|
|
@@ -4613,7 +4613,7 @@ one-on-one interactions with real people. And, come to think of it,
|
|
|
in any event, talking to people more might not be such a bad idea.
|
|
|
|
|
|
#49 of #100DaysToOffload take 2.1, https://100daystooffload.com/
|
|
|
-*** Work :work:
|
|
|
+*** Work :work:retirement:
|
|
|
**** WIP Changing the world, one side project at a time :100DaysToOffload:compuserve:history:
|
|
|
:PROPERTIES:
|
|
|
:EXPORT_FILE_NAME: 2023-12-22
|
|
|
@@ -5198,7 +5198,75 @@ beliefs. I may be tearing down my own beliefs. γνῶθι σεαυτόν!
|
|
|
# Post 21 of #100DaysToOffload https://100daystooffload.com/
|
|
|
|
|
|
*** Life :life:
|
|
|
-**** WIP "I ain't no Senators son, no !" :100DaysToOffload:
|
|
|
+**** WIP Digging through layers of obfuscation :100DaysToOffload:retirement:
|
|
|
+ :PROPERTIES:
|
|
|
+ :EXPORT_FILE_NAME: 2024-01-20
|
|
|
+ :EXPORT_HUGO_PUBLISHDATE: 2024-01-20:
|
|
|
+ :END:
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+This is a story about the similarity between finding good information
|
|
|
+to identify vulnerable devices on the Internet and finding the info
|
|
|
+one needs to sign up for US health care.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Hint: in one of these domains it's possible to find facts. In the other
|
|
|
+there is a shifting maze of marketing, laws, partisan media coverage,
|
|
|
+and bureaucracies who's goal is to profit from making it impossible to
|
|
|
+find facts and make decisions on your own.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+#+hugo: more
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+In my last job at Palo Alto Networks/Cortex Expanse
|
|
|
+(https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/cortex/cortex-xpanse), one of the
|
|
|
+things I did was dig through data that we generated by scanning the
|
|
|
+entire Internet regularly to identify devices and applications
|
|
|
+on the Internet so that we could inform our customers what potential
|
|
|
+attackers saw to allow them to fix it.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+One thing I learned pretty quickly was that you had to get past
|
|
|
+marketing and sales info to find useful information. A first step
|
|
|
+was usually to search and exclude the companie's web site (ususally
|
|
|
+mostly marketing material) from the results. Someitmes I went
|
|
|
+looking for technical manuals and installation guides, the "rubber
|
|
|
+meets the road" reality for making things work "Open up these firewall
|
|
|
+ports....". Acquisuitions (company name changes) and product
|
|
|
+name changes (a favorite pass-time of marketing departments) where another source of confusion. I generally found that
|
|
|
+the older the info was (tech startup's first engineer-written product
|
|
|
+description) was often the best source of infomation ... the longer
|
|
|
+the marketing people had their hands on it, the fuzzier and more
|
|
|
+confusing things got. Once you see "The market leader in..." it's
|
|
|
+time to move on. The acutal information content will approach zero.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+I tell you that story to tell you this one.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+Having just retired, I'm looking at health care, both ACA (ObamaCare)
|
|
|
+and Medicare for myself and may family. It turns out the same
|
|
|
+marketing obfuscation applies here, and I've not yet figured out how
|
|
|
+to filter out the mis-information.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+But wait, there's more. In this space we're dealing with a political
|
|
|
+football (healtcare) where the laws and regulaitons change every year,
|
|
|
+where there is highly partisan coverage of the topic, and where mistakenly
|
|
|
+giving out your phone number can result in 30 robocalls a day for a
|
|
|
+week.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+I'm not sure I will be able to find digestable spin-free sources of
|
|
|
+truth in the health care space. There are too many vested interests
|
|
|
+with a stake in keeping things confusing allowing them to posture to
|
|
|
+appear to be "the solution". It's not about healthcare. It's about
|
|
|
+votes, maintaining bureaucracies, keeping things complicated so you
|
|
|
+need to pay people to help you and in general siphoning off as much
|
|
|
+money as possible at every step.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+I pay a physician friend directly, out-of-pocket, no insurance for
|
|
|
+basic primary care. I get what I pay for, no more, no less, with none
|
|
|
+of the obfuscation or competing interests, no office manager or staff
|
|
|
+to deal with, no claims to file, no stupid one-size-fits-all policies
|
|
|
+that are actually a hazard to my health. And I get good
|
|
|
+informatoion, unfiltered.
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+#55 of #100DaysToOffload take 3.1, https://100daystooffload.com/
|
|
|
+
|
|
|
+**** WIP "I ain't no Senators son, no !" :100DaysToOffload:retirement:
|
|
|
:PROPERTIES:
|
|
|
:EXPORT_FILE_NAME: 2024-01-08
|
|
|
:EXPORT_HUGO_PUBLISHDATE: 2024-01-08:
|
|
|
@@ -5295,7 +5363,7 @@ https://reason.com/podcasts/nice-things/
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
-#53 of #100DaysToOffload take 3.1, https://100daystooffload.com/
|
|
|
+#54 of #100DaysToOffload take 3.1, https://100daystooffload.com/
|
|
|
|
|
|
**** PUBLISHED Count Your Blessings :100DaysToOffload:
|
|
|
:PROPERTIES:
|
