Innovation, economics, society at large – Page 11

‘Code, you know

Recently, I was reminded again that keeping up with appearances of developments, in the IT field are difficult. And placement of commas is an art if you wondered. The culprit in this instance was this here among various articles about Low Code / No Code as a thing. The placement of intermissions is, too.

Well, I’d rather be a fan of Do Code… But I’m unsure whether that still flies, other than in classrooms around the world but not your local prep / grammar school that sorely falls behind in prepping children (‘kids’ is for their parents with diminished language competencies) for the nearest of futures.

Oh well. Just go out and yolo- / NoLoCode… Plus:
[What beautiful ~~Frank Lloyd Wright~~ just Jeruzalemkerk Amsterdam]

Long and fruitful lives

Again, the discussions re pension age turns up; whether those in ‘physically stressful’ occupations should be pensionable – even in this day and age, without any regard to subject’s want or not..! For 10 points, compare to slavery – at earlier ages. Use 100 words or less.
Where there never is any regard either for the starting age(s) of work. Most often, those in the ‘physically stressful’ categories will have started work early, right? And/or, have paid their dues, in terms of contributions to pension schemes anyway, or indeed hard work without much in the way of tax deduction cleverness. So yeah, when it comes to a ‘right’ to be pensioned early, that should be, should have been for a long time already you lazy … policymakers, in the schemes. And, for those who started later (like Yours Truly… much later but better prepped and experienced than my cohort, definitely), having to end later should come as not much of a surprise nor special burden. Nope, I didn’t mean pre-tired half-lives, plain late-r-etirement…

Whatever. Plus:
[When this is your work/-place, you’re not used up so early, are you? Granada]

Forever young, immature infosec

Sometimes one feels like one’s in a partial Gourndhog Day or 2:22 …
When 7 december 2006, there was this meet about the maturity of infosec, as a field. Which was compared, by Yours Truly, to the then (and now!) equally immature IS audit world – which had a couple of decades more under its development belt but ~~was~~ is still quite immature still.

Then there’s the first paragraph of this. ’nuff said..?

And:
[This, still fresh which is a different thing …; Barça of course]

Diving under, almost, everything

Dindn’t we feel it coming, if not in the air tonight than at least, after we signalled that BIOSes had been targeted… that there’s always a layer deeper one has to be on guard for infosec leakage and backdoors… How did this ‘surface’? Bypassing all the O/S features …

Just putting in down here. E.g., which, how many, platforms would be vulnerable to this; how much and what sorts of traffic could you send around through this …? Would one be able, when in so deep, to pick up system/sysadmin/root rights/credentials when browsing around ..?

And here we (not) are, all fleeing to the End User Is Stupid mantra, away from our own failings in tech but hey, users are the weakest link so we shove tons of hard protocol i.e., stupidity, on them. And burying them in awareness smotherlectures, instead of creating real behavioural change.

Oh well. And:
[Buried under the tons of network traffic, there’s a pay(ing)load you see? Nyagra]

Once were warriors of the smallest kind, our promise for the future

Who was surprised when this here piece entered their view? Not I. I not ed that a presentation of Yours Truly of Jan 2015 had:
Ello, Viv, YikYak, Tsu, Whisper, Kik, WeChat, Line, Viber, surespot, Whicker, Treema, KakaoTalk, Nimbuzz, Tango, MessageMe, Slack, HipChat, Peerio, Wizters, Secret, The Insider, Awkward, Cloaq, Chrends, Dropon … just as a sample list, so
To which already then, tons could have been added.

[Intermission quiz: Which ones did I forget then, that have made it big today ..? Or have perished again in the mean time ..? Or are still around but struggling ..?]

Some questions spring to mind:
Have you called your money manager to account over investing in every hype over and over again whereas the returns (after accounting for LGD) are so measly?
Why do we believe the hype, against old but still solid and supreme-quality advice?
How can we do better next time(s) ..?

Poor old/young Yik Yak. So much promise, snatched away at such a young age…
Plus:
[Not a unicorn, but somewhat rare; guess where (wrong, wrong again, and again …)]

Collaborative economy

Just a shout-out for some positive initiative, indicative of what you too, could do qua collaborative economy…: This, for all your poetry in business, in particular when you’re Dutch. Which might be an oxymoron of sorts, semantically…
Whatever. Just sponsor …

Plus:
[Past poetry in 3D; Zuid-As Ams]

Free (for) all or valuable next to nothing

We discussed the distinction between ‘users’ and ‘clients’ re socmed recently, and also a bit on socmed usage profiles – I mean, (active) ‘user’ numbers.
Did I mention … (not; ) the development of one catch-all platform for those who have no clue about their own user profiles and hence dump just about anything on Facebuck, in between all duckface, cat and somewhat-(??)-indecent pics since they don’t have the capability to see the future negative reflection this will have on their sensibility qua socmed use?
Plus a whole suite of other socmed platforms, with particular use by respective particular parties that know where to post which content? Not lumping it all together, and have it viewed by just about any irrelevant crowd, but carefully pitching various content at sites where they know only interested, subject-discriminate and -educated (also, by experience) peers will seek, find and see the subject-relevant materials.

Are there any data on this? Big data on various age categories, and whether (other) user categories (per professional category at some level of detail?) use different socmed platforms ..?
Would like to learn; thanks in advance for your pointers.
Oh, edited to add before release: There’s already something on user categories, unfortunately without the numbers.

And:
[Oh all you 2 billion individuals… Caught in the intensive human farming for data…; Zuid-As Ams]

Droneshield-downer

How would this (link in Duds) great – not so much – invention help against drones that have pre-programmed GPS coordinates and semi- or fully-autonomously fly to their destination? Because they’re out there already and even building/programming them is a piece of cake for the ones that would actually want to do harm for no defensible (sic) reason.
And also, there already is this; better drone detection than the article (and the vendors therein) suggest would be possible …!
And also, there already is law against the proposed jamming.

So, too bad, vendors Deutsche Telekom, T-Systems, Dedrone, Rhode&Schwartz, Squarehead, Robin Radar Systems, and HP Wüst: Magenta is a colour, not a viable product — it’s illegal and it doesn’t work; a square fail.

Am I too harsh? Possibly; that happened some 50 years ago as well. Plus:
[Quite this’y: All showboating, no real value, and skewed; Haut Koenigsbourg again]

Sending the right message

This of course being the right message. If you can read it when I Send it you. And, for your viewing pleasure:

[Anonymous but blurry and far from privacy-complete, this physical cloud exchange…; NY Grand Central]

Goldielocks versus information security

If you expect some fable about budgets; not so much.
This post’s about the generation thing called the Goldielocks syndrome – every generation (aren’t they ever shorter, these days?) believing that they had it, and made the society they ‘created’ no less, better than any generation before and after them.
For many generations, tech is still something that ‘came in later’ [venturing that even the newest ones, will see major tech-driven societal / tools changes in their lives], and information security nitty-gritty stuff is a major part of what they experience of that technology.
And ‘we’ (all) have done a very poor job of making it easier, actually improving over what was, to take away rational arguments for the G syndrome. We rather have heaped tons of infosec micromanagement of the worst kind onto the mere use of the technology, not even mentioning the troubles in the content where automation turned into change and inefficiencies of the polished work that was, and all that to cope with issues not in the actual work but in the operation of that very technology and its (sometimes gross) imperfections that didn’t exist before.

So, we may have to re-strategise and re-implement about all that we have, qua technology and qua information security dyeing on top and after it.

There’s other reasons, too. And:
[When defences were, quite, a bit less buggy; Haut Koenigsbourg]