Tag Archives: UK

November 17, 2022 · 20:13

Brain drain, by design

I was sitting in my room, enjoying the sounds of David Bowie. Then the track ‘This is not America’ came. It took me back to 1985, the movie ‘The Falcon and the Snowman’ which uses that song was released. I saw it, but I did not get it. You see, we steal for our governments and we commit murder for our governments, these things happen, yet I personally never understood treason I never accepted that act. I believe traitors are due a bullet to the back of their head. They are a little better than child molesters, but not by much. 

And at that point the mind started to move the cogs. You see we see acts of treason against employees all the time, but we ignore it. Some listen to the reason of Wall Street and that is when people get hurt, it is business as usual for Wall Street and America. But what happens when someone takes that given foundation am makes something of that. In this we see India and a conglomerate is acquiring talent. These people are offered a choice of two places. One in Himachal Pradesh and one close to the Kumarakom Lake Resort. To places, one for summer and one for winter. These are closed resorts and they are set as 5 star resorts. The difference is that these two resorts are only for the invited. As India sees the betrayal of staff, these people are approached and offered a different way of life. They merely have to create IP, the value is the ante for staying there, when breakthroughs are made, when these people make the numbers they are off for the rest of the year if they want. Optional these people can work forward, as such if they create the IP that exceeds the numbers they are given the option to relax and rest. A person could work three months in year one and if the value exceeds the numbers he has a paid vacation until the end of year two. All orders these people have are managed online. And that is how their version of paradise works. Yet there is more, that project is managed by India and China. They are sitting on a wealth of IP, and as the people create and commit, they are treated like kings, nothing is missing in their lives, their kids get the best private tutors and their partners have access to a life of wealth and good health. The one downturn is that they cannot leave the resort. 

The beginning of a miniseries, it will be too large for a movie, but a 4-6 episode mini series with a run time of 60-90 minutes could work. China remains below the surface (at lest in the beginning) and the idea that we see a list of damages

United States $275 billion, United Kingdom $43 billion, European Union $27 billion (and so on) and now consider that the stage where two 5 star resorts are created to facilitate for the acquisition of $345 billion dollar. This could work and the settings I saw over the last week where Google and Amazon are firing staff, people are in a runt to make ends meet and they casually left $6 billion on the floor, I reckon this approach to a new kind of logistic assault on nations is merely a heartbeat way. It is not 5G, it is not the stage of greed. It is facilitated by the simple need of people wanting a decent life, the question is do the people still remember what a decent life was? In this day and age the cogs of labour are changing and companies are finding out that holding the people against the bottom line of a corporation will facilitate such places and there is a chance that some will be willing to move to a place like China. The US has a much bigger problem than they realise and that is the setting for this script and exercise. It took me 3 hours to set up the station for this story and consider, what happens when 200 engineers take the road towards a decent life and a decent way of life. You figure out how much certain places could lose and more importantly how that impacts their economies, because the last time I checked the loss of $275 billion in value could drive a place like the US into utter bankruptcy. They all forgot about what happens when the makers and creators leave, just like Covid, they were never prepared for that scenario. Why not? And if that I true why not treat those people better? The foundation of  story and optionally a TV series.

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November 12, 2022 · 17:56

The other foot

A thought occurred, it happened earlier today, but my mind was not with the program that runs within me. You see we have a foot we prefer, almost like left handed and right handed, but the foot is less obvious, it is merely in the back of our minds, perhaps it is linked to instinct, perhaps it is less than that, but the setting exists. Yet what happens after? You see we are so of the mind that we walk we do that, and sometimes we run. Then we meet with people who tells us not to run, but to walk. Some have an actual concern. It can be safety, or merely the chance of danger. The other group gives us that setting do that we can be caught up to, we do not run faster than they do, it worries them. 

Yet there is another place. Where we rely on asymmetric gait, it is skipping. The interesting part is that skipping, even for 1-2 minutes a day strengthens you and increases your accuracy. Yet be honest. When was the last time you did that exercise? When do you no longer need to rely on increased strength and accuracy? You thought of that as a child’s game, did you not? 

The other foot is there too. What happens when you start concentrating on moving the other foot first? It is a simple question, did you ask yourself that? What happens when people state that there is no need, you are good as you walk and for a while you suddenly get compliments. Did you consider that someone does NOT want you to increase your mobility? In the 90’s my bosses did something similar. Convince me to NOT learn Oracle. It did not sit well with their exploitation of me, yet I did not learn that lesson until much later, too late actually. Yet in my twilight I have merely a few goals. Sell my IP and get a really nice stake in my retirement. And in good faith those who wronged me will never be allowed near my IP (Microsoft is not invited either). 

Yet the stage is not my IP, this stage is about you. When were you given a real option in the last two years? You see bosses are now no longer in charge (sort of). It is an employee setting and for the most they cannot get a good employee at present. EVERYONE is short of staff. As such this is the time to slam your fist on the table and set precise goals that they have to adhere to, although if you do that, you better deliver on their needs too. 

The AFR (at https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/why-we-don-t-have-enough-workers-to-fill-jobs-in-4-graphs-20220621-p5avcc) gives us in a first graph that the shortage increased by 30% in the last 2 years alone and it is not merely the ageing group. Bosses have short sold their staff for over a decade and now the invoice is due. In the blue collar stage it fluctuates between 20% and a whopping 74%. As such businesses on a global scale have a problem. Fortunately for them they have some options in other fields. Instead of relying on ‘Fake it until you make it’ they need to rely on ‘learn it until you lead it’ and there could be options all over the Commonwealth, Europe and even the US. Places like Oracle can start hiring trainees and after their first courses are passed they can be placed at their customers. Rotating every 6 month until someone ‘Shanghai’ them to become permanent employees. And this is not merely Oracle. There is Oracle, IBM, Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services, end a few others.

The HR departments on a global scale need to alter their Modus Operandi it no longer works the way they think it does. The old days are over and you either adjust or you restrict your business. Of course players like Oracle need an alternative workforce, but there Universities and experienced oldies might be two streams of getting the workforce enabled. In addition they have the ability to enhance cyber knowledge all over the field making their people more enticing than the other ones. There the AFR had another view (at https://www.afr.com/technology/skills-shortage-a-handbrake-for-technology-companies-20220503-p5ai8r) and here we see ‘Skills shortage a ‘handbrake’ for technology companies’ which is merely the top-line. It is “The Australian Information Industry Association’s annual member survey found 75 per cent of technology companies are expecting their revenue to grow by at least 5 per cent this year but are concerned skills shortages will be a barrier to expanding their business.” And that is merely Australia. The commonwealth (especially UK and Canada) have growing issues and the US is in deep trouble and with their approach to everything it is now becoming the least interesting place to work. Plenty of California places (as well as the large players) have an option to syphon services via Canada, which is not a great solution, but better than nothing. In addition we see “AIIA chief executive Ron Gauci says his members are looking offshore to find specialist tech talent” and there we see the first problem, they rely on HR systems that did not evolve, that did not adjust and I see the same BS emails in my inbox to prove it, all half baked ‘invitations’ to come to Malta, they even pay the first month rent. Moving to a place where ‘others’ call the shots? You have got to be joking. When you are young and in the workplace we had 7 years ago, some people might give that a try. In todays setting it does not hold water and that is also a problem in Australia, the people who fell for that approach the last 6-10 years ago now have different stories and their friends are giving it a miss. But some places have options. They merely have to wake up and look at the equation from the other side to see that opportunities and options are there, merely for those willing to throw the gears in another speed setting and start with the other foot, it is seemingly that simple.

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November 7, 2022 · 09:12

Start with the blabla

Yes, that is what it seems like. It feels like merely yesterday that we had COP26 and a young lady calling it a ‘bla bla’ moment. And with the actions of the exiting Brazilian president we might hope that the dangers to the Amazon are over, but I am not convinced. They were given until 2030 to fill there pockets and there is every chance that all but the final 1/3rd of the Amazon will be gone by November 2029. There is also other news COP27 will be held in Sharm-el-Sheikh. It is nice when these things are held in a place I know to some degree. I was there in 1982, there will be a lot of changes, but for some reason it clicks a lot more. The BBC gives us (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-63517078) ‘COP27: ‘Climate chaos’ warning as UN summit begins’ where we are told:

At last year’s summit in Glasgow a number of pledges were agreed:

  • to “phase down” the use of coal – one of the most polluting fossil fuels
  • to stop deforestation by 2030
  • to cut methane emissions by 30% by 2030
  • to submit new climate action plans to the UN

Developing nations – which are at the forefront of climate change – are demanding that previous commitments to finance are upheld.

It is nice to stop deforestation, but Brazil saw that as a moment to increase deforestation by well over 20% at present, so we have that to deal with. In other news the Guardian gave us a list on November 2nd. This list (at https://green-alliance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Global-methane-pledge.pdf) offers “a series of low-cost measures, which it says could reduce methane emissions from their 2020 levels by 43%.” I would state that we do not give livestock Mexican food, but the document is a lot more serious and they give us “The feed additive Bovaer/3-NOP, manufactured by DSM, could cut methane emissions from dairy cows by at least 40 per cent, if it was approved by the Food Standards Agency. It must be fed to cows regularly, making it immediately suitable for dairy cows but less so for outdoor reared beef cattle and sheep.” The two issues I currently have with it is the question whether ‘Bovaer/3-NOP’ has been properly tested for long term issues in beef and milk. We made similar mistakes before, lets not do that again. On the other hand it seems that the stock of DSM will go the roof if this happens. To be honest, with all the issues at hand, I cannot say how useful this meeting will be. Call me a pessimist, but the events following COP26 in Brazil made me weary of progress here and lets be clear Brazil will be the first screaming for money, yet where exactly are these deforestation profits going? 

In other news

I woke up from a weird dream this morning. I was in some kind of marketing trailer. They were running a large screen (85”) and the image war sublime, it allowed for 4K where on the image of a salesperson, and whilst we walked and moved in the trailer the image was captured and placed on the TV, we were midgets walking all over the person on the screen and it was uncanny. The feet the stance were all instantly adjusted to the new stage based on the images captured in the trailer. The angle of the feet, the angle of us as we ascended or declined the salesperson laying on a couch. They called it Oracle Eloquent, and it gets weirder. I looked it up a minute ago and it exists. Or at least Oracle Eloquent exists. I was unaware, I have not talked about Oracle for at least a decade. I learned two things in the dream. Oracle Eloquent was free with the video equipment, it was (I think) a stage of new marketing and direct editing to make video and events in Meta, in addition to this a person had a work login, a deployment login and a third login (not sure what it was). It allowed for some kind of AI based deployment (read: deeper machine learning), it seems that some players are ready for the big players in Meta, what I saw was overwhelming and I think that something like this will appeal for the entire top tier of the Fortune 500. I partially recall seeing some Apple advert and it was amazing, but even now the dream is falling into the realm of shades and beyond my grasp. The trailer was set up for a team of 6, they would be Abel to interact and combine options to create new miracles in a setting that is mobile. As such the trailer could be moved to different Coca Cola locations. But that trailer could be placed in a specific place, linked to power and AC units. A locked setting to get the next Meta trend event to take place. It was all I saw but the thing that threw me the most was “Oracle Eloquent Model. Updating Blob directly using OracleEloquent.” I found it half an hour after the dream, so I am in the dark. I searched my history but for the last two years I have not looked at anything Oracle related. I might have seen something in a place like Verge, but I am unaware of it. The brain makes the weirdest jumps at times. As such I am willing to accept that I could see the name subconsciously, but the rest, I am drawing a blank.

So, that is enough bla bla from me for at least 10 hours.

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October 31, 2022 · 10:28

The path not trodden

That is something that has been with me a lifetime. Even when I was little, being a passenger in a car, I always wondered where the exits led that we passed. Over time, as my knowledge of geography grew I knew where they led, but it was not that simple, although I never realised that at the time. So when I got accepted into Uni something started to stir and I got myself degrees in internet-working and legal studies with a master of Intellectual Property. That did not open the doors I hoped would open, yet it opened up doors inside of me. A much more rewarding part. I started to question almost everything and it led to over a dozen pieces of IP. UTS opened a doorway into how other people were thinking and that was utterly rewarding, because the exits I saw pass by were now in the open for me to explore and a dozen of IP pieces are now mine. Google never looked there, Amazon did not look there and wherever Microsoft is looking and not looking is not something anyone needs to be bothered about. Especially as some give us only 15 hours ago ‘Microsoft warns that October 2022 security updates can cause problems joining domains in Windows 11 and older’, I wonder if Microsoft can actually properly test security updates, they have become too big and the cracks are showing. In all this I found billions in revenue and to be honest, I do not trust a whole lot of wannabe tech firms. You see them on LinkedIn with fortune cookie wisdoms, getting their friends to like their post and liking the posts of friends hoping they gain traction. It is one of the reasons I handed the first part of my IP to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and if part 1 comes through they get a shot at the rest as well. As the large firms contract into the billions, I found additional billions as well as a few more options, because I explored the paths not trodden. Not only that, I found a few new sides that were ignored for longer than anyone would be happy about. When I started to meditate on these parts, my speculation (perhaps presumption) was that they either did not understood what they were looking at, or they didn’t fit it with their ‘marketing’ revenue. And that is the larger station. They are all trying to cash in on advertisements, and as they do that, they left billions on the floor. The certain telling of a limited field of view, like Microsoft. It is still a mystery why dopey googly Google would miss out and for that same reason Amazon, but there you have it, by looking where other race by, you tend to find the gemstones. The problems is which party could want and would pay for these gemstones. I am banking on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the UAE is an option but too far from Sydney at present and there are too many unknowns there too. The fact that the tech firms in the US, UK and EU have the same failing implies that they are all connected and optionally a discriminating source to some, as such I went the other way and now that there is a real chance to take a slice of the marketshare that should have been Google and Amazon (or wannabe Microsoft too) is a larger concern. I did not forget about Apple or IBM, they have focussed areas and they focus on these places as any tech firm will. So they never faltered (not to that degree), and in all this when you start digging and you see how they are all in the same mindset you will see that they miss the same opportunities again and again, which is now amounting to billions. So when you see ‘Google reportedly spends $100 million on avatars to take on TikTok’, or ‘Google making disinformation profitable via ad business: Report’ you get a first view that they are all looking at each other, optionally coveting the piece of pie the other one has and I found a new pie that I would not need to share (well whomever buys my IP). And now we have a new ballgame. The IT representing hundreds of billions of value is ignoring the few percentages that I found and no one else is aware (for now), I actually wonder when they will wake up from their dog eats dog momentum to realise that the dogs fighting over the same bone left half a dozen bones still covered in meat alone. Me as the little chihuahua got those bones as they were seemingly too small, but at 2%-5%, these billions are a lot to a little Chihuahua like me and I am happy with the spoils that they bring, I reckon that Saudi Arabia will be equally pleased. They get to sit at the big tech table and the other players will wonder how that happened. It happened because they followed each other and they all ignored the few exits that made me wonder, they all thought it went nowhere, which tells you more about them than me. And after my first win, the other IP pieces will become interestingly easy to sell, but I am also loyal, as such Saudi Arabia gets to pick first. The others never wanted to show interest, now they do not have to. That is only fair, is it not?

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October 28, 2022 · 23:21

Two things

They are not connected, not in any way, but the first part is too short to make a blog by itself as such I connected the two in separate parts.

Zeus Awakens

I have been brooding on the entry for Zeus, there is no way he can be omitted from the story, it is in one part as he is father to Ares, he is the other grandfather and he will emerge. In part that as our main character is gaining strength, the main character is now becoming a larger concern to the big three. As such I had to add Zeus to some degree and the second season was a decent moment to introduce him. 

It was a nice summer day in France, Nice to be more exact (as it is a nice town). I was sitting on a balcony on the esplanade of Nice, looking at the sea a mere 122 metres to the south. I heard a woman’s voice in the back asking me if I wanted any tea. ‘Yes please Lucia’ I responded and a few minutes later she came with a pot of tea. I saw her shiver and I took a gaze at the thermometer to my left. It was odd, it was slowly going down from the 28 degrees it was a minute ago. In one minute it had cooled down to 19 degrees. Grab the cat I said, I started to close the windows inside, she came in with Charcoal who was clearly feeling the lack of warmth and we closed all the windows. I moved towards the gas heater and turned it on. I didn’t need it, but she would definitely need heat soon enough. I looked at a contraction in the cupboard. It had thermometers, barometers and they were all going nuts. Air pressure was down to 950 and the temperature had gone down to 9 degrees. I looked out and I saw people run for entries wherever they saw one. It was definitely a larger problem, but I had never seen anything like this. The clouds in the air were dissolving, the sky was deep blue and the thermometer was now at 6 degrees. The sea looked calm, the air was quiet and the thermometer kept on declining. Within a minute it was down to 1 degree and it seemed to stop there, in the two minutes that I looked outside, I saw people grab coats. I saw a shopkeeper hand sweaters to some women in bikini as well as to men wearing shorts and t-shirts. The cold was felt everywhere. I noticed that the cat was keeping his body against the heater, it as not used to the cold. Then Lucia screamed, I looked at her and she pointed to the room. A man with long silver hairs was standing there. He was wearing a Victorian suit and he looked at me. I had never seen him before. He raised his hand and sparks flew out of his fingers towards the glass table, he then vanished and the heat came back, I looked at Lucia in puzzlement. I smelled a distinct Ozone air and I looked outside. The heat was coming back and I turned the heater off. I looked outside and the sun was there, the heat came gushing in everywhere and within a minute the temperature was back to 20 degrees. I looked at the table. The glass was there and so was a text, in the glass ‘Ελάτε στην Ακρόπολη, πρέπει να μιλήσουμε’. I got that message loud and clear. So this was my grandfather? Time to learn more about the other branch of the family. I send a mental note to grandpa Hades. “Zeus summoned me, will update you later” I looked at Lucia “It seems I have to make a business trip”, she nodded. She did not understand what was going on, but I got the impression that she was eager to go into denial. “Break the table into small parts, keep the cat away and be careful. Get a new table please.” I walked into the bedroom and got a small bag and from the living room fruit bowl I got my keys, wallet and some small stuff. Time to see Athens again.

Time squandered, time wasted

That was the first thought I had when I saw the Guardian article ‘Profits at world’s seven biggest oil firms soar to almost £150bn this year’. It is not their fault. The article is not what I am commenting on, not really. We get (at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/oct/27/profits-at-worlds-seven-biggest-oil-firms-soar-to-almost-150bn-this-year-windfall-tax) “Mathew Lawrence, the director of Common Wealth, a think-tank, said Shell’s zero windfall tax bill for 2022 showed the levy introduced by Rishi Sunak when he was chancellor in May was “not fit for purpose” and needed significant change”, yes. That is how it starts and I am not saying that the comment is wrong, because that would require me to be an expert on taxation, and that is definitely not me. But consider that I wrote ‘Heating at what price?’ On December 3rd 2018, almost 4 years go (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2018/12/03/heating-at-what-price/).

I mentioned tax overhauls before that, years before than and now we see the impact of inaction and I get that Shell is not wavering, because tax laws were never properly overhauled and now there is a problem. So in 2018 I wrote “It is the first time in history that a Middle Eastern nation has the ability to put the US and EU to shame with their lack of technological progress. They claim to have it, yet Saudi Arabia is making a move towards ‘showing to have it‘, changing the game for both the US and Europe. This is where we see the difference. China and Russia see this as an opportunity, whilst Europe and the US are seeing it as an inconvenience” and now it is no longer an inconvenience, now it is an actual problem and the UK, EU and US are not ready. I warned of these dangers 4 years ago, but they all knew better. How do you feel? Did they know better? Did they know more are were they merely playing stationary, optionally licking stamps. And the opportunity that Russia sees and the opportunity that China sees are different. Russia is out of the equation, but China is now fulfilling what I saw 4 years ago and it will get worse. As China has more and stronger ties with Saudi Arabia they can get more oil and America? They can play indecisive politician, play the pariah game a little more. The UK has its tea grannies (CAAT) messing things up and Europe has little options from the start. All things I wrote about in 2018. And the UN is useless in this case (as I see it). Two things can be seen in very different things, in different ploys. In players and receivers. In actions and lack thereof. Two things almost half a dozen times over and I made clear mention of it in 2018. So as I prepare to sell my IP, I can now see that the timing is near perfect. The players will overreact and by the time they figure out what they could have done I will be retiring. In this it will be either Google versus Amazon, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia versus all others. If one acts the other loses and it will be billions that they lose, if one accepts they will have billions in a direction they never considered before and as I see inaction upon inaction I am wondering if their inactions is why they never saw what they could have gotten. I know it I speculation, but when was the last time anyone left well over 5 billion a year on the floor? And it plays out in the same way that Shell and others are coaching their fortunes. The inactions of others is making them rich, I deeply hope that I get that same bonus, my retirement kinda depends on it. 

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October 25, 2022 · 21:11

Questioning the drawing board

That happens at times, we all have a drawing board, we have an idea or IP and it goes swimmingly and then the floor drops. Not because of the idea or the IP, but the floor drops because you forgot, or were unaware of certain parts. This happens and there is no real blame here not in any direction, it is merely what is. This is currently happening to me. In this my IP bundle 3 was knowingly with some risk, because it is depending on certain Meta evolutions, but over time there would be the stage. Yet in event number one we are confronted with a video regarding Modern Warfare 2 Amsterdam Mission. (At https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_LlSR6-ibA) this is so close to real that the metaverse cannot be that far behind (when they figure out where to put their data centre). This is part presumption (a better from of speculation) and the fact that certain players want a benefit now in the metaverse and that works in part in my favour. Yet my idea was set to a stage where the takings were set to somewhere between two and three billion. In part because of the Meta risk, in part to how things tend to evolve. That is in part the name of the game. Now with the evolution stage being that far pushed, the takings of my IP could be 5-10 times higher and there still is a risk. So what gives? Well there are three cogs in that machine. The speed of adapting to the metaverse. That cog is now a lot smaller (hence quicker adaption) because of some of the Modern warfare 2 imagery. Cog two is personal evolution, this remains steady at the same size, it will go quicker because of cog 1, but not that much faster. Cog three is technological attachment. That one remains a little bit of a mystery. Because of what we see in Modern warfare two, we can assume that the rest will be as great, but that is not a given, there will be congestion and there will be overlap, but it matters as the whole image is now a presumption of what Modern Warfare 2 brings. And that matter as the adaption goes quicker, more will adapt and that quantifies the 5-10 times larger growth then I had foreseen. The risks remain the same, as the adaption is more complete my solution will find a home in a lot more cases than I can anticipate, but that is less presumption and more speculation. Amazon is still the frontrunner, but Google has options here too. Amazon has a few extra benefits (if they adapt), but that does not take Google out of the race, not by a long shot. And this matters in other ways too.

You see, these thoughts raced through my mind when I saw the three day old article ‘90% of schools in England will run out of money next year’ (at https://www.theguardian.com/education/2022/oct/22/exclusive-90-of-uk-schools-will-go-bust-next-year-heads-warn) there we see “Nine out of 10 schools in England will have run out of money by the next school year as the enormous burden of increased energy and salary bills takes its toll, the Observer can reveal”, I do not completely agree with this. I can agree on the entire energy setting. The UK and other nations are dealing with the Russian part of the equation, as such we are given “electricity and gas costs for schools in his chain had rocketed from £26,000 a year to £89,000” and there is no way that any organisation can foresee a rise of well over 300%, as such other solutions need to be found. We can return to covid stages and shut the schools down for now. This could work in my favour, but I prefer not to go there. Amazon will have a much larger benefit there and both Google and Apple are close by. In all this Apple could trump Google, but that too is speculation. What does matter is that these two elements have similar solutions and we need to look at solutions. The concepts of schools are now more and more outdated. Outdated might not be the right word, but the drain on energy needs to be stopped and as such schools in winter become a no-no. But that same setting gets pushed to homes and they are equally not entirely on the mark for dealing with this. The reality is crass and not that nice. But you need proper isolated warehouses where you can place a few hundred students all with proper internet access, all with power supplies. Well, that or properly isolate schools which should have been done decades ago. The lesser evil needs to be found and I am not sure what the best for education is. As such we have a drawing board, but we need to question that one too. That drawing board is set to old standards, new standards are required and I am not sure where to find them, and I need not worry as it is not on my plate, but that stage is altering enough that we all need to think what is possible here. There is a larger stage and that is on the politics (of the UK), the stage that 90% runs out of funds is only in part on energy, the rest is the consequence of inaction. We want to give blame but the Covid era was a year and too little was done there, the Russian invasion of the Ukraine made the mess complete but that too is only in part (for western Europe). I believe that Strasbourg and London should have had large debates with Elon Musk on the energy issues and that could have been started well over two years ago, now it is seemingly too late and one generation will get the mess of inactions. That is almost a given. I could be wrong, but see of what is happening and see what was not done, not merely in the UK, in most of Western Europe. The early bird that hesitates gets worms. An expression seen in 1988, so this is not new. I will let you mull over what could be a solution for schools, but I am not sure if there is a good one at present, it might be a little too late for several solutions. 

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October 25, 2022 · 04:25

Is no sense and nonsense the same?

I woke up from something and it nagged me a bit. It started last week when two idiots decided to treat a masterpiece of Van Gogh to tomato soup and yesterday I saw the wax museum where two royals were treated to pie slaps. The second was not as bad as the first, but it still nagged me. So lets give them what they want in a way they never wanted it. You see they import around 3310 GBP Million in oil per month. The bulk of it comes from Norway and the US. There is some from the Netherlands and Saudi Arabia as well and in previous years from Russia as well. So lets set them all to zero. And there is a small addendum. As long as at least one member of ‘Just stop Oil’ is still, alive the agreement cannot be stopped. I wonder how long it takes for them to realise that they are the cause of hardship? You see petrol in the UK is about 175p per litre (a small deviation between unleaded, leaded and diesel, but not much). I reckon within two weeks that price will go up to 355p or even 455p. Consider that there are 2,500 per million tradies and most of them rely on their vans to get around. This implies that their prices go up by a lot and that will have several negative impacts for some work will fall away. 

So how long until one of them will realise that a British wrench is also known as a murder wrench? And as long as even one is alive the agreement holds, no import of oil. You really think that they stand much of a chance with well over 150000 tradies wanting their skin? I think not and the larger problem is that these people are not that intelligent, they were coached by others. But that is not my problem, it will be theirs soon enough. So why don’t we give them what they want? We might be able to stop two problems all at once. Just a thought mind you.

I will let you decide if there was no sense to my idea, or was it all nonsense? Yet consider that these idiots will hurt a piece of art we all feel strongly about. At that point what chance to they have when we all lose our patience? 

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October 24, 2022 · 19:04

When is a stamp not a stamp?

That is the thought I was confronted with when I saw an article this morning. It linked to an article to the beginning of the year and it was about stamps, and I initially ignored it (there is only so much I can read), but today I saw the article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-63367733) giving me ‘Royal Mail: 100 days left to use stamps without a barcode’ and this time it held my attention. In the article we see “Royal Mail introduced barcoded stamps in February, saying they would open up possibilities for “new innovative services.” The long-term plan is that people will be able to watch videos, find out information and send birthday messages to each other through the barcodes which can be scanned with the Royal Mail app”, but the implications are a lot larger. 

There are all kinds of intelligence implications not short term, but long term. If it can be paired to this setting, it could also be paired to where that stamp was bought, over time we can connect it to who bought it and that list extents almost indefinitely. QR codes are that solution too and let no lulling of some innocent setting tell you otherwise. It makes sense, the UK has billions of pounds getting shipped through royal mail under the eyes of the police, under the eyes of intelligence and something had to give. There was no other way, and frankly it is kind of ingenious, it seems no one else had the idea and that gives the UK an edge for a much longer time. 

And as I look at the solution, I wonder why no one else hd the idea, I certainly did not. I still mail things at time, but it is rare that I do so and we accepted a stamp as the most mundane of solutions and someone (a Brit no less) decided to evolve the stamp and how it is used. I reckon that someone in GCHQ will also be bucking for a promotion, because if I see this right, the criminals who rely on the mail solution will soon be out of business and that is a victory that should not now or ever be underestimated.  

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October 23, 2022 · 20:56

Silence is sewage

Yes, that is quite the difference from the original ‘silence is golden’ isn’t it? But that thought started recently when I was given ‘UN, international community condemn Houthi drone attack on Yemeni oil terminal’ (at https://www.arabnews.com/node/2186011/middle-east). The idea started when I had a look and not entirely to my surprise I could not find anything from the BBC, the Guardian, the NOS, and that list goes on. Houthi terrorist actions continue, using Iranian materials and the west ignores it, how quaint. They did mention that Iran is delivering its drones to Russia, but the political parties are all about a hands off regarding Iran. I did make mention of an optional solution to take care of Iranian and Russian nuclear plants, perhaps I need to make that public domain. Perhaps they will wake up then. But back to the events at hand. The Arab News gives us “The UN on Saturday condemned an armed drone attack launched By Yemen’s Houthi militia on a southern oil terminal in Hadramout province a day earlier, saying it was a “deeply worrying” military escalation”, well it isn’t in most newspaper, so I reckon it is not that Important or that critical. And we also get a name with “I condemn the aerial attack claimed by Ansar Allah yesterday”, we also see very little regarding that terrorist and the BBC or the Guardian. One could speculate that the Iranian stakeholders in the UK have a lot more sway than anyone is willing to acknowledge, yet that is mere speculation from me. In addition we are given “Bin Mubarak said he also held a call with the US ambassador to Yemen, Steven Fagin, to discuss the consequences of the attacks on civilian facilities and commercial ports, and how it would worsen the humanitarian crisis in Yemen, adding he “demanded strong measures to put an end to Houthi terrorism.”” It sounds nice, but if the media shuns it to this degree, there is every chance that the Americans will not do too much in the end. They have so far not done anything successful in reigning in Iranian events, so I would not hold my breath on this either. 

The larger problem is not the these events are happening, it is that the powerful voices are lulling the people to sleep, ignoring what Houthi terrorists are up to in Yemen and in Saudi Arabia, all funded by Iran and we need to wake up, we need to see that Iran is becoming a much larger danger than we could ever be comfortable with. For China it is yet another option to spread its influence in the middle east. Consider cardinal Richelieu (Alexander Dumas, the 4 musketeers) stating “who will do something about these blasphemers?” The informative path is open, and those doing something will end with a lot more than the silent ones, but the US and UK could enjoy a further restriction of a million barrels a day. Do you think they will not buy them? The US has had an option to do something for well over 2 years and they did not. It was all about the pariah Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud, but what happened when the US needed cheap oil (for whatever reason, they sell most of theirs). Yes, and now the ante is upped because no one is doing anything about Iran, no one is acting when inaction is no longer acceptable. 

When the Yemeni port is hit, when that port becomes inoperable, we will see some tea granny (CAAT) make claims that this was all the fault of Saudi Arabia, all whilst it is the western world that is in part to blame as they are hiding behind ‘Silence is sewage’ and they are fine with that, t least their stakeholders are, are you? This war has been going on for well over 8 years. Not in any point in time did terrorists have such a hold in disturbing a population and several nations. 

The fun part (for me) is that if China makes a stand, when it actually does something about the terrorists by supplying the Yemeni and Saudi governments what they need, what will the west do? For them it will then be too late. There is now a larger area that is in the mix and it could cost the EU and the US a lot more than they ever imagined and the papers will prove me right. Which paper had anything on the attack on  the harbour in Hadramout province? So far I found France24 with a decent piece, the rest? As far as I can tell, not a word. Why is that?

The age of Silence is golden is over, it was never a real golden era to begin with, it only supported greed driven entities and it supported them well. We need to change the book of tactics before it is too late for too many, but that is merely my view on the matter.

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October 12, 2022 · 19:52

No one wonders?

It all starts with a BBC article (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63207771) where we are given ‘Chinese technology poses major risk – GCHQ Chief’, there are two settings here. The first one was the BS approach by the Yanks (that place between the Pacific and the Atlantic river, South of Canada) and the UK issues. The Americans basically called Huawei (China) evil and refused to hand over any evidence. The UK stated that no foreign nation should be in charge to a major infrastructure. The UK is setting the centre stage to policy and that is fair and decent. In the Netherlands that same policy was used by founders Rob Romein and Franz Hetzenauer to create Tulip computers and they got rich real quick. You say Potato, I say Tomato. But policy is a real issue and that is fair in any government. So today I get to see “China has deliberately and patiently set out to gain “strategic advantage by shaping the world’s technology ecosystem”, the head of the intelligence agency told an audience at the Royal United Service Institute for its annual security lecture. Sir Jeremy argued the Chinese Communist Party was aiming to manipulate the technology that underpins people’s lives to embed its influence at home and abroad and provide opportunities for surveillance”, OK that is a decent accusation and it will not be easy to prove that, or basically it will be a stretch to prove it. We then get “China’s development of the BeiDou satellite system – a rival to the established GPS network which he said had been built into exports to more than 120 countries. He claimed it could be used to track individuals or combined with plans to knock out other countries’ satellites in the event of a conflict”, which is one approach, but could the Chinese government not claim that GPS could do exactly the same thing? In addition we get “the intelligence chief said he would not stop children using TikTok – which is owned by Chinese firm ByteDance – although he said young people should be more aware of their personal data and how it could be shared”, OK fair point and awareness of personal data is a good thing, but doesn’t Facebook (and Meta) do he same things? I have seen advertisements on Facebook that should never have appeared, as such too many players are doing exactly the same thing, but for us China is red and evil, would they not claim the same thing regarding Facebook and YouTube? We are then given “He said the UK should continue to welcome students from China but “be really clear on the areas of technology where we will require additional safeguards”. Areas like artificial intelligence and quantum computing were particularly important, he told the audience”, which is a fair point. Although it is not out of the question that this should be a marker between commonwealth countries and any other country. In that regard places like Canada, Australia and New Zealand have to agree on similar settings. In this Sir Jeremy Fleming (a more dashing lookalike of Michael Andrew Gove) has a few issues on the table that make sense and although we wonder why the Americans are so easily accepted, they issues all make sense. It reflected for me how I am happy that I offered my IP to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and not to China, although the new partnership between China (Tencent Technologies) and Microsoft is not making any waves at all, funny ain’t it? I wonder if we are hitting a critical point of nationalism at this point, and where should the inventors sit? The fact that Google and Amazon are decently clueless on where I found the grounds of 50 million subscriptions will also hit Facebook at some point and I accidentally stumbled on this, the invention had a different foundation and direction, but as I aw where it could take me, I left it to these two titans to slug it out and Google dropping the Google Stadia implies that they are losing more than they reckoned on and that leaves Amazon (who is seemingly still in the dark), so now my hopes are that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia accepts my offer. But the underlying stage also exists. I still have my 5G hardware, a stage I saw two years ago and no one else is seeing this, they are all hoping that Facebook makes good on their Meta and they are all in some wait state that it comes for them, I designed my hardware with the view on Neom, as well as the changing stage of marketing, a stage that ill be very different from 2024 onwards (OK, it might be 2025). But those in a “wait-state” will lose out if they cannot adjust their course and I will (extremely hopefully) retire with a nicely filled bank account to sing out my retirement with good food and seeing nice places, I worked 40 years, so I feel entitled to my decently whistling wish. Yet between the lines there are battlefronts. The issue for the Commonwealth to find the right allies, to align with the proper parties and be decently neutral against the others. Yes, we all oppose Russia in the Ukraine stage and that is fine, but do not for one second believe that America is our ally, our friend. Their friendship changes election after election and in the end they are merely their own ally, so when America implodes, and it will, we should be aware and we should be willing to continue with true allies, one that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia could be, if we could for one minute stop listening to stakeholders, whose alliance is their wallets and their wallets alone. I tried to warn people for 3-5 years that stakeholders are corporate tools that releases the media as their goals see fit, I showed years of data in that direction and soon there will be no choice, if they get their wish, they fill their wallets, they say ‘Oops!’ And they walk away, and where we will we all be at that point? The larger issue is not why we were unaware, but where the media was when the elements were in view. The missing Iran reports regarding Yemen, the list of Pi Phone articles that are only now showing up, the serious questions that the media should have lobbed at Jack Dorsey and Twitter over the last few months and the list goes on, filtered information is not news, it is news founded on discrimination and that is the stage we face, but what else are we not given? Who knew on the partnerships between Chinese Tencent and Microsoft? Who asked the serious questions? I will let you seek and search that part yourself. 

So many question and no one wonders how a simple guy like me has the inside track on 50 million optional customers, you think Google would have dropped their Stadia if they could gain 50,000,000 optional customers? Figure it out and yes, some will consider the main point that I might be spreading that stuff that grows the grass in Texas, but I asked myself questions and also doubted myself. Stakeholders will not do that, they will merely proclaim that the other side does not exist (or is irrelevant). 

It is time for you to wonder what else they are missing and that is aimed at my 5G IP. A side of 5G none of them have. 

Enjoy the day, you should, preferably before the Russian decide to make all the Ukrainians glow in the dark.

 

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