Category: Information Risk Management

Your unbody double

So, there now is a thing being Artificially Intelligent 3-D Avatars. As per here. How nice.
And then you realise time travel may be possible once you don’t have the physical duplication problem anymore. Though we still would have the other problems; bummer.

But still, one of the problems has been solved. The others, actually … may need re-study. Because, there may now be differences in travelling forward (possibility approaching, when ‘time’ in your physical life needs to stay synchronised in some form or another with others, and your AI3DAvatar can speed up ..?) but then, returning to Now might (creation of possibility here) be equivalent or the same [which aren’t] to travelling back in time. Duh. Too bad it’s still so hard to reason (positive-)logically and consistently about this.

And, it will make the ‘need’ to have dirty, planet-soiling flesh-and-blood humans around, much less. There’s no such thing required anymore as people being trapped in The Matrix and then wanting blue or red pills, but rather it’s the attachment of AI3DAvatars to the Singularity Machine; their subsumption into it (removing duplicate or false/inconsistent memories – that will be there IF the AI3DAvatar’s anything like you) leading to their disappearance — all they ever (in the future) were, had already been included (thought out on its own) by the SingMach.

For now, we’re still here; individually. And:
[“Tape”copies of the views from up there, will be loaded to your AI3dAvatar in a millisec; no need for that either; CNN Tower, Toronto]

FOMO as FOYA gone bad

The enslavement to socmed seems to be a generation- … less thing: Unfortunately, all too many seem to need to be connected — mistakenly, just liking things will not lead to a true connection; how many are there that actually grow into such? Only on apps that are specifically aimed to that –swipe-left– otherwise, not so much. Or hardly. Most socmed like-affiliations are a. for sheeple attaching themselves to some brand(s), indicating their lack of self-esteem by submitting themselves as consumer-onlies, b. for lack of dare to actually do something for a Good Cause but wanting to be associated with Successful-in-life people [i.e., actual do-somethings] nevertheless. No c. to think of, qua ‘most’.

What remains, is a hard to miss impression of the truth, being that socmed attachments (mostly to the worst-on-ethics corp behemoths rather than anything) are panicked FOMO symptoms to the world, signalling a much deeper problematic psyche, being the Fear Of Youself As-is; FOYA.
That’s right. Individualism having gone so far as to drive all those that subconsciously cling to group belonging much more than is societally acceptable ( or so it seems!), i.e., the vast majority (of Like-serfs), to seek ways to still attach to something that can slurp up their feeling of insecurity (on their own) and return a pat on the back for group support.

You get it. Can ramble on, but have little time. And:
[An affiliation choice!; Amsterdam]

Leaking profiles

Got an attention raiser during an off-the-cuff discussion on data leakage. Qua, like, not getting the first thing about what privacy has been since Warren&Brandeis’ eloquent definition, and subsequent codification in pretty hard-core, straightforward laws.
The problem being, that no theory of firm (incl public) allows subsumption of employees into slavery, of mind or otherwise. Think Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 12. Hence, tracking and tracing every keystroke of employees, i.e., treating them as suspect of e.g., data leakage before one has any a priori clue about everyone individually actually doing anything wrong, not having been granted any rights of surveillance in this jurisdiction, is a crime in itself.
And no, the comparison with street cameras that bother no-one and make everyone safer, is a lie on two counts. And, in many countries (the civilised ones; a criterion in reverse), such (total or partial) surveillance isn’t outlawed without reason.
So, your data leakage prevention by tracing everyone is an illegal act. Don’t.

No, your security concerns are not valid. Not the slightest, compared to the means you want to deploy. Stego to files of all kinds, when all are aware of its implementation, may help much better. And supplies you with the trace you want; not to your employee that you (but no-one else) suggest is rogue – (s)he knows about the traceabilitry so will be self-censored (ugch) into compliance – but to the third party that spilled the beans. Since stego-cleansing tools may exist, your mileage may vary. Encryption then, the destruction of content accessibility for those not authorised (through holding a password/token/~), will fail when anything you send out, might have to be read off a screen; the PrtScn disabling being undone by good ol’ cameras as present in your good ol’ S8 or P900 (though this at 0:50+ is probably the typical TLA stakeout vid/result).

Conclusion: Excepting very, very rare occasions, your data leakage prevention by employee surveillance will land you in prison. Other methods, might be legal but fail. Your thoughts now on outbound traffic keyword monitoring. [Extra credit when including European ‘human in the loop’ initiatives.]

And:
[No privacy in your prayers, or ..?? Baltimore Cathedral]

Ninety percent

Not in any economic sense you may have thought, given the attention oft given to, e.g., the 1% or 99% (We Are-; Occupy-style) where now the 90% might be the disappeared middle class in the US that extended from the bottom 10% – that was around even in the best of times – all the way to the top — excepting the 0.01% that was in charge all the time …
Here, it’s about a quote slash truism:

90% of everything is crap

Have ever truer things been said. This, of course you knew since prep school, being Sturgeon’s Law.

Just putting it there. See the link for a ‘proof’. Or look around you; physically (co-workers), mentally (in your head, and feel free to assume the others’ heads are not necessarily better…), qua your pay check, your significant other [hey here I can testify I’m lucky with a not-90% specimen par excellence; no she’s not reading this], etc.

Leaving you with:
[In the 10%, definitely. Even when it rains, this one. Baltimore]

Summer’s approaching

Sixteen steps to build a campfire [Because there’s not enough attention, or contention, to make it to the List of Lists you’d want to be on]:

  1. Split dead limb into fragments and shave one fragment into slivers;
  2. Bandage left thumb;
  3. Chop other fragments into smaller fragments;
  4. Bandage left foot;
  5. Make structure of slivers (include those embedded in hand);
  6. Light match;
  7. Light match;
  8. Repeat “a Scout is cheerful” and light match;
  9. Apply match to slivers, add wood fragments, and blow gently into base of fire;
  10. Apply burn ointment to nose;
  11. When fire is burning, collect more wood;
  12. Upon discovering that fire has gone out while out searching for more wood, soak wood from can labeled “kerosene”;
  13. Treat face and arms for second-degree burns;
  14. Re-label can to read “gasoline”;
  15. When fire is burning well, add all remaining firewood;
  16. When thunder storm has passed, repeat steps 1 – 15

    17. Oh, and:
    [Feels like a slide; to follow the above link, please do; NY/NY]

Get them ..?

The effectiveness of any system of limitation of random liberty for the common wheal, like, errm, traffic speed limits, where the enforcement hinges on individuals’

  • Weighing of necessity to break, either by being pressed (to arrive in time, or other coercion by others), or by an innate need to show off one’s [purely hypothetical; the more claimed, the more clearly emptily overshouting in vein] individuality;
  • Probability of detection, where of course society needs to balance total surveillance against freedom of movement — without interference even by blanket self-censorship;
  • Leniency of prosecution, i.e., whether one has boobs and cleavage (works with straight male and other-than-straight female cops, I guesstimate) and the happenstance happiness level of the state trooper (F/M/~), squared of course with how much over the limit you were and
  • Penalty — how much you’re charged for if at all

— with the overall effectiveness being helped most, it turns out, by #2 [Used ul in stead of ol on purpose, yes]. Making the societal weighing thing much more serious, (un)fortunately.

But also; how could this help in #ditchcyber space ..? Many more raps on the knuckles …? How? By enforcing time-outs on the use of the (=?) Internet? That would be quite some latter-day equivalent of shutting people out of global society by solitary imprisonment … (way beyond mere forced exile to wastelands (inclusive)or ‘Strailia). Calling to question the humanity of it. Or would it provide a (suggested limit:) day’s worth of re-education on the subject of life out there?

I’d want the latter for the great many … Time for some Multi-million scale entrapment…?

Oh, and:
[Yep that’s the panipticon at work in Penn’s Eastern State Pen — be it Al’s cell all nicely decked (with the wrong radio!); worth a visit ..!]

Some cloud insurance market

On the authority of a couple of very knowledgeable peers, there seems to be a discrepancy between the coverage (sanctions) that cloud providers (in particular the Big 4 of that) contractually will provide for, e.g., outages (recall the AWS East-1 one), versus what businesses (most, qua scale and lawyer fee availability) require given their revenue / reputation dependence and risk management.
In normal language, this translates to: If thing go pear-shaped, you only get something like 12 months’ subscription refunded even when your business tanks due to zero revenue when your services are unavailable. Zero chance to be able to negotiate this away in your contract. Hobson’s choices everywhere.

Isn’t this a great Insurance opportunity, then ..? Odds very low, deep pockets for redress xor easily re-insured, no real single-vendor dependency when taken global, etc. It’s just that there’s a power gap leading to deviation away from the middle when it comes to bearing damages, that can be fixed in this way; ‘out of band’.

Or am I missing something …?

Plus:
[Or just pray, that’s also a (real?) red carpet option; Sicily]

Explicitation of Risk — scaring yourself into victimhood

As may be clear, Sloterdijk’s explicitation ideas don’t hold on metaphysics levels of abstraction alone.
It works for all the mundane stuff like ‘risk management’ [disclaimer for the contradictio], too.

And, by making explicit what previously was ‘there’ already, but implicitly and hence not in any beholders’ eyes, in this case all one gains is not understanding (per se) but especially, systemic, existential scare.
Because the Unknown is identified, explicitised into existence. The Unknown that is, by (now) definition, the primordial Chaos contra the Order of Zeus and Apollo in his wake. In turn turning your existence into some degree of insecurity. [In a practical sense, not in the Schäume/Über-sphere sense of Peter Big-S]
And then, ‘risk management’ is the continuation through treatment of that Uncertainty with the addition of other means. [Italics mine, to correct towards the Original quote.] Because, you see, ‘managing’ the risks, even if for the moment we purely hypothetically consider that to be the case in any above-absolute-zero factual degree even for the most trivial, operational form, means having to acknowledge the fundamental impossibility of it. The harder ‘modelling’ types throw their weight [ah, yes, a very-big-if assumption, Pinocchio/Calimero’an again] against the uncertainties, the bigger the resistance is; the harder the chaos-theoretical unpredictability of the future bounces back. The further pushed, the more the full weight of the Universe pushes back.

You get that drift.

Well, then. What remains in nearby sight is the loss of naïvety that would give room for human growth. No guts, no glory! Where the guts are taken out of the picture, when they once were the area where gut feelings pro and contra any action or inaction were properly weighed, now only stupidly-crippled-rationality weighted.
But on the other hand; believing in the efficacy of ‘risk management’ in principle, will lull to sleep in a most blue pill sense.

Just don’t force all to take that colour; some actually want to succeed in Life.
And:
[Aim for clarity, deal with reality; Amsterdam (Lights Festival tour)]

Being Creative with Trust in Identities

… seems impossible to get right. Since for sure, Identities that can be Trusted are so stable that all Creativity is impossible ..?

What does society-at-large want? If you think about the bandwidth above: Aristoteles’ true middle..! But would you know where that is, in this? Would it be sufficiently on the Fixed side to be able to be used as trustworthy Identity? Or would it be a matter of good-enough reliability, for the task at hand?
Possibly we should like Activity-Based Access Control to pair to this Task-Sufficient Identification ..?

A lot on this will have to be developed further, I’d say, but this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship…
Plus (skewed ‘horizon’-ID intentional…):
[All the ID theft may not get you here…; Amsterdam]

Imminent enrichment through AI — of jobs ..?

Anyone else feels like the breakthrough of AI in all sorts of jobs (yes, most certainly not only the bohrrring repetitive-manual-labour kind — that may be one of the kinds that comes much later in the sequence since it requires extremely sophisticated physical/intellectual (yes) interactions than previsouly thought (by humans))
is imminent?

And anyone see that the horror of replacement of humans XOR your co-workers is to come only (a bit) later, when AI-driven systems have become good enough to replace you, completely — leaving the spoils of labour to the (intensive people-farming) factory owners ..?
With in the shortish mean time, your job being ‘enhanced’ through AI, by the enrichment of having to deal less with the simple stuff and you having more time available to do more Intelligent (parts of) your job. Possile, on conditions of:

  • Such more intelligent parts of your job existing; a great many a manager may find there is no such thing, or the room for manoeuvre isn’t there;
  • You being able, capable, of performing such more intelligent job parts; with the focus on reporting (send/receive; hardly ever anything more than the extremely-simpleton processing in between) probably your capabilities have shrivelled into unusability;
  • Time availability is what holds you back so far; extending on the previous condition, you may find yourself to actually – be honest now! – already have had that time available but used it for busywork, like, being a Manager or so. And/or, by loafing or do I repeat myself. Now that you may get time available for Intelligent stuff, you may not notice that;
  • You getting paid more, or at least the same; as it turns out that the enrichment-by-cutting-out-the-bottom-part, leads to a serious pay cut as your Overlords now see your function as much less time-consuming or bottom-line-feeding. Especially the latter may turn out to be an eye-opener…
  • You getting sufficient time to build a new job; the creeping replacement of You by AI-based systems might speed up significantly as the first rewards transpire — to the Owners again — and hence the cry [not tag; ed.] for More may intensify the efforts to replace you ever more, funded by … your increased utility if at all, or the increasing utility of the you-replacing AI at least.

Suffice to notice that a priori it will be very, very difficult to meet all these conditions, if even anyone would try (apart from you, but you’re too singleton in this to pull that off). So…

Oh well, there’s always:
[A different look at Casa de Musica; Proto]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord