Ah, your home controlled by …?

In the race to grasp as much of the market as possible, which is understandable, one party jumps in to create the API of APIs we’ve all been waiting for, among others (since this) in this domotics category.
But … will we surrender even our in-house as-yet unconnected lifeblogging data to one of the parties that don’t have the best of track records re privacy …? I mean this one. With an odd name

Oh yes, I hear you suppress your fears … with empty words, given that even at chip level intrusion and (data) extrusion seems to have been possible, and in the wild, already for years.
So, this one party grabbing your data at software level may even be an ‘improvement’ for transparency … the devil you know (but still don’t see) – how’zat for self-censorship in your house? Even when with a required warrant, will (tending to casual, ubiquitous) surveillance in your own home be the future?

Well, I’ll go cleaning up. With said product (name) of course…. And:
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[Preferably, the non-scratching kind … London already a decade ago]

3+ bodies found in business

… just about everywhere. Of course I refer to the n-body problem set with n > 3 as here.
Because it is so dismally known, and applied. Most starkly (#loveofwords) in ‘business’ ‘strategy’, where the lack of wisdom is clearly demonstrated in the lack of inclusion of all (sic) potential (sic; including chance function estimations) competitors’ moves. Name any market where the latter s doesn’t apply, and report it to (anti-?)cartel authorities.

I.e., the Problem applied to strategy means: Strategising is futile, all your course belong to us. On a side note:
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[Alignment; Vienna]

Swa(r)m(i’)s anyone ..?

OK. That title needs some explanation. This is that.

First, a pic to display the right mood:

000024 (7)

[Office; Y2K fieldwork at Martinique]

Yesterday [at time of scheduling ;-] it struck me that some years ago already – time flies like an arrow (eight interpretations) OR when you’re not working (traditional interpretation) – there was this fad in organisationland called ‘swarms’ in which agile (sigh…) little bands of independent professionals would come together all bringing their individual expertise and competences (as swami’s) to do a certain project job, then disband to go off to other ventures in yet other swarms. As transparent pools of in-group trusted achievers that would need less coordination than Big Corp in-house controlled project teams, and would leave the independents truly independent even from one another. Yet needing the trust among themselves.

But as swarms go, the hype’let soon disappeared it seems. So I checked with Trends™ – and found something interesting:

Swarm trend graph

Off search term ‘swarm -bird -bee -starcraft -alien -heart -“the swarm” -locust -particle’ yes even the movie needed to be excluded to let it make some sense.

Where you see … there might not have been a hype’let in the first place. And/or it was buried amidst negativity over the New Economy (© The Year 2001) in the Financial Downturn.

Anyway; which part of the jobless growth isn’t jobless but rather perm-contractless ..? Only if we net out the work contracted to independents (individual / swarm / inc.), would we know how much actual productivity/growth is jobless indeed.

Or you would have pointers to definitive data on the latter already ..?

Gininflation ..!?

The title not referring to a rise in consumption of some derivative beverage (jenever being the real deal of course!), but a conflation of Gini and inflation.

Because it just won’t leave my mind that some form of inequality (change) index might be derived from a clever combination of regular inflation rates (the real ones, not the pure phantasies ponied up by governments!) with both the Gini income and wealth indices. As this would amplify that inflation may hit classes that can hardly avoid it harder, and classes that wouldn’t care much, less. Or the other way around. Or so. Driving out money supply through capturing where the hoarding of that new money takes place.
Finally exposing the spiraling inflation in the Euro zone, too, that officially didn’t exist after Doomsday struck (Feb 2002) but all but the most foolhardy delusional (bordering on ? utter incompetence) knew and know better. Coinciding with the mortgage / derivatives bubbles.

But it takes some careful crafting to combine inflation (which one?) with Gini (which one?). Where my skills in the area are a bit rusty. Anyone ..?
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[No razor sharp banking saved Toronto]

Not even bread

Juvenalis was correct. But isn’t anymore.

People do still care for bread, and circuses, but the latter-day economy slowly degrades to only provide the latter. As in: The 0,1% (yes indeed, the next-0,9% is under threat as well) that consists of a handful of behind-the-scene creeps (as defined by Jaron Lanier) and a less than handful of Universe-scale lucky start-ups, run the economy, ‘jobs’, of the 5% petty work-slaves that are the ‘new’ generations of app developers and ‘disruptors’ (quod non) – let to play and claim some fame, until play time (circus) is over and the 0,1% reels in the money buckets. Never mind that income of the petty, was dismally low (“you shouldn’t want to earn, but grow..!”, right?). Never mind that this structure leads to no money buckets remaining anymore in the end. Never mind that the circuses lead to just about everyone believing they have a shot at fame – with enough ackonwledgement of history and historical facts, they would see that a. chances are so slim to none, very, very close to none; b. levelling would benefit hugely many more, and quicker, and would make all things more robust leaving time for actually gratifying societal actions.

As there’s a huge middle class of just-slightly-less-überhip to not-hip-at-all people that would want to work for bread – but either can’t find anything other than stale ever simpler jobs in stale ever more brittle companies (no circus shows at all) as long as the latter last (ever shorter) for ever less bread, or are pushed into Etsy Arcadia where barter and trade will not suffice to pay your mortgage for a long time if ever. Yes the latter is more fulfilling than comfortable (?? not.) numbness, but when (not if) leading to starvation of lower Maslow levels, will achieve much less accomplishment of higher M levels by default. And that’s still how we all roll… [In the Western world]

So… is there a middle ground, for the 94,9% in the middle when the middle ground they held, vanished and not much appeared yet ..? The ‘hope’is of course that the 0,1% will either tumble long before the Singularity, or the Singularity will overtake them…

OK, will lighten up…:
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[Ávila, to keep the hordes out of the lush gardens ..?]

Musk / Vicarious / ASI

Haven’t heard in a while of anything fruitful coming forward from Elon Musk’s investments in Vicarious despite his concerns. (Now that DeepMind has gone over to the Dark Side.)

Reasons ..? Double secrets?
I’d just like to know.

For the weekend:
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[Algorithmic justice prevails ..? Amsterdam]

Simple link: BYOD is the New Wi-Fi

Very true. Though we may even say: BYOD was the new WiFi, as BYOD is so 2013 … but let’s await the resurrection of WiFi when IoT-in-the-shape-of-ubiquitous-computing takes off…
BYOD is the New Wi-Fi – Infosecurity Magazine.

Will amount to not much

… Was the typical reaction that long (!) time ago when this aired. Which was, statistically, correct I guess. When betting on binary outcomes ( [Huge | Nothing] ) with so skewed a distribution [Intermission: What would the moment-generating function be ..? Could point at some underlying success formula!] of probabilities, the Will Amount To Nothing opinion is quite valid.
But then, when weighing in the possible pay-offs (per distribution, too ..?), the picture is somewhat less clear. But still heavy on the Dismiss side, right ..?

Safe bet:
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[May still loose out after tech moved on; Sevilla]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord