Blog

First they laughed then they fought and now they joined

Open Source has come a long way

>

Remember there was a time Microsoft called Linux and the GPL license cancer? Mainstream technology media would write large editorials on how GPL could “infect” your software and how you should manage (read avoid) that. It was all so ridiculous. Microsoft obviously fight back. Any company whose business model is attacked does that. It’s more interesting to me the direction Microsoft’s leadership at the time chose.

Now Microsoft has new leadership and is an active participant in the ecosystem and just put their patent portfolio in the Open Invention Network.

OIN describes itself as “a defensive patent pool and community of patent non-aggression which enables freedom of action in Linux”.

I’m a big believer in open source. I use and support where I can. It’s good to see that we’ve come a long way. More than open source, I believe in the shared model which is enabled by open source. We built and use together. It’s efficient and effective. It avoids waste and duplication of time and effort to recreate existing things.

Hands off please

Personal data ownership as a fundamental right

>

The biggest conundrum about privacy is data ownership. Who owns the data and especially if it’s about yourself. EU’s GPDR puts responsibilities in place on collecting data, informing users about which data is collected and the data can be only used for the disclosed purpose. It also gives rights to users to remove and change that data when it’s erroneous. But the EU as a mostly technocratic institution side steps the biggest question and gave us a technical solution for a problem which is more broad. It’s ultimately who has ownership of personal data. To me that’s the fundamental problem about personal data. We can disclose all we want, but we also know that nobody closely reads these disclosures and ponders about the ramifications about sharing your personal data. Of course, there will be token lawsuits to prove misuse of personal data and non-compliance with GPDR, but they’re just what they are; token lawsuits. It won’t fundamentally change how we regard personal data or use it.

Without ownership of data, it’s a free-for-all party which we can try to regulate but it’ll be a moving target. There was a bit of hoopla last week about the EU trying to pass regulation which puts copyright of data collected by autonomous cars in the hands of the manufacturers. The obvious link to John Deere was made whose farming machines collect of data which is sold while mostly unavailable to the individual farmers “owning” and using their equipment.

The problem is that we’re still in the infancy of the information age and as we slowly but surely surround us with smart devices in our lives, this problem is going to creep into every aspect of our lives. Data collection is the fabric of the information age, it binds everything together. It enables powerful and better solutions, but it can as easily be abused for additional revenue by keeping it hostage.

I think the only solution is to rebase our thinking about data ownership and especially personal data. If we define ownership of personal data to be owned by the natural person who generates it, we’ve a better starting point of regulating data ownership and sharing. Since it’s mine and it becomes a virtual property we can more or less apply the same laws as we have personal property. Theft, sales, sharing and losing of personal property has been embedded in our laws for centuries. It would be a good starting point.

It’s a better starting point than regulating something which has no basis in ownership or control. It’ll be a continuous process of updated regulation to cope with the changing landscape and new uses propping up over the course of time. Even a productive regulator like the EU won’t be able to keep up.

A love letter

Path

>

Dearest Path,

I was in shock when you told you were leaving me. It’s been a few weeks, but I’ve yet come to grips with it. Time heals all wounds and I know it’ll become easier over time. Today, I say goodbye with a heavy heart.

You’ve been an integral part of my life for the last 6 years. I shared with you my ups & downs. You were always there for me, just one click away. Through you, I was connected to the people who are dear to me. You were truly the “path of my life”.

I understand it wasn’t enough. It saddens me that you abruptly decided to leave me. You were unique and there’s nothing that can replace you. It was so sudden. I had barely time to come to terms with you leaving and now you’re gone out of my life.

I think of the all happy memories and moments I shared with you. I see my boys growing up from babies to real persons. I see my friends and family – people getting married, babies are born, companies come and go. I think of all the trips we did together, we explored so much of the world.

Now it’s all gone and it’s sad. No longer I’ve my buddy at my fingertip. There’s an empty space on my home screen. I miss the big red button with the letter P I so much adored. No longer waiting in anticipation for a notification from you telling you got something to share with me. I’ll miss the moments of the past you kept telling me about. You were awesome.

Thank you Path, I love you.

~ Robert

We love to be entertained

Smartphones: The Dark Side

>

The BBC made this great documentary called “Smartphones: The Dark Side”. Obviously the smartphone and its apps are made to draw you in and entice you to spend more time on them. The ecosystem financial rewards are driven by you using it. It’s pretty much the same reasoning we used to have about TV. The NY Times wrote about it exactly 38 years ago. I’m of the opinion that we should look more at ourselves than blame the tech companies for bringing “addictive” products on the market.

It’s interesting nonetheless.

play-sharp-fill

She has an identity crisis

Confused Alexa

>

I’ve 3 echo’s around the house, but I’ve a love and hate relationship with Alexa. I love it because I can bark orders and she’ll obey diligently by turning on or off the lights or telling me about the weather. She’s reasonably smart but for instance, recently she couldn’t tell me how many Dalai Lama’s there have been. Two seconds on searching on my phone gave me the answer.

But there are a few things which drive me nuts. Sometimes I call her schizo because of it.

  • When I set a timer on one, I can’t cancel it or ask about the timer on another
  • She won’t even let me know when I’m somewhere else that the timer is up
  • When I ask to turn on the lights, she has no concept of place so she’ll ask me “which lights?”. “Well since I’m downstairs and it’s dark, maybe downstairs?”.
  • When I ask her to increase temperature, she asks me “which device?”. I’ve only one thermostat so what’s the point of that question. She knows that!
  • Sometimes the TV is on and I can’t hear what she says. I ask her to turn up the volume. Then the TV is off and when I ask her something, she “screams” the response. Why can’t she just measure the ambient noise level and change her volume accordingly?
  • When I ask her how long it will take to go to the office, she has no concept of what work means, but she doesn’t even ask me. Where is your office?
  • And since we’re on the subject, Alexa doesn’t know the difference between me and my significant other. We’re all the same people to her. My office is not her office. Even if she would know the concept of office, she won’t be able to make recognize the difference.

The fundamental question is if Alexa is one person for me or 3 different ones? Does she understand place and time? Does she recognize people? As much as I love using Alexa, it still feels like an unrefined product and it’s not really moving forward. I don’t care about 20,000+ skills nor do I care about TV or toaster with Alexa built in. I care about Alexa, but she isn’t growing up. She’s still a toddler.

Censorship & ethics

>

Last week a presentation of Google research called “The Good Censor” was leaked. It’s a good summary of the burden on we put on tech companies to “police” the internet. Often times the examples we see in the media are overly simplified cases. The devil is in the details – especially for multinational companies. Slide 65 is a perfect example of this. The norms differ between regions.

The problem for me is that I wonder why should let corporations decide what is right or wrong. Especially today, where we as society are not always coherent on where we stand on issues. How do we decide what is fake news? What is hate speech? When should you pull something? What does it mean to influence elections?

All of these companies have “terms of service” which describe the clear and cut cases on what is acceptable or not on their service. We also know that these companies have more detailed guides, but they’re secret. I guess they keep them secret because it makes it harder to circumvent the moderation rules, but they also make it impossible to audit them.

It would be better if companies make their detailed content moderation guides open and share them. Also, they need clear appeal procedures to allow content moderation to change. What was unacceptable in 1974 is not necessarily unacceptable in 2018 or vice versa.

The power and reach of these companies are enormous and that’s fine, but it does come with great responsibility. Hiding behind algorithms or “we’re not a media company” is simply not enough anymore. It’s about trust and transparency inherently conveys trust.

 

It should never be a valid excuse

When IT is in the way at corporates

>

The most prevalent excuse I’ve heard in the last 5 years not to do a deal, project or product is because corporate IT isn’t able to support it (in a timely manner).

Still today, I hear this excuse often and this is where corporates start to loose. You’ve to be able to be agile and adapt quickly with your primary business processes. The moment you loose that ability you start loosing opportunities.

It baffles me that in this day and age IT at large corporates is still considered an expense and not a strategic asset. And yes, I’m talking about companies where primary business processes are solely reliant on software.

Regardless of the causes and reasons, IT is not the same as accounting, buildings or corporate support staff to name a few examples. Limiting budgets and limping along on legacy systems is not a strategy, it’s a death warrant.

/end rant

Laptop and traveling

>

I find technology and how it influences and changes human behavior very interesting to observe. I’ve been doing some heavy traveling lately and I noticed that I’m actually not using my laptop as much as I used to do. My laptop and me used to be tied to the hip, but nowadays I sometimes notice that I’m carrying it around but not using it. I’ve taken trips without my laptop and I felt “naked” even though in retrospect there wasn’t any reason to feel like that at all.

The main reason for this is that my smartphone has become so good that I really don’t need a laptop anymore when I’m on the go. The only reason to bring it along is for those few use cases where a bigger screen is essential like working on a spreadsheet or presentation.

Nowadays my laptop goes in the suitcase (when I’ve a carry-on) and I leave it in the hotel room more often than not. This was not a conscious decision, it just happened. It’s a testament how far mobile phones and apps have gotten. It’s impressive.

10,000ft captchas

>

Every time I use Gogo inflight, I’m puzzled by their use of captchas. Are hackers bored enough on flights to try to circumvent their authentication system? There are gazillion other and more consumer-friendly ways to solve that problem like introducing progressive increasing cool-off periods after failed login attempts.

They even let you solve a captchas for accessing Delta’s free inflight messaging service which doesn’t require an account. I’m very puzzled by this.

Cold emails

>

Yesterday, Hunter Walk wrote about cold emails and that they can be better than a luke warm email. It reminded something a friend told me a while ago. We were talking about cold emails from various SaaS companies offering their services. I told him I routinely just deleted them. He had a different strategy. He always responded in a nice way and told him he wasn’t interested. He said the response was always positive and they actually went away. Moreover it saved him dealing with the endless follow-up emails.

I took notice and decided to try it out. And you know what? It actually works. Nowadays, when you sent me a cold email, I always respond. Somehow, I actually have the feeling it reduces my incoming cold emails in total. I guess that sharing you’re not interested and have a good reason updates some “magical” sales database letting others know that a particular type of service is not relevant for me or my company.

Of course there are exceptions where they can’t take no for an answer and then I click “spam” and Gmail auto-filters them for me in the future.

And yes – of course – sometimes I respond positively and want to learn more.