Innovation, economics, society at large – Page 14

The Legend of Knuth the Agile

Once upon a time in a land far, far off-shore to today’s centers of economic, political of civilised-society gravity, before DevOps was a thing even, there was a great algorithm champion warrior named Knuth. Unlike his fellow programmer clansman, that coded for ~~fun and profit~~ deep innovation and peer recognition [f&p came only decades i.e. ‘centuries’ later; ed.], in a world that was barren of bad code but still inhospitable to what later would become hero geeks and nerds (for whom this was still obvious), Knuth was just that little bit less quickly-footed in his subject matter, earning him the nickname The Agile, just to deride his profound work.

Because, you see, he was a man of honour and clean algorithms, two things that in his days were nearly the same. And he was in favour of solving things with fundamental parts. Not ‘process steps’ or so – how would he laugh at those that propose that, these days. Nor happenstantially bundled ‘sprints’ of fast (hacked, in its profound meaning) coding – though extreme coders live on here and there, not given the honour and credit they deserve.
But real, standardised, tried and tested (even in a semi- or fully mathematical way) logically consistent actual process steps. But then, he understands that the real warrior body (brains) belong only to those that have honed the warrior spirit, have grinded and polished their skills over decades to shine like blank sheet metal of the finest alloys. So, not like ‘hey I had this one-year (??, mostly one-week or so ..!) course in agile programming now I’m a l33t h@x0r’ kind of pre-puerile nonsense.

Well, dear readers, you know how times can fly and how reputations can change overnight. So it happens that his nickname suddenly meant something else. No more poetic escapes of sparse code and clean, logic-based algorithm library linking and calling/returning at the side of the waterfall. development method. No more re-use of the tried and tested. No more frozen waterfalls at all, due to scope creep leading to progress-temperature drops to zero and below, leading to icy atmospheres where nothing works anymore. No more basic weapons training of even knowing how to deploy re-usable code and algorithms…
All we have now, in these days with no more heroes (but the baddies are still out there, everywhere), is/was faint attempts at “patterns”, being of course the latter-day devolution of the very algorithms that made Knuth the hero he was. Is.

And then, DevOps came to the scene. If only Knuth were still in his prime, he would know what to do…

Plus:

[Only in such art is extremely precisely applied sloppiness a virtue …! Gemeentemuseum Den Haag]

Chasing the GDPR hippo

As I was reminded of the ‘Kill the Hippo’ meme, I realised its application is valid in specific circumstances, too.
Where the Hippo is of course here. And the application that I was thinking of, is here.
Not this one, that may stay where appropriate (which is much less than always)…

No, your Usual Suspect isn’t the CEO or whatever, and suggesting the CISO is just a pun, but … the lawyer(s) involved…
All you have to do, is take a look at their billing rates. And at the hippo-original abbrev meaning (sometimes, even the original meaning outright qua looks but in the most-expensively-dressed-in-the-room version, hopefully?) — pointing at the need to not listen to them as the most effective way to deal with the issue(s) at hand since they may on occasion (50,1%++) have the least useful insights to bring to the table…

Oh well. I’ll leave you with:

[Dead straight, according to your lawyer. Cromhouthuis Ams]

Where’s F Fatigue ..?

Considering the fatigue seen everywhere re fake news, about all that is out there is called into question.
Which led me to search for a meme that just swirled into my mind: ‘Facebook Fatigue’. Boy did I think that could be quite some recent development, with the brag about ‘users’ (meant to mean ‘addicts’; the brag being towards ad salesmen as street corner suppliers, and investors as proceeds rippers ..?) being at something over 1.8B or so.
Boy was I wrong. Already in 2008 … And 2012, and 2015, and since …

When you try the same thing over and over again, and expect different results, you will!

Update later: This here; QED.

Now, where did ‘Newconomy’ go ..?

So there is hope. And there is:

[Paint your castle – is such a hass’le; Dublin C]

Effective presentations

May be elsewhere.
Recently delivered a ppt full of bullets and text [hold it; see below], to gather response and feedback. Put in quite some effort, like two days’ driving to the venue, including overnight stay, lunch and dinner costs, transport expense, sweating away at the location (the venue was only a couple of °s cooler than the 30°+ outside) with an extra night stay at the location, plus lunches, dinners, and a return trip of two days’ driving, incl overnight stay, lunch and dinner costs, transport expense, et al (sic).
For … well, not any sort of renumeration or token gift, even. Not, like, a promisingly large room turning out to be less than 40% (rounded way up) filled.

Which wouldn’t be so bad, if suitable, useful feedback had been received, or only publicity gained e.g., through (live or late) tweeting, LI mention or so.

But now, all I got was not even the T-shirt; all I got was 0. As in: zero.
Yes that’s the number of tips (let alone useful ones), or tweets about the pres (let alone far out reaching ones). I did disclaim the fullness of the slides (sic) to give impressions of all the content delivered (did not read them line by line, mind you), and yes I did before, during and after ask for feedback… Only some old hand pre-known friendlies with form/delivery compliments.

Oh well; at least now I know not to submit for free anymore. And/or, is this the beginning of the Classroom Learning Is Dead for trade conferences ..?
Yes, sponsor opportunities will make conferences et al, still feasible economically, but not when attendee rates will go down. Yes, online webinars et al are still bandwidth-challenged and most often, sketchily interactive at best – which is an opportunity for TEDx style beautifully told fairy tales but not for the ability to interrupt and, in particularly necessary very often with these kind of powering-on talks, correct huge biases, false assumptions, and certainly pastiches of logical reasoning, nor for feedback or pointer tips.

So, where are the (affordable…!) online conferences that are worthwhile to visit?
Not 2-way IRL (‘F2F’ like in the olden days of still today) but virtually – warping the meaning of the latter so far beyond its Original, and not taking it to the limit here but having only the channel un-physicalised, even; where is total two-way VR and/or AR in this ..?

Oh well, and:

[Still only had time for ‘drive-by’ i.e. walk-by tourism…; München]

Panoptic business

Recently, I heard the gross error of thinking again “When people use their business IT for private purposes, they have no right to privacy” – rightly countered from the room that standing European law most clearly has the opposite: Employer has zero rights to see anything unless there’s prior evidence of some malfeasance or malfunctioning (e.g., performance problems – of the employee, not of the infra…). So, blanket or categorical surveillance (or blocking, which presupposes monitoring how the heck else would you detect the to-be-blocked URLs..!?): No sir.

What about the recent spat where a bank blocked Netflix because employees’ use of it at home, using company laptops that Citrixed back to the bank and from there onward, overloaded networks of sad (typo not said, intended to characterise the) bank? Well, a. how dumb can you be to Netflix over Citrix etc, or is one so incredibly cheap (hey, works at bank; apart from the exceptions you know, go figure) that bandwidth cost is an issue? Then maybe you’re too scroogy to be allowed to wok at a bank in the first place; monumental failure of ethics wise, b. in this case, clearly there are performance issues – when it’s noticable on the company network level, certainly it goes for a number of individuals, even if only by disturbing the performance (bandwidth availability) of others. c. there’s no absolutes in what employers cannot do.

But clearly, in just about every case considered today where categorical blocking by blacklisting would be attempted because managers sideways involved in HR stuff would understand what the URL is about, i.e., not-business-related entertainment however SFW or N-, skipping the blacklisting of the really to be blacklisted sites (torrents, malware shops and other rogue tooling),
we have again the panopticon argument of “observation changes behaviour” – and in these times of clueless managers (the less they know that of themselves, the worse cases they are!), you need in particular those ‘users’/employees that go beyond monkey typing away to be creative in their work and find new revenu / cost reduction directions. Which means that when you observe, or only log to be able to observe, you squelch productivity and profitability… Way to go!

Oh, and:

[Not the one mentioned above; HypoVereins München on a heat-hazy day]

AI learning to explain itself

Recently, there was news again that indeed, ABC (or The ‘Alphabet’ Company Formerly Know As Google) was developing AI that could improve itself.
O-kay… No sweat, or sweat, qua bleak future for humankind, but …
Can the ‘AI’ thus developing itself, maybe be turned first to learn how to explain itself ..? Then, this [incl link therein!] will revert to the auditors’ original of second opinions … Since the self-explanatory part may very well be the most difficult part of ‘intelligence’, benefitting the most from the ( AI improving itself )² part or what?

And:

[Improving yourself as the imperative; Frank Lloyd Wright’s Beth Sholom at Elkins Park, PA]

Simply laborious

After some post recently, I was triggered to summarise – and expand …
Since there is a bit of history missing. Being the Theory of Firm. Which is, among other stuff but au fond, about the creation of the manager. As the go-between of ’employees’, as the go-between between the workforce and Capital. As the foreman, the one in charge of coordination – when the people come together because they can achieve more in cooperation than the sum of their individual efforts, through specialisation of labour, those specialised contributions need coming together in one way or another, and the provider of capital (the thing that other raw materials are paid with hence the about-only thing to receive deferred payment; don’t get me started on the so absolute quod-non of the ‘inherent right’ to rent above trivial liquidity and risk compensation…) will want to talk to just one. Originally, sometimes capital provider and leader/cooperation-initiator/manager were one, until external capital was required from parties that extorted control. Big sic there.
Well, now don’t go blaming me that it is on the capital provider side that criminally biased rules and regulations have crept in. Flash capital, extortionist locust ‘capital management’ groups, et al., have forced their mob ways into ‘normal’ conduct — almost; the Rheinland model [first, learn to pronounce that correctly, then, get to understand it fully, then, return and prostate and happily receive your life sentences for your transgressions] still holds sway, and sometimes veers back a bit. A bit.

So yes, to the latter, that is criminal, and the cause of cushions called management layers, ever more wrongly devised and developed. And yes, we would need some totalitarian revision of organisational structures to cure it all. Including, starting with, the redefinition [i.e., throwing away all that function there smoothly now, as they denounce their incapacity to really do what’s really required] of middle management and refilling the positions. Also capping CEO pay to, say, something like 10 times the average pay of the bottom 10% of the workforce. All contribute, and a CEO may need a little compensation for when [not if; should be law..!] something goes wrong, his (sic) head rolls. But not too much. When the CEO is sacrificed, something went so wrong that many will get hit; the CEO being in the best position to survive it, qua social and economic strata he should be in. Workers, much less so; much less opportunity to have built buffers, capice?

But maybe not absolute only Owners and Professionals. That will simply not work. Both sides would, even in an ideal world of perfect information everywhere, be buried under control information to the mountainous levels that they wouldn’t have time left [if you’d need more than 25 hours a day to do your work, just work that little longer!] to do their primary jobs…
But a revisit of Galbraith’ four information processing capacity increasing routes, as here, is desperately necessary… Surely, herein lies the way forward to much better organisational design, integrating the latest of possibilities qua information processing and internal and external networking, making possible the creation of true networked organisations and individuals…?

Oh, and:
[Completely undoctored, also unsmoked, pic from Toronto]

2FA is illegal!

Just when you thought the solutions to your eternal (not) pwd problems were getting mature enough to deploy – nudged to annoyance by all the vendor FUD – and you forgot the solution is totally easy and already in your infra everywhere, you will find … 2FA is declared illegal …

Oh …, it turns out to concern the party drug kind only, not 2FA but 4-FA. Like, here. Phew!
But stil, kids, don’t rely on 2FA either; help users reduce complexity not hinder ’em!

Oh, and:

[When all sober and straight would have been Boring; Lille]

Surge ethiconomics

There was already quite some debate about surge pricing, in particular re [illegal] taxi services.
What I missed so far, are discussions about the economic or raher ethical character of abusing surges and their price tag instabilities. Like, how would you depict such developments in price elasticity graphs; shooting up and down on-curve, and curve shifts included. Is orderly society permissive of such hog cycle disruptions ..? [Term pointing at the characterisation of the CEOs that not want to see anything in/human in what they do]
The asymmetry (shooting) on the curve, is market imperfection; the curve shifts in the long run, are better captured by ‘classical’ economics. Again: the ethical ramifications aren’t value-free (tauto), aren’t of uninterest to anyone that values freedom — as that requires markets to function, which is done by regulating them. The latter is proven so many times I don’t even want to discuss it here.

Stock markets, and stocks, are capped qua max change (volatility spikes), the most extreme competitive markets out there;
why wouldn’t other markets have the same ..?

Your contributions in comments, please… Plus:

[Stable, safe, cleared for use; Madrid]

Autoflexelec

Oh (not like here though supported) when will EVs be useful? Like, being available with diesel range (1000kms, seriously! I seriously need that) and station car luggage space (660/1950ℓ – yes really need that, too), at a fair price (which is 2nd hand, not even a fifth of what 40%-featurematching EVs go for today).

No, I’m not going electric today because EVs will get better in a couple of years. I’m not going to waste buckets of money and opportunities by sitting out those years with a severely underperforming car. If others do that; that’s their bad decisions.
But wait; there’s hope around the corner (of the Cobra, Málaga–Ronda and v.v. kind): When we have electric (?) autonomous trucking sometime soon (like Big T is proposing or already developing), the results might be scaled down to anything in the range, in due time. And/or current auto-elecs are scaled up considerably. Squashing my own hope, this will take a couple of years.

By lack of proper alternatives, trying to do away with fully functional transport, is an attempt to hinder the due functioning of society; to be categorised as illegal.

I rest my case. And:

[Once upon a time, in a world far, far away (i.e., not so far Valencia), training was Fashionable]