Tag Archives: reuters

Greed v Agony: 1-6

We see the set, we see the result, yet we do not understand the equation. The media is mulling it over, it is in despair on what to do. They have so many voices to listen too, producers, executives, stake holders and share holders, none can agree on the story and more precise, most of them are clueless on what the story is. Reuters gives us ‘SolarWinds hackers accessed Microsoft source code, the company says’, the story (at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-cyber-microsoft/solarwinds-hackers-accessed-microsoft-source-code-the-company-says-idUSKBN2951M9), gives us plenty, but are they giving us what we need to know? Even as we are told “It is not clear how much or what parts of Microsoft’s source code repositories the hackers were able to access, but the disclosure suggests that the hackers who used software company SolarWinds as a springboard to break into sensitive U.S. government networks also had an interest in discovering the inner workings of Microsoft products as well”, a stage that is a lot bigger than anyone knows, some cyber experts have an inkling of thought on just how bad things got, but they do not know just how bad, because we do not know what was accessed.

Back in Time
So as we consider that on December 13, 2020, The Washington Post reported that multiple government agencies were breached through SolarWinds’s Orion software. So this is when the worm got out, yet I believe that the first instances were early August, I cannot prove this, but that is when the first event took place, they were merely not seen or identified as such. As far as I can tell (through unconfirmed and slightly dubious sources), there was a mapping phase in play and it was in play for weeks. This mapping phase was not contained or limited to the US, or to governmental players. It was also not the first time it happened, but it seems it was the most complete and most successful attempt, and it is about to get a lot worse. You see, people didn’t learn from 9/11, from all these people who went to flight school just to take off and learn how to fly into buildings, they didn’t learn the first time, and they are not learning now (at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZAoFs75_cs), it gets to be funnier, the ethical hacker is topped by another advertisers, offering the same with 75% discount, and would you know it, all these ‘new’ ethical hackers, what are the chances that a few have their own agenda? Now these people are not ready to take over Solarwinds yet, but they are en-route.

A lot of hackers started as ethical hackers and then didn’t end up with a decent job, they had to make ends meet, and would you know it, they had just the education to make that happen. So as they didn’t get high paying positions at Google, Apple or Sun systems, they decided to take the reins themselves. They do have their competitors, people who graduated from London Poly, or Moskovski politekhnicheski universitet an a few others, all having graduates and the world had no positions for them, so they became the new managers of another version of Ransomware, or some other solution. It was only 5 years ago that we saw “Trend Micro released a research paper about sextortion: the means through which cybercriminals obtain compromising personal images or videos of Internet users – which they then hold hostage until their demands have been met” and that was if you were lucky, the idiots that most governments have include idiots that put the national security and defence issues on a USB stick. 

Time flies when greed is in charge
Over the last 5 years we saw an abundance of issues, yet the greed driven idiots all had a bottom line and cost is not part of that bottom line, it is actually against it, that was what some of these executives were screaming. And as things were pushed back quarter after quarter, the setting became that nothing was done, so when SolarWinds was transgressed upon the bulk of all corporations had no issue to see just how screwed they were, the sales people needed their bonus structure and so do the board members, as such there was for the most no defence. And it gets to be worse, even as we all want to blame SolarWinds, we need to realise that anyone with a lack of defence only has itself to blame. This is why I took certain defence matters into my own hands and even as they are not perfect, it beats no defence at all. When the Telecom Companies start to scream murder because usage is out of control and the numbers start showing that 100,000 people used 200 GB, all whilst the numbers showed that for the most the average of 50 GB, we will see another issue, the loss of telecom data and more important, our financial records will not match up, and at that point you will see a stage where our data is up for sale and there are plenty of interested parties who want that data. A setting of 5 servers that can be used multiple times and 25 customers all willing to pay $10,000 for the usage records of 100,000-350,000 people, and after the financial data is aggregated, they can collect a lot more from another 40 customers. It boils down to $250,000 for a month of work, and that is merely one segment, once these people hit companies (especially those with underfunded IT departments), The numbers will add up larger and faster, especially when IP data is made available, by the time the companies learn just how intense the pull of data was it will be too late and for the most the global police settings will not be able to cover it, the US has an FBI who can get to the matter to some degree, but they still think that North Korea did the Sony gig, so I am not holding my breath on that one. And that is before they realise that I devised another setting that explains the inside job part and I found a new way of exporting that data, which took less than an hour, the shareholders who needed a patsy in North Korea are that much in the dark at present and for the last 7-9 years actually.

So whilst the sales people are in the push for revenue, I reckon that only the companies that have a CTO on their board of directors will have a decent chance, the rest is cannon fodder, it is basically that simple.

The greed drive looks that good, but in reality they are losing 6:1 at present, SolarWinds is merely showing the agony that is out there, it is ABC News that gives a much larger timeline, with ‘Malware may have been installed in June’, which does give voice to my timeline, but it is not enough, we see the larger stage with “the hackers piggy-backed on the company that made software running on hundreds of thousands of corporate and government networks” and in all this, where was the security of SolarWinds? I believe that the damage is much larger and the players just do not know what to trust and who to trust, and that will stay with them for the larger extent of 2021, implying that their systems will not be properly cleaned for a much larger time, because they look at the larger setting, but this pass over will hit EVERY system, and it will hit a few systems in different ways, because they will get found out in a few ways, but not in all ways and that is why the agony score is so high and all this before someone realises that their cloud system could be just as infected and that is another piece of cake entirely, one that does not clean up so easily. 

So whilst we see the trivialisation of “it says patient information was not stolen” or “there was nothing to suggest customer data had been accessed”, it is the basic defence of any company or government organisation, but in reality they are decently clueless on what data was accessed and how it was copied or positioned in a place they can get to. For example it might not show, but when you realise that a person was using 12-17 GB of data during the day, so why is that person’s account using this data on his sick day? Odd is it not? There are a few more examples, but I let you simmer on this, because 2021 has a few more surprises for all of you, perhaps for me too.

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At the end

Yup one full day left in the year, and my mind gets hit with all kinds of thoughts, towards the Sony directed RPG I came up with a different setting of weapons expertise.

You need to have minimum levels, yet the use of it, also over time strengthens the player. Bash weapons are all about strength (Mace, Club), darts and blowpipes are a pure dexterity event, whilst blades require strength and dexterity and also power both, and Bolas are for strength and intelligence, knifes require dexterity and intelligence and the staff is a pure intelligence weapon. This has two events, you can strengthen a property you do not need, but can power up, all whilst the pure of heart will have play-throughs with different weapons, depending on the person they selected to be, so whilst I was thinking that through, we see new articles on the UK and their dire Covid situation, this is actually more important than you think. Even as we have covid more and more here, the setting of the indication is not merely that what we see (at https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-britain-cases/uk-coronavirus-cases-set-new-daily-record-prompting-extreme-concern-idUKKBN2931P5), a setting that gives us ‘UK coronavirus cases set new daily record, prompting ‘extreme concern’’, all whilst the information I gave in ‘The lull of writing’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/12/28/the-lull-of-writing/), a setting where we see presented evidence that the quick test gives a false negative in up to 40% of the time, that is quite the issue and as we see “Britain’s government reported 53,135 new cases of COVID-19 on Tuesday, the highest number since mass testing started in mid-2020 and up sharply from the previous record of 41,385 set on Monday” I am massively surprised that the NOS data as well as the data given by the LUMC, a academic place that equals John Hopkins, and no one is picking it up? How much ignorance is required in these positions? 

I am not asking them to merely accept the outcome, but as far as I can tell there is no debate on the findings at all, which is positively weird, especially as the Covid issue in the UK has filled 414 caskets in the last 28 days alone (some went into a vase), the silence on this is positively deafening.

So we see additional issues at the end of the year and I haven’t even started on the weird Brexit issues I am finding. All stations of discussions, but the news is all about different things and a largely less reliable covid test is not coming up, why not?

So whilst we applaud the setting of “Andrew Hayward, warned that Britain was heading for “catastrophe” over the coming weeks if it did not take tougher action against the more infectious variant of the disease”, the issue might be too late at present, the more transferable version is out and about and even if it is not more deadly does not matter, when the UK has 35,000 additional patients instead of the 15,000 they might have had, the hospitals would not be able to deal with the additional 20,000 so more people will unnecessarily die, it is basic numbers. And that setting is there out in the open, as such I got real angry over the Swiss setting and the spoiled touristic baboons there. 

A station of hurt is coming our way and there is almost no way to avoid that and as the media is not giving the people essential information, the people will continue to be a lot less careful than they should be. A setting that I optionally face in the next week, which has one upside, if it hits me in the most negative way, I can laugh because I decided to ignore a tax bill until next June, one payment I will optionally not live long enough to pay for, joy joy joy!

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Once more for the whiners

It started in 2018 when I wrote “A certain play performed by adjusting to the notion of stupid and short sighted whilst the captains of industry have been getting their A-game in gear and others never did. It is merely another stage of the impact of iterative exploitation and profit founding, that whilst Huawei, Google, Apple and Samsung are no longer going iterative, they are now making larger leaps over the next 5 years as they want the largest slice of 5G pie possible and in an iterative setting the others can catch up and that is where we see the clash, because these hardware jumps will also prevail in software and data jumps and some players are in no way ready to play that game”, there was a malleable situation that came to fruition 2 years later. I saw it coming, and whether it was Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, or Apple iCloud (that selfish title), one would reap the benefits. Of course there will always be the negative shouts (on how nut I am), yet less than one hours ago, we see Reuters give us ‘Aramco to bring Google Cloud services to Saudi Arabia’, a stage that was always going to happen and it serves my IP as well, so I merely have to wait, like a spider in the middle of his web. Two years of anticipation about to pay off massively. The article came as ‘Clueless to the end’ on that October 12th and now we get the setting where Microsoft and Apple are basically second to all. 

So as we now see “Aramco said Saudi Arabia is being added to the global network of Google Cloud Platform regions, as part of a strategic alliance agreement signed between the company and Google Cloud this month”, this also means that it can test apps in 5G at full speed in a national setting, implying that the advantage of Google makes more and more headway, this is not about the foresight of Google, it is for the most the lack of foresight to all the other players that scream that they are treated unfair and the large tech companies must be broken up, here we see a stage I foresaw 2 years ago, several people were all up in arms how I didn’t see it right, larger tech companies in a lack of action and here is the advantage that Google now has, and more importantly well deserved has.

So when we see the New York Times 21 hours ago and see in one part ‘The Antitrust Case Against Big Tech, Shaped by Tech Industry Exiles’, as well as “Regulators are relying on insiders like Dina Srinivasan, who left her digital ad job after concluding that “Facebook and Google were going to win and everybody else is going to lose.”” We see a stage of people in  stage of whatever (aka: lack of insight), this is further set in “before she became an antitrust scholar whose work laid the blueprint for a new wave of monopoly lawsuits against Big Tech, Dina Srinivasan was a digital advertising executive bored with her job and worried about the bleak outlook for the industry”, which is great, because as she was looking at the bleak prospect I came up with a new piece of IP for 5G, and it is something she could have thought of, but no she didn’t and now I have it (and she does not), so does it make me a genius and her average, or me creative and she a mere advantage seeker with no prospects to advance over, I would like to think it is one, but reality will probably set me in camp two. As such a larger stage is not merely the lack of foresight, it is a whole range of people in a stage of seeing what Google can come up with and how it fits their need for profit seeking, something that was decently clear in every attack on Google and its three tech accompli, a stage that the media milks but seemingly does not care to understand, but that is my take on the matter. As such, does Google matter, or was Google always the martyr? I think both, but the advantage seekers wanted google to suffer their non profits (they call them losses). Yet the stage is seen as per today that these players never looked beyond the length of their nose (we are excluding Pinocchio and Cyrano de Bergerac from consideration). Or in the language of Sergey Brin (Google’s own Papa Smurf), If we smurf what we smurf all the smurf, the smurf we smurf will be better than any other smurf.

So as we see (at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/technology/antitrust-case-google-facebook.html) “With no background in academia but an insider’s understanding of the digital ad world and a stack of economics books, she wrote a paper with a novel theory — that Facebook harmed consumers by extracting more and more personal data for using its free services”, no one is considering that whilst she had the advantage she was quiet, when the advantage went away she started to cry (well sort of) and now we see “she argued in another paper that Google’s monopoly in advertising technology allowed for the type of self-dealing and insider trading that would be illegal on Wall Street”, yes that is what the whiners say (as I put it with diplomatic eloquence), yet the truth is that there are two stages, what the people want, what WE seek and what advertisers push WHAT THEY THINK WE WANT, two very different settings and as they REFUSED to listen, because it was not a contribution to their bottom line, and as some of these digital weavers left things unsettled in 1995-1998 Google had an option and created a search system, one that simpleminded people could not conceive, in addition, in 1998-2000 the digital advertisement players sat on their hands, on their asses and kept on faltering, because their short sighted approach was making them rich and in 2000 Google Adwords came and changed it, they actually LISTENED to those who needed advertising and gave them options and choices, something the others never did, they had the conceited approach like the yellow pages and we merely had to shut up and pay the bill, Google Adwords gave options and choices and a massive way for us not to be taken advantage off, we only paid one cent more than the one before us, so if number 4 paid $0.37 for an advertisement, number three paid $0.38 (regardless of bid), number two paid $0.39 (regardless of bid) and number one, el jefe de advertencia paid $0.40 (regardless of bid), that as something the others NEVER offered.

So cry me a river, now Google Cloud is also in Saudi Arabia (via Aramco) and hopefully son my system will deploy for consumers and small businesses, all whilst the whiners say they are treated so unfair, I got an optional entire technology arm launched, so how we consider “they can articulate the specifics of what they worry about”, which they are allowed to do, but in that same time I came up with a new 5G technology, at that point, are the whiners really helping us, or stopping us from reaching innovative greatness, merely because they cannot fathom the options?

So whilst w might notice ‘The Facebook Antitrust Case Is a Vital First Step. But More Needs to Happen’ and accept words of a Smoking Gun, is there an actual progress by these whiners? Let’s not forget they were at the helm and let it slip, these executives were riding high and falling asleep whilst Chinese companies hungry for that much revenue are waking up and nipping at everyones heels. This might be a good thing, but those same whiners complaining about actual innovators is taking it one step too far, and as I am showing, that progress started to come in 2018, now that the Google Cloud is going there the others will wake up and wonder why they never thought of it. Well, I can tell you, it was the lack of vision that did not get you to Vision 2030, which was launched well over to years ago.

So there!

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Stage light or lime light?

This morning I had to mull things over. I saw ‘Suspected Russian hackers spied on U.S. Treasury emails – sources’ (at https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-treasury-exclsuive/suspected-russian-hackers-spied-on-u-s-treasury-emails-sources-idUKKBN28N0PG), I saw the news early this morning, but the stage was not clear. You would think that when you see a title like this, the stage is pretty clear, is it not? But in all this, two sentences were out, or perhaps they were off was more apt in this line of consideration. 

The first sentence that waved like a hammer and sickle flag was “according to people familiar with the matter”, this was not some official brief by the FBI or the DHS, it was some anonymous setting and as that nations current president is mad as a hatter (or in possession of less common sense then the Court Jester entertaining Reniero Zeno) gives rise to worry. Now, let be clear, I am not stating that this isn’t happening. Consider “but three of the people familiar with the investigation said Russia is currently believed to be responsible for the attack. Two of the people said that the breaches are connected to a broad campaign that also involved the recently disclosed hack on FireEye, a major U.S. cybersecurity company with government and commercial contracts”, so now it is not from one source, but one journo has access to ALL THREE? Then there is (the secnd one) “cyber spies are believed to have gotten in by surreptitiously tampering with updates released by IT company SolarWinds”, which also affects the military, and in this, we grb back to the earlier statement “they asked the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI to investigate”, really? Military integrity is in play and you think that none of the Defence intelligence groups, or cyber command is invited? Then we get the end which gives us “The hackers are “highly sophisticated” and have been able to trick the Microsoft platform’s authentication controls, according to a person familiar with the incident, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak to the press”, that and the consideration (not fact) that “Hackers broke into the NTIA’s office software, Microsoft’s Office 365. Staff emails at the agency were monitored by the hackers for months”, consider that and set the light towards a transgression on the Microsoft Azure cloud that makes their cloud useless, or turns it into a public domain Bulletin board, something EVERY industrial wants to hear. You think that this was not out in force and Microsoft was on every channel on the PLANET explaining to the people that there was no cause for alarm? All this and some Christopher Bing has three sources? Anyone else concerned with the quality of news? And the last line giving us ‘because they were not allowed to speak to the press’ did it for me. 

Is this a ploy to avoid the limelight, or make sure that the stage lights are pointing somewhere else? Now, I reckon that the Russian government is forever trying to get its fingers on all kinds of hush hush details, the CIA does pretty much the same thing, yet in this we see “highly-sophisticated, targeted and manual supply chain attack by a nation state”, what evidence is there? This is important, because it could well be organised crime or a super rich singular player who wants the low-down on deals that syphon his or her money more efficiently and that has been done before as well. In this the entire approach is one of chaos, even if the chaos seems organised. The fact that it was allegedly possible to “Staff emails at the agency were monitored by the hackers for months” with the mention of Microsoft 365 and the news was limited to one person at Reuters? That and the fact that it as seemingly ‘months’ is a larger cause for concern, the fact that this was going on for well over a week and not every Christmas light would shine brightly red at 2624 NE University Village St, Seattle, WA 98105, United States is a first, the fact that not every siren is blasting on EVERY Microsoft 365 and Azure data centre is a second. But no, we get “there was a breach at one of its agencies and that they asked the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI to investigate”, yes because dimensionality in alarms and corporate dangers are passed on forever to the FBI in such a blasé way.

So I have several issues on the matter and in all this I can in all honesty not determine whether the light shining is a limelight to give visibility to someone else, or a stage light to make the people look to the left all whilst the people on the right are running off the stage, hoping no one will notice. It can be either or both, but the picture they are painting for us does not make sense and lust like that Italian dude (read: doge), the 45th no less, had his own battles to fight (mostly with Genoa), it was set in one quarter, but had underlying conditions (like Michael VIII Palaiologos) and in this certain nobility members profited greatly, I wonder why that never got properly investigated. And as such I do not oppose the pointing fingers at the Kremlin, but doing so before we see “the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI to investigate” deliver a finished report is a little fast, so fast even McDonalds cannot compete. All whilst cybercrime has a much larger reach to a great deal many more people and still Microsoft remains silent. 

There is a bright light over yonder, yet what it is used for, I cannot tell.

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Can You tell?

That is the setting that I am faced with, a setting where we get the news and whether it is a story or a setting of wishful thinking (some might say fairy tale), when we cannot tell, is it on us, the lacking credibility of the news or something else? I have been to some degree Apple minded for over 20 years, I had hits, I had misses, and I was confronted with blunders (by Apple), yet overall, the Apple feeling is good, steering towards decent. That is set in a few stations, first is the iPod, when it came out I got the 20Gb and it was heaven, at some point I had to upgrade and I got the 80Gb classic, I still have it today, it never stopped working for close to 13 years, that is the setting I crave. I also had other Apple stuff, first the question mark, I had to get an Apple (partially for work and on the edge of Powermac, I ended up with the Performa 630, part of me was unhappy that Powermac was not compatible, yet the Performa did its work and it did it well. I learned a lot in those days. That was until the new updates were no longer helping me, but I could still use it to surf the web and a few other things, I was not unhappy. The next one in my route was a clear miss, the G4 MacBook, I was happy as anything the moment I had it and it did it work and got me through my Unix classes, but after 15 months the display had one line, then 5 then 30 lines and I had no Apple care, the laptop ($5,200) had cleaned me out and when the bad setting hit it was too late for me, I think I still have it somewhere in the box, it was a sad day for me. It was after I got the G5 Mac Pro which was an absolute delight, it still works (I think), it was one of the first 68020 and it never let me down, it could edit photos (25MP ones) in a heartbeat. So here I am now, listening to Jean Michel Jarre on my iPod, whilst typing on my MacBook, which is outdoing most of the expectations I have on it. I actually got some naughty 4K footage and the display was unbelievable, I don’t really have it for that, but I wanted to see if it could hold its own and it does. So here I am looking at Reuters giving us ‘Apple’s late iPhone launch temporarily wiped $100 billion off its stock value’ (at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-results/apples-late-iphone-launch-temporarily-wiped-100-billion-off-its-stock-value-idUSKBN27E3FP), so is it wishful thinking? Let look at the quote “Since 2013, Apple has delivered new iPhones each September like clockwork. But pandemic-induced delays pushed the announcement back a month, with some devices still yet to ship. Even as booming sales of Macs and AirPods boosted overall revenue and profit above what analysts had expected, iPhone sales dropped 20.7% to $26.4 billion”, in this where am I? Well it started with the entire Coronavirus part and the fact that we were allowed to get some of our retirement funds early, I got the first one, but not the second one. It paid for a truckload of bills and there was enough left to get the iPad. You see, when I went to get my two graduate and master degrees, I treated myself to the iPad, the very first one and it has been working 24:7 since I got it in 2010. I got the 64GB version with cellular and I was happy, in classes as I watched everyone run to a powerpoint, my iPad got me my notes and I was happy. Even as most options will not work because support stopped for it long ago, some basic usage was working and earlier this year when I started to wind down more and more, I was sad, so with the cash, I went for an iPad Air in may 2020, my iPad would have worked 10 years a achievement well worth it. And that is where I am now, still waiting for my iPad Air, I had to resubmit the order, but the basic setting is that Apple cannot deliver, now the latest (partially unconfirmed) is that I will receive my iPad this coming month, after 6 months waiting (and not just me, others have this issue too). So as you might figure, the headline Reuter gives a warped setting. Is it true? The setting might be worse, in July I got a hold of information that the delay was ONLY the iPads with cellular, I have no decent sources to confirms that, but that would indicate a chip shortage, if that is so the iPhone has additional issues, as does any Apple mobile device with cellular. So when we see “But the flagship iPhone 12’s announcement was delayed until Oct. 13, several weeks later than usual, meaning no opening-weekend iPhone sales are included in the fourth-quarter results” and when we realise that some devices that were supposed to come out in the beginning of October are still not here and optionally not until the 15th of November, the damage is larger and worse. If there is a chip shortage (still unconfirmed), we are looking at a 4th quarter where it sucks to be an Apple (not that oranges have a better chance). Yet in all the hundreds of advertisements on the new iPad Air, who has seen any kind of article anywhere that these iPad Air are still delayed? When we seek it in Google, ‘iPad Air’ gives us 31,000,000 hits and the first few hundred links give nothing on delays, so why is that? And when we get to “Apple said revenue from its accessories segment was up 20.8% to $7.9 billion, compared with analyst estimates of a 13.5% rise to $7.4 billion, according to Refinitiv data. Mac and iPad sales rose to $9.0 billion and $6.8 billion, compared with estimates of $7.92 billion and $6.12 billion, according to Refinitiv data”, the question shapes. I paid for my device, I just haven’t received mine yet, so where are they? As far as I was able to tell, here in NSW there were 85 outstanding orders, so how many are missing and if they are all the cellular versions, what chip shortage is Apple facing and when we learn that part, how come Reuters did not have the goods (or pretty much any other newspaper). In this, I wonder what else we get to learn before the year ends and if that delay is the cellular chipset, where will we be when the year ends. Fortunately, my mobile is Android driven and for now I am in a good place for most matters technology based. And my mind goes on racing, even though it is more for the movies than real life (as one might hope), I just had an idea where the Fitbit could be part of a detonator, but then so could a Wear OS device, I merely need to test if I can silently ping the device, oh the inhumanity of it all. I got the idea as I was considering another chapter in my Rama story and when “This type of sub-dermal implant usually contains a unique ID number that can be linked to information contained in an external database, such as personal identification, law enforcement, medical history, medications, allergies, and contact information”, it is not merely that, the Fitbit has a similar path and when it is close enough, boom (big badaboom). Although the setting has been seen in the movie Wedlock, the implementation does not need to be that visible, you just need to person to pass the box and the result is gained (might be that Ubisoft Watchdogs Legion) got my devious side up and running, yet the station is there. And how does this affect Apple? It got to me whilst I was remembering the Guardian who gave us in 2018 ‘Fitness tracking app Strava gives away location of secret US army bases’, yet it does not need to be that simple, simpler settings are enough. Someone gives us “Find My Fitbit finder app for iOS and Android helps you find your lost Fitbit in minutes not days”, yet the setting of minutes lies with the provider, one app adjustment and we see seconds instead of minutes, now the only thing we need is the proper app. 

I am willing to bet that the CIA (and its counterpart on 2 Bolshaya Lubyanka Street) already have a version, and that is if we think simple, 5G allows a setting that is worse, it is targeted fund relief, lets face it kids love the big badaboom, the rest prefers the ka-ching sound, and why does it matter? You see when you help out a person like Jeff Bezos with the weight of 154,667,332 dollars in his wallet (one of his Credit-Cards), people will find you, unless you were never there, as a silent drone can be placed on that path to release a specific person of a number represented by 28 bits, we see that the Leo’s are at a loss, it is not their forte, yet the technology is already here. The thought of that made me create my dumb-smart device, but this stage is a lot larger than I gave it credit for, and as governments are bitching on what big-tech can do whilst they have larger issues than Section 230, it is time for them to smell the instant Waco, it is almost like coffee, but set to gunpowder tea (yes that really exists). 

So as we see the Apple setting, it is more than a see chip shortage, the question becomes, who has them and how can they possibly be used. All whilst you are thinking you have a cool foldable phone, I see it for what it is, it is a personal data server and I found three additional uses you were never aware of. So, how cool is that?

So when you run and you hear a large boom, it is not some explosive, it is the other shoe dropping.

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Freedom to insult

That is the stage that we see reopen an hour ago on Reuters. The article ‘Saudi Arabia condemns cartoons offending Prophet Mohammad’ (at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-security-boycott-saudi/saudi-arabia-condemns-cartoons-offending-prophet-mohammad-idUSKBN27C0FE), which pretty much repeats my view given in ‘Creation of doubt’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2020/10/18/creation-of-doubt/) almost 10 days ago. Even as the BBC gives us ‘France targets radical Islam amid row with Turkey’ (at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-54692802), the larger issue is avoided by almost all. In a stage where we see ‘freedom of expression’ versus ‘disrespecting religion’ how can this ever be right? We see it in Hedbo in their view of christian values and in this there is no real setting, there is no doctrine against an image of Jesus, or an image of cardinals or the pope. Yet there is a clear directive on images of the prophet Mohammed, and Islam is quite outspoken of that part and that is ignored again and again.

The Reuters article gives us “Freedom of expression and culture should be a beacon of respect, tolerance and peace that rejects practices and acts which generate hatred, violence and extremism and are contrary to coexistence”, yet we see a lack thereof by the teacher Samuel Paty, in this I believe that the action against him were wrong, yet I wonder what drove a teacher to intentionally insult Islam, yet the media is driving around that question, driving around it by well over a mile. In this the BBC gives us “The government believes the response cannot only be about law enforcement. They also need to manage social networks and associations, because this tragic case shed light on a whole network which spreads hate speeches within the population. The system needs changing”, an interesting quote, yet if we look at ‘a whole network which spreads hate speeches within the population’, yet that applies to a schoolteacher as well as the person who beheaded that teacher, and that part is largely missing. And by the time we get to “Marine Le Pen has also cast the peaceful public expression of Islam as a threat to French national identity”, in this it is not about “peaceful public expression of Islam”, it is the intentional disrespect of Islam that is the larger part here, and ever as some state that this is the need of Macron to win a reelection, the stage of intentionally insulting religion has a much larger stage all over Europe, and as far as I can tell the big newscasters are all in silence there, they will skate around the subject and most of them are doing just that.

Even as the Guardian gives us yesterday ‘Macron’s clash with Islam sends jolt through France’s long debate about secularism’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/26/macrons-clash-with-islam-sends-jolt-through-frances-long-debate-about-secularism) we get a set stage, and as such we need to look at that stage.

First there is secularism, which means “indifference to or rejection or exclusion of religion and religious considerations”, as such we need to see “rejection of religious consideration” when it is set against ‘insulting religion’. In an age of discrimination laws where some might accept “The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on Thursday that insulting Islam’s Prophet Mohammed is not covered by freedom of expression” (source: Al Arabiya), the stage is not that clear as France rejects the Blasphemy Law, as such France is in a different pickle, yet the stage of ‘insulting religion’, and until that part is dealt with, the stage remains and might actually get worse.  So whilst we all accept and see that beheading a teacher is wrong, no one is wondering why a teacher is allowed to openly insult religion, insult Islam. Even as some papers give us “some of them caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, during a history lesson about freedom of speech and freedom of conscience”, I would have had the same stage in 2015, I protested like others Je suis Charlie, yet at that point I did not know why the action was taken. I believe that the protest was valid, but the lack of validity that goes with openly insulting religion is not addressed, not by any news paper. Why is that?

Now that I know that images of the prophet Mohammed are taboo, why would a teacher repeat the same insult? If it truly was about freedom of expression, why not use the christian examples (we christians do not object to this) and refer in that same lesson that Islam has specific rules on idolisation, yet the papers and plenty of other sources steer clear of that part, I wonder why?

It is clear that there is a gap in secularism, as such we need to take heed on how we openly insult the religions around us, why do this, what is there to gain? 

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Is the link real?

Apart from the continuation of the IP I promised as public domain for Sony exclusive products, I was in doubt of some information on ISIS I got my fingers on. This is besides the information that is out in Israel where we see: ‘ISIS urges attacks on westerners, oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia’, the danger of the nfrmaetion I saw is that they are merely parts of something. I need to painty a picture. In one courtyard there is a person selling sweet fruits, they are orange in colour and in the other courtyard there is a person selling sweet fruits but red in colour. Now, I cannot tell if the first one is selling oranges, tangerines or perhaps nectarines. The other person is selling cherries, strawberries, red currant or even tomatoes (are tomatoes fruit). Some will set the stage that fruit sellers are in these two courtyards. Yet I do not know are these sellers an outlier, is fruit all they sell, can I confirm what exactly they sell and what do they call themselves? Even the issue if the two sellers are related is in question. But some intelligence is set on too little data and too often dubious data. Then there is the stage what do they call themselves? Are they actual sellers, or merely two people in a closed setting where they have something for sale? All questions on the stage we see here, so when I see “An Islamic State spokesman called on the terrorist group’s supporters to target westerners, oil pipelines and economic infrastructure in Saudi Arabia”. This set a few issues. In the first the reliability of it all, the western media has actively avoided a few settings in these places, so there is little to go on and for the most they merely copy one another. In the second Saudi Intelligence is pretty efficient in Saudi Arabia, as such ISIS is calling for activity in a place where they do not have any, so is it a hollow threat, is it a call to arms or a red herring to mess with Saudi Intelligence. The additional problem is that any attack could only happen with a much larger support from Iran and ISIS and Iran do not really mix, which gets me to a slightly inappropriate joke. Two hooligans, one Swede one Dane have an argument over Football, they both grab their knives and stab each other in the chest, instantly killing one another. What is the Score? Answer: Norway leads by two points.

OK, not the nicest joke, but the issue gets across (I hope). ISIS is leaking and making claims, yet the stage is not set and there is debate on how effective ISIS is in Saudi Arabia, and that is the larger truth here. ISIS might have followers in Saudi Arabia, but that is hear say, there is speculation, but no active data supporting this. Iran has activity (to some degree) in Saudi Arabia, but there is still debate on how much and how effective it remains. 

In a stage where we see: “Saudi Arabia has stressed the need to step up efforts to reach a lasting and sustainable peace agreement among the Palestinians and the Israelis” we see one side, we see ISIS in opposition, yet no one is looking on where Israel Hayom got its data (at https://www.israelhayom.com/2020/10/20/isis-urges-attacks-on-westerners-oil-infrastructure-in-saudi-arabia/) from. This was not some leak, this was not intelligent by Mossad, the article given to us is from Reuters and ILH Staff, OK, we can accept that, so why doesn’t Reuters have this as front page news on their Middle East section page? And as such, who at ILH had this and more important when did they have it? An article by Reuters not on their website, especially one involving ISIS is a larger set of weird, and guess what, it was about Saudi Arabia, another reason to have it, and the only other source I saw pushing this was oilprice.com. That and the stage of ‘Offshore Oil & Gas Poised For A Major Rebound’, as such, in light of all this, I have questions, don’t you?

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Without trial

It happens, and most often it is some American source that gives us the alleged goods. I state here alleged, because I am not now, not ever willing to take the media at their word, there have been too many events where the media goes free because someone whispered to them ‘as far as we can tell’, or ‘an anonymous sources close to the matter at hand told us’, the media hs had too many of these events. Yet when Reuters give us goods, it is time to take notice, mainly because Reuters does not go out on a limb that often. So when I became aware of ‘Why 4,998 died in U.S. jails without getting their day in court’ (at https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-jails-deaths/), I woke up pretty quickly. 

Apart from the images, the article starts with “The U.S. government collects detailed data on who’s dying in which jails around the country – but won’t let anyone see it. So, Reuters conducted its own tally of fatalities in America’s biggest jails, pinpointing where suicide, botched healthcare and bad jail-keeping are claiming lives in a system with scant oversight”, I get why the US government wants to keep a lid on it, yet 5000 deaths is not something that goes unnoticed. So what is going on? The setting only gets worse when we see “Death rates have soared in those lockups, rising 35% over the decade ending last year. Casualties like Hill are typical: held on minor charges and dying without ever getting their day in court. At least two-thirds of the dead inmates identified by Reuters, 4,998 people, were never convicted of the charges on which they were being held”, as such we see an institution that has failed on several levels, 35% over a decade is quite the increase, when we look at lives lost, any percentage change that is a mere one digit is seen as disastrous, so how does this happen? I am asking because the institution that we can laughingly call the Human Rights branch of the UN, seems to have no problems going after Saudi Arabia, and when we are told “Capital punishment is a legal penalty in Saudi Arabia. The country performed at least 158 executions in 2015, at least 154 in 2016, at least 146 in 2017, at least 149 in 2018, with possibly 184 executed in 2019”, as such can someone explain why the UN has such loud trumpets on the 791 death, all whilst the US put 4998 to death without a trial. With the Saudi allegedly ending the lives of close to 15% of what the US might categorise at ‘Business as usual’, ‘the cost of doing business’ or even ‘workplace accidents’ (with the optional oops! At the end). Yet this is not about Saudi Arabia, it is to some degree about Reuters (the good part) and to a large extent about the United Nations (the bad part) where we heard an essay writer and French Human Rights expert and the Special Rapporteur for the UN how she shouted (debatable) events, she never gave us the 4998 inhumane endings of life, did she? So as Reuters treats us to “The U.S. Constitution grants inmates core rights, but those provisions are hard to enforce. The Fourteenth Amendment guarantees fair treatment to pre-trial detainees, but “fair” is open to interpretation by judges and juries. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel punishment forbids “deliberate indifference to serious medical needs of prisoners,” but proving deliberate negligence is difficult. The Sixth Amendment assures speedy trials, but does not define speedy”, we see the larger picture and we understand and get that some events cannot be anticipated, but 4998 losses that continue to go on is a much larger stage. It is optionally a stage where we see that the debts of the US are now the almost given guarantee to loss of life in the US, all whilst there is a larger stage where there is a chance that the largest percentage of these 4998 losses are not criminals, they are people caught in a bad setting and awaiting a chance to explain themselves. All this, in a stage where people in the US are calling Saudi Arabia bad, all whilst they are in a setting where they have killed 631% more people, all innocent people, you are innocent until proven guilty and these 4998 people never got their day in court, all whilst the 791 executed people, were proven to be guilty in a Saudi court of law.

So who represents the larger failure (apart from the UN who never acted, perhaps because their HQ is in New York). Yet Reuters is nowhere near done. When they give us “Many jails are not subject to any enforceable standards for their operation or the healthcare they provide. They typically get little if any oversight. And bail requirements trap poorer inmates in pre-trial detention for long periods. Meanwhile, inmate populations have grown sicker, more damaged by mental illness and plagued by addictions”, it is my personal view, yet a stage where we see “not subject to any enforceable standards”, a stage that merely escalates bad situations quickly towards what could be regarded as ‘worse nightmares’. There is however a small gem there too, but you will miss it when you read the article too quickly. The quote “Reuters was not able to identify the race of 9% of inmates who died”, you see this is a stage with a much larger frame of mind. In my personal opinion, this either sets the stage of a shoddy administration, or optionally a party wanted to make the identification of 9% of the cases close to impossible. There is the case of multi-racial stage, but to admit to such a failure gives rise to an inmate registration failure that should have been fixed well over two decades ago, as such I see a much larger stage, yet with the limited information available I cannot say which is the more accurate one.

The article is much larger and it has several sides that make this dynamite on several levels and to see this in Reuters and not in the Washington Post or the New York Times is a larger stage. So the last part I will look at is “The Justice Department has grown more secretive about the fatality data under the Trump administration. While BJS never has released jail-by-jail mortality figures, it traditionally has published aggregated statistics every two years or so. The 2016 report wasn’t issued until this year”, the stage has a few items that are debatable and optionally a larger stage that has issues all over the board. The lack in mortality figures is the largest and most visible one, you see, this stage was much larger in the 70’s and Robert Redford gave us the low down in the movie Brubaker in 1980, a movie that is a gem on several levels. So 40 years ago there was a clear stage where mortality rate was a visible issue (11 years after the fact), a large one and someone swiped that issue OFF the table. The movie was based on a fictionalised version of the 1969 book, Accomplices to the Crime: The Arkansas Prison Scandal by Tom Murton and Joe Hyams, detailing Murton’s uncovering of the 1967 prison scandal. The unsettling stage of something that came to light when he had the wardenship of the prison farms of Arkansas. 

It is when we consider this stage we see the largest failure in the US, a stage where side entries into society (criminals) are set to a stage off the board making them marginalised. There is one little issue, the 4998 people were innocent, they were never convicted, they never had their day in court and the system failed them close to 100%. And even if we give credibility to Michelle Deitch, she might be right on her turf, the setting of “these gaps make comprehensive nationwide statistics all the more important. “You can’t have good policy without good data,” she said. “Data tells us what is going right and what’s going wrong.””, the fact that racial info was missing in 9% of the cases give rise to a faltering system that has never properly overhauled, or the system is fault due to possibilities of data manipulation, that part is given a level of clarity when we realise that out of these cases the racial data of 450 people could not be ascertained. It is not a flaw or a data gap, it should be seen as a systemic failure. When a person is arrested, from the arrest (2 people) to local arrangements, to transport, to arrival into a jail, well over a dozen people missed it, and more important, they missed it 450 times. This is a systemic issue from day one and no one has rung the bell, at least not to the degree that this bell should have been rung. 

Well done Reuters!

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You’re useless and you know it

Yup, quite the opening headline and  would like to tell the reader the it is about him or her, but no such luck, the headline (as is) can only be given to the most useless of useless, the US Senate. Yup, as some voices stated in the past, the US has fruits (US Congress) and nuts (US Senate) and there we sit in the middle of the tutti frutti of the dance floor, one might almost invite Madonna to come over and add a little spice to the mixture.

Yet Reuters who gives us (at https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-senate-tech/senate-panel-approves-sending-subpoenas-to-ceos-of-twitter-facebook-google-idUSKBN26M6FA) the headline ‘Senate panel approves sending subpoenas to CEOs of Twitter, Facebook, Google’, with the quote “The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee on Thursday unanimously voted to approve a plan to subpoena chief executives of Twitter, Alphabet’s Google and Facebook for a hearing likely to be held before the election on a prized legal immunity enjoyed by internet companies”, We can go in every direction possible, but lets start with “passed into law as part of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) of 1996 (a common name for Title V of the Telecommunications Act of 1996), formally codified as Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1934 at 47 U.S.C. § 230. Section 230 generally provides immunity for website publishers from third-party content”, In this we see two elements, the first being that in 1996 there was no Google, no Twitter and no Facebook, in the second on larger beneficiary was the online presence of FoxNews, Yahoo and lets face it as I personally see it, Microsoft who started part of the mess we have now. 

To invoke what I did (the useless part), it is important to see “After passage of the Telecommunications Act, the CDA was challenged in courts and ruled by the Supreme Court in Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union (1997) to be partially unconstitutional, leaving the Section 230 provisions in place. Since then, several legal challenges have validated the constitutionality of Section 230”, in this Justice John Paul Stevens (Supreme Court) wrote in June 1997: “We are persuaded that the CDA lacks the precision that the First Amendment requires when a statute regulates the content of speech. In order to deny minors access to potentially harmful speech, the CDA effectively suppresses a large amount of speech that adults have a constitutional right to receive and to address to one another. That burden on adult speech is unacceptable if less restrictive alternatives would be at least as effective in achieving the legitimate purpose that the statute was enacted to serve. … It is true that we have repeatedly recognized the governmental interest in protecting children from harmful materials. But that interest does not justify an unnecessarily broad suppression of speech addressed to adults. As we have explained, the Government may not “reduc[e] the adult population … to … only what is fit for children.””, as such how stupid does a US Senator tend to be? It passed the Supreme court, it passed a few stations over the term of 20 years and optional alleged beneficiaries (Google, Facebook, Twitter) are called into a Senate hearing? Some sources even state ‘Letting Platforms Decide What Content To Facilitate Is What Makes Section 230 Work’, the latter one is up for debate, but the setting of section 230 is not, it is a legal thing, so why would someone set the stage for a hearing the is basically pointless set the stage? To get a few free dinners and perhaps tax deductibility? I do not know, I merely ask.

The setting of a stage 40 days before election, is the current view and when we see “top Democrat Maria Cantwell, who opposed the move last week, saying she was against using “the committee’s serious subpoena power for a partisan effort 40 days before an election,” changed her mind and voted to approve the move” I wonder what this really is, because as I see it, it has nothing to do with big tech, and optionally section 230 is also not in play, but what is? There is the optional quote given “Republican President Donald Trump has made holding tech companies accountable for allegedly stifling conservative voices a theme of his administration. As a result, calls for a reform of Section 230 have been intensifying ahead of the elections, but there is little chance of approval by Congress this year”, yet optional settings of “stifling conservative voice” would not change that, this is about intentional hurting facilitation, changing the premise of free expression, the moment big tech is held responsible, no opinion is heard and the anti-Trump (those who highlight stupidity) is seen nearly everywhere, as such, President Trump needs every amount he can get. I do not think that this is the right path and more important changing law on this scale to bake (not make) awareness of something set almost in stone for 20 years does not help. 

In this I want to extend my friendliness to give a shout to the largest part of the problem, mainly Republican Senator Roger Wicker, even s he gives us “After extending an invite to these executives, I regret that they have again declined to participate and answer questions about issues that are so visible and urgent to the American people”, I merely wonder if he has any clue who the American people are. This train of thought is seen as Politico gives us “under the newly unveiled Online Freedom and Viewpoint Diversity Act, the legal shield would protect the companies only when they take down specific types of content, including material “promoting terrorism” or which promotes “self-harm” or is otherwise illegal”, as such, when was there an upside when we consider ‘specific types on content’, as I see it it the setting towards a biased filter of what constitutes free speech and freedom of expression. As such the simple question becomes: ‘Who has seen S.4534 – Online Freedom and Viewpoint Diversity Act?’ Deputy Counsel Elizabeth Banker did and gives us “Section 230’s otherwise objectionable clause underpins crucial content moderation efforts that make their platforms safer for everyone. Eliminating that clause will make it harder, not easier, for online services to remove content like misinformation, platform manipulation, or bullying that’s neither illegal nor in the bill’s new description of allowable moderation. This bill would also hamper platforms from adapting to future moderation challenges.“We also have serious First Amendment concerns with this bill. This bill would limit the ability of private online platforms and services, including small forums for schools, churches, and local sports leagues, to set and enforce rules for their communities.””, a direct powerful view given on September 8th (at https://internetassociation.org/news/statement-in-response-to-the-introduction-of-the-online-freedom-and-viewpoint-diversity-act/), as such we takeaway “Eliminating that clause will make it harder, not easier, for online services to remove content like misinformation, platform manipulation, or bullying” does this constitute the idea that the speculated biggest bully in America wants a free pass? And there are also “serious First Amendment concerns” which cannot be ignored. 

When we see this level of issues from the very beginning, how stupid is any senator participating in this, and when we demand under freedom of information their names and tell people that this lit constitutes a list of people attacking free speech, how happy will they be? There is of course the issue of the elected Democrat from the state of Washington Maria Cantwell, I wonder what she has to say for herself, especially it he hearing happens before the elections, I reckon that President Elect Biden will not have too much need for her, but that is merely my speculation.

 

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Using the limelight

It all started a few days ago and for the most I kept you all informed. The latest news was in my possession for well over an hour. I waited because I wanted to see how the others were reacting. And I was not disappointed, they did exactly what I expected, basically, they did nothing.

It all started with ‘Saudi Arabia says it took down ‘terrorist cell’ trained by Iran’ (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/9/29/saudi-arabia-says-it-took-down-terrorist-cell-trained-by-iran), so should we say it is real or not? It is a fair question to have, yet the quote “Saudi Arabia says it has taken down a “terrorist cell” that had received training from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, arresting 10 people and seizing weapons and explosives”, leaves me with the setting that this is factual. We are also given “Among the items seized were improvised explosive devices (IEDs), dozens of stun guns, kilos of gunpowder and a variety of rifles and pistols, according to the statement. It did not say where last week’s raid or arrests were carried out”, yet the western media has nothing. Not the BBC, not Reuters, not European news offices, and not FoxNews. It seems to me that Iran is given an option to get away with any action that is not set in America or Europe. And this is where we get the larger issue, the news is filtering what they think we need to know, as such we see a totally destabilised view of what is going on. 

This news matters because it gives strength to something else I stated, which was speculative at the time. I speculated that someone was painting the Aramco targets so that the drones would be more effective. These 10 men could have done just that. The arrest off the 10 men does not make my setting any less speculative. It does however open a larger stage, the news was avoiding a lot of what happened, eager to use ‘speculative’ and ‘alleged’, which is not unacceptable, yet it sets the stage that the western media is optionally complicit is setting a stage that is not part of what happened (like the Khashoggi disappearance). We see even the UN side with Turkey (where the most incarcerated journalists in history are), blatant statements even as there is no evidence is supporting any of it. 

So in this we have a much larger guilt, we are part of the problem, the media is filtering what is happening and no excuse makes up for that. It goes beyond the media, there is some indication that Google and the social media are part of this. Google calls them omitted results, social media merely hides the events on the timeline altering most results and chronological results, the last part is speculative, but the seems to be happening.

Why does this matter?

The UK, US and EU have been throwing the ‘terrorist’ word at us for the longest time, and we merely had to swallow it, now that there are additional indications that Iran is part of the problem we are left in the dark. The Saudi government gives us ““The competent authorities will conduct investigations with all those arrested to find out more information about their activities and the persons connected to them in the kingdom and abroad,” the statement read”, yet I wonder if the is enough, I wonder how much shielding Iran is receiving, Yemen and the Houthi actions made it clear that this was happening, now we are set in a stage where shielding is a lot larger making the media less reliable, I wonder who they are working for, because as I personally see it, it is not the advertisers. This all does not make the 10 men guilty, but it sets a stage of questions that most do not want to entertain, what is Iran actually up to?

 

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