Gyro Gearloose

 

Image from Pixabay

Gyro Gearloose is a crane after my own heart. He can invent a genius device to order, or he has something lying around that just happens to come in handy in one of the many comic book adventures in which he appears. They always excel in both simplicity and effectiveness and all inventions have one thing in common: they could not exist in the real world.

Donald Duck is a completely different bird. The duck would rather be lazy than tired and is impulsive, short-tempered. Not exactly someone who reads the manual first when he buys a new TV or something else. Donald often seeks Gyro’s help. And while Gyro patiently tries to explain how his gadget works, Donald is already flying through the door with it, because he knows it all. Sometimes Gyro shouts after him that the device is not completely finished yet, or that it has side effects. Later in the comic strip, Donald invariably pays the price for his stubbornness.

I personally don't like it when people just press buttons without knowing what they are for, hoping that the device will do what they want. The more complex the device is, the more can go wrong, or the further you sink into the swamp of incorrect settings. So I'm one of those people who still read manuals. Admittedly, not with every device; I was able to get our new juicer working without first consulting the manual. That booklet was still included, by the way; Nowadays, because no one reads the manual anyway and all that printing costs a lot of money, you only get a quick start guide and a QR code for the extensive manual.

Computers, apps and the internet don't have manuals. These have been replaced by help functions. If you realize that you cannot find a solution, you can consult those. Sometimes you can call them up by pressing F1, sometimes you have to consult an FAQ, and otherwise you just have to google. But you will be using all those things before you have read a letter about them. On the one hand it is nice that many things work so intuitively that this is possible, but on the other hand it is difficult for someone who wants something more than the basic settings.

Donald shows time and time again that it is often not safe to just turn something on or turn all the controls to maximum. Instead of saving the world, he often brings it to the brink of destruction. Fortunately, the wise cousins Huey, Dewey and Louie always manage to turn the tide in the nick of time. They do have a manual: the Junior Woodchucks' Guidebook, the pocket book that knows everything.

In a safe world, everyone has read the manual before starting anything. I know that this is a utopia. But that does mean that people drive cars without knowing how to turn on the lights, that an air conditioner somewhere heats instead of cools or that you get frustrated because you cannot get your smart speaker to work. And that makes the world less safe: traffic accidents, heat strokes and hackers are lurking. You may think that's a bit far-fetched, but hey, I get paid to be a doomsayer so I'm always looking for what could possibly go wrong. Putting things into perspective will come later, when others speak out their hope that it couldn’t be that bad.

Ducks regularly stroll along the local cycle paths – real ducks, not cartoon characters. When you cycle along, they invariably waddle in the wrong direction: they cross the path in the direction you cycle past a few seconds later. I just want to say: they are not the smartest animals. I have no experience with cranes, but if we take Gyro as an example, it looks like they are a lot smarter. Maybe that's why I've never come across one on the cycle path.

Moral of the story: if you're more of a Donald Duck yourself, listen to what the Gyro Gearlooses around you have to say. If, on the other hand, you are a Gyro Gearloose yourself, take a good look at what the Donald Ducks of this world really need and offer an (obviously safe) solution for that.

You just read the five hundredth Security (b)log.

 

And in the big bad world...

• Two-factor authentication is only safe if you don't let yourself be fooled.
• a criminal allegedly stole information from Europol.
• a South Korean goes to prison for hacking into 400,000 households and selling CCTV footage from those homes.
• the police arrested three men on suspicion of bank helpdesk fraud and friend-in-need fraud.  [DUTCH]
• your Android phone protects itself if it thinks it's stolen.
• the new Dutch cabinet will tackle cybercrime more stringently.  [DUTCH]
• the British NSCS has published guidelines for paying ransoms.
• Google has to pay a million-dollar fine for using French news reports to train their AI.  [DUTCH]
• some car models disappear from the market due to cybersecurity regulations.  [DUTCH]