I'd agree generally, but I wonder that in the end, it's actually irrelevant whether security is quantifiable. Sure, we could estimate the cost of a breach, estimating the risk of it happening, and even make a very credible job of it, but those numbers will often get the security dept people nowhere.

Why? Leaders think they are lucky and that they will get away with it.

If they were pessimistic scared pedantic types, they wouldn't be leaders.

And the technology is fragile. So it isn't really their fault. They have to succeed in the market whilst dependent on inherently fragile technology. Their only reasonable bet in that situation is to hope they stay lucky.

And by inherently fragile I mean, you buy it and it should just work, not this, hire an army of people to perform rituals and sacrifices to try to stop the company's crown jewels suddenly leaking out of the hole in the bottom of your coffee machine's waste basket.

Why the tech is so fundamentally fragile, despite many brilliant people creating it, is an exercise for the reader.

Sounds hyperbolic.

Now, where did I leave my car keys...

So I'm actually saving your post, for that day. Maybe print it out, put it in a frame, and hang it in a gallery.

Because on that day, that's the only way anyone is gonna see it.

That's interesting, and just to add my own two cents, I have been following a number of doctors and scientists over the last 10 or 20 years, the ones who have been willing to question things. And it seems that there are quite a few myths in the field of medicine and nutrition. One of the curious myths is that eating lots of fibre is good for you. For example, apparently there's only ever been one study on constipation and it found that increasing fibre increased constipation. At the same time, there's the work of Sabine Hazan who points to the microbiome as being really important for a lot of things and she's been raising the alarm around apparent widespread loss of bifidobacteria. Fibre alone doesn't increase it (just increases other bacteria instead, but apparently vitamin C can increase bifidobacteria). There's also something about a gut-brain axis. And then in the carnivore world, they find that if they just eliminate all fiber, then they digest pretty much everything that they're eating and absorb it, because it's just protein and fat and the body can use all those things bof building and energy, and just absorb them. Consequently, they end up pooping very little. And then there seems to be a thing where every individual is a bit different; some people can absorb certain nutrients very easily, whilst other people struggle to absorb them and have to eat more or be careful they're not also eating anti-nutrients. So the whole thing seems to be quite complicated and there seem to be a lot of unknowns. I guess at the end of the day it's being open-minded, but at the same time, experimenting with oneself and trusting how one feels.

One could read that statement to mean the Chinese via the UK want access.

My guess is a white pixel would in a blur scatter more light in the visual effect, therefore having to compute more of the adjacent pixels, whereas a black pixel has no light to scatter visually, therefore no computation is needed on the surrounding pixels.

Always remember your disclaimer, people!

Maybe they're good at specific tasks and the problems are when they are used for general tasks.

Besides, all code has bugs -- it's just that traditional code has logical errors whereas neural networks have irrational errors.

Sure, there is a lot of experimentation and hype at the moment, but that seems to be part of the process.

I was going to say that, but with punctuation.

A somewhat overlooked point: the 600 year old Ottoman Empire fell in WWI.

New powers decided the new borders.

Some years ago I used to believe that Britain was a sensible country. And I'd have agreed with your general sentiments.

But something about globalization -- and I just don't know enough to know what to call it or why it's happening -- perhaps it's something about establishing a new global multipolar world, or a global government which then creates the opportunity for one superpower to take more control over everyone else...

But since globalisation, we've started having all of this -- and the average level of things has been turning more authoritarian.

For example, the comment about doctors' advice being from real doctors etc -- maybe that was true 60 years ago, but everything is so under the influence of corporations now -- it just stopped being true quite some time ago.

This opinion is based on watching one or two health matters develop over the last 20 years, and at first the scientists were saying we just need to show this and that evidence, and then when they showed it they said, well we just need to get the authorities to see this as well, but then that just never happened, the authorities were obviously not serving science. (That's not meant to convince anyone, that's just to say my opinion isn't based on one blog I read last Tuesday).

So it's not run by the people, it's not for the people. I don't know what's running things, it's probably something to do with globalization.

Our old ideas about what's British are long gone. Although I do tend to think that there is a kind of cultural memory, the Magna Carta 800 years ago, etc. But post-modern thought has convinced everyone that there are no truths, so even the tradition of individual freedom is being watered down.

And with so much rapid migration these days, to and from and all over the world, and don't just mean people, but especially, money and corporate systems flowing, not to mention geopolitics, endless wars, all the "trans-national" influences and power games...

I think if anything the world is going to settle on a common ground, which if you look at China and Russia and emerging things in Africa, that common ground is going to be much more authoritarian for everybody, because that's the average held by billions of people, and as we let go of "British" identity and habits, we'll merge into the wider global authoritarian patterns, except now backed by high tech infrastructure.

Britain is just too small to matter in that respect. So yes, Digital ID is going to come. They've been pushing it for decades. And everyone who's pushing for it, has the big bucks. It's inevitable.

The question is, what will the world look like then?

I think it's very similar for me in the sense that it just works.

And there are of course many pros and cons. There are some very nicely thought out apps for Macs, however, mobileme was a disaster, etc.

The hardware just lasts a long time.

The inconsistent UI on Windows drives me nuts, and to the extent that macOS is inconsistent that also annoys me, but it's much better overall.

The pros and cons are going to be a very long list.

But I've using Macs for quite a long time, and once Mac OS X came along in 2001, well, everything works and keeps working.

The hardware and software doesn't develop problems over time.

You can turn off almost all the iCloud stuff if you want.

And we have launchd (LOL).

And I'm sure people who know Windows or Linux can run it well, or have more specific needs.

But if you're married to macOS, it's not a bad thing generally.

Yes but SaaS marketed straight to staff as free has completely broken admins control. Sadly.

Sounds like, "move fast, break things, be fragile."

I guess there is just a huge amount of utility in doing this which everyone is willing to go with, and security concerns are just accepted and to some extent ignored, because why try to set up a system that is more careful and assured, when the problems might not show up for years.

And just to be clear, I'm commenting on incentives and the relatively small number of people in positions of authority at a corporation or a client who would be in a position to make a decision to keep this quiet. I'm not talking about the average ethical person who just wants to do the right thing -- they may want to, but they'll be under pressure by the perverse incentive structure. And it's speculative whether there has been any actual breach or any wider impacts. It's just a scenario.