Tag: disruption

Non Dad Bots

With all the attention having gone to the not-so-Russian-or-are-they hacks, and some ransomware and CES17 news, over the past couple of months, one could have forgotten that not too long before, there was the wavelet (not like this) of hype over the, then, sudden exponential roll-out of bots in all sorts of customer-interactive sittuwaysjons.
Have these non dad bots, contrary to the MAMILs, disappeared from the streets ..? Or where are they; not like “out there in the cloud” which means a. they’re on someone’s machines, still, geo-bound as physically these are and hence under someone’s (non!)privacy control, b. nobody cares. But in a sense of ‘market share’ by any measure (which?), and who are the big players, what are the typical products/services and what metrics are there to compare these?
[Edited to add after scheduling the first version: this]

Just wanted to know. Surreptitious developments are ominous in their invisibility already. And working worse than ever… — some help may be thinkable, not yet on its way I’m sure, but that’s a long way off what we’d need…
Oh and I didn’t mean the idea of botnets for attack purposes; that’s done deal and yesterday’s weapons technology, right?
And also not robots, as they have a physical presence which enables some form of physical override options, at least in theory, when required and not hindered…
Not even the personal at-home quasi-sentient devices limiting your world view ever more whilst plucking you bare for unwanted purchases behind your back.
But did mean the kinda chat bot-ish software working in the background…

Until then, we’re stuck with bad not dad bots not bods … With:
DSCN6171
[Physical protection, if of the obese/obsolete kind; Nancy (sic)]

Fake-fake-fakes

[Edited to add: this, I wrote a month+ ago, and has of course since been ‘repeated’ over and over, e.g., through the poor Swedes not knowing what hit them…]

Not quite like this, but troublesome: The information explosion brought to us by the Internet, has finally come to the brink of its feared state of drowning-till-death the Truth, under Fake. Where nothing, literally nothing, can be believed anymore, nor can anything be refuted as fake once the humans’ limited context view cannot discard everything that seems legit or on the border of it, for lack of irrefutable, foundational truths that would raise the plausibility to sufficient levels.
On the contrary, the logical-positivists’ traps / blind spots would kick in. We get unprovable ‘double secrets’ and ditto ‘double falsehoods’ (“We didn’t hack the elections”) — so finally, we reach Socrates’ ideal ..!!

The Elysion at last, like:
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[Now that’s E Pluribus Unum; Noto oh no it’s reluctantly-unified DunEdin…]

Secret Health

The year hasn’t started in earnest, and already we’re swamped in news about the over-easy hackability in and/or frequent leakage of medical data from the Care sector — haha we aren’t swamped but rather, quite ignore the news because either one cannot do anything about it (but complain) or it’s too embarrassing …
Also, it turns out that people are more reluctant to share medical data (info) with their practitioner(s) when they are less secure about the secrecy of it; the very reason there’s such a thing as medical professional code of secrecy (doctor/patient confidentiality) and now, leading to worse care (quality, cost) then if proper secrecy wouldn’t be in doubt.

So, either you medical/care expert have professional pride to provide the best medical care and hence implement proper infosec measures (from ISMS to crypto-details) and chastise your managerial staaf for not doing it properly — or you try to wing it, don’t secure properly hence don’t provide maximal care, and should be banned.

And:

[A good health figure; Barça]

Going somewhere but where?

Which beats going nowhere. Like, where’s the hardware industry going?
If this is where it’s going, brace yourself, four seasons in one day’s coming.

On the serious side, where’s the hardware industry going? Are we through with yet other categories, from desktop to laptop to iPhony to iPad to notebook to notepad to bent screen mega-TVs to tilt-screen Chromebooks to slightly-larger-but-hardly-so-what’s-the-point-anyway phone screens …? Why can’t I still not assemble (sic) my equipment the way I want it?

And, I forgot Cloud in there, and Raspberry, and mainframe (heh, that one’s just for the joke), and …
Is there such a thing as a framework for discussing how this all fits together? A set of classifiers so one could draw up a matrix of options/feaures ..?

Plus:
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[Well that’s still fresh, but a one-off; Sculpture garden, DC]

Automobiles, (trains,) Planes

What a disaster it would be if all those (self-driving, or augmented-driving as they are today already) cars could be taken over by some madman or unrelatedly hacker … One could remotely steer a car off the road! One could remotely steer a whole bunch of cars within some area / country (?) off the road in a broadcast … With pre-emptively having disabled manual override, of course. [Though, noted before, the ability to do so would on the human side deteriorate very quickly as it wouldn’t be needed to be seriously trained/experienced (anymore).]

Yes, that’s bad. How is this same idea, but applied to current-day planes ..? Where about-all is automated, and users get more and more access hence control (think that one through; qua nothing’s 100% secure) to still but what do you know limited zone(s) of plane networks, e.g., re on-board wifi. The known-to-be-stellar-secure wifi.
Of course, this would be suicide — or airport-proximity (from just outside the fence) runway-DoS …; but not all seem to care about the sacrifice… on the contrary. And don’t come with the argument of having to know systems to break in / run amok. Some had gone through the effort of going through a pilot’s training, right? And here, one can be a passenger and do recce from business class, and/or deliver and C&C from there.

I love my old-style car / driving … and:
Photo15
[Warped, but quite safe from hacking… Somewhere upstate WI]

Four Cyber

Where a Big 4 consultancy (or rather, a hang-on-by-the-teeth-fourth intensive-people(?)-farming accountancy-wannabe-advisory) now has a (unit) label “Cyber”. Where #ditchcyber (here) hardly helps… ‘Cyber’ is like being a lady; when you say it of yourself, you aren’t. This qualifier as head of a Linked List — you didn’t need the link to get the wink or did you? — a very long list it is. How desperate can one be to maintain extortionist fee levels and labour practices, to have to label yourself so empty-barreled ..?

I’ll halt now, and:DSC_0700 (2)[Or, like a dolphin not leggard]

White Mannism

The baby with the bath water.

Slate: “Glamour just published its first issue completely produced by women. It’s about time.” Meh. Check. Move on.
Some agency trying to find a diversity manager: Probably only non-white mentally and/or physically challenged LBGTQ ‘persons’ need apply ..?

Now the politics (mostly, of the PC kind; as completely isolated and locked up it was in its cultural-economic elite without real power) slowly finds that the Trumpists (or ~, fill in your European ‘OMG he (sic) doesn’t play by the over-ritualised pastel crayon coloured emptybabbletalk schemes’ overly-labeled-xenophobe polls-moonshooter) aren’t the Angry White Men that the (tell-tale) rushed qualification need (fear fo being found out not to have any insight, maybe?) had thought them to be,
it is time to also consider even more sobering. In the area of: No, I can’t help being a white man I’m just born that way. And raised, by the way, in an environment that worked towards imprinting penalty for that already. To think that I don’t know this, don’t notice, or unconsciously or consciously abuse the privilege because some have attached the idea that I have that to me, unwantingly, is a scam and demonstrates that those involved, in fact do NOT know me but it demonstrates as well their limited world view of trying to lock up all they meet (or not even) in extremely limited confines of classification. If that’s your need, you have other problems than your supposed underprivileged childhood so maybe use your lifetime trying to grow a pair (F/M)?
This translates into: If you care to hire such a diversity manager as mentioned above, you demonstrate to want a token woman. If you care that some women’s magazine (yeah, I do realise that, sigh.) is finally made by women only, you consider no man capable of understanding women ..? Are you helping by trying to avoid that? Did you check all suitable male candidates for their inability to deliver the quality you need? (My guess: at the printer’s, there’s quite a few men working there, by the way) Or do you care less for quality than for gender accidentally (!) fixed at birth or medical facility?
Again, being born white male, does that mean I’m less because I’m supposedly ‘privileged’ …? If the (medically) colourblind can’t tell red from green, are others privileged and discriminating (usually taken to mean the one and the other are inseparable somehow) and shouldn’t be allowed to ever use those colours?
(Apart from some, rare, groups seriously trying to undercut common superstitions; I like those — as far as they see the limits of their purpose and stretch)

Or do you want to change the world by practicing what you preach?

There’s anger for you. Anger for being told why one is supposedly stupid for reasons of not seeing and recognising one’s stupidity. There’s why the protests by voters (the ultimate source of power, it shows, and of authority in our world) are from all those not in command. Re-read Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man again; you’ll only have to add ‘self-righteous PC babbling airheads’ [disclaimer: I’m one, too] (in)to ‘government’ and you see where the current set of politicians went off the rails.
By the way, don’t be fooled by the tone of the above: I’m not even angry! Just sad and disappointed. And unhopeful about the future [ _ | for me ].

Now, there’s also the Age thing … like, this and you’re aiming for sheeple not experience…

Oh, plus:
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[Classical burden; this, for Heroes — Arlington]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord