Tag: Risk Management

The ides of March

… aren’t today only, but are indicative of … well, a lot of what goes on in infosecland these days.
Who to trust, when your buddies and experts and both in ones, may carry knives or worse. Like, turning their your defenses against you behind your back. Like the Brutus’es and Ed S.’s did because their consciousness revived (true in both cases ..!), like the great many are doing without tipping you off already. Until it’s too late. And, in similar vein, how’zat for your backdoors built in ..?
But then, as long as you can sit there like a rabbit in the headlights … sleep now in the fire [insert appropriate link to RATM clip] because the Time Till Collapse may leave you less room for Après Nous la Déluge than ever before.

Just to wake you up, by the way; if you read the above as some kind of chagrain I may have achieved my aim of making you think beyond mere Mehhhh.
So, I’ll leave you with:
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[Shifting politics, shifting alliances…]

Vindication …

With due respect, but vindication is a beautiful thing…
As I had delivered a lecture over five years on all the places that risk management of the Basel II/II style, using quants and all to model (an übercomplex combination of scores of) human behaviour thus sublimating one’s model errors and one’s misunderstanding of how the world turns, not even mentioning the risk of the 15.5 risk; necessarily (if you’d had got It) speculative about what’s next, the evaluation was heaviliy tilted from quite (UK style) positive to mediocre by one bad review, that had as only comment “not based in evidence”. See the latest pres’s in my LinkedIn profile; without much by way of speaker notes, the ones on e.g., Blind Alley et al. can be readily understood qua intent.
Recently then, finally, this arrived. Maybe spinning off in an adjacent direction; veering off or running in parallel? But definitely touching the sore spot.
To the point where the dish is sweetest served cold.
But hey, would have liked all the business (and ~travel…) opportunities that could’ve been…

Now, let’s all go study Basel IV’s methodology and learn (e.g., as in the above-linked article). Maybe there is a future for risk management. Even if not as a separate discipline; see my posts of management-in-general. Plus:
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[Once was my ‘work’ location; worth re-pursuing Trois Islets, Martinique]

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

Mock transparency in accounting

Errrm, this on increasing transparency. By using Mock’s Scale (as here, in Dutch but you’ll get/GTranslate it) on e.g., materiality levels in financial auditing and publishing them in annual figures even if only in the accountant’s statement (in full for every line item listed…). Much beyond mere ‘reasonable assurance on true and fair views’ that aren’t anything of any of those kinds.

Then, we’ll know much better where the trouble spots are. Yes, some analysts may be of a quality that they already know. But wouldn’t it be nice to let the wisdom of the crowds work on the figures’ margins as well, to detect (e.g., per big data analysis or via some OK-rating-like instrument) anomalies.
And, maybe expanded to some form of XBRL tag per communicated line item. Add a dose of fuzzy logic arithmetic and hey presto there’s your (Not)InControl-statement …?

Fit for a grad thesis, I guess.

Oh well:
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[Rennie Mackintoshian approachability but this in Dunedin]

New category: Miss Quotes

Quite literally, literally. The quotes, of motivational nature or other, that you meet every time again — but aren’t, since they are garbled versions of the original. And the original had much more profound wisdom, or was even true where the misquote isn’t.

Heard often, lately, lame defense for some that utter the most ridiculous lies:
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
(“Je désapprouve ce que vous dites, mais je défendrai à la mort votre droit à le dire”)

Which commonly is attributed to Voltaire (no surname needed), and refers to freedom of speech and democracy at large, even to the point of complete breakdown of ethics when falsely claiming Purple Hearts etc. But then, what Voltaire actually said was
Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too.
(Essay on Tolerance)

Which is something else entirely. E.g., it starts with ‘Think’ — that so many don’t do, most by not being able to. And, ‘for yourselves’ which has the element of ‘and keep the results to yourselves as well, no need to blabber and reveal your thinking was garbage’. And, it’s a privilege. Nowhere does it say that you have the right to disturb anyone’s peace with you failure of logic. See the above link on false claims, and also refer to current-day elections politics in some global backwater…

I’m off to some wine tasting (business, not volume..!), so I’ll leave you with:
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[Remark-wise, related. At Condoníu]

Accountancy: agency or is it a Repeated Sequential Life Core War Game ..?

These thing just swirled into my mind:
The accountancy industry pictures itself as some instantiation of agency theory’s model(s). Which may be right, but then, the eager beaver ideal is achieved hardly anywhere anytime. The praxis is one of a model so deeply devolved that we have much more of a farce at hand.
Alternatively, the idea(l) of the repeated game, in sequential form with some Life notes on the palate and definite tones of Core War, turned up. Yes, it takes some crafting to plug all participants into it, and to my surprise not too much definitive info could be found on the ‘net (apart from, e.g., this sort of work) or am I missing something. Maybe it’s the difficulty of the crafting that I missed by which I might also overstate.
Oh and did I mention that usually, game theory is explained from the start of a two-player simultaneous game whereas in our application, we have three to numerous players (stakeholders/-groups) and sequentialism to at least some degree. Plus the Life aspects of travel through time and the environment, within the limits and counterforces set by the Core size/format. And yes, three-plus players … an obvious Three-Body Problem, right ..?

Why all this game-name dropping ..? Because reasons.
Reason being: There might be much better understanding of the role and value of ‘the’ accountant in daily practice (though the significance may very well be much less than presented today), and a number of methodological issues in the field would be settled much easier.

But then, if only someone would pay me to investigate… [And pay my time’s worth — now there’s many less that can even afford me ;-] but oh well, there’s still:
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[To impress. Girona yet again]

Racing humanity against ASI

One thing still amiss in the discussions about the (near?) Future:
Whether Singularity/ASI will come before humanity leaving its biological substrate, or the other way around.

The first, leading to a dystopian future of humans initially being Machine’s pets but later (?) being discarded as inefficient nuisance. Even if only via Lanier‘s route.
The second giving some hope that humans may transform into ASI after which the age-old wars start all over again. Or, the first past the post takes all…

Yes, still ploughing through [and finding much want for evidence or less of it, and addition of great many ethics aspects] Kurzweil as here, here and here.
The first, in a great many previous posts on this blog. The second, too. I’m unsure how the future will play out. Now that Ray’s predictions, time-wise, seem to have fallen before (fallen non-behind) actuality maybe due to something with a financial crisis but Ray had demonstrated (?) that to not hurt the ‘real’ economy too much — from which either we will bounce back with a sprint to return to the (smooth..?) expo growth path, or we will prove not all that starts exponentially, will indefinitely continue that way. So we have lost already by not waking up fast enough or still have some time if only we’d wake up to join the discussion — not necessarily the Luddite revolt …

Your thoughts, please ..?

Oh and just wanted to add, for the relatively (very) short term: “If every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others, if the shuttle could weave, and the pick touch the lyre, without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not need servants, nor masters slaves.” (Aristoteles) — taken to be positive. But just extend that; one could consider it short-sightedness by Ari to not have asked why there would be any chief workmen with the possibility that there would need not be any work at all leading to no income for all hence devastating poverty and starvation but for the few if any (sic) who ‘own’ the machines. Also:
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[The interesting about ‘life’ in Chalons-en-Champagne is just a tucked-away corner, nothing more — same for humanity in the near future ..?]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord