Innovation – Page 6 – Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord

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.

Waves of cyberfud

Not just because #ditchcyber is real. But because only now, the first of the absolute leggards (i.e., gov’t officials) begin to make waves about access to private data, through apparent (sic) complete lack of understanding about the fundamentals of free society. The issue of blanket access to any communications, for whatever purpose, has been settled so shut up for eternity or however much longer it takes ‘you’ to get it or die — whichever comes first, my guess is the latter.

Politics being the only field of work where no education is required; all the cyber-blah being the second, then, apparently ..? And:

[He would have annihilated the little people that clamour for ‘backdoors’, etc., et al.; DC]

Another Thoreau, another on more-than-mere-process

I would not have every man nor every part of a man cultivated, any more than I would have every acre of earth cultivated: part will be tillage, but the greater part will be meadow and forest, not only serving an immediate use, but preparing a mould against a distant future, by the annual decay of the vegetation which it supports.

Which again, points at not every waking hour should be spent on work within the straight jacket of Process(es) and procedures, just clicking the only icons you have. But also having, taking, the time to let one’s mind wander, and do things differently, for the very purpose only of refreshment. Refreshment of the mind, for the purpose of that creating the mould, … on which future creativity is crucially, essentially dependant.

Without ‘idle’ land and time (spent on refreshment and enrichment, e.g., through reading serious (sic) i.e., only tangentially business-related (sic) books), your future will be a depleted land, a life spent being a wringed-out lemon for others’ profits.
With idleness, refreshment and joy (that essential true-life ingredient), you can be(come) all you want to be and live a full life.

‘Nuff said, plus:

[Even the ground enriches the eyes… Plus, straight lines at a slight angle are more interesting >:-] ; Ancy-le-Franc, Aube]

ORM will not fly B-4 People are included

[Warning: Longread]

On the ails of the Basel-IV ORM proposals:

1. Unwarranted, certainly unscientific overreliance on ‘models’;

2. Modeling for prospective use in stead of hindsight understanding;

3. Too much top-down, not enough bottom-up;

4. No humans in the picture, hence the wrong and unactionable indicators.

Introduction

About all of the banking industry, and other financials in their wake, have had to deal with loads of regulatory requirements. Justified, some say, for ‘they’ cause(d) so much misery beyond mere most temporary loss of bonuses that the ‘un’ should be (have been long before) detached from bridled. So, Basel II and -III regulations swooped in requiring much more explicit and detailed handling of financial business than ever before. The move from laissez-faire to regulation, to regulation with sanction schemes, to sanctions (possibly interpreted as ‘token’…), was extended with provability and then complete proof-demonstration as minimum requirement.

This all, however, has created a large, and in general even I would say quite overpaid [disclaimer: am profiting too] industry of consultants, quants, ‘risk managers’, reviewers, assessors, auditors, and scores of Toms, Dicks[1] and Harries of the GRC kind. That are all very likeable nice lads and lassies, but maybe not all quite worth their salt, certainly not their bonuses, or even be sure to be worth much lending one’s ear to.
Keep reading!

New! (RE yesterday's post)

Oh how appropriately timed, this…: A new version of l0phtcrack is here ..!

As I mentioned in the passing in yesterday’s post, defense-wise one would be hard-pressed to find anything that’s up to snuff qua being a step ahead of the Other Side, catching up is however still (if only just) feasible. Good to see that the tools once (we talk, like, ages ago, ages being circa 20) used offensively and having disappeared from view, return in all their sophisticated glory — be it as point solutions in a much evolved world but still.

All rejoice and ‘play around only to get to know it’…!

Remember… you may turn out to be such a toll all the same … And:

[Once, sufficient and hard to handle, for defense. Now, a model just for show]

Dronecatcher ..?

Was tinkering with ideas to get rid of drones around / over high-risk sites, e.g., critical infra (sites).

You know, like the radiant type of energy production.
Where drones pose a somewhat new but pesky risk. The newness, of course being not much of it when all sorts of attack with either plain vanilla or modified-to-autopilot RC controlled planes (possibly built in one’s garage) were around already and would hardly need any (suspicious) infra to take off and do their nefarious thing.
Though the proliferation of the new heli-style drones somehow raised the frequency/chance side of the risk equation. And, maybe, the ease of modding for sufficient tech capabilities of the kind you’d not want a.k.a. payload weights.

So, apart from the sudden realization that in times past, recent included, little did we know of the defenses surrounding critical infra against the classical winged type drones, we have the question: What now ..?

There seem to be two solutions required:
1. How to detect a drone, possibly rogue
1.5. How to handle false positives/negatives
2. How to down it.
Because I don’t color inside the lines only.

The first, might be feasible with some mini-/micro-installations of e.g., phased array radar in scan and track modes.
The second… My favorite would be a healthy dose of rounds, e.g., like a couple of full-on Goalkeepers around your install. Or have the lamo version of only (cross-?)beaming the GPS around your target out of the sky, or lasering it beyond melting point. These latter two might be the more difficult ones, qua aim/range specifity needed. But the former will probably not fly too well with overzealous environs freaks [note: not against the reasonable ones]. Oh well, we’ll just throw up some net structure when the threat is imminent — quick reloads available ..??

And there’s still the issue of not shooting two birds with(out) one drone. I.e., how to ensure you’re not offing all sparrows in a cloud, and miss the single drone’let that disturbed the birdies in the first place. Well, Why should I come up with the lame side-solutions ..?

Also:

[The unexpected, but disastrous scenario…]

ChainWASP

… With all the blockchain app(lication)s, in all senses, sizes and seriousnesses if that is a word, growing (expo of course) everywhere,
wouldn’t it be time to think about some form of OWASP-style programming quality upgrading initiative,

now that the ‘chain world is still young, hasn’t yet encountered its full-blown sobering-up trust crash through sloppy implementation. But, with Ethereum‘ and others’ efforts to spread the API / Word (no, no, not the linear-text app…) as fast and far and wide as possible, chances of such a sloppy implem leading to distrust in the whole concept, may rise significantly.

Which might, possibly, hypothetically, be mitigated by an early adoption of … central … Oh No! control mechanism of e.g., code reviews by trusted (huh?) third parties (swarms!) where the code might still remain proprietary and copyrighted.
Or at least, the very least, have some enforceable set of coding quality standards. Is that too much asked …??

I know; that’s a Yes. So I’ll leave you with the thought of a better near-future, and:

[Horizontal until compile-time errors made adjustments necessary (pic); beautiful concept — other than Clean Code, actually executed to marvelous effect]

Man talks about Innovation

‘Innovation’

By Harold Jacobson

In Long Beach, a man talked about innovation. The man was of indeterminate age (thirty-five or something), wore a jacket and was slightly sweaty on the forehead. He stressed the importance of innovation: “Innovation.”

The man had made a ‘Roadmap Innovation and Innovation’ (RI&I). In the RI&I, there was something on the theme of ‘innovation’. The man said we are in the midst of an innovation revolution that may eventually lead to an innovation transition. According to the man, fear is not the right motivator but innovation is. Hence, we may come out stronger, if only we innovate.

The man was adamant we should have an ‘Integrative Innovation Cluster’ (IIC), as he already had in his RI&I. Because of the democratization of innovation, he said, changes are on order in the economy at large, like innovative initiatives.

According to the man, we may miss the boat if we don’t innovate. Therefore, for the boat we need an Investment Programme with Scenarios, Action Paradigms and Projects in the general area of Innovation (IPSAPPI). ‘Innovation’, as the man stressed.

[Original, in Dutch, on the Speld; translated with permission]

Fintech: Babble-fork

Coining (pun not even intended as I wrote this — lame non-landing anyway) a new phrase: Babble-fork.
Which is what happens now in the financial industry with fintech:

Banks et al. think they have a role to play in the applications of blockchain technology in the financial industry of the future.
As bc is just a distributed ledger technology [ref. Tapscott the Elder & the Younger], right?
Obviously, dead wrong. Or, ‘the Internet’ is just phone lines between mainframes.

Otherhandly, the start-ups that have no role or place for the incumbents. The start-ups that expect the old ones to die [1:03 of the linked]… and then, it is already a mockery of a flattery to relate the financial industry-that-was with that commander that never made it to captain (Navy); an outright self-delusion of the grandest scale when such industrialists think they’ll still be able to catch up with the innovation tidal waves already rushing to their shores (unseen, over still deep seas until reaching their shallow tropical beach sides ..!).
Since bc is the very counterpoint of centralized (‘trusted third party’-, quod non par excellence!) trust, being the utter distribution of it hence contra anything however remotely approaching the delusion of importance that may still be with the traditionalists.

So, fintech forks ferociously for the financial future as a tenable alliteration runs only so long. But you get it. Time again to ask for the entry password — with the wrong answer leading to …?

Well then, I also have for you:

[Dear Lord. In the Attick; Ams]

Plusquote: ‘Big’ Data

People never lie so much as before an election, during a war, or after a hunt.

Otto von Bismarck was right. The bias for socially acceptable answers plagues all analysis when that concerns data gathered from humans. Before an election, during a law suit, or after one has by the most unthinkable Luck (after most irrational stamina kept you going) stumbled upon a unicorn like here.
That’ll be all for today! Plus:

[(The quoted general was) solid as a rock; Amersfoort of course]