Category Archives: Energy

Energy, Security

Co-tenancy risk for Polar Bears

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I get asked all the time whether it is “safe enough” to run different levels of security on the same physical hardware if you have a hypervisor separating the load. The answer is, of course, it depends. We have complex control models and detailed explanations that prove hypervisors can reach even the highest (e.g. FISMA High) level of measurement. But the issue is really not about controls available, it is about management decisions and configuration.

To put co-tenancy in a broader context, consider the latest decision by the Obama administration regarding the obvious plight of Polar Bears. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service today published in the Federal Register a proposed rule and draft environmental study. This new draft is meant to replace a Bush administration 2008 attempt at a rule that was voided in 2011 by federal court. The public has two months to comment and already there is a clear backlash based on broad risks of co-tenancy.

A proposed rule aimed at protecting endangered polar bears doesn’t even mention how the federal government will address global warming, which is seen as the primary threat to the Arctic predators.

[…]

Both the current proposal and the previous Bush rule exclude activities occurring outside the range of polar bears — such as the greenhouse gas emissions of industrial polluters like coal plants — from regulations that could help stop the bear’s extinction.

Unfortunately, it seems bears have no service level agreement with their provider that they can use for leverage against the harm that is coming from their neighbours. The administration also presents an interesting argument against controls that seems completely upside-down.

In the new environmental assessment, Fish and Wildlife managers argued that not issuing an exemption for harm to polar bears outside the Arctic would lead to a plethora of citizens’ lawsuits which, the agency said, had little chance of prevailing. Such suits would take up agency staffers’ time that could better be spent helping polar bears, they said.

Energy, Security

Parking Space Corruption

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I often refer to a USC economics study of parking behaviour when speaking in private on correlation and insider risk but apparently I have not yet mentioned it on my blog, so here it is: “Cultures of Corruption: Evidence from Diplomatic Parking Tickets”

Corruption is believed to be a major factor impeding economic development, but the importance of legal enforcement versus cultural norms in controlling corruption is poorly understood. To disentangle these two factors, we exploit a natural experiment, the stationing of thousands of diplomats from around the world in New York City. Diplomatic immunity means there was essentially zero legal enforcement of diplomatic parking violations, allowing us to examine the role of cultural norms alone. This generates a revealed preference measure of corruption based on real-world behavior for government officials all acting in the same setting. We find tremendous persistence in corruption norms: diplomats from high corruption countries (based on existing survey-based indices) have significantly more parking violations.

Energy, History, Security

Rain = 600% increase in So. California road accidents

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Southern Californians are known for a love, if not obsession, with spending much of their time holding a steering wheel and staring at the tail lights in front of them.

Los Angeles county road

One might think all the time on the road and money spent on cars would mean that risk will decline, but here is some new data that suggests the exact opposite can happen — when it rains:

Traffic crashes jumped more than 600 percent in Los Angeles County Saturday morning, compared to the same period last Saturday when roads were dry.

[…]

Some 422 crashes were reported in Los Angeles County between 5 a.m. and 10 a.m., CHP Officer Tatiana Sauquillo told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune. During the same period a week ago, when the weather was dry, 58 collisions were reported, she said.

This is a nice example to pull into information security discussions for at least two reasons.

First, given the technology advances to handle wet conditions people still were unable to avoid disaster. Just like with information security the users may not have had the latest technology, they may not have had sufficient training to use the technology, or they may simply have been in a situation that the technology was unable to prevent. It is clear that technology has not yet solved a problem — inclement weather control — that has been a serious concern for decades.

Second, it is not clear whether this risk was a factor in the decision by those who removed the largest streetcar system in the world and replaced it with asphalt and unprofessional drivers.

Clearly, GM waged a war on electric traction. It was indeed an all out assault, but by no means the single reason for the failure of rapid transit.

It was not the single reason, perhaps, because of natural market effects when new technology is introduced. Buses at first were probably easy to market as superior to the streetcar. Then cars were easy to market as superior to buses. Why the streetcar had to be removed is not clear, however, which is why a bus/car manufacturer might be seen as the source of pressure to remove the streetcar as an option.

Whether or not you buy the conspiracy, or the natural market, argument about technology choices for transportation in Los Angeles there continue to be some very interesting data points related to the study of risk compared with other urban areas. In brief, factors like pride, conformance, convenience, cost, etc. may drive consumers (pun not intended) into positions of higher short-term and long-term risk.

“Exhibit 2” from General Motors and the Demise of Streetcars, Transportation Quarterly, Vol. 51. No. 3 Summer 1997, p. 52

Energy, Food, Security

Harvard Study: Bacon Kills

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A new study says people who eat red meat have a far higher risk of premature death. The study reviewed more than 100,000 cases over 20 years, which really is just a tiny amount of data. Nonetheless, here’s the news from the LA Times:

…adding an extra daily serving of processed red meat, such as a hot dog or two slices of bacon, was linked to a 20% higher risk of death during the study.

You might be thinking the researchers are nuts, and you might be right.

Eating a serving of nuts instead of beef or pork was associated with a 19% lower risk of dying during the study.

Not much is said in the article about researcher bias or data integrity issues. This is their best effort at a disclaimer:

…there can be a lot of error in the way diet information is recorded in food frequency questionnaires, which ask subjects to remember past meals in sometimes grueling detail.

But Pan said the bottom line was that there was no amount of red meat that’s good for you.

With that out of the way the reporter then highlights the cost savings from reducing risk.

…a plant-based diet could help cut annual healthcare costs from chronic diseases in the U.S., which exceed $1 trillion. Shrinking the livestock industry could also reduce greenhouse gas emissions and halt the destruction of forests to create pastures, [UC San Francisco researcher and vegetarian diet advocate Dr. Dean Ornish] wrote.

No word yet on whether eating less bacon could have a far greater impact on healthcare costs than patching Windows faster.