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April 18, 2025 · 17:18

A viewpoint is not a point of view

Yes, nice and confusing. But that is the meaning of this exercise. You see, I don’t agree on the point of view the law makes in this case. They have altered their point of view on the law in motion. In a setting that ran for over a decade. I don’t think they are to blame, there is no real guilt here (apparently), but the setting stands. In this I call to attention the BBC article (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3674nl7g74o) stating ‘Google has illegal advertising monopoly, judge rules’ I do not agree and for this I call to attention two ‘pieces’ of evidence. The first is the actor Ryan Reynolds, a person I have called more than once the craziest marketeer on the planet. The second piece of evidence is a firm named CAASIE.co, an advertisement services firm apparently in Brisbane (I thought they were in New York). These two stand out, in a pool of millions. Set in a presence of “The US alone spent almost $481 billion on marketing in 2022, with digital marketing seeing significant growth. Australia’s marketing industry is also substantial, valued at over $20 billion.” With the added “While a precise count isn’t available, the scale of the industry suggests a large number of professionals are involved in marketing roles worldwide. The demand for marketing expertise is strong, and the industry is continuously evolving, particularly with the rise of digital marketing”. Don’t get me wrong, there are good marketing teams. The bigger brands have decent teams and at times places like Coca Cola and Heineken stand out. Yet in that setting of millions of people these two stand out. Why? Perhaps marketing is seen by some as the path you take when you can’t do anything else? Perhaps these men (women too) can talk their way into the panties of the youthful ladies and they thought, perhaps I can make money out of this venturous situation. And they went into marketing, mainly because ‘sex sells’. The truth couldn’t be farther (or is that further) removed from the truth. 

And there the problem starts. You see, Google isn’t monopolising things, they merely had the proper handle on things. The marketing bulk doesn’t know what it its doing and as ‘they’ see it Google is in the way. In the early days Google (read: Larry Page and Sergei Brin) figured out a few things. As Microsoft was talking dirty to the CFO’s in the land (in the late 80’s and beyond) these two youthful young sprouts figured out that the work was done by the m inions of these CFO’s, so as they catered to the bulk of the worker ants, Microsoft was wasting its time on expensive dinners and drink parties and they got all the CFO’s and CTO’s of the Fortune 500. But these people needed their worker ants and Google had created a search system that catered to THEIR needs. So whilst these youthful young sprouts were at Stanford University, their buddies all went for the knickers of the ladies. They created a page rank system, because they saw ahead that the web was going to be a mess, millions of voices create cacophony and they cut through the mess.

So ahead we go 20 years (take or leave a year) and Google figured out that their system is gold. So they venture forward and they create Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords) and that was in 2000. Again they hit gold, although it was a natural continuation from page rank and again Microsoft wants ink on the game, but wannabe’s and spin creators can merely make shallow creation and it is seen in their product. At present known as Microsoft Advertising, holds a market share of around 3-4% of the global search engine market. This is bad news for the marketing wannabe’s as they bought the shite that Microsoft is seemingly selling. Even I saw the bing hijacking of people seeking and as Microsoft is all playing innocent, they did (as I personally see it) enable the system to be abused. It matter not, Google created a firm product and now the marketing bitches (both male and female) decided to cry fowl (intended typo) So that I the setting.

Marketing today is people who talk a lot present a lot, but as I see it, they do not know what they are doing. Merely hoping that their revenue cup runneth over and it is based on decade old settings (which is what schools rely on). At UTS (University of Technology Sydney) we had one lecture on page rank and that opened my eyes (unlikely as much as it hit Sergei and Larry), but the setting was clear. Google created the largest setting by thinking of what to do, not to wine and dine the people with money and they followed Microsoft as they didn’t realise what they were up against. The internet of things is a massive beast with plenty of horns and these are the horns of plenty.

So now we get to the ‘court case’ that the BBC gives us. So as we are given “The US Department of Justice, along with 17 US states, sued Google, arguing the tech giant was illegally dominating the technology which determines which adverts should be placed online and where” and as I personally see it, they are catering to millions of people who do not know what they are doing and they think it is unfair that these people should miss out on a business they are unlikely to understand. You see, I name these two at the start as they have figured out a few things. Ryan Reynolds created billions from understanding the world and its business (Mint Mobile, Aviation Gin, and Wrexham AFC. He also co-founded Maximum Effort, a marketing agency and production company) he figured out a few things and that sprout is a mere 48 springs old. He saw the options and turned several products in a multi billion dollar empire by engaging with an audience and telling a story in a way they remembered. The other (the wannabe’s) can scoop up a mere $100,000 dollars at a time as I see it. Let’s not forget that this man started as an extra on the X-Files, now he surpassed the main cast of that series (including the director) in several ways.

Second we get CAASIE.co, they come with “buy outdoor ads globally – from your browser”, with the byline “Self-service. No contracts. No commitments” and consider this quote “In 2007, São Paulo, Brazil instituted a billboard ban because there were no viable regulations of the billboard industry.” For decades these billboards were out there and in 2020 (a mere 5 years ago) they decided to change the premise. So as we get “They are an advertising company specializing in Digital Out of Home (dOOH) advertising, programmatic advertising, and digital signage. Their headquarters are in Brisbane, Australia”, a setting that was clear for decades but no one considered what there was and these people did, so as they gain favor and altitude by being innovative the wannabe marketeers can (for all I care) go duck themselves. 

These two examples are a clear sign that the crying marketeers need to grow up, or as the Americans say “Go big or go home” and that is noticeable on the future of marketing as I see it. Now they are all about AI and creating hypes, but that doesn’t pay for the yacht (or for diner as I see it). 

So as I see “US district judge Leonie Brinkema said in the ruling Google had “willfully engaged in a series of anticompetitive acts” which enabled it to “acquire and maintain monopoly power” in the market.” Is wrong by at least half a continent (a mile seems so shallow), so as I see it, when did the law start catering to village idiots? The fact that there are thousands of voices doesn’t make this clever. Reynolds and CAASIE were clever, they were very clever and that is a setting that CAASIE can enjoy, you see when they get access to the stage where the Google Ads people use CAASIE as the global interface to get global visibility, CAASIE will grow a lot more and what will the marketeers do to get their slices of pie? Cry a little more? Since when did we cater to the stupid to give value to this world?

The is the setting I see and as I see it the larger folly of US district judge Leonie Brinkema, so their goes her “willfully engaged”, Google walked a path for decades and that thought paid off and as I see it, Google was not catering to CAASIE, CAASIE found its own niche of global needed marketing. These two settings (Reynolds and CAASIE) show that there was space and these are raking in the billions (CAASIE not yet) but they can get a lot more by expanding into the UAE and Saudi Arabia, optionally Bangladesh and Indonesia as well. A setting that will iterate in new areas and that was something that a player like Microsoft never understood. My evidence in that statement is the fact that they lost marketshare 6 times over.

So the viewpoints of Google, Ryan Reynolds and CAASIE are not points of view, they are intentional strides in the Internet of Things and their views of how to make money. A lesson a lot of marketeers never learned in the first place. Although they got their collection of panties n their trophy cabinet, something I never ever had, but I decided to remain innovatively engaged. So as I had the ball several times from DARPA, Ubisoft and Microsoft (optionally Amazon and Apple as well) I can relax to see these departments of Justice (globally) fumble their balls and as things go from bad to worse I can giggle (not Google) from the sidelines. How the stage is the play of things, something Shakespeare figured out in 1623.

Have a great day whilst you ponder the wisdoms I left here with two hidden snags, the clever people out there can work out what I left for others to find. Have a great one.

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February 7, 2025 · 18:30

Who you gonna call?

Well, the answer is simple. It is +1 202-346-1100 (aka Google DC – Massachusetts Ave). As such the Pentagon has a few more techies in service. Yes, we all know that according to the BBC (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy081nqx2zjo) that they are there for the AI concerns and the setting ‘given’ is “Alphabet has rewritten its guidelines on how it will use AI, dropping a section which previously ruled out applications that were “likely to cause harm”.” And we also heard the ‘other’ side with “Human Rights Watch has criticised the decision, telling the BBC that AI can “complicate accountability” for battlefield decisions that “may have life or death consequences.”” So here comes my question “What will you do about that?” You have done extremely little to the Hamas setting, to the Syrian setting and to the Houthi setting, not to mention acts against Iran, its IRGC, Hamas, PLO, Houthi terrorists, Hezbollah and a few other parties. 

I think it is time for the Human Right Watch to set next to a set of tea grannies and debate ‘normalcies’ with these grannies over tea with a bicky. 

In the mean time people within or outside of Google will face the challenges of the world and as I see it the Pentagon is short on people. So until that gets resolved Google does what it needs to de and create a work sphere that can service its people. Let’s not forget that Amazon, IBM, Meta, Microsoft and a few others are ‘departing’ with thousands of people and placing them outside the workforce. Google adjusted its view to include a set of duties that are extremely unlikely to do harm (there is a 0.0001% chance a person gets executed by messing with the back of a server rack). As such I think that Google has the better mindset. Oh, and before you complain. With all these firms dumping staff on the ‘reduction’ line, they will most likely be out of a job for several years. So good luck with that setting, especially if you are in California. 

And as we are given “In a blog post Google defended the change, arguing that businesses and democratic governments needed to work together on AI that “supports national security”.” We could surmise that there is a small chance that Google will be the go-to guy for Palantir settings, upping the value of Google by a fair bit (and giving Palantir the people the desperately require). There is another side, but that is pure speculation on my side. Google will enable the US Administration to make bigger inroads into exporting this knowhow to Saudi Arabia, UAE, NATO (all over Europe) and a few other places. As such Google will enable American growth. So what have these naggers (HRG’s) achieved?

So whilst they (via BBC) give us “Experts say AI could be widely deployed on the battlefield – though there are fears about its use too, particularly with regard to autonomous weapons systems. “For a global industry leader to abandon red lines it set for itself signals a concerning shift, at a time when we need responsible leadership in AI more than ever,” said Anna Bacciarelli, senior AI researcher at Human Rights Watch.” Consider what ‘red lines’ are. You didn’t hold Apple account for pushing advertisements of gambling to children, You never held parties that are a clear and present danger to any level of account. So it is time to consider the Human Rights Groups for the windbags they actually are. Spreading unease and flaming what they can (which never did them any good) as such Anna Bacciarelli, got here name mentioned one more time and people (specifically Googlers) need to get back to the business at hand before China gets too much of the world in its grasp. I personally don’t care about AI (as it doesn’t exist) but the world is now revolving around Deeper Machine Learning, Advanced Deeper Machine Learning and LLM’s and here Google can impact all kind of business and it is clear that The Pentagon needs that knowledge if it is to keep on standing. And before these grannies start crying foul bicky, consider the line ‘California Wildfires: How exci’s AI Technology is Revolutionising the Fight’ Do you think that this was possible with just public spendings? Do you think that “An estimated 12,000 houses, businesses, schools and other structures have been damaged or destroyed, at least 24 people have died and about 150,000 people were ordered or warned to evacuate.” This will continue? The next setting, which is optionally a year away will remain, he next time the casualties will run into the hundreds. And ‘AI’ will diminish these casualties to approaching zero. That is the other side and only larger settings (like the military) have the processing power to do something about it. So, the social news setting was ‘Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple and Uber haven’t donated anything toward LA fire relief, but Taylor Swift donated $10 million.’ (Source:  Politifact) Which could be true (it was not, as stated by themselves as “Swift’s donations to 10 organizations for wildfire relief efforts.”), but Meta set up systems so that people could stay in touch, set up the markers for people to warn families and friends. I am not sure what they others did, but they did something. Even Microsoft (as I saw a notice) gave ‘Wildfire Risk Predictive Modeling via Historical Climate Data’ You don’t think this was an intern with HWG sympathy did this. This was at least a team busy crunching data and verifying number for days effort. California was the first hit and this will not be enough. Google might become a power for good on several fields. We can’t steal the thunder from Exci who have their abilities, but one player is not enough and this military needs to become multitasking. The Dutch clearly saw this need in the 80’s and 90’s and they reacted. Now Google is setting a new frame pushing new boundaries. Two little fields that Anna Bacciarelli overlooked. How Human Rights was that. Oh, I forgot fires are natural and people have a right to be baked to a crisps BBQ style. 

And in other news, consider the stage that they gave with “battlefield decisions that “may have life or death consequences.”” The Pentagon doesn’t need Google for that, they can do that all by themselves. I reckon that a few more ethical hurdles are added when Google gets entered into that frame. I might be wrong but that is how I see it.

Have a great day and enjoy tea with a bicky as tea grannies and HRG members tend to do.

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July 30, 2024 · 21:03

Rules of the game

It isn’t a statement, it is actually a question. You see, something caught my eye in Al Jazeera today. The article (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/30/why-are-conservatives-claiming-google-is-covering-up-the-shooting-of-trump) gives us ‘Why are conservatives claiming Google is covering up the shooting of Trump?’. I took a look and I noticed the given “Google has come under fire from conservatives in the United States amid claims that the tech giant is suppressing information about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in order to influence the presidential election.” Then we see “Google on Monday told NBC News that autocomplete was “not working as intended for some searches about the names of several past presidents and the current vice president”.”

My issue is that there are other matters not being taken into account. I have partial knowledge of this and. Wonder on the stage we are facing. The first stage are the conservatives, the second stage are the influencers and the conspiracy theorists. Let me explain as best as I can. 

We can search for something direct [attempted assassination of Donald Trump] then we have the option [assassination + ”Donald Trump”] they are not the same you see the first one also gives use anything related to ‘attempted’ as such any combination of [attempted, assassination, of, Donald, Trump] will be caught in this. The problem is that the influencers know this, the conspiracy theorists know this and they are always try to put ‘their story’ above all the others. These two groups have elevated their knowledge of the search routines and the in’s and out’s above all others. Because they need their story to come on top.

Now consider these two groups, do you think that they influence the outcome? So when we see “autocomplete was “not working as intended”” the question becomes how to see ‘not working as intended’ I wonder how the other players influenced the ‘not working as intended’. I do not think that Google did anything wrong (speculation on my side), I think that there is more into this. You see what evidence do the Conservatives have? 

So do you think that Kansas Senator Roger Marshall who also accused Google of suppressing information looked into the whole range of this? I doubt it. These man tend to have less than an hour a day to look into matters. The Google setting requires close to a week of several people dedicated to search and autocomplete. Consider the small setting that the world has thousands of dedicated Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) people. Do you think that Google will mess around with that, or is it likely that these thousands as well as the influencers and conspiracy theorists have found a loophole that sets them above all others and when that is the case is there a clear case of malignant Google messing with an autocomplete. The last part is that it is ‘autocomplete’ as such the search could (or should) have been given completely and not via an autocomplete. Oh, and an autocomplete is relying on an anticipated result, yet when these results are pushed by SEO’s, influencers and Conspiracy theorists, what are the changes that the model sways?

All settings that could (not a given) been an influence and there is nothing of that in the Al Jazeera article. But in all this Kansas Senator Roger Marshall got his limelight. So I wonder how many holes I can shoot in that case, after all Donald Trump merely got his ear pierced and not by a qualified piercer. 

Oh and before we end this story, lets not forget that the conservatives use any option they can to get some limelight, did anyone take that into account as well?

Enjoy the day Monday is almost over for me, Vancouver will follow in 17 hours.

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May 16, 2019 · 11:09

The €0.01 pledge

Yes, we all heard it before, ‘I hereby solemnly swear‘, ‘I pledge my allegiance‘ and ‘for what we are about to receive‘. All nice sounding words, yet are they worth the value of the printed paper when people speak these words? That is where you stand when we were given ‘Leaders and tech firms pledge to tackle extremist violence online‘. And the quotes are nice to read too. First there is: “World leaders and heads of global technology companies have pledged at a Paris summit to tackle terrorist and extremist violence online in what they described as an “unprecedented agreement”“. The article (at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/15/jacinda-ardern-emmanuel-macron-christchurch-call-summit-extremist-violence-online), and President Macron, who is in all kind of non-economic states took the time to shed light on this. So when I saw: “a “plan of action” to be adopted by countries and companies to prevent extreme material from going viral on the internet” I needed well over 10 minutes to stop howling with laughter. It was funny, I agree, but in the article there is supporting evidence for my ‘howls of deriving laughter‘ (borrowed from Monty Python).

You see, the first delusion is ‘prevent extreme material from going viral on the internet‘, the internet is all about going viral, and we enabled marketing and SEO systems of doing just that for the need of creating awareness in whatever way possible. The creation of viral events is what drives Facebook and their social companions. And even as their might be some form of control on Facebook, places like 4Chan have close to 0% control and whilst people are trying to find the viral video, a dozen copies will be spread to alternative locations. If you want to understand viral video, take a look at Medium dot com (at https://medium.com/this-happened-to-me/10-ways-to-make-your-video-go-viral-d19d9b9465de), they make a nice top 10 with actually interesting issues to consider. Social media is about getting viral (or is that virile?), they need to sell advertisements and the list mentioned give at the second tip the stage where you have millions of views in just under 72 hours, and that was merely some girl dancing.

The Guardian gives another part. When we see: “The footage was picked up by some international media outlets who initially published excerpts of the video and links to the gunman’s extremist “manifesto” before quickly dropping them in the face of political and public outrage“, so until outrage became slightly too loud, the news media themselves had no issue propagating the video (partially), that is the larger failure. You want to stop social media, whilst the media themselves use the material? What was that, ‘the people have a right to know clause?‘

As I see it: “as a voluntary initiative it is for individual countries and companies to decide how to honour their pledge” that pledge is (as I personally see it) nothing more than another way to grease the wheels of the EU gravy train. When we add “nations to bring in laws that ban offensive material and to set guidelines on how the traditional media report acts of terrorism“, so we get non mandatory actions linked to censoring of the traditional media, and you wonder why I was laughing? All this whilst a mere two days before that we got: “The case has been appealed, and in the time since two federal Courts of Appeals have ruled in separate cases that viewpoint discrimination on government social media pages is illegal.” Even as we see that they are separate issues, the stage of ‘Courts to Government Officials: Stop Censoring on Social Media‘ sets a larger stage and sets the stage where there is a much larger issue not addressed. So as we look at the term ‘viewpoint discrimination’, we see places like Heavy.com who had extremist video (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2016/05/01/homerun-by-ukip/), in May 2016. there in the article ‘Homerun by UKIP‘ I added a link to an ISIS video that remained viewable for well over a year. And that was something that was openly searchable. So at what point will we get a true status change? These places need the clicks to get their cash and many of them will not care how they get their money, their traction, their visibility.

So as we see “The US has reportedly refused to sign up because of concerns about freedom of speech“, we will see these people move to US servers, as there is free speech, as such this entire effort is largely wasted, when the larger players on social media are not willing to play ball, when we see that shifting stories and videos can move location in seconds, we see a gravy train switching tracks again and again, never resolving anything. Yet, they mostly agree on Huawei being a national security threat (without documented evidence), all that whilst the Cisco mess is presently well over 1000% worse (and documented).

This is all about money and it is time that we wake up and realise that as soon as something can be made to currency, it gets free reign. That is the consequence of debts that go into the trillions. And the traditional media only stopped after the outrage, after the cost of publishing started to grow that is when they stopped. In this I have nothing against the actions of Jacinda Ardern, they make perfect sense, but the Intelligence community could have clearly explained the traps of lone wolves, the traps of a media stage that is out of control. It is also nice to note that the presence of Justin Trudeau and President Macron was encouraging (according to Emmanuel Macron), yet these are two politicians with the ratings that are deep into the basement, any positive news that mentions them is political currency for them, so I wonder what their attending stake is in the end.

In this Jacinda Ardern makes one mistake (unintentional). As we see: “Facebook had made a changes to its livestreaming, announced at the same time as the summit, under which the Christchurch terrorist “would not have been able to livestream his act of violence”“, might be true to some point, yet there are so many other streams (like 4Chan), so even as the wave towards a viral video goes down in the reach to maximum (see the Medium article), the moment the links get spread through all media, the race is on and the multimillion views are almost guaranteed, optionally with a few minutes delay from slaughter happening, to slaughter watched. And after the event the world en mass will likely be watching. That is the impact of viral views and the ca$h for those cashing in on the advertisement on those pages. Because as the views go over the millions, the ads will get visibility and the dollars come pouring in stacks of them per tenth of a second. When you realise those numbers, you see the first part in why this is not getting resolved, and the danger merely increases as lone wolves get to make themselves martyrs for a cause they never understood, shouting a name they were never part of giving extremism even more visibility.

Unless you take these glossy propagators of what they call news off the 0% VAT (read: GST, BTW and so on) list, this will merely continue, for the media circulation is everything. Consider that we hear 4 days ago that ISIL was using Instagram to promote jihad and what does the Telegraph do (at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/05/11/isil-extremists-using-instagram-promote-jihad-incite-support/), they used the picture of a smiling ISIL fighter as well. I think we can agree that this is like mopping the floor whilst the tap is running at full, we merely shift the mess and never end up with a dry floor.

You merely have to look at the Google failure and search: ‘Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi‘, he is not a terrorist; he is labelled as a ‘political leader‘. So how exactly will we end up seeing forward momentum, true forward momentum not presented momentum whilst we see that others label terrorists as political leaders. The pledge is worth a mere €0.01 and I think we are all still getting screwed on the deal at that price.

 

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January 23, 2019 · 14:56

Why the objection?

We all have it, we all object at times. I am not stating that an objection is irrelevant, wrong or short sighted, because as we might not know all the fact, no conclusion can be due to a lack of data. Yet, the objection of Jordan seems wrong to me, especially when we consider the quote ‘Jordan’s state-run media said the new Israeli airport near its border violates the kingdom’s sovereignty‘. The article (at https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/01/israeli-airport-open-jordanian-border-190121102753669.html) gives us the goods on the newly opened airport, soon also to be an international airport is from my point of view a really good idea in more than one way. You see, Ramon Airport gives people a direct option to Eilat, a wonderful place to behold (I was there in 1982). It has the views, the water, some entertainment, a nice aquarium and a few other parts that make it to be a very nice holiday destination.

In addition, it opens up tourism dollars to Aqaba (Jordan), as well as dollars to Taba (Egypt). Las but not least, the new city of Neom, which end just to the south of there will be easily reachable. It will further growth to Neom and Eilat, as well as commerce in that region going all the way to Sharm-El-Sheikh. There is close to no valid reason to oppose it. There might be unknown reasons to me, I just cannot tell at present.

Ben Gurion airport needed an alternative for the longest of times, and now there is one. In light of the activities by Hamas, Ramon airport is a good thing to have. To be quite honest, whilst I am typing this, i am thinking back to the lovely days I had there as well as the great shoarma’s I had at a gas station near the aquarium. It has been 36.5 years and I still remember those shoarma’s.

There is another matter that will rear its head soon enough. As the completion of construction continues, the need for a new digital marker in visibility is of equal importance to Eilat, Neom, Aqaba, Taba and Sharm-El-Sheikh. You see, they will only get visibility if they raise awareness and that is seemingly not happening.

To get the two at the top when we seek “Eilat Tourism” is nice, but nowhere near good enough, your business is only as good as the awareness you create and or the most, and there is not a lot of awareness. the fact that there is an Irish place there (at http://www.paddys.co.il/), and they are not above the fold and not bidding on the keywords is quite honestly a mistake, in addition, the website looks good on desktop, but well over 50% is searched via mobile and at that point there website requires an overhaul on a few levels. The switching to the English site was amazingly slow and that is just for starters. As tourism grows it will be about who knows you and how easy people can find you, awareness is everything. It is not too late, it is merely January so they have time to repair what is there, but it needs to be done and this is the one that was visible. There are many that are not even visible and for the life of me, I cannot figure out why.

There is a lot more, but that is not important right now.

The message for Aqaba is not much better, we can argue that Aqaba was never intended as a touristic place, which makes perfect sense, but why not profit on the back of all this? This proclaimed jewel of the red sea is there to be an asset for Jordan, and as such people need to know that this is an important place to consider, especially as they are a short bus ride from Eilat. I found their Tourism site more appealing, yet also slower. The webmaster was trying to be clever about it and basically shot himself in the foot in the process. If it is slow on the desktop, it will be a nightmare on the mobile (and it was) and as such they lose a lot more visibility. As stated before well over 50% is sought via mobile and these places are mobile unfriendly. I get that they might not have been ready in 2015, yet in 2018 it is an essential path to consider, especially in tourism, the digital footprint is close to everything there.

Both Aqaba and Eilat know that the digital life is important, yet why they failed to the degree that they have remains a mystery for now. In all this, it is my view that Taba scores to low to have an actual digital footprint, I reckon they could have done better and have a better tourism return, yet with Taba being in the Sinai, there might be additional problems for them. Almost the same could be said for Sharm-El-Sheikh, but they started to grow visibility in the early 80’s, it also had other hardships to deal with, yet as they are opening themselves for business, having a proper digital footprint is essential and they do not have one. So even as ABC news gives us: ‘Egypt welcomes back tourists after seven years of political instability despite security concerns‘, it seems to me that they are nowhere near ready at present and there is no direct consideration whether this is due to ‘security concerns’ or if there is another cycle of changes required. No matter what they are waiting for, the digital footprint will be essential to gain growing levels of awareness in that region. I know from others and from the past that diving and water activities used to be decently high, so regaining that footprint should be an essential first step. In addition, even as we agree with the ABC headline ‘Any help on tourism front is a positive for Egyptians‘ without a growing awareness element, it will not matter too much down the road. They can hope for a large infusion as Neom grows, but that would be disastrous too as we see a much more eager growth in both Aqaba and Eilat, if people need to make a choice, the size of Sharm-El-Sheikh dwarves to the visibility in offers that the other two have at present. Even as we saw Reuters treat us in mid-2018 to: “an 80 per cent increase in revenues from the previous year“, the direct reality is that 80% more of little is still not a lot. It is more visible when we consider: “However, for many working in the industry, including in South Sinai, the official increases are not quite paying off yet, as direct flights from places like Russia to Sharm El-Sheikh are yet to resume“, I see the lack of a digital footprint as a direct result of the lack of growth for the moment (I am not ignoring the security issue).

What is lacking in one will benefit the other and that is where larger options for growth in both Aqaba and Eilat become apparent and both could profit. Also, as the entire region is linked more and more to Neom, we see additional options for growth for all concerned, yet none of it matters when awareness is kept to a minimum. No matter how we slice it, the tourism will be on the rise in Eilat soon enough, it will rise enough for Jordan to find cooperation there and grow tourism to both Aqaba and Wadi Rum, both are within 35 Km and as such taking an additional day to see both places will be well worth the effort for all tourists visiting the Gulf of Aqaba. When that starts happening, Haql, who will be on the northern border of Neom City, which is only 30 Km from there would benefit greatly in that regard. Consider any tourist and the option for them to go home stating that they went sightseeing in Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia within a week, remaining close to the beaches and enjoying the sunshine almost every moment in this, who would not be envious hearing those words?

From my point of view, growing the business will take time and it all starts by having a clear digital footprint, without it these places will remain lost and unfound, it is a solution that could be done by most web designers and proper SEO consultants overnight. I merely wonder why no one looked at this before; because there is no way that I was the only one noticing this.

I wonder which of the three will catch on the quickest in 2019. I am not dismissing Sharm-El-Sheikh, I merely remain aware that they have a lot more elements to overcome at present.

 

 

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December 20, 2016 · 14:33

Rephrasing a Minder

Politics tends to be filled full of weird and crazy people, from my point of view those people tend to be members of the Labour party. That view got a new light in the article ‘Labour calls for closer scrutiny of tech firms and their algorithms‘ (at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/dec/18/labour-calls-for-regulation-of-algorithms-used-by-tech-firms). Now, there are two sides to any equation, so let me give you the two that I have.

1. I believe that tech companies have been facilitators for too long, many will not accept any responsibility for way too much. On the other side, I do believe that the only working internet is a free one. So when I read the words from Shadow minister Chi Onwurah, I honestly did not regard her to be anything more than a person seeking the limelight. It is equally important to realise that she is using last week’s amazon debacle in Scotland, with questions how that relates to regulating algorithm, it’s a mere application of employment law, is it not?

From the quote: “The outcomes of algorithms are regulated – the companies which use them have to meet employment law and competition law. The question is, how do we make that regulation effective when we can’t see the algorithm?” I feel slightly cautious to call Chi Onwurah a joke, there is a chance that some of this was lost in translation, if not, she has a larger problem to deal with. That problem will be clearly visible when she decided to look into a mirror. So why to look at my point of view?

You see, there are no regulations on algorithms, they are basically formulas with a solution. In addition she states: “greater scrutiny of the mathematical formulas that now control everything from the tailored news served to Facebook members to the speed at which workers are required to move around an Amazon warehouse“. I think that we need to look a little closer at the last statement. You see, it is highly likely that any staff members would need to meet a certain amount of jobs for shipment and delivery. Yet how feasible is that requirement? I can’t tell from the description that was given a week ago, too many variables missing, that does not make the approach regulated. Yet like in any job, workers have ‘responsibilities’, yet more important, they have rights. These are clearly set in most countries of the Commonwealth, so how does that equate to apparent regulated algorithms.

2. The openness of any system will silently advocate the abuse of it. A not so good example was given by the Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/04/google-democracy-truth-internet-search-facebook), where we see ‘Google, democracy and the truth about internet search‘. We get Carole Cadwalladr with the quote ‘and this was Google’s answer: Jews are evil. Because there, on my screen, was the proof: an entire page of results, nine out of 10 of which “confirm” this‘, which started with typing 7 letters ‘are Jews’, which is an issue from character one onward. She then tries to dilute the issues by setting the image of the search of ‘are women evil’, probably to ease the tension, but the damage is done, short-sighted (as I see it) she continues. So whilst she wastes two paragraphs on titles of the slightly anti-Semitic nature, which she then sets in an atmosphere as “I feel like I’ve fallen down a wormhole, entered some parallel universe where black is white, and good is bad. Though later, I think that perhaps what I’ve actually done is scraped the topsoil off the surface of 2016” and she ends with “This isn’t a secret Nazi cell lurking in the shadows. It’s hiding in plain sight“. As I personally see it, she is the person who has been standing behind an iron for most of her life and now she sees her first microwave, a cliché if I ever saw one.

You see, the article goes on for some time and there are really good parts in it too, although the spatial map is a bit of nerdy space we could have gone without, the issue I never see properly addressed is that the term ‘are women evil’ and on number one is a WordPress blog, literally with the link ‘sheddingoftheego.com/2015/06/25/are-women-evil/’ and the title ‘Are Women Evil?‘ literally a perfect match for what the person was seeking. Google worked perfectly. What is ignored and what influences many sights, especially on how Google Rankings are influenced. Now Google has a way to counter it, yet this is not immediately done and it is not perfect either. Places like Reddit are actively working on posting whatever they need to raise their ranking and the rankings of their customers. It is interesting that the Guardian, the Huffington Post and Forbes take absolutely ZERO time to explain the games that SEO’s are playing to influence ranking through scripts. because it is in the end what someone was seeking for, yet the fact that this is the direct value for SEO’s and terms like ‘Tips on how to improve your website’s ranking on Google’s search engine results’ were also ignored in these articles giving rise to the one sided and unbalanced view the press is giving, whilst those in the digital media all know that this is done and those who are doing it usually have a massive tag list ready to add to EVERY story they write.

So when we see the quote “Many search results are now reinforcing extreme views, with articles denying the holocaust or disparaging women increasingly appearing at the top of the rankings“, we need to wonder Chi Onwurah should even be allowed to be Shadow Minister of Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, or Just the elected MP for Sesame Street. By the way, what I did not know is that this department is also responsible in the area of Intellectual Property, so if Labour ever wins, we need to get scared fast.

So getting back to the MP in my sights, it is important for her to realise not just what a google search does and what it shows, but the elements that influence it and what happens under the real guise and the influenced guise of what people are looking for. By the way, her article acted for possible millions of additional clicks, because she raised the issue, whilst not raising the alert of how the numbers get influenced. So, as we go down the article, we do need to stop at a part that matters a lot. This is seen in the quote “Social media platforms are being blamed for allowing the spread of misinformation and online abuse, conditions which some argue are fuelling the resurgence of extreme politics in America and western Europe“, which is a fair point, yet as bullies and trolls can hide behind the freedom of speech without accountability, there is little chance of this changing, in addition, this isn’t a transgression from 68 million people in the UK, it is the search result and interaction of billions of internet users on the planet, so as there is no localised situation, misinformation and online abuse remains. In addition, as Chi Onwurah should clearly realise, when we see webpages with quotes like ‘Millions of People Are Cancelling Their Netflix Account Because Of This One Site‘, whilst the link looks like a cookie 2 miles long, all set to improve visibility. The media at large, including the UK make use of professional cookie, tags and ranking strategies and all kinds of advertisement counters, so when she is talking about regulations, setting anchors against the exploitative use of cookies might not be the worst idea. In addition to that thought, whilst labour was in office, they did zero to get the tax accountability rolling on corporations, so to see this quote “need to take responsibility for the unintended consequences of the algorithms and machine learning that drive their profits” in the reality of the law (the act of facilitation), she needs to realise that her statement is empty and hollow to say the least. So when we see “we need a tech-savvy government to minimise the downside by opening up algorithms to regulation as well as legislating for greater consumer ownership of data and control of the advertising revenue it generates“, she is not unreal, she is utterly unrealistic for even considering to open up that tar pit, because once we see that regulation come to ground, the economic algorithms are the first one we will have a go at and at that point, when that reality comes knocking, she will soon be the loneliest politician in the history of the UK. In addition, is it not interesting how Bing was not mentioned once in all of this? Why is that Chi Onwurah? Basically this is an act of discrimination, however let’s not nit-pick in an article that is already shoddy in several ways.

The software engineering reality (historically speaking) is that the Google search results and Google ranking was filed in 1998 with a priority in 1997. Lawrence Page realised that the content on the internet would be growing exponentially and as others were concentrating on corporations and corporate views the founders of Google looked at a much bigger picture, so finding anything would sooner rather than later become a massive issue.

In an age when the ‘great’ internet companies were about image and looking cool, Google started to get professional. In the days of Yahoo, Yahoo was the search engine of choice. Alta Vista, later Excite and a few others were garbage from week 1 whilst never catching up in any novel way. Yahoo started in 1994 and they were leaders for a while, and in the 90’s as Yahoo grew its value, they started to lag behind. Now the irony is that Yahoo got started at Stanford and the Google rank patent was designed and invented at Stanford too. By the time someone started to ask the right questions it was already too late and the Google patent for ranking gave them exclusivity which will last a little while longer, but others are now considering the consequence that Google Rank patent will still be in effect when G5 starts, as the issue of ranking is still growing near exponentially as more and more files are added and with G5 it will take on an additional dimension.

now we see the issues that are brought to the foreground in what I regard as a half-baked shadow ministers approach, asking ‘questions’ and implying regulations, all this whilst a below par informed level of knowledge is shown in the articles they set to press. One of the issues is actually shown in one paragraph in the Huffington Post “Finally—and this is the key point—even without human intervention, Google’s algorithm, while doing exactly what it’s supposed to do, routinely boosts one candidate higher in search rankings simply because of normal “organic” search activities“, which is the cornerstone. As we know, organic search (what you type in the google search bar) is used, yet what happened when this is done through scripting? What if a few of the 200 parameters gets influenced from outside though scripted actions, again and again? That part was never clearly mentioned, but it is the bread and butter of nearly every SEO, to get the position and ranking of their clients to the very top, in every possible way and method and the shadow minister does not give any visibility to it, the visibility it requires and deserves.

That is the flaw in all this and this is the need to rephrase a minder, a minder who as I saw it never understood the plot, or she did know and she was misinforming the readers to some extent, yet how much requires misinformation and was that not what she was accusing social media of? So as we await Labours industrial paper, we will have a few more options to have fun of labour especially as they define supervision whilst again not getting any results in proper corporate tax legislation, not even as suggested proper corporate tax legislation.

taxformulaSo should we see the taxation algorithm for large firms where x is the taxable amount, b is revenue and a is tax deductible options, you know that it is not just the regulations of algorithms she got wrong.

 

I’ll let you decide.

 

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