Silicon Valley CEOs Called Psychopaths
September 28, 2020
“Why Silicon Valley CEOs Are Such Raging Psychopaths?” calls Silicon Valley CEOs psychopaths. That’s not new, but the idea that these skilled managers are “raging” is a novel twist. The article states:
According to the Hare Psychopathy Checklist — the universally accepted diagnostic tool used to assess this disorder — a psychopathic personality includes traits such as a grandiose sense of self-worth, a lack of remorse or guilt, poor behavioral controls, pathological lying and a lack of empathy. These attributes aren’t just present “but celebrated in Silicon Valley,” says Gavet, who once held the position of executive vice-president of global operations for Priceline Group, among other roles.
The Gavet is, as if you did not know, is the author of a new book called “Trampled by Unicorns: Big Tech’s Empathy Problem and How to Fix It.” Maëlle Gavet worked at Priceline and tallied 15-years in Unicornville. The article states:
Research by the FBI found that companies managed by psychopaths tend to have decreased productivity and low employee morale. In fact, Silicon Valley’s psychopathic traits “trickle down through entire organizations,” says Gavet. “In effect creating psychopathic companies.” This is enabled by an “infantilized culture” at many start-up companies, where employees become accustomed to working in “hyper-privileged bubbles where their every whim is catered to and every need anticipated,” she writes.
Amazon takes a punch as well:
She sees evidence of it happening already. Tim Bray, a celebrated engineer at Amazon and their onetime vice president of Web Services, quit his job in May because of the “toxicity running through the company culture,” as he wrote in a blog post. “I choose neither to serve nor drink that poison,” he wrote.
DarkCyber notes that the publicist who nudged the New York Post to write an article and book marketing use case deserves a Google mouse pad. DarkCyber wonders if Rupert Murdoch’s other New York are property will provide similar dead tree coverage of the book?
Will Mr. Murdoch purchase a copy, or will the wiley John Wiley provide the esteemed publisher with a complimentary copy? This has been a tough year for trees. First Bolton, then Rage, and now the psychopath thing. Trees, be aware: There is Kindle to save you someday, maybe?
Stephen E Arnold, September 28, 2020
Quite an Emoji for 2020
September 28, 2020
DarkCyber does not use too many emojis. Sure, we put them in our DarkCyber video news program to add visual punctuation. Most days, words are okay or K in the lingo of the thumbtypers. One of the research team called attention to “These New Emojis Perfectly Sum Up This Dumpster Fire of a Year.” The image comes from an outfit called Emojipedia. We think this is the Oxford Dictionary updated for Gen X and Gen Y mobile messaging addicts.
Nifty and appropriate. Keep in mind that in about 12 weeks we can look back and reflect on the pandemic, economic erosion, social unrest, and the asteroid which will have collided with earth on or about the first week of November.
Does dumpster fire capture the spirit of this memorable year? The emoji does.
Stephen E Arnold, September 28, 2020
US Public Records: When Is Mail Mail?
September 25, 2020
DarkCyber operates from rural Kentucky. We do watch what other fly over states do. “Citizens Not Entitled to Receive Public Records by Email, Judge Rules” explains that in Oklahoma:
Custer County District Judge Jill Weedon ruled this summer, though, that the law does not entitle citizens to receive public records by email, upholding the county sheriff’s refusal to send a police report to a professor.
Like the song from “Oklahoma” says:
It’s a scandal, it’s an outrage!
Any farmer will tell you it’s true.
The article points out:
“The court … agrees that it would be more efficient to produce the requested documents electronically,” she said, “however [the act] does not require that the sheriff do so. The remedy … is in the Legislature, not the courts.”
The solution? Put on a mask and pick up the records in person maybe? That email stuff is progressive for Kentucky and obviously Oklahoma too.
Stephen E Arnold, September 25, 2020
Information Manipulation: A Rich Tradition
September 21, 2020
“Scientists Use Big Data to Sway Elections and Predict Riots — Welcome to the 1960s” is an interesting write up. The essay begins with a quote from a high profile Xoogler, Anthony Levandowski. He’s the engineer who allegedly found information in his possession which was not supposed be in his possession. Things just happen, of course. The quote in the write up reminded me that Sillycon Valley in an interesting place.
The point of the write up is to romp through information manipulations related to elections in the US. One company — Simulmatics — applied systems and methods refined by other experts. I am not comfortable naming these people because it is 2020. Proper nouns can be tricky business.
The write up asserts:
The press called Simulmatics scientists the “What-If Men”, because their work — programming an IBM 704 — was based on endless what-if simulations. The IBM 704 was billed as the first mass-produced computer capable of doing complex mathematics. Today, this kind of work is much vaunted and lavishly funded. The 2018 Encyclopedia of Database Systems describes ‘what-if analysis’ as “a data-intensive simulation”. It refers to it as “a relatively recent discipline”. Not so.
The “not so” nails down the obvious. Information manipulation has been around for more years than Silicon Valley’s luminaries have been reshaping the world with digital services.
This quote warranted a check mark:
Although none of the researchers he had met “had malignant political designs on the American public”, Burdick warned, their very lack of interest in contemplating the possible consequences of their work stood as a terrible danger. Indeed, they might “radically reconstruct the American political system, build a new politics, and even modify revered and venerable American institutions — facts of which they are blissfully innocent”.
Yep, Sumulmatics. The other thought the write up evoked is, “When and to what does one pay attention?” Thumbtypers, what do you think?
Stephen E Arnold, September 21, 2020
The JEDI Questioned: Windows 10 Updates and Value
September 21, 2020
“Windows 10 Updates Are Pretty Much Useless” suggests that the JEDI outfit and inventor of two mobile phones held together with a hinge is hand waving. Who knew? The article asserts: “IT professionals claim Windows 10 updates rarely deliver value.” The sample on which these shocking conclusions are based contained 500 people. No, we don’t know how these folks were selected or if they were wearing Steve Jobs-style jeans and shirts.
We noted these items from the write up:
- Of the 500 respondents, 20 percent said they think Windows 10 updates deliver at least some value.
- 22 percent said the updates left them “indifferent.”
- In 2018, a similar survey revealed nearly 70% of IT personnel were dismissive of the bi-annual feature updates at the time.
Is Microsoft Windows winning over the hearts and minds of the JEDI minions? Not much progress it seems. How excited can one get when an operating system is a utility function. Fiddling with an operating system appears to put speed bumps on the information highway.
What about bum updates? Not even a bold online information services dares to enter that digital swamp.
Stephen E Arnold, September 21, 2020
Bowling Alone Furniture Fashion Trends
September 15, 2020
Two items plopped into the DarkCyber news watch system. The first is “This $25,000 Meditation Pod That Looks Like an Egg Is Designed [to] Be Installed in Offices and Airports. Here’s How It Works”. DarkCyber added the missing part of the infinitive, and we think we understand an isolation chamber. The write up, however, explains:
OpenSeed says it has a solution, in the form of 1,000-lb meditation pods that look like something that fell off a UFO. According to the company, they believe “that the human race will access higher states of awareness, not through external technological developments, but by taking the journey within.” That’s where Meditation Pods come in.
How much for one of these pods?
Just $25,000.
Color, audio, and seating options?
Check, check, and check.
The second item is “The Startup That Made Office Phone Booths for Google, Uber, and NASA Is Selling Modular Work Pods.” Surprise. These are squarish versions of the meditation egg. We learn:
The modular pods are like pop-up meeting rooms with extra ventilation, and Room is also offering a new analysis tool to give clients data on how office space is used, and how employees can safely return. Room’s proposal is just one idea popping up about how to work during a pandemic. Architect and designer Mohamed Radwan created a system of airtight office pods with air purifiers, and many other designers have created tiny backyard offices, or even ways to transform the home into an office, tastefully.
Interesting. Is this a trend?
DarkCyber remembers a wonderful night in a Japanese capsule hotel in 1999 or 2000. One of the team members said:
These look like three coffins bolted together.
Another noted:
Tiny houses designed by a D student in Architecture 101.
Either way, one can go from bowling alone to thinking or working alone. No information is available about injecting the scent of a bowling alley into the structures.
Stephen E Arnold, September 15, 2020
Nvidia Arm: An Artificial Intelligence Angle. Oh, Maybe a Monopoly Play Too?
September 14, 2020
As the claims, rumors, and outrage about Nvidia’s alleged acquisition of ARM swirl, DarkCyber noted an interesting story in ExtremeTech. “Nvidia Buys ARM for $40 Billion, Plans New AI Research Center” states:
According to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang,
We are joining arms with Arm to create the leading computing company for the age of AI. AI is the most powerful technology force of our time. Learning from data, AI supercomputers can write software no human can. Amazingly, AI software can perceive its environment, infer the best plan, and act intelligently. This new form of software will expand computing to every corner of the globe. Someday, trillions of computers running AI will create a new internet — the internet-of-things — thousands of times bigger than today’s internet-of-people. In the same letter, Jensen notes that Nvidia will build a “world-class” AI center in Cambridge, where a state-of-the-art ARM-based supercomputer will conduct research. [Emphasis added by DarkCyber]
Assume the deal goes through. Assume Nvidia creates a new AI research center. Are there some implications of this type of move? Who knows, but it is often helpful to identify some potential downstream consequences:
- Nvidia becomes the de facto supplier of silicon for supercomputers
- Amazon, already keen on Nvidia, ramps up its efforts to boost Sagemaker and allied technologies in the AWS environment
- Google and Microsoft have to do some thinking about their approach to next-generation silicon
- IBM may be inspired to do more than issue Intel style news releases about creating stable silicon using fabrication techniques outside their competencies at this time
- Chinese and China-allied semiconductor companies will have to shift into a higher gear and amp up their marketing
Will the deal, if it takes place, create the semiconductor equivalent of a Facebook monopoly?
That’s a possibility. Those US regulators are on the job, ever vigilant, just like those on Wall Street.
Stephen E Arnold, September 17, 2020
The Ideal Internet: Point of View Is Important
September 11, 2020
I read “Now the Impact of Regulation on the Internet Can Be Gauged.” Interesting but fanciful, the article lays out what the Internet should be. The main points appear to exist in a mental construct removed from political turmoil, the Rona, and financial challenges.
The write up explains that the Internet Society has crafted an Internet Impact Assessment Toolkit. I learned that the:
Internet Way of Networking (IWN): Defining the Critical Properties of the Internet, … explains how the Internet’s unique foundation is responsible for its strength and success. It also identifies the critical properties that must be protected to enable the Internet to reach its full potential….The Internet Impact Assessment Toolkit is a guide to help ensure regulation, technology trends and decisions don’t harm the infrastructure of the Internet.
Here are the key elements of the IWN:
- An accessible infrastructure with a common protocol – A ‘common language’ enabling global connectivity and unrestricted access to the Internet.
- An open architecture of interoperable and reusable building blocks – Open infrastructure with a set of standards enabling permission-free innovation.
- Decentralized management and a single distributed routing system – Distributed routing enabling local networks to grow, while maintaining worldwide connectivity.
- Common global identifiers – A single common identifier allowing computers and devices around the world to communicate with each other.
- A technology-neutral, general-purpose network – A simple and adaptable dynamic environment cultivating infinite opportunities for innovation.
Quite idealistic, and the statements do not address the reality of corrosive social networks and the emergence of corporate nation states. And there’s China. Oh, right, China.
Stephen E Arnold, September 11, 2020
Yo, Kafka: Check Out This Bureaucratic Play
September 9, 2020
“Beijing Floats a Plan to Protect Chinese Companies from American Cyber Bullying” is an interesting news report. Let’s assume that it is accurate with nothing lost in translation. The write up states:
In a speech Tuesday, Chinese State Councillor Wang Yi proposed a set of international rules intended to increase trust and refute the Trump administration’s strategy to limit the reach of Chinese-made technologies. Wang said the “Global Initiative on Data Security” is a recognition that data protection techniques are increasingly politicized at a moment when “individual countries” are “bullying” others, sometimes “hunting” foreign-based companies.
The political questions are outside the scope of DarkCyber. The semantic issues are getting into the research team’s area of interest.
What’s important is that this is a content object which may be weaponized. Who is bullying whom? Has security become the equivalent of accosting a person of improper behavior? What’s hunting mean?
Worth noting.
Stephen E Arnold, September 9, 2020
Names: A Problem beyond Math
September 7, 2020
I read “Why Mathematicians Should Stop Naming Things After Each Other.” The main point is that naming conventions in mathematics make it difficult to know to what something refers. There are numerous examples; for example:
A Calabi-Yau manifold is a compact, complex Kähler manifold with a trivial first Chern class.
A possible explanation? Consider:
The memory-intensive naming schemes in modern math may have the result of boxing out the laymen, but we must hope the priests of the academy are not doing it on purpose.
My view is that making names tough to parse adds some magic and special sauce to what might otherwise be a “so what?” insight. On the other hand, weird naming prevents meaningful connections to be perceived. What if a Hopf fibration is related to giant waves in the universe? Making the connection is tough with today’s naming policies.
My personal view is that many experts are nervous about the validity and value of their research or insights. Hiding behind language and naming conventions deflects criticism.
The same approach fuels the use of jargon and techno-babble. Search is not find. Search is discovery. Yeah, right.
Stephen E Arnold, September 7, 2020
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