disruption – Page 56 – Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord

There’s hope

Though hope has never been solid business planning, as it is what’s left after all rational expectations and handles have vanished and only leaving it to fate remains, this move may, may have some impact in one way or another: Ello mutating into a PBC.

And, for the weekend:
[We have a beautiful prize available for the first to locate this!]

Unfreeze, the quest for ~ in business

How do Those In Business that deal with the all-sorts of überbureaucratisation, think the Second Law, of thermodynamics of course, wouldn’t apply to their work as well?
Let’s kick off with:
DSCN8580
[Appropriately named the Airplane building. Zuid-As]

Happened to attend a conference last week. And was able to read back a great many days of twitter feed. Due to the utter boredom. Because the presentations were all about … introducing control frameworks, under the guise of governance frameworks, that aren’t (fact).

Still, all was presented as if there would be little in place already;
Still, it appeared none looked past ‘first-time’ implementation. Albeit that some (not all…) mentioned the repeat of the PDCA (some, as just an element of a PDCA cycle they, how Ecce Huomo, completely erroneously mixed up with the management control cycle!), none seemed to have had any experience with an actual (hence very shoddy) implementation of ‘GRC’ let alone found the root cause of its continued, law-of-nature certain decline. Law of nature, as the system of control of which we speak, having entropy-aversion as its rationale, will suffer from the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The entropy of a closed system never decreases. These systems, leak all the way, and aren’t rigorously consistent and/or stable in the first place. I.e., all these systems tend towards Chaos; no Man, half-god or god(s) has ever been able to (or wanted to!) prevent this.
As if the concept of Life Cycle wouldn’t apply to the totalitarian system of bureaucratic control that GRC is; the Decline has been set in everywhere as it has set in throughout the Culture Of GRC.
As if there weren’t already serious errors in the system itself: Trying, repeat ad nauseam, in vain to control the uncontrollable, to capture the thing that is defined by its escape from control, i.e., Risk.
As if it were a good thing to consider GRC as necessarily (sic) one-size-fits-all within an organization; all elements should be in all corners. That is not ‘governance’ (which already is nothing in itself) but genocide-by-dehumanization-and-slavery over all involved.
As if GRC isn’t self-defeating or rather, self-destroying by crushing initiative (that necessarily is over the edge of Control’s allowance; the more perfect GRC the more so!) and hence straightjacketing anything and everyone into tighter and tighter harnases whilst the competition, muddy-ocean to blue ocean whatever, would not overrun and eradicate your organization. ‘The fish starts to rot at the head’, here too.
As if… as if the step-wise activities approach still depicted, would possibly work anywhere and not fit, as any day at the office (sic) would be swamped with all activities all the time in an insurmountable mix.
Where the likes of Nassim Taleb did already prove that when one thinks to control better by being displayed less variance in some results variable, that is only a sign of the powers of nature prepping up for the big Bang that kill those very results. Which is the force of nature, demonstrated since the dawn of humanity to having plagued all systems of cooperation and society: The Apollo side may think to triumph, but the Dionysos side in Man will get even no matter what. The more the latter is pushed aside, tha harder it will strike back in unforeseen directions. No doubt; fact of godly nature.

You get it. I hope. Now, go understand Road to Nowhere.

Not so self-driving

Errrm, after reading this Slate article, what is the ‘self-driving’ the car does ..? It’s just fitting into the template of the world laid out, not self-driving with ‘self’ being autonomous and aware.
Though I’m not fully in agreement on the conclusion, I do recognize the comparison in the early paragraphs: The G’s self-driving one as the Newton. But that was handsomely overtaken (intended) by the handhelds of all sizes that are ubiquitous today. As the article already hints, it’ll be a matter of AI creeping into our cars in all sorts of ways, when we suddenly realize how close we are to (or past the point of) true autonomy. But we’re not very close to that, yet; the jumps to be made may be much bigger than the Newton-to-Android-phablet one. Not being able to cope with any but the finest weather … Ugh, if one had known that, no-one would have claimed anything about self of driving, right? Where are the permits to road-legality (CA, probably already, UK 2015/2016 it was?) going to if mere sleet and fog may destroy safety?

By the way, did you notice the similarity with what happened to Glass ..? “Yes indeed, where has that gone!?” Well, it turns out it was a good try for Big G and now has vanished due to the public denouncement, through ridicule and physical backlash. So… next time, the tech will be inobtrusive, secretive, so you’ll not be able to detect or defend against it… Big win, not. So it will go with cars. Till the next round; then: Sneeking up on you, then be inevitable.

OK, I’ll leave you with yesteryears’ gloomy perimeter defences:

Players, sides, too many – where’s the (over)view?

Apart from the #ditchcyber aspects, in the (sometimes somewhat sportsy, even) battle about control, or is it temporary one-upmanship, over the world’s communications, so many parties play a role, in such varying sizes, and operating for so many sides, sometimes multiple sides at the same time, sometimes without even knowing that, with the interactions playing at various topics and levels of abstraction and with varying scopes, time horizons, strategies and plans (quality), I could really do with some clarity. Some mapping, interactive or not.
Which all was triggered by this post on yet another singleton developer taking on, inactively!, some well-funded TLA.

Will have to dive into the detail of it all, but know that I’ll end up losing the helicopter view. How many similar developments are out there, known or not? What stages of development, of deployment, of maturity, of starting to crack and leak are they all ..? It’s a hard life, this keeping up thing.

Hence, you deserve:
[As if moulded by a genetic algorithm, Porto]

Note (bank-, bankable); ICYMI

Hmmmmm… Who would be able to mine the easy pickings already, in the Bitcoin world ..? Who has sufficient resources, old-money wise and miners wise ..?

As the firsts through the gate may gain an insurmountable head start at the game of the future. Also, re this on the as yet ill-understood, hardly visible / overseeable spin-off world. DACs are just one part. When incumbent countries’ / nations’ and supra-governments find themselves competing not only with each other but also with anon societies existing virtually (non-geographically – though in the end, physical servers will have to be somewhere), will the latter be re-invented like wheels, with or without preventing the failures of history …?

Since it will be very interesting, sociologically, but still years away (I think…), this:
[Guess where. Netherlands]

Arms reversion (flipping); your call

Would anyone have the official name for a tactics switch leading to a collapse of an arms’ race ..?
I was triggered by this recent post about some gang(s) using low-tech but somewhat-sophisticated pencil-and-paper crypto in stead of the highest tech burner phones etc. (or did they also use those). To which many commented that probably, the code should be (very) easily crackable even if all of the many safeguards were upheld.
(But also, dropping a physical USB stick at a (physical) watering hole (or desk, or handout point, or street corner pavement) also circumvents a great many fab network entry safeguards of the firewall kind, in particular when APT technology, stamina and dedication, and tailoring is involved.)

But then, what if the codes were good enough; time-based security still can work, and the adversaries (gov’t) weren’t overly capable in this, apparently. And one can also think back of what happened to the stealth fighter-bombers that suddenly showed to be vulnerable to detection by not the highest-tech radars but the decades old low-freq stuff e.g. the ‘Soviets’ had stored one day behind the Ural.
Sort of an arms’ race that has gone to such did-did not length that in the buildup, a sudden flip to old technique and old tactics / operations may undercut the sophistication of the other in an off-guard way. Maybe not allowable per arm wrestling rules, but arms’ races are a different ball game everywhere; no honour involved, weaseling allowed and winner takes all for the time being.

How would that be called..? Flipping? Reversion ..? I’m really interested. About your thoughts, too. E.g., how can one use this to improve security (‘pentesting’ yourself against such flips / reversions), on the Internet and elsewhere. Hope to hear!
I’ll leave you with:
[A fordable river, at Cordoba]

Regulation Renegation Abomi nation

So, after privacy-enhancing regulations finally got some traction here and there – mentally, hardly in implementation yet – we’re getting the full bucketloads of bovine-produced fertilizer regarding adapted protection through ‘Data Use Regulation’.
Which already throws back actual regulation in intent and in the letter of it. But has many more nefarious consequences… As is in this article; couldn’t word it better.

We should be vigilant …

For now, I’ll leave you with this:
[A spectacle, Jerez]

Detachment

First, this:
DSCN9250
[Fantasy, sorcery, in the end Harry wins. Porto]

Just to start your day with a bit of freshness.

Then this: Hardly any surprise that Big Corp advertises like a headless monster
7e55ec92-20ab-11e4-8ead-22000ab926d3-large
Where the ‘joke’ is that this is from a company (note: it’s just an example, others are similar (..?)) where staff is pushed to the edge to deliver on hardly-quality-related shortest-term-possible KPIs, have had to hand in holiday days to keep up the profit shares of the partners (‘voluntarily’ as otherwise it might be illegal), etc. etc. Stepping one millimeter out of line is punished with all but physical beheading. So, the ad is just false advertising of the worst, culpable, kind, or displays the utter ignorance of those involved.

Or both. Which again are signs of dinosaur behavior. Detachment of where actual work is done. Same as outsourcing production abroad and claiming ignorance about work conditions – ignorance on purpose is still very, very culpable; do we need a SOx for what should be normal, human, humane treatment of employees ..? Hopefully not, as this would open the floodgates of totalitarian bureaucrat advisors and consultants once again (…), yes those that Holier Than Thou folks (see above) who display to don’t know a thing about practical management. As proven (!) by Mintzberg.
Detachment. Isolation, islands of bounty at the ‘top’. That will be swept into oblivion by a mere floodwave. Where a tsunami’s approaching.

Oh, for the unattentive reader: There’s a great many posts on this site (just do a search) that I am not against leadership, by actual leaders… This just being a rant against the falsehood of advertising and against bad ‘leadership’ …

Be quick at Making or be like dead

When I noted an article (is it?) on Baidu Eye (all of you will certainly know by now what I mean…!?), it finally dawned on me: ‘we’ in the West (let’s say for purposes here, the 300M of Europe plus the 300M of North America) just don’t do enough rapid prototyping yet.
Because that’s the trade we have left to e.g., the Chinese when ‘we’ shipped our (rapid) product(ion) development to them.

Now, the sweatshop structure that sprang up to the side of that, is one huge landscape of rapid prototyping facilities. Which, if not ‘stealing’ (don’t start the legaleeze that’s way too dependent on cultural notions) product ideas before launch, or just slapping a different brand tag after (over)production, allows copycatting of products (commonly, of less quality or functionality) or of sparks of innovation (not taking a product as ideal model but as inspiration).

This somewhat fits the model of the Maker movement that springs up in the West. Is still springing up a bit, here and there. Was mentioned here and there, sparsely, and may have whittled into almost-oblivion already again ..?
Whatever; the Maker movement has a different focus, not on extremely-rapid prototyping to mass produce, but to keep it as close to one-offs as is feasible. Quite an opposite horizon!
And also leaving a vast playing field open for … others.

How can we change business / production culture to get, beside a Traditional and a Maker movement, a Happy Go Lucky Production movement where improvement-on-the-production-fly-cycles are much more rapidly learned from? (Much faster even than e.g., Samsung’s (and others’ like Apple!) fast-introduction-perfect-in-next-versions approach. But also taking this into account, for this reason!) No, just shouting around about tearing down bureaucratic rules won’t work; those rules are there to regulate the current rogues (big business, oligopolising everywhere) – I mean a real cultural shift. Is that what’s happening (or should happen) in some backwater country now that the 0.001% with help from the 1% has killed the previous mainstay power the Middle 80% ..?

Seriously, how can we rig, ground, lay the foundations, for such a Third Way ..? To get, e.g., this sort of initiatives far more widespread.

[Huh, since I wrote the above (couple of weeks ago), this came to light…]
[And this, the caveat you wanted …]

You (somewhere in the #=0 to #=3 range) have been such kind readers to even visit… hence I’ll leave you with:
[Freedom to consume; the mediocre! – Good, more authentic stuff, close by but elsewhere]

Algorapp

Just a short shout-out to this awesome initiative: Algorithmia.com, the open marketplace for algorithms; easy to include in your app(s) that will make you [ rich | famous | achieve your full potential hence Happy with a capital ]. (If you don’t know how to read that, never mind.)

Look now, Open (?) Source Crowdsharing gets another bump. Again a need to improve education… to be able to fully realize all the huge potential.

OK, to close off of course:

[How did they calculate the construction before calculus was developed ..? Yes Siena]