Tag Archives: Netflix

July 7, 2021 · 19:04

Choices by media

We all have them, we all have choices, believes and convictions. The media has them as well and they are entitled to them. I never objected to their choices, I merely want them to have accountability towards their actions. To kick this off, I need to confess. I had difficulties believing Bill Cosby was guilty. I went with what TV fed me, his character, his demeanour and I will admit, I was taken in by all of it. I saw the jokes, I saw the accusations and when we got ‘Bill Cosby released from prison after sex conviction overturned’ my mind went to different locations. I am unsure. Yes, I accept “The court ruled that the prosecutor who brought the case was bound by his predecessor’s agreement not to charge Cosby”, it does not make him innocent, yet why would any prosecutor come with an “agreement not to charge Cosby”? From a legal point of view it strongly implies that the prosecutor had no evidence to begin with. If the evidence was there, that promise would never be voiced by any prosecutor. And this got me thinking on Kevin Spacey. When we see “Kevin Spacey accuser who tried to sue anonymously is dismissed from case” (source: ABC) and we are given “A US judge has dismissed all claims by one of two men suing actor Kevin Spacey over alleged sexual misconduct in the 1980s, after the plaintiff refused to identify himself publicly” that is a voiced 50% loss, 50% went out the window just like that. And that is merely the beginning. The media is now in a much larger stage, a stage of denial and a stage of their big mouths that could land them an 8 figure settlement, optionally 9 figure, but that is a stretch. You see, at the height of the ‘House of Cards’ he was cast out, thrown away and that show was the talk of the town. Now we see the impact of the media and their need for a pound of flesh. So when we consider ABC giving us “The other plaintiff, actor Anthony Rapp, said he was 14 in 1986 when Spacey engaged in an unwanted sexual advance with him during a party at the actor’s home. Spacey, 61, has denied CD’s and Rapp’s sexual misconduct accusations. His lawyers did not immediately respond to requests for comment”. Did it happen?  I do not know, but in legal settings evidence matters, flaming opinions do not. Yet for an issue to wait 20 years until Kevin Spacey has his golden moment sounds off by a lot. And is no one asking what a 14 year old person is doing at a party? There might be a valid reason, there might not be, yet the lack of information in the media makes me wonder. A media that is too much about flaming and too little about informing. So I am not upset with Netflix when we see “Spacey starred in Netflix’s House of Cards before Netflix severed its ties with him after sexual misconduct accusations surfaced in 2017”, Netflix had to protect what was theirs, and there was damage, but in all this the media flamed that damage and when we see “the man known in court papers as “CD” said revealing his identity would cause “sudden unwanted attention” and be “simply too much for him to bear””, I have an issue, this could be a blackmailer hoping to cash in, ‘could be’ being the operative part. More important when we consider ‘10.83 The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to be confronted with the witnesses against him’, a simple foundation and when I see “Peter Saghir, a lawyer for CD, declined to comment on Thursday” I wonder what had gotten into Peter Saghir. It is speculative of me to think that the case with just Anthony Rapp was too thin to proceed. Yet the media is not looking at that picture or any picture that has the shown image as a picture in picture. And it is Reuters who gives us “Peter Saghir, a lawyer for C.D. and Rapp, declined to comment on Thursday. He has suggested that C.D. might pursue an appeal if his case were severed from Rapp’s”, so he is willing not to be ‘anonymous’ when Rapp is off the charter? It gives us a larger stage that the Rapp case is thin, optionally too thin. And that is when Kevin Spacey will made the 8 or 9 figure claim, he lost that much and that is the ball game and when the media gets that much of a claim, the game changes, the wolves become crying chihuahua’s trying to hold on as much of that money as possible, in a stage where every penny counts, losing over a billion if not well over ten times that much pennies will make them suffer, and with all the BS I have watched over the last decade, the media could do with a little suffering. 

Some people are all about Bill Cosby and Kevin Spacey, I am on the fence because we are lands of law, evidence is part of that and when the media is all about emotional flames, it tends to be the setting for a lack of evidence. Yes, this is speculative, but in that I have been proven right a lot more often than I was proven wrong. 

So what is next? 
When you see the flamed accusations against Spacey and Cosby, all whilst the media is going with excuse after excuse against Ghislaine Maxwell, daughter of dead media mogul Robert Maxwell. It seems that the media seems to be a protective shield for anyone with strong ties to media. So when you see the slams against these two gentlemen and we see ‘SHAMED Ghislaine Maxwell was left “broken” by her “horrendous childhood”’, ‘Ghislaine Maxwell’s prison cell flooding with raw sewage’ and more, yes she is so sad and so broken, but these people cannot afford a ‘$1 million home paid for in cash’, can they? When you have enough money to get a “4,300-square-foot house sits on 156 acres of land, at the top of a half-mile driveway” (source: NBC News), things do not add up. Especially as her daddy forfeited (read: default) on £50,000,000 in loans and went yachting. Yes, poor, poor little Ghislaine. 

Do you see the problem? The media has two measures and none are holding evidence too high and in all this we become the flock that relies on flamed materials, too often devoid of evidence.

So when you see this and we reconsider the hack (Kaseya) and now we add Government Security Info (at https://www.govinfosecurity.com/kaseya-ransomware-attack-this-dramatic-escalation-a-16996), I wonder what is true (I really do wonder) they give us “There’s one big question that hasn’t been answered, says Tom Kellermann, head of cybersecurity strategy at VMware Carbon Black. “Who gave REvil the zero-day?””, yet Fortune dot com gives us “The Dutch Institute for Vulnerability Disclosure said it had alerted Kaseya to multiple vulnerabilities in its software that were then used in the attacks, and that it was working with the company on fixes when the ransomware was deployed”. So one side gives us ‘zero-day’ the other gives us ‘multiple vulnerabilities’, as well as ‘it had alerted Kaseya’. Yet no one will give us how long this was known by Kaseya, how long the issue was out there and for how long Kaseya did too little in protecting their customers? The media is on both slots and the lack of voiced investigations are staggering, so when will we get the real deal, the state of matters drowning in facts and evidence? 

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July 5, 2021 · 01:01

A quarter of a century later

There is a side in me that yearns for all the old games, the games that emphasised on fun. Don’t get me wrong I love some of the games that are new Ratchet and Clank, Aragami, Sniper Ghost warrior, AC Origins, God of War and there are several others. Yet there are moments that I am driven towards the old games. Portal (the interactive novel), Millennium 2.2, Mass Effect, Masters of Orion and lately I have been thinking back to the game Ascendancy, a game 25 years old, yet it was an amazing forward thinking game in those days and I wonder why it was never released as a remaster, or even to some degree overhauled for today’s systems. If Cloud gaming is the wave, then these players need all the fun games that they can get and so far it seems awfully quiet. In part this is to be understood, as I stated in the past, until there is a proper 5G in place Cloud gaming is optionally nice to have, but without 5G it will not go anywhere fast, if even at all. Yet to get a library of good games, you need to start now to have a decent calibre of offers when it matters. And it is important to cover the foundations, in this (with no attack on that player) to rely on Ubisoft to cover your bets is massively stupid. No matter how good the coming games are, when the next game is as glitched and as buggy as AC Valhalla, you endanger your hardware. The ages of CBM-64, Atari ST and CBM Amiga have created some of the most amazing gaming journeys, a lot of it is no longer protected IP and using that foundation to create gams will be a great start in having a larger library, moreover, these games have some limitations, and even when upgraded, they might not take that much on the download. The difference between two streamers, one with Ubisoft and one with Ubisoft and half a dozen original and optionally exclusive games will give us that the one with the exclusive games will win, when the hardware is too close together, the one with the large exclusive (providing the are good) wins. We saw this in PlayStation 2 versus Xbox, Playstation 3 versus Xbox360 and PlayStation 4 versus Xbox One and that list goes on, Playstation won every time and only in the Xbox 360 age did Microsoft catch up to a decent degree, only to lose it again in the Xbox One age. In streaming Google Stadia, Amazon Luna and Netflix it will be the games that decide on the winner, giving Google at present a distinct disadvantage over Amazon Luna. Netflix is one boasting its arrival, yet nothing is known, so they are an unknown for now. 

So as we consider Ascendancy, a game I enjoyed for years, the stage has one weakness, the AI in the game was overly bad and that requires an upgrade, but that is the only large part, and even then the game scored 90%+ on several formats, A score Ubisoft had not seen since Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell Chaos Theory (2005), Which is not entirely fair, Metacritic gave AC Origins a score of 81, I myself thought it was worth somewhere between 88%-93%. And as I replay the game, my score remains. The game has one flaw, or perhaps a wrong choice, but that is all and my view is not important. The fact that there is a massive limit to really good games is why the streamers need to open their search and they need to make sure that they have a decent library of games. Both Nintendo and Sony showed that it was essential one is number one and the other one surpassed the most powerful system in the world with the weakest system around. I believe that the evidence is clearly out there. As such games like Ascendancy can grow a larger base, especially if the game makers take care in what was and what could be. So far I have seen that option (or opportunity) with half a dozen games, a few movies and a TV series (self made), but in all this, the staggering push for ‘new and cheap IP’ by the makers, all whilst one corner away, there is a pile of good IP, all ready to be chiseled up into fabulous remasters and that is before you realise that a lot of these games come from an age before the gamers of today were born. Now, I do not know if there is IP on the following two titles, but the Dreamcast also gave us two titles that were just too much fun and great looking, they can even stand up to todays games on PSX4 and Xbox One.

The titles were Wacky Races and Fur Fighters. By the way, the PSX2 version of Fur Fighters is a joke, but the Dreamcast version was amazing, why it was forgotten we might never know but that stage could reinvent itself with cloud gaming. With 4 players in that arena, the one with the great games, great exclusive games mind you will take the cake and they will win that race, and when you consider that being number one in that race will grab you more players and more visibility from the moment you are that number one, that is how you win a race, wacky or not. So I will look and see what Amazon, Google and Netflix are up to (I am already disregarding Microsoft, as they seemingly have an Azure preference of taste), there is no way to tell how this ends, but in this the Verge gave us a few months ago ‘Google is shutting down its in-house Stadia game development studios’, which is a choice, but it is one that could serve both Amazon and Netflix to a degree that could bank them pole position. Time will tell.

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June 30, 2021 · 01:27

The future doorstop

That is how we sometimes see a book, a doorstop, a missile towards our partners (and sometimes really annoying elderly teens), a weight for the papers we need, when a book is not really what we wanted, it gets a secondary function. So even as some saw this specific book as ‘A beautiful defense of the common man and woman against a technological elite’, I consider a book like ‘The Tyranny of Big Tech’ as one that is not stating the issues. 

Did I read it?
Nope, and I do not have to, the article clearly shows a republican (who looks like he recently stopped being a teenager) who is aiming for money from both the left and the right. When we see “According to Hawley, it’s not our politicians, our lawyers, our Ivy League graduates, or our Hollywood celebrities. It’s Big Tech – those big names like Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, Apple, and Google that have embedded themselves in our lives to an almost irreversible degree”, I see the beginning of a BS string of texts that will most certainly become debatable and utterly rejectable. You see Zuckerberg attended Harvard whilst designing Facebook, Dorsey came up with the idea for Twitter at NYU, Jeff Bezos was already done with Princeton when Amazon became the idea, Apple was the child of Steve Jobs who attended part of Reed and dropped out, Sergey Brin and Larry Page came from Stanford, so what is left of “not our Ivy League graduates”? Oh and I with my 5G IP am from UTS (Sydney), so there! And when we get to “have embedded themselves in our lives to an almost irreversible degree” we get a lot more. Apple (Macintosh) offered what consumers wanted, Google did the same, Facebook did it even more and created a new digital era and they all OFFERED it to consumers, they planned long term and they won, the small minded people lost. The exception is the Amazon guy who doesn’t need to spend on Shampoo, he offered something to rural people all over the world which they never had access too. In the US this is 60,000,000 people and in the EU it is 125,000,000. One firm aimed for a little over 180 million consumers. The people shops forgot and now Amazon is the bad guy? So this is the setting from the start and the man with the teenager look (Josh Hawley) is already off to a bad start. So when we see “the robber barons reshaped the economy into a corporate monopoly to serve their own ends, in which an aristocratic elite govern above the labouring masses”, all whilst the US government stole from the native Americans whatever they could (99.655% roughly) is like the pot calling the kettle black. In this one pushed what they wanted, the other (current big tech) let the people decide on WHAT they desired and the consumers liked the free 1GB email (Google) whilst the internet providers offered 20MB for a fee. What would you do? That same grocery store (still Google) came up with additional ways to service the consumers (cookies anyone?), the offered shopping, information and choice, whilst those dabbling on the internet wee all about grabbing whatever coins they could get. When the consumers were happy players like Amazon created the Amazon Web Services offering a pay as you go approach, a cloud approach to small businesses. First web services in 2002 and cloud services in 2008, it would take IBM and Microsoft years to offer anything near that, the big tech of then were made basically redundant. And with the pay as you go there was a larger SaaS (Software as a Service) setting. The big 5 became big not because “Big Tech is a direct descendent of the Gilded Age robber barons”, but because they offered choice when the others were unwilling to do so. In this Apple stands alone. They were always the elite DTP solution (a lot more expensive than others) and in 1998 they recognised the needs of the consumer and the iMac was born, all whilst the consumer got the amazing phrase “There’s no step 3!”, an affordable solution in an age where PC’s were still running behind the facts. If you were not up to speed you were either lost or you became an Apple user. All this whilst the writer wants to push “descendent of the Gilded Age robber barons”, a stage none of them pushed for, it merely is in the statements of those who were asleep at the wheel between 1996-2006, they lost it all by not pushing the envelope and 5 companies got ahead. The fifth (Netflix) was like Facebook, it offered something never offered before and whilst we had to seek TV provider after TV provider, they offered what we wanted, movies and specifically movies not hindered by advertisements. They went from sales to rental to streaming and as the firm started in 1998, Hulu, Stan, HBO Max and Disney Plus, some well over a decade AFTER Netflix, so the statement from Josh Hawley is not just bogus, it is utter nonsense. So when we see “Washington, D.C. politicians routinely protect the interests of Big Tech over and against the freedom and well-being of the American people” we see the joke that this book seemingly is. These systems were offered to consumers, you can walk away! I kept my Yahoo account for years later, until the information offered was too outdated or too much adjusted for localisation (against my will), so when we see ‘well-being of the American people’ I wonder what data he can actually produce (raw data, not aggregated and weighted data) and in the grand scheme of things, the US has 320 million people, Europe has 750 million and India has 1.3 billion. All enjoying what the five players are offering. In all that, the US is a mere 15% and on the global scale they do not add up to much, and the US is actually part of that failing. In the era of 1990-2010 American firms remained largely absent on the international scale, relying on someone to pick up the ball and none of them did and the American needs were swallowed by the voice of the consumers, no barons, no lawyers and no politicians. The people wanted what Google offered and Youtube now has over 2,000,000,000 viewers (I am one of them), so far none of the offerers were able to meet this and more important by 2005 both IBM and Microsoft were merely relying on Adobe Flash, these two players had nothing to offer. In 15 years they never really woke up and here I get to use Microsoft against itself with “Microsoft Stream is a corporate video-sharing service which was released on June 20, 2017 that will gradually replace the existing Office 365 Video”, so 12 years of inactivity, in comparison, the Chinese (the makers of Won Ton soup) gave us TikTok one year earlier and now has 100,000,000 active users. Players like IBM and Microsoft have been that much asleep at the wheel. As I personally see it, American BigTech is the only player (all 5 of them) that stops the USA from becoming utterly irrelevant, if they were not there China would be superpower number one and they are close of becoming that anyway, any issues with BigTech and every BS article in every newspaper with  some ‘alleged’ and ‘watchdog’ is merely another delay and it will help China to become the greatest tech power, US politicians (EU politicians as well) are helping China meet that goal.

BigTech, the virgin
BigTech is not holy, it is not innocent and it is no virgin (they got screwed by global politicians again and again, so they are definitely not virgins), BigTech are merely the innovators we always needed and the rest is merely a wannabe player, even Microsoft and IBM have fallen that much from grace. Microsoft had the most powerful console in the world and within 2 years they were surpassed by the weakest console of all (Nintendo Switch), IBM has its own stream of non-successes, and they are all crying to their politicians as to the bad bad tech companies. Most of them had no idea what the digital era was until they were surpassed by a lot of other players (some of them Asian). So when we consider the stage, we need to see the whole stage, not some setting of “Ending Big Tech’s sovereignty is about taking back our own, and we can begin to do that in the lives we live together. Big Tech works relentlessly to force individuals into its ecosystem of addiction, exhibitionism, and fear of missing out. It seeks to create its own social universe and draw all of life into its orbit. But the real social world, the life of family and neighbourhood – the authentic communities that sustain authentic togetherness – can act as a counterweight to Big Tech’s ambitions”, in this phrases like ‘force individuals’ is massively wrong, people have choices. I do not have Facebook on my mobile, I have no need for it there, I do not order from Amazon (I am a support your local hooker kind of guy) and I have currently no Netflix or Disney Plus subscription. That is 3 out of 5, I have an Apple because Microsoft dropped the ball 4 times in the last 5 years and IBM is too expensive for what it offers. I chose! We can all choose and that is where we realise that ‘The Tyranny of Big Tech’ is like a Chicago politician, all hot air and not too much on substance (judging from the article (at https://mindmatters.ai/2021/06/a-book-review-the-tyranny-of-big-tech/). He might at some point present a few parts that are relevant, I am certain that he will, but as a former Missouri’s Attorney General he will tread on places where he knows the answers, so as I see “holding Big Tech accountable where others don’t dare tread. In investigations, in legislation”, I merely wonder how much legislation against BigTech made it through? It matters because it is what you can prove that matters, not what you claim. I made no claims, it is all timeline stuff, including the Chinese parts. 

Consider the choices YOU have, and make choices, it is your right. You need not be on Google, you can select Microsoft Bing. You will lose out on a lot but that is the choice you make. For well over 20 years Google offered choices, YOU were the consumer that selected WHERE you wanted to go and you went there. All whilst Microsoft could not be bothered, it seems to me that the Netscape Victory made them lazy and now they are no longer the relevant company, they are merely the Column B (or C) company. And consider being in a place like Antigo Wisconsin. Now try to buy a game, a DVD, a bluray, a 4K movie, a CD and a book. How many of these items will require Amazon? It was the foundation of 4G (Wherever I am) and it will be the stage of 5G (wheneverI want it), so when will 5G be available in Antigo Wisconsin? Consider these points and consider whatever Josh Hawley is trying to imprint on you and consider what you can find out for yourself. BigTech is not evil, BigTech is because the others became lazy, BigTech merely is and governments do not like the self sufficient organisations, the ones that do not make large contributions to them. In the end if you look into the shareholders and stakeholders of some of these players you get a very different picture, one you need to be wary of.

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June 28, 2021 · 03:37

As updates go

I got a few messages on the previous article named ‘Perception is merely the start’, several readers had a hard time comprehending this, and off course it is my fault. Well, OK, I will accept that, yet I also assumed a few people being ahead of me in a few regards, so the fact I had to explain this was a little weird, but OK, fair enough. It seems that those in several industries were in the dark of a few items there, so here goes.

Perception
The perception circles are a stage where we go from what we perceive to what is unknown, in middle is what we are aware off. Some put that in a different order, yet perception is the larger circle. We perceive and within what we perceive (complete awareness), there is hat we are merely aware off (partial awareness) and the inner circle is what we do not know. People expect it is the other way round, but this is from niche to speciality. For example, we perceive a firearm, we are partially aware of the calibre, we are partially aware of ammunition, spare parts and cleaning kits of a firearm, yet the parts and specific spare parts of  firearm is unknown to us. The same is applicable to games. We are aware of a type of game, we are partially aware of objects, scripting, optionally programming, yet we are in the dark of programming itself. And this repeats itself when we look at the larger approach of cloud gaming and optional other tools of gaming (like Google Glasses). We see the elements, but we do not see how they interact, not precisely. 

Assessment
Then at some point I mention “In a simple form it is about Awareness, Perception, Recognition, Identification, Assessment and Proper response.” In the second graph, we see how identification and assessment goes, now we see that it does not go from the outside inwards, it goes from the unknown to the perceived. This might seem weird, but the brain goes the other direction, we auto label what we know until we are left with the unknown, but the assessment setting goes the other way, the brain merely discards all the steps according to what is known, that is the first issues we see in AI, I left it to linguistic sides, but the AI has a larger problem to identify, because it never learned to learn. Our brains got that from creation (and childhood), we learned to learn and that is our benefit, yet AI (what sales people call AI) relies on deeper learning and AI, when it crosses the unknown it is lost (until the programmer adds options as wide as possible), there is the larger setting where games fail. So we need to set a larger data pool and when we add additional signals we get a level of immersion, it is a data overload and the brain now takes over, it will use what it comprehends and relates to, we enter the game on a deeper level and it seemingly overtakes our sense of reality, because we are vested in THAT game, as the brain has less time for what is around it, we seemingly forget about it until we are yanked out of the game. An example is to see ourselves as a horse in traffic, we are aware of traffic as we have a wide perception, but now )as a horse) we are given blinkers. Their function is to limit vision “a piece of horse tack that prevent the horse seeing to the rear and, in some cases, to the side”, we can get that same effect with other means (like the Google Glasses), as the brain gets more info, it drops what is not relevant, as such the real world falls away. Now, it is important to realise that my model is imprecise (or incomplete). In the assessment stage there are levels of verification that we do automatically. Consider that you are walking and you see a sign stating a time (3:30), yet when you are closing in, you suddenly realise that it was 3:38, the brain verified what it saw again and again until there was clarity, we forget about these automated processes and that is where AI also fails, when it has the data, it is assumed to be correct and on point of what we require, yet when we grapple back the ‘Yo mama’ expression, the AI cannot tell when it is about your mother, a formal declaration of defeat, or a joke. It never comprehended what was real, the programmer never taught the AI and there are waves of missing data pointers. The part we are often given is linked to deeper learning and there we see a lot of good (really a lot). In this Saga Brigs wrote “You can’t search for something you’ve already found, can you? In the case of deeper learning, it appears we’ve been doing just that: aiming in the dark at a concept that’s right under our noses” and that is the problem, an actual AI has the wisdom as a situation approaches, our brain does that, it has that ability, the computer does not. As such it leaves a lot blank (optionally a lot to be desired), yet our brains pick up on a lot of that, hence my anger at Ubisoft and their embrace of mediocrity. Yet as I see it, if we give the brain MORE to deal with, like an HUD in Google Glasses, or something similar, that game changes, the blanks (as our brains see it) fall away, we get a lot more and the brain is now fully engaged, the effect, or immediate effect becomes that the game is seemingly a lot more immersive. So what we perceive increases by factor N, as such the game becomes (seemingly) a lot more rewarding to the player. 

Validation
This now gets us to a model you will have seen in all kinds of versions before, it is validation and verification. Yet in this setting we see Verification (A), where we control what we see and we either confirm what we see or we let the brain think it is doing so (through a second display like the Google Glasses), as it does this it involves a larger stage to immersion, yet this alone will not do this, the other side it gives us Validation (B), it is a bird? (Superman), is it an enemy? (AC Origin), and that list goes on. On the other side it is where we are, where we go and the consideration that we are on the right track, in the middle is the neat stuff. It is the system, the deeper learning, or perhaps a better stage is the data we are given, yet there is an upside and a downside. The upside that if there is data, it will always be correct. Yet our brains have always been in a stage of checks and balances and if the test and the data is always 100% correct, the brain becomes less and less convinced and the model fails in a game. Checks and balances are missing too often and that is where it goes wrong, so if we give the brain more to do it takes longer for it to catch on, the immersion os more and more complete. And these three models are always active and always relating to one another in some form, so as the brain is given the specific item of some table, it shuts down in disbelieve, nature is never perfect and that is where the game goes wrong, the brain was no longer convinced. That is the setting where cloud gaming could become the next thing. We had the provide stage, we knew nothing (Atari 2600), we moved towards seek where we learned what was out there (Atari ST), we entered connect to what we were playing (Playstation 2+3) and now we enter the imprint stage where the game imprints its brand on our needs and desires (Playstation 4+5, Cloud) and this is where the cloud becomes (optionally) more. 

All this was part of yesterday and the developers and IP people should have been on this page long before I put it out here today, so that is where we are now and that is where gaming can go in 2022-2023, will it? It depends on the stage of immersion they are banking on, I reckon that consoles will take longer because of the model of software, but cloud gaming (like Amazon and possibly Netflix) can go further, it will be about a lot more than merely the graphics and the story, I wonder if they are ready for that.

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June 24, 2021 · 12:26

Clouds with a change for gaming

Yup, I started it yesterday, and part 2 is today as I had a few ideas on the subject. These ideas can be used as public domain by Amazon (Luna), but Microsoft will have to pay big time (if they can hand over $7,500,000,000 to Bethesda, they can pay me at least 1%).

Changes (by David Bowie)
The first thing I will do is to introduce Milestones, it is for the most part merely a name change to ‘Achievements’, yet over time it will be a little more. The second is to add a second tier to this, I will add ‘Discovery’ to this, yet all you Susie Dent boffins can clearly see it is a Synonym, yet the function of Discovery is different. As you discover something in one game, it gives you a token that can be spent as YOU see fit. For example if you find a ‘golden chess piece’ in a game like Clue, or a ‘Golden Revolver’ they will become Discoveries that wield the token of a revolver, or a Chess set. In a game like Battle Chess (in normal or battle mode), the Chess token will unlock a Greek Chess set, The golden revolver could unlock a weapon in another game and so on. This is one of the nice parts of the Cloud, we can add a lot more over time and give the people a reason. David Bowie sang:

I watch the ripples change their size
But never leave the stream
Of warm impermanence
So the days float through my eyes

I think it is time to take a page from that, we see gaming chances in perspective, but never remove you from where you are. I am setting a stage where that is possible, where games have a longer lasting appeal and I am offering the stage where the player tries something else as well. Most gaming options outside of the console and singular streams do not offer you this, merely an optional DLC and an optional skin, I want the token to take on new life and a much larger stage. This is about gaming and this is about making gamers happy. The nice part is that there is no guarantee that the token is there at game 1, I thought it through, yes there are some internet driven completionists, yet it is time for them to smell the reality of gaming.

We have largely ignored the masters of yesterday because they were 8 bit, yet some of them with today’s graphics and better intelligent response mappings could become the heroes of tomorrow and the nice part is that the groundwork is already done. Consider Millennium 2.2 with an upgraded map of this solar system, with additional information, more options and a larger stage, can we truly think it will not matter? I wrote about Murder on the Zinderneuf, Seven cities of gold and a few more in the past, close to a dozen games ready to be ‘captured’ (if the IP was abandoned), and the early bird that hesitates grows its own worms, so let’s get cracking. 

Microsoft throws money at everything, wouldn’t it be nice for players like Amazon (optionally Netflix too) to show them how silly that idea was? You see, I love Bethesda products, I really do, yet I also believe that gamers like the next fresh (and original) game. Consider that the top 100 of all time (by Metacritic) has a top 10 with 3 games older than 20 years and an additional 4 games that are between 10 and 19 years old, giving us that the 70% of the top 10 is 10 years or older, these numbers are in front of everyone and as far as I can tell, none of them are Electronic Arts or Ubisoft and 30% of the top 10 is Nintendo. So I have a clear case here, so why are the different board of directors pushing for some game every year, cool graphics will do the trick or perhaps having the most powerful console is the solution. As I see it, without a really good game they will not continue and that evidence is all over the place. 

So where to go after this? Well that is up to I reckon the Indie developers, they will need to choose an optional winner and in that platform create their original or remastered and revamped game. Consider that Elite was released in 1985, now the revamp called Elite Dangerous has 500,000 active monthly players. Ubisoft has plenty of successful games not being that busy, as such we can see that the old games still have appeal. OK the difference between Elite and Elite dangerous is larger than the Grand Canyon, but the foundation remained the same and that is the pull we need to consider that close to a dozen games released in the last decade could have a great revamped and remastered life on streaming even if they were not that successful in an earlier life. The difference is to truly look into a game and see what is possible. Like a sculptor to take that block of marble and chip away what is not needed and reveal the Torlonia statue and yes, it is not merely about chipping away, in some cases it is about polishing, upgrading and adding which we cannot do in a statue, but the statue could be given a shield, a sword (or trident). All options and streaming will give us a larger and adjustable stage as well. A stage where your game will be in the streaming stores for close to a decade. There are clearly options for streaming and it will not hinder consoles, the console gamers will most likely choose an additional streaming solution on the side.

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June 23, 2021 · 21:46

Thought for imagination

Consider the next setting, I am in the Harrods foodcourt, I feel the meat-pie as my right hand caresses the side pf the pie, I see two small basins of ketchup, I grab the knife in my left hand as I slowly use the sharp knife to cut a part of the left side of the pie. I cut through the pastry and the what I think is minced meat. It looks a little dry, but the overwhelming scent of fresh and warm meat enters my nostrils. I add a small bit of ketchup to the pie. The slice is cut in half and I slowly eat the part on my fork. My senses overwhelm with the spices in the meat, the pastry and it does not taste dry, it is an amazing experience and this is merely the first bite.

All what you saw before is true, all came from my imagination. You see I have had meat pie in the past and I envision what might be the perfect meat pie. I have been to harrods twice, but I never set foot in the food courts. Not for any particulate reason, I just never got around to it. I hope to do so in the future, but that will be part of the future that I see, or it might never happen. This is life. So what was this about?

The train of thoughts started a little while ago and that train entered the station again when I stumbled upon same article today ‘Netflix reportedly plans push into video games market’ by the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/media/2021/jun/02/netflix-reportedly-plans-push-video-games-market). The thing that got to me was “Streaming company said to have approached game industry executives with project at early stage”, one could argue that they kill their own project by approaching Ubisoft, Ubisoft has another setting of needs and their product is what I personally would call ‘faulty at best’. Yet it is not all bad news “Netflix has been approaching senior game industry executives about joining it to lead the creation of a subscription games service, according to reports from the tech news site the Information and Reuters”, is the right sentiment, but as I see it, the safest route is to take the route Apple is seemingly taking. Games absent of in app purchases and absent of advertisements. These two elements will spell a much larger stage of doom on the industry than you know. Places like Android and iOS are now filled with phrases like “These ads are driving me insane, every level again”, and it will not be long until people have had enough. Then there is the stage of deceptive conduct in advertisements, a decently new approach to getting people to install your software. But these two elements will have a disastrous impact on gaming soon enough, and it will hit Apple as much as it will hit Google. Then there is the competition, Amazon did a lot better than I expected it would. I (personally minded) thought that it would be an easy win for Google, a tech maker if ever these was one. And it is ahead of Amazon, but I never expected Amazon to be this close to Google in the first place, as such the Amazon Luna remains in the race and there is an element that might not make Google the winner in the end. Google’s approach to exclusive games is not that impressive (as far as I can tell, they have none), Amazon Luna has acquired the knowledge it needs to make that difference. And the article repeats my thoughts towards gaming, with “However, the new offering is at a very early stage, with executives focusing on Apple Arcade as the potential competition. Users of that service, exclusive to Apple’s iPhones, iPads, Macs and AppleTV, pay a flat monthly fee of £4.99 for access to a library of downloadable games, spanning genres and target audiences. Apple sets strict rules on developers, banning them from monetising their games through in-app purchases or advertising, in order to try to keep Arcade a premium service” is the right move, but they made one mistake, a big one, there is no mention of the Amazon Luna and the Luna is in a primed spot to become the number three system behind Sony and Nintendo (yes, I have written off Microsoft to remain a competitor), so even as Netflix has the advantage of a subscription group that makes the head spin of all streaming gaming solutions, good games is where it is at, innovators and makers of original creators that is the winning combo and Netflix (might or might not) move into a field where it is not certain it will become the third position player, or what they classify in the Tour de France, the polka dot player. On the plus side (from my point of view) it will soon thereafter reduce Microsoft to the 6th position, behind Sony, Nintendo, Amazon, Netflix and Google. So as I see it, their investment $7,500,000,000 investment in Bethesda goes tits up and Bethesda is not to blame, the board of directors at Microsoft is. 

I remain a Sony person, hence my Playstation remains on its pedestal, I would say right next of the shrine of Panigale, a Ducati shrine where the executives of Ferrari, Lamborghini and Maserati come to pray for inspiration, OK, there is no Panigale there, because I could never afford one and I am not a racer, but engineering perfection can be recognised by plenty of people, so there! Yet the stage is given, inspiration comes from excellence in creativity and that is what a good gaming provider offers. I wonder if Netflix is considering what they need to do to get there. Microsoft merely bought the IP out there hoping it would thrust them there, but they had too much against them, like the most powerful console in the world that has nothing to offer (at present). They might in the future, but with all the bad decisions haunting them, all whilst Amazon is already on the run towards an upcoming third position, they might not be in time to make a real difference anymore. All this whilst they are trying to bash xCloud streaming everywhere. They become their own worst enemy and when it happens, the people will not trust Microsoft, I see elements of that everywhere and they, what I personal regard as a push towards whatever influencer they can muster is more than a bad call. 

Microsoft (as I personally see it) forgot that good games come from the mix of imagination and creation, they used to know that, yet it seems that they forgot, I have no idea why, the wrong board member, the sentiment of revenue over substance, it could be a boatload of things, but there you have it. And Netflix? 

Well the article gives us the important stage “One key decision that has not yet been finalised is whether a game subscription service would also require Netflix to develop games itself. Apple Arcade is filled entirely by third-party developers, but other gaming subscriptions rely on first-party exclusives to drive signups.” They are hitting the nail on the head, it is the exclusives, Microsoft forgot, Google never embraced and that is the stage why Amazon Luna is in a good place, Netflix could be too. One of these two needs to get these 2-3 exclusives that no one thought about that they are locked into third position and in an industry that is about to have a relevance of 90.7 billion, with a stage that has an annual increase of 24%, it matters, the difference between third and fourth position implies the stage representing several billions, when you consider that good AAA games cost (according to some) $500,000,000 to make, but that result in a God of War with a 97% rating, it is the price of an original masterpiece and it sold over 10,000,000 copies, implying that the game close to a billion. In streaming land, that setting will be a nail driver, 2-3 games like that and people will jump on that bandwagon a lot faster than you think. So as Microsoft gave us (via sources) that they will build native games for the cloud, why would anyone buy one of those overly stated powerful Xbox’s? And in that stage, would you trust a provider who dropped the ball three times in a row to provide you with original games, all whilst they bought the talents and are trying to grow through that premise? So far Netflix might make it, but as far as I can tell, Amazon Luna is most likely primed to get there at present.

And that too will set the indie developers off into a direction, where they end up I cannot tell (it will be their choice), but there are a few indicators that it will not be in a direction Microsoft will like. As I see it, outsourcing gets you a labour force, hiring creation and imagination grants you a universe of opportunity. I will let you work out the rest.

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June 12, 2021 · 15:27

Choices and Wisdom

We all have all kinds of wisdom, what we learned in school and that what as further tempered by work and eduction. Then there is the wisdom we get over time, from the things we have enjoyed doing, or loved doing for decades. No this is not some weird way to tell others that we are all well grown gynaecologists (without a medical education we really are not), yet some events, like photography, music, filming, gaming, reading. These are skills that develop over time. Some will never be great writers, but they grow a knowledge that allows them to recognise good and great pieces of writing, some will see great movies and TV series from the early beginnings, some will recognise a really great game. We all grow such skills, some faster and more complete than others. And here is where I am now. With Keno Diastima I am now at an impasse. I completed the thoughts on the cliffhanger on season 3, and as I see it, it will be one that will make jaws drop all over the field, yet what next? Try to get into season 4? Or end the story with a wide open ending? For some reason the second one is appealing to me. I haven’t thought of where to go in season 4, that is true enough, but in all that the setting of an open ending is appealing. It lets the viewer imagine what would be next. I personally never liked the American approach to finalise everything. The setting is that in the first finalisation is overrated, in the second it is that life is never complete, if we finalise we cannot perfect, if we cannot perfect we can grow, we can become better, the finalised people are mediocre or will never know the perfection they could have been headed to. It is like a lot of Ubisoft games, they are below par. 

Am I correct?
Well, the balance of probability states me to be correct, yet in opposition, we see God of War 4, Ratchet and Clank Rifts apart, Miles Morales. The PS5 is showing a whole host of games that ended up close to perfect, all whilst Ubisoft showed us games that were mediocre between 70% and 80%. So we have two stations, one showing me that I am right, one making it debatable and I am in the middle trying to make a choice. In all this I am wondering what to do. Even as I saw another side of some of the settings that I designed, as I see more and more evolutions in the IP I created, I also see that anything can be improved on, Keno Diastima is no exception. And in this yes, there is more to explore, but the appeal of finishing a story on a high is weirdly appealing. I wonder if J. Michael Straczynski faced this at the end of season 4 of Babylon 5? 

So how should I go about it? I am asking this of myself. Perhaps in a few days I see the light and a larger idea opens up, but it is not a guarantee. And within me the struggle continues shall I move forward, or not? It is a stage of wondering, not a stage of fear. Not a stage where we see ‘US lawmakers have introduced five bills aimed at limiting the power held by Big Tech companies’, bills that were designed out of fear, because overhauling the tax laws to fit all was too dangerous, powerful friends would be out in the cold and demonising a few is preferable, not unlike the Nazi’s who demonised the gypsies, the jews and a few others, remember that? How did that end? So when you see “The bills were drafted after a 16-month investigation into the powers of Amazon, Apple, Google and Facebook” consider that a law on 4 is discrimination, an overhauled tax law including the 4 is the right direction. I have said that for the better part of 2 decades, yet we see an investigation of 16 months. How is there any level of equilibrium? How is there balance on al fronts when 4 are demonised? So when will they limit Netflix and Disney plus to give ‘equal’ way to the others? It is the beginning of dead people trying to live a little longer. Soon America will see a larger setting, soon they will claim the union of patents and IP into the economy, because it will be best for all the people, a limitation of 5 is preferable over the denying to nearly all, and the US still has no plan to avoid overspending by trillions on an annual basis. So whilst I look at the optional ending of a great ride, they are merely looking at the continuation of a mediocre ride and there is the rub, there is the flaw. We see it in movies, TV, games, books and software, yet we do not catch on, life is unpredictable. Those who wield choices to their end are all about staying in power, even though they do not contribute and they are scared, China is on their heels to surpass them technological and economical, a twofold loss. So whilst CNBC gives us ‘U.S.-China relations are ‘still deteriorating,’ says former U.S. ambassador’, we need to consider that the US overplayed itself economically in well over a decade and whilst they needed to strap expenses, they refused to do so, they entered a road of iteration, all whilst a nation without true innovation has no place to go, but to become a following sheep and the innovations by Huawei are proof of that, Apple, IBM, Microsoft all iterative, all whilst I designed more original IP by myself then all of them together. And that is separate from the ideas on movies, TV series and games I came up with, and that is besides the additions to existing games. 

I feel happy in some way and sad that several government are so scared and so dependent on the US that it is almost scary that the media (from a multitude of sources) are merely copy and pasting some news. Consider ‘Romanian president signs bill into law to ban Huawei from 5G’, as well as ‘‘No concrete proof’ of espionage: Malaysia on verge of Huawei 5G deal’. For me the issue is that the US and others have NEVER EVER shown evidence that Huawei equipment was used for espionage. In opposition the equipment in use (Cisco for example) allows for example allows for all kinds of sneaky acquisition of data. The sources via Solarwinds are proof of other larger flaws, Huawei equipment is not needed. When you consider that and we see the US accusations, as well as copied accusations by others, all whilst no evidence was ever produced. The Verge gave us “There is no hard evidence to support this notion, and some of the reasons put forward for this notion are weak. For example, the background of the chairmen of Huawei. Huawei founder Mr. Ren Zhengfei once served in the People’s Liberation Army. As we know, serving in the army was one way of getting out of poverty for people in the countryside, which is where Mr. Ren is from. His time in the army was a short one and he was not in any important position”, as well as “Any supposedly safe Chinese product is one firmware update away from being an insecure Chinese product”. The second one is optional, but that applies to all American hardware as well, but the media is not giving us that part, are they? The media did (to the largest extent) avoid for the longest time to look into the Cisco flaw(s), even as Cisco informed their customers close to immediately. So what is wisdom? I am not sure if I am the right person to state that, but I do feel that limiting 5 players whilst they were not illegally acting is wrong on several levels and all whilst the IP and patent stage remains open, as such I will make a case for my IP to be placed in either the UK or Canada. They seem the safest place and when other figure out what I have figured out and the IP and patents of the Fortune 500 end up being registered in these two locations over the US, you will see that I am correct and the US will find them self in something close to a Wall Street free fall soon thereafter. 

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May 11, 2021 · 12:34

The tweets that flame

Yes, it seems harsh, and it is not meant to be. You see, this might be the tweet of today, but the setting has never changed not for three decades. Even as political windbags are all claiming that they are doing their bit, they are actually relying on emotional events to keep the flames going, especially when they do not resolve anything. My blog has covered it for almost a decade, and I have been stating it for another two decades. And this tweet is bringing it to the surface yet again.

People are all about ‘taxing billionaires’, ‘taxing corporations’, and ‘taxing churches’, the last one is nice, I hardly ever see that one. So let’s take a jab at this (yet again).

Taxing Billionaires
Yes, it is all about discrimination, taxing the billionaires. I still hope to become one, that is if Papa Smurf (Sergey Brin), Clever Smurf (Larry Page) and optionally Tracker Smurf (Sundar Pichai) wake up and take notice. OK, wake up is incorrect and uncalled for, they are likely awake 18 hours a day and they optionally take notice of a dozen matters every hour of every day, but so far they are not noticing my 5G IP (darn).  So at what point will we ‘tax’ the billionaires? Will we check their bank accounts and levy it for 20%? At what point do you think will these 614 billionaires move to Canada, or Europe and leave the US completely bankrupt? What do you think happens when $5,000,000,000,000 moves to another nation? I have another issue, these people made money in whatever way, and not all are a Lawrence Elliot, Mark Zuckerberg or Google top. As such do you really want the creative top of the world to vacate to another place?

Taxing Churches
There is a larger stage here and I am not against taxing the churches. The Catholic church has pillaged in their own way the planet for centuries. So will you tax one (discrimination) or tax all? It is a slippery slope, and ever as it is not the worst idea, it is a trap waiting t explode in all our faces, we just do not know how. 

Taxing corporations
They are getting taxed, it is the degree of required taxation that is the issue. 

The point is not taxing them, it is overhauling the tax laws and on both sides, both democratic and republican presidents, they all failed. From 1993 onwards the USA has had two democrats, two republicans and now another democrat President, the last 4 all failed to overhaul the tax laws.  As such, blame Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump for this failure. In April 2019 we saw “Amazon, Netflix, IBM, and General Motors are among the 60 big companies paying $0 in federal income taxes in 2018”, not one, not two, not three, but 60 big companies all avoiding taxation, avoiding not evading. Evading taxation is illegal, avoiding it is only paying what the letter of the law tells you to pay and that is how it should be, as such tax laws need an overhaul and this has been clear for 30 years, so why is it not done?

Because we see flames, we react to flames and no one is considering (intentional or not) to push legislation to overhaul the tax laws. It is the same joke again and again. Tax and gun laws are trodden on, we see all the crocodile tears, but people die and die again and until gun laws are truly overhauled, starting by giving the ATF the teeth they need to take a chunk out of guns, this will continue. And the media knows this too, but they cater to their shareholders, their stake holders and their advertisers and none of those three are happy about overhauling tax laws. 

And until the people unite complaining to the media nothing will change. It is funny that a valid objection by a journalist regarding an Oprah Winfrey interview, where we see a reported “Over 57,000 complaints have been delivered to Ofcom” regarding the point of view of a reporter, yet I am willing to bet that NONE of those 57,000 people ever complained on the need to overhaul tax laws. And we notice people complaining that nothing gets done, well, does this not start with you? A person can tweet to high heaven, but that does not change things. Getting hundreds even thousands complain to electable officials never happens (and the politicians, as well as corporations are happy about this), they need the rich to pay for their reelections and that will not happen when tax laws are overhauled.  

This is also not limited to the US, it is a global issue and if people really want poverty to go away, you need to demand an overhaul of the tax laws. It is really that simple. But beware, when you push corporations away it has other impacts. California is now learning that the hard way as more and more corporations are moving to Texas. So this is a much larger slippery scale and their will be consequences, no matter how we slice that tax cake.

But I am not against taxation, but I too will take the tax avoidance route when called on, it is not because I am against paying taxation, I am against paying too much taxation, that is why tax laws were created. A paper in 2014 gave us “‘Tax avoidance is a taxpayer’s course of action in line with the letter but contrary to the spirit of the law’. Definitions phrased along these lines can be found in many policy statements and legal provisions. They are common, but nonetheless problematic. It is the ‘spirit of the law’ part which poses problems. These difficulties not only have theoretical import; they also cast doubt on the legitimacy of efforts to combat tax avoidance. And the skeptics – ‘non-believers’ in the spirit of the law – are many.” The paper by Hanna Filipczyk gives us a lot in that regard, on the problems and on the 27 references that show that this has been going on for a long time, and until politicians stop wanking about the spirit of tax law and do something about the letter of tax law, this will continue, and its continuation will never cease. And the media is making it easy for them as they cater to part of that group. Should you doubt that, then wonder when the media told you to that to achieve a proper level of taxing, tax laws need to change. Do not take my word, check what THEY said, you will see I was right and I have been correct in this case for well over a quarter of a century. 

It was never hard, it was never complex, it merely needed to be done and the previous 4 presidents did not achieve it, why not? I will let you ponder that part for a little part longer.

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January 28, 2021 · 17:55

Moon Shine

I wish we were talking about that home brew alcohol, but we are not, this is about Amazon Luna and their counterpart Google Stadia. Now, I am telling you this from all kinds of selected sources, I did not play either myself, I feel that this is not as important as the setting round it. The first thing that I have to say right now is that I am pretty amazed with the second wave quality that Amazon Luna offers, from the early Alpha stage that some reported on as well as the second wave that several subscribed to, Amazon Luna is way over and well above standards (to a larger degree). I would think that Google Stadia had the upper hand, but that is not the case, they are surprisingly even, yes Google Stadia has an advantage, the load times of games is decently faster than Luna, but the rest, whilst in the game they were on par and that is a surprise I initially did not see coming. Yet overall they both fail in other ways. They are both relying on Ubisoft to bring the great titles, yet that is the largest danger when we see the stage that Ubisoft provided for and at this point, there is not a whole lot of faith that they will be around by the end of 2022 (they did this to themselves). 

My issue is with the Amazon 4K gaming promise. You see my YouTube has all kinds of lag and latency issues when I go above 1080p, so does Netflix, I do not even bother with 4K, merely because of congestion. That is not a setting that everyone faces, yet they will when larger cities get over 100K users streaming gaming via their internet, it is almost unavoidable, the infrastructure is at present too weak. Yet in 2-3 years if 5G comes through to a much larger extent and a much better bandwidth and speed, yes, it would work without hesitation. Most rural places will have this issue off the bat, so France and Germany can pretty much forget about it outside of their really big cities and I wonder if Spain, Italy, Greece and a few other nations are ready for that level of congestion. It makes both Google Stadia and Amazon Luna a USA Big city setting, OK, I exaggerate, yet in all I am not that far off. 

There is a second setting, each system is missing out on exclusive titles, it worked for Nintendo, It worked for Playstation and even Xbox, the exclusive titles have always pushed platform and neither has an overwhelming set of exclusives, which is a shame, yet that might be become the hunting ground in 2022-2023, yet not for now and some of the critics they all seem to agree, Luna is for now seemingly the winner. I agree with their assessment. Google is not showing skin in the game, no commitment, if they stop, the user is in nowhere land and there is no indication that Google is committed, that signal is more clear with Amazon, even as load times are not as fast as with Google, that might merely be a temporary delay, in all I personally had expected more from Google, so to see Amazon win this was a bit of a surprise, and if Amazon has its own share of exclusives, the streaming service might become set and match for Amazon, but let’s be clear, it is too early for that verdict at present. 

It is however a thing of the future, 5G will make it clear and when your local internet provider is upgraded to something serious, it will be a real horserace and to be honest, Amazon is doing a lot better then expected with its stallion Luna, it is close to equal to Google, a level of equality I had not expected, so as I personally see, the one having the more and the better exclusives will win the race, they both have Ubisoft games, so that is not an overwhelming advantage, just like the previous war, the exclusives set the race when the hardware is too close an equal, a stage we saw between Xbox360 vs PS3 and again Xbox One vs PS4, yes personally I see the Sony sides to be superior on a few sides, but for the gamer that was not clear and from that point of view they were close, and in both cases the stage of exclusive games made Sony a winner, a war that Google vs Amazon will see soon enough and whilst we see a level of melancholy with Sonic and other older games, it is the exclusive games that will give a system the game, set and match signal, and I wonder if Google is willing to commit to that, that was voiced by a few critics and I see their point of view, I am not sure if I completely agree, but their points were valid, I reckon that by the end of Q1 2022 the stage will be decently clear, at that point the people will more strongly commit to the
Moon, or to the stage, will I? Not sure, I am happy with my PS5 and in this the exclusives will push me in one direction or the other, as will it be with other gamers as well. 

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January 26, 2021 · 22:26

Panem et circenses

Yes, this setting is as old as the hills, the Italian hills mind you. We get this view from Decimus Junius Juvenalis who had a view on life and society 1800-1900 years ago that seems to reflect on the now. His view reflected on superficial appeasement, a stage we have been in for around 20-30 years. We (a collection of nations) became nanny states, but the politicians have no way to deal with the impact of the cost of living in that way. So whilst we might notice that politicians are here to generate public approval, not by excellence in public service or public policy, but by diversion, distraction or by satisfying the most immediate or base requirements of a populace, even as most comprehend that Donald Trump is merely the latest version of bad management, he is not alone, this is happening all over Europe as well, and to some extent the media is playing along as long as their owners get a slice of that pie, or is that pizza?

No matter how we tell ourselves it is, we created this stage by letting a few loose cannons set expenditure without accountability. So when I see ‘The only answer: squeeze the super-rich’, I wonder if he has any clue on how deranged that path of thinking truly is. In this, I have to take caution. I might not agree with Simon Jenkins, yet he is entitled to his view. I feel that it is unacceptable to merely bash the man with a dictionary. So as we see the full title ‘Covid has made inequality even worse. The only answer: squeeze the super-rich’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/news/commentisfree/2021/jan/26/covid-inequality-worse-squeeze-super-rich), it is the by-line that matters. Here we see “It’s not right that the world’s 10 richest people have amassed £400bn since the start of the pandemic while billions struggle”, in this he might not be wrong, but does he have a case? Consider that COVID was not any person’s fault, it merely was, we had the Spanish flu 100 years ago, we have COVID now and these 10 people are not to blame, whilst the politicians made the people lazy and content with bread and games (McDonalds & Netflix), some went out and did something, they had made solutions that applied to isolation and they got to cash in. My IP would have been great, yet it was never designed for that, I looked at the plans for Neom City (Saudi Arabia) and came up with the solution, all whilst I also designed an additional system to optionally limit cyber crimes, and if it is not sold soon, I will make it Public Domain and let the hungry feast on that free IP and ruffle a few feathers along the way. 

So when I saw ‘squeeze the super-rich’, all whilst politicians are largely to blame as they refused to overhaul tax laws for 20-30 years, and even make more essential adjustments to tax write offs in the last 10 years, you see where I found the snare of the loom of discord in the writing of Decimus Junius Juvenalis. So when I see “it is hard to quarrel with the report’s conclusion that current economic policies have enabled “a super-rich elite to amass wealth in the middle of the worst recession since the Great Depression, while billions of people are struggling to make ends meet””, all whilst the Great Depression is the stage we face, can anyone help me remember who set the stage of the the 47-storey Waldorf-Astoria Hotel that opened in 1931 at a cost of $42 million ($600 million today)? The rich had a really good life then and some truck out, greed driven and losing their fortune as the depression hit America, 70 years ago, so how was that solved? Well, we got rid of plenty of people by setting the stage towards WW2, we look at people like J. Paul Getty and Barbara Hutton, but we fail to notice the mess that politicians allowed to happen in the first place, so how will it end now? We might blame that list of 10, but what happens when I get lucky (you gotta get lucky sometimes), will it be my fault, or was my crime to innovate what people forgot about and I got to cash in? Most of us, we all catered to some politicians by accepting the Hamburger and watch Netflix (or Disney Plus), I wonder if anyone on the lit of 10 had any time to watch Netflix, to get the hamburger (the second most likely yes). There is a saying that I saw a few years back: “behind every successful man or woman is a deactivated Facebook account”. There is a ring of truth there and it sets the stage of emotional flames on social media, so whilst we drown in those messages and responses, we forgot to look at the ball and watch someone else take it to success. It is the impact of bread and circuses and even as there is some acceptance on the view of Simon Jenkins, he is seemingly ignoring the bread and circuses stage that has been going on for 20 years, even if one of the ten is paying for the circus, there is a stage where we see that politicians failed its population close to completely, as I see it, it is time to ask the hard questions, but that is a stage that politicians dread, so they will appeal to the media to set all kinds of talks that are about emotion and less about fact, or sales deals for vaccines where the EU relies on the word ‘hope’ and not on the clear contract that needed to be there (see yesterday’s article for details). 

The stage of Panem et circenses will come to a halt soon enough, because the governments of a whole list of nations are out of money, they all owe the banks and the list of 10, who can now set a very different agenda, you are either a consumer, and enabler or useless. If you fall into category 3 hard times are ahead, hard times unlike you ever faced because governments will no longer be able to assist you. It is the price of a nanny state, it’s good going until the invoice is due, at which point the people behind that push are gone, gone like snowflakes in a heatwave. So whilst Jenkins gives us “it is for governments to track down and police those who, far from not paying enough tax, pay little or none at all. They grow rich by keeping their wealth offshore and refusing to contribute to treasuries from which they and their families draw a lifetime of benefit. The billions of dollars in the world’s protected tax havens”, I merely wonder if he comprehends the setting that these tax havens and tax options exist because politicians refused to take care of business in the last 20 years, the stage that they all avoid is that these super rich people did not break any laws, their accountants saw options, their accountants used options that governments allowed to happen. All whilst they now flame Google on news, in a stage that this is to aid a few Murdoch type of people, all whilst the tax overhaul would have helped all, you did realise this, did you not? And when Google does go, as I stated days ago, small business will suffer to a much larger degree than they ever thought possible, and why? All because papers are no longer dependent on news, they are dependent on their advertisers, a stage of what I personally see as filtered content (instead of news) has a much larger impact, the people are seeing this too and they resort to apps by Al Jazeera, BBC, the Guardian et al. And the people are also realising that the politicians are part of the problem, not part of the solution, but so far there is no real solution, yet in my view, the first part of a solution is seeing that you have a problem and as I personally see it those relying on Panem et circenses are a massive problem. In the year that we had COVID, I designed the foundation of 5G IP, the setting for almost a dozen video games, 2 movies and a TV series. Now, I need to find a way to sell it in a trustworthy way (or make it public domain), because that stage too is still thwart with dangers, enablers look in two ways, those they enable so that they are enabled and those they serve enabling them to the position that they are in now and in all this, the laws and politicians have set a stage that is unequal, but not in the way Simon Jenkins sees it it is inequality to further those in key positions. These so called friends of the media and politicians who offer you a golden deal, yet they will never deliver, they merely apologise for setting the wrong stage due to miscommunication from your side and then walk off with your idea. 

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