Maverisk – Page 94 – Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord

Ebow to lower prices, up the sharing ec

OK, here we have these two trends:

Ebay still being around (although slowly, coming under attack from entrants; check your feeds if you’d have missed that) but when people get tired, they bid lower and lower, when at the same time sellers want decent prices or retract and retreat. A fair market may not exist after all – or it is the minute details that turn out to count.
The sharing economy is growing, steadily.

So, the two may go together. One doesn’t get enough on Eb and rather give it away, resulting in less traders and trades on Eb closing the circle. Not a virtuous one. But would anyone care ..? And, data please!

For those in the kno:

[Art. My own. [Mostly unedited indoor phone pic]]

Tempting Under-30’s

It dawned, suddenly. The ubiquity of lists of Under 30 mil/billionaires, where they live, etc. All that attention – Why? Jealousy? Maybe, (most) partially that is the lure for attention.
[Note that it dawned only. If you’d find this post a bit … imperfect, that would be a. impossible ’cause it’s mine, b. as the thaw hadn’t dried up, c. in particular on socmed not very much elsewhere. If unsure always go for b.]

For one thing, the Under 30 list phenomenon is real and annoying.
For another, it shows the slightly less-than-full-witted to be the target audience – how else to explain the ’30’ cut-off ..? Age isn’t even a number, it’s a word. And why so fixated? … Ah, because:
It (the lists/phenomenon) serves as teaser, as bait, for the gullible (‘slightly-less-than’) to work their … off, even accepting nothing but a vaporware share (‘points’ anyone?) of the mirage. So that the ones that stay behind the screens, the Powers That Be can reap the benefits. It doesn’t even help to have experience; most don’t learn from that anyway as practice shows.
And it creates a sense of urgency, when one inevitably gets closer to the 30 mark so quickly. To not be a failure, hurry up even more armagerrd the pressure to be Creative!
And then find that sane people might be as creative, or even more so, at all later ages as well. My guess: The early fast burners are exhausted by their 40s and have nothing left to rekindle [or, maybe they have, if they’d try really really hard], when the percentage of as-yet untapped innovation and disruption capable people does not go down except when stuck in dumbing-down moronic work (factory, office..!). The ones that escape, have more! Both an urge, a cropped-up primordial energy, and experience to effectively and efficiently release it. Some hope for Yours Truly, then.

So, we weren’t surprised when this came along. IoT not invented in Silly Valley. Because that is where all the minions are doing the hard mind work. Whereas IoT relies heavily on old tertiairy industry and at the same time doesn’t require the totalitarian unphysical-labour-only approach of the Valley. The mindset-disconnect is why IoT hasn’t taken more flight yet; one needs both the less-than-exponentially-exploding developments from everywhere-but and the ‘disruption’-labelled somewhat-faster business model innovations together whereas still, the disconnect is too much of a sea (baha) to be parted-is-connected by some Steve type.

[Morning fog still there. I’ll pause now.]

[Boating, banking style @ Zuid-As. Oh stop it! Not literally as a utterly wasted money pit sailing yacht – Dutch invention in two ways… – but figuratively in more ways than two.
In the background left: Not symphony but simple.onetrickpony…]

Industry tourism

… not the other way around. Or, both.
Where the most afford-able tourists will ‘move on’ to ever newer places when things get too crowded, or just too common, they will in the end return to past favourites, when the wind of stampedes has blown over. Industries … do the same ..? Considering IoT is really turning manufacturing’s global movements and spread on its head, with the AI in-roads leading to e.g., a switch of human involvement from ‘hands’ to ‘brains’ [what a change! managers should fear …!], I wanted to start some economics analysis here but don’t have the right data at hand.
So, for the series, I’ll explore. Like, cycling from primary all the way to quartary (?) industry (administrationland), and back (and forth) in between, innovating as we go along … no, no this post is going nowhere. Must be Friday’s.

Similarly, I have no clue why this [own] anonymous Philly pic is here. Or is my account hacked and did some joker just put the above down as a claim ..?

Still going, maybe not strong but still

Would anyone have a list of ‘development’ re obsoletion of (tech) products that isn’t / aren’t ..? Like, e.g., email, and offices (of the corner-/cubicle- kind), and paperless.

As I was pointed out recently in a tweet (@MEFDeBock) where staff lose their trolleys but not managers. Of course not … And there was this consultancy (sometimes the designator can be used just to poke fun about unselfaware wannabees) that wanted to drop all email use.
Oh yes, nice; at least they try to accomplish change. Where they through their actions indicate to have zero clue. About what their staff want/need, what they’re made of, …
Yes, Change’s a hard thing to pull off. Told you so. But that doesn’t mean your ill-advised ‘enforcement’ will work; on the contrary.

But now back to the main line: email’s definitely still around. So is ‘offices’. Et cetera. Would anyone have a list of these, well not sea-change changes but second-level innovation ideas that were supposed to have become obsolete but are still around in, say, more than 20% of applicable contexts? Yes, that’s not 90% or so. Be aware that there sometimes (sic) are legitimate advantages in innovations. SMS… I once was involved with very first developments of that, deep into the software-almost-at-hardware level. It took quite some flight since, and now is dying out in favour of 1-to-1 and 1-to-many (broadcast/narrowcast) ‘new’ short messaging apps though the core functionality is still the same.

Edited to add before publishing already: this. Similar. And, by the way, I don’t mean the almost-completely defunct or disappeared casette tape, etc. – those are really gone and have so little comparative advantage…
And this. Rest my case.

So, your contributions please. And:
DSCN8603b
[A bleak future, today]

Keezel: Online freedom

Now, biting my nails awaiting delivery …

(Old) New non-app

For those that see the world as coming to an end i.e. have a slight dislike for the popularity of apps and their users in particular, there’s hope of sorts in e.g., this.
As not all the world has in an instant gone from a salon socialiste ideal of ultracommunal discussion groups to hyperindividualistic eyes-glued-to-mobile-millennials (and younger…).

On the contrary, there are some signals that rebounds happen in all sorts of places. Children (can we lose the downright ugly ‘kids’, please ..!?) seem to still want to go out and play (big-if their parents aren’t ridiculously fearful, to be found out to not have an own life), and new media are made part of, not all of, their lives.
Also, the older ones, the ones that actually with their own hands built all the new gadgetry from the (scientific and artisanal) ground up, seem to adopt whatever is to their liking. Picking, cherry-picking, not losing themselves in uncritical slavery. This is what the above link demonstrates…: The Old may return, and be valued by all ages for what it stood and stands for. The feelz, that no ASI can emulate yet. Where humanity would seek refuge, calm and a sense of purpose; ‘robots‘ [oh dang HTML play nice with the ” and anchors! (sic, below)] outdoing us in the mundane.

No, no melancholy! Or so. Just positives. E.g., why would people still travel so much when the vast part of the experience can be streamed online? Including the standard holiday pics. Why would anyone care whether you’ve actually been there, and done that? Where ‘that’ was purposefully created for tourists only… And:

[“If you wanna second class, dip a ring for it”; the Yard, MD]

De administratie is van geen van allen … [Dutch]

Was triggered by this here article, as read in het Parool but repubd – and deserves republication in many more places. Yes it’s in Dutch unfortunately, as I don’t think the problem is exclusive but it may be tearjerkingly worse and exposed here…

Waar nog bijkomt dat een flink aantal (?-tot-100%) ‘bestuurders’ nog steeds in de illusie leven dat ze iets ‘besturen’ en dan ferme besluiten nemen, met de vuist op tafel slaan zelfs, en dat er vervolgens niks gebeurt. Helemaal niets. Het ‘besluit’ was immers de prestatie *quod non* en de uitvoering, tsja, dat is voor het lagere volk. Daar ga je je niet mee bezighouden. Terwijl het besluit zó ver los staat van de werkelijkheid lees implementeerbaarheid (op wat voor manier dan ook; taalgebrabbel los van normale praktijk, met bij voorbaat zeker gierend budgetgebrek) dat niemand zich waagt het op te pakken. Dus *gebeurt* er niks…
Als je dat maar eventjes stil kan houden (fijne wensmanagementrapportages in bestuursjargon ja We Zijn Nu Eens Echt Goed Bezig Met Actiemaken maar niet heus), dan is het Na Ons De Zondvloed. De naam ‘Asscher’ gaat rond in het Groene-artikel. Wel goed dat er een enquête komt! (of al voorbij is gezucht zonder dat iemand er erg in had). En oh wat goed dat die wordt gehouden door dezelfde in-crowd; dan weet je zeker dat er iets echts uit gaat komen..! </sarcasme>(?)

Maar ja, er schijnen zelfs nog mensen te zijn die werkelijk denken dat we in een democratie leven. Als de facto een pak ‘m beet 0,0001% van de stemgerechtigde bevolking uitmaakt op wie je überhaupt kán stemmen en geen enkele partij de moeite neemt om te zorgen dat je het met meer dan maar 30% van de standpunten eens kan zijn (waar de rest persoonlijke hobbietjes zijn; belastingmiljardenverslindend en vaak nutteloos) met een persoonlijke aansprakelijkheid van nihil, terwijl “dan richt je toch zelf een politieke partij op” niet kán werken, ja dan heb je een echte democratie hoor ..!

Passend:

[Actual government, direct; tranquil reflection on that]

Unknown Stats

Just as an intermission; this. QQ, QZone ..? Good to (learn to) know (them), if only to wake us up to the classic-Western-world bias some may have…

That’s all for now. Your conclusions are valid, almost as valid as mine, in the limit. This:

[Oh how glorious, brilliant, radiant (… you know …); and Central
If you wondered why the vertical warp: dunno, probably just WordPress’ error …]

First take on 10

… Oh I didn’t mean to mean actual #first, just that the dust clouds around the official Win10 launch should have subsided and the first indicators of near-future trends should have become clear.
’cause I recall this tweet (?) about some peer that posted: at home, ten years ago (M$) PCs were for business and Macs for fun and now things had changed around but started to reverse again. And I wondered — are there indicators that this would be a trend, due to Win10 ..?

That wouldn’t do much for M$ as the basic first …(double digit)% of business machines still did run on, well, maybe not quite NT-to-XP but still something theirs, and Macs had made some in-roads (in design corners) but not much, and the explosion that caused a relative decline of M$ had been on Other platforms on Other devices. But if we now see Eple demand-push retreating from such a still very, very important market, it makes it, more than before (?) a narrowly-focused operator. Which is fine, in its own right, as the co would have to (innovation-)play on many less fields concurrently than M$ — that still is on anything from desktop, mobile, OS, software of a bewildering variety, business services (cloud et al), gaming world, etc.etc. how do they retain the overview and innovative power everywhere ..?

Anyway; we’ll see… And:

[Nothing special, NO! edits; just a camera test at Noordwijk beach]

#ditchcyber CSI, this was real

A quote, a post:

This is a story of a very high-tech kidnapping:

FBI court filings unsealed last week showed how Denise Huskins’ kidnappers used anonymous remailers, image sharing sites, Tor, and other people’s Wi-Fi to communicate with the police and the media, scrupulously scrubbing meta data from photos before sending. They tried to use computer spyware and a DropCam to monitor the aftermath of the abduction and had a Parrot radio-controlled drone standing by to pick up the ransom by remote control.

The story also demonstrates just how effective the FBI is tracing cell phone usage these days. They had a blocked call from the kidnappers to the victim’s cell phone. First they used an search warrant to AT&T to get the actual calling number. After learning that it was an AT&T prepaid Trakfone, they called AT&T to find out where the burner was bought, what the serial numbers were, and the location where the calls were made from.

The FBI reached out to Tracfone, which was able to tell the agents that the phone was purchased from a Target store in Pleasant Hill on March 2 at 5:39 pm. Target provided the bureau with a surveillance-cam photo of the buyer: a white male with dark hair and medium build. AT&T turned over records showing the phone had been used within 650 feet of a cell site in South Lake Tahoe.

Here’s the criminal complaint. It borders on surreal. Were it an episode of CSI:Cyber, you would never believe it.

Just to remind you; it’s not all APTs only that hit you. Here, it was ‘just’ hardcore kdnapping. And think about victims of false … [fill in your favourite of the four horsemen of computer crime and colour the picture] accusations alone: Defamation by the clueless, works at much longer terms, and maybe more effectively. Nothing progressive, innovative, disruptive about that… And:

[Yes that is the First Flag – government project: (i.e.) unfinished]