Innovation (technologicallly driven) – Page 23

New! (RE yesterday's post)

Oh how appropriately timed, this…: A new version of l0phtcrack is here ..!

As I mentioned in the passing in yesterday’s post, defense-wise one would be hard-pressed to find anything that’s up to snuff qua being a step ahead of the Other Side, catching up is however still (if only just) feasible. Good to see that the tools once (we talk, like, ages ago, ages being circa 20) used offensively and having disappeared from view, return in all their sophisticated glory — be it as point solutions in a much evolved world but still.

All rejoice and ‘play around only to get to know it’…!

Remember… you may turn out to be such a toll all the same … And:

[Once, sufficient and hard to handle, for defense. Now, a model just for show]

Weird infosec science

Who would have thought — that total surveillance would reach into the house, no / hardly any backdoors need to be built in even.
As explained here, and here in closer-to-humanly-readable form.

If such are the Tempest inroads, who needs the newest-of-highest-tech solutions as they all will all succumb to either trivial complexity-induced-unavoidable sloppiness of implementation, or to circumvention in the above way…?

Of course all of it is an atrocity in ethics but … I won’t be utterly negative about humanity’s future so I’ll stop now. With:

[Art imitating life; Stedelijk Amsterdam]

Plusquote: You ..?

Short of just copying the site of all sites when it comes to motivation, this time we have something truly positive ..:

Men have become the tools of their tools.

H.D. Thoreau was right. Already in his day. Didn’t witness the atrocities of … about every decade somewhere (yes, 00, 10s, 20s and 30s, too, around the world, and 50s, 60s/70s, and, on an economic scale, 80s/90s included) of the last century though a millennium ago [is that the right expression? Not like the length ago but the timeframe that has passed…] but still already he was right.

And, since ARPAnet was invented, we’re on a same track for this century, be it still, again, as Always, again, under the flag of utopian optimism about what newest developments in AI bring. But hey, Skynet’s a beautiful thing, right ..? Right ..!?

Since this is a Plusquote post, I’ll still leave you with something positive:

[Keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping, into the future]

I can see your pulse

Just to drop a note; that Big G’s Glass is still around — but the same may, on a comparative after-launch timescale (sic), possibly not be said about Big A’s Watch.
Come to think of it… Watch isn’t what it’s made for; ‘flix on your wrist would be a hard view. More like Big B-rother watching your intimate (sic) health data…

— As an intermission, this (esp. 0:00-0:11 and 2:45—) deserves many more clicks —

But as said, some competitor is still larger in pulse-racked computing, at least (without having the energy to google for actual data) when it comes to visibility and leadership of the pack.
So, let’s wait and see what v2.0 Big G will come up with next. Maybe there’s a real serious and immediately obviously useful tool lurking just around the corner, just out of sight, not out of pulse. Not like, the iProducts that started as massively dumbed-down versions of stuff already around, with a Braun rip-off design.

Oh well, never take one’s point too far so I’ll stop already. Plus:

[Warped real life imitation, not usurpation]

Dronecatcher ..?

Was tinkering with ideas to get rid of drones around / over high-risk sites, e.g., critical infra (sites).

You know, like the radiant type of energy production.
Where drones pose a somewhat new but pesky risk. The newness, of course being not much of it when all sorts of attack with either plain vanilla or modified-to-autopilot RC controlled planes (possibly built in one’s garage) were around already and would hardly need any (suspicious) infra to take off and do their nefarious thing.
Though the proliferation of the new heli-style drones somehow raised the frequency/chance side of the risk equation. And, maybe, the ease of modding for sufficient tech capabilities of the kind you’d not want a.k.a. payload weights.

So, apart from the sudden realization that in times past, recent included, little did we know of the defenses surrounding critical infra against the classical winged type drones, we have the question: What now ..?

There seem to be two solutions required:
1. How to detect a drone, possibly rogue
1.5. How to handle false positives/negatives
2. How to down it.
Because I don’t color inside the lines only.

The first, might be feasible with some mini-/micro-installations of e.g., phased array radar in scan and track modes.
The second… My favorite would be a healthy dose of rounds, e.g., like a couple of full-on Goalkeepers around your install. Or have the lamo version of only (cross-?)beaming the GPS around your target out of the sky, or lasering it beyond melting point. These latter two might be the more difficult ones, qua aim/range specifity needed. But the former will probably not fly too well with overzealous environs freaks [note: not against the reasonable ones]. Oh well, we’ll just throw up some net structure when the threat is imminent — quick reloads available ..??

And there’s still the issue of not shooting two birds with(out) one drone. I.e., how to ensure you’re not offing all sparrows in a cloud, and miss the single drone’let that disturbed the birdies in the first place. Well, Why should I come up with the lame side-solutions ..?

Also:

[The unexpected, but disastrous scenario…]

Plusquote: Qua Quantification

Qua quantification, maximal isn’t the optimal that minimal is.

If quantification were good, or worth pursuing even anything more than a bit or minimally, Yoda would talk about hidden Markow chains not The Force.
Not all that can be counted, counts, and not all that counts, can be counted. Where ‘not all’ is to be read different than latter-day simpletonian, but as antediluvian ‘none’. Capice ..?

Many more arguments might go here. Suffice to say that ‘evidence-based’ science is a scam. Only those that are too stupid (let’s put it like it is) to ‘get’ the value of philosophy (and ethics etc.etc. as part of it), may not understand it. But as the vast masses don’t have a clue how their car works — chemical reactions within the pistons, anyone? how ’bout the programming of the cabling that controls it all? — but still use it, NO you not understanding does NOT mean it’s nonsense, in your case to the contrary.

To return to the positive of the Plusquote…: All may have a say in matters of society and the ‘control’ (quod non) of its infrastructure including all ‘critical’ sectors like energy, security and finance…

Oh that may be too much of a stretch but still…:

[OK, … quantify this … NO not even the qualifier Amsterdam is correct, it’s Dordrecht and even that doesn’t capture the picture…]

Rio per capita

… Is the medal list per capita out already ..?
[Spoiler: next Thusday’s post has some results for the below…]
For surely, just adding up medals per ‘country’ is ridiculous. When some country may send two athletes (four?) to some contest and can pull from, e.g., 10M citizens, how much infrastructure (economically, culturally etc.) can it muster, compared to some country that has a potentials pool of, e.g. 300M ..?
[Including that some form of compensation should be available for the very fact that population- and surface-wise smaller countries have a much lower ‘pyramid’ of local contestants challenging each other for better performance, and less physical room for training/contest facilities, uniform marketing hence sponsoring, and societal recognition to be had — if at all, see the following.]

Bragging about some idiotic sort of ‘we’ that has collected 1000 medals over the decades, is double nonsense. How many of the medal winners were allowed to procreate so prolifically that, genetically, the ‘we’ is now justified, gene pool wise? Or rather, how many of the medal winners were neglected by society so that they died in ignominy and often even poverty ..!? That’s quite contrary to the ‘we’, those medals should be discounted from any total …

So, where is it, the Per Capita medals list of, e.g., Rio’16 ..?

[No, the Netherlands wouldn’t climb very much higher; close to median in population as it is, and same qua performance (?).]

Next, what would a handicap system look like ..?

And:

[a.k.a. ‘The Medal Race’ — or is it a commentary on the financial industry in the midst of which it lies beached ..? [spoiler: yes it is]; Zuid-As Amsterdam]

Get the vibe

Or, how did you not think this would happen, everywhere, all the time ..??

I’ll finish with a pretty pic:

[When curtains would keep your salon business private …; Huis van Gijn Dordrecht]

Inverse Recency Bias

Word has … had it, that continuing doing what didn’t work, would be futile. (Remember?)
And, there was a thing called the Recency Bias (as, somewhere, in here).

Against the first, some point out its truth (quod non), that outcomes wouldn’t change. But when the environment (say, the actual world) in which the ‘experiment(s)’ were conducted, have changed — and it does, ever faster — the input will inevitably be processed differently hence will give different outcomes except the exceptions, rightly named.
Against the RB then, Big Data was all-powerful, in particular in pointing out that going back way beyond some limited, overly recent data set, would overcome it. If you go back long enough, you’ll find any data to fit any curve you’d like…

But in between both, we have the Inverse Recency Bias. When you go back far enough … of course you’ll find data, from a vastly different environment than the one that the recent data is from. So you’re biased to find results (time series extrapolated into the near or far future) that apply ever less, the more (further) you look back. Great.

Oh I’m just here to mess up your mind, so you can make it up. Plus:

[At GlassNext Dordrecht; Dordrecht Museum, Dordrecht]

ChainWASP

… With all the blockchain app(lication)s, in all senses, sizes and seriousnesses if that is a word, growing (expo of course) everywhere,
wouldn’t it be time to think about some form of OWASP-style programming quality upgrading initiative,

now that the ‘chain world is still young, hasn’t yet encountered its full-blown sobering-up trust crash through sloppy implementation. But, with Ethereum‘ and others’ efforts to spread the API / Word (no, no, not the linear-text app…) as fast and far and wide as possible, chances of such a sloppy implem leading to distrust in the whole concept, may rise significantly.

Which might, possibly, hypothetically, be mitigated by an early adoption of … central … Oh No! control mechanism of e.g., code reviews by trusted (huh?) third parties (swarms!) where the code might still remain proprietary and copyrighted.
Or at least, the very least, have some enforceable set of coding quality standards. Is that too much asked …??

I know; that’s a Yes. So I’ll leave you with the thought of a better near-future, and:

[Horizontal until compile-time errors made adjustments necessary (pic); beautiful concept — other than Clean Code, actually executed to marvelous effect]