double secrets – Page 7 – Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord

Peak Gulden

I’ve been dabbling in this pure-fiat money (sic) Gulden that is an attempt to indeed bring back the Dutch florin wink.
So far, I only put a toe into that water, and ’twas a profitable ride indeed. Should’ve moved all-in and retire…

Yes there’s all sorts of payment functionality but haven’t found a place to put that to use yet. Which made me think: Is there some sort of metric by which one can determine how ‘mature’ respective blockchain currencies are ..?

Like, some ratio that includes available volume, traded volume (exchange for (much longer) pre-existing traditional currencies), actual payments made for goods/services transactions, et al.
Or would anyone already have some (pointers to sufficiently secure-not-clickbait) sites that have such info and mdash; surely better factors and ratios than the above…?

TIA. And:

[Here, another mix of (not ‘chain but brick-‘n-mortar) architecture and finance; Troyes]

Needing trolley answers — NOW!

Needing your help on this. In two ways…:

How come all the ethicists dreaming up ever more complex versions of the Trolley Problem, but are only too gleefully snickering at n00bs-to-the-field that figure out the peculiarities as they are led through the many pitfalls in thinking — but never arrive at definitive answers themselves! and are just happy with ever further complicating the issues.
Question is: How to bang their heads long and hard enough or, to give them a last chance, lock them up without food and drink until they deliver definitive answers? Left or Right, Yes or No, with ‘or’ being absolute XOR not ‘and a bit “and”, too’.
How does System 1 thinking, or System 2, tie into these sort of discussions ..? As said problems call for immediate decision (no time to wait for decades of completely useless non-answers from ethicists…), System 1 would probably have it, System 2 being too slow. How does System 1 respond in this arena, then ..? Should be tractable.
[Of course you didn’t expect me to stick to even my own ‘two’ of the intro, did you?] Is System 1 inherently more tied to the hunter-gatherer life that humanity has evolved in for so much longer, than the agri-society of late (10k years) ..? If so, in what way could we use such connection(s) and ramifications (…) to improve our responses to the above, and to society’s ails in general..?

OK, enough questions, possibly though certainly not certainly not answerable in a simple Comment … Hence:

[Ah, the Classics, they would probably provide better, actual, solutions, wouldn’t they ..? Ancy-le-Franc encore]

All Your Data Are Belong To Us

Or, in the form of a question: When
a. One has to notify authorities of any (possible!) data leak, per law, in Europe and soon maybe also in the USofA,
b. Even BIOSses aren’t secure anymore, baked in from the word Go and onwards,
Shouldn’t all organisations declare all of their infrastructure and hence all their data, possibly compromised ..?

Just asking.

[Edited to add this. Also relevant; this one deeper (?)]

And:

[Calm, not private; Museumplein Amsterdam]

Help determine this rock

I have an inkling of what this piece of art means, but would there be anyone out there that, under strict confidentiality of course, could provide a full explanation ..?
In particular — but including full context — what the link is between a book, possibly obscure but a tip as pleasurable read and this in Joinville:

It’s just all too odd to not have a connection … Including this, perhaps ..?

You sporting against all

When sports are considered to be character-forming for later (mostly assumed to be business-)life, either by having been trained to be competitive or have learned (really?) to cooperate in teams (really?), let’s see which versions there are:

In which the You Against Natural science (No counter-actors other than nature, only personal performance counts, possibly measured against others but still, bad luck gets you), You Against One opponent (where one’s in a knock-out tournament or variant; running into the later champion in the first round doesn’t do much for your chances for second place), and Team Against Team (if you’re a champ in a bad team, fuggeddaboudit; the other way around too, like Leicester City…), are all too well known, with the ‘character formation’ mostly being: Either you win or are a loser, and Suck It Up The Other Guy(‘)s Much Better.

But in business … Be careful not to think that it’s a team-to-team competition. Yes, you may assemble, or join, a team, but you’re playing against … the Market. Not another team … Unless the very unusual situation of a duopoly, which should be breakable, legally.
Rather, you’re up against ‘everything out there’; can count only on one’s own errors, not count on the luck of anything out there working your way though they sometimes do. And the character building/application is … well, mostly about you not being Hercules.

Well, if you think you are the big Heracles himself, note that your Impostor Syndrome is no illusion. The Wonder CEO that thinks he’s in the bottom right corner, is deluded to not see that it’s not all the underlings (certainly the sycophants) in a Team against him (seldomly her), in an internal struggle much larger than any competitive fight out there. But that all those one’s up against, are the Team in the top left corner, though possibly having ousted him for displaying anti-team play morals…

Talking of big business: What sport would have massive teams of hundreds, thousands, hundred thousands of players on either side ..!? With all specialised in their own little square foot of the playing field ..? At best, one has such armies with the classical mercenaries — and even they were, are, organised much more effectively. The military discipline of the multinational überbureaucracies will fail in the murk out there, certainly when one’s not against one specific opponent, as above.
‘Normal’ teams in sports are, ballpark, smaller than 20 players, all maybe having designated tasks but always all (of the winning teams) have the flexibility to step out of their role and position, with team mates catching the blind spots. As if that ever happens in business-outside-the-startup-scene. The closest to actual normal business, would be athletics teams, all with their specialties, contributing to the total, the satisfaction of having succeeded as a team winning out over the satisfaction of personal performance over team gains.

So, what was that about through (‘high school’/university age) (team) sports, would one breed character for the real world ..? If one does sports, obviously it should‘nt be for that reason but for the joy of it. ‘Character building’ as an argument shows one has no clue.

Data Classinocation

I was studying this ‘old’ idea of mine of drafting some form of impact-based criteria for data sensitivity when, along with a couple of fundamental logical errors in some of the most formally adopted (incl legal) standards and laws, I suddenly realised:

In these times of easily provable easy de-anonymisation of even the most protective homomorphic encryption multiplied with the ease of de-anonymisation throught data correlation of even the most innocent data points, all even the most innocent data points/elements must (not should) be classified at the highest sensitivity levels so why classifiy data ..!?

This may not be a popular point, but that doesn’t make it less true.
In similar vein, in European context where one is only to process data in the first place if (big if) there is no alternative and one can process for the Original intent and purpose only,

To prevent data from unauthorised disclosure internally or externally, without tight need-to-know/need-to-use IAM implementation, one already does too little; with, enough.

That’s right; ‘internal use only’ is waaay too sloppy hence illegal — it breaks the legal requirement for due (sic) protection, and if the use of data is, ‘by negligence’ not changing a thing here, let possible, the European privacy directive (and its currently active precursors) do not allow you to even have the data. This may be a stretch but is still understandable and valid once you take the effort to think it through a bit.
Maybe also not too popular.

Needless to say that both points will not be understood the least by all the ‘privacy officer’ types that have rote learned the laws and regulations, but have no experience/clue how to actually use those in practice and just wave legal ‘arguments’ (quod non) around as if that their (song and) dance is the end purpose of the organisation but cannot answer even the most simple questions re allowablity of some data/processing with anything that logically or linguistically approaches clarity. [Note the ‘or’ is a logical one, not the sometimes interpreted xor that the too-simpletons (incl ‘privacy officers’) interpret but don’t know exists.]

OK. So far, no good. Plus:

[Not a fortress, nor a real maze once you see the structure; Valencia]

Fraud no-angle

There was a lot of work done, mainly from faux legal/ethical corners, on the so-called ‘fraud triangle’. Without pointing only at previous dismissal, there are some fresh insights on why this’all is faux.

One is, as pointed, the presentation that considers the three corners of the triangle (pleonastically not tautologically) to be ‘present’ at one same time. In stead of seeing that there is a (very) definite order of the three. Once started, the march by moral capture / self-blackmail is one-way only. Whether triggered by willful act or casual impulse (i.e., Kahnemann’s System 2 or System 1 ..!); this is just a fact.
Two, the considerations on the triangle, and how to ‘prevent’ ‘it’, are theoretical only. Because they leave out human nature, where Systems 1 and 2 interplay. Where ‘protection’ against that, is not a theoretical exercise somehow (sic) translated into perfect control — as history learns, all totalitarian dehumanising organisations inevitably (sic) fail, and even trivial implementations will fail due to imperfect control everywhere, by definition through its selection by risk vs. budget balancing.

Yes the Faux triangle sometimes appears to be discussed only by those without due experience in practice. That know not of what ‘ethical’ means when it comes to leading and controlling people. That see only a tiny fraction of perverted Bad people (tellingly forgetting about the difference between Bad and Evil, Nietzschian style) that need to be stopped at all cost… Because Ordnung Muss Sein.

We all know how that worked.
Leaving you with:

[Please take a bath…; at Caldelas]

Comedy crashers

No capers, frankly no comedy either, when some of the most respected in the field are concerned about pervasive probing of whole countries in one go. As here.

Probably, the same is pulled off on smaller countries as well; the infra doesn’t distinguish, but the protection budgets probably are much smaller, so a proof of concept might be interesting. Though this may trigger better protection in the larger country/countries, if done ‘right’ the attack(s) may be class break kind of things not so easily protected against in the first place.
And for now, the smaller countries probed, will have even smaller budgets and capabilities to even detect the probing all together / in the first place. Interesting …

But maybe budgets are better spent on all the other actual risks out there, like: ..?

[Suddenly (of course !!) turned up at the Joinville château; Haut-Marne]

Dronecatcher, now with dronespotter

Ah. Found; yes, probably @DARPA already had theirs, this one’s more (?) private-sector though: A partial solution to the Attack of the Drones thing.

Back some time ago I posted this gem, on a solution against drones, e.g., around objects of ‘vital infrastructure’ — that weren’t, like, so, about a hundred years ago and people may have been happier then.
Once drones were distinguished from birds [the in-the-air kind not the ones you spot on the beach, topless], any kind of mini-Goalkeeper preferably with buck shot (since short-range effectiveness is required only, without any long-range bystander damage risk) might suffice. I’d say Mini- indeed; more like a double-barrel pointed up above e.g., 50° or more to prevent nasty fall-out on hoomans but with some swing capability to cross-fire.

The problem being, was, to have an installation small enough to be easily placeable in sufficient number to get good air dome/cylinder coverage but to not be too obtrusive. Yes, probably @DARPA already had theirs but didn’t want to beat the drum too much, to not lure ‘DoS’ swarm attempts or false-negative probing. But at least, for the rest of the World, there now is Elvira, instantly in fixed, flex as well as military versions.
Apparently, their aim is to prevent bird/drone collisions in mid-air (triggers association with this great clip work, and also this one) but I see use for the inverse, too, picking off the flyers/drones before they don’t, up against ‘vital infra’.

But aren’t we then reverting to an arms’ race where the silly, petty, may be stopped but not the countermeasure-escalation pro’s …? Like these:
drone
[But hey, seems to be on a carrier exactly like I have in my back pond for fun and impressing the babes so can’t you have one, too ..?]

Culture for breakfast, since it's so light and airheaded

Yet again some oversight body / de facto regulator gave wind that they already had changed to auditing Culture and the Tone At The Top including Behaviour and Awareness, apart from mere ([ed.]) process and technology.
To get the latter off the table: Good. ‘Technology’ wasn’t understood the least bit anyway; really (sic).
And Process, ah finally they found that about all they had done in the past, was windbaggery of the worst kind. Yes, process has its place, but a so much more minor, subaltern one than the past Tragedy (sic, again) that ‘governance’/GRC/compliance/SOx was …! Yes again, it really was the little chicken pretending to be a full-grown eagle.

So now, they ‘have’ turned to Culture and related blah. About which they have no clue or would had to have fired a majority of own staff and hire complete+ replacement with psychologically skilled (i.e., fully a square angle to -educated) staff. Which they haven’t, or would have found out that the new skill set would have burned down the house that was.

Of which no (smoke) sign is in sight.

So, … words; the Tom Tom Club was right.

And:

[Blockhead and Culture with a capital C here …; Casa de, Porto of course]