Where is the value of Twitter and why I'm suspending my personal account

As you may know I am fascinated by large numbers and the difficulty of perceiving their magnitude. Nobody can deny that the purchase of twitter by Elon Mask is a big number!

What is the estimated value of Elon Mask's fortune? 210 billion dollars as of October 27, 2022 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk) How much has Elon Mask paid for Twitter?: 44 billion dollars. (https://news.sky.com/story/elon-musk-completes-44bn-twitter-takeover-according-to-us-media-reports-12723010). This is supposed to be the 20% of Elon fortune. That's a lot! As a comparison so far, NASA has spent more than 48 billion dollars to develop the Space Launch System, Orion spacecraft, and prepare ground systems at the Kennedy Space Center for the new-generation moon program (https://spaceflightnow.com/2022/11/16/nasa-triumphs-in-successful-debut-launch-of-huge-sls-moon-rocket/). My question is, why is Twitter so worthy?

Possibility A: The infrastructure

It seems that in 2010 twitter decided to build its infrastructure and stop depending on third parties (https://blog.twitter.com/engineering/en_us/topics/infrastructure/2017/the-infrastructure-behind-twitter-scale). According to this same article "Hadoop: We have multiple clusters storing over 500 PB divided in four groups (real time, processing, data warehouse and cold storage). Our biggest cluster is over 10k nodes. We run 150k applications and launch 130M containers per day." Now, let's imagine they have 100 clusters of 10k nodes. That would be 1 million computers. If they were PCs they would be worth around 400EUR per unit (they don't have a screen or keyboard or anything but a CPU): 0.5 billion dollars. Even if I'm wrong by a factor of 10 (5 billion dollars) I'm still far from what he paid. It wouldn't seem to be that.

Possibility B: The worker force

Maybe it's the people who work there? 8000 people (according to https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TWTR/twitter/number-of-employees). That would be 44/8000=0.005= 5 million for each employee. As good as they are, it seems impossible for their value to be so high.

Possibility C: Twitter users (the famous "community"):

How many people use Twitter?: 0.48 billion people (according to: https://datareportal.com/essential-twitter-stats). It seems reasonable in proportion to the people in the world (8 billion people). They could hardly be too many more. Lets do the math: Each Twitter user has cost of 44/0.48=92 dollars. Does each Twitter user really generate that much value? I would really like to see this in the citizen science projects I'm involved. Maybe it is if we read this other article (https://news.sky.com/story/largest-us-automaker-temporarily-halts-paid-advertising-on-twitter-after-elon-musks-takeover-12732862 ): "Ad sales made up more than 90% of Twitter's revenue in the second quarter." Without an audience, advertising would not work.

In summary, that I can not understand this operation but I have one thing clear: I do not like to be sold for 90 dollars and therefore I have decided to put my personal Twitter account on hold and redirect my time to more productive activities instead co creating content for others to get rich.

As in love films: Sorry, I believe I need some time.

"The bird is freed"

Moving Windows 10 from HDD to a SSD drive on my laptop.

Background

I was convinced that having a SSD drive is far much better than an old magnetic HDD. Once you have it setup that is definitely true, but I was afraid from past experiences that the process of moving Windows to another machine could be painful. 

Are the benefits of the SSD speed going to overcome the time and effort spent in moving the Operating System?.

First, let me say that the Laptop is a Lenovo Ideapad 320 with a Windows 10 preinstalled. It was a very good deal, costing 560EUR with a HDD of 1 Tbyte. The carton box contains only a user manual of a few pages. No CD or DVD with a Windows or a recovery disk. No Windows license document. Probably the reason is that the laptop has no CD or DVD drive unit but it is a bit frustrating anyway.

In principle that laptop has a special partition structure for recovery. The structure of the disk is very confusing with 5 partitions (3 hidden). All using the new partition schema called GPT. I did not what to loose the Windows licence or the capability to recover the Windows from future crisis.

I anticipated problems since the HDD was 1Tbyte big but the Samsung 860 EVO disk was only 500Gbytes (100EUR) that will be enough for editing some document and preparing presentations.

Hardware

I have a SATA docker stations that can be connected to a USB

Failure 1

Windows 10 provides a backup image control panel to save your drive and restore it later. The procedure that I followed was inspired by this:
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10/how-to-create-a-system-image-in-windows-10/84fa6683-e3ac-4e93-9139-368af9267869
https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/windows_10-update/how-to-restore-a-windows-10-system-image-to-an/e20992ca-5641-4f7c-bb09-3895d0732162
To anticipate a disaster I used the Windows Disk Manager to reduce the size of the Windows partition from ~800 to ~400 Gb. I needed to defrag the disk first and the Windows defrag failed to make it compact enough. I discovered the Puran Defrag that did a perfect job.

To do this procedure, I needed and extra old disk of 160Gb to save the image temporarily. The idea was to create the image, replace the disk drive in the laptop and restore it back using a old USB memory stick with a Windows 10 setup ready to be used.

Nevertheless it was a complete disaster that ended in the error 0x80042412. After some trials and googles, I gave up.

Failure 2

Everybody seems to recommend the EasyUS. In principle is able to clone the complete disk but in practice it failed to create all partitions that my Lenovo has.
The advantage of this method is that it does not require an intermediate disk and you can plug the SSD in the Docker
I tried to add them with another tool called AOMEI partition assistance Standard edition I has able to replicate the other partitions.
The result was a complete failure. When the SSD drive was connected to the laptop Windows failed to boot

Success method

A bit desperate, I found another partition tool that could be useful to try to manipulate something?. I found the Minitool Partition Wizard that has a free version. This tool seems very complete (for a free version) that allow to change the TypeID of a new GPT partitions to declare that a partition is a windows recovery partition or a system partition etc.

Suddenly I realize that there is a HDD to SSD button. I connected to the SSD to my USB docker and started the process immediately. The application allows for copying all partitions in a drive that you are going to replace and dynamically change sizes of partitions. It is not capable of cloning the Windows C: directly in the graphical user interface but it offers to reboot to a old fashion text interface and continues without any questions.

In the end, it was that fastest method I have tried and the most transparent. All partitions were cloned and seem identical in the GUI. Windows is also happy with the result and the SSD drive boots perfectly.

Great tool! Thanks!.

Paula Diaz video trilogy for Terrace Band is now available.

It was difficult to find even if it was published in Song Writing Magazine the July 3rd, 2015.

You can find it here:

http://www.songwritingmagazine.co.uk/news/exclusive-special-place-by-terrace/24754

(At the time to write this lines there is no reference in the Terrace Band new website or in its facebook. Only a reference to its teaser)

This time we have a combination of the two precedent videos footage with images of a big city (that could be Vacouver but I was not able to confirm it) with new images of Paula discovering her face with her hands in a very serious and concentrated expression. Here just one example:

Serious, almost sat, expression of Paula is constant in the new footage. But in the very last second of the video her expression changes to a flat laugh. That is good, Paula. I see that last summer was good after all.

More details coming soon.

See the previous two videos in the Paula Diaz Fan club first post: http://joanma747.blogspot.com/2015/04/paula-diaz-fan-club.html

Simon Lock interview from Terrace band talking about Paula's 3 videos.

"The love affair that the camera has with Paula throughout all three videos"

This is extracted from: http://www.northerntransmissions.com/interview/interview-simon-lock-terrace/ where Alice Severin interviews Simon Lock from terrace.

We reproduce here the part of the interview that talks explicitly about the 3 videos:

NT: “Cote D’Azur” is a great track, with that jazzy pop keyboard sound. How did that song come about? And of course it was your first video as well. Entertainment Weekly gave it a rave review. It’s got that summery, vacation at the beach feel. At the end, when the music fades out and you can hear the waves hitting the shore – it just takes you away.

SL: That’s the genius of Marc Alcover of Spain. All the videos were shot in Mallorca, but made to look as though it was the south of France. “Cote D’Azur” is funny. That song started about two years ago. I had heard a new Cut Copy song, and I said oh shit, they’ve just done exactly what I wanted to do. And I was frustrated but I had this idea for a song, and I sent it to Chris, who used to be in the band, and he said, that’s easy, we can do that in five seconds, and he sent me back in ten minutes, what became the chorus loop of “Cote D’Azur”. So it had guitar, and keyboards, and drum loop. And that’s all it was, like eight seconds long. And he said, see how easy that was? And I thought, yeah, I really like that. And then I took the parts, wrote the verse, tweaked a few things, made it sound nice. And the Rhodes piano he used in that, the keyboard, had a really rough sound originally. So just tweaking the settings of the instrument itself, made that really nice smooth, soft 80s sound. And then from there, we put in the chimes and the steel drum, which is really quiet, and all that stuff. The song sounded really good, and we were really happy with it. Then lyrics – lyrics always come last, you know. And that song was the first one that was really completed and the first one that I was really head over heels about, Chris and I co-wrote it together. And always, from the beginning, it was going to be the lead single, because it just had that feel that I wanted, that sun-drenched, heat feeling, you know? When we talked to Marc about the video, we said, it’s supposed to be the south of France. And he said, no problem, I can make Mallorca look like the south of France. (laughs) And he did.

NT: It does give you that relaxed, wonderful beach holiday feeling. It makes you want to go there right away. Drop everything, and take off.

SL: Yeah. We didn’t want it too exciting. We wanted the person to think you’re on a day date with the girl, like this is somewhere you’d want to be right now. If you’re a guy, you want to be there with her, if you’re a girl, you want to be her. People going to work and getting that, life doing its thing, feeling – we wanted to make a video that kind of looks like a tourism video – hey, look, you could be doing this right now.

[...]

NT: “Exit Stars” was the second single release, and apparently it’s going to be a trilogy, and each of the three songs will have a video?

SL: We just finished, well Marc just finished production on the next single, which is “Special Place”. It’s really interesting, because we film our parts in Vancouver, and we send them to him in Sweden, he’s there now. And then he usually says, well, it’ll be a while – I’m really busy, and the next day it’s in your mailbox. Boom. (laughing) So the video came through and he just knows exactly what we want, all the time. And it kind of wraps up the love affair that the camera has with Paula throughout all three videos. In the first one, it’s very vacation-y, very beach-y, and in the second one, she’s being pursued, almost taunted by the ocean, stuff like that. This one, it’s a happy song. So many people I’ve seen videos for, and they look so sullen and serious. You know? You think, they all look so pissed off. So we actually just kind of goofed around for our scenes in this video. And first time I’ve ever been in a video, it felt like hey, this is kind of funny. We made it very light. It’s not the big traumatic wrap up to a trilogy that someone would expect.

NT: That’s a nice change.

SL: Yeah. At our level, starting out and stuff, of course you want to be taken seriously, but you don’t have to be serious all the time. That’s when it becomes like a job. You don’t know what tortures I went through to get my heart out. Like, oh, come on. You can smile once in a while. It’s all right.

NT: Some of the most memorable music videos since they began have been light, even a little silly at times. Or there’s the image of people marching down the street…

SL: Yeah. Richard Ashcroft nailed that video. Fantastic, walked down the street, smacked into people. He got the sullen, angry artist down pat.

NT: That’s so funny you said that, because I was just thinking of that exact video, Bitter Sweet Symphony. That’s one that works so well.

SL: People like videos that tell stories. I don’t. I like videos that just simply look good. You know? It doesn’t have to have some kind of ironic story, it’s not Game of Thrones. You don’t have to have a 700 page script treatment for it. Just make it. We wanted to fly to Spain and be part of it, but I don’t think any of us are the biggest fan of videos or photo shoots. We’re not much to look at. We look like rejects from the Pretty in Pink extras trailer.

[... I reproduce this here because it is a funny coincidence with a detail in Paula's live...]

NT: You’ve got an interesting job – when you’re not making music, you’re an airline pilot. Do you fly everywhere?

SL: I’m international. Mostly the South Pacific, and New York, down to the Caribbean. My main route is usually Los Angeles.

NT: How long have you been flying?

SL: About 21 years now. I started when I was 18. I was a house DJ for years and years, and going to school. And I just carried that through, and I’ve been flying ever since.

Paula Diaz video trilogy promoting Terrace Band music Completed with "SPECIAL PLACE"

In 4th of June 2015 the Paula Diaz fan club has confirmed that there will be a 3rd video for the Terrace Band album

Source:
http://www.xsnoize.com/terrace-share-new-track-special-place-from-forthcoming-album/

"‘Special Place’ will soon complete a Trilogy of thematically linked videos, each chronicling a different chapter in one girl’s quest for travel with beautiful sunshine flairs, underwater angles and bluer than blue skies and seas"

The video is not public yet but a teaser has been released. At the moment it is only available on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Terraceband/videos/vb.160185904070069/831960210225965/

Some images of the teaser:

But in July 27th we were able to finally see the 3rd video of the trilogy. more details finally here: http://joanma747.blogspot.com.es/2015/07/paula-diaz-video-trilogy-for-terrace.html

The complete sound track is available here: https://soundcloud.com/manimal-management/terrace-we-fall-together-01

See the previous two videos in the Paula Diaz Fan club first post: http://joanma747.blogspot.com/2015/04/paula-diaz-fan-club.html

President of the Paula Diaz Fan Club travel to America to the presentation of the Terrace Band Album (and to the OGC TC)

The presentation of the Terrace Band first album, and possible the third delivery of the video trilogy of stared by Paula Diaz has been announced to June the 1st.

The president of the Paula Diaz Fan Club has traveled to America to be closer to the event. Well, actually, there is also a Technical committee meeting at NCAR campus in Boulder and could be another reason why we went there (http://www.opengeospatial.org/events/1506tcagenda). An Engineering Report about possible use of JSON in OGC will be presented. In particular presentations will take place at:
* Monday June 1st, 8h: GUF.SWG. Implications of Critic Reviews expressed in JSON-LD for the future of the GUF work
* Monday June 1st, 13h: WMS.SWG. What role JSON can play in the new WMS 1.4
* Tuesday June 2nd, 10h: Architecture DWG. Implicatinos of JSON for the OWS Common. Validation schemas for JSON.
* Tuesday June 2nd 13h: OWS Context. JSON validation and OWS Context for HTML5
* Wednesday June 2nd 8h: Coverage DWG: JSON and Binari arrays to build a WCS Javascript client.
* Wednesday June 3rt 10h: WCS.SWG: JSON encoding for GMLCov.

Paula Díaz fan club

Welcome to the informal Paula Díaz fan club.


I personally know Paula for quite long now. In fact I met her in the 2008-09 as teacher of the GIS and RS master. At the beginning I has captivated by her Catalan "Mallorquin" accent that for a standard Catalan person speaker sounds sweeter than our accent. I supervised her Master project about Geospatial Metadada quality and completeness. I discover her working capacity and good learning curve. I suppose I had something to do with her starting her Scientific carrier. After that I had the pleasure to work with her from Apr 2011 to Aug 2012. She is currently 2015 in the Zurich Politechnical University (ETH Zurich Department of Environmental Systems Science, Institute for Environmental Decisions). More details here.

But I decided to start this blog when I was amazed by a complete different faced on her activities: She is the star in 2 video-clips of the new songs of a Canadian music band called Terrace. 

First Video: Cote D'Azur

The video and the song she is presenting a fresh and young opportunity for a summer informal relation.

I really like the ingenuity that she is able to present. She is really a natural!. This is an scene were she is looking directly to the spectator (I mean you):

You can see the video here:

The video was directed by Marc Alcover and filmed in Majorca, Spain and stars the Paula. Director of Photography and cameraman: Biel Calderón.

Second video: Exit Stars

This video (also directed by Marc Alcover) is showing also Paula in Majorca presenting a different situation. What seemed to be a good relation is turning into something more tense. Paula is seen again fresh and natural at the beginning but is becoming immediately more distant. We are assuming that a mysterious guy in black seems to be in relation with her but things are not going so well.

These are what I consider the best shots of her in this one. 

You can see the video clip here:

The vídeo was premiered by that Clash magazine last 2015/05/06: http://www.clashmusic.com/videos/premiere-terrace-exit-stars

The video has been selected by Kaltblut as one of the top 5 videos of the week: http://www.kaltblut-magazine.com/top-5-videos-of-the-week-4/

Even if I personally prefer the first one, I have to admit that the second one is more interesting scenically and artistically. This could be reason why Marc Alcover has himself selected also some shots from this one and published in social media (http://www.enjoygram.com/marcalcover and ). Let me just reproduce them here:

Third video?

We all in the Paula Diaz Fan Club are expecting a third video. And our hopes are high!. In fact in the Terrace blog a video trilogy is promised. I really wonder if there will be a third release and when. In fact the band plans to release a full length album called We Fall Together by Spring 2015 so she could be also the image of this "long play". Clash magazine recently announced the new album will be released in June 1st we are wondering if this will be accompanied by the 3rd video of the trilogy.

NEW: Third video confirmed. More info here: http://joanma747.blogspot.com/2015/06/paula-diaz-video-trilogy-promoting.html

We got access to the cover of the We Fall Together "long play". What a pity: Paula is not on the cover.

Opinions

"Captivating Paula": https://www.facebook.com/Terraceband/posts/726147010807286
"the recurring object of desire, Paula Dias": http://www.northerntransmissions.com/news/terrace-share-new-video-for-exit-stars/
"footage to accompany their disco-pop track, of a girl simply gliding through crystal blue waters": http://www.kaltblut-magazine.com/top-5-videos-of-the-week-4/

Other:

Do you want to now Paula better? Visit her travel blog here.