Hoog op Flut!

Kan de gezamenlijke restaurantwereld in NL nou eens ophouden met die nonsens van “Hoog Op Smaak” en gewoon toegeven dat er door iedere gang een AKZO-jaaromzet zout gaat omdat de ingrediënten zó goedkoop moesten dat er geen enkele smaak aan zat ..?

[Edited to add: Nog erger als koks gaan beweren niet zo veel zout toe te voegen maar de smaak ‘umami’ maken. Een emmer MSG erbij gooien bedoelen ze dan. De betekenis en vertaling van ‘umami’ was tot voor kort ‘van alles veel’. Toch vreemd, dat we sinds de Romeinen vissaus kennen, vol van ‘umami’-glutamaten en afgeleiden, maar dat we nooit een woord ervoor hadden, of het als smaak bestempelden. Maar ja, het tikt vele receptoren aan hè? Dus het kan geen variant zijn van een van de vier basissmaken ..? Net als marsepein een aparte smaak is tenslotte, want naast heel veel zoet zit er ook een klein beetje andere smaak bij dus zoet op zich is marsepein niet ..?? Iemand een uitleg waar ‘basis’ voor staat in basissmaken ..?
En dat zout en ‘umami’ zo’n beetje hetzelfde effect hebben … Inderdaad, ze hebben beide het effect van smaakkoppoetsing door papillenactivering. Nou en?
Door met wat er al stond; lees aldaar dus MSG als :]
Heel triest om te zien dat ook vele ‘sterren’koks et al., zich er zo consequent aan bezondigen. Goede ingrediënten hebben geen volle Dode Zee / chemiefabriek (!) nodig om smaakvol te zijn. Die sterren zijn ze echt niet waard. Tot nu toe slechts zegge 1 (schrijve: één) (ja ik weet het, zucht) Michelin-ster tegengekomen (i.e., geproefd) die de ster ook echt waard was. De rest (t/m 3*!): Nee hoor; effectbejag met een over de hele dichtgepletterde poging tot ‘umami’ door alle eigenheid aan smaak van de ingrediënten weg te poetsen met 3651 vrachtwagenladingen natriumchloride. Waar waren die sterren ook alweer voor? Toch niet alleen om ze als zodanig te voelen, waar de zon nooit schijnt, na beschikbaarstelling aan de keurmeesters van die bandenleverancier? Want het keukenproduct … oh zo vaak middelmatig, zeer middelmatig.
Dit soort proletarische vervoosde degeneratie-decadentie staat natuurlijk naast natuurlijk een flink aantal niet-sterrententen die het begrepen hebben ‘maar daardoor geen ster halen’. Die gewoon weten hoe je de kwaliteit van ingrediënten kan halen zonder die te vernietigen, door te beginnen met goede ingrediënten en die geen geweld aan te doen. Als de (on)geachte cliëntèle dat niet proeft: Pech. Move over. Ga maar naar de Schotse keten, daar pep je de boel maar op met ketchup en mayo. Dá’s pas smaak, toch …!?

Zout kan je er niet uit halen, wel erin als je aan tafel zo nodig moet laten blijken te grof te zijn voor finesse.

Enfin, zo kan ik nog wel doorgaan. Rest, voor nu:
DSC_0217
[Sombertjes; hoog daarboven, op de schouders/berg, een ruïne, beneden rest een zoete kledder (gemiddeld); Ribeauvillé]

Old innovation

Sometimes, the ‘small’ innovations, by ideas that may not even be new but turn up at last in an implementable, implemented fashion, may deserve more spotlight. An Oscar of sorts maybe even, some time after many years’ wait.
This being one of those. Now implemented to protect a museum; many more applications thinkable. Don’t lower the river (only); raise the bridge dam …

That’s all. Just sayin’. And:
000013 (17)
[Just as (?) pretty, less of a dam though; Curaçao]

Wired / Tired / Expired, 2016 Q1 edition

Yes here’s a surprise new quarterly Wired / Tired / Expired jargon watch overviews, a mixed bag again. But much needed, it seems, as there’s much to promote or dis(mis)s.
First, for your viewing pleasure:
Photo20 (4)
[Yes the UFO one again. Still prime FLlW space…!]

WIRED TIRED EXPIRED
DeepMind / AlphaGo Watson “Robots”
For, discreetly not completely, winning at Go, taking the fame flag from this edition’s Tired contender. The W of <fill in the blanks and colour the pictures>, e.g., medicine but now having extended so often into the mundane. See also many earlier posts of mine, as indication that the newness has been lost quite summarily. Anyone who still thinks ‘robots’ as humanoid machines are the future, either writes for simpletons in a way that reveals the simpleton self or hasn’t understood in the first place.
Noam Bernie Donald
Still going, maybe not very strong but exposing the ridicule of it all, ever more clearly. Hang in there, best-option of the world! If elected, the world will have a seriously bad hair day.
Artificial Empathy UX MobileFirst design
Ow yeah! The end purpose of all AI explained: To sell us even more in ever more devious ways … Not even Linux but the nonderstood follow-up of user-centered design. Sometimes in a last-ditch effort even renamed mobile only design. Will go the way of the books, sense returning to common.
Flex mesh work Start-up Culture / Creative Incubator Silicon Valley
Project-oriented and anything staffing-wise goes. No strict ‘policies’, just getting the ultimate High-Q resourcing in whatever way available. Oh yes all the petty boys and girls getting ripped off off their ideas, talent and energy. Dumped subsquently. Does hardware XOR consumerist-data. Both old.
Crypto Backdoors Security
Let’s all do it, transparently, in privacy-friendly apps, or on top of the less so. Will not work Period As if still using the container phrase means anything other than confusion.
Drones versus commercial flight safety Drone deliveries Attack drones
OMG the Need For Regulation! Yes…, why not, exactly…? Women have deliveries, men have balls but as this isn’t about cricket, drones have physical distribution potential. Some. Yes, that’s the first and very foremost commmercial deployment of the category. Now what?
Do Your Thing Disruption The Uber Of
Just read Godin’s frustrum post and you’ll get it. Of the right kind, not the ‘overthrow then what’ kind you m.r.n The shorthand for / of the Clueless.
Caring for refugees Expanding the EU EU
Get real about the numbers, the risks. Humanity can fix this. Easily. Expanding the mess exponentially, isn’t going to clean up. Pronounced ‘Eeewwww!’. Why not ditch it, have a good cry, and start over again with a glacial-speed cultural integration first …!?

OK, any suggestions for next quarter’s (!) edition ..?

Crash’in the wings

… Thinking back of the Taleb’ian remarks, and truths, on Extremistan, and how some more or less closely watched parameters may lose their variance but not their uncontrol since such petering out of shock’lets are just the precursors of an asteroid impact scale collapse, I wondered what is about to happen in infosecland. Since for weeks, nay months already, there has hardly been any news… Apart from the usual suspects (#ditchcyber ..!), there hasn’t been anything serious, has there, by means of yet another class break or more comprehensive controllability breakdown?

Which is why everyone should sit more uneasily, in stead of the opposite sleeping better than ever.

But then, this was the message from your Wolf-crying boy …?

To which:
elk-06

[Since last Friday, you know this isn’t a reindeer but an elk that is no moose, at least not everywhere]

Security so(m)bering

There’s this discussion going down on the merits of privacy versus security. Whether the one is part of the other, or the other way around, or both. Whereas the smarts are with considering privacy enhanced by good confidentiality settings ’cause they see that privacy is an issue of higher (abstraction) order than mere confi; achieved by it but only as infosec are the bricks and mortar when all you wanted is not bricks or so but a wall.
Through which you may reflect on compliance in infosec. Because hardly ever, is that taken to include compliance with the principles and business objectives and conditions that include being sparse with hinder to the business. Really, those that truly set only guiding rails not enforcement rails, are the unicorns of the trade. No, not those unicorns, those are just frauds anyway.
You may try to do better; really. It starts with risk … when properly applied, you would not get the remarks about ‘why, it has never happened to us before / what are the odds?’ but might even get better support for some slightly hindering process changes and better (but less end user detectable) ‘infra’ i.e., everything under the users’ level of visibility.
So, I’m not sombering or if, about the eager beaver pervasive prevalence. Because sobering up, wising up, may win the day and may be due…

We shouldn’t somber too much… Isn’t this a perfect opportunity to finally demonstrate how we do (… can …) link up information security to real business issues at the highest GRC levels. Since we shouldn’t be passive, and leave ‘privacy’ to be taken over by lawyers jumping into the current Privacy Officer void. Since we can translate all the operational and tactical work that we do on privacy, all the way up to strategic levels and still be very concrete. And not have to wait till ill-understandable “guidelines” (shackles) keep us from achieving something.
No more wannabe whining about ‘deserving’ a seat at the Board table or at least be heard; not asking to be allowed but matter-of-factly showing ‘Done.’ … if, not when, you did informtion security right all the way…

Just like that:

[“Na na nanana can’t hear you!”; Porto]

Jobba… Niche or disruptor ..?

Was dealing with Jobbatical.com the other day. The site of which, well.., still has that β feel to it, which made me wonder: Is this the UX of a disruptor ..?
Since, ‘local’ recruiters seem to move back and forth on the margins they can rob off clients (either side), pointing at pendulums between monopolies (e.g., by having blanket contracts with buyers even when thaht defeats the purpose) and open competition (when the Professionals don’t even want to work with middle men b/c of lack of effectiveness).

And now, the same, but much lighter on the go-between parts and more transparent hence (sic) more efficient. Though maybe a slight bit less glitzy — but those are the characteristics of Disruptors, right ..? Yeah, causation can’t me mirrored (A Or Not B isn’t B Or Not A) but still.

Why am I tipping you on this as you might compete ..? B/c I don’t think your profile will be like mine; you might (big if) compete on the Want side but hardly on the Can side …

So I don’t care. And:
DSCN6534
[Wouldn’t mind this as work location, either — minus the trampling tourists]

Quick Note: Big Data or ..?

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing with pebbles on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay undiscovered before me” [I. Newton]

Whence my feeling when reading this, that I was looking into Big Data ..? Maybe Big Data could be made to work when set loose on the world’s major problems. So, no petty process analysis or what have we; onto serious fruition!

But then, it turns out that such problem solving, in particular such problem solving, needs no more data but can be solved, as shown throughout history, to be solvable without it and where data was available (yes, far more commonly available in the heads of otherwise decent much less looking-away kind of people) it wasn’t used properly or even in opposition.
Apart from the applications where it is used fully wherever more comes available and still not bringing us much closer to eternal humanitarian bliss.

For the humanity’s departure:
DSCN0124

Plusquote: You’re not perfect

Even at the Computer History Museum most of the devices on display stopped functioning many years ago.
This time, not one of my own but quoted from Ray. Pointing out that it’s not that bad if you fail at having the perfect IT management (systems/operations) in the universe — even if you’d had forever you wouldn’t succeed so take it easy on the minor non-compliancies.

So, this in a series inspired by this here Expert, some more of my own (heh) personal ramblings which I would dare to call motivational soundbites but you would consider to be as typically as this sentence to be my interpretation of brief, not necessarily positively motivational but that’s (yes I do use abbreviations to shorten the sentence even further) because that remains your interpretation but that’s not necessarily the right one being the one I intended.

Capice? And:
DSC_0378
[Once – not forever – the newest, carved in / out of stone; Reims]

Your valued info at risk

Ah, just noted: A great many of you may have switched (or, c’mon don’t be a laggard or too late, will soon switch) to self-assessments of risks, even to the level of detail of data security (as part of information security, part of IRM, part of ORM, part of ERM, part of just-freakin’-perfectly-normal-or-are-you-kiddin’-me mundane run-of-the-mill average daily management of which ‘governance’ is the most preposterous windbag label).
Which is all very well, to determine at the shop floor levels, that apparently are the last hold-outs of actual business knowledge beyond the mumbo-jumbo of meddle management (sour joke intended), what the risks, and particularly also, Value of information (data…) processed might be.

But … You’d miss half or more of the picture, then. The value you attach to the info, may very well be what you’d be prepared to fork out to protect it (balancing estimated frequencies of intermittent losses versus continuous costs flying out the window), but you then forget that the attacker isn’t after the value you attach, but the value to the cracker. Which may be completely different. Think, e.g., Sony (and the many others alike): comparatively, there was hardly a nickel value in the ‘stolen’ (exfiltrated, or egressed since it was lying around so obviously) data from the Sony perspective. But the value was enormous from the hacker perspective — whatever the innocuous data was, the mere exposure was of such import that APT’ ing around apparently was worth it.

Now, how’zat (women have deliveries, men have Balls) for all the other info throughout your glocal enterprise/empire ..? Similar to same, I presume.
So, … what about the budgets to be made available to counter data theft/robbery/whatever comparison to physical-world expropriation you’d like to use? And still not trying to overshoot in comparison to the value you yourselves establish for yourselves by yourselves, or you’d run the risk (chance close to 1) of splattering any flexibility and usability under tons of ‘controls’ (quod non, BTW). But then, not protecting ‘regular’ data enough, might expose it too easily — which might be rational but will cost you, e.g., through EU data protection fines … ;-|

So, you’ll not only have to do the multiplication of this and this, but extend in other dimensions as well…
Oh well, the world gets more complicated every day… and:
DSC_0115
[Your data protection; Noto]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord