Copying it bluntly, for you

Just like that, a full page of niceness and arguments to consider. Guess which one I’m switching to. So should you. Competition, leading to improvement.

Neo is right

When it is about the way The Neo-Generalist, Kenneth Mikkelsen and Richard Martin, is:

The Neo-Generalist is both specialist and generalist, often able to master multiple disciplines. We all carry within us the potential to specialise and generalise. Many of us are unwittingly eclectic, innately curious. There is a continuum between the extremes of specialism and generalism, a spectrum of possibilities. …
Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, our society has remained in the thrall of the notion of hyperspecialism. This places constraints on the way weare educated, the work we do, how we are recruited, how our career progression [say what? ed.] is managed [not; ed.], how we label ourselves for the benefit of others’ understanding. …
Our workplaces, governments, intelligence agencies and other communities and institutions constantly complain of silos, but that is an inevitable consequence of our promotion of hyperspecialism. So too the myopia of expertise that prevents us from seeing properly what is right in front of us, or connecting it in meaningful [sic; ed.] ways with other information, other people.
[Preface, almost completely]

The institutionalisation of the label, and the constraints it demarcates, both physical and psychological, is an unfortunate legacy of the Industrial Revolution and its effects on society. The scientific management practices popularised at the turn of the twentieth century retain an insidious hold on how people think and organise themselves for manufacturing and knowledge work, even extending into Healthcare and education. It is a dehumanised and mechanical approach that views individuals not as people with unique charcteristics, knowldge and expertise but as replaceable parts. Their very humanity is occluded by the labels they are forced to bear. We remove this welder and replace them with that welder. When this accountant leaves, we will hire another accountant. Our project managers, nurses, teachers, bus drivers, are considered entirely interchangeable.

In the meantime, however, we have set up a conveyor belt of humanity that is geared towards squeezing people into the correctly shaped holes, ensuring that the label fits. Hyperspecialism is the end goal. … Educational choices made during our impressionalble teen years can have a lasting effect. To select is also to exclude. Opting for certain academic disciplines during high school limits what can be pursued at university or as a trade. For those who aspire to it, a higher-education specialism then narrows workplace possibilities. Qualifications lead to employment, whcih in turn leads to the constraints of a role and job description, the path towards increasing functional expertise. Measurement and performance assessments impel us to sharpen our skill set within the restricted field. The myopia of the expert sets in. The boundaries within which the specialist operates get narrower still.

The funneling has an inevitable consequence: it fosters silo-based practices and behaviours. Corporations, government departments, intelligence agencies and a host of other types of organisations bemoan the disjointness of their departments, the lack of interoperability between IT systems, the hoarding and protection of knowledge. Yet this is the end result of a system that encourages hyperspecialism and narrow, deep expertise. [pp. 24-25]

And so it goes on, with relevance. We may interject a full Book by Quote later, but for now leave it at this and encourage you to Study the work. To weep and learn, how you should not do it. I mean, tag along. Resist!

Oh, plus:

[Cordoníu the Beautiful (~ design by Puig i Cadafalch), San Sadurní d’Anoia Catalunya]

Where art thou, APT ..?

In line with some previous posts, about e.g., the Maker Movement, I’d like to ask if anyone knows the whereabouts of all those pesky APTs that were around a couple of years ago. Oh, yes I do know they’re in your infra everywhere all the time, but qua publicity, qua countermeasures ..?
I would like to hope that in this case, more contrary to its nature you can’t get, it would indeed bebecause (sic) of having been dealt with sufficiently in the past. Or the whole APT thing turned out to be a [any country’s] TLA move – of a side with ample publicity-suppressive powers everywhere.
But that would be day-dreaming. So, I’d like to ask your insights…

And:

[[Fuzzyfied] Oh, just some storage room in my house. Or, somewhat more, at the Royal palace, Dam, Amsterdam]

No confidence voting

Why would it surprise anyone that these here results came out of the Defcon 25 Voting Machine Hacking Village ..?
More importantly, where is the true side-by-side comparison of trraditional paper-only voting against all safeguards thinkable by today’s voting protocol science ..? (As here and here, to name a very few of the tons out there)

And, where can blockchain fundamentals be applied to ‘vote’ more equally and/or provide a graceful degradation or (hacked to breach to skew) error correction mechanism ..? Preferably with two-round- and/or multicameral (2+) systems tweakability; that would be grand.

All else that would need to be arranged, would be … [similar to encryption in general practice…] error-free, tampering-boobytrapped implementations… Good luck with that. And:

[Museum of tamper-free hence ?? abandoned voting system ..? No. But a museum, Lissabon/Belém]

A philosophical one: Polynesian time

When one considers Einstein’s profound maxim Time is that not everything happens at once, is one lost for causation and/or free will ..?
The former excluding the latter, if taken to its utter consequences. The latter, presupposing the former or how else can one’s decisions turn into actions turn into something chosen among alternatives that can only exist when alternatives are potentially there, excluding ultimate-causation theories. With the apparent-free philosophies in the middle.

But that’s not my point. My point is: The thought of Polynesian navigation crossed my mind. Not in a literal sense, but in a cultural sense where (the Original) Polynesians, as lore has it but there’s nothing against believability, would not actually sail to another island but the world would rotate underneath them. The traveller would remain in place, with everything else shifting.
Is this how we all travel through time, individually? We all staying in the (Here and) Now, with the Past slipping by us, behind us, and the Future just rotates to under us?
Is this impacting on causation and/or free will ..? Will have to think this one through; awkwardly hard.
Where would the ‘everything in the universe is not matter or natural laws or Energy but Information’ or ‘All energy is Information’ school(s) fit in ..?

I sense there is a link between the Indivudual Time / Universal Time dichotomy, if that’s not refuted by Einsteinian / -adepts’ time relativity theory. Another one to think through.

Qua individual time nevertheless, it’s comforting. Time-wise, we are where we are. No need to ‘be in the moment’, we already always are. No worries about the past or the future; those are, already, somewhere (in time). [Apart from having to care for one’s mortgage…]

Oh well, the head spins (+1/-1 ;-| ) when thinking too hard… Hence:

[Into the distance… Belém]

Too late for GDPR compliance ..? Click here to pay up

It seems like everyone’s finally waking up to the fact that ‘GDPR D-day’ is less than 283 days ahead.
Yes I checked. And I didn’t discount for weekends – minus 80 days, more of less –, holidays – either the normal kind, at some three weeks in this period, or the sanctified ‘bank holidays’ for those that say they don’t believe in holidays, or say they do but still are too awkward sheep to actually go on normal holidays, maybe a week in total – and the year-end curfew on all IT changes because business is doing things they have done for years, decades, and still haven’t mastered apparently.
So, we’re more in the area of 100-150 business days left.

Before what …!?

GDPR has power of law per … 20 days after its publication in the EU Official Journal, on 4 May 2016 … !!!

It’s just that officially, it’s not enforceable.
And would one be able to challenge organisations already today, e.g., with the letters from hell just not from the duds?
[To the latter: The Dutch DPA was sanctioned in court four times recently for not having acted sufficiently in spirit and to the letter of their tasks. Suggest to estimate what percentage this constitutes to the actual number of cases they didn’t act sufficiently where legally, they were and are forced to; refusal to obey instructions…]

No really: ‘Civil’ law is other than administrative law, right? Enforcement is postponed, but is the requirement to comply as well ..?

Will ask legal advice. And:
[The Classics, may stay even when at an angle; NY-NY]

Diving under, almost, everything

Dindn’t we feel it coming, if not in the air tonight than at least, after we signalled that BIOSes had been targeted… that there’s always a layer deeper one has to be on guard for infosec leakage and backdoors… How did this ‘surface’? Bypassing all the O/S features …

Just putting in down here. E.g., which, how many, platforms would be vulnerable to this; how much and what sorts of traffic could you send around through this …? Would one be able, when in so deep, to pick up system/sysadmin/root rights/credentials when browsing around ..?

And here we (not) are, all fleeing to the End User Is Stupid mantra, away from our own failings in tech but hey, users are the weakest link so we shove tons of hard protocol i.e., stupidity, on them. And burying them in awareness smotherlectures, instead of creating real behavioural change.

Oh well. And:
[Buried under the tons of network traffic, there’s a pay(ing)load you see? Nyagra]

Once were warriors of the smallest kind, our promise for the future

Who was surprised when this here piece entered their view? Not I. I not ed that a presentation of Yours Truly of Jan 2015 had:
Ello, Viv, YikYak, Tsu, Whisper, Kik, WeChat, Line, Viber, surespot, Whicker, Treema, KakaoTalk, Nimbuzz, Tango, MessageMe, Slack, HipChat, Peerio, Wizters, Secret, The Insider, Awkward, Cloaq, Chrends, Dropon … just as a sample list, so
To which already then, tons could have been added.

[Intermission quiz: Which ones did I forget then, that have made it big today ..? Or have perished again in the mean time ..? Or are still around but struggling ..?]

Some questions spring to mind:
Have you called your money manager to account over investing in every hype over and over again whereas the returns (after accounting for LGD) are so measly?
Why do we believe the hype, against old but still solid and supreme-quality advice?
How can we do better next time(s) ..?

Poor old/young Yik Yak. So much promise, snatched away at such a young age…
Plus:
[Not a unicorn, but somewhat rare; guess where (wrong, wrong again, and again …)]

Droneshield-downer

How would this (link in Duds) great – not so much – invention help against drones that have pre-programmed GPS coordinates and semi- or fully-autonomously fly to their destination? Because they’re out there already and even building/programming them is a piece of cake for the ones that would actually want to do harm for no defensible (sic) reason.
And also, there already is this; better drone detection than the article (and the vendors therein) suggest would be possible …!
And also, there already is law against the proposed jamming.

So, too bad, vendors Deutsche Telekom, T-Systems, Dedrone, Rhode&Schwartz, Squarehead, Robin Radar Systems, and HP Wüst: Magenta is a colour, not a viable product — it’s illegal and it doesn’t work; a square fail.

Am I too harsh? Possibly; that happened some 50 years ago as well. Plus:
[Quite this’y: All showboating, no real value, and skewed; Haut Koenigsbourg again]

Sending the right message

This of course being the right message. If you can read it when I Send it you. And, for your viewing pleasure:


[Anonymous but blurry and far from privacy-complete, this physical cloud exchange…; NY Grand Central]

Maverisk / Étoiles du Nord