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[stalemateserial]

46

Ruth was slower to get out of bed than usual. Judith thought it preferable, since it'd taken a very long time for her to shake off whatever had gotten into her yesterday. On some level, she understood that she'd only done what she had wanted to for a long time; but on the other hand, it was uncharacteristic of her. These were extraordinary circumstances, after all, and the rush of taking charge had, if only for a moment, cleared Judith's mind of every worry.

Judith doesn't have to wait too long before her shipmate drifts into view, picking a ration from the larder and taking her seat on the other side of the table. Ruth's normally quick to start a conversation, but she busies herself with opening her food and having a few mouthfuls. Maybe Ruth wants to see if she'll take charge again, but Judith can tell from looking at her that she was awake for a while before she got out of bed. There must have been something that kept her there, and Judith doesn't want to get a new subject on her mind.

After a few more swallows, Ruth gets up for a drink. With her back to the table, she finally breaks the silence. "I had a wonderful dream last night?"

"You did? I'd love to hear about it."

"Well, first, I'd like to hear your move for today."

"I hadn't really been thinking about it."

Ruth's taken her spot back at the table by this point. She's so occupied with her response, she misses getting her foot into its harness to help her stay in place. "Part of the the reason we agreed to the game was so that we could stay focused on something. I guess maybe there's been something else on your mind?"

"Some things are more important than games, after all. But have your breakfast while I think of the move."

"Sure thing."

Judith retrieves the move history, realizing that she'd forgotten to add the two that were made last night. She jots them down, tapping the pen against the paper while she concentrates on openings. But maybe she needs an opening of another kind. Given the episode yesterday, maybe she can't wait much longer for their second wager to resolve one way or the other. "Pawn to B4"

Ruth misses her foothold again, her head whipping in Judith's direction. "You're sure?"

"I am. Now tell me about the dream."

Ruth takes a moment, settles herself into the restraints so she can better feign the experience of sitting at a table. "I had a dream that we were back down there, and we'd gotten an apartment together. It was hard to tell where it was, but it was raining. I never really had a strong opinion of it one way or the other, but I miss the sound of rain. It's like a reminder that time is passing, water is going through the cycle, crops are being nourished, that sort of thing. Up here… well, it's like a stasis, really."

"You're rambling."

"I am, sorry. The point is that we were living together, and we didn't have to worry about all this, and we could make real food, and I'm pretty sure we had a cat, or maybe a dog, and it was wonderful. It was wonderful."

The story has brought a smile to Judith's face and what could be tears to the corners of her eyes. Ruth doesn't embarrass her by pointing it out. Judith asks "were we living in America or Britain?"

"I don't know, although the rain in it might be a point for your side of the pond."

"I'm not sure I'd want to live there again."

"But it's your home?"

"No, it's where I was born. It's where I grew up. The government has made it very clear that Britain is no home for people like me."

"But that law, in 1967, I heard about-"

"That law? Said they could keep it behind closed doors. It got worse for the men that thought it meant they didn't have to hide. Just think what they would have done to Turing if he hadn't jumped ship to IBM."

"What they'd have done?"

"There's a drug they'd have made him take that would have made it a lot harder, if not impossible, to have sex. I suppose to them, if you can't treat the disease, you chop off whatever's incubating it. Now, I'm not familiar with the particulars of your country, but one that would make a spectacle of that is none I want to stay in."

"You'd leave your country to be with me?"

"I'd leave my country to be safe with the one I loved. And as it stands, honey…"

"I'm ready to make my move."

"Are you?"

"Pawn takes pawn at B4."

Judith doesn't respond, she just takes a breath. They're looking at each other with an expectation they'd learn to hide so well, the sort that could be denied, covered up, recontextualized. But there's no uncertainty here, no possible other way it could be construed. Ruth moves out of her harness, floats up past the height of the table, reaches out for Judith's face, her head moving closer while her legs buoy further up. Their mouths linger at each other's margins for a moment, and then they meet.

Neither is new to the act itself, but this is nothing like those times. Down there was pining, sneaked glances and hand signals attached to eyes that scanned the hallways for privacy. Down there, it was like a game, being young and feeling invincible. Up here, there's feelings and sentiments that have calcified into something that must be punched through, definitively. No need for restraint, no fear of being found out. In a way, it was exactly what they had asked for.

Over and over again they arrived at what could have been a resolution, a satisfying denouement that would allow them to part, but they kept finding each other again. This is not the gentle feeling of relief, it is the first bite into a meal they've waited days for. It is a banquet they'll enjoy for every course, even if the beds weren't made to hold two people. Even if it's the last time they'll ever get to. Even if it was only because of where they are. For tonight, it's enough.

[thecloudstrap]

IBM DOORS DXL Skip List

DOORS DXL SKIP LIST is a built-in data structure in IBM Rational DOORS that allows you to store a collection of values in a specific order. It is called a "skip list" because it uses a skip-list algorithm to provide efficient search and insertion operations, even for very large lists.

https://thecloudstrap.com/doors-dxl-skip-list/

[mgtechsoft]

7 Benefits of Application Lifecycle Management tools

Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) tools in the process of completely managing the lifecycle of a software application intended to help in business management. ALM solutions are all-in-one tools that offer end-to-end application development covering the entire history of a product or software from idea to planning, requirements analysis and elicitation, design, development, testing, retirement and all other product-related processes in between.  

Top 7 benefits of Application Lifecycle Management

1. Helps businesses to prepare and organize

ALM Solutions enable stakeholders and team to start a project with an organized plan and assessment as per the requirements. ALM Software helps in managing complex projects through resource planning. There are specific tools available for different requirements which can be for traditional waterfall projects, or agile projects or both.

2. Improves employee satisfaction, efficiency and utilization

ALM solutions bring in numerous opportunities to boost the productivity of all stakeholders and teams involved in a project. ALM Solutions enables teams to follow the best practices and proven methodologies that increase productivity. A lot of time and efforts are saved as automation eliminate repetitive tasks. ALM tools also improve collaboration among teams that eliminated human error and delivery delays.

3. Enables real-time decision making

The best Application Lifecycle Management enables teams to make more informed decisions about their applications as they mature. ALM attributes like real-time planning and version control gives stakeholders an edge, they can map the future of an application quickly and decisively so that organisations can plan effectively whether they deploy traditional waterfalls or agile development projects. ALM is particularly important for informed decision-making when organisations implement interdependent projects that require complex oversight.

4. Improves speed and agility of development

In today’s evolving marketplace, keeping ahead of the crowd is a constant battle for companies. It is particularly true when it comes to software development and application creation. ALM platform gives engineering teams the ability to produce software at the speed and agility required to stay competitive. This also offers proprietary source code management to match software development priorities with organisational objectives.

5. Improves performance and compliance

ALM platform produces a high-quality software application for your development team. It promotes quality effectively through the management of source code and the collaborative effort. If production teams and reviewers are out of the knowledge loop, this can place a toll on the development process and impact the final product quality. Communication during the governance stage, which encompasses the strategy and establishes phases in software development and information technology (DevOps) operations, is particularly important.

Governance is also known as the description and design stage of requirements, in which the specifications for solutions are specified. These requirements generally cover everything from requirements relating to technology platforms to compliance regulations. Since this phase is where applications are designed based on such requirements, providing optimum solutions for customers is essential to get this phase right.

6. Help enterprises plan more efficiently

Using ALM software teams may launch projects using existing methodologies and accurate estimates. Through resource planning, it provides support in project management. Depending on the criteria, particular techniques are available, whether they are typical waterfall projects (where projects are built through a linear approach) or agile development projects (where projects are built in an iterative process).

7. Enables team collaboration

It is essential for companies, particularly those in multiple locations to have a simple and strong network and management for collaboration between different teams. ALM software ensures that everybody involved in the development process has a full and real-time track of the project’s strategies, changes, requirements and status. ALM Software helps the whole team to define what type of skill sets would be perfect for a particular process, and how to prioritize goals.

Conclusion

ALM process is important for delivering on time and within budget results. MicroGenesis is a leading solutions provider of holistic Application Lifecycle Management with over 20+ years of experience in handling various ALM applications. We are partnered with leading ALM based OEM’s to deliver the best ALM solutions to our customers. Our team with its expertise and knowledge has served multiple clients across various geographies and culture and has helped them scale-up in the market.

[aianalytics]

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE FUTURE OF ENGINEERING

At the time of Artificial Intelligence taking over the world rapidly, does engineering have any future?

Back then engineering was all about blueprints, sketches, and physical models. But today it is intensively about software tools and computer designs. The demand for artificial intelligence and digital technology has been gaining momentum. Advancements in the AI sector are transforming smart systems and supervised machine learning to a great extent.

Artificial intelligence systems will ease the laborious tasks that engineers do such as finding relevant content, fixing errors, and determining solutions. Smart systems can help finish their job quickly. AI and digital tech can also assist the system engineer in creating sophisticated designs along with incorporating sensor-based design procedures and delivering the designs to intelligent manufacturing facilities.

But AI may not approach the project the way a human designer would. Sometimes this can go off the grid too. Because today’s machines are usually made of expert systems that have software-enabled decision-making. Since the engine of this software is based on if-then rules, it is acquired through experience.

When new knowledge is registered in the library, the software uses if-then rules to expand new facts or ifs and comes out suggesting various solutions or then what occurs.

This process serves as the basis of AI and machine learning. As people are connected with the help of the internet, this opens the doors for smart machines to bring in new services and opportunities.

The largest fraction of smart systems is currently made of expert systems and this will be soon taken over by autonomous robots through technology transformation by 2024. There are critics as well as supporters for this trend. Since the number of robotic appliances continues to increase automatically, the cost of the sensors will decrease this becomes the simple reason for artificial intelligence robots to multiply within no time.

The robotic sensors market is estimated to undergo a CAGR of nearly 8% over the forecast period of (2021-2026). Currently, most of the industries like automotive, transportation, industrial manufacturing, logistics, and defense have started to adopt autonomous robotics and digital technology as their main mode of the production process.

As a result, due to this rapid growth of smart technologies with its roots, interconnected artificial intelligence can lead to uncertainty. Though computers can take intelligently-based action, they are not capable of replicating the cognition processes of the human brain. Algorithms of artificial intelligence tech can only deal with known data and cannot predict and formulate rational decisions during uncertain situations.

New technologies using the most advanced AI and machine learning have been coming up due to their widespread connectivity and inexpensive sensors. These technologies are primitive and still are not capable of mimicking the human brain.

It becomes clear that AI algorithms relate facts to solutions that are dependent on experiential learning without any acknowledgment of physics. AI has evolved from scientific advancement to an engineering tool. Latest innovations in digital tech require engineers from various domains to learn and integrate AI tools into their engineering designs.

Many open-source tools such as Microsoft’s DMLT, Google’s TensorFlow, and Amazon’s DSSTNE possess software libraries that empower machine learning. The DeepVariant open AI software of Google can depict a person’s genome from sequencing data more accurately than other methods are helping engineers to seek help from.

Personal productivity assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Windows Cortana use natural language processing to make decisions. IBM Watson has been trained by Oncologists to help them treat and diagnose lung cancer. Tesla is getting closer to self-driving autonomous vehicles. Zebra Medical Systems, an Israeli company is developing tools for radiology having greater than human accuracy. All this is possible with the help of different types of engineers who are responsible for training smart systems.

At this point in time, the role of a human engineer may be that of a director shortly rather than producing and manufacturing the products. Though humans may not be executing the task, they are definitely the ones who are choosing the direction the machine should work. Once the machine knows how to design things, the system of engineering will change but engineers will still be highly skilled and relevant.

The uncertain future of technologies demands resilient and versatile engineers who can design robust technologies using artificial intelligence with different skill sets, including teaching AI systems how to innovate and become part of future human-AI organizations.

[thecloudstrap]

DOORS DXL Skip List Advanced

What is DXL Skip List? IBM Rational DOORS is a requirements management tool that allows you to capture, trace, analyse and manage requirements for complex systems. DOORS eXtension Language (DXL) is a programming language used in DOORS to automate tasks and extend the functionality of the tool. DOORS DXL SKIP LIST is a built-in data structure in IBM Rational DOORS that allows you to store a…

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[micahrodney]

Thread; Chapter 1 - Lost Boy

The following was a commissioned piece for MatthewCaveatZealot. Awakening with a start, Neil managed to bash his head on the ceiling of his dorm room. He collapsed back into his loft bed, running his hands across his temple.  He had always known this was a distinct possibility with his sleeping arrangement; there was barely three feet of clearance between his mattress and the unsettling popcorn-style stucco which always left flakes in his bedding. The only damage appeared to be a mild contusion, and a slightly hurt ego. The boy glanced at the alarm clock, which was inelegantly tucked into a corner of the frame, cord precariously taut.

8:35 AM

“Shit!” Neil cursed.

In his panic, he practically hurled himself over the rail of his loft. Fortunately, his faded blue bean bag chair – presently covered by a week's worth of dirty laundry – broke his fall. Fishing in the bureau just beneath his bed, he managed to dig out a clean pair of jeans and a grey tee.

As he reached for his bookbag, he noticed he'd left his computer on. The dull white of a Lotus document was burning into the monitor. Upon reading the salutation of “Dear Erica” the previous night's phone call came rushing back to him; three years discarded in two minutes.  He had trouble saying what he needed to say in that call. Truthfully, the shock of it had rendered him phased out of reality. There was a hollowness that consumed him upon hearing those words, an emptiness that had to be embraced lest it consume him.  

He couldn't even bring himself to cry.  Tears would only validate the nightmare.  That had to be it:  a nightmare.  One that he would wake up from in a day or two when she called him back and apologized.  When she remembered how happy they had been together and realized what she was giving up. After a few hours, he had passed from denial to bargaining. Every possible scenario played through in his head simultaneously, from magnanimous acceptance of her apology to him banging at her door and pleading to take him back.  That was when the rational approach of writing her a letter presented itself.  

Without bothering to save the document, he flipped the switch. The dull fizzling sound was always a strange comfort.  To Neil, it represented the end of a day.  Maybe that's how he should view Erica: just another chapter in his life that he would move past.  And maybe, like the document itself, there really was nothing worth saving there anyway.  

--- 

Voxton was once a whistle-stop town just outside of the state capitol.  It was the home of an active farm community, and the state's number one exporter of unemployed drunks looking for better opportunity in “the big city”.  Then somebody decided to build a college there in the wake of the 1973 stock market crash, presumably with hopes of turning the state's fortune around.  

McCain University – presumably named for its founder, though Neil had never bothered to find out – had grown to become something of a Mecca for the technically inclined. If you wanted to break into engineering or computer science, you went to McCain, assuming your parents weren't wealthy or connected enough to ship you off to MIT.  

Thanks to a grant from the Governor, the school had an entire campus building dedicated to the most powerful machines on the market. Perhaps this was why Neil insisted upon using a personal computer from the 80s, despite the fact that his father had offered many times to buy him something newer.  

The IBM 386 was more than a little dated, but the chunky machine could do the important things in his life.  Sure his classes had him learning on top-of-the-line Power Macintosh hardware, but it had been the computer he grew up with.  Its impressive 32 MB memory was stuffed with the text-adventure games of INFOCOM.  While his first love would always be Zork, it was the murder-mystery Moonmist that made him want to become a writer.

These dual interests had conflicted before, and while Neil's father was supportive he was also wary.  Writing, after all, was a hard market to break into.  But computer technology was in high demand and only rising.  When he had embarrassingly tried to connect with his son by saying maybe he could learn to make “some of those Nintendo games”, Neil had politely laughed and agreed to consider it.  The boy's consideration didn't take long.  As a lawyer, his dad always was the better negotiator.  Perhaps it was overkill to mention that it is what his mother would have wanted.

Neil opened the door to his usual morning haunt, a student-run coffee shop called “The Junction”.  The place was barely bigger than his dorm, but they also had the best muffins in Voxton.  He stumbled up to the register and barely sputtered out his order before his bookbag slipped off of his shoulder, sending his notebooks scattering.  

“Damn,” Neil cursed.  “Sorry, Angie.  A blueberry muffin and a coffee to go please!”

“Running late again, Neil?” The senior asked, tying her long ebony hair back with a scrunchy.

“I know, they're lucky to have me as a student,” Neil mumbled bitterly, shoving the papers haphazardly back into his bag.  

“Four bucks. Your dad's Amex, I trust?”  Angie replied, extending her hand.  

“Cash today.  I forgot to grab my wallet, but luckily there was a five in my jeans,” Neil chuckled benignly, handing her the bill.  

“Moving up in the world.”

“Tell me about it.”  

“Lemme grab your breakfast, champ,” Angie smirked.  

Neil took his change and leaned back against the bar.  The place wasn't really all that bad.  Sure two people couldn't walk side-by-side behind the bar, but the little brick shack was alright. He had particularly liked the ironic name.  Before the University reclaimed land for a parking lot the place had been a rail depot. The result were tracks that didn't lead anywhere just behind the restaurant and for few miles north and south respectively.  

“And in offbeat news today,” droned a local news anchor on the 16 inch TV in the corner of the bar. “IBM supercomputer 'Deep Blue' went six games against chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov yesterday. Although Kasparov won the match with four games to Deep Blue's two, this is the first time a computer has ever defeated a world champion under tournament regulations. Truly this is a sign of things to come. Just how more advanced can these computers get?”  

“Neil!” Angie called, snapping her fingers in front of his face.  “Muffin, coffee, late for Computer Theory 221, remember?”  

“Right, sorry!” Neil sputtered, grabbing his food and bolting out the door.  

---

“Mr. Brown. How nice of you to grace us with your presence.”

Professor Barker was generally a nice guy, but Neil had tried his patience one too many times.  Tardiness was just one of Neil's offenses against the would-be silicon valley elite.  In short, Barker didn't like his attitude.  He didn't like that Neil would sit through his classes, mind clearly on other things. But what he hated worse was the fact that Neil continued to ace every assignment in spite of his lackluster classroom performance.  It wasn't Neil's fault that he felt he got very little out of the lecture hall experience, preferring instead to study on his own time.  

“Sorry, sir,” Neil apologized half-heartedly.  “Rough night.”  

“Wait until you become an adult, then you'll learn what a real rough night is,” Barker scolded.  

The aging technician looked like a slightly sunkissed Steve Wozniak.  He had the beard and the plaid collar shirts, but his face was a bit more rugged.  Barker had learned computers while serving in the Army during the 70s.  The synthesis was a computer nerd who looked like he used to beat kids up for their lunch money.  

“Now that Mr. Brown has found his seat,” Barker sighed.  “Let's resume. Where were we now?  Ah, yes! The potential of virtual reality.  Now, this ain't your 'Virtual Boy', we're talking about actual virtual reality.”

Barker was nothing if not fond of the sound of his own voice.  The lecture was more or less him pontificating about the achievements that had been accomplished with the budding technology and his wild-eyed fantasies of future use.  Of particular note, Barker's assertion that we could one day use virtual reality to explore the entire planet's history in first-person seemed especially romantic.  

“Imagine, if you would, you put on a visor and are instantly transported to the wild west.  With a few mouse clicks, you are in the Roman Empire, or watching the building of the Great Pyramid of Giza.”

A loud digitized beep came from the clock just over the door. It was already 11 AM.

“Ah, well, I seem to have rambled on right to the end of class,” Barker chuckled. “Alright, that's a good stopping point anyway.  I'll let you head out.  Mr. Brown, a word.”

The students began to pack up and make their way towards the door, as Neil marched down the steps of the lecture hall, prepared for his weekly chew-out session.  The beard of the middle-aged educator seemed to twitch in anticipation and annoyance.  

“Neil, do you want to be in this class?” Barker asked bluntly.  

“Yes sir,” Neil stoically replied.

“You know the class starts at 8:30 AM every Monday and Wednesday, right?”

“Yep.”

“The winter semester has only just started and in the six classes we've had together you have been on time to one of them.”

“That's correct, sir.”

Barker sighed and waved his hands about in front of him as if he was grasping for something to strike him with.  

“I don't know what you expect from me,” Barker steadied his hands and pointed a finger in Neil's face. “But I know I expect from you. I can't have you barging in after the class starts.  If I have to lock that door, I'll do it.  Your work is good, but if you want to stay in my class I expect you to show up on time.”  

“I understand sir.”

“Well, I hope so,” Barker grumbled. “I'm not kidding about that lock either.”

---

Monday was, by design, Neil's easiest day.  He only had the one class, and he used the remainder of the day to run errands.  So as soon as Barker let him out, his first stop was to the Store24 to pick up some groceries.  Considering his food storage options in his dorm was a mini-fridge and the top shelf of his closet, he only wound up with two bags and a twelve-pack of the store-brand cola.  

He dropped off the bare essentials of sustenance and took a brief moment to tidy his room.  There wasn't much cause to impress anyone, but he felt compelled to use the time. It felt better to accomplish something – anything – rather than waiting around for the day to end.  

The next two hours were spent overseeing a load of laundry in the dormitory laundromat. It was pretty depressing, featuring bare stone walls and illuminated by a single dirt-specked window. with a line of six washers and four driers on opposite sides of the room from each other.  There was a table in the middle, slightly off-set from the window in a way that mildly infuriated Neil. There were technically chairs, but two metal folding chairs took a certain wear-and-tear over the decades and had never been replaced.

Neil found himself sitting on the edge of the table, staring out that window and reflecting on the bizarre dream that had woken him with such a start.  The events of the day had driven out most of the fantastic experience from his mind, but bits and pieces still lingered.  Those omnipresent voices, speaking in grand detail about him.  An idyllic planet that was repeatedly destroyed. The beast from within the pit, as Neil was bound and helpless on a web of light.  

He considered whether or not he wanted to try and duplicate the effects of his lucid dreaming again tonight. Was it a story worth picking up? Or did he want to find himself once again at the genuine mercy of some phantasm?

A low blare came from the drier, in what was more than once mistaken for a fire alarm.

Discarding the shards of his recollection, he set about folding his clothes for about five minutes, before hastily shoving the rest of his clothes into his basket and resolving to just “do it later”.  This was perhaps his favorite lie.  

So it was, at 3:00 PM, Neil found himself back in his room with nothing else on the docket.  The young scholar now had to decide between drowning his mounting sorrows in video games, television, or – if he were feeling particularly adventurous – both at the same time.  

Looking to a torn up photo of Erica on his desk, he considered what he would be doing if last night's conversation had not happened. The weekends were theirs and sometimes she would visit him Monday night as well, to hit up a movie when it wasn't crowded with people.  She wasn't a terribly social girl, and Neil had always done his best to accommodate that.  

They both used to joke about how she was a “cheap date”.  She was the kind of person who genuinely enjoyed an experience-driven rendezvous.  Erica would much rather walk through the Voxton arboretum or take in one of the free community light-shows at the planetarium rather than actually go out and spend money.  

On their first date, Neil had nearly blown his chance with her by trying to flaunt his dad's wealth.  He had been given $100 to “impress the girl” with.  Erica, in that way she always did, knocked him flat on his ass.

“I'm not here to get to know your money, I'm here to get to know you,” she said, before insisting on having dinner at the cheapest restaurant in Voxton, where she paid for her own meal.  

The wake-up call had worked, and he loosened up considerably; enough so that she was agreeable to a second date.  In spite of the rough start, they had gotten along famously.  But apparently not as well as he had thought.

A knock on his door disrupted Neil from his day-dreaming.  

“Hey man, open up.  You're decent, right?”

Neil chuckled as he opened up the door.  His friend Damian could only be described as “dashing”.  The heart-throb of choice for all the girls when they were in high school together, his looks had only improved with age.  

“Did they finally let you in?” Neil teased.  

“Dude, they let you in,” Damian retorted.  “If I wanted in, I'd be in.  But money is good in the sales game.”  

“You work in retail.”

“Retail sales.  If I sell ten computers, they give me $50 of store credit,” Damian replied with a dismissive wave of his hand.  “Anyway, we doing dinner?  My treat.  Gotta cheer up my sad-sack friend, don't I?”

“Damian, you don't have to-”

“Nah, brother, I insist,” Damian smiled, patting Neil on the back.  “Breakups hurt. I've been here, and you're gonna be fine.  We will eat, drink, be merry and this weekend we will go out dancing and find a girl to make you forget all about her.”  

It was this benevolent nature that led to the two becoming friends in the first place.  In middle-school, they were both slightly awkward, but Damian had the further disadvantage of being an immigrant.  His mother Tabitha had fled Egypt shortly after that assassination of Anwar Sadat, carrying along a four-year-old Damian with her.  

The pubescent Damian was dealing with bullying and trying to adapt to both a new country and a stepfather who Neil had never met.  The two had met while Damian was hiding out in the library during one fateful lunch and they managed to hit it off over Lloyd Alexander's Prydain Chronicles. Neil had just started reading The Black Cauldron, but Damian was already on Taran Wanderer. A young boy's excitement to talk about his favorite fantasy series led to the longest-lasting friendship either of them had enjoyed. 

“Damian, I'm not sure if I really want to 'forget' about her, you know?” Neil sighed. “But I don't really need to get into that now.”

“Why not now?” Damian asked. “Take the time, friend.  Dinner can wait.”  

“It just seems kinda,” Neil struggled to find the words.  “Pointless.  I mean she's made her decision.  I have no idea why, but she made it clear she was done with me.”  

“Your feelings aren't pointless,” Damian replied, tapping his chest for emphasis.  “It's all we really have in this world.  Of course, if you don't want to talk, I won't make you.  But, uh, make a decision quick.  I skipped lunch.”

Neil laughed and opted to continue keeping his thoughts concealed. At least for now.  

“Alright.  Dealer's choice,” Neil said.  

“What a dangerous power you've given me,” Damian chuckled.  “Thai food it is.”  

---

This one is hard to position.  The thread is destabilizing.  

Neil was not dreaming.  The voice was not in his head. It was just on the opposite side of his dormitory door.  The room around him was shrouded in darkness, and only the door was illuminated.  If he could just reach out and grab the handle...  

A terrible weight was dragging him down, and his limbs felt as though they were made of concrete.  A biting cold was gnawing at him, and there was a presence just behind him. Somewhere in that darkness, a great unseen thing wanted to devour him.  Panic seized him as he flailed his useless forelimbs at the impossible contraption.  A doorknob; he had seen thousands of these.  But his brain could not process how to manipulate one.  

With looming annihilation mere inches from him, he resorted to throwing all of his weight at the wooden barrier, hoping it would yield under the force of what, to Neil, felt like two tons of his own mass.

If the thread is lost, we lose the Binder.  This is unacceptable.

“Nox?” Neil called out, vaguely remembering the kindly voice from the other night.  

We are here, Binder.  Patience.  We will pull you into our realm.  You will not be sundered.  

At this pronouncement, a hideous shriek invaded Neil's mind. The darkness wrapped around the young man and began to flay him, leaving crimson marks on his arm.  By the time the third sinewy tendril had lashed him across the face, he felt an uncomfortably familiar tug around his midsection as he was dragged out of the darkness and through the door, beyond which lay the sea of stars from his prior visit.  

As the distant sparks sailed past him, the memory of that Eden weight heavily upon his mind.  He wanted to see it again, and yet he could not bear to watch it be destroyed once more.  The thought of having to relive the same disaster over and over again throughout eternity was unbearable. How many times would he have to suffer the same loss?  How many people would abandon him to the darkness of his own mind?  

Hey Neil, it's Dad.  Hope you've had a good Monday.  You're probably out with Erica, but I just wanted to get in touch with you about... well, your mother's remembrance.  It won't be a big social gathering like last year's.  Basically just gonna be your siblings and me, but we wanted to coordinate with you. Just give me a call back when you can.  I love you.  

His father didn't know yet.  Of course, why would he?  That was only last night?

Focus on the moment, Binder!

Rem's voice was as stern and monotone as ever, but with a renewed sense of urgency. There was a planet on the horizon, but it was no paradise.  The world was molten rock and scattered space-dust, perhaps one in the process of still being formed.  Or was this was had remained of the other world after the disaster?  

See past the reality of your eyes, Binder. They are not a reliable path to truth, Nox urged.  

He is weighed down by his emotional attachment to his own thread.  We are losing him, Rem added.  

The planet was quite hot, and Neil felt his flesh beginning to sear as he drew ever closer to it.  He closed his eyes as he fell through the atmosphere of a dying world, the weight of his grief dragging him into oblivion.

[watfordseo]

via Twitter https://twitter.com/TheWatfordSEO

[pleasesavetanaka]

Gen is Human - An Analysis

The idea that Gen is actually a human, not an ajin, is something I’ve been pushing for a while. I wrote the original post in may last year, but that original post is pretty out of date. There’s a surprising amount of evidence for what was originally a crack fan theory, so under the cut I’ll jump right in and go over it all.

Keep in mind this is long and image heavy, since I tried to include all the evidence.

One of the core facts we need for this theory is the explanation that Gen absolutely has not died, at a minimum, between Grant Pharma and the present. Scars go away when you die, and Gen’s still got his super cute little nose scar.

This nose scar is the big smoking gun. While my original impression when I first read was that Gen always had the scar, this isn’t actually true. Back when he was introduced in chapter 15, Gen had no scar at all.

The exact moment he gets that scar is actually seen in the manga. In chapter 21, when Takahashi and Gen are sniping from the roof, Gen has no scar:

Then, directly after, Takahashi gets shot in the head. The nose whizzes right past Gen’s nose, and in the third panel he has what will eventually become his scar:

So from this we can establish that, since this point, Gen has not died.

To start out, this seems insanely out of character for Satou. Satou’s all about getting people to use their immortality in creative ways, and even if you assume that Tanaka did all of the training for Takahashi and Gen... it seems bizarre that Satou wouldn’t even glance in. Even Okuyama dies repeatedly in the manga, and yet Gen is always placed in positions and situations where he won’t die.

Forge Security is absolutely littered with times when Gen could have died, but doesn’t. He’s always placed behind one (or often two) ajin meatshields who keep him from getting shot. Really, the entire of Forge Security is Gen crouching behind someone who can get back up if they’re shot.

That said, the fact that Gen hasn’t died isn’t conclusive evidence - there are other reasons he might not choose to die. But that’s really just the tip of the iceberg.

It’s canonically stated that Gen cannot produce an IBM, but it isn’t clear why:

Tanaka wasn’t able to make one for ten years, and after a month with Satou suddenly could, so it seems strange that Satou couldn’t do the same for Gen. The way Gen states it seems like it’s something Tanaka already knows, so it’s doubly strange that Tanaka doesn’t make a comment about Gen trying harder so that he can. It’s just a given that Gen can’t, and that him making an IBM isn’t plausible.

This also makes how Gen got to the meeting in the first place pretty confusing. Ajin knew where to go because they sent their IBMs to get the information. The only person we see there in person is Kou. It becomes obvious that Takahashi must have brought him along, because otherwise he wouldn’t have even know where to go.

Similarly, we don’t have any evidence that Gen can see IBM particles.

There’s several interesting points which involve Gen reacting to IBMs, but they all come with interesting tells. For example, in chapter 15, we see Satou’s IBM clap to draw the attention of those gathered. Everyone turns... except for Gen, who continues to look away as if he can’t hear the clap.

Immediately after, we do see Gen turning to face the IBM...  as we also see Takahashi pointing out where he should look.

Forge security also has a few moments like this, although they’re significantly less obvious. Sakurai seems to go out of his way to not show Gen’s reactions to IBMs. When Takahashi summons his IBM on the stairs, we see the guards react. We see Tanaka react. But we never actually see Gen’s reaction. He’s always just off screen, or partially hidden by speech bubbles.

The big climax (for Tanaka and co) is also littered with little hints. Again, we see Gen crouching behind Takahashi even though there’s a literal bulletproof wall between him and anyone with a gun. The vents kick on, and we do (however briefly) see Gen turn to them. This isn’t really surprising, and it doesn’t mean he can see the particles. Three vents suddenly kicking on all at once is distracting, so he looks. 

Gen is suddenly out of line of sight. For the next two pages we don’t see him at all, hidden by the particles. The next time we see Gen, he’s still crouched, but his expression is perfectly hidden by the door. The entire wall is transparent except for one small section, and it just so happens to be hiding Gen’s face.

This trick is actually something we’ve explicitly seen Sakurai do in later chapters. In chapter 46, we see the entire of Suzuki Jun... except for her left ankle, which is hidden by a garbage can, disguising her GPS cuff.

For the rest of the particle scene, we only see Gen once. Gen doesn’t speak in this time, and he gets shot first, before they can rationalize anything. At this point, Gen is confused. He can’t see anything--the particles are clear to him--but he also can’t see any enemy IBMs. As far as he knows, Kei’s IBM could be approaching them right then. When we do see them, he’s reacting to something else entirely:

Takahashi isn’t looking at anything at all, but Gen is looking through the glass, specifically at the Black Suits. Manabe, Kuroki, and Suzumura are all right on the other side of the glass, likely approaching with guns out, and Gen’s face is reacting to the ‘oh shit’ realization that they’re totally screwed.

The fact that Takahashi loses his mind when Gen gets shot is another hint. If he’s concerned that Gen was shot with a tranquilizer dart, it’s easy enough to fire off his gun and kill Gen to reset him. If he’s an ajin, on the other hand, there’s no need to be concerned about him getting shot with a normal bullet. The fact that Takahashi is yelling and panicking lends credence to the theory that he’s worried that Gen, a human, has actually been shot by a real bullet.

The absolute biggest piece of evidence, though, comes near the end of Forge Security.

Sedatives don’t wear off instantly. They take time to pass through the system, even when disconnected from an IV. Satou, not exactly being the most patient person, solves this by simply shooting Tanaka in the head.

That clears the drugs out of his system, bringing him to full wakefulness immediately. He then leaves it to Tanaka to wake the others and escape. Less then a few minutes later, we see Tanaka and co leaving the room, carrying someone on a stretcher.

Considering that Okuyama has an injured leg that causes him pain when he walks, it’s obvious that Okuyama should be the one carried out. He’s also the one who is legally in the building, allowing Takahashi and Gen to pass themselves off as rescuers more easily.

Except it’s Gen on the stretcher.

This makes absolutely no sense if Gen isn’t a human. Why would Gen--an able bodied Ajin--not be carrying the guy who can’t walk properly? Okuyama’s cane is in the room when they’re sleeping (we see it at one point), and yet they have him carry Gen out without it rather than having Gen carry himself.

This scene really only makes sense with the idea that Gen is a human who cannot reset, and is thus still sedated and unable to walk properly. Gen still has his scar in later scenes as well, which means he wasn’t reset any time in Forge.

All of this makes for some pretty compelling--albeit not perfectly canonical--evidence that Gen is actually a human.

The anime isn’t canon to the manga - they diverge pretty heavily. Even so, the anime itself follows this theory to a tee.

Gen gets his scar in the same way. He goes through the same basic motions. However, when it diverges, things get even more obvious. Gen is always in a position where he won’t get hurt. When the entire gang of Ajin effectively jump down an elevator shaft, Gen doesn’t - he takes the long way around and gets there first. There are so many scenes where Gen is pulled to the side or left behind because the alternative would be him dying.

Literally the entire final battle is ajins vs ajins, and while we know why Okuyama needs to stay out of the battle (he’s piloting the drones), why the hell does Gen have to stay with him? Even Tosaki goes into the battle.

There’s also an absolute boatload of off-camera action scenes where literally everyone gets shot all the time and is splattered with blood... except Gen, who is, as always, spotless.

The only other real point of interest is Satou’s threads in episode 11. He first threatens Takahashi, who is pretty blasé about it. But then, when his threat doesn’t deliver, he explicitly says he’ll behead every one of you and swings the knife around to Gen.

To say the least, Takahashi and Gen both look horrified. Considering they’re adrenaline junkies, it seems pretty weird they’d care about a philosophy-question about how much of you is ‘you’ when you lose your head.

Except, of course, that Gen can’t come back if he loses his.

Hopefully I convinced some people who hadn’t yet seen the theory. I know it’s long, but there is a lot of evidence for this theory, and I’m really hoping we’ll see it get revealed in canon soon!

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Software Engineer II

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[wolfliving]

IoT out of control, put some blockchain on it

*That oughta help, since the likes of Bitcoin are so steady and predictable.  And by the way it’s yet another protocol with yet another clique of stakeholders.

Jan 27, 2017,  09:00 ET

SAN FRANCISCO, Jan. 27, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- In December, representatives from a group of industry-leading startups and innovative Fortune 500 companies met in Berkeley, CA to discuss the challenges facing blockchain and IoT innovation and the potential for a collective effort to address them.

The meeting, New Horizons: Blockchain x IoT Summit, was the first step towards a collaborative effort to explore and build a shared blockchain-based Internet of Things protocol. Participants in the discussions included blockchain companies Ambisafe, BitSE, Chronicled, ConsenSys, Distributed, Filament, Hashed Health, Ledger, Skuchain, and Slock.it, along with Fortune 500 corporations BNY Mellon, Bosch, Cisco, Gemalto, and Foxconn.

The initiative was motivated by the leaps made by startups and large, blue-chip IT firms in deploying blockchain-registered tamper-proof hardware for various use cases and making new blockchain-based software systems available to enterprises. The meeting included presentations from blockchain and IoT focused startups on their established use cases, industry findings, and identification of common needs.

The group agreed that security, trust, identity, and registration and verification would be the cornerstones of any common protocol, while also acknowledging the need for integration and interoperability across multiple chip types, communication protocols, proprietary platforms, cloud service providers, and blockchain systems.

A blockchain technology industry consortium emerging from the meeting will move forward in defining the scope and implementation of a smart contracts protocol layer across several major blockchain systems with elective steer from the attending Fortune 500 companies. The functioning of the group is voluntary at this stage with intent to emphasize nimble and fast-moving open source collaboration with any formal membership or governance structures emerging if and when necessary.

Skuchain Co-founder Zaki Manian said: "We called together leaders in blockchain, hardware, software, venture capital, technology, and finance to discuss the barriers to interoperability and security within IoT and how we can complement existing IoT platforms with a blockchain back-end.  We believe there is a real value proposition here for IoT, supply chain, and trade finance."

Dirk Slama, Chief Alliance Officer at Bosch Software Innovations, said "We are seeing tremendous potential for the application of blockchain in industrial use cases. Being able to create a tamper-proof history of how products are manufactured, moved and maintained in complex value networks with many stakeholders is a critical capability, e.g. for quality assurance and prevention of counterfeits. This must be supported by a shared blockchain infrastructure and an integrated Internet of Things protocol."

"Blockchain has the power to improve resiliency and efficiency in a fully connected world," said Alex Batlin, Head of Blockchain at BNY Mellon. "What's missing today is a solution that provides trusted, tamper-proof guarantees for any title deed, public record, compliance event, or transaction, building on the way paper documents are used currently."

Joe Pindar, in the CTO's office at Gemalto, said: "Securing identity for physical property and packaging is going to be a big business opportunity over the next decade, high value parts of logistics supply chains and regulated industries like energy, pharmaceuticals, and cold chain could all see a blockchain component over the next decade."

Jack Lee, Managing Partner at HCM Capital, an investment arm of Foxconn Technology Group, said: "We are excited to see leaders in the Blockchain and IoT space coming together from America, China, France, and Germany to develop a standard Blockchain IoT protocol.This is a positive step towards industry confidence, momentum, and interoperability. We're looking forward to collaborations in this space in the near future."

"In order to power the sharing economy, door locks, autonomous vehicles, and electric charging stations will need to have secure identities," said Slock.it Co-founder and CTO Simon Jentzsch. "We are already working on a number of use cases; by teaming up with this consortia, we can create common primitives to register and verify hardware identities on blockchain."

BitSE CTO Patrick Dai said: "If we want to secure the Internet of Things we need to standardize how we identify, manage and communicate with internet enabled devices through blockchain technology. With a standardized protocol, more people will be able to share in these benefits."

Joseph Lubin, Founder and CEO of ConsenSys, said: "ConsenSys is very excited to be part of a group pursuing rationalization and standardization of the interfaces linking blockchain and a potentially very wide variety of devices. This group has the expertise to craft sufficient yet elegant interfaces and our energy projects group and supply chain management projects group are eager to see how we can apply these to our own systems."

Ambisafe Co-founder and CEO Andrei Zamovskiy said: "We are excited to be a part of an initiative to create a secure, transferable, notary-enabled, and payments-enabled identity for any physical thing, object, device, or machine."

Ledger CTO Nicolas Bacca said: "We are building a new generation of hardware with secure elements, strong cryptography and open firmware to secure the IoT. We're excited to contribute to innovative identity protocols extending the concept of "object passports" to blockchain technologies."

Maurizio Greco, CTO and Co-founder of Chronicled, said "We recognized the need for industry-wide collaboration to accelerate the pace of industry advancement.  We're thrilled with the result and excited to work with the strong set of partners coming together."

About Ambisafe

Ambisafe is a leading provider of software development and shared ledger services on the Ethereum blockchain. The Ambisafe team is comprised of a network of blockchain and web developers in Eastern Europe and the United States. In the first six months of Ethereum's existence, Ambisafe projects were responsible for more than half of all transactions on the Ethereum network. Using Ambisafe's platform, companies can deploy smart contracts, including standard support for private key recovery, debt and equity issuance, and multi signature transactions. Ambisafe has been a pioneer in smart contract security and digital asset issuance. For more information visit http://www.ambisafe.co/

About BitSE

Founded in 2013, BitSE is a leading Blockchain as a Service (BaaS) company based in Shanghai. BitSE's founding team came from world-renowned enterprises such as IBM, PwC, Louis Vuitton and Alibaba and dedicated themselves to bringing their experience to the blockchain industry. BitSE focuses on developing blockchain technologies for enterprise use cases as underlined with its VeChain project, a product management platform built on top of the blockchain. BitSE is a member of the Hyperledger project, an industry collaborative effort created to advance blockchain technology, the Shanghai Blockchain Industry Development Research Alliance and has a strategic alliance with PwC in Asia Pacific markets. Learn more at bitse.com and vechain.com.

About BNY Mellon

BNY Mellon is a global investments company dedicated to helping its clients manage and service their financial assets throughout the investment lifecycle. Whether providing financial services for institutions, corporations or individual investors, BNY Mellon delivers informed investment management and investment services in 35 countries and more than 100 markets. As of September 30, 2016, BNY Mellon had $30.5 trillion in assets under custody and/or administration, and $1.72 trillion in assets under management. BNY Mellon can act as a single point of contact for clients looking to create, trade, hold, manage, service, distribute or restructure investments. BNY Mellon is the corporate brand of The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation. Additional information is available on www.bnymellon.com. Follow us on Twitter @BNYMellon or visit our newsroom at www.bnymellon.com/newsroom for the latest company news.

About Bosch

The Bosch Group is a leading global supplier of technology and services. It employs roughly 375,000 associates worldwide (as of December 31, 2015). The company generated sales of 70.6 billion euros in 2015. Its operations are divided into four business sectors: Mobility Solutions, Industrial Technology, Consumer Goods, and Energy and Building Technology. The Bosch Group comprises Robert Bosch GmbH and its roughly 440 subsidiaries and regional companies in some 60 countries. Including sales and service partners, Bosch's global manufacturing and sales network covers some 150 countries. The basis for the company's future growth is its innovative strength. Bosch employs 55,800 associates in research and development at roughly 118 locations across the globe. The Bosch Group's strategic objective is to deliver innovations for a connected life. Bosch improves quality of life worldwide with products and services that are innovative and spark enthusiasm. In short, Bosch creates technology that is "Invented for life."

About Chronicled

Chronicled secures the Internet of Things with cryptographic, tamper-proof identities and unforgeable transactions. We build open protocols, hardware and software solutions that use the blockchain as a foundation of immutability and trust. Our platform helps industries implement interoperable IoT solutions that deliver trust between partners, brand experiences for consumers, and compliance for regulators. By securing end-to-end IoT solutions, we enable confidence in the delegation of critical functions to autonomous I/O devices that perform processes on our behalf. Learn more at chronicled.com and chronicled.org, and follow us on Twitter @ChronicledInc, Facebook, Github, and on our blog.

About ConsenSys

ConsenSys is a venture production studio and custom software development consultancy building decentralized applications (DApps), enterprise solutions and developer tools for blockchain ecosystems, focused primarily on Ethereum. Powered by smart contracts and secured through encryption, our applications provide the benefits of transparency, auditability, and immutability that are unique to blockchain-based solutions. For more information please go to http://www.consensys.net.

About Gemalto

Gemalto is the global leader in digital security, with 2015 annual revenues of €3.1 billion and customers in over 180 countries. We bring trust to an increasingly connected world. Our technologies and services enable businesses and governments to authenticate identities and protect data so they stay safe and enable services in personal devices, connected objects, the cloud and in between. Gemalto's solutions are at the heart of modern life, from payment to enterprise security and the Internet of Things. We authenticate people, transactions and objects, encrypt data and create value for software – enabling our clients to deliver secure digital services for billions of individuals and things. Our 14,000+ employees operate out of 118 offices, 45 personalization and data centers, and 27 research and software development centers located in 49 countries. For more information visit www.gemalto.com, or follow @GemaltoSecurity on Twitter.

About Foxconn

Foxconn Technology Co., Ltd. is principally engaged in the manufacture, research, development and distribution of computer, communication and consumer electronic (3C) products. The Company provides metal casings and structures, heat sink of desktops, servers, notebook computers, tablet computers and other 3C products, as well as consumer electronics. Its products are applied in the manufacture of notebook computers, mobile phones, projectors, electronic books, digital cameras, servers, workstation heat sinks and household game consoles, among others. It distributes its products primarily in Japan, Mainland China and the United States, among others.

About Ledger

Founded in 2015, Ledger is a French startup building a trust platform for the physical world. With a unique combination of expertise in embedded OS, secure hardware, cryptography and blockchain, the company aims to leverage its technology in various fields, from enterprises to consumers, with a current focus on industrial markets. Ledger is headquartered in Paris, and has offices in Vierzon and San Francisco.

About Slock.it

Slock.it brings the benefits of the Blockchain - transparency, security and auditablity - to real-world objects.Slock.it technology can be embedded in almost any device, enabling anyone to rent, sell or share their property without middleman. With Slock.it, the unused bicycle in the shed gets a new lease on life. Parking spots can be sublet on demand. Rental apartments become fully automated. Built by members of the Ethereum project, Slock.it integrates blockchain nodes in connected objects. The experience of sharing items is improved by making trusting the other party as unnecessary as possible, handling secure peer to peer payments, providing adhoc insurance and freeing the users from having to coordinate with each other to hand over keys. And because it's built on top of the Ethereum blockchain, Slock.it is always on, suffers no downtime, features cryptographic security by default, requires no login or signup, and can be audited by anyone. For more information, please visit http://slock.it or follow @slockitproject on Twitter.

About Skuchain

Skuchain applies the cryptographic principles developed in the Bitcoin network to security and visibility for the global supply chain. As goods travel from manufacturers to distributors to consumers, the crucial electronic information of what the item is and where it came from becomes disconnected from the SKU itself. A blockchain offers a universal, secure ledger by which SKUs can attest digitally to their origins and attributes.

For more information contact: Rebecca Migirov Chronicled, Inc. rebecca@chronicled.com +1 609-454-3660

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Amazon Ring Must End Its Dangerous Partnerships With Police

Across the United States, people are taking to the street to protest racist police violence, including the tragic police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. This is a historic moment of reckoning for law enforcement. Technology companies, too, must rethink how the tools they design and sell to police departments minimize accountability and exacerbate injustice. Even worse, some companies profit directly from exploiting irrational fears of crime that all too often feed the flames of police brutality.

So we’re calling on Amazon Ring, one of the worst offenders, to immediately end the partnerships it holds with over 1300 law enforcement agencies.

TAKE ACTION

TELL AMAZON RING: END POLICE PARTNERSHIPS

 One by one, companies that profit off fears of crime have released statements voicing solidarity with those communities that are disproportionately impacted by police violence. Amazon, which owns Ring, announced that they “stand in solidarity with the Black community—[their] employees, customers, and partners — in the fight against systemic racism and injustice.” 

Amazon Statement

And yet, Amazon and other companies offer a high-speed digital mechanism by which people can make snap judgements about who does, and who does not, belong in their neighborhood, and summon police to confront them. This mechanism also facilitates police access to video and audio footage from massive numbers of doorbell cameras aimed at the public way across the country—a feature that could conceivably be used to identify participants in a protest through a neighborhood. Amazon built this surveillance infrastructure through tight-knit partnerships with police departments, including officers hawking Ring’s cameras to residents, and Ring telling officers how to better pressure residents to share their videos.

Ring plays an active role in enabling and perpetuating police harassment of Black Americans.

Despite Amazon’s statement that “the inequitable and brutal treatment of Black people in our country must stop,” Ring plays an active role in enabling and perpetuating police harassment of Black Americans. Ring’s surveillance doorbells and its accompanying Neighbors app have inflamed many residents’ worst instincts and urged them to spy on pedestrians, neighbors, and workers. We must tell Amazon Ring to end their police partnerships today. 

Ring Threatens Privacy and Communities

We’ve written extensively about why Ring is a “Perfect Storm of Privacy Threats,” and we’ve laid out five specific problems with Ring-police partnerships. We also revealed a number of previously-undisclosed trackers sending information from the Ring app to third parties, and critiqued the lackluster changes made in response to security flaws. 

To startm, Ring sends notifications to a person’s phone every time the doorbell rings or motion near the door is detected. With every notification, Ring turns the pizza delivery person or census-taker innocently standing at the door into a potential criminal. And with the click of a button, Ring allows a user to post video taken from that camera directly to their community, facilitating the reporting of so-called “suspicious” behavior. This encourages racial profiling—take, for example, an African-American real estate agent who was stopped by police because neighbors thought it was “suspicious” for him to ring a doorbell. 

Ring Could Be Used to Identify Protestors

To make matters worse, Ring continuing to grow partnerships with police departments during the current protests make an arrangement already at risk of enabling racial profiling even more troubling and dangerous. Ring now has relationships with over 1300 police departments around the United States. These partnerships allow police to have a general idea of the location of every Ring camera in town, and to make batch-requests for footage via email to every resident with a camera within an area of interest to police—potentially giving police a one-step process for requesting footage of protests to identify protestors. In some towns, the local government has even offered tiered discount rates for the camera based on how much of the public area on a street the Ring will regularly capture. The more of the public space it captures, the larger the discount. 

If a Ring camera captures demonstrations, the owner is at risk of making protestors identifiable to police and vulnerable to retribution. Even if the camera owner refuses to voluntarily share footage of a protest with police, law enforcement can go straight to Amazon with a warrant and thereby circumvent the camera’s owner. 

Ring Undermines Public Trust In Police

The rapid proliferation of these partnerships between police departments and the Ring surveillance system—without oversight, transparency, or restrictions—poses a grave threat to the privacy and safety of all people in the community. “Fear sells,” Ring posted on their company blog in 2016. Fear also gets people hurt, by inflaming tensions and creating suspicion where none rationally exists. 

Consider that Amazon also encourages police to tell residents to install the Ring app and purchase cameras for their homes, in an arrangement that makes salespeople out of what should be impartial and trusted protectors of our civic society. Per Motherboard, for every town resident that downloads Ring’s Neighbors app, the local police department gets credits toward buying cameras it can distribute to residents. This troubling relationship is worse than uncouth: it’s unsafe and diminishes public trust.

Some of the “features” Ring has been considering adding would considerably increase the danger it poses. Integrated face recognition software would enable the worst type of privacy invasion of individuals, and potentially force every person approaching a Ring doorbell to have their face scanned and cross-checked against a database of other faces without their consent. License plate scanning could match people’s faces to their cars. Alerting users to local 911 calls as part of the “crime news” alerts on its app, Neighbors, would instill even more fear, and probably sell additional Ring services. 

Just today Amazon announced a one-year moratorium on police use of its dangerous "Rekognition" facial recognition tool. This follows an announcement from IBM that it will no longer develop or research face recognition technology, in part because of its use in mass surveillance, policing, and racial profiling.

We're glad Amazon has admitted that the unregulated use of face recognition can do harm to vulnerable communities. Now it's time for it to admit the dangers of Ring-police partnerships, and stand behind its statement on police brutality. 

TAKE ACTION

TELL AMAZON RING: END POLICE PARTNERSHIPS

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DOORS DXL Dialog Box

DOORS DXL Dialog Box In this article we will discuss DOORS DXL Dialog box. In IBM Rational DOORS DXL (DOORS eXtension Language), a dialog box is a graphical user interface element that allows users to input data and interact with a DXL script. A dialog box can be used to prompt the user for input, display messages or warnings, or provide status updates on the progress of a script. Overall,…

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Standardization is Key to Boosting Economies of Scale

The networked economy of container shipping relies on collaboration. 

In serving the multitude of clients bringing goods from their point of origin to their point of destination, the supply chain industry may be conceived as a network of actors having different capabilities to fulfill the needs of the customer. In such a business network, business actors would be of different sizes and undertake different roles, where some of them are in direct interaction with the client while others may be serving the needs of the client’s client. In many industries this has brought companies to focus on core capabilities and pursue business in the so-called networked economy. Each participating actor then has a role as part of such a value creating system. 

The supply chain ecosystem is quite complex, involving multiple actors that are continuously trying to enhance their processes, optimize their costs, and enter strategic alliances and collaboration with other partners to better serve their customers. In pursuing business in a networked society efficiently, participating actors must have agreed ways of communicating, to share information on both the key physical parameters, such as the identity and location of containers, and on other important organizational information, such as bills of lading, and timing of operations and movements. 

As is becoming clear in container shipping, the collaboration between shipping lines is now evolving from operational collaboration focused on rationalizing resources and offering more global coverage, to strategic collaboration focused on IoT (Internet of Things) communications and smart everything data exchange. The container segment of shipping has a profound proven history of collaboration in which they various actors and elements back up each other. Some examples of such collaborative endeavors are:

• Different shipping line alliances, such as 2M and Ocean Alliance signing cooperative agreements including vessel sharing on major global routes. This can be seen as similar to the aviation sector where different airlines form strategic alliances (such as Star Alliance, OneWorld, and SkyTeam). 

• Several shipping lines, namely CMA CGM, MSC, and Maersk, have together invested in a French start-up called TRAXENS to deploy smart containers across their fleets.  

• The top shipping lines have helped establish a non-profit consortium called Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA) to develop technology standards to transform inefficient practices and accelerate digitalization through a unified industry effort.

• The TradeLens platform, coming out of the collaboration between Maersk and IBM followed by CMA CGM, MSC, Hapag Lloyd, and ONE becoming engaged as well, is offering opportunities to standardize all the events related to goods movements track-and-trace across different means of transport, stakeholders including cross-border agencies. 

Collaboration is a key factor in enhancing the services and increasing the customers’ satisfaction, achieving cost effectiveness and meeting sustainability goals. The purpose of this article is to elaborate on some of the possible collaboration opportunities seen in the light of what comes out of digitalization empowering the network economy of container shipping. What may be seen now is that this collaboration is not just happening between different complementary service providers, downstream to the customer; the collaboration is now expanding horizontally between competitors facing the same technical and regulatory challenges.  

Historical trends in capability building among shipping lines 

Historically, the shipping lines were more focused on their vessels’ capacity, building bigger ships and trying to optimize their stowage plans and routes. The success of their alliances depends on the degree of compatibility of their service networks. Historically, shipping lines have also secured port capabilities by establishing such things as own terminal operator’s companies and having their own tugboats operating within the port. 

However, bigger ships have not generated significant economies of scale and have yielded only marginal cost benefits for the shipping lines while creating significant costs elsewhere such as the need for dredging deeper draft berths, and wider access roads to the dockside to cater for increased cargo volumes per ship. Hence, the race to build bigger ships has slowed or perhaps even stopped, and shipping lines need are now looking elsewhere to optimize costs. 

The ongoing efforts in utilizing digitalization for supply chain integration have also put port developments in focus. Trade patterns as well as short first and last mile distribution carried out by not utilizing sea transports points to the need to empower a large network of smaller ports to serve the needs of overall sustainability along the supply chain. At the same time, port’s does though need to become smarter and concerns have been raised over some ports pushing too hard at establishing themselves as the gateway to larger regions. 

Digital solutions easing the burden in collaboration

As an example of historical collaboration among shipping lines, when one carrier has had more bookings than it has capacity, competitor carriers that still have capacity have been approached, so as to still satisfy the needs of the original client rather than refusing a booking outright. This buyer-seller collaboration ensures that the customer is served, and the cooperating competitors both receive revenue by maintaining or even increasing respectively their shipment volumes and capacity utilization. 

All the document flow associated with such collaboration has been considered as the inevitable consequence of enabling the different collaborative arrangements. The traditional flow of exchanged documents includes specifications, production schedules, and forecasts such as booking requests, booking confirmation, shipping instruction (BL instruction) and shipment status and tracking via various electronic data interchange (EDI) messages.

Nowadays, taking full advantage of digital technologies is clearly a high priority for shipping lines that wish to benefit from smart assets and big data to transform their processes and gain in efficiency and security. Leading shipping companies are investing heavily in smart assets (smart containers, smart vessels, API gateways, being part of smart ports development efforts, and smart everything) to digitalise their fleet, operations and administration. In this effort, the ecosystem actors are collaborating to define enabling technologies, including specifications and requirements for Internet of things (IoT) communication and data exchange interfaces definitions, and competing in value-added services definitions. 

Some of these efforts and expected outcomes are elaborated below.

Uses cases coming out of different standardizations

Smart containers

Smart containers are traditional containers – reefers, dry or tank containers – with added electronics. The added electronics enable the tracking and monitoring of a container during its journey and the conditions under which its contents have been transported. The smart container solution can be configured to send real-time data regarding location, door opening and closing events, shocks and vibrations, temperature or other relevant physical parameters. 

Smart container data offering door-to-door visibility of the trip execution is conceived as foundational for end-to-end supply chain excellence. Smart container data enable the creation of value adding services such as Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) calculation, optimizing the container flow as part of fleet management services, container utilization management, monitoring of the condition of the container, CO2 emission calculations for the journey, as well as predictive maintenance. 

The UN/CEFACT Smart Container Project has delivered formal global Smart Container Business Requirements Specifications Standards and a standard Smart Container Data Model based on the UN/CEFACT Core Component Library. The next steps in standardization efforts will be focused on completing a standard describing the data governance rules with respect of the competitive advantages of all the actors, as well as defining a catalog of standard Smart Containers APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) to communicate all the standard smart container data elements.

In addition to defining standards for data exchange protocols, the collaborative efforts should result in defining the requirements specifications of IoT communication protocols. In fact, one of the biggest cost factors of smart containers is power consumption that is mainly consumed to establish power-hungry cellular communications while roaming. In addition, establishing connections almost everywhere is very challenging due to the highly metallic and harsh environment in which containers are deployed and frequently shielded from mobile communications signals. The leading shipping lines must define the technology to be deployed in smart ports and on smart vessels to ensure extended reach for smart containers with no line-of-sight to enable coherent and sustainable massive deployment of smart containers. 

Time stamp data sharing for port call optimization

During the recent years, a lot of focus has been on using digitalization for supporting the coordinating and synchronization of port operations with what happens at sea and in hinterland transport operations. For this purpose, the unbiased, non-proprietary, open, and international concept of Port Collaborative Decision Making (PortCDM) coming out of the European MONALISA project and Sea Traffic Management (STM) efforts, has been brought forward providing both operational and technical guidelines for regional and local implementations. 

This effort of international standardization is a way for episodic visiting actors, such as the ships from shipping lines, to be able to share relevant advance information and progress in the same way with all ports to which they make port visits to. By having a standardized way of communicating and with agreed procedures for collaboration, this also enables shipping lines, for example, to e.g. exchange time slots given a delay of one ship with another one that is being closer to arriving. 

One of the next steps is defining the use cases and the standards interfaces between the data collected from the seaside and the hinterland side supporting the optimization of the port as a transhipment hub, and by that also taking advantage of the smart container data and services.

DCSA Track and Trace Standards

The focus of the DCSA is to simplify shipment visibility across multiple carriers, enabling them to better plan and optimize their shipment handing activities. DCSA Track and Trace Standards describe the underlying set of processes along with the data and interface standards needed to communicate the fundamental track-and-trace information across multiple carriers. Next steps could be reviewing and redesigning these processes taking advantages of emerging relevant standards and new data availability, namely the smart container services and data on berth arrival, departure planning and port operations. This consistent approach, endorsed and supported by the shipping lines, is already implemented in their ongoing digital projects.

Combinations of the different initiatives

The DCSA shipping industry is currently working on providing requirements specifications for the IoT communication technologies of the smart container to ensure a better coverage for the smart container. While the smart container standard has enriched the UN/CEFACT data model with smart container and geofencing data, the DCSA track and trace standard is also aligned with the former data model thereby taking advantage and preserving existing investments. 

DCSA has also started an initiative to achieve significant pollution emission reductions through advanced berth arrival and departure planning, at scale building upon standardized principles of collaboration and standardized data sharing.

Standardization – a key to enable business benefits coming out of collaboration

With the ramp-up of new and emerging technologies, standards and horizontal collaboration between competitors are now more necessary than ever. A standard is an agreement among a business network constituted by actors that share the same common object of interest.

Adoption of global multimodal standards is a win-win situation, since these standards guarantee interoperability. Standards enable stakeholders in the logistics chain to reap the maximum benefits from smart container solutions, while enabling them to share data and associated costs. Standards-based solutions increase the ability to collaborate, which in turn increases efficiency. Additionally, data exchange standards reduce development and deployment costs and cut time to market for IoT solution providers. This is also valid for final customers as they will be able to get the maximum value of their data regardless the shipping lines they booked with.  

Examples of contemporary standardization initiatives are the Smart Container standardization efforts, port call messaging for the integration of what happens at sea and in ports, and track-and-trace standardizations supporting global trade. For this purpose, there are several organizations that enable collaboration among different actors, such as the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) using the Smart Container Business Requirements Specification (BRS) to ensure that the various ecosystem actors share a common understanding of smart container benefits, the IMO/FAL (International Maritime Organization Facilitation Committee) developing the IMO Reference Data model to facilitate alignment of definitions that come from different standardization bodies, as well as efforts pursued by e.g. the International PortCDM Council (IPCDMC), the International Task Force Port Call Optimization (ITPCO), and the H2020 funded DataPorts project focused upon event definitions, messaging standards, operational processes, and data sharing environments (including the definition of a service market place). 

The latter efforts build upon the facts that shipping lines are collaborating with actors together with operating within the port. The standardized definition of the data elements that different devices and operations can generate accelerates integration and the use of data from many sources on different platforms for the enhancement of operations. In addition, utilizing different types of data, such as data from smart container data, port call operations, timing of ship movements, and track and trace enables open communications channels between supply chain actors. 

Shipping lines will be limited in their ability to provide their customers with business intelligence coming out of the solutions above for their customers in the absence of a global standards. Standards data models and standard APIs will help stakeholders to make the necessary transformation to achieve supply chain excellence. Indeed, APIs are key to ensuring simplification and acceleration of the integration of digital services from various sources. Data sharing is particularly important in the logistics supply chain due to the large numbers of diverse players and because container movements are global. 

Easy access to information for all the relevant stakeholders enables situational awareness (e.g. in other words; the status, progress, and outcome of a particular process) and empowers data-driven risk analysis and decision-making.

Conclusion

As pointed out by the European Commission, the many zettabytes of data that are channelled from the source to use in diverse business cases is going to expand exponentially towards more increasingly becoming generated by connected IoT devices. This also means that it will be increasingly possible to derive business intelligence from the combination of multiple sources for the better good for the industry. In doing so, it is important to distinguish between the sharing of business critical rather than business sensitive data, so as to promote the actors’ willingness to share data.

Digital data standards are now being introduced to encourage the generation of data streams and to facilitate their combination, especially in the logistics chain, as concrete examples of where collaboration is enabling this development. The use of a standard for sharing data on the timing of port call events allowing for estimations on the cargo flow and a foundation for the exchange of time slot allocations between shipping lines. 

It is important to note that the communication technologies are on the agenda as current challenges for the shipping lines. Like telecoms companies, shipping lines must collaborate to define communication technologies - communication is a commonality that transcends beyond competition enabling the necessary adoption of smartness in the networked economy of container shipping. 

Other areas to consider, but not discussed in this article are aspects associated with cyber security, a common approach to the identification of consignments, the handling of empty containers positioned in different parts of the world, solutions associated with the digitalisation of bill of lading, aligning common processes used in container shipping, and IoT standards for container shipping.

Collaborating between shipping lines is a win-win strategy for reducing transportation costs, empty miles and environmental impact provided that logistics are willing to take advantages of the emergence of big data and increasingly interconnected communicating objects (IoT). Improving the technological aspects is clearly a high priority to getting ahead at this pivotal time of changing regulations and growing demand for business and at the end of the day provide a better service to the end customer. As in many other industries some areas are fully okay to collaborate while others might be more sensitive. The establishment of the DCSA is the proof that the leading shipping lines have come to an agreement to reinforce the utilization of standards in the container industry. 

About the authors

Hanane Becha is actively driving smart assets standardisation for key industries such as maritime and rail freight. She is currently the Innovation and Standards Senior Manager at TRAXENS and she is also the Leader of the UN/CEFACT Smart Container Project as well as the UN/CEFACT Cross Industry Supply Chain Track and Trace Project. Hanane has received a Ph.D. and an M.Sc. in Computer Sciences from the University of Ottawa and a B.Sc. from l’Université du Québec. 

Mikael Lind is Associate Professor and Senior strategic research advisor at RISE, has initiated and headed several open innovation initiatives related to ICT for sustainable transport of people and goods. Lind is also the co-founder of Maritime Informatics, has a part-time employment at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, and serves as an expert for World Economic Forum, Europe’s Digital Transport Logistic Forum (DTLF), and UN/CEFACT. 

Andre Simha is the Chief Digital & Information Officer at MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company, the second largest container carrier in the world, whose team is responsible for implementing and developing the complex data flow between the company’s headquarters and its agencies around the globe, as well as steering the business towards the digital future of the shipping and logistics sector. Simha is also the chairman of the Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA). 

Francois Bottin is the Head of the Digital Factory, a global organisation having the responsibility of leading the digital transformation of CMA CGM Group and digital projects delivery. CMA CGM is a French container transportation and shipping company headquartered in Marseilles, leading worldwide shipping group, using 200 shipping routes between 420 ports in 160 different countries. 

Steen Erik Larsen is the head of Technology M&A in A.P. Moller – Maersk, the global integrator of container logistics, connecting and simplifying the supply chains. Larsen has the responsibility of the enterprise risk management aspects pertaining to information technology in integration and partnering, and is also representing Maersk in the Digital Container Shipping Association (DCSA). 

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