education – Page 11 – Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord

Leaking profiles

Got an attention raiser during an off-the-cuff discussion on data leakage. Qua, like, not getting the first thing about what privacy has been since Warren&Brandeis’ eloquent definition, and subsequent codification in pretty hard-core, straightforward laws.
The problem being, that no theory of firm (incl public) allows subsumption of employees into slavery, of mind or otherwise. Think Universal Declaration of Human Rights, article 12. Hence, tracking and tracing every keystroke of employees, i.e., treating them as suspect of e.g., data leakage before one has any a priori clue about everyone individually actually doing anything wrong, not having been granted any rights of surveillance in this jurisdiction, is a crime in itself.
And no, the comparison with street cameras that bother no-one and make everyone safer, is a lie on two counts. And, in many countries (the civilised ones; a criterion in reverse), such (total or partial) surveillance isn’t outlawed without reason.
So, your data leakage prevention by tracing everyone is an illegal act. Don’t.

No, your security concerns are not valid. Not the slightest, compared to the means you want to deploy. Stego to files of all kinds, when all are aware of its implementation, may help much better. And supplies you with the trace you want; not to your employee that you (but no-one else) suggest is rogue – (s)he knows about the traceabilitry so will be self-censored (ugch) into compliance – but to the third party that spilled the beans. Since stego-cleansing tools may exist, your mileage may vary. Encryption then, the destruction of content accessibility for those not authorised (through holding a password/token/~), will fail when anything you send out, might have to be read off a screen; the PrtScn disabling being undone by good ol’ cameras as present in your good ol’ S8 or P900 (though this at 0:50+ is probably the typical TLA stakeout vid/result).

Conclusion: Excepting very, very rare occasions, your data leakage prevention by employee surveillance will land you in prison. Other methods, might be legal but fail. Your thoughts now on outbound traffic keyword monitoring. [Extra credit when including European ‘human in the loop’ initiatives.]

And:
[No privacy in your prayers, or ..?? Baltimore Cathedral]

Ninety percent

Not in any economic sense you may have thought, given the attention oft given to, e.g., the 1% or 99% (We Are-; Occupy-style) where now the 90% might be the disappeared middle class in the US that extended from the bottom 10% – that was around even in the best of times – all the way to the top — excepting the 0.01% that was in charge all the time …
Here, it’s about a quote slash truism:

90% of everything is crap

Have ever truer things been said. This, of course you knew since prep school, being Sturgeon’s Law.

Just putting it there. See the link for a ‘proof’. Or look around you; physically (co-workers), mentally (in your head, and feel free to assume the others’ heads are not necessarily better…), qua your pay check, your significant other [hey here I can testify I’m lucky with a not-90% specimen par excellence; no she’s not reading this], etc.

Leaving you with:
[In the 10%, definitely. Even when it rains, this one. Baltimore]

Summer’s approaching

Sixteen steps to build a campfire [Because there’s not enough attention, or contention, to make it to the List of Lists you’d want to be on]:

Split dead limb into fragments and shave one fragment into slivers;
Bandage left thumb;
Chop other fragments into smaller fragments;
Bandage left foot;
Make structure of slivers (include those embedded in hand);
Light match;
Light match;
Repeat “a Scout is cheerful” and light match;
Apply match to slivers, add wood fragments, and blow gently into base of fire;
Apply burn ointment to nose;
When fire is burning, collect more wood;
Upon discovering that fire has gone out while out searching for more wood, soak wood from can labeled “kerosene”;
Treat face and arms for second-degree burns;
Re-label can to read “gasoline”;
When fire is burning well, add all remaining firewood;
When thunder storm has passed, repeat steps 1 – 15

Oh, and:
[Feels like a slide; to follow the above link, please do; NY/NY]

Explicitation of Risk — scaring yourself into victimhood

As may be clear, Sloterdijk’s explicitation ideas don’t hold on metaphysics levels of abstraction alone.
It works for all the mundane stuff like ‘risk management’ [disclaimer for the contradictio], too.

And, by making explicit what previously was ‘there’ already, but implicitly and hence not in any beholders’ eyes, in this case all one gains is not understanding (per se) but especially, systemic, existential scare.
Because the Unknown is identified, explicitised into existence. The Unknown that is, by (now) definition, the primordial Chaos contra the Order of Zeus and Apollo in his wake. In turn turning your existence into some degree of insecurity. [In a practical sense, not in the Schäume/Über-sphere sense of Peter Big-S]
And then, ‘risk management’ is the continuation through treatment of that Uncertainty with the addition of other means. [Italics mine, to correct towards the Original quote.] Because, you see, ‘managing’ the risks, even if for the moment we purely hypothetically consider that to be the case in any above-absolute-zero factual degree even for the most trivial, operational form, means having to acknowledge the fundamental impossibility of it. The harder ‘modelling’ types throw their weight [ah, yes, a very-big-if assumption, Pinocchio/Calimero’an again] against the uncertainties, the bigger the resistance is; the harder the chaos-theoretical unpredictability of the future bounces back. The further pushed, the more the full weight of the Universe pushes back.

You get that drift.

Well, then. What remains in nearby sight is the loss of naïvety that would give room for human growth. No guts, no glory! Where the guts are taken out of the picture, when they once were the area where gut feelings pro and contra any action or inaction were properly weighed, now only stupidly-crippled-rationality weighted.
But on the other hand; believing in the efficacy of ‘risk management’ in principle, will lull to sleep in a most blue pill sense.

Just don’t force all to take that colour; some actually want to succeed in Life.
And:
[Aim for clarity, deal with reality; Amsterdam (Lights Festival tour)]

Imminent enrichment through AI — of jobs ..?

Anyone else feels like the breakthrough of AI in all sorts of jobs (yes, most certainly not only the bohrrring repetitive-manual-labour kind — that may be one of the kinds that comes much later in the sequence since it requires extremely sophisticated physical/intellectual (yes) interactions than previsouly thought (by humans))
is imminent?

And anyone see that the horror of replacement of humans XOR your co-workers is to come only (a bit) later, when AI-driven systems have become good enough to replace you, completely — leaving the spoils of labour to the (intensive people-farming) factory owners ..?
With in the shortish mean time, your job being ‘enhanced’ through AI, by the enrichment of having to deal less with the simple stuff and you having more time available to do more Intelligent (parts of) your job. Possile, on conditions of:

Such more intelligent parts of your job existing; a great many a manager may find there is no such thing, or the room for manoeuvre isn’t there;
You being able, capable, of performing such more intelligent job parts; with the focus on reporting (send/receive; hardly ever anything more than the extremely-simpleton processing in between) probably your capabilities have shrivelled into unusability;
Time availability is what holds you back so far; extending on the previous condition, you may find yourself to actually – be honest now! – already have had that time available but used it for busywork, like, being a Manager or so. And/or, by loafing or do I repeat myself. Now that you may get time available for Intelligent stuff, you may not notice that;
You getting paid more, or at least the same; as it turns out that the enrichment-by-cutting-out-the-bottom-part, leads to a serious pay cut as your Overlords now see your function as much less time-consuming or bottom-line-feeding. Especially the latter may turn out to be an eye-opener…
You getting sufficient time to build a new job; the creeping replacement of You by AI-based systems might speed up significantly as the first rewards transpire — to the Owners again — and hence the cry [not tag; ed.] for More may intensify the efforts to replace you ever more, funded by … your increased utility if at all, or the increasing utility of the you-replacing AI at least.

Suffice to notice that a priori it will be very, very difficult to meet all these conditions, if even anyone would try (apart from you, but you’re too singleton in this to pull that off). So…

Oh well, there’s always:
[A different look at Casa de Musica; Proto]

Nog een / One more on audit culture

U zult weinig genoegen scheppen in zang, dans of vechtsport als u bij de zang de harmonie van de muziek ontleedt in haar verschillende klanken en u bij iedere toon afvraagt: ben ik hier nu echt van onder de indruk? U zou u voor zoiets schamen. Hetzelfde geldt voor de dans, wanneer u elke beweging en houding apart beoordeelt, en voor de vechtsport.
Which translates to, anachronistically:
A pleasant song or dance; the Pancratiast’s exercise, sports that thou art wont to be much taken with, thou shalt easily contemn; if the harmonious voice thou shalt divide into so many particular sounds whereof it doth consist, and of every one in particular shall ask thyself; whether this or that sound is it, that doth so conquer thee. For thou wilt be ashamed of it. And so for shame, if accordingly thou shalt consider it, every particular motion and posture by itself: and so for the wrestler’s exercise too.

Which in turn brings back the discussions on the auditors being of a stratum or subclass that abhors the Cultural stuff, runs away from the Arts. Contrary, statistically, to e.g., lawyers and notaries-public. This was researched some years/decade back here in NL: auditors don’t read books. Don’t go to theaters. Don’t go to concerts. The bores, the bereft of exposure to the Classics, in classical or latest-modern form. They just don’t delve into anything moral, or consider Advanced Excel the ultimate they’ll go to.

As POTUS of the Western world — military and culturally, not just the latter or, much degrading, economically only — Marcus Aurelius saw it right (yes the above is from his Meditationes, book XI / II): Those that focus only on the analytical, tracing the veracity of the True and Fair View to the detail only and not do (moral/ethical-Value) synthesis, are of an ethically overly impoverished, plebeian folk; worth to be (wage) slaves.
Those, on the contrary, that use the nitty-gritty to arrive at some grand, eloquent plea like lawyers do [should do; ed. – yeah that’s me myself ;-] even when not fully in compliance AAARGGGH! Yes I’ll go rinse my mouth with green soap with the Original “ISO” standard for that, will see their Virtue strengthen…

Never thought that I’d prefer lawyers over … anything.

But it does also refer back to my post of a couple of weeks ago in which I explained the difference between dispassionate conformity checking and invariable fault finding, the robotic way, versus compassionate improvement-issue formulation and risk-based prioritisation, the nothing-like-robotic way.
Now imagine which side I prefer to be on …

Plus:
[Ah, Culture and heritage, much over, higher, than mere systems of record; Edinburgh]

Quote by Book: John’son

Network: Any thing reticulated or decussated, at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.
Dr. Samuel Johnson, Dictionary

No kidding. Only script kiddies of the worst kind don’t seem to get that. Though it has been around since 1755, as a definition that is. How prescient.

And:
[Mash; London (already some years ago, yes]

Meta / Attrib-ShareAlike- … Commercial

For the following, one would best resort to …
Who are we kidding; are there still believers out there apart from te truly stupid-to-beyond-dysfunctionality-capacity defenders, that metadata is something less bad than just privacy-sensitive data points outright? Well, <spoiler> it’s the other way around— as is exemplified in this here piece. From which I’ve blatantly copied:

They know you rang a phone sex line at 2:24 am and spoke for 18 minutes. But they don’t know what you talked about.
They know you called the suicide prevention hotline from the Golden Gate Bridge. But the topic of the call remains a secret.
They know you got an email from an HIV testing service, then called your doctor, then visited an HIV support group website in the same hour. But they don’t know what was in the email or what you talked about on the phone.
They know you received an email from a digital rights activist group with the subject line “52 hours left to stop SOPA” and then called your elected representative immediately after. But the content of those communications remains safe from government intrusion.
They know you called a gynecologist, spoke for a half hour, and then searched online for the local abortion clinic’s number later that day. But nobody knows what you spoke about.

So blatantly I might as well add:

But then the Non element in there warps things. Nevertheless, I’ll use the example in my upcoming pres.

And I’ll leave you for now with:
[Full of info, too, innocious that aint but no invasion on you; Prague]

Is the EU repivoting ..?

Just a question; is the EU repivoting its society / economy ..?

Like, it stays away from the troubles of off-shoring / de-industrialisation versus global oil struggles versus growth hacking for the purpose of masses’ employment. It’s just not into anything, it seems. Also not qua the way society is organised.
So, is it quiet(ly) (sic) re-pivoting to something altogether totally new, or is it just dumb and silent (as the world rages towards improvement for All) …?

One wonders; sage or stupid… and:
DSCN8357
[Times almost immemorial, when the EU was into the New things…; you-(should by all menas!)-know-where, Rotterdam]

More of less

Digital cameras: The more pixels and quality-enhancing features (filters, autocorrect et al), the bigger the mass of lousy to so-so-at-best pictures taken. Selfies as case in point. The less, percentage-wise, the real art photography — squared with more picture exposure leads to more seeking out the ultimate quality / qualities by the discerning few.

The same, with management. The more of it we had, since WWII (sic), the more awful to mediocre-at-best management we had. Micro-management as case in point; intellectually at the same depth (‘level’ wouldn’t suggest the lowness of it) as selfies.
And, the less actual Leaders we see, perceive, acknowledge and laude. Unicorns notwithstanding — they may be the very build-up of a bubble that will in the end demonstrate the principle outlined here.

On this cheerful note:[Now there’s quality; near Racine, WI]