Archives for January 2022

Why is Bitcoin relevant with regards to the Great Reset?

Probably you have noticed. There is a lot of buzz about an ongoing or upcoming Great Reset conducted by the World Economic Forum (WEF) under the supervision of Claus Schwab. What does this entail and why is Bitcoin in this context discussed as well?

The fact of the matter is that the chairman of the WEF, Klaus Schwab, has written a book about the Great Reset. His vision for the world order in this book is supported by world leaders and a powerful financial-economic club of wealthy CEO´s. These politicians, influencers and powerbrokers meet up yearly at Davos in the Swiss alps, or lately virtually due to the pandemic.

According to Schwab offers the pandemic a unique window of opportunity to restructure the current global economy for rebuilding a better post-corona world with the UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals in mind. A more sustainable form of capitalism is needed: stakeholder capitalism. A business should not be run based on profit only. It should go above the interests of shareholders and entail the wellbeing of all stakeholders associated with the business. A business should create long-term value for all stakeholders and not to maximize profits for only shareholders at the expense of other stakeholders. Free market forces should be constrained, neo-liberal principle tamed. The world should strive for a more equitable form of capitalism with more equal outcomes for all.

In order to create more growth and prosperity the use of new technologies should be used in order to bring a fourth industrial revolution. The power of 3D-printing, robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), Augmented Reality (AR), data mining and cloud computing should be used. The global economy should be more digitized and connected with the Internet of Things (IoT). Even humans could get integrated. The Great Reset has a trans-humanistic agenda. Biology and technology are getting merged.

The WEF and the book of Claus Schwab do not dive deep into the financial aspect of this Great Reset. This is the domain of the IMF and the BIS. Nevertheless, it has become clear that central bank digital currencies (CBDC) are an essential component for the financing and smooth operating of this new social-economic order. The current fiat-financial system is not able to support the Great Reset vision. A new digital infrastructure is required for, for example, the facilitation of IoT-networks and the implementation of special direct stimulus programs, like Global Basic Income. CBDC´s are programmable and could be used for efficient taxation, stimulus programs and surveillance of the currency streams. More effective monetary and fiscal policies could be contrived for realizing the Great Reset and creating the equal outcomes the WEF and UN is looking for.

Nevertheless, this top-down all knowing approach is problematic as in fact the current stakeholders of the system are centralizing their power. The WEF, IMF and UN will gain further in importance. Supranational entities are in fact to gain, like the supranational, so called multinationals, have gained financially the most during the pandemic. More importantly, the Great Reset does not address the elephant in the room: unstainable exponentially growing global debt based on fiat-money printers of banks and central banks. Inflation is everywhere and interest rates are falling. In fact, the current financial system with negative interest rates and negative yielding debt is debasing the purchasing power of normal working people around the world. The Great Reset does not address this and thus will not improve this. In contrary, according to the World Economic Forum own words people will own nothing and be happy. A central bank digital currency will be easy to distribute for social programs, easy to tax, inflate and of course confiscate. This is digital money is not sound money people do not own, can save and spend as they do see fit. This type of unrestricted centralized control over the money of people is problematic.

This is why Bitcoin is important. Bitcoin is digital gold and an alternative sound money system for this globalized digital information age. It provides a necessary alternative decentralized financial system for long term savings. It is a safe haven for realizing financial sovereignty during a Great Reset of which the outcome for regular working people is still unclear. For example, increasing inflation and the further debasement of weak currencies in developing countries. There are many unknowns. Besides, as the history of collective top-down programs have often shown: the way to hell is based on good intentions. We might proactively start to accumulate some bitcoin before it is too late, just in case….

If you’ve been on the board of a condo or co-op or a landlord for an apartment in New York City or any large city in the U.S., chances are you would have met the dreaded property manager. There is no shortage of horror stories about property managers that are rude, inefficient, and incompetent. But that era is coming to an end. Resident satisfaction is more important than ever, and property managers need to up their game. Here are some tips for owners to find the right property manager for their building.

Fluent in Communication

A large component of property management is communication. A property manager is the liaison between the building owners and the tenants, and will often be expected to find the happy medium that keeps both sides satisfied. They may also have to manage in-house maintenance staff, contracted construction vendors, or public officials.

A property manager never sleeps. They are expected to be ready to respond to issues at any hour of the day and solve pressing problems that are affecting the residents. Some property managers have website portals with forms for residents to submit maintenance requests and urgent inquiries. However, unless they can reply to these forms promptly, these forms can be more hassle than help.

Aside from troubleshooting, property managers should be able to communicate clearly with building residents about any scheduled maintenance such as elevator repair, pool cleaning, or lobby disinfection. Residents should receive these notifications at least two weeks before the scheduled dates so that they can respond accordingly to requests. The same goes for routine unit inspections.

On Top of All Things

Maintaining the value and quality of the property in question is central to the property manager’s role. Routine inspections and preventative maintenance will allow you to have a good overall view of the health of the property and remedy small issues before they become big problems. Keeping the building in tip-top shape not only makes owners happy but also shows residents that you are serious about their wellbeing.

Property managers should use checklists to ensure that they do not miss any tasks that have to be done. From a daily maintenance checklist to a broader monthly property health inspection, working off a checklist can assist managers and building maintenance staff in covering all bases. Keeping documentation of all repair and maintenance actions can also help owners prove due diligence if there are any disputes.

Although you may be taking fabulous care of your property, accidents do happen. A burst pipe or a stuck elevator can rapidly take your resident satisfaction level down to zero. In such cases, property managers need to have a team of trusted staff and vendors ready to fix problems. If your manager responds quickly but the repairman takes several days to show up, the bad press will still fall on your shoulders.

Engaging and Proactive

Resident satisfaction is important for property managers. Happy and contented tenants are stable tenants and consistent sources of income for owners. Resident feedback is a valuable way for property managers to improve their service. Property managers should be able to respond to feedback—positive or negative—with grace and authenticity. You can also allow direct feedback from residents to hear unbiased reviews on how your property managers are doing.

The property manager is the curator of the community. They screen new tenants, keep existing ones happy, and deal with problematic residents. Some large properties hire a community manager for the specific purpose of engaging residents and building a community vibe. Community managers keep residents updated on social events happening in the area and host resident gatherings such as potlucks or pool parties.

For properties with fewer doors, the property manager will often take on the role of the community manager. By building individual relationships with the residents, property managers will become trusted confidants and will receive genuine feedback and suggestions. When they understand the residents, property managers can be proactive in making adjustments that will make your tenants happy and your building a wonderful place to live.

Taking it Online

Last but not least, use technology to your advantage. It is the 21st century and we can order transport and groceries at the press of a button, so why not bring that innovation into property management? A group of creative property managers has revolutionized NYC property management by creating a digital property management platform.

The platform offers instant chat, personalized updates, building feeds, and a host of features for residents to get the information and assistance that they need in seconds. For building owners, it provides vendor recommendations, maintenance scheduling, and digital financials. The platform can even renegotiate vendor contracts and save you thousands of dollars.

Modern problems require modern solutions. Letters, forms, and telephone calls are a thing of the past. The tech-savvy residents of today love responsiveness and progress updates. By streamlining the communication and property management process, both building owners and residents can look forward to more comfort and contentment. Say goodbye to the grumpy property managers of yesterday and hello to better customer service and building control.

While many of us may be familiar with the IVR voice talent that you hear over the automated answering machine or the increasingly human-like responses of virtual assistant technology such as Alexa and Siri, not many of us know how they came to be. Especially in the case of fully automated programs such as the artificial intelligence (A.I.) seen in sci-fi, it may seem improbable or nearly impossible that they are able to respond to just about any question without hesitation.

The process behind how these voices are curated and generated is complex and labor intensive, and certainly takes more than a single recording session in order to develop. Not to mention the fact that such programs have to be able to “read” any piece of text thrown at them no matter the subject matter. Furthermore, over the years, software developers have been doing their best to make A.I.s seem human-like, both in terms of responses as well as how they sound. Although to some it may cross into uncanny-valley territory, the fact of the matter is that as the capabilities of voice synthesis software have continued to develop, the voices on everything from Global Positioning Systems (GPS) to that in the latest action movies are increasingly able to be pass as human. So how do they do it?

Break It Down

All speech, no matter if it’s from an organic vocal tract or a computer’s speakers, is made from small units of sound. The technical name for these small units are “morphemes.” The smallest morphemes are captured in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), in which each symbol of the IPA represents a single type of sound. However, it is remarkably difficult to make some of these sounds in an isolated manner and even more difficult to artificially create in a way that sounds accurate to the human ear.

So how do programmers and developers get past this? Well, the simplest solution is to bring in experienced voice actors and have them read a variety of texts. This description is of course deceptively simple. With over 160 symbols in the IPA and thousands of ways to combine them into even a simple consonant-vowel pair, to try and record the whole scope of sounds a human is capable of making in a single recording is nearly impossible.

Does This Sound Right?

To be completely fair, no language in the world uses the full suite of 160 IPA symbols, and in fact most of them use only a small proportion of the sounds. However, with the increasingly multi-ethnic and global reach of the internet, this also brings in many new sounds and words that a language might not use on a regular basis. For example, monolingual speakers of English may find it challenging to differentiate between the tonal languages such as the Chinese languages and Vietnamese. So what happens if Siri is asked to read an article talking about various tourist attractions in China that have Chinese names?

Therefore, trained voice actors often have to carefully listen to the original source language and to study how the words are pronounced in order to best replicate them. Trained voice actors are often acutely aware of how they sound and will do their best to accurately convey the correct pronunciation of a word while trying to remain sounding natural. This is, of course, no mean feat, and it involves constant updates and recording sessions that utilize a variety of texts in order to maximize the range of sounds from a single voice actor.

Get The Right Tools For The Job

While it may seem that all you need to do is to remix the sounds from an audio recording in order to form a new sentence, it’s actually not that easy to do. Although anyone can get their hands on cheap (or even free) audio mixing software, actually developing a program that can understand questions and respond appropriately is actually a lot more difficult.

Think about it: There are over 5 billion searches on google each day and around 500 million of them use Siri. How can you possibly anticipate all the possible whacky internet searches that come with the sheer size of the user base?

The current ability of many such programs is mainly due to advances in how we train various pieces of software. Many use either Deep Neural Networking or Hidden Markov Models, and the math behind them is more than a little horrifyingly complicated. However, the main thing to note is that such training programs are able to cycle through thousands of possibilities and permutations with every new piece of information that you feed it.

Computer programs have come a long way from the huge monstrosities in the 60s that worked using a punch card system. Now they are incorporated into a majority of households and are an integral part of life. Today programs are becoming more and more human-like, finding their voice, and seemingly gaining more and more awareness. As technology continues to progress, we are likely to see this trend towards life-likeness continue.