Smart cities are all the rage.

For good reason. They are supposed to be the next big thing.

Driving higher efficiencies and generating large amounts of data for analysis.

We've seen that traffic, health and infrastructure planning helps to map out the ways in which cities should be developed.

Tech companies have also been advocates for the establishment of smart cities.

But cyber security experts are now lining up against making cities 'smart' in all respects.

They fear the risks of a cyber-attack increase exponentially when infrastructure controls get 'smart'

The current 'dumb' power stations are much harder to hack.

Data generated about the functioning of a city can also become a primary target for command and control.

A contract for a 'smart city' in UK was objected to for several reasons.

The National Cyber Security Centre pointed out that as more and more services were added to the 'smart grid', security provisions needed to scale exponentially to avoid determined hackers.

We're seeing ransomware attacks grow in size and complexity by the year.

So the kind of 'smart infrastructure' that needs to be built has to be examined in greater detail.

Smart or dumb cities? Tough choice.

The Facebook - Signal spat

Signal, the messaging platform wanted to run ads on Instagram.

But they weren't the regular creative executions. They told people why the ads were being shown to them.

Demonstrating how Facebook data drilled deep into people's interests.

And the keywords were highlighted in the ads.

It picked up interests and profiles of people to generate the ads based on their interests, their status, their circle of friends and may be things they weren't too comfortable about.

It's one thing to read an article about it. It's another to find out how much Facebook knows about you.

The deep drilling into the lives of people was on display

There's no mention of Signal in the ads.

It's like using an advertising platform to show people how targeting works and not to promote the product.

Facebook was not amused.

The ads were banned, and Signal immediately launched into a PR offensive to highlight the ban

Facebook struck back, saying that Signal never intended to run the ads but were only using them to seek publicity.

Signal claimed that the ads were never approved, and Facebook said that they had blocked it due to an unrelated 'payments' issue earlier.

You decide who's right.

We're shattering data record limits

From gigabytes to tera and petabytes

It's as if there is no limit to storage. But there is.

The NASDAQ in the US is close to reaching the edge of displaying a share record data value.

Class A shares for Berkshire Hathaway Inc. are flying close to the outer limit the exchange can handle - $429,496.7295.

And the share price is at over $421,000 per share

An upgrade will fix it, but you see where this is going.

We think computers can scale endlessly and data will magically organise itself.

Every system has to operate within a maximum and a minimum. In most cases, the maximums are projected for the several decades and there is enough room for growth.

That limit is so distant in the beginning as to be inconsequential.

In a matter of years, some property values could touch billions.

It's not just computing. 

In 1976, at the Montreal Olympics Nadia Comaneci became the first gymnast to score a perfect 10. All the judges awarded her full marks. And the system crashed.

Perfection is out of reach in the real world!

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