Drones are the new tablets

It’s obvious once you think about it (which admittedly may or may not be obvious in your case) —

  • Desktop sales rebound a bit, on new (‘large’, expensive-)chip performance;
  • Tablet sales a sagging as they turn out to be too slow, and the ‘keyboard’ size and control pads turn out to be insufficient for all but casual browsing. Though highest-end specs may suffice, almost;
  • But at the lower end they’re overtaken by notephones;
  • And, at the higher end, 2-in-1 laptops shrink with all their convenience and power on board (SSD mem…) to (better) serve the nomads (than till now);
  • Unexplored newness (post-retro-hipster, though a lot of ppl around may have missed a couple of trend switches probably due to being sheeple anyway) is now in Drones. Of all sorts:
    • Not just cam pics/vids of the casual kind,
    • We’ll see an array of submarkets springing up,
    • E.g., photography: Think about all the much-better tilt-shifted [No. No. NO! Not the crapcam idiot-filter kind!] pics of any environment, including cityscapes and high(sic)rise architecture,
    • Or the pro-am sports event coverage that can improve so much (except for the actual pros — they may lose their margin),
    • And industrial inspection may be much easier if done right; replacing bulky dangerous man-manned choppers etc. — see the text of this!
    • Lots of variants are out there, still; no market rationalisation in action (yet),
    • No easy Eple version being in sight. That could only have the functionality that sheeple can handle; two simple push buttons: ‘Take-off’ and ‘Crash’,
    • All this, especially since safety issues (and privacy maybe, huh) may mean full freedom may not be feasible in the end — leaving the drone thing to techies (those that have a developed feel for tech, not the weaklings that have grown up thinking math was hard b/c they didn’t want to put in any effort into anything let alone hard learning stuff and were left free by their ‘I live like my kids are an accessory’ too stupid to should have been allowed to be parents). Where techies just don’t grow the market into early adoptor/early majority sizes quickly.

Oh well, I made my point. I hope. Anything to add ..? Like:
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[This is a test: If you don’t know what that is, you’re disallowed to operate a drone for obnoxious ignorance]

Cyber ‘Nam

OK… As you know I wouldn’t be the war monger re ‘cyber’ warfare. And don’t have the answers — neither do you! — but have searched and asked for them; see past posts (numerous).
This one is more about how the campaigns and battles are fought. Full cyberstatefulfirewallcomplexmonitoringNOCSOC jacket style, out there in the field. (Privacy) protesters at home, safely away from the danger. Some top brass (‘generals die in bed’) ordering your data forward, hardly trained/hardened or crypto protected and blaming shoddy execution and wily counterparts. The traumatised demobilised db admin not wanting to shoot down even a deer-like referential integrity violation. Et cetera. Feel free to add to the comparison. E.g., how things will develop. Or– how thing would have to work out if, huge if, for once history is learnt from.

Oh well. @CyberTaters and @cyberXpert will have their way. And #ditchcyber. And this:
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[Will be.]

Assurance… No; continuous blockchainproofing will be

Accountants (of the certifying kind) have seen the light of continuous assurance coming. The vast majority of them reacted by being the rabbits [certainly not of the Winnebago / Native American trickster type ..!]; though assuming the headlights were and are still very distant, sitting quite still…
A select few have responded differently – embracing some change as inevitable, researching how Continuous Assurance might be, in times of proliferating XBRL and the like.

That’s OK. And laudable for the Virtue of facing the danger not ducking.

But … all of the assurance industry is still lock, stock and barrel dependent on being the Third Party in agency models.
And now, blockchain tech is around the corner, promising all sorts of unbelievable new ways of transferring trust. If only one could build some system(ic) in which any principal would be able to Read all minute transactions of an agent, and would be able to reliably (…) make sense of it – then the information quality (read: [non]uncertainty, [non] information (access, processing capability) difference) would be immediately visible and actionable. Undoing the need for a trusted third party to give a second opinion that is so beaten down to platitudes anyway that the usefulness has deteriorated way beyond what third parties themselves still believe (if they wouldn’t, who would…?). And note the italics of trusted.

Trusted – the thing that blockchain technology spreads so evenly, so extremely to the opposite of the ultimate non-spread of one person/entity.

Oh well. You know now, and this:
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[Relevant if you think it through: Warped reflections. NY of course]

Sharing a name for economy

Rightfully, I thought as I read this article… but then, not.

Yes, ‘sharing economy’ is abuse by the UburbNb’s of this world as they’re exploitative scams that have little to do with the actual Sharing Economy.
The actual Sharing Economy is about sharing because of caring, which is price-less in itself and holds quite some anti-monetary ulterior goals.
The Sharing Economy shouldn’t have to change its name because others, in an ethically-horrendous and despicable robbery, claimed it.

And all this is futile resistance. “All that is of value, is defenseless” (Troelstra)

And:
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[Yes, the same as a couple of weeks ago, now from a approx. 120deg different angle, still works ..?]

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:
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[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.]
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[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 ..?
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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:
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[A bleak future, today]

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

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord