Wats’on your bug-hunting program ..?

Tinkering with some unrelated ideas …:
How would one go about setting Watson (Clone, III) to work on bug hunting ..?
Where the Beast would be fed all sorts of past code / code patterns (source~ or executable~, or whatever style you’d prefer) with known bugs / errors / exploits and the way in which they failed, and then have the Big W scan, e.g., Win10 source code and come up with a list (in this case, assuming sufficient storage ;-| ) of bug red flags. Probably, to be classified in a range of Sure Thing, via Commonly, to Maybe. As we’re discussing patterns, certainty can’t be had for all found points of interest per se.

That being the simple part, what about automated immunization ..? If some patterns are near-certainly bugs/errors/exploit-points always, can they be plastered ex ante ..? It might be easy(er), too, to throw in an extra development test in the first place (“Sorry Dave, I can’t compile that”). But this sort of scope creep could easily lead to creepy behavior, e.g., if (??) the (??) system would get hijacked.

Oh well. Would still be glad to have your thoughts. And:
DSC_0062
[“Tin”foil hat for actual protection (well, No.), at Haut K-bourg again]

Plusquote: Critique of the Pure Reasonlessness

This episode, by reference to the excellent Future Crimes (Marc Goodman, as here), one originally by G.K. Chersterton (The Blue Cross):

The criminal is the creative artist; the detective only the critic

To which we would want to add: And the auditor, only the disgruntled desk-bound traffic cop.
Since, the checker (and penaliser) of the trivial petty little rules, should remain in the third line, right ..?

Where by the way, the creativity of the artist is required to make the art work that sells — and hence all make their living off straightforward crime or would perish. The more you bureaucratise into totalitarianism, the more you see life wither, till death. Even if the crime keeps on being perpetrated — by laxity of the second and particularly third lines, in cahoots with the profiteers. … Maybe that’s a bit deep-but-overly-lapidary …
Hence, just:
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[Panopticon Central, Strassbourg]

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]

One IoTA FYI

To close off [almost, since @KPN fraud themselves away from bankruptcy by series of outright lies to customers and tort] the year with a wild shot, ahead:
There is value in the information analysis in IoT, as described in Gelernter and many since, of the two-way flow of information. One, flowing up are information in the form of answers as aggregations or pattern matched tuples(ets); the other going down, being both commands and inquiries/questions.

This fits the IoT world snugly, and should be taken into account when developing IoTAuditing frameworks:
What we’re after of course in all of auditing — and this we consider self-evident or else go back to study auditing fundamentals, from agency theory! — is the controls that keep the quality of the back/forth i.e. down/up information flows within (client-!)required margins. No more! But be aware of who the client really is, not the one doing the actual paying. So, we may focus on the integrity of the information flows first and foremost, then the continuity (availability), and then confidentiality as an afterthought.
With neat break-downs to isolation, appropriate input/output buffering (anyone still aware of the difference between an interrupt and a trap? If not, take a hike and learn, and weep), integrity controls above all. And some thing on (establishing) the quality of aggregation and of the questions being pushed down — when the wrong questions get asked e.g. by lack of understanding of the subject matter (sic), as is so very commonplace in the vast majority of organisations today, the wrong results will turn up from within the data pool (reporting ‘up’wards).

And of course there’s the divide between
the operational world where actual business is done (either administratively in offices though one could argue (i.e. proof beyond recovery) that this isn’t actually doing anything worthwhile, or producing stuff), and
the busybodies world ‘above’ (quod non) that, which thinks (wrongly) to be able to ‘control’ and ‘steer’ the productive body, sometimes rising itself into the thin air levels of absolute ridicule (by) branding itself ‘governance’.
But do re-read all of last year’s posts and weep. But do also see the implications for variance in the integrity, availability, and confidentiality needs at various (sub)levels.

And:
DSCN2229
[The 2016 way is up; Cala at Barça]

Prediction16

Yawn. Or not. The following will get real serious in 2016. Like,

Well, for the list with everything and their dog:

  • Some Exits: Green Egg, ‘Cyber’everything, disruption/uberization, privacy, and, certainly and very much hopefully, “Like us on Facebook” … and very, very certainly hipsters let alone their ‘beards’ (quod non).
  • Entrat to replace the latter, hopefully, some actual non- or anti-bureaucratic frameworks of mind.
  • Also out, to be replaced by … [as yet unknown]: Vlogging or what have we, in socmed space, with 100k-1M+/++ followers as being he thing to aim for. As it becomes clearer and clearer in 2016 that only the 10M+/++ leaders (??) can make a dime from it, or barely a living. Who are the big winners, in all of this? User data / experience farmers?
  • Risk Management 3.0 will grow to be the Next Thing in managementspeak. If you’d need any proof, go read back the ton of posts on your perennial Truth site.
  • Also, we might get a last blip from SMAC(T) as a trend summary.
  • All of the points made by The (some) Man. Obviously. And some of this as well though this may all show to be overblown.
  • Still a wave of interest in Rise of the Robots. Combined with AI through and through, like in this. With support at an angle, from this.
  • A further blend of cloudsourcing and deperimetrisation putting your infra and all of your data naked and out there in the cold.
  • Oh almost forgot: A lot more on APTs, 3D printing (when will we finally get 4D printing …!?), MehhDrone stuff, blockchain, IoT, et al.
  • But we may hope, the latter two get much more innovative applications; one the one hand with simpler explications, on the other, truly innovating e.g., into the DAO realm.
  • Ah, DAOs; let’s first see more of this in 2016.
  • Offering a simple list copy from HBR:
    • Algorithmic personality detection: Yes
    • Bots: Yes
    • Glitches: Mwah; we indeed will see scores of them, ever bigger and more impactful (also b/c complexity explosions of the mixed e and physical worlds), but they’re somewhat of the mehhh category for the purpose of Here.
    • Backdoors: See APTs et al; much more of them yes but again, mehhh
    • Blockchain: As mentioned
    • Drone lanes: Hmmm, interesting…
    • Quantum Computing: Probably hung in there from previous (many) years’ lists; mine, too. May, might, but for the same token may not
    • Augmented knowledge: Definitely. Hopefully, in a good way. But maybe even hopefully, steered towards safe use, after a hopefully indicative but small-enough dystopian-style mishap ..?
  • CloudIAMming. IAM, renewed, for federated use in ‘the’ cloud. Yes, this will have a whole new lease of life, as a management field, and a consultancy field as well.
  • This just in: Forgot to mention VR as a thing in 2016. Definitely.
  • I may want to do an update halfway through the year…
  • Oh, and of course our motto for 2016: A CEO with you, is still a CEO.
    #gosubstitute[ _X, _Y | fool, a tool ]

After which there’s only:
DSCN7943
[Purposefully unsharp. Berlin, some years ago.]

C’est arrivé près de chez vous; LoRaWAN

Yet another major building block of the Future … in place. [And, not a ref to some City of Light atrocities]
Where’s the Privacy and (OR) Security experts …? For certainly, though almost out of public view, the undercurrents develop fast, into a maelstrom — I’d like it even more in this form — of possibilities; to be abused before being controlled, as has always been the case throughout history.

Oh well, can’t stop Progress, certainly not of the Technology kind… But one can hope we (sic or huh?) the Concerned will be in sufficient numbers to be able to and to be allowed to insert the appropriate controls into the whole shazam.
Like, you know,
DSC_0752
[Or is this an Tocqueville’ian opposite ..?]

Blown over — smart dust or where is it?

In all the news about IoT, where has the (admittedly far-flung) prediction about ‘smart dust’ gone ..? Where has the smart dust gone? Was it a wormhole glimpse into the future, was it some runaway brainstorm on steroids (or other stimulative substance) session’s result ..?
Where still, it looms in the background. Once information is created, will it remain in the universe, existing without a result (as it may or may not have a cause, the rebel against entropy that it is)? (Here I go in similar vein, not stimulated!)

Now, let’s first have actual working quantum computers. Similarly vague at inception and counter-intuitive — for which reason I believe it will turn out to have logical fallacies in its current models so will in the end not be feasible to realise ..! —, let that come first. In itself, already difficult enough to cope with, as a global society.

Afterwards, smart dust will look like a rough cut piece of cake, probably. But maybe the Problems of it, will stil be Hard (compute-complexity-wise), as here and elsewhere.

And this, for your blue pill:
20150911_143851
[Excellent or mundane archi; but with sublime acoustics — second (to) one in Amsterdam!]

Trivial TLA Things-Tip

If you Thought This Time Things would be easier, as the universality of plug-‘n-play has spread beyond even the wildest early dreams into the realms of the unthought-of non-thinkingness, think again. Drop the again. Think. That was IBM’s motto, and they created Watson. No surprises there.
However… It may come as a surprise to some that now, an actual TLA has some actual tips, to keep you safe(r). As in this. Who would have thought… On second thought, this agency of note might have no need for the access disabled themselves anymore, as they’ve provided themselves of sufficient other access (methods) by now and just want to hinder the (foreign) others out of their easy access ..?

Oh well, never can do well, right? And this:
DSC_0070
[Another one from the cathedral of dry feet — only after, making sticking fingers in dykes worthwhile; at Lynden, Haarlemmermeer]

Tempting Under-30’s

It dawned, suddenly. The ubiquity of lists of Under 30 mil/billionaires, where they live, etc. All that attention – Why? Jealousy? Maybe, (most) partially that is the lure for attention.
[Note that it dawned only. If you’d find this post a bit … imperfect, that would be a. impossible ’cause it’s mine, b. as the thaw hadn’t dried up, c. in particular on socmed not very much elsewhere. If unsure always go for b.]

For one thing, the Under 30 list phenomenon is real and annoying.
For another, it shows the slightly less-than-full-witted to be the target audience – how else to explain the ’30’ cut-off ..? Age isn’t even a number, it’s a word. And why so fixated? … Ah, because:
It (the lists/phenomenon) serves as teaser, as bait, for the gullible (‘slightly-less-than’) to work their … off, even accepting nothing but a vaporware share (‘points’ anyone?) of the mirage. So that the ones that stay behind the screens, the Powers That Be can reap the benefits. It doesn’t even help to have experience; most don’t learn from that anyway as practice shows.
And it creates a sense of urgency, when one inevitably gets closer to the 30 mark so quickly. To not be a failure, hurry up even more armagerrd the pressure to be Creative!
And then find that sane people might be as creative, or even more so, at all later ages as well. My guess: The early fast burners are exhausted by their 40s and have nothing left to rekindle [or, maybe they have, if they’d try really really hard], when the percentage of as-yet untapped innovation and disruption capable people does not go down except when stuck in dumbing-down moronic work (factory, office..!). The ones that escape, have more! Both an urge, a cropped-up primordial energy, and experience to effectively and efficiently release it. Some hope for Yours Truly, then.

So, we weren’t surprised when this came along. IoT not invented in Silly Valley. Because that is where all the minions are doing the hard mind work. Whereas IoT relies heavily on old tertiairy industry and at the same time doesn’t require the totalitarian unphysical-labour-only approach of the Valley. The mindset-disconnect is why IoT hasn’t taken more flight yet; one needs both the less-than-exponentially-exploding developments from everywhere-but and the ‘disruption’-labelled somewhat-faster business model innovations together whereas still, the disconnect is too much of a sea (baha) to be parted-is-connected by some Steve type.

[Morning fog still there. I’ll pause now.]
20150311_122327_HDR
[Boating, banking style @ Zuid-As. Oh stop it! Not literally as a utterly wasted money pit sailing yacht – Dutch invention in two ways… – but figuratively in more ways than two.
In the background left: Not symphony but simple.onetrickpony…]

Waves of IoT

Tinkering with the great many (unknown) unknowns of the IoTsphere, it occurred to me that there are various intermediate phases to deal with before we can consider ourselves comprehensively outdone after the Singularity (dystopian with P(X)=1).

By which I mean the following ‘growth’ model:

  • Current-day operations: Factory ‘robots’ or process plants being (factory-)centrally controlled from e.g., typical classical (?) control rooms. And ATMs, the robots without arms!
  • IoT in its four distinct forms. With ‘robots’ moving out of their prothesis confines, as e.g., here. Possibly with some ANI.

    Both these levels can be regarded to have operational level problems; ethical, security/privacy, industry-disruptions and comprehensively new business and labour models, etc.etc. but relatively definitely operational, to be solved.

  • At a tactical level, there’s AGI stuff to be figured out.
    Ethics, ‘robots’ like self-driving/autonomous cars [yes, yes, I know those two are very much not the same!] as proxies for humans, with all the rights and duties including how to enforce those, and Privacy on a much larger, impactful scale. Including also, all problems you thought to have solved in the previous rounds, now coming back to haunt you and be very much harder to solve.
  • The Strategic level, with ASI all around. To repeat, including also, all problems you thought to have solved in the previous rounds, now coming back to haunt you and be very much harder to solve.

This, as just a briefest of summaries of all sorts of dilemmas to be figured out. Sonner rather than later, or bingo (points of nu return) will have been passed sooner than you realise. I’ll try to help out with a post here and there, or course ;-]

For now:
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[At what stage will AI understand the genius of this design ..?]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord