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ICShape

Doing some pondering, digging and backtracking on the issue of IoTA. But, … already got stuck when considering how to (best?) model the architecture at lower levels. Would a classical picture, or a somewhat-less classical picture work best to gain understanding of the risk areas ..? As in:
Industrial control cycle
[Own pic]
Or
open-standards
[Plucked, adapted from the site linked below]
Where the former is from the industrial, process-oriented engineering world, and the latter from the digital networking world.

Yes I’d really like your advice on how to ‘marry’ both to be able to optimally visualise where the risks are; the potential, intentional or not, noise on the signal, or the wrong signals altogether. What might cause that, how to protect against that, etc.
Yes, taking into account the work already done here – which is impressive, but somewhat (?) protocols-oriented, not architecture-/risk-oriented. Yet. Something like
SCADASmartGridEfficacy_Page_2_Image_0002
[plucked off a simple search] is what I’m after.

But the other work, too. All, to overlay with risk lists on all surfaces at all levels… Then, to see how to protect that all against the (generic?) risks, and how one would audit sufficient (?) protection is in place. Not ‘controls’ – those are the losers’ weak retreats, the “didn’t want a cookie anyway” fig leaves. Taking into account this breakthrough though.
But for now, again already, leaving you with:
DSCN2075
[Life in stead of straight angles, Barça]

UnEllsberging your change

Somehow it only recently, and suddenly, struck me that the resistance to change that we see so pervasively in ‘organisations’ is indeed due to people’s very human resistance to change as one might loose some things held dear – for whatever reason.
The latter, obvisouly often stated in terms of losing something Known for replacement with Uncertainty even if prospects and rational risk calculations might indicate huge improvements achievable.

The crucial point being: the risk calculations may be rational but apparently aren’t emotional. The striking thing mentioned above, being that we need to integrate Ellsberg’s Paradox much better into our change approaches and programs… Indeed, rational calculations will not work in a world where humans function like described. The ‘future’, uncertain world must be described in terms of the same absolute certainties as the world we experience in the now/past [as the now of now is the past in an instant], just as perfectly credible also in the completeness of its pro and con arguments. Since not only do we exactly know the devil (our, e.g., work environment) we know because we have experienced it in full, hands-on, but also because we have quite a rosy picture of that devil when our brains forget nasty stuff easier than friendly bits.

Now go study all of the linked wiki – it has tons of good info, both explanatory and as pointers to slurp it all up into practical solutions.

And, for a glimpse of a better future:
DSCN4984
[They’ll come when the (grossly overstated) benefits are high enough and/or the left-behind is dismal enough; NY]

Overabsolute Majority Report

On this sad day (in NL), only a hint of a mer à boire on our future that will be – not so happy. Possibly.
Where the dystopian future scenarios are more right than the on the surface by and large generic tending-to-rosy robot movies predict. With Ex Machina having some interesting thoughts (again) on AI and what it is to be human but in the end also falling back to common standards. And with the similalry common flaw of expecting ‘robots’ to become near-human possibly to the point of indistinguishability [nice word] – that will then operate in a world where ‘individuals’ would be the unit of existence-currency. With no ‘government’ in sight, at least not in today’s sense where even the largest governments (agencies) are still made up of human elements. There is something, but it doesn’t matter too much for the discourse. Where the dystopian worlds we’ll live in (big question marks all around) may have quite a different set of physical media, e.g., all-digital.

Which makes it possible to see today’s (supra-)governments, the largest of them in particular and including the globally biggest private companies, where ‘company’ isn’t between a platoon and battalion of men anymore, as supra-national organisation forms in the abstract.

This already causes problems when one would want to get redress from e.g., the ‘financial industry’ and before, to tackle the military-industrial complexes that were (are?). This will cause problems now that the complexes are informational-industrial-military, with the middle part in the driver’s seat and the two others as wingman, protecting.

In the future further out, the global complex may be beyond the Singularity (negative view), about which I posted quite a bit before. How will we approach such overlord(s) when completely abstracted, sublimated ..? Hm, gotta read up on Negri&Hardt a bit more…

But for now:
DSCN6043
[When centres/seats of power were only this big; Madrid]

Unpersonal AI

… a trope worth extending: How we still (apparently want to ..!?) see the future of AI and robotics merged into android (no capital) forms… As in Ex Machina and many others: ‘Intelligent’ (like linked here) human-shaped robots taking over, or not.
Whereas of course ASI will strike us through its supra-individual form it already almost has. Not as the military-industrial complex that was already a common-form supra-individual thing, but as a really medium-/materialisation-independent form. With room to spare for all sorts of ‘dysfunctional’ behaviour and ‘thoughts’, and still hands(?) down being our overlords and usurpers that undo us in a blink.
Or maybe we’re halfway there already. With maybe still some select group at the wheel, behind some veil, pulling off some shady trickery with constitutions (multiple). To off themselves, by a glitch.

Dystopian, eh? Well, for now, there’s:
DSCN6248
[’cause we love the quaint, old … Strasbourg or so]

Not much on the books

Soo… We have been hearing for years, maybe for a decade already, that print books were completely dead, either already or within a couple of years … And now, the reports are that ebooks have an whopping … 15% market share. No, no typo, not 85% or 95% or even 105%, but just 15%.
So much for the Through of Disillusionment …

What if … what if subsequent ‘trends’, that are a great many in number, since, would have the same exponential quod non growth rates hence amount to not much ..?
Yet … As ‘exponential’ i.e. sigmodial-at-best growth goes, big blots on the hype-radar but under the actual radar of real life?

A lot of lapidary references. Hence, for now I’ll leave you with:
DSCN1147
[Old but ‘still’ very fashionable in its entirity, London]

Ack or ook ..?

Yes, there we are again, on the subject of ‘Ethical’ hacking.
Because I came across such a ‘Certified Ethical’ Hacker once again. Which made me think (again…) about the allure of that. And then it struck me: It’s just a matter of replacing ack with ook and we’re all set!

Think about it; and ook does for money what others do for fun and ulterior motives… So does an ack. An ook can be certified (licensed) and get government-controlled medical/physical check-ups, by another bodily-educated professional. An ack can be and get the same; through permanent education requirements and peer review.

But what an ook can’t get, is the Ethical label that the ack has – for no apparent reason and it should be the other way around: Where the ook has proven her (majority; unless some ladies in the readership have sufficient experience to validly claim the opposite) role in society since the dawn of time/mankind/human society, the ack dabbles in what somewhat similar but short by aeons, is a crook’s business.

So, CEH better refer to the ooks out there. For now:
DSC_0081
[It’s … Name That City time again!]

Grendel’s mother

When the short summary doesn’t do justice to the core of the problem… Where the core is both a misreading of the depth and a misreading of its intentions.
As this here few little paragraphs have. There’s no light way of putting this: Go read the … thing in its entirety and then, do understand it in all of its cultural superiority to today’s news accounts.

Yes, for the simplest of minds it may read like just a story. Hero, this, that, done. But to the slightest of more careful reader, it is overwhelmingly clear: The book contains so much profundity on the core of politics, societies, and clashes of war. Then you see that it’s not about slaying Grendel and some afterthought. It is about slaying the symptom, the fed, and only then can you get to fighting the real cause that (literally) both birthed and feeds the symptoms, the Mother of Evil. Pointing, too, at the continuity through generations of that concept.

Oh and did it mention anything about brothers or (maybe even worse ..?) sisters ..? Opening up all sorts of options for prolongation through the ages of this tension between what one (sic) could regard as Good and another (sic) as Evil? Mother doesn’t see Evil, she sees her pride, her son displaying the most beautiful (s)he can imagine. Yo don’t even know which side you’re on! Etc.

Yes indeed. It is simply not simple. It is The World As We Know It, and Man cannot change much about it…

For the latter, see how Western ‘powers’ led by the one, try to meekly and halfheartedly subdue Grendel in the Middle East; just enough to safeguard their own interests. Where they don’t see the full depth of mother’s lair, nor her issues. For those less ‘sues’, read this and see the eternity of the problem.

For now, this:
DSCN7008
[Ah, bull fighting (at Sevilla no less): Another such eternal struggle between Good and Evil, order and reason against pure force of nature – so often completely mistaken for simple ‘sports’. Cruel, to the Weak (sic) but not to those that value its depiction of life itself; that have experienced and/or seen much worse in human life, in person.]

Oh hey, quoted (at a distance)

Oh hey, I got quoted (almost … I mean at an enormous distance) by some reputable (?) institution.
Where that body did jump to all sorts of conclusions (see my next Monday 27 April post squared with my 3 April post against (?) those), but in the passing mentioned an arms’ race known to modern man already for decades as if it were something new. In this here piece.

What’s the aim, then? To have all sorts revert to Flipping ..?

To leave you with:
DSCN3994
[Still? against intruders, Trier]

Culpable misinformation

The inescapable Bruce was very mild, characterising Comey’s texts as a joke. Like here, on this. Whereas puppets everywhere (in NL as well, here) can show only a handful cases if any at all where mass surveillance (like this by InfoSec Taylor:
CBgp99KVIAAt4wn
explains) has been key. Referring not to any paraphrase (here) of Ben Franklin (“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”) ..?

But the point is: Where failure to act may be culpable in the same way that acts may be, deliberate (intentful) misrepresentation by omitting knowledge and/or presenting false conclusions may be as culpable as outright lying. In particular, when in the public sphere (of income) where speaking the truth (the whole, and nothing but…) is part of the deal, however indirectly through defense of a constitution. Wilful neglect of that duty (that may include informing oneself properly!) is a scam, con, deceit, fraud.

So, come clean. And:
??????????
[F..tis didn’t get away with it; too simpleton despite pretense]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord