The returns to scale for being smart, young, skilled, and high-energy have gone up tremendously, and that has profound implications for society. The smart are getting richer.
What’s missing is the traditionally fat middle. We’ve gone from a normally distributed set of outcomes, to a power-law distribution. The median is a small fraction of the mean.
Source: The returns to entrepreneurship
Notice and consent is an absurd legal fiction. … But as terrible as notice-and-consent is, at least it pretends that people should have some say in the destiny of the data that evanescences off of their lives as they move through time, space, and information.
The next generation of networked devices are literally incapable of participating in that fiction.
The best way to secure data is never to collect it in the first place. Data that is collected is likely to leak. Data that is collected and retained is certain to leak. A house that can be controlled by voice and gesture is a house with a camera and a microphone covering every inch of its floorplan.
Source: Locus Online Perspectives » Cory Doctorow:The Privacy Wars Are About to Get A Whole Lot Worse
It takes a brilliance to change the world. It takes something else entirely to wait patiently for people to notice. “Zen-like patience” isn’t a typical trait associated with entrepreneurs. But it’s often required, especially for the most transformative products.
Source: When You Change the World and No One Notices — Collaborative Fund
FBI Director James Comey presented the morning government keynote address to cyber security experts at the Symantec Government Symposium in Washington, D.C. on August 30, 2016
Here’s why I think it requires an adult conversation. Our nation’s founders struck a bargain 240 ago. In our great country, we have a reasonable expectation of privacy in all of our private spaces—in our houses, in our cars, in our safe deposit boxes, in our devices. That is a very important part of being an American. The government cannot invade our private spaces without good reason—good reason that is reviewable in court.
But it also means that with good reason, the people of the United States, through judges and law enforcement, can invade our private spaces. That is the bargain that has been at the heart of ordered liberty in this country since its founding.
We need a conversation that starts from a place where we recognize that there are no evil people in this conversation. We share the same values. We all care deeply about the same things—privacy on the one hand, security and safety on the other. We may weigh them differently. I may see the world more darkly than somebody who lives in sunny Silicon Valley. I may over-weight the dark side. But we have the same values. That should allow us to have a thoughtful conversation without demonizing anybody or trying to bumper-sticker anybody. I hope you will participate in that conversation, and that we can have it next year when we’re not engaged, as you may have heard, in an election.
Source: Inside the FBI: Director Comey Addresses Cyber Security Experts — FBI
Using both conventional media and covert channels, the Kremlin relies on disinformation to create doubt, fear and discord in Europe and the United States.
Moscow’s targeting of the West with disinformation dates to a Cold War program the Soviets called “active measures.” … the ideological component has evaporated, but the goal of weakening adversaries remains.
Source: A Powerful Russian Weapon: The Spread of False Stories – The New York Times