Innovation, economics, society at large – Page 60

Ringtones on deaf ears

Must … resist … being … too … negative …
There seems to have been an explosion of ~mojis lately. Like, the past half year has seen a proliferation of subsets and niceties that, as a phenomenon, spell the end of interest in messaging.

As the phenomenon (not this which is great in any absolute measure) is so very much the same as we saw with ringtones…
Arrrg! Yes indeed they spelled the end of the introductory phase of mobiles. The more it became a fad to have some peculiar ‘tone, the more one exposed oneself as a somewhat (?) pathetic Laggard, not quite knowing yet how to have and treat a phone as perfectly normal tool without having to brag how great one was for having one in the first place.

Can you see the same with messaging? If not, you may be the one that actually paid for the nicest ringtone you disabled in shame for not getting any but negative recognition after a couple of days again.

So, … next up in this series: How “Like us on Facebook” went the same way in the 2^nd half of 2015, latest… And:

[Siegfried& not quite]

Certified without being aware of that

Hm, how come so many organisations rely on certification – by means of electronic certificates; the other kind is mindbogglingly empty paperwork – and don’t have a clue ..?

I’d say, let them get a good checkup, e.g. via.

Deeper of course is the ‘problem’ that here we have a quite important piece of the ‘security’ (note the ”) puzzle, but one that is buried deep, very deep in technology. For most. And hence is out of view. But when there’s so much talk lately (for years, decades on end already – eras in Internettime) of (info)’security’ having to come aboard in Boards and this haven’t happened almost everywhere, we now see why (?): Infosec can, partially, be ‘solved’ way out of view. Like security around electricity. As already outlined long ago.

But, to conclude, it’s an And-And thing all the way throughout the organisation. One can dream, can’t one?
DSCN0610
[If you immediately thought of Asley Madison, that’s your dirty mind …!]

May a change is happening

The title is correct; finally we can see what the Mayans meant when they, errrm, their calendar, predicted the end of the previous era and the dawn of a new one. Where many simpleton minions pinned it down to some very moment at 1 Jan 2012, of course the lore was about a longer-term turnaround phase before a really new era could be said to have emerged.

Now, isn’t it since the beginning of this millennium or even more, since about 2012 that AI sentience has merged with IoT to kickdown towards the Singularity …? So that the new era isn’t one for mankind only but one in which machines take over the lead over the world’s physical as well as mental reality ..? Just saying.

Oh don’t take it all too seriously. One might even read this as if I would follow Hegel’s reasoning of a path to a final and eternal triumph of abstract Reason. Hah. And:

[Torún. Famous for …, somewhat appropriately]

Why ‘cyber’s still a dud

[Oh yes @CyberTaters will warp the pings re this post. And #ditchcyber!]

For one, all (sic) of ‘cybersecurity’ (quod non) is incomprehensible to those that consider themselves ‘leaders’ in one way or another in practices where actual infosec should be top of mind. Since the (for quite too large a part) despicable mice (of this story) don’t see their own folly, these kindergarten emperors will be found to wear their new clothes well… but not ‘get’ what it takes to start developing ideas how to actually lead in the infosec field. Starting with debunking Internet myths and hype-FUD but also starting the sea changes needed to achieve something (if maybe not everything).

For another, since all the hype-FUD only leads to Technology focusing, where those that would still not have thus-focused houses on order should be fired; decades of developments would have to have been easily dealt with – though it is rocket science, it’s hence not that hard. Hey, designing and building a probe to Pluto, isn’t there an app for that?
Leaving the other 99.9% (well…) of work in the area of People (and don’t start me on Process..! see my posts over the past couple of weeks). Which, even if it would be understood what needs to be done in that field, would be known to be near impossible to pull off, let alone in the short term.

Hence by simple (?) logic, ‘cyber’whatever is a dud.

Sobering:
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[You know where, or not; every corner needs to be beautiful…]

ICYMI PON heeft gelijk [Dutch]

Voor het geval het een paar weken terug langs u heen is gegaan; dit. Terecht. En ondertussen zitten allerlei (zeer!) kwetsbaren zonder de zorg die ze verdienen (verdiend hebben) omdat (voorgaan)de bodemloze put miljarden (sic) het zwarte gat in zuigt.

Scaling ‘security’

Availability: 99.9% (per year).
‘Security’ (the C, the I) … nothing. Or, the infeasible 100.0% XOR nothing.

We may have a major issue here…

Well, we do have OSSTMM on one hand, and the seriously innovative, very important Secrecy stuff on the other.
But can we answer the question “How secure are we“..? Indeed, OSSTMM gives us a number – for the operational and technical elements. How ’bout integrating the tactical, strategic, and non-tech stuff like hooman behaviour ..? And still make it somewhat understandable to the clueless (Csomethings and other involved in the utterly useless nonsensical area designated by the pejorative joke label ‘governance’; all with the exceptions acknowldged of course); other than the above % per year estimates that are interpreted so badly..!
Oh and things like failure rates from e.g., FMAE, as presented like ‘dam can stand a one-in-a-thousand-year flood’ also don’t work – dam can break today, and tomorrow, and the statistic may very well still be valid!

Maybe it’s key to first find how to whack the notion of “1-in-1000yrs means I don’t have to worry for another 999 years” fallacy. Psychology it is but so security should be..! As many of Bruce Schneier-et-al’s posts prove (?), FUD and other angle fail so miserably.

The time (decades) we’ll need to turn around the psychos, allow us some leeway to develop suitable Scale(s?) of Security. But let’s not wait for the end of those decades before embarking on the exploratory first steps of that. You suggestions, please, today.

[Edited ahead of posting, to add: This here piece on the (declining) half-life of secrets; definitely something to include in the above ‘metrics’. ..?]

For the eye candy:
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[Zurenborg again, slightly edited – who’ll do the colour corrections for me?]

The Holidays

The (…) holidays are all around us. Except maybe in that North-American corner where the 5% of world population holds out that don’t celebrate (any) of that.
How nice would it be if the rest would hold an indefinite holiday, I mean over the Cyber! Cyber! Cyber! barfing that goes around ever more it seems, lately (being the last couple of months in particular). Despite #ditchcyber so clearly being preferable.

In similar vein, please explain:

[Believed not to be photoshopped but who can be sure ..?]

Stale^2

Hm, wanted for once (huh?) to not be negative, deriding but …

This here piece calls for comment. Like: Instating a quality seal for products that should be considered well-matured, almost outdated tiny point solutions; isn’t that overly stale² ..?

Because quality seals are issued for … procedural justice of the petrifying kind. And, AV – isn’t that almost the model for grossly-insufficient-in-and-on-themselves point solutions that have no field of development/progress left ..?

Oh well, not much use kicking a dead horse.
Other than the Dakota arguments… thus turning this into a sort of Golden Oldie Pic Of The Day:
[Source: Scott Wagner; no ‘automatic’ endorsement.]

The Future Plays At All Boards

There seems to be quite an interest in ‘the’ future, lately. As in, the last couple of tens of millennia but also the last couple of months. Recency Effect, maybe ..?

The thing is; discussions how the near and far future will/might be, are handicapped by industry and specialisation myopia.

IT-angehauchten discuss ANI, AGI and ASI, with neural networks resurfacing, finally, in discussions over when (soon) we’ll have the Singularity. Yes you’ve read my great many posts about that already or go in shame and still do it (impression tracker is engaged).
A branch of that, discusses very near future labour markets – mostly, almost exclusively, those in the furthest developed economies only.
Biologists and eco-nuts (are they?) are on the Global Warming / Food- and Fresh Water- Starvation / Anti-GMO paths in their discussions.
And there’s of course daily glocal wars going on, military/physical and refugee atrocities everywhere, and economic warfare as well. Of the latter which ‘cyber’ in all its forms (remember, #ditchcyber) is part.
Simple-economically, there still is the enormous divide between haves and have-nots, now being exposed (nevertheless still growing) within countries’ local economies as well due to jobless growth and the Pikettyish 1%’ers.
And, I probably forget some category. [Edited half a day after post release, to add: Yup, this here combi-one.]

But, … all play out on/in the same world, the one you and I inhabit [well maybe not you, alien (as physical being or just meme/information floating around over whatever physical media) listening in from the Andromeda nebula]. So, we’ll have to deal with all problems, operational, tactical and strategical, together both in people and in solutions. And as the world spins faster than ever, requiring ever more clever and ever more-dimensional solutions. Until all choke, mind-wise. Hasta La Vista, baby.

Oh well. I’m not (even) negative …
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[Anywhere, everywhere.]

Schmobol

With the current uptick in interest in the ageing population … of the handful still capable of hardcore manual programming of COBOL, as e.g., here, I wondered:

Is the code base still so enormously biased to COBOL(-based! software)?
Why haven’t COBOL-to-e.g., C, or others converters, not caught on widely so the ‘problem’ doesn’t exist anymore ..?

Especially the latter; especially since we still have tons, too many (?), programmers available to tackle C- and more modern-language scrutiny and optimisation jobs. Jobs; high-pay jobs. And automatic testers to compare absolute 1-to-1 identity of the functionality or tractable lists of boundary conditions (possibly differing).
But with so many more (modern) code/functionality maintenance tools and capabilities available. And with integration/migration to (even) newer integrated platforms available.
And, when things get tough, AI that should be easily trainable to get to the hard, core bugs (higher abstraction sense) before/after the translation(s).

So, what’s the deal? The only deal there is, is (and was, having lost a long time) the lack of forward-looking maintenance to have already started early on modernisation. Yes, of course, there’s Not On My Watch and Après Nous Le Déluge. But real leaders would cut through that; that’s what distinguishes them from mere shopkeeper ‘managers’.

All right. Leaving you with:

[Impossible to guess I guess. Where?]