Just like that, a Golden Oldie again then, that relates quite well to the elections, recently in NL and soon in the US:
Choices, choices…
Blog
Book by Quote: Chesterfield’s
Ah, there we are again, for once, after a long while of want: A Book By Quote. Again, not in the plain vanilla version of just jotting down some bon mots but again, wherever appropriate ..! annotated with some of my interpretations. Which may be biased, as they are of human thought made. You know who I compare myself with, here.
Without further ado then, from Lord Chesterfield’s Letters:
(On people’s thoughts) … if we take them upon trust, without examining and comparing them with our own, it is really living upon other people’s scraps, or retailing other people’s goods.
To add, the quote by Ford: “It is a poor business that only makes money” as this so neatly maps to banking business. But do keep on reading this post 😉
To know the thoughts of others is of use, because it suggest thoughts to one’s self, and helps one to form a judgement; but to repeat other people’s thoughts, without considering whether they are right or wrong, is the talent only of a parrot, or at most a player.
Hence the annotations… And the parrot/player part is where so many (most?) ‘consultants’ and ‘business advisors’ (have) end(ed) up.
Whatever is worth doing at all, is worth doing well; and nothing can be well done without attention. It is the sure answer of a fool, when you ask him about any thing that was said or done where he was present, that ‘truly he did not mind it’.
Yes that’s the Original. And the surety of any answer of remark that you don’t particularly like (to receive), about the speaker. I feel a need to insert a just-found pic here:
If a man uses strong protestations or oaths, to make you believe a thing, which is of itself so likely and probable that the bare saying of it would be sufficient, depend upon it he lies, and is highly interested in making you believe it; or else he would not take such pains.
Ah, there we have all the bankers’ oaths, the quality (quod non) assurance (quod non) frameworks (quod non) of auditors, etc … In the style of Qui s’excuse, s’accuse — There should be a law against such things. Continue reading “Book by Quote: Chesterfield’s”
Old innovation
Sometimes, the ‘small’ innovations, by ideas that may not even be new but turn up at last in an implementable, implemented fashion, may deserve more spotlight. An Oscar of sorts maybe even, some time after many years’ wait.
This being one of those. Now implemented to protect a museum; many more applications thinkable. Don’t lower the river (only); raise the bridge dam …
That’s all. Just sayin’. And:
[Just as (?) pretty, less of a dam though; Curaçao]
Paradise Lost
.. of not the Milton kind, unfortunately.
But of the kind of Age of Innocense. In crowdsourcing. You remember, from before the days of Mechanical Turk and similar no cure, no pay but the pay’s a rip-off scams. Close to (?) post-slavery slavery by Hobson’s Choice.
But as said; before that, there were the dreams of free agents delivering their best efforts to common problems and getting handsomely rewarded for their solutions (if the best). The Age of Aquarius dawned. No more masters, no servants, all equal.
Or so.
The brevity of hapiness…
[All play and sunny weather now that you have been returned to Consumer status (pejorative). Sure to (have) change(d) …; NY of course]
Wired / Tired / Expired, 2016 Q1 edition
Yes here’s a surprise new quarterly Wired / Tired / Expired jargon watch overviews, a mixed bag again. But much needed, it seems, as there’s much to promote or dis(mis)s.
First, for your viewing pleasure:
[Yes the UFO one again. Still prime FLlW space…!]
| WIRED | TIRED | EXPIRED |
| DeepMind / AlphaGo | Watson | “Robots” |
| For, discreetly not completely, winning at Go, taking the fame flag from this edition’s Tired contender. | The W of <fill in the blanks and colour the pictures>, e.g., medicine but now having extended so often into the mundane. See also many earlier posts of mine, as indication that the newness has been lost quite summarily. | Anyone who still thinks ‘robots’ as humanoid machines are the future, either writes for simpletons in a way that reveals the simpleton self or hasn’t understood in the first place. |
| Noam | Bernie | Donald |
| Still going, maybe not very strong but exposing the ridicule of it all, ever more clearly. | Hang in there, best-option of the world! | If elected, the world will have a seriously bad hair day. |
| Artificial Empathy | UX | MobileFirst design |
| Ow yeah! The end purpose of all AI explained: To sell us even more in ever more devious ways … | Not even Linux but the nonderstood follow-up of user-centered design. | Sometimes in a last-ditch effort even renamed mobile only design. Will go the way of the books, sense returning to common. |
| Flex mesh work | Start-up Culture / Creative Incubator | Silicon Valley |
| Project-oriented and anything staffing-wise goes. No strict ‘policies’, just getting the ultimate High-Q resourcing in whatever way available. | Oh yes all the petty boys and girls getting ripped off off their ideas, talent and energy. Dumped subsquently. | Does hardware XOR consumerist-data. Both old. |
| Crypto | Backdoors | Security |
| Let’s all do it, transparently, in privacy-friendly apps, or on top of the less so. | Will not work Period | As if still using the container phrase means anything other than confusion. |
| Drones versus commercial flight safety | Drone deliveries | Attack drones |
| OMG the Need For Regulation! Yes…, why not, exactly…? | Women have deliveries, men have balls but as this isn’t about cricket, drones have physical distribution potential. Some. | Yes, that’s the first and very foremost commmercial deployment of the category. Now what? |
| Do Your Thing | Disruption | The Uber Of |
| Just read Godin’s frustrum post and you’ll get it. | Of the right kind, not the ‘overthrow then what’ kind you m.r.n | The shorthand for / of the Clueless. |
| Caring for refugees | Expanding the EU | EU |
| Get real about the numbers, the risks. Humanity can fix this. Easily. | Expanding the mess exponentially, isn’t going to clean up. | Pronounced ‘Eeewwww!’. Why not ditch it, have a good cry, and start over again with a glacial-speed cultural integration first …!? |
OK, any suggestions for next quarter’s (!) edition ..?
Plusquote: Be not a hampered herring but a free speedboat
Yes, again one in this series of quotes of my own making (predominantly), intended to be motivational. Just like www.despair.com… This time:
Be a free speedboat, no hampered herring
Which, for an explanation, starts at the back. Being about the choice between being a (hopefully growing into too) big fish in a small pond, or a small fish in a big pond. And, since the former is limiting by its ‘boundary’ condition already and the latter has grown to be to be a tiny fish in the world’s oceans all together, none are more than a suckers result in a Prisoners’ Dilemma match.
But then, the choice is a false one — no-one asked you to remain a fish, of set growth or flexibility. Turn into a speedboat! Do not want to be, to become, an oil tanker but keep agile, manoeuvrable, successful rather than doomed by size.
And yes, speedboats can go anywhere. May not be a survivable as a tanker in some storm, but being flexible enough in movement and destination hence travel routes, you’ll be able to not get caught in one in the first place; no fun so avoided almost naturally. Storms are for others to wither, you keep in nice weather.
Oh yes, there’s risk and danger, also caused by you e.g. running over some silly swimmers on onto rocks, by careless steering. But think of the upside …
Also:
[Remember the moose though I have no clue why you should … ;-| ]
Be-four you turn enthousiastic
[Warning: Long-read. Opiniated, and structurally your recommendations may be are needed, too]
About all of the banking industry, and other financials in their wake, have had to deal with loads of regulatory requirements. Justified, some say, for ‘they’ cause(d) so much misery beyond mere most temporary loss of bonuses that the ‘un’ should be (have been long before) detached from bridled. So, Basel II and -III regulations swooped in requiring much more explicit and detailed handling of financial business than ever before. The move from laissez-faire to regulation, to regulation with sanction schemes, to sanctions (possibly interpreted as ‘token’…), was extended with provability and then complete proof-demonstration as minimum requirement.
This all, however, has created a large, and in general even I would say quite overpaid [disclaimer: am profiting too] industry of consultants, quants, ‘risk managers’, reviewers, assessors, auditors, and scores of Toms, Dicks1 and Harries of the GRC kind. That are all very likeable nice lads and lassies, but maybe not quite worth their salt, certainly not their bonuses, or even be sure to be worth much lending one’s ear to.
Since March, suddenly, there’s news. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision has released a consultative paper on ideas for (much-needed, many know) simplification of the operational risk management part of regulations. For Basel-IV forthcoming.
Continue reading “Be-four you turn enthousiastic”
Crash’in the wings
… Thinking back of the Taleb’ian remarks, and truths, on Extremistan, and how some more or less closely watched parameters may lose their variance but not their uncontrol since such petering out of shock’lets are just the precursors of an asteroid impact scale collapse, I wondered what is about to happen in infosecland. Since for weeks, nay months already, there has hardly been any news… Apart from the usual suspects (#ditchcyber ..!), there hasn’t been anything serious, has there, by means of yet another class break or more comprehensive controllability breakdown?
Which is why everyone should sit more uneasily, in stead of the opposite sleeping better than ever.
But then, this was the message from your Wolf-crying boy …?
To which:
[Since last Friday, you know this isn’t a reindeer but an elk that is no moose, at least not everywhere]
Watson’s ID
Does Watson have an identity? Because, when it (sic; why not ‘she’ ..?) is intelligent enough to make its own decisions, it may want to, or know ways to obtain, or be bestowed with, personhood of some sorts. To which it may need an identity, and according ID.
But that all hinges on the construct of a single, identifyable instance of <something>. And all sorts of fancy dancy press announcements — where one might ask ‘Where you’ve been to come to the show only now’ — regarding deploying ‘Watson’ in some confined business context seem to start to fly around; mostly with corporates having a dire need to blow over the news of their atrocious lack of morals — but what is it they use?
Most probably only a time share (think S/36 style) or copied-instance or copied-engine of the concept / most elaborately trained instance available.
Do we have a criminal / misdemeanour system in place already for such non-human persons? No, I don’t mean the sorely failed ‘corporate’ personhood approach as that’s a hoax. People still are in charge of corporates, and are punishable per (Board!) capita for anything that anyone does on behalf of their employer XOR they are fundamentally not allowed to act independently in any society.
Only now do we have new entities coming aboard that behave like individuals but have none behind them to cover for accountability … or they aren’t individual operators. So, no choice. But as yet, no legal system to operate in. Conundrum!
On a somewhat tangential (is it?) node: Yes, AlphaGo has beaten a human a couple of times, and the other way around now, too, but that doesn’t mean the game is lost (its interest); see Chess. And, ‘who’ has beaten the human player? Is it a ‘who’ or is it (not only) an ‘it’ or not even that, is it too abstract to say that a ‘robot’ that is in fact an ‘information system somewhere out there dispersed in place, maybe even in time’ has beaten a human..? AGI has no power plug, people!
Also,
[“The” Church, Ronchamps]
Obviously today: Elk, Moose, Reindeer
As an intermission: Would you know which is which, of the above/below …?
And then, there’s continental differences …
First up, the Elk:
Servus Canadensis, the wapiti indeed. Next up, the Elk:
know as such in Eurasia including those tinny pebbles off the coast called the British Isles. Looks suspiciously like the Alces Alces that is the Canadian (oh well, and US, yes, whiners) Moose, doesn’t it?
Because it is…! But you moose’ent confuse the two with each other nor with the reindeer a.k.a. caribou:
Rangifer Tarandus, since this one’s for Saami and Santa.
Are you feeling elky now ..? Or move to the Caribouan; you’ll never have problems with the above there …
