data and at which price, yet the US government is not allowed access, not when it can be sold at $14.99 per kilobyte of raw data.

This remains an evolving field and it is not until we get to the part “Apple devices also had access to the contact numbers and calendar entries of people who had changed their account settings to disable all sharing, the records show. Apple officials said they were not aware that Facebook had granted its devices any special access. They added that any shared data remained on the devices and was not available to anyone other than the users“, so not only does the new iPad pro bend under the smallest pressure, which Apple claims is normal (something the consumer was not informed about), we see that the ignorance of their own technology is now a much larger issue all over the playing field. the mere fact that disabled sharing of data still allowed for sharing is an architectural failure of much larger proportions than ever contemplated. In all this data sharing in Huawei devices remains unproven and in all this it seems that Google is not the black sheep some proclaim it is, all whilst Facebook is showing to be without ethics, without regards and without morals, so at what point will we relabel Facebook to Faecesbook?

So as the article ends with: “How closely Facebook monitored its data partners is uncertain. Most of Facebook’s partners declined to discuss what kind of reviews or audits Facebook subjected them to. Two former Facebook partners, whose deals with the social network dated to 2010, said they could find no evidence that Facebook had ever audited them. One was BlackBerry. The other was Yandex” gives a much larger rise to the lack of privacy that up to two billion users have not had for the longest of times. We could argue that it is in the interest of Google, to fix Google+ and allow people to port away from Facebook. When we look at the two players, it seems that Google+ is not nearly as dangerous as Facebook is more and more showing to be. Even as we are considering that Washington DC is suing Facebook, the realisation we get from: “Washington DC has sued Facebook for allowing the political consultancy Cambridge Analytica to gain access to the personal data of tens of millions of the site’s users without their permission“, when we set it against the stage that the guardian, the Times and the New York Times have shown the people. We merely have to print the log of all data shared and number all instances of data transgression will optionally show Facebook to be the most reckless and unethical corporation in the history of technology, that is quite the achievement, and it works for Microsoft as they might proclaim themselves to be saints in a tar pit.

When we consider the quote: “According to a letter that Facebook sent this fall to Senator Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat, PricewaterhouseCoopers reviewed at least some of Facebook’s data partnerships“, we see a massive failure by Facebook to police and protect the data of others, and as we already know, those who have the latest mobile phone, we need to realise that this is no longer a mobile phone, the latest phones and the ones for 5G are no longer merely mobile phones, they have become personal data servers and as we are seeing the impact where Facebook has made most of all that data shareable, with people you never agreed on having access, in how much anger will you be from January 1st 2019 and onwards? For me it works out nicely, it merely increases the value of my new IP, which is currently on the rise to a much larger degree than even I contemplated. 2019 might be finally be the year where my life turns largely to the better and at present I feel a lot safer handing that IP to Huawei than to anyone else, that is one reality that Washington DC has shown to the largest of degrees (Mountain View remains a strong contender for now).

The only part in all this is why large parts of all this was not shown clearly in the senate hearing of September 2018. Just contemplate this weekend, what else did that so called Senate hearing not figure out, and how unsafe would you like your personal data end up being in 2019?

 

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November 2, 2018 · 13:08

Fruity tech sides ignored

We have seen plenty of events in the last few days, some we will side one way, and the next the other way. some of these issues are not black and white, they are grey at best and we can no longer decide which shade of grey we are looking at, even less decide if there are 50 shades of them. We see places like the Sydney Morning Herald give us: ‘Facebook is turning into an Apple lookalike‘, whilst CNBC gives us: “Facebook’s revenue miss means more ads could flood user timelines“. I believe that this goes beyond a mere notion of ‘Facebook growth slows as Zuckerberg says developed countries are saturated‘, which we get from the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/30/facebook-quarterly-report-revenue-growth). Yes there definitely is saturation, but there is also a growing resentment from the users themselves. You see, Facebook is no longer about the users, it is no longer about what we want, Facebook is about telling us what we want and the resentment group is starting to grow, perhaps soon enough on an exponential scale. This is what I would call the precursor to collapse. Facebook did this to its self and that is not even considering the Cambridge Analytica element in the equation. When I start Facebook I want to see my timeline as a timeline, I need it chronologically as I have friends and family all over the world, so time zones are important here. Yet every time I start Facebook on desktop or mobile, it resorts to what gets the most visibility, it is about the most interactions hoping that it will lead to more engagement, but that is now more and more less likely to be the case as users have evolved. They know what to look for and when to look. Facebook is about traffic pressure and does not seem to care on what the users want and that saturated group is starting to look for other places where they can get what they need. It ends up not being good news for Facebook and they are hurting themselves more and more by not considering their users and placing them first, they place traffic pressures for the need of enhanced advertisement first and the people are now backing away.

So when the Guardian treats us to: “Zuckerberg cautioned that revenue could slow in the future“, I merely see the truth as it should be which is “Zuckerberg should be cautioning us that revenue will slow in the foreseeable future“, they are not the same.

And even as we are told: “Last week, the company announced that the war room team had detected and deleted 82 pages, groups, and accounts, all found to be part of an Iranian disinformation campaign targeting voters in the US and UK” it seems merely the top of the iceberg and even as I have no real notion of what they think is a war room, but there are doubts on what Facebook thinks it is and what it actually should be from a few directions.

To continue that it would seem important that I use the quotes from last May when Bloomberg gave us: “At the end of April, Al-Ahed’s website linked to an Arabic Facebook page with more than 33,000 followers. Content on the page included a video of masked snipers targeting Israeli soldiers. Another Al-Ahed Facebook page had more than 47,000 followers, and one in English had 5,000. Facebook’s policies prohibit material that supports or advances terrorism. The company’s definition of the term, published last month for the first time, includes a ban on nongovernmental organizations that use violence to achieve political, religious, or ideological aims. It specifies that such groups include religious extremists, white supremacists, and militant environmental groups. Facebook also says content that violates its policies is “not allowed” on the site.”

Now consider this site (at https://www.memri.org/reports/hizbullah-reveals-drones-and-missile-museum-jihadi-tourism-south-lebanon), whilst we see: “In August 2018, for the first time, Hizbullah revealed drones and the short-range 75-kilometer Khaibar missile that it used during the July 2006 war with Israel. These are on display as part of a new exhibition held at the organization’s “Museum for Jihadi Tourism” (also known as the “Mleeta Tourist Landmark”) in Mleeta, South Lebanon, to mark 12 years since the war. Reports about these new exhibits and others were published in various Hizbullah media“, also consider “the head of Hizbullah’s media department, ‘Ali Daher, told the organization’s news website Al-‘Ahed that, until recently, the museum had displayed only old-generation drones, but now drones of several generations, which can carry out a variety of missions, are on display. The report stated that Hizbullah has a fleet of advanced drones stamped with the emblem of the organization’s “aerial force,” which first came into operational use during the July 2006 war“. That place also shows missiles used on targets last year (‘liberating’ Al-Juroud in 2017). So in this my short and direct message to Mark Zuckerberg is (as diplomatically as I could presently possibly muster): ‘Do you have a fucking clue what you and your war room are NOT achieving?‘ You see the Memri.org group has over one hundred and seventy eight thousand followers on Facebook mind you! As martyrs are ‘heralded’ and optionally ‘recruited’ via a non-profit organisation there is no issue? Who exactly are they effing kidding here?

Now we must be careful, as MEMRI also gives us: “Speaking at the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ (IISS) 2018 Manama Dialogue, Omani Foreign Minister Yusuf bin Alawi bin Abdullah said: “Israel is one of the countries in the region… Maybe it is time that Israel had the same privileges and duties as other countries.” Bin Abdullah said that the Torah and the Israelite prophets emerged in the Middle East and that there had even been Jews in Medina. He stated that improved relations between Israel and its neighbours can be accomplished“, which could be seen as a monumental step, yet there is still an issue. I will agree that the shades of grey become increasingly hazardous for everyone here, so painting with one brush will not bode well for everyone, yet Yesterday they also gave us: ‘Palestinian Columnist In Qatari Daily Calls For Armed Struggle Against Israel‘, which can be read (happily or not) on Facebook at this very moment (I did just so roughly 221 seconds ago). So there is a lot on Facebook that is out of whack. And with “He called on Fatah to take up arms, and on Hamas to expand its struggle against Israel to the West Bank and the Palestinian diaspora” we can see how roughly 178,633 followers were kept up to date (optionally picking up arms against the state of Israel) less than 24 hours ago. It seems to me that Facebook is mopping the floor and forgot to shut off the water tap before commencing the mopping, so we can see that this is going anywhere ever, and in that process they are going nowhere anytime soon. How is that for recognition? You Markie Mark Zuckerberg!

Oh and by the way Mark, feel free to reward me for bringing this to your attention with a 4.2 GHz quad-core 7th-generation Intel Core i7 processor, 27″ iMac 3TB and a new iPad Pro Cellular and Wi-Fi 1TB (12.9 Inch) with Keyboard and pen (preferably both with Apple Care). I mean let’s face it; you just had a sweet deal of 128 Million dollars by selling 5 million shares just in time. There is nothing like spreading the wealth (or at least recognise the fact that you have become a little lost for now).

You see, being fruity is all good and fine, yet when you neglect the need of your users the game changes. You will merely be feeling the pressures of less and less forward momentum as you neglected their direct desires and their indirect needs and this group is actually increasing so much faster than you can imagine. With every semester as students are connecting through international exchange programs, at that point their time line need changes as well, because not every exchange student goes to MIT, Stanford or Berkeley. Some will go to the Luleå University of Technology (the Swedish version of MIT) where we see only 75,000 in the entire city, or perhaps Örebro University, a place you might not know, it merely has 107,000 people living there, yet Örebro University has a Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences that is ahead of the curve by a comfortable space. In addition, Örebro University is in the lower part of the top 2% of all the universities on the planet. So whilst you, Mark Zuckerberg, you seem to be focussing on the 2 billion daily users. You are seemingly trying to build engagement pressure. You will of course fail as you are also (seemingly) forgetting that these 2 billion users all staged in segments to some degree and in that you seemingly forgot the (roughly) 5,324,883 niche groups that are a large chunk of Facebook as a whole. So whilst you focus on a net that captures all the people, the mazes of that net are getting too large and you will start to lose all the sardines, after which you will lose the herrings, then the eels, and so on. I hope that you get the idea of the danger you have put Facebook in. You have been so upset with a net that captures all the fish that you completely forgot on why the fish were there in the first place. It was not just a new deep blue sea, it was a comfortable place for fish and as you have been removing that part, you will see the shoals swim away. There is logic referring to fish. You see when we see “Any group of fish that stays together for social reasons is said to be shoaling, and if the shoal is swimming in the same direction together, it is schooling. About one quarter of fish shoal all their lives, and about one half of fish shoal for part of their lives.” In this TJ Pitcher gave us an article in 1992 on the behaviour of Teleost Fishes; it is on Page 363 if you are really curious. So whilst we concentrate on a net capturing them, your teams forgot to focus on the reason that they were there. Most for union, some for connection, some for protection and some just to swim and all these niche groups are the reasons for these fishes to remain together, yet some shoals unite and are what is seen as ‘about one half of fish shoal for part of their lives‘, yet they will move from shoal to shoal and that is where these niche markets become increasingly important. Google+ figured that part of the equation out within the first 30 days, so as you are placing pressure on your 2 billion users, you forgot all about the basics and you could be losing a lot more faster and sooner than you think and that is where my prediction “Zuckerberg should be cautioning us that revenue will slow in the foreseeable future” becomes more than a reality, it will be optional prophecy and it could have been avoided a long time ago. It almost feels like me and Mark Zuckerberg are opposites to some degree (and in some ways, especially financially) not the greatest place for me to be, but I believe in my path, that is how I roll.

Naval Extremism

Let’s take a look at an extremely fictive setting that is based on the truth, so as the story begins, a story I wrote and thought up myself mind you: “There is always an upbeat path in looking at ‘new’ technology. In the age of now, as I got bored, the need for entertainment was nigh and highly needed. So as I got the details on the USS Pennsylvania (via a documentary), my mind went racing. I always had a soft spot for Submarines. Cary Grant and Tony Curtis in Operation Petticoat might have been the first starting that interest; they were in the end not the only inspiration. There was the Hunt for Red October on the CBM Amiga (as well as the silver screen with Sean Connery). It is especially interesting to see the development of submarines from WW2 onwards. So as I looked at my initial solution to remove the Iranian navy from every equation, I decided to think through on how a submarine could be used to deploy such solutions. It is not a hard task and it seems applicable to do so, so it was not really a challenge. Then I got the idea to apply my solution in another way. The technology of the fibre torpedo gave me the idea, not to blow up a submarine, but to incapacitate it. The only problem at present is that the solution will not work on a submarine at full speed, so it is basically not a solution (yet). Now my mind focusses on solving problems and I like that. It does not matter what kind of puzzle it is. The less I know, the more I can learn; it is applied engineering and design in one cool patent package. At this time my engineering knob is 99% active and likely merely 1% efficient; I look at the video and remember the Russian VA-111 Shkval, a torpedo that goes like a bat out of hell (200 knots) at whatever they need to hit. The fact that this puppy can be nuclear is not a good thing for any submarine to meet, so I look at this puzzle and wonder how to make it less efficient. It takes an hour to come up with the craziest idea and I do not expect it to work because someone in any navy would have had that idea as well, or so I would believe. Yet what if no one had ever looked at this solution? Now consider that the Russian VA-111 Shkval uses GOLIS autonomous inertial guidance, giving me the idea in the first place , as we are confronted with the stage of Go-Onto-Location-in-Space, we see that this has the flaw of requiring a stationary or near-stationary target, and in a war condition a submarine getting fired on is like a virgin shouting that she is in heat, if she stays stationary she is going to get screwed, so movement is pretty essential at this point. This is where I had the craziest idea of releasing a cylinder behind the submarine, roughly 500 KG with copper and liquid (preferably solid) Oxygen (or Nitrogen) and let pressure blow it apart (nothing heat related), the water around it would freeze and the copper would likely transfer it stronger as well as making the object more solid, solid enough for the lump to take the hit and not the submarine. OK, it is the craziest idea and it might not ever work, yet it took me less than 30 minutes to come up with the idea after watching one History channel episode on the USS Pennsylvania” Now we go back to Facebook and we see a whole range of iterations ignored by the makers themselves. They have been so growth oriented that they forgot all about quality orientation, a part that is my only conclusion as we see the failings in the app and desktop side of the matter. It goes further as we see the evolution of people now getting judged on their social media profile, a stage where Facebook is completely ignoring the two sides in every person (a fun and a work related side), yet the people are not tailored to, and that is seen as more and more young new worker bees are leaving Facebook unattended to a bigger degree (and for longer times) and they are focusing more on LinkedIn and optionally learning that Twitter has what they need to a much better degree. All niches falling away, all niches selling other waters that look, feel and sense like the other deep blue sea, the deep blue sea they once thought they were in. A staged exit for all the people looking for what they need, for what they desire whilst Facebook has been focussing on what they thought their subscribers wanted and desired for the benefit of the selling of ads that the bank account of Mark Zuckerberg (et al) required, all versions of perceived and proclaimed truths whilst the fish in the Facebook database no longer experience it to be.

For a better term, Facebook lost the Googlyness it once heralded and there are sharks around who desperately needs to trim Facebook, because the strength is had with 2 billion, the strength of having a true global opinion customer base was just too scary for some of the political players and the sharks are circling the Facebook net that is showing more and more weakness at present. It is a risk of catering to the goals that were outside of the perception of the fish in the net. Fruity and techie can remain yummy for all the players, yet it will require a massive adjustment. When you consider that both Sony and Microsoft made claims in 2011/2012 on what was to come and that never really happened to the degree that the people might have hoped for. Now also consider that Facebook has 2 billion users and that other sources give us that more than 1.2 billion people are playing games worldwide, part of them is a group of 700 million who play online games. When you realise that, and you see that Facebook only touched on that to the smallest of degrees, when you realise that gaming social media is as isolated as it gets, how many balls did Mark Zuckerberg drop? And to be clear I am not talking about the two he should have on a biological level. I have watched on a massive oversight, one of the biggest niches on the planet.

It is a stage where 16% of the entire planet plays games, optionally up to 60% of all Facebook users. When we realise that, what other avenues is Facebook not investigating? Like the shoals of fish, gamers are part of several flocks, moving from flock to flock, yet staying in that same part of the ocean, how long until Facebook realises that the fish they had moved to another ocean? If gaming brings comfort to so many people, is it not weird that Facebook is not trying to appease such a large title dedicated group? Once we realise that we are all seeking a place of comfort where we can be ourselves, where we can unwind, does the failure of the current version of Facebook still makes sense to too many? Have we become complacent or are we merely too lazy to look around for the players that actually are customer engagement oriented?

You tell me!

 

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September 26, 2018 · 14:40

One thousand solutions

Yes, it has been 5 years in the making, or was that six? But the day is here, today is my 1000th article. So in light of some of the slamming that I have done against Microsoft (which they deserved and it was highly entertaining for me as well), it is also just to give recognition where it is due.

To see that in its proper light, we need to take a jump towards Sony, the very first PlayStation and a game called Gran Turismo. The first having the highest rating was one that stood out. You see, Kazunori Yamauchi gave us with Gran Turismo something that we had not seen before. Oh, we had seen racing games going all the way back to the CBM-64 with pole position. Yet Gran Turismo was something new, something unheard of and the screenshot that you see here might seem laughable to you now, but this was 4 console generations before now and then this was amazing. It was new it was fresh and it gave the players something that they had not had before and we all loved it!

These elements are important when we realise the article on Forza Horizons 4 for Xbox One (X) when we read “There’s almost been a sense of rediscovering what Britain is. I don’t think we’ll ever make a game quite like this again“, they were the words of Ralph Fulton. I personally believe he got it right, but he was not correct. I believe that this game added heart to Britain, which is a lot more then you bargained for. If there was one game that gives light to the consideration to buying a model X console then this game is it. The images are not merely about the cars, the views of wherever you drive, whenever and in what weather just jumps at you; it surpasses almost everything you will have played in racing games, and in this, even me, who is not a racing fan at all, I got blown away. They did not merely add some tracks to race, they gave us the UK to race in, and everyone, not merely those in the UK seems to be loving it.

I have written this before, so why repeat it?

Well, in my view Microsoft did something that Ubisoft should have done. You see, if you plan to make a game that is designed not to be a failure, you’ll never create a true winner. To do this, you need to jump out of the box and optionally burn it. This is seen on a much wider scale. We get part of this with ‘Instagram co-founders resign to explore ‘creativity again’‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/sep/25/instagram-co-founders-resign-to-explore-creativity-again). Here we see that “Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, have announced their resignation from the company, which is owned by Facebook Inc, saying that they are leaving to “explore our curiosity and creativity again”“. We can speculate on whether this is the full truth, or whether there is the setting that Mark Zuckerberg has made some colossal errors and these errors are not done yet, they are still to some degree escalating and as the wild wild west of the internet is now in a stage where governments are starting to ‘cooperate’ on setting rules and regulations in place. We see the Independent giving us last year: ‘Government outlines plans to ‘regulate the internet’ and get rid of problem content‘, which is hilarious for all the usual reasons.

So, as we see how government is introducing rephrased ways to set censorship, instigate discrimination and avoid issues of accountability, we are left to our own devices and there are more and more devices arriving, all remaining in some set league to avoid setting the stage where data is the most eagerly desired currency, because some people are not willing to go there just now. the one element avoided is that whilst we see in paces everywhere that porn is a problem, we see that it is so widely available that the internet is not the problem and that identification is at the heart of the matter, because America is not the solution, America has for the longest time been part of the problem. It has been for quite a while. It wants to police the internet, it wants to have freedom and set boundaries, but only as long as it does not hinder American business and that was the problem all along. Even as the numbers are not up to date, when you consider that “When faster internet led to a boom in video pornography in the mid-2000s, worldwide industry revenue skyrocketed to an estimated $40-$50 billion” is set on taxable dollars, do you think that America wants to do anything that is realistically achievable? I remember the short discussion that was going on somewhere around 1993-1996. I forgot the actual date, but there was a discussion that was started by the adult entertainment industry. They were the adults staging the setting that by having an .XXX domain (or something similar), there would be a place for adults and children could more easily be kept away. It did not go far and it was not successful as some religiously pushed people wanted all the porn from the internet. So tell me, after 20 years, how did that go? American bias, ego and greed stopped a whole range of solutions getting through and some could have made a decent impact. All stopped by ego and greed. It gets to be worse, because as the US is now trying to arm wrestle IP powers away from the people and making it government goods. To see this, we need to take a look at the IP Watchdog (at http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2018/03/01/u-s-patent-system-americas-decline-competitiveness/id=94249/), and we get treated to: “To find out who is responsible for the demise of American competitiveness you only reflect a mirror against U.S. innovation policy“. We see additional parts with: “China has established courts that specialize in intellectual property litigation so litigants have an experienced, fast and cost-effective forum to resolve patent disputes. These specialist courts take about 10 months to resolve patent infringement lawsuits with litigation costs running at approximately $200,000. In contrast, patent litigation in the U.S. often takes five or more years to resolve with litigation costs running in the many millions of dollars. A fairly ordinary dispute when litigated in the U.S. can easily surge past $3,000,000 when you factor in the inevitable post grant challenges (each of which will run $500,000 to defend, sometimes more) and the federal court litigation after that“, Yet another source (the Diplomat) gives us: “The United States government believes that IP protection is critical to both the physical and economic security of the country. IP protection ensures that American businesses, which produce a disproportionate percentage of their value in IP, will remain competitive on the international market. The U.S. government also believes that advanced technology is critical to U.S. military superiority, and that protecting this technology (through IP law and other means) will keep the United States ahead”, the setting of security and the stage of innovation have been opposing one another almost forever, so how does that help innovation? And when we consider ‘IP protection is critical to both the physical and economic security of the country’, how long until some level of ‘national security’ stops the IP from remaining with the actual owner that filed the IP?

It gets to be shown as worse off, when we consider both: “patents challenged in federal district court as claiming unpatentable subject matter were invalidated 67% of the time. The vast majority of these invalidated U.S. patents would have been deemed valid under current Chinese patent law, and some of these invalidated patents do actually remain valid and enforceable in China, Europe and elsewhere throughout the world“, as well as the economic setting which we got last March with “a whopping $215 billion in sales for medications could be lost from patent expirations between 2015-2020 and $31 billion are at risk in 2018 alone“. How do you think the US economy will get hit when certain nations start their generic solutions, lowering medication costs by optionally thousands or dollars per patient for both hospitals and patients?

As the patent holders are now also realising that there are added benefits to be part of the Chinese IP system and due to a lack of enforcement, the US market is no longer of decent value, we see that they are confronted with global benefits against much larger local setbacks and limitations.

How does one relate to the other?

There is a correlation between video games and patents (yes there really is). The correlation is seen in creativity and out of the box thinking. The conservative path of: ‘make sure it is not a failure‘ stops innovation. You see, we have been treated to so many resources that some people cannot fathom how some solutions were designed on a 2 MB RAM, 1 MB VRAM system, with a disc that had a maximum of 650MB (the original PlayStation). The makers avoided all kinds of traps and found new innovative solutions to make the game work. Gran Turismo is one of those jewels that show what a system when properly used to the max could achieve. As we went to iterative solution thinking, we lost the ability to become truly innovative and that is where we see that innovative patents no longer are, merely in the presentation are they optionally regarded as innovative, and that is where we see the next wave of technology.

Even as we are still confronted with the allegations against Huawei, we got shown 6 months ago: “Huawei filed 2,398 patent applications with the European Patent Office in 2017 out of a total of 166,000 for the year“, basically 1.44% of ALL files European patents were from that one company. And when it comes to innovation, we were treated to: “In our first [5G] smartphone we’re going to introduce a foldable screen“, and if you think towards the old flip phones think again, you merely have to consider the concept image to see that actual innovation in not merely a jump from iPhone 6, to iPhone 7. When we start seeing Huawei optional speculated settings, we see an actual jump and we can agree that to some extent 2398 patents do make for an interesting push towards the future.

This all takes another leap forward when we consider that if we want to be players, the iterative model no longer works. We need to be first and we need to be better than everyone else and iterative thinking is what merely gets them second place. It is not merely brand marketing, it is becoming a new level of marketing all together. We merely have to see the settings and changes we see towards Neom in Saudi Arabia to see the potential there. It is Ericsson that has already set the stage where the UAE has the potential to gain business benefits of $3.3B over the next 7 years, that is an additional $500 million, nothing to sneer at and when we consider the opportunities we see when we add the stages and places that Salini Impregilo is already working on, we see the growth of a long term stage with dozens of golden parachutes for those who have the financial backers to get it up and running. Take information to a new level, not merely showing up on a display, but for you to tune in with your phone or tablet and select what you want to see, with the optional setting of “Line 3, also known as the Orange line, is 41.5km long with an 11km underground section. It will have 22 stations“, two 5G stations on the line and repeaters at every station will suddenly give you thousands of users, getting informed by you, giving them choice of what they want to be informed about and with the smart dumb devices I mentioned a month ago, you get the setting of any train with up to 250 people getting informed. It is not merely marketing at this stage; it becomes entertainment facilitation with personalised advertisements. Creating branding and loyalty at the same time, because it is the first trip, that moment when you are going to work, or going home when consistency tends to be a need for so many travelers, that is where the next stage is and that is in Riyadh, expose that to the Neom stage where the city is 32 times the size of New York, it is no longer merely on how fast people get from one place to the other, it is the setting that people will want and need information at this moment, the one giving what they need is the one with the information required. It is no longer mass media; it becomes what I would call ‘Legion media‘, a facilitated one to one media solution for all. Not one stream all watch, but hundreds of media streams interacting seamlessly on the needs of the user giving them one seamless stream of information. A fluidic setting of interactions as configured/disseminated for the viewer, all personalised and automated; a situation that requires 5G to work and a solution that remains fluidic for the changing need of the user. We know the reality of Neom being years away (apart from the act that building will take quite a while), it will be now that we see the need to prototype and pilot those new projects to get the flaws out and stage the setting for large deployment, for the mere reason that new solutions are nice to have, but when your new idea fails on day one, that entire city will switch to the next solution on day two and never consider you again, because that too is the stage of 5G. It will be more and more about getting it right the first time. I wonder how many developers have realised this and most of them will trivialise that of course, and it makes sense that they do. Yet when the backers learn that the 5G community will be a lot more critical than ever before, will they still continue backing, or will they hide behind alternative wealth bringing solutions?

You see the apps that will be the most valued and priced ones are not the ones that look cool. In 5G it will more and more about enhanced pragmatism and managing of your personal infrastructure. Did you not figure that out? When we see the options that Saudi Arabia brings, we need to also see the limitations that it has. So the right ability to manage that through domotics and smart solutions will be close to everything, pre heating, pre cooling, adjusting, shopping and groceries, all done on the fly when you have time.

Even when we see the opposition (always important) giving us: “King Abdullah Financial District north of Riyadh, meant to rival Dubai as an economic hub, is still incomplete after more than a decade. As of last April, nary a financial institution had agreed to occupy any of the district’s 73 buildings“. I think that this is important too. Is it merely the language? You see, when we see: ‘Financial District‘, we think Wall Street and consider that area. Yet when we see: “Designed by architecture firm Henning Larsen, the 17.2 million-square-foot master plan calls for over 60 residential, office, and retail towers, several schools and parking garages, a medical clinic, civic buildings, and three hotels“, we see a lot more than merely a financial district, we see an almost self-contained city. You see when we see the larger scale I see an optional obstacle, not a negative one, but one none the less. To give comparison, I need to take you back to an original game. It was called ‘Sim City’ and it was a game, but gave the player an insight into designing his city of the future. Zoning was important at this point, so it required gradual growth. By going too large in one area, you would be broke and could not gain momentum in other ways. Even as it looks amazingly beautiful, how will you get people there fast? How can you vacate 2 million people (most likely from Riyadh and other larger cities) and set them in the new stage? There are two ways. You either create a need in the new place, or you create opportunity in that place. The first requires essential growth; the second requires a staging investment drive.

In the first example, we need ‘a pressing need’, when there is an infrastructure or a structural need, you create jobs and people will move there for the new job, which is fine, but requires vast amounts of money and large players getting there. The second one is great, but is initially also costly. For the second example I will use a solution that was in South Australia some time ago. To get people there, they gave away land. They still need to build the house, but in this setting he people had 50% additional money, or lessened costs, yet to break even the government stated that the land was given, but represented value X, and when they sold the house, they would have to pay the invoice for the land first. Now consider this in the setting of the King Abdullah Financial District. And there we set the stage of ‘selling’ houses/apartments at a mere 10% of the price, yet cannot be sold until the 100% price is satisfied first. So you now have a setting where the next 10,000 apartments only seem really cheap, yet in that setting you also create need, because these 10,000 households will need infrastructure like food, water, clothing, transportation, entertainment, schooling and so on; with that we see the investors come. build their shops and grow their business, as a result housing value rises fast and creates not merely a need, but also creates additional growth, so as these houses exchange hands and new occupation, the government gets the outstanding 90% back and a thriving place. It is not a short term, or a fast solution, but it is one that brings growth, and creating larger infrastructure solutions, because at that point with the additional 10,000 people or more we see the growing need in every direction. As these elements grow other needs can grow too, when there are 10,000 potential candidates in the financial industry and a clear path of growth exists, only then would there be interest into growing the stock exchange in a new place. Yet in that setting we need to realise that for many industries the capital remains alluring. So when we are confronted with “potential tenants and investors are less optimistic than the district’s planners about its future success“, as well as “The potential is amazing. The inside is impressive,’ one Dubai-based expat, who toured the site and preferred to remain anonymous, told Reuters. But he added, ‘It will not be finished. Decision-making is very slow (on the project, and) people don’t have cash“, we see the clarity of what I described. The ‘not having cash’ can be alleviated in one way, creating additional needs. It is the ‘decision making’ part that now requires to be decided on (yes I see the trap here) and there too is a solution. If we consider the statement that Business Insider mentioned: “Some of the kingdom’s strict social codes, including one requiring women to wear dark robes, will be relaxed“, we see the option of creating an opportunity for the foreign players in Qatar to become a larger mesmerising target for ‘poaching’. When we consider the Bloomberg message earlier in May this year giving us: ‘Qatar to Allow 100% Foreign Ownership of Firms in All Sectors‘, we see the setting that there is interest, especially in the financial sector to grow options on a global scale and there too Saudi Arabia would be able to set the stage for the future. More important, once these investors see the benefit in one place, there will be an added stage towards growth towards Neom for them too. This could have additional benefits as a much larger stage between Saudi Arabia and places like Egypt could become a much more interesting choice for the future. that part is not merely seen in one way, it becomes an entirely different stage when we consider yesterday’s news with ‘Award-winning Dubbo solar home uses Tesla Powerwall 2 battery‘, you might think that this is a ‘So What?‘ stage, but it is more than you think. That part is seen with: “A building company in Dubbo says the Tesla Powerwall 2 battery in its new display home means the Dubbo solar home could potentially go off-grid. Award-winning Greenmark Homes installed a Tesla Powerwall 2 battery to boost the display home’s energy efficiency“, it becomes even more impressive when you consider the added: “Tesla big battery wins awards, prevents blackouts“, you see, even as Saudi Arabia has plenty of sunshine, at some point the sun goes down and that is where the usage changes and whilst we know that air-conditioning takes the bulk of the energy, we see that the overall need could be filled in more efficient ways and that too needs time to evolve and refine. It is taking solutions out of the box where we see the beginning of true innovation and there are plenty of places that can benefit, but we need to open the door to creativity to make it thrive and set the next stage of innovation. We can make fun of some situations as we are offered (a very old joke): ‘a new powder for hydration, to make it, merely adds water‘. It is the innovative person that uses the solution and creates a powder to capture the moist in the air and end up with water. That same application is seen when we see applications on energy and hydro needs and creates another solution, the one we forgot about. That is the nice part about these stages and on why we need to keep our focus on Neom, you see it is not about the size of the city, it will be about how certain situations get solved and how innovative those solutions are. That is where we will be able to test our creativity and optionally become an actual innovative player ourselves, driving solutions and new technologies forward, not iterative over time, but by leaps, which is how you end up with one thousand new solutions not a thousand versions of one solution.

 

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July 27, 2018 · 13:12

The bite

Today the news is all about Facebook, when we get confronted with: ‘Over $119bn wiped off Facebook’s market cap after growth shock‘, we suddenly see that the story given (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/26/facebook-market-cap-falls-109bn-dollars-after-growth-shock) is one that has global ramifications. There are several quotes that give rise to concerns and opportunities. The quote: “More than $119bn (£90.8bn) has been wiped off Facebook’s market value, which includes a $17bn hit to the fortune of its founder, Mark Zuckerberg” is a robust one, especially when we realise that it links to “Facebook’s shares plunged 19% on Thursday in New York, a day after the Silicon Valley company revealed that 3 million users in Europe had abandoned the social network since the Observer revealed the Cambridge Analytica breach of 87m Facebook profiles and the introduction of strict European Union data protection legislation“. You see, this reminds me of the movie Blue Earth II, we see a dead Sperm Whale at the bottom of the ocean and the Sixgill sharks are having a feeding frenzy. In this case Facebook is the sperm whale. Now, it is an exaggeration, Facebook is not dead, not by a long haul. But the opposers and contenders for social media are nipping at the heels of Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg needs to wake up and act. For two people it is equally an interesting day. You see, this setting proves that Vic Gundotra and Bradley Horowitz were right all along when they created Google+. They did the right thing, the right approach and I do hope that those people abandoning Facebook will turn onto the Google+ highway, I personally always had both. I did not stop Facebook because of Cambridge Analytica, I always saw these risks to some extent, so I decided to remain decently clever on how I used Social Media, I was merely unaware that Facebook would be this stupid about it, but that is what happens when you are asleep at the wheel. In this case, for Mark Zuckerberg losing $17 billion the day was an extremely rude wake up call, all that whilst I gave him the option to own the next gen tech for a mere £20 million post taxation. I reckon a most expensive month for Marky Mark (do not confuse him with the other Marky Mark who is governor of the British bank). In this I also think that the market overreacted slightly. When you consider the quote: “The collapse came after the company told investors to expect a significant decline in growth rate, and revealed that the number of users in Europe had fallen from 282 million to 279 million“, we are either not getting part of it, or we need to realise that confidence can be gained back with the proper developers. It merely requires one visionary to change the game. The fact is that there is a second option for Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg does have the cash to make it work, optionally getting him an additional estimated 20 million members from the start and a lot more down the road (it’s not going cheap though). If we agree that the markets are about data and that the equivalent of members adding to that data is wealth, the setting of his currently loss could be overcome within 14 months, 21 months at the most. You see, it is not about what can be added, Facebook is seemingly not looking where it currently is not. That is where the chunks of lost members are optionally found and it is also where boatloads of new members can be added too, you merely have to be able to look at the facts that not all the fishes are in the ocean. You see, we all ignore the Nearshore fish, but when we realise that Australia has 25,760 Km of beachfront space and that within 10 meters there is an option to gain many millions of Nearshore fishes, how would I best go about it? You see, when it comes to fish, we think like a swimmer, or like a fisherman (in a tinny or not). Yet thinking like a surveyor gets us the boatload as well (just a lot quicker), we merely had to change our hats to get to the goods, it was THAT simple.

In this David Wehner makes close to the same mistake. with “the company’s decision to give its users “more choices around data privacy” following the Cambridge Analytica scandal “may have an impact on our revenue growth”“, that’s merely damage control and that is important too, let’s not be coy about that. The setting is that we are merely looking at one fish, like me (growing up in Europe), I know my Herrings, My Cod (a Captain Hook pun) and my Turbot, yet until I moved to Australia, I had never known how tasty the Pacific Dory was (not the one from Finding Nemo). It enabled me to create the Fisherman’s Pie (a Shepherd’s Pie variety). I merely adjusted my direction a little and a new option was created plain and simple, Facebook has all the makings of doing exactly the same, but can it figure out how to get there? Well, no matter how nerdy clever Mark Zuckerberg is, the fact that he lost 17 billion and I am merely trying to get my fingers on a mere 0.32% of that loss seems that I am either hungry or a little too stupid, I’ll let you decide.

Facebook also gives us “Zuckerberg said his company aimed to hire 20,000 people by the end of the year to boost its security and help review suspect content on the site. It has been hiring extra bodies at a vast rate, with its headcount increasing by 47% since last year to more than 30,000 people“. It is one step and I am not judging in any way, it is a path Mark Zuckerberg needs to walk, but in the end, he will end up hiring close to 50% more if he is to make the step from where he was do where he should be adding millions of users because the market allows him to do that, with additional benefits down the road in both the members and advertisers available. When I was learning about AdWords (Google Ads), I saw the granularity that Facebook offered, but in that same setting he missed out on engagement, which is a first sign of fake accounts, that path would be covered giving Facebook the direction, where the users themselves the option to tag fake account, because users rely in engagement and interactions, that part alone will stellar the value of Facebook much sooner than ‘now+21 months‘.

And the funny part is that it is in front of all the faces in Media and at Facebook HQ. I reckon that Google has figured it out, they seem to be on path to do something about it; the question is when the snooze alarm of Mark Zuckerberg will force him to take notice as well. That is the ballgame that should matter, in light of the shifting like ‘the new Nine Fairfax media magazine‘, it stands to reason that most are merely looking in their own shipping lanes, yet the setting has changed, because it is not those who can navigate the media seas, or get through the clouds of media, it is about the option to do both. It was a Frenchmen that came up with the idea and after a while we got to the date of March 28th, 1910, when Henri Fabre flew the first Hydroplane. One of the last pioneers of human flight left us in 1984 at the age of 101. He was there and he patented the invention, we need to realise that the state of matter storage does not impede data, in this Facebook and Google have the upper hand in getting the IP in the right place, will they follow through in this, or will they buckle and end up being food for the hungry sharks who found the opportunity and decided to dig in?

Let’s realise that Facebook and Google are too big to be devoured, but they are in a stage where others can grow due to the stagnation of these two. You see, we might see stagnation with Google, whilst some call it saturation and there is the crunch, how to overcome saturation. Even as I oppose the American view that saturation does not exist, the fact is that saturation is overcome through direction and medium. You need to remember that there is more than one side here. Some will give you ‘ads are delivered through a medium marketed on the promise‘ (or is that premise)? Some will give you ‘the consumer is concerned with the ROI regarding value rather than money‘, or ‘each medium offers a specific set of placement options‘ (source: Alice Jackson, Design Hill). Yet in all this we forgot the one part, we forgot about ‘Who is exactly the consumer?‘, it is like in Market research we state that the population agrees, but what made it ‘the population‘? Is it every nymphomaniac that owns a liquor store (a Dutch Comedian pun), or is it whomever you want it to be? The first is targeted, the second is the Holy Grail and that grail is available if you take media into a new light, because affiliated exposure will become increasingly important. In the previous media cycle it was not so cleverly regarded as ‘the Mobile Market‘, now that 5G firmly on route some people will need to get clever fast, because the first one in that market with the proper setting will get to rule that market ahead of anyone else giving them a large advantage. The rule here is engagement and some marketing firms and digital marketing dealers are still not aware what is required. The few players that do get it are now ahead of the game. They will have a large headway into growth and that is the part where Google and Facebook need to grow, not tomorrow, not next month, it should be today (although yesterday would have been better)! That evidence is seen throughout my articles over the past year and for the most I have been proven correct for well over 80% on this matter, people have wagered their billions (aka Mark Zuckerberg) on foundations a lot more shaky than most would have acted on; and whilst we think that Mark Zuckerberg is in a corner licking his wounds, he must move forward as fast as he can. He needs to realise that the current advantage that he has with Google will not stay there forever.

Because it is not this bite, it is the next bite and the optional seven Sixgill sharks that will make short work of the social media corner, the others have too much to gain not to go after any potential carcass in the waters. In the end Facebook does not need to take any risks at all with the right path forward, so why tempt the sharks to come and take a nibble?

 

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July 13, 2018 · 12:08

Iterative diversity never goes anywhere

Facebook has been on the minds of many people, so merely on how to procrastinate (a student thing), some on the value of the company and some are investigating on how data issues were reported. CNet reported merely a few hours ago ‘SEC asking if Facebook properly warned investors of data issue‘ (at https://www.cnet.com/news/sec-investigating-if-facebook-gave-investors-enough-warning-about-data-issue-wsj-says/), the origin is the Wall Street Journal. My issue is at the top when we consider the quote “The agency is looking into how much Facebook knew about Cambridge Analytica’s misuse of data, says a report in The Wall Street Journal“, do you think that any evidence is still there to be found? Even if the brightest minds unite to finding anything, by the time all the proper access is granted, the decisionmakers will be facing a new government resetting priorities.

Now, I get it. That is the job of the SEC. With “The SEC has requested information from Facebook to learn how much the social-networking company knew about Cambridge Analytica’s data use, according to the Journal. In addition, the SEC reportedly wants to learn how Facebook analyzed its risk as developers shared data with others against Facebook’s policies“, we see that the SEC is merely doing its job and even if we believe the meida and some of the revelations that passed our screens, the SEC has a clear directive, merely set in factual evidence. Yet the can of goods is seen with “The SEC is also looking into whether the company should’ve told shareholders about Cambridge Analytica’s policy violation when Facebook found out about it, in 2015“, it is not the game, but it is a setting of the stage. In my view there is doubt that this was properly done. The issue is not whether it happened, it is the setting that we must speculate on what would have happened next, and that whilst there is no evidence that something was done. Not the acts of Cambridge Analytica their part is a foregone conclusion. The issue is as long as there is no evidence showing that the data was sold on to other parties. The value of the company would not have been impacted, which would have negatively impacted shareholders. That is the game the SEC is set with that is their duty and they are doing that just fine.

The question becomes on what stage is speculation of something that might have happened set in actionable consideration two years after the fact, that is the setting and that will be a dry bone as far as I can tell. Still the SEC has a duty to perform and they are doing that. Even as Endgadget goes with “the agency might disagree with Facebook’s perspective and find the company at fault for not properly informing shareholders“, the setting is not a given. You see, the impact of value was after the revelation and after the shareholders were spooked by the fear mongering media. As long as there is no evidence that a third party has all the raw data, the value impact is close to nil. The only impact that the SEC should be allowed to consider is the negative impact of value, if proven that data left control of Facebook and only when that evidence is proven to have impacted Facebook before Jan 2018, only at that point is there an optional issue and there is a second tier in all this. If any shareholder is in both companies, it becomes a little murky, because at that point the shareholders themselves will be up for investigation. Whether this is true cannot be said because the first part for the SEC is proving that the second player actually has the raw Facebook data, in all this aggregated data lacks value and interactions on aggregates data is just too shallow for consideration.

And this is just one of the settings. The second and main setting is the Diversity report that Facebook has presented. The Verge is all about the focus on ‘Change is coming slowly, if it comes at all‘, which is a given in most companies (Apple and Google are optionally the exception). The setting is however no longer just about optional diversity, it is about bankable value and the national patent value that these places have in that setting diversity be damned and Endgadget knows this the fact that they took a page to focus on ‘diversity’ whilst there are much larger fish swimming in the Facebook pond is to some a total mystery. The IP Watchdog gives us another side and a side that in this day and age are actually really important. There we see (as a small grasp):

  • U.S. Patent No. 8732802, titled: ‘Receiving Information About a User From a Third Party Application Based on Action Types’. Issued to Facebook in May 2014.
  • U.S. Patent No. 8938411, titled: ‘Inferring User Family Connections From Social Interactions’. Issued to Facebook in January 2015.
  • U.S. Patent No. 9740752, titled: ‘Determining User Personality Characteristics From Social Networking System Communications and Characteristics’. Issued to Facebook August 2017.
  • U.S. Patent No. 9798382, titled: ‘Systems and Methods of Eye Tracking Data Analysis’. Issued to Facebook October 2017.
  • U.S. Patent No. 9923981, titled: ‘Capturing Structured Data About Previous Events From Users of a Social Networking System’. Issued to Facebook March 2018.

These are only 5 out of a large basket of patents and the issue is not about diversity of staff, it is about the diversity of the population. The setting does not change that much, because changes might be small, but consider that in this case we have an additional 1 TB a day that can now be used very effectively. So even as the Verge reminds us with “Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-NC) took some time out of a congressional hearing in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal to grill CEO Mark Zuckerberg about increasing diversity at the company, something that Zuckerberg said that Facebook was “focused on.”“, we can take diversity as stated with ‘increasing diversity at the company‘ as either staff diversity or data diversity, I guess that I am going with number two on that one. You see, even as I tipped on ‘diversity’ we all recollect places like Forbes and the Financial Times on how it leads to better profits. It is the reason it reflects on the shareholders on how that notion gives them an on the spot hard on, male and female shareholders alike. Yet, the much larger revenue boost is seen when we combine the setting of the patents, the data that Facebook has and now we get to yesterday’s story, In yesterday’s article (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/07/12/seeking-security-whilst-growing-anarchy/), I left a few screws fall all over the place. With ‘Seeking security whilst growing anarchy‘, I gave a title that could be read in more than one way. The part I just skipped yesterday (as the story would have been too large) was seen with “So now we get the setting of ‘who is exactly waging war on who’, or is that whom?“, as well as “the defense ‘laws governing wars were devised with conflicts between states in mind‘ can no longer be upheld“. These were true settings, yet the setting of the data was partially set in “how many flags were raised by that one person, yet now not on 5 tests, but on dozens of tests, against people, places, actions and locations at specific times“, there we see the issue, but there is a complication, the bulk of the people actively sought all use burner phones, they tend to be nervous and do not call, yet they are closely grouped together and that is a first setting. Now consider that for the most burner phones are useless, now consider these people taking hours to keep busy and some will go for the silliest diversion. A diversion like a simple Candy Crush, now take another look at the 5 patents, consider that the burner phone is useless for intelligence, but now reconsider that value when these patents are used, not merely for tracking needs, but reconsider the ‘Eye Tracking Data Analysis‘ add the camera to take a silent image of the iris, it is almost as good as a fingerprint. Now add ‘Structured Data About Previous Events From Users‘. Two of the five added to the billions of users on Facebook and now we have a system that does a lot more, it is the 32% that Palantir inc. does not have, the patents that Facebook has allows not merely for a diversity growth factor, it will be one of the few times that any company had two massive niches in data, when Combined it allows the US to have a grasp of a system that allows near real time tracking of anyone they seek, this system can void well over 80% of the false flags making the data system well over 10 times as efficient than ever before. So yes, we can argue the truth of “Not to worry, says Facebook VP Allen Lo, head of intellectual property. “Most of the technology outlined in these patents has not been included in any of our products, and never will be,” he told the Times in an email” as a master of IP I do know the length that Facebook has been through with patents and he is telling the truth, the product of Facebook is Facebook, that system will not go there, but will be in all kinds of different technical solutions that allows for new methods of data gathering. Even as it is a burner phone, when they take it for a mere leap into betting solutions and gaming procrastination, they will hit some top 10 app of the month and that is when one element of data is connected to the ones that matter for those seeking these really welcome people for personal one on one interviews. And there we see the link between places like Palantir and Zuckerberg (not Facebook). Sen. Maria Cantwell was asking around the edges for a reason, the April interview had another reason, one that I was never aware off (or considered). It seems that she heard water cooler chats on settings of Palantir, this was about a larger issue and the Patents had clearly indicated options for Facebook, it was not about the setting (as she put it) ‘the talent and the will to solve this problem‘ it is given that Palantir knows that Facebook Inc. can become a contender and with the data that could be available, we see a setting where Palantir would be going up against a new player having 500% of the data that the Palantir customer has and more important, Facebook has the patents to partially solve the burner phone issues much better then Palantir ever had the option for and that is a real new path in this field. So as I personally read it, Sen. Maria Cantwell was asking whether Mark Zuckerberg was ready to become a player in this field.

So yes, even as we see that some steps are small (like diversity and torts law), Facebook has an optional setting to take a leap forward, not by a mere length, but by an entire class of data options, which is new and that is where those investigating Cambridge Analytica never looked at, or so we were meant to believe, Sen. Maria Cantwell might be the first through orders or insight to do just that.

That setting is now still under debate, not because of the tech, but because of a case of OIL STATES ENERGY SERVICES, LLC v. GREENE’S ENERGY GROUP, LLC, ET AL. No. 16–712 (decided April 24th, 2018), this case changes the game all over, because until overruled by the US Congress, we now have a setting where we see that the possibility that patents are no longer property rights is close to an absolute. Patents are not property rights and will not be property rights until Congress overrules the case, so in this the entire patents side is now a new setting that it is set as a government franchise, so in all this Facebook has the one play to set themselves apart from the rest of the data players, and some might state that the setting of the decision of the Supreme Court was a forgone conclusion close to two weeks earlier, so Sen. Maria Cantwell was either on the ball or asked the perfect questions two weeks in advance, I wonder who ended up with a boatload of speculated wealth, because someone definitely got rich in that process (happy speculation with a smile from the writer).

In all this it was not merely the setting of diversity and how to see it, but the fact that a place like Facebook might think iterative within its Facebook app, it has options and therefor opportunities in a much larger field than merely the Facebook app. So if Palantir is not worried on what comes next, they are more asleep at the wheel than you imagine; a small spoiler alert here: the people at Palantir are a lot of things, they have never ever been asleep so they know what is coming and as the path of Facebook is allegedly on now is regarded as government Franchise terrain, we need to wonder where this goes next as they are still all about finding those illusive extremists, all depending on burner smart phones.

I wonder when the rest realises what the patent holders have been able to achieve in mobile communications, now consider 350% of speed increase and 700% of data markers with the release of 5G, now revaluate the Patents that the Facebook corporation has and consider how much larger they could optionally become by 2021. Now reconsider the Forbes list of ‘The World’s Most Valuable Brands‘ and consider its position in 2021. I doubt that it will be #1 at that time, but it will be equal if not bigger then Google by then taking its #2 position away from them, and leaving Microsoft a distant #4. Although Microsoft is doing plenty to diminish its value all by themselves, they do not need to rely on Google and Facebook to reduce their position for them.

Iterative act never go anywhere, it is the setting of new stages where true fortunes are gathered.

Happy Friday 13th everyone! (Please don’t meet a guy named Jason today)

 

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July 4, 2018 · 12:42

The academic colour

This goes back to me having a very young age and in those days we had a saying in chess: ‘white begins and black wins‘. It had nothing to do with race, it was that those in reaction have a benefit; we can play whilst considering in response what the opponent is doing. It is a mere tactic, some you win, some you lose, yet overall, I still believe that the one moving first is out on a limb until the game unfolds and as long as the player using black comprehends the moves that are set, that player has an advantage, the size of that advantage is how quickly white picks up on the countermoves by black.

Yet, I made the race connection and here it is: ‘Trump administration moves to rescind Obama-era guidance on race in admissions‘, the Washington Post headline (at https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/trump-administration-moves-to-rescind-obama-era-guidance-on-race-in-admissions/2018/07/03/78210e9e-7ed8-11e8-bb6b-c1cb691f1402_story.html) gives us a dangerous setting. The issue is the reasoning behind it is what matters. The quote starts us with: “rescind Obama-era guidance to colleges and universities on how they can use race in admissions decisions to promote diversity, according to an administration official“, yet I am not certain whether that is a good setting. You see I have had my share of tertiary education. I was lucky to some extent and I finished with three post graduate degrees, one a Master. I have lived in many places where diversity was the cornerstone of education and I expected that to be the norm, yet we all know that it is not.

If we look at the Pre-Obama era and take the sport players out of the consideration (Football and Basketball), the racial diversity is pretty much non-existent as I see it. Even now, if we look at American education and we take the top 30% we get a really skewed view of ‘educated Americans‘ it is seen even better when we look at the census. We see (at https://www.census.gov/prod/99pubs/99statab/sec04.pdf), the fact of educated people, and even if we realise that the percentages are all going up, the setting that in 1998 that 80% of those with high school were white and merely 50% was black, that is a number that matters, in a diversity given setting, they should be a lot closer together, not 30% apart. The Hispanic community is much closer to the white one, yet still trailing. When we look at the next step, those with 4 years (or more) of college, we see that Caucasians lead with 25%, that against Hispanics at roughly 12% and blacks at 10%, that is a problem, there is no level of equality. Any civilisation that truly embraces diversity and equality can see that these numbers are just wrong, and as such changes, many large changes are essential. Now, we can argue with the Obama setting, or find a way to improve it, not rescind it.

There is another setting that we see (at https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2016/demo/p20-578.pdf). It makes no sense to completely chew the report and mull over the entire spectre of data, yet the one that lighted up were those with advanced degrees. 8.2% Black and 12.1 were Caucasian, what was interesting that the Asian group is 21.4% surpassing all others. There is a change and we need to earn what that is, because here we have a shift in success. The numbers seem to add up more evenly (after 20 years) between black and white, yet the shift starts from Associate degree and later, that is where we see the numbers drop. Yet in all, how was this weighted? You see, the counts give us White with 168,420, Black with 25,420, and Asian with 12,331, so a setting so uneven is unsettling, because this implies that if there is weighting that it is too unbalanced. That issues grows even further when we see (at https://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-02.pdf), the setting “This report looks at our nation’s changing racial and ethnic diversity. It is part of a series that analyses population and housing data collected from the 2010 Census, and it provides a snapshot of race and Hispanic origin in the United States. Racial and ethnic population group distributions and growth at the national level and at lower levels of geography are presented” is one that I cannot agree with. We see in 2010 223,553,265 (72.4%) white, 38,929,319 (12.6%) black or African American and 14,674,252 (4.8%) is Asian. If we go from the (I admit a wrongful set assumption) that there is equality to some degree, that if we take the black population as part of the white population as comparison, there should be some equality between the educated and the ‘actual’ population (yes, it is shallow, I know), they should be close together, yet they are not, they are 2% apart and when you consider it reflects a total of 200,000 students (roughly rounded), the African Americans lose out on a few thousand completed education seats and that is actually a much larger issues than anyone realises.

I will not tell you what the reason is for the difference, because it takes someone a lot more clever than me to do that, but the data (even when not optimally used) should not add up to this. In equal measure I feel that I need to disagree with Roger Clegg, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity. We see: “He said it was appropriate for the administration to ditch policies that had encouraged schools to weigh race and ethnicity in deciding where students would be assigned or admitted. “Students should be able to go to a school without regard to their skin color or what country their ancestors came from,”“, I agree with the premise he states, yet we already see that the African American population are getting short changed for a few thousand higher education seats and we need to find out why that is happening, because if diversity can lead to academic salvation of a nation, we need to change the books and values most held for granted. This is seen in the Teacher Education Quarterly, Fall 2008 in the article by Rita Kohli called: ‘Breaking the Cycle of Racism in the Classroom: Critical Race Reflections from Future Teachers of Color‘, we see on page 178: “Eddie came up to us and asked, “Ms. Wright, I don’t got no lunch money, can I sit in your room and use the computer?” Ms. Wright was a seventh year White teacher who received a lot of respect for the high academic standards that she held students to at this underperforming school. Ms. Wright immediately responded, “I am not going to answer that question until you speak correctly. How can we say that in proper English?” We both looked at Eddie, waiting for him to rephrase his words, but instead he calmly replied, “Maybe not in your house, but in my house that is how we speak correctly.” Ms. Wright and I were both caught off guard and a little speechless, and Eddie just stood there un-phased, waiting for us to let him use the computer“, it is there that we see the reflection on “what I was not conscious of, until Eddie so confidently pointed it out, was that although differences exist in the structure of African American Language (AAL) and Standard American English (SAE), at this school, we were actually teaching a hierarchy of those differences (FairesConklin& Lourie, 1983)“. The article goes on regarding racial issues that are beyond my comprehension, as my life has been very different, yet this one setting where we see that the cards are already set against the African American population in a mere AAL versus SAE setting, these kids have not even made it to high school and they are already at an advantage, I cannot even perceive the disadvantages that the Native Americans face in such a setting. But that small setting can already impact thousands, thousands of students who could be the prospering African American minds that America desperately needs. Let me state it in a simplified way, the mere setting of AAL versus SAE would not prevent any African American becoming the next Mary Frances Berry, Stephen L. Carter, Patricia Hill Collins, Roland G. Fryer, Jr., or Rhonda Vonshay Sharpe. Hell, I’d be happy just to get another James Earl Jones so we get to enjoy a really good movie that is relying on zero special effects.

The issue is that in a true society, race is not the deciding factor. Or as I see it, when we look at the average year of a university we should get a racial setting that approaches the national population. That will never be true, because some are more driven to be successful than others. You merely need to see the Asian graduation numbers to see that some drives are inherent to family values and history. Yet, they should not be as unequal as we currently see them and that is why I am not on the side of Roger Clegg, even as he might be completely correct.

I also need to raise the issue that we see with: “Harvard University’s use of race in admissions has come under scrutiny in a federal lawsuit that alleges the school has discriminated against Asian Americans. Separately, the Justice Department is conducting its own civil rights investigation of Harvard admissions. The university denies wrongdoing and says its methods — weighing race and ethnicity as one factor among many in a review of an applicant’s background and credentials — conform to decades of settled law“. I do not think that there is anything that Harvard is likely to have done wrong, I merely think that the system has stopped working correctly and we need to see if another mould might do the trick in getting it right, yet the setting of ‘weighing race and ethnicity ‘ might be the wrong path. You see, weighing is dangerous, even if we use it to set towards a path of minimum inclusion, which is a good thing, most tend to see it as a reference line to exclusion, which is a lot more dangerous. The old setting that has been going around for the longest time is ‘will that person succeed’, ‘will that person contribute’, ‘will this not be a failure’. The third is important, as it highlights my issue with a place like Ubisoft for the longest of time. To set the stage of something not being a failure is also the stage of creating mediocrity, for those who are not willing to put it all out, they will never create something truly exceptional. In gaming those are the games that are that are scoring 97% or higher. You merely have to look at the track record of Ubisoft to see that I am correct. The next group of upcoming billionaires are not created in Wall Street, they come from the streets and high schools; they figured out on how the next generation of technology (5G) can be harnessed in productive ways, the will start something new, whilst those around them will try to copy and mimic that creativity. We forgot all about the creative arts, the one side that does not rely on AAL versus SAE, it relies on vision and that matters, because vision allows to create that what does not yet exist and growing that group with academic skills is all that matters, giving them the comprehension of tools and concepts is what allows them to link one to the other and that is where trillions are created. I came up with three systems not by pushing the boundaries further, but by inverting the process. We do not need someone who solves the next small clever iteration, we have thousands of that, we optionally need the one solving the puzzle of CELL(150) (or is that CELL(182)?), it cannot be created here, but when you figure out where it could be found, you solve two other puzzles and that is where we need to look.

We don’t need another John Paulson; we need another James Edward Allchin. As data speeds go up, the systems that need to store are becoming the bottle neck in all this, and whilst everyone smiles and points at the cloud, we will see some people losing the plot, and some sales figures will point at the Cisco QoS: Congestion Management Configuration Guide. We will see clever articles on “control congestion by determining the order in which packets are sent out an interface based on priorities assigned to those packets. Congestion management entails the creation of queues“, it all sounds so easy and so logical. Yet the truth is that most have no clue. You see, 3 billion people using the peak of 5G (2024-2027) will impose  levies of congestion on nearly all systems; some cannot even keep up now (a jab at Australia’s NBN). It is very serious matter and even as all the players are in the dark. So, someone, who was into painting night skies would optionally get into astrology and whilst that person decided to paint a starry night outside Lambert Montana, the thought: ‘What if I stored it that way?‘ came to that persons mind and then considered the storage that mother had in the kitchen and things start falling together. It would never have worked in any other way, sometimes the biggest fluke is actually the brainwave that solves a lot more than we ever considered.

Exceptional solutions are not grown or trained, they come from people with vision and growing those people into levels of comprehension towards analytical and critical thinking is what gets the golden eggs that change everything. True wealth is not following or being better, true wealth is being first and pushing the boundaries for everyone else. Mark Zuckerberg might be the clearest example, but he is not the only one. And when we consider that some of the solutions were seen as early as the 70’s with the benefits of VAX/VMS whilst the connection of one with the setting 5D optical data storage and now replace that ‘contact lens’ for a hollow cylinder where the inside writes and the outside reads and you’ll end up with a storage system that offers no less than 250 Petabyte, has a half-life of well over  an eon and is 75,000 times faster than anything found in the Pentagon (at present or in the next decade). You merely need to reset the mind to not adhere to the current rules of any proclaimed captain of industry (especially the self-proclaimed ones). And whilst you laugh on the CP/M part, consider that it was equal to anything else and was merely surpassed by IBM because they relied on business sense and marketing, not on technological advantage. Oh, and whilst you giggle on VAX/VMS, it had full 64-bit addressing around 21 years before Microsoft, it also had version control and decent security at least a decade before Microsoft or their Windows 95 version had a decent setting towards security, so looking back at what the ‘old guys’ offered is never the worst idea.

So when we change the given and make 5G the weakest link in speed, we will finally get to the hardware that will give us a true advantage, although I merely want it so that I can call Sundar Pichai, telling him that the Bristlecone processor is the slowest link in my computer system and I need a quicker chip so that I can enjoy a nice game of Pong, because that is how weirdly warped my sense of humour is at times.

#RealtimeIsJustTooSlow

 

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May 18, 2018 · 13:57

Interaction

Today is part on what happened, what we see now and something from the past. It started yesterday when the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/may/17/vote-leave-strategist-dominic-cummings-refuses-to-appear-before-mps) gave us “The chief strategist of the Vote Leave campaign has refused to appear in front of MPs, risking possible censure from the House of Commons but also raising questions about what more can be done when a witness ignores the will of parliament“. Apart from the folly of his action, there are other questions beneath the surface and they must be answered. Now, for the record, I have been in favour of Brexit! I have my reasons and I will introduce you to some of them. When I see “Dominic Cummings, who has been credited as the brains behind the successful Brexit campaign, told the select committee investigating fake news that he would not be willing to answer questions in public before the Electoral Commission finishes its ongoing investigation into his campaign” I do see a valid concern and even as I called it folly, which it partially remains, there is the setting that these MP’s need to come in front of the camera as well. I have serious questions from these MP’s and if they cannot answer them to MY satisfaction, they should be removed from office, it is THAT simple.

When I see that the leave groups have connections to Cambridge Analytica, I have questions as well. Even as we see “questions about the use of Facebook data during the EU referendum campaign“, we need to make certain that we are not caught on the rings of misinformation and that is happening on both sides of the isle in this case.

You see, to get to the core of it we need to look at the entire mess. Some are still willing to blame it all on Nigel Farage, but it goes deeper. He brought something to light, the issue is that we have had a massive amount of question marks before it started and that remains in the dark. The corrupt and the exploitative never want the limelight. The fact that Nigel brought to light issues on a larger scale needs to be commended. For the longer time, there had been an issue. Even as there was such a large level of positivity in 1975, by 2016 there was not much positivity left, the numbers show a degradation of the interest in being part of Europe. We see all those messages and news casts on how good things are, yet were they? Apart from the large corporations having benefits which did not go beyond the board of directors and senior sales staff having ‘training’ sessions in sunny places, the wheels of the system continued by the workers, by the support systems and the logistics who never saw anything in support return with the optional getting wasted evening on a Christmas party, that was the extent of the appreciation given. When we look at the issues from 2004 onwards we saw stagnation and until 2017 we saw no improved quality of life, whilst bills went up and incomes froze. In all this we see not an increase of living and future, merely a setting of getting by at best. That was never a good setting. So as we consider that the UK had EU costs. Some state “But the UK actually paid around £275 million a week in 2014 and paid around £250 million a week in 2016“, we also see (at https://fullfact.org/europe/our-eu-membership-fee-55-million/) a few additional numbers. The numbers look nice, but they leave us with all kinds of questions and the mistrust grows as we are not offered any clarity. It is largely seen with “the EU spent nearly £5 billion on the public sector“, would that not have happened if the UK was not part of the EU? We also see “Extra money not counted here, goes directly to the private sector“, is that perhaps merely commerce? When we see the ‘gravy trains‘ running in Europe on how some ‘elected’ officials make 10 times the average income, questions come to the surface and the EU has never given proper response that is one part that has been setting people off. It becomes even worse when we see ‘Different figures from different sources‘ with the part “The Treasury and ONS both publish figures on the subject, but they’re slightly different. The ONS also publishes other figures on contributions to EU institutions which don’t include all our payments or receipts, which complicates matters“, it is not the ‘complications’ it is the lack of clarity and transparency, transparency has been an issue for the longest time in the EU and the people have had enough. The UK has seen close to no benefit to the EU, only the large corporations have benefited, those who need to work internationally anyway, so 1,500 corporations have a benefit and 150,000 do not and that is a visible setting that the UK faced. Even as we see ‘open borders‘, the fact that well over 60% has not been able to afford vacations for many years see no benefit, the setting had become too surreal. In all this we also need to realise that setting that the ECB have given all involved, whilst everyone keeps quiet that the taxpayer gets the bill. Everyone is seeing this fabric of illusion call quantative easing. Mario Draghi as head of the ECB had instigated a setting TWICE on this spending a trillion the first time and almost double that the second time around, so when you spend €3,000,000,000,000 do you think there will not be any invoice? Do you think that this money is printed and forgotten? No, it impacts all within the Euro, as money loses value you must pay more, you must pay longer and there is nothing you can do on this. Non-elected official spend that much money and they are not held accountable to any extent. In what I personally call a setting of corruption, this Mario Draghi was in a group of exclusive bankers (G30 bankers) and there was a question on it ONCE! There was no response and the media merely let it go, the media that is all up in arms on the freedom of speech did NOTHING! They let it slip away, how can we ever agree to be part of such a setting?

We have given away the quality of life and we are letting this go, in that regard Nigel Farage was perfectly correct, we are better of outside of the EU. The moment we heard this we got a lot more than a few ruffled feathers. Banks started threatening to move away, the same screwed up individuals who bolstered massive profits in bonuses as our lives faded in 2009; they are all about the gravy train. Why should anyone support this?

Now we get a new setting, with Cambridge Analytica, people woke up! I warned many people for well over 4 years, but they were all about ‘the government should not spy on us, we have a right to privacy‘, those same individuals got played in Facebook, pressed on fear, pressed on choices and like lambs they went to the slaughter and no one ‘blahed’ like the sheep they were. Yet there is a setting that is now in the open. When we act on fake news, is that fraud? The news was not asking us to jump, the people at large merely did and now they are crying fowl (pun intended), the turkeys got the sauce and now realised that they were going to dinner, yet they were the meal, to the ones getting fed.

So now we go back to the first setting. We have two issues; the first is the investigation from the Electoral Commission. That investigation is still ongoing, so why exactly is the digital, culture, media and sport committee rolling over that event? When we see the quote “lawyers had told him to “keep my trap shut” until the Electoral Commission completes its investigation into Vote Leave this summer“, I tend to fall behind Dominic Cummings in all this. When we look at parliament and specifically the ‘Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee‘, I personally come with the blunt and direct question (and as politically incorrect as possible) with the question to the conservative members Damian Collins (Chair), Simon Hart, Julian Knight, Rebecca Pow and Giles Watling. In addition also to the Labour members Julie Elliott, Paul Farrelly, Ian C. Lucas, Christian Matheson, Jo Stevens as well as Brendan O’Hara from the SNP. My question would be: ‘Who the fuck do you think you are interfering with an investigation by the Electoral Commission?‘, I might get shut down that they have a perfect right, but in all this, the overlap, this does not add up well. This is about interfering, creating opportunity perhaps? We can all agree that there are issue, that there are coincidences, yet with the exception of the Scottish and Welsh member, they are all from Brexit constituencies, I think that this bad news is going to their heads, and serious questions need to be asked by the media regarding a committee that is what I call clear interfering with an electoral investigation. Is that not a valid question? Oh, and for the number, you can check that at http://www.bbc.com/news/politics/eu_referendum/results.

the other quote we need to consider is “It is the second time this week that a potential witness has turned down a formal summons to answer questions from MPs, after Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg turned down a request from the same committee“, so why are they, trying to get Mark Zuckerberg in the ‘dock’? Do they need the limelight? What silly questions could they ask that the US senate could not come up with? Another quote from Dominic Cummings was “He said he had been willing to give evidence to the committee after this date, but the MPs’ decision to issue a formal summons via the media showed their priority was “grandstanding PR, not truth-seeking”” and I tend to agree with that.

When I look at two publications, the first being “The potential impact of Brexit on the creative industries, tourism and the digital single market“, I see issues, I seem them as personal issues, merely on what I have personally witnessed over the years that I have visited England. The first is “There is a phrase people like to use, “Locals selling to locals”. It does not matter whether it is the box office or the Royal Opera House or whether it is the distribution department of a television company selling finished programmes or formats, you need multilingual, multicultural teams to sell great British content around the world or to sell great British culture to tourists who come“, which might be true as a setting, yet in practicality? This is about local selling skills, how many grocers are hiring foreigners to sell a great cabbage? I also have an issue with Deirdre Wells, Chief Executive of UKinbound. She gives us that she employed; “70% EU nationals in their London office so they can communicate with the outbound operators in Germany, France and Italy and create those sorts of business deals in their own languages—that is still primarily how business is done. They need those language skills with skilled operations staff who can work with their clients overseas to be able to put these packages together“, which is interesting as most metropolitan Europeans speak English, in the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark and Norway that language skill is way above average. Now, we can accept that language skills are important, yet when I see the footnote (16) and I look there, we see: “16 Q63“, I wonder what Q63 actually was, it goes a little further when we consider the issue given with item 31, where we see “Visit Britain emphasised the dearth (meaning lack of skill) of language skills available to tourism and hospitality businesses and compared the lack of skills affecting tourism with the IT skills required by the wider business community: In a 2013 survey of businesses by the Confederation of British Industry only 36% were satisfied with their employees’ language skills, compared with 93% who were satisfied or very satisfied with school and college leavers’ skills in the use of IT.“, here we see a reference to ‘IOB 027 p6‘ (at http://data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/culture-media-and-sport-committee/impact-of-brexit/written/42076.pdf), the paper gives a good view, yet it lacks a view of the Total EU compared to the rest of the world, when we see mention of “70% of respondents agreed that ‘the weak pound makes it a good time to visit Britain. This was highest in China (85%) and the US (78%)“, so if that is important, how large a slice of the cake do they represent? In light of that connection we need to see how important the EU slice is, if we are looking at a margin compared to the US and China, why are we bothering over the crumbs? At present we cannot tell, because it is missing, which tends to imply that the impact is not as large as expected, because I am (roughly) 89.4335% certain that if it was massive (compared to China and US) it would have been mentioned clearly and shown in some kind of Pecan Pie setting. [42076]

The second setting is seen in ‘Facebook written evidence‘ as published 26th April 2018 [attached]. Here we see in regards to This Is Your Digital Life “When an advertiser runs an ad campaign on Facebook one way they can target their ads is to use a list of email addresses (such as customers who signed up to their mailing list). AIQ used this method for many of their advertising campaigns during the Referendum. The data gathered through the TIYDL app did not include the email addresses of app installers or their friends“, which make the plot thicken, in addition we see “We also conducted an analysis of the audiences targeted by AIQ in its Referendum-related ads, on the one hand, and UK user data potentially collected by TIYDL, on the other hand, and found very little overlap (fewer than 4% of people were common to both data sets, which is the same overlap we would find with random chance)“, so at this point, I see no actual need to invite Dominic Cummings at all, or better stated, inviting him before the Electoral Commission finishes its report, it seems that certain members like the limelight a little too much. In addition we are treated to: “Our records show that AIQ spent approximately $2M USD on ads from pages that appear to be associated with the 2016 Referendum. We have provided details on the specific campaigns and related spending to the ICO and Electoral Commission. In the course of our ongoing review, we also found certain billing and administration connections between SCL/Cambridge Analytica and AIQ. We have shared that information with ICO for the purposes of their investigation“, it merely makes me wonder more on things being done twice at the same time, if there is validity to this, I cannot see it at present, at least not until the Electoral Commission is published. It makes perfect sense to scrutinise the findings to some degree, but to give two summaries at the same time overlapping one another is merely a way to diminish factuality and muddy transparency as I see it. Written-evidence-Facebook

In this, Yahoo had an interesting article last year at https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/brexit-remain-campaign-struggled-grasp-145100601.html), herer we see M&C Saatchi give us: “The downfall of the “Remain” campaign during Brexit was due to its inability to understand the electorate, according to the advertising chief enlisted to run the campaign. M&C Saatchi’s worldwide chief executive, Moray MacLennan told CNBC in the latest episode of Life Hacks Live, how M&C Saatchi’s unsuccessful Remain campaign struggled to grasp what the British people were really thinking about. “Everyone thought it was about leaving the European Union. I’m not sure it was. It wasn’t about that. It was about something else.”“, this is important as chair holder Damian Collins used to work for M&C Saatchi, so for the chair to take notice of his friends (if he has any), might not have been the worst idea. in that light, we see that there are issues that plague the British mind, yet the Remain Group never figured out what it was, which now gives light to all but to (Wales and Scotland) ended up with a ‘leaving’ constituency. It seems to be a mere example of a flaming frying pan, and no lid to stop the flames. In that, in light of the fact that M&C Saatchi tends to be terribly expensive, I wonder who funded that part of the deal, is that not a fair questions too?

As I see it, Hannah White, of the Institute for Government states it best when we see “Every time everyone observers the emperor has no clothes, in that parliament can’t force people to come, they lose a little bit of their authority“, which is an awesome revelation, so as we witness levels of interaction, whilst we are realising that the players should have known a lot better than what we are witnessing gives rise to other matters. What matters that they are why they are larger than you think remains a speculation to some degree and we all will have our own ideas on that. Yet without clear and accurate data it is merely speculation and we should not depend on speculation too much, should we?

Or perhaps when we consider ‘Dominic Cummings, who has been credited as the brains behind the successful Brexit campaign‘, we might, in light of the Moray MacLennan disclosure consider that Dominic Cummings comprehended the voters and Will Straw (the opposing team leader) did not, we need to realise that wars have been lost with a smaller disadvantage like that, so the Remain group might merely have themselves to blame for all this. If interaction is about communicating, we can deduce that not properly communicating was the cause, and in this the grandstanding by the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee will not help any, will it?

 

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May 3, 2018 · 12:18

A Bill of Goods

So when was the last time that you were sold a bill of goods? Have you ever been in that place? Some people avoid most of it by never purchasing 2nd hand materials to avoid that, I am for the most one of those people. I tend to inform myself before I go into anything, like a good person should. Now there is a level that we should attend to and after that it is overkill, paranoia and optionally a few other things. So there is a basic check we all should make. You get that don’t you? So when I looked into Cambridge Analytica in previous articles, I was a little late to the party (4 hours late), but that was because I wanted to look into a few things. So on the 18th of March, I got a few issues that made me wonder, and off course the first question I had was “Here I wonder (for a mere moment) if something wrong was done at all“, you see not having that question makes it all emotional and useless. It is all about the facts. So when we see the utter inactivity of the police and other elements for close to 10 days, I knew that this was about something else and there was even the premise that Cambridge Analytica was not the only player in town. So when I went “Robert Mercer has found a business model that works. The question merely remains on how that data was captured“, I had a little more than you all bargained for. This continued whilst ‘my emotional‘ side also added “for years I have spoken out clearly that these users are all about stating ‘privacy’ no the NSA whilst at the same time sharing indiscriminately on social media like Facebook, whilst not comprehending the system because it was ‘free’. This is the direct consequence and these users will be used again and again because that is what they signed up for“, the evidence (a slightly overstated word), had seen parts of this going back to 2014. The quotes were from ‘How Facebook data flows‘ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/03/18/how-facebook-data-flows/amp/). Yet today’s article ‘Cambridge Analytica closing after Facebook data harvesting scandal‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/may/02/cambridge-analytica-closing-down-after-facebook-row-reports-say) leaves us with a lot more questions. Consider the following quote “The company has started insolvency proceedings in the US and UK. At Cambridge Analytica’s New York offices on an upmarket block on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, it appeared all the staff had already left the premises“, yet this is in direct opposition to “Although Cambridge Analytica might be dead, the team behind it has already set up a mysterious new company called Emerdata. According to Companies House data, Alexander Nix is listed as a director along with other executives from SCL Group. The daughters of the billionaire Robert Mercer are also listed as directors” and that is not where it stops. You see Metro (at https://www.metro.us/news/the-big-stories/cambridge-analytica-backers-new-data-company-emerdata) gave us 3 days after the news “Emerdata was incorporated in the UK in August 2017, reports Business Insider“, this puts a spin on the previous statement, because as the first liner sinks, the Rigid Inflatable Boat (pun intended) was already prepared for the main cast of it all to vacate the premises onto a different vessel, yet were they visited by the police and other digital forensic instances? No they were not! It seems that when you are backed by a billionaire, the machines of prosecution tend to maul extremely slowly, or the machines is inhabited by cowards that are not willing to press any buttons until they can blame someone else. Whatever the reasoning will be, it is about to get a lot more juicy!

That is seen with “The data was collected via Facebook’s permissive “Graph API”, the interface through which third parties could interact with Facebook’s platform. This allowed Kogan to pull data about users and their friends, including likes, activities, check-ins, location, photos, religion, politics and relationship details“, not only was the Facebook team extremely lazy, the setting of the app could have potentially made things worse. They could have been accumulating data and reset the data against aggregated statistical margins, that means that EVERY market research company on the planet had optional access to additional data they never ever had before, it would have optionally increased value of any dashboard by 400%, now consider that I saw part of this flaw (I never knew that Facebook had made it THIS easy) from 2014 onwards. Even if the system was less able, there was a flaw and there is absolutely no chance that this merely involves Cambridge Analytica. So when we consider this, and add the quote “He told an undercover reporter: “We did all the research, all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting. We ran all the digital campaign, the television campaign and our data informed all the strategy.” He also revealed that the company used a self-destruct email server to erase its digital history. “No one knows we have it, and secondly we set our … emails with a self-destruct timer … So you send them and after they’ve been read, two hours later, they disappear. There’s no evidence, there’s no paper trail, there’s nothing.”” this changes the game on a few levels, this is no longer merely data capturing, or data analyses, this is tradecraft, deleted things cannot be acted on, a truth that has existed even before Facebook existed (ask the horse Pegasus). So when we think that James Brien Comey Jr. esquire, who served as the seventh Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from September 4, 2013, until his dismissal on May 9, 2017. The dismissal is part of it all because, as I personally see it, he never had a chance, this is not some commercial app; this was tweaked on a much higher level (to where will never be proven, and unless someone kept a printed email, the evidence is gone forever). That part shown that this was no small operation, this was tried and tested on several levels and if there had been no whistle-blower, we would never have known, even if the metropolitan police decided not to sit on their hands for about a week, it still would not have mattered.

It does not stop there, this is a lot bigger and I think Mark Zuckerberg knows this, he must have realised this in the first hour the mess landed on his desk, the question is what he would have been able to do after the fact, I think it would have been very little. The fact that the Guardian had part of this in 2015 also counts, even as there is a large lull in activity, a journalist hands are tied to some extent, no evidence, no setting and even as I knew parts of this earlier, I could not prove it and Facebook was certainly not going to be much help there, because the value of their treasury is their data and someone telling them it is overstated by 70% is not what they are willing to hear or give attention to.

The next part is Cambridge University researcher Aleksandr Kogan, when we see “My view is that I’m being basically used as a scapegoat by both Facebook and Cambridge Analytica. Honestly, we thought we were acting perfectly appropriately. We thought we were doing something that was really normal“, really? Capturing private data is perfectly normal? We see that part in “Aleksandr Kogan, a Moldovan-born researcher from Cambridge University, admits harvesting the personal details of 30 million Facebook users via a personality app he developed. He then passed the data to Cambridge Analytica who assured him this was legal, he said“, he had no clue on Intellectual Property rights? Because that was already an issue when I attended University years before that, there are Facebook documents on what can and can’t be done, none of that rings a bell? And this statement now completely opposes the mention by Cambridge Analytica that there was never any data. In addition, his title, where he is boasting his title as a Data Scientist, he should be aware of Loshin (2002), Loshin, D. (2002). Knowledge Integrity: Data Ownership, June 8, 2004. Here we see “Researchers should have a full understanding of various issues related to data ownership to be able to make better decisions regarding data ownership. These issues include paradigm of ownership, data hoarding, data ownership policies, balance of obligations, and technology. Each of these issues gives rise to a number of considerations that impact decisions concerning data ownership” the fact that the information came from a protected source, should have been clear indication that Aleksandr Kogan should have clearly known that what he did was illegal to the larger extent, or he could remain in denial and just hand in his degree and title (Cambridge University might like that a lot better too).

All simple points that seem to have been looked over or is that looked past).

Now let’s get back to my previous promise ‘it is about to get a lot more juicy!‘ and go just there. So you all have heard the one truth, ‘If you don’t want your naked selfies to make it to the internet, do not make any!‘ So there is this girl who thinks she might be a photo model, so she goes ‘tits out’ and shows that she is photo model material, she sees the results and realises that she is not, so she makes her boyfriend promise to delete them and he does. At home he undelete’s the pictures, posts them online and he looks for a new ‘fuck of the week’. For her it all goes tits up which is worse that tits out and that is where we are now, Facebook has ‘shared’ the data and now it is out, so when we see the link to Emerdata, and the mention that Alexander James Ashburner Nix has the following company appointments

  • SCL GROUP LIMITED (05514098), as Director since Jan 2016
  • SCL ANALYTICS LIMITED (09838667), as Director, since Oct 2015
  • CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA(UK) LIMITED (09375920), as Director, since Jan 2015
  • SCL DIGITAL LIMITED (09375055), as Director, since Jan 2015, DISSOLVED
  • SCL SOVEREIGN LIMITED (09375809), as Director, since Jan 2015, DISSOLVED
  • SCL COMMERCIAL LIMITED (08840965), as Director, since Jan 2015
  • SCL SOCIAL LIMITED (08410560), as Director, since Feb 2013
  • SCL ELECTIONS LIMITED (08256225), as Director, since Oct 2012
  • EMERDATA LIMITED (10911848), as Director, since Jan 2018, RESIGNED, Mar 2018
  • FIRECREST TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED (11238956), as Director 2018, RESIGNED same day

This is all form one address in one instance he resigns the day he is hired? How weird is that? Don’t answer, the options are all overwhelming, but in all these instances he would have had access to infrastructure allowing the passing through of terabytes of data, it is also so interesting that they were all called Alexander, perhaps a fluke! Yet when we look at Alexander Bruce Tayler, we see that he is also a Director at Emerdata limited, so the plot does thicken. In addition, these places are all linked to PKF Littlejohn, the chartered accountants, now that last part makes sense as a director might seek one accountant for all companies, nothing weird about that. The issue is that there is a whole web of connections that allow the data to have been moved to Hong Kong and New York with no options to securely obtain the data and have it wiped. So this is not an accusation, this is the realistic setting that the data could (I do say ‘could’) have been spread all over the planet, until proven that the data was illegally obtained there is no crime and no option to get anything done, Facebook should have known this from day one. Even in the mid 90’s it was clear that Intellectual property and Data ownership was the hard-core central point for any corporate setting. If not, why would there have been such a booming business in transferring legacy systems?

Data has value, ask any salesperson!

So are we sold a bill of goods, because that is what it looks like? Let me also add that this is not sold by the Guardian, I think that the players in this game has been a lot more clever than most players and the paraphrased suggestion that the rats pretty much walked away with a whole wheel of cheese (ask any sinking ship) is not the strangest notion in all this. The final part we see (at https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/02/cambridge_analytica_shutdown/) with ‘Cambridge Analytica dismantled for good? Nope: It just changed its name to Emerdata‘, yet is that information valuable? I cannot tell because I am not an accountant. You see, I found it interesting that even as PKF Littlejohn, the representative of PKF International was seen in all the registrations, it is “the boards have applied to appoint insolvency practitioners Crowe Clark Whitehill LLP to act as the independent administrator for Cambridge Analytica“, there might be a valid reason for that yet when I seek into PKF international I see: “PKF International member firms lead the world in Insolvency services, we can help you through financial misfortune and the recovery process globally” (at https://www.pkf.com/services/advisory/insolvency/). In this it is merely my speculation that this is the start of a Chinese wall, a level of isolation regarding information and reporting. It protects all the players in the house. It remains speculative, yet is it an optional truth? When was the last time you saw an accountancy firm walk away from revenue? Tesco lunch anyone?

So whilst someone might cry for the people involved, I wonder how much tears an executive deserves when you realise that 2 hour mail deletion systems were in place, what else were they hiding and who else is playing that game, because when we see the 2 hour deletion setting and the police sitting on their hands for around a week (as I personally see it), I have little faith that the actual truth will ever be found through any level of evidence. The whistle-blower Christopher Wylie E Coyote is the one clog in the cog that set this all to an open investigation status; so whilst the rest is doing the ‘meep meep’ roadrunner we are left wondering how many other social media corporate settings are filled with stupid people. The numbers rarely add up, but I never expected the books to be this out of balance, not when we realise that this partially implies that Mark Zuckerberg has been doing open heart surgery on himself with a butter knife (a stupid idea for at least two reasons).

That is what it looks and feels like and it is as I personally see it as the result of being sold a bill of goods by all the reporting players, most of them unaware that they were doing just that (I am referring to the actual newspaper reporters in this instance).

 

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April 24, 2018 · 10:42

Behind Fake News and Business Intelligence

It all started with the Independent last night (at https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-terrorism-isis-alqaeda-content-removed-mark-zuckerberg-a8319001.html). You see, we have had our fill of Facebook news, some of it seems to hold ground, a lot linked to ‘rumoured’ and some founded through advertisement as Eddie McGuire is now fighting with ‘Eddie McGuire is vowing to sue Facebook over a fake news article that claimed the broadcaster was promoting a cure for erectile dysfunction‘. Even as we see the issues around the Australian TV Presenter, we are nowhere near ready.

There is in addition the visibility through the MoneySavingExpert founder Martin Lewis, who is determined to give Facebook a bloody nose.

Yet at the core we are in a separate standing. The first is given with Facebook generates 4 new petabytes of data per day; this translates to 4,000 Terabytes, or 4,000,000 Gigabytes. That is every day! So when I see “Facebook has said it removed or flagged 1.9 million pieces of content linked to al-Qaeda or Isis in the first part of 2018“, I wonder what they did NOT find. There is no way to tell, but they are nowhere close to the 100% mark. In addition, people like Eddie McGuire and Martin Lewis are not making it any easier. Now, I am partially on their side, if their name is wrongfully used there should be repercussions, yet this is advertisement and they should go after those advertisers, not Facebook themselves. They might do this from the sense of Torts to go after the money, but then they merely want a payday, not a resolution. When we take a look at Facebook Marketing, we see something interesting in the Business Insider, when we consider “Relationship marketing differs from other forms of marketing in that it recognises the long term value to the firm of keeping customers, as opposed to direct or ‘Intrusion’ marketing, which focuses upon acquisition of new clients by targeting majority demographics based upon prospective client lists“. This implies that this system relies on idiots propagating the message of the fake McGuire and Lewis. That is what makes the issue a larger issue. You see people have a god given right to be moronic idiots, with no accountability to the truth or reality. So these two gentlemen are almost on some fools errant. The moment we look into the advertisement policies, the online sales structure, Facebook is likely to have absolved all liability and they become a mere facilitator. And in all this America just doesn’t care, if they did the ‘big dick‘ and ‘huge tits‘ pharmacy solutions would have stopped decades ago, but they didn’t did they?

So in all that light we see ‘Why paying for Facebook won’t fix your privacy’ (at http://www.businessintelligenceinfo.com/business-intelligence/big-data/why-paying-for-facebook-wont-fix-your-privacy), the issue is not the data. We see that when we consider “While Facebook might offer an option to pay instead of having targeted ads shown, it’s also likely that people purchasing such an option will have their personal information collected anyway. Zuckerberg hinted there might be a version of Facebook that is not free, but he never hinted that he might stop collecting your data. And Facebook is only one example of a ubiquitous business model“, this is the one place where Google and Facebook are truly the same. Their operations rely on having that data and collecting more data, the value of data is only a guarantee as long as the data is up to date.

In all this there are some clear issues. You see, the user should be allowed to get the data on ANY advertiser. So, as such if there if fake news, or wrongful advertisers, these advertisers are now in the picture as their records could be pulled by anyone. It would also enable people like McGuire and Lewis to go after the advertisers. As those fake advertisers can no longer hide, they will need to find other shores to dig for cheap revenue. Yet there is no solution for those people, and Facebook themselves have opened that door by their own doing. Facebook Business gave us “Facebook is one of the most efficient ways to advertise online. See how we connect businesses with all the right people on any device with Facebook marketing“. If they ‘connect businesses’ they have the goods on that business and as such we have a right to know. I would not put it past McGuire to introduce those people abusing his good name by introducing those advertisers to the business end of a ‘2 by 4’.

If Business Intelligence is ‘the strategies and technologies used by enterprises for the data analysis of business information’, Facebook would have no option but to make that effort and change. You see, if business information is not correct of reliably false, it stops having value degrading the facilitator, so it is actually in their interest as Facebook to make that jump. In addition, when we consider ‘BI is most effective when it combines data derived from the market in which a company operates with data from company sources internal to the business‘, which we get from ‘Coker, Frank (2014). Pulse: Understanding the Vital Signs of Your Business. Ambient Light Publishing’, to some extent, we see that Facebook is either willing to lose its markers on effectiveness or adjust its current visions. In addition, when we realise that its terrorist propaganda settings are below nominal, we see that the system needs more than an overhaul, it needs a separate dashboard of flags as to ascertain the volatility of the advertisement space used and that is merely when it is set to advertisement. When we consider the ISIS 2016 recruitment video (removed in late 2017) that was on Heavy.com, we now see a new iteration. What happens when it is not some extreme violence advertisement? What if it is merely fake news and false advertisement? The only way to get through that is to start mapping the users propagating this, there is no other alternative. Let the user face the accountability of their use of ‘free speech‘, the moment it clearly intersects with defamation and liable acts, that is the first moment that the waves of prosecution will warrant the user to start acting responsibly.

I am willing to take it one step further; the user needs to become Business Intelligence aware, all of them, no matter how artsy their stand is. If our ‘survival’ require us to be aware of the value we represent, we suddenly grow an interest in what we propagate is when we start cleaning a system, so these 500+ members (friends) we have, whilst we need to remember that 150 of them were because we needed ‘stuff’ from Farmville, at that point we will start cleaning our accounts and the interactions we have. When we have clean accounts a lot of fake news will start limiting itself to a small circle of ‘facilitators’ and as such the issue becomes a much smaller issue. As the circle decreases, those people abusing advertisements and propagate messages will learn that the effort to grow will take much more effort and as such it will become a lot less rewarding to do so, in addition, as the circle is smaller, it will be the actual circle of those embracing either fake news and extremism, the fake news people will isolate themselves more and more and the extremism people will be more readily identifiable.

So as Facebook is holding onto ‘Twice as much as in the previous quarter‘ I am willing to speculate that they aren’t even close to 25%, that means that their extremism message is still getting through and until Facebook changes their ways, the issue is unlikely to ever be resolved. Now, that does not mean that Facebook is willing to facilitate for them, it merely means that the changes in the propagation through messages, false posts and/or advertisements needs a massive overhaul.

So as we accept the Independent with “It noted that “bad actors have long tried to use” the internet for nefarious ends, noting that white supremacists and al-Qaeda have for decades sought to disseminate their ideologies online“, as well as ““While the challenge of terrorism online isn’t new, it has grown increasingly urgent as digital platforms become central to our lives”, the post said“. We need to see that there is a lot more to be done. That evidence is seen (at https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/04/09/cryptocurrency-ads-facebook), where we see: “The worst part is that the trick is ridiculously simple: all it takes to circumvent the crypto currency ad ban on the popular social media platform is to avoid using any of the forbidden terms. This is why some marketers have begun strategically abbreviating the word “cryptocurrency” to “c-currency” – and other similar variations“, this in itself is could be partially aided by making the advertisers details open and public. When we consider the news ‘the people have a right to know’, then the people have an equal right to be aware of who is trying to ‘sell’ them that information, when those people can no longer hide, they will optionally start receiving the documents for reparations. Yet this all depends on Facebook being willing to change their model in the first place, it will up the quality of their Business Intelligence data as well as the result. It is likely that they will lose thousands of customers with $100 to spend, yet in light of the damage that they are causing now, that loss should be no more than a mere drop of water on a hot plate, the benefits should outweigh anything else in the long run. In addition, how can you have any faith in any product or solution whilst the seller is trying to hide their identity? How does that make sense?

The nice part is that hitting Fake News, not merely some ‘white supremacist’ trying to push their ideology, when we start seeing trolls and “When Storm Harvey displaced thousands in Texas, US, in August, a Canadian imam had to point out he had never been to the state after he was accused of closing his mosque’s doors to Christian victims in a fake story been shared more than 126,000 times“, we need to consider that they either found 125,000+ gullible idiots, or that the issue is a lot larger than we can imagine. That issue is seen in the BBC article (at http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-42724320), where we see “The young people in Veles may or may not have had much interest in American politics, but because of the money to be made via Facebook advertising, they wanted their fiction to travel widely on social media. The US presidential election – and specifically Donald Trump – was (and of course still is) a very hot topic on social media“, which means that greed propagated a direct impact on Fake News as well as skew the Business Intelligence results. So why pay anything at all? It seems that if people have an interest in informing the audience they will and there is every likelihood that not paying anything could have prevented up to at least 75% of ‘locals launched at least 140 US politics websites’, there will always be a select group of jokers, but a mere cost effective cut might have prevented 75% of the damage others faced by not paying those jokers. When we accept that I am not the most intelligent person on the planet (I actually am, but for the moment, let’s just assume I am not), how come that no one in Facebook handed this option? It is all about the money and in that stride we see mistake after mistake, the toll of greed. that is the true fight Mark Zuckerberg faces and let’s be honest, if he (and his wife) bank a mere billion, they will have enough to live an extremely comfortable life. All these issues seem to exist merely because of greed facilitation. I will let you decide how hot the waters are that Zuckerberg needs to navigate, but as the lawsuits are piling up, making the details of every advertiser known might be a first step to change it all for the better for everyone involved, well except the advertisers that is. As the Business Intelligence value goes up he might attract a whole range of other businesses, a group of people that are proud to propagate their brand, their product and their value.

It is a radical idea, but then, I was always a rebel rouser, if only to make people face the value they could have, not the value that other people say they might have.

 

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April 20, 2018 · 13:36

Physical vs Virtual (part2)

In part 2 we look at the virtual aspect in all this and for that we need to take a look at the other part of the equation, and see where the interaction ended up, because that is also a matter that truly counts.

Virtually

It started way before now, but the now gives us ‘Facebook moves 1.5bn users out of reach of new European privacy law‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/apr/19/facebook-moves-15bn-users-out-of-reach-of-new-european-privacy-law). You see the law is one thing, yet in all this, when we see “Facebook has moved more than 1.5 billion users out of reach of European privacy law, despite a promise from Mark Zuckerberg to apply the “spirit” of the legislation globally“, was anything illegal done? When we see: “when asked whether his company would promise GDPR protections to its users worldwide, Zuckerberg demurred. “We’re still nailing down details on this, but it should directionally be, in spirit, the whole thing,” he said“, did he lie?

Those are the immediate questions. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the EU in this gives us “replaces the Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC and was designed to harmonize data privacy laws across Europe, to protect and empower all EU citizens data privacy and to reshape the way organizations across the region approach data privacy“, so the people created their account long before these privacy issues were there. They never cared for the longest time, as long as the US government didn’t get any data and when we respond to pornographic images and videos on social media, oh no, that was not us, that was merely Gavin Barwell (see part 1), in a time when his mind should have been all other kinds of matters. Ah well, we all have an itch now and then. Yes, it is that itch, because we are all on social media for some reason, to share, to look, to listen and to judge. Some of them actually communicate, and that has also been proven so communication on social media is not a fab. So when we see the EU site on the GDPR: “the biggest change to the regulatory landscape of data privacy comes with the extended jurisdiction of the GDPR, as it applies to all companies processing the personal data of data subjects residing in the Union, regardless of the company’s location. Previously, territorial applicability of the directive was ambiguous and referred to data process ‘in context of an establishment’. This topic has arisen in a number of high profile court cases. GPDR makes its applicability very clear – it will apply to the processing of personal data by controllers and processors in the EU, regardless of whether the processing takes place in the EU or not“, the first thing we see is that social media has no business having offices or processing data in the EU, that basically is the signal for Facebook to vacate using the ASAP protocol and they did just that. And Mark Zuckerberg did it all in the spirit of it all, it is just not what was expected and the Senate hearing just gave themselves (allegedly) access to de data to nearly all the European users. the second part gives us “The GDPR will also apply to the processing of personal data of data subjects in the EU by a controller or processor not established in the EU, where the activities relate to: offering goods or services to EU citizens (irrespective of whether payment is required) and the monitoring of behaviour that takes place within the EU. Non-Eu businesses processing the data of EU citizens will also have to appoint a representative in the EU“, so with ‘monitoring of behaviour that takes place within the EU‘, is a much larger issue and Alex Hern makes no mention of this anywhere in the article (that is not an accusation), merely that Facebook has moved the data and that the people in the EU have less rights under US law. Was that not always the case? Was that not the initial setting when Facebook started? So when we read “This is a major and unprecedented change in the data privacy landscape. The change will amount to the reduction of privacy guarantees and the rights of users, with a number of ramifications, notably for consent requirements“, which we get from Privacy researcher Lukasz Olejnik, we actually do not get anything new, because the GDPR would not have been enforced until next month, so there! (OK, not an entirely justified outcry, but I am feeling batty)

In all this the missed issue of monitoring is actually a lot larger for some and those boasting on what they bought on the dark net (some people remain simple on every level) will have a few repercussions, yet in all this when it regards Cambridge Analytica, we see all kinds of media exploitations, rumours, alleged actions, yet no arrests, no one in the dock and still the entire mess is merely focussed on Facebook. We have seen news on a massive amount of apps collecting data, smart toys, and with the upcoming 5G, the RFID and mobile tag as well as device tags will be an exponentially growing data market with the entire Fortune 500 chomping at the bits to get their fingers on that data, yet at present the legislation has been faulty at best and nominally missing completely. All that because the people give it all away willingly, that is what the next fridge with a £250 discount will warrant, as did the 2016 Sony Smart TV as just about all following models. that is not a joke, you agreed to this when you bought the TV,

it is in the end users license agreement and they are not alone, it is a massive list of corporation that are doing this and the media was, yet they were largely silent about it and the Sony issue in 2012, where the media is what I would personally label as: ‘whoring for advertisement options‘ instead of informing 30 million consumers on the change and its impact, is what still has my nostrils flaring 6 years later and I am an actual Sony fan.

So as we see how we are singularly focussed on where our personal data is and not what we allowed it to be used for, especially as it came with the free use of Facebook, we all need to accept that nothing is for free and the corporation requires its return of investment, well in the case of Facebook merely 60 billion. Where did you think that value came from? Watching advertisement? In that Facebook and google are largely alike. So in these issues in the physical and virtual side, we are short on memory, too large on emotions and unclear on how to make the houses of Lords and Commons more accountable for the matters at hand. Even as they cannot prevent you from staying with Facebook, we all have been failed by legislation that was too slow and MP’s that are showing to be lacking the necessary skills to do something successfully. It would be so lovely if Sir Martin Moore-Bick would be kind enough to show both matters, because it would have a much larger impact. Even as we see, (what I would personally call) the failed false promises of Jeremy Corbyn regarding housing, with: “One million new “genuinely affordable homes” over a decade, mostly for social rent. That’s not quite 1m new council houses – a chunk of these would be delivered by housing associations – but it gets very close” is also a Porky Pie of the largest order. You merely have to look at google Maps to see that there is no place for even 30% of that in London, so will they mostly be in Wales, Penzance, Brighton and Scarborough? In addition, none of the sides of the houses
(Lords or Commons) have successfully done anything to make a change, regarding leasehold which will drive the entire social housing matter further and 1,000,000 houses will not nearly be enough. So, back to the Virtual part, because that is still central in this. In that part I have to thank the realtor Harcourts for bringing the juice.

You see, with: “NPP1 – Collection of Information; Agencies are prohibited from collecting personal information unless it is necessary for one or more of its functions. Personal data should only be collected in a lawful, fair, and not unreasonably obtrusive way. The agency must disclose certain information at the point of collection“, yet in all this the terms: ‘unless it is necessary for one or more of its functions‘ gives a much wider scope, does it not? In addition, with ‘only be collected in a lawful, fair, and not unreasonably obtrusive way‘. So when they (the real estate in general) offer a £199 rebate for registering you as the leasehold owner, how many people do you think that will consider it necessary and not unreasonable? It merely needs to satisfy one function and the deed is covered with the mantle of opportunity. In addition we see “Personal and sometimes sensitive information may be collected and stored on standard real estate industry forms, such as tenancy applications, listing forms, etc. These need to be secured and available for inspection by customers“, so when did you look at what some call the RP Database? In Australia there is a firm CoreLogic and it has a product called RP Data Professional. In all this we see: “RP Data Professional is the leading property data solution used by property professionals in Australia. Prepare reports for prospects and clients, generate value estimates, verify information and conduct valuable research and highly targeted marketing. Packages starting from $150 / month“. It is widely used by debt collecting agencies as well as realtors. You would be surprised to see all that data and what every address offers. Do you think that they are the only ones? Data is gold, it is the printer that allows you to print your own money and for the most it is massively unchecked. Now, I know that RP Data is merely a facilitator in all this, all perfectly valid, and nothing illegal. Yet when we consider ABC in 2016 with “The Reserve Bank has taken the highly unusual step of switching its preferred home value data, arguing that CoreLogic’s figures overstated price growth in April and May due to a methodology change“, so as you see the data goes a lot further and for the most the people, the tenants and Real Estate seekers are totally unaware of such parts and in all this do you think that the UK does not have its own options. In all this, with the explosive cladding issues, did you not think that the clad dealers were not tailoring to ‘property value increase at minimum costs’? This goes a lot wider in several lanes and the sudden much larger issue of cladding is almost not looked at (I did say almost).

So when we see “CoreLogic’s head of research Tim Lawless acknowledged that the changes to the index may have temporarily bumped up the figures for a couple of months. However, he said other data indicate that those two months were still relatively strong for Sydney and Melbourne housing sales” we forget to look at the aligned indications and what else is setting the pass in all this. Even as the last parts were the Australian side of this, CoreLogic is also active in the UK. In this no one seems to have talked to CoreLogic to see if the cladding industry has been given (through subscription) access to the UK RP Database. Is that not interesting too? You see, when we accept the January setting of “Just three tower blocks out of almost 300 with the same “dangerous” and “flammable” cladding as Grenfell Tower have had panels taken down and replaced“, how come the number of buildings is so high? Are all cladding providers so very bad, or was there a very intelligent salesperson selling cladding to the right people, when the timing was just right? I am fairly certain that this part of the conversations has not been showing up anywhere.

The virtual side to the Grenfell disaster was not seen, perhaps that part was immaterial at that time, yet when we see 297 tower blocks in a serious setting of harm, with the initial setting of finding the proper candidates, have we considered that corporate social media (like LinkedIn) could be used to get the goods (in alleged Cambridge Analytica style) to create fear in other ways? A lack of value versus a larger valuation set against a minimal investment. You show me a person who turns that down and I will introduce you to a person who is very aware of the concept of dishonesty.

You see, we have seen for the better part of 5 years the notion of taking fear from the workplace, usually in the style of ‘Corporate Leaders Must Remove Fear Factor from the Workplace‘, which we get from the Huffington Post (at https://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-prefontaine/corporate-leaders-must-re_1_b_1437445.html) as early as 2012, so when we see “As reported in the Harvard Business Review, employees faced with incivility are likely to narrow their focus to avoid risks, and lose opportunities to learn in the process. Obviously this impacts their level of personal success and the success of the organization“, yet in equal measure, those actors never considered to take the fear factor out of the boardrooms, which are forever ruled by the bottom line and in that respect there is very little difference between a corporate boardroom, or places like the Kensington and Chelsea TMO, which has one bottom line, which is the value of housing and the rise of values of upcoming new housing. So now, the entire Metro section we saw in part one with ‘Cladding added to Grenfell Tower to ‘improve view for nearby luxury flats’‘ it makes a whole lot more sense does it not? It is my personal view and opinion, yet in all that data was at the very Core and Logic of it all (pun intended). So when you think the Facebook data is an issue, guess again. The issue is a lot bigger, wider and more exploitable at the expense of yourself of course) than you would have thought.

All within the considerate view of those not looking at any of this, and you think I went deep here? I merely touched the surface and I will be very surprised if the public inquiry touches on any of those matters, not because they do not want to, but because the legal scope is unlikely to be there, as it would have been in the emotional seeking justice side. I guess that it is one of the questions that certain councils do not want to answer, so making sure that the question is not asked will be a first priority for all of them, because if it does get to the table, those who want to stiff Leaseholders with a £40,000 bill might optionally end up being not so successful and there is every indication that a fair chunk of those 297 tower blocks are currently facing a similar dilemma.

That is just my thought on the matter, and in all this, when you start realising the issues at hand and the time that this has taken, in addition that I saw some in minutes a few more in hours and one or two through my decades of data experience, are you not surprised that the elected officials remained in the dark? I know I am one of the better ones on the planet, but I know close to a dozen equal or better than me, many living in London. Do you actually think that some were in the dark or are they allegedly keeping themselves ignorant? In that case, if more happens, how many lives was the price of that ignorance? Can we afford to find out?

I’ll leave you with those questions, have a great Friday and do try to enjoy the weekend!

 

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