It's a tale as old as time. A desiccated muppet valiantly struggles through tech fail after tech fail to eventually be anointed as Donald Trump's cyber czar and, maybe, finally have a chance at becoming a real boy.
However, in the Grimm's Fairy Tale that is Rudy Giuliani's life, we are sadly deprived of that happy ending. You see, when it comes to all things technology related, Giuliani was cursed to live out his days as a moron.
We are reminded of this fact today by the somehow unsurprising news that back in 2017, shortly after Trump named him his cybersecurity advisor, Giuliani waddled into an Apple Store to have his iPhone restored to factory settings. Why? Because he entered the incorrect password too many times in a row.
This, dear reader, was not Giuliani's first tech-related mishap. And no fairy tale, even one as dark is this, is complete without a detailed recounting of its villain's fall from not-quite grace.
So let's take a moment to flip back through the pages of that sad, tech-fail ridden life.
1. The butt dial
I guess I could use my finger...
Image: NICHOLAS KAMM / GETTY IMAGES
When you're already down in the dumps, it somehow makes sense that it's your butt that does you in further.
Giuliani learned this lesson first hand on Oct. 25, when NBC News reported that the former mayor had butt dialed a reporter. In the process, he managed to leave a three-minute message in which he could be heard saying "The problem is we need some money" (among other things).
2. The tweet invader
Gulp.
Image: The Washington Post / getty
Like the demented prince of a plague-ridden kingdom, Giuliani felt the need to protect his digital fiefdom from invaders.
He made that much clear back in 2018 when, after accidentally tweeting out a nonsense link, someone registered the link and turned it into a website trashing Tump.
Whoops.
Image: screenshot / twitter
However, instead of realizing the folly of his ways, Giuliani insisted that the fault lie not with him. Instead, he proclaimed, "Twitter allowed someone to invade" his tweet.
3. The website
Security goes through the hole like so.
Image: NBC NewsWire / getty
Cast your mind back to January of 2017. Giuliani has just been appointed Trump's cybersecurity advisor, and people were genuinely curious what technical chops he brought to the round table. And so, as one might expect, security experts took a look at his company's website.
What they found was anything but reassuring.
Giuliani Security:
- Expired SSL
- Doesn't force https
- Exposed CMS login
- Uses Flash
- Using EOL PHP version
- SSL Lab grade of F
Like a sputtering automaton desperate to find the few remaining others of his kind, the lugubrious Giuliani tweeted those three letters in the summer of 2018.
Perhaps he was hoping for some kind of human connection, or maybe attempting to fulfill a dark prophecy, but either way he reminded everyone just how far he had managed to not come over the years.
Like many a failed Disney villain before him, Giuliani never truly learned his lesson — and his repeated tech fails kept him trapped in his muppet-body prison. As is the way of these tragic tales, the once mayor of America is doomed to live the rest of his life never knowing the pleasures of being a real, live boy.
Investments driven by bad math are like houses built on sand. At first, they can appear nice on the outside and may even work well for a period of time. Eventually, however, the wind picks up and the shaky foundation crumbles - often a lot faster than anticipated.
Unfortunately, bad math is lurking in many portfolios today. The problem is the cause-and-effect relationships at the heart of so many investment strategies are often deeply flawed, merely spurious correlations dressed up as something they are not. These can include numerous ETF strategies, customized structured notes, hedge fund strategies or proprietary indices that are in many portfolios. Like houses built on sand, many of these investments sit on shaky foundations.
Tyler Vigen, someone with perhaps a bit too much free time, conducted a large search for spurious correlations while in graduate school. He collected a lot of data and ran it through a computer algorithm to find the most absurdly correlated pieces of data. The results are hilarious. Below are five examples from his list of 30,000 spurious correlations at www.tylervigen.com (yes, 30,000).
U.S. spending on science, space and technology correlates with suicides by hanging, strangling and suffocation (99% correlation)
Per capita cheese consumptioncorrelates with the number of people who die by becoming tangled in their bedsheets (95% correlation)
The divorce rate in Maine correlates with per capita consumption of margarine (99% correlation)
The age of Miss Americacorrelates with murders by steam, hot vapours and hot objects (87% correlation)
People who drowned by falling out of a fishing boat correlates with the marriage rate in Kentucky (95% correlation)
Perhaps my favorite is a shocking “discovery” about something I have long suspected: the impact of Nicolas Cage movies on the general health of the public.
https://ift.tt/2p8VVjh
Beneath the flippant nature of these correlations is a much more serious message. Increased data combined with more powerful computers, if not used correctly, can be used to pervert the scientific process of how we know things in finance and beyond. To understand this issue more deeply, let’s start with a simple description of the scientific method:
Observe something in the real world
Develop a hypothesis on the cause and effect of that situation
Collect data
Analyze the data to reject your hypothesis or retain it
This kind of research informs government policy (e.g., tax policy), business strategy (e.g., product strategy) and investment strategies (e.g., factor-based ETFs).
Unfortunately, in today’s world, you can run hundreds, thousands or millions of “tests” and claim a “discovery” which is simply random noise in the data. Finding spurious correlations in such as way is not only possible, but probable, as Professor Campbell Harvey from Duke University explains:
“The statistical tests usually are significant at the 5 percent level, Harvey says. That means that when a variable is shown to be statistically significant, there's a 5-percent chance of seeing that (or a bigger) result in the numbers, even if there is no real effect present. That's pretty low odds if you're just running one test,but if you use powerful computers to run hundreds of tests, you're sure to find some "significant" relationships that are just random noise.”
Many, either consciously or subconsciously, turn the scientific method on its head by mining data for correlations and then backfilling a hypothesis of cause-and-effect that is not actually there. Without proper methods such as an accurate accounting of the number of tests performed, it is impossible to to know whether the finding is a signal or noise. Unfortunately, very few disclose such information.
A Real-Life Example: “60% of the time, it works every time”
Unfortunately, there are real incentives to push spurious correlations as unique cause-and-effect findings. Academics face constant pressure to “publish or perish” and Wall Street has an insatiable desire to develop new investment products to sell. The result are countless, often subtle, correlations masquerading as causation within investment strategies marketed by financial advisors, banks and investment firms.
For example, a friend recently told me how his financial advisor recommended that he invest in a factor-based investment product. He was presented with all sorts of backtests showing very good returns with little risk of loss. Unfortunately, only a few months after investing, the investment lost 30% of its value and my friend withdrew his money. Just days after this poor outcome, his advisor showed him another set of backtests and statistical data on a different fund that he should consider.
Here’s a funny thing about backtests: they always work on paper but often fail in the real world. Why? When they mistake correlation for causation, the strategy is at a severe risk of not performing in the future. To quote Paul Rudd’s character from the movie Anchorman, “…60% of the time, it works every time” (see 1:10).
Is Everything We Think We Know Wrong?
Confusing correlation with causation is not an unknown issue but it is becoming increasingly problematic as data increases and computers get more powerful. Nor is this an academic issue limited to finance. It gets to the heart of what we know - or think we know - about how the world works. To put it more directly, here is a startling comment from leading academics on the topic:
“...we argue that most claimed research findings in financial economics are likely false.”
Source: NBER Working Paper No. 20592, Campbell Harvey (Duke University), Yan Liu (Texas A&M University) and Heqing Zhu (University of Oklahoma)
In finance and investing, a select group of academics and practitioners have been highlighting the issue and their work deserves more attention. Some examples:
It would be a mistake to think that this is just a risk for retail investors. Many so-called fundamental investors misunderstand the implications from quantitative analysis either done by themselves or others. And, so-called quantitative investors may fail to understand the spurious nature of relationships identified if they lack a fundamental understanding of the market or industry being analyzed. All are at risk of making bad decisions.
“Past performance is not a guarantee of future results” - Disclaimer or Prediction?
To be clear, some Wall Street firms and academics are doing good work. Others are likely making honest mistakes. Many, however, are pushing spurious correlations as actual causation, packaged into investment products that others are buying. Without better standards, it is hard to differentiate. As Marcos Lopez de Prado, CIO at True Positive Technologies and Professor of Machine Learning at Cornell University’s School of Engineering, comments in a recent paper, “Empirical finance is at risk of becoming a pathological science…” – something no ethical practitioner or academic wants to see.
There are solutions such as better ethical guidelines, improved disclosure of data and methods, more peer policing and perhaps regulatory oversight. However, that will take time and perhaps a bit of public outrage. Until then, investors should carefully evaluate the research processes employed and the cause-to-effect logic.
Most importantly, investors should pay attention to often-ignored disclaimer that is in every investment offering, “past performance is not a guarantee of future results.” In the world of spurious correlations marketed as causal drivers of the future, this statement should be read as more of a prediction than a disclaimer.
I would like to thankMarcos Lopez de Prado, CIO at True Positive Technologies and Professor of Machine Learning at Cornell University’s School of Engineering, for taking the time to discuss some of his research with me.
SANTA ROSA, CA: OCTOBER 29: Power lines are silhouetted during a smoky sunset along Mark West Springs Road as the Kincade Fire burns near Santa Rosa, Calif., on Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2019. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)
California utilities unleashed unprecedented widespread blackouts in October to reduce wildfire danger during strong autumn winds.
Still, more than a dozen fires erupted around the state, and power lines are suspected of sparking nearly half of them, from the massive Kincade Fire scorching through the Sonoma County Wine Country to Southern California blazes near the Reagan library and Getty museum.
State officials this week said they would investigate the utilities’ use of power shutdowns after the blackouts to hundreds of thousands of customers in a state that is home to marquee technology firms like Google, Apple and Facebook made California a national punchline.
The causes of most of the fires remain under investigation. Did the power shutoffs help or do more harm than good?
“It’s really too early to tell as far as the effectiveness of the utility shutdowns,” said Scott McLean, spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire. “We are definitely delving into that.”
San Diego Gas and Electric pioneered the so-called public safety power shutoffs after the devastating 2007 Witch Fire. Pacific Gas and Electric was criticized last fall after it decided against de-energizing a major transmission line east of Chico that failed and sparked the Camp Fire, California’s deadliest and most destructive.
But after initiating its largest-ever public safety power shutoffs this month to avoid igniting another blaze, PG&E was blasted for cutting power so broadly, leaving many residents without electricity for days.
Gov. Gavin Newsom called the utility’s admittedly clumsy implementation “inexcusable” and declared that “utilities must be held accountable and be aggressively penalized for their overreliance” on the shutoffs to avoid fires. He called on the California Public Utilities Commission to “launch a total reform of power shutoff rules and regulations.”
Yet even with all the inconvenience and cost of the blackouts, fires broke out as well, many linked to power equipment.
PG&E acknowledged that its high-voltage transmission line near The Geysers geothermal plants in Sonoma County may have ignited the Kincade Fire, which has scorched more than 76,000 acres, destroyed some 266 homes and buildings and forced mass evacuations. The fire erupted Oct. 23 near an energized line during safety shutoffs to some 28,000 Sonoma County customers.
PG&E wasn’t the only utility making such disclosures.
Southern California Edison reported that its “facilities were impacted close in time” to the eruption of the Saddle Ridge Fire on Oct. 10. The fire, which consumed some 8,800 acres near Sylmar, started beneath a high-voltage transmission tower. Edison had cut power to some 24,000 homes and businesses due to high winds and red-flag fire warnings that day.
The Southern California utility also reported Oct. 30 that “there was circuit activity” on a distribution line about the same time the Easy Fire started burning near Simi Valley and threatened the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Some 82,000 customers were shut off that day due to high winds and fire threats.
In addition, the Los Angeles Fire Department reported that the Oct. 28 Getty Fire that has burned some 750 acres in Brentwood near the famous Getty Center art museum was started by a tree branch falling on power lines during high winds.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which serves that area, did not shut power to customers during the high winds. As a matter of policy, the department does not shut off power because it serves an urban area that doesn’t pose the same wildfire risks.
But despite a handful of high-profile wildfires that may have been ignited by energized power lines, utility officials say scores of other blazes may have been averted from lines that were found damaged from winds.
PG&E found 143 cases in which crews found wires or equipment from Bakersfield to the Oregon border that were damaged by winds during the public safety power shutoffs Oct. 26 and 29, spokesman Jeff Smith said.
“It’s always more of a challenge to demonstrate what might have happened,” Smith said. “But we absolutely believe these 143 events are very much the type of incident that could lead to a potential wildfire if the lines were energized.”
#PSPS: Extreme wind event – many instances of damage/hazards, incl. trees, limbs & branches into lines & downed pwr lines. These could've been a source of ignition had a PSPS not been initiated. We appreciate your patience as crews work to restore service. https://t.co/ye2fPfkYM3pic.twitter.com/zGhPsltfCV
Rob Lawrentz and Angel Brown, a retired couple from West Virginia, were on their dream vacation, cruising the California coast on Highway 1. She had never seen the Pacific Ocean. He wore a shirt that said,"Almost Heaven.”
On Tuesday afternoon, after a four-hour drive north from Monterey, they pulled into Bodega Bay, the little fishing town where Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” was filmed. It was deserted, and the lights were off at Bodega Harbor Inn, where they’d booked a room weeks ago.
“We pulled in and it was like, ‘uh-oh,’” Brown said.
“It’s usually a bad sign when there’s no cars,” Lawrentz added.
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The vacationers were 40 miles from the Kincade fire burning in the Mayacamas Mountains northeast of Healdsburg. But Bodega Bay had been vacated.
The couple had driven straight into what could become a new normal: a mega-evacuation zone.
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Angela Brown and Rob Lawrentz of Winfield, W.V., drove more than four hours to reach the Bodega Harbor Inn, where they had reservations for weeks. It was closed because there was no power.
(Hailey Branson-Potts/Los Angeles Times)
California wildfires over the past two years have left unprecedented destruction and loss of life, leveling thousands of homes and killing dozens. The death toll left communities like Paradise and Santa Rosa stunned and exposed major weaknesses in emergency evacuation systems.
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So this year, Sonoma County officials didn’t take any chances, issuing an unprecedented mandatory evacuation order that stretched all the way to the coast, forcing nearly 200,000 people out of their homes.
No deaths have been reported from the Kincade fire, which has burned mostly in uninhabited areas and destroyed 94 homes.
But many residents questioned whether officials overcorrected, pulling far too many people into the evacuation zone.
On Tuesday, Greg Garcia unloaded a new Craftsman generator from his pickup. The power was still out at his home in Bodega Bay, and overnight temperatures were dipping into the 40s.
The retired transportation worker had left town Thursday and gone to visit his mother in Milpitas because he knew it was going to be windy and he couldn’t go fishing. He’d planned to come back Saturday, but the evacuation kept him away until Tuesday.
“People were really upset,” Garcia said. “I think it was overkill, but I think they didn’t want to say they didn’t tell people. But I think they overdid it. They really did.”
But Sonoma County Sheriff Mark Essick said authorities learned hard lessons from the 2017 Tubbs fire that killed 22 people and destroyed thousands of homes. Then, authorities were criticized for inadequate warnings that did not reach many of those in peril.
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“I absolutely stand by the decisions that we made,” Essick said of the Kincade fire evacuation.
With the Kincade fire, authorities had more time, Essick said. During the Tubbs fire, people in Santa Rosa awoke to flames at their doorstep. Northeasterly Diablo winds had already been forecast for days by the time the Kincade fire started Oct. 23 in a remote mountain area off John Kincade Road and Burned Mountain Road.
The fire initially — and luckily — crept south for about a day before threatening more-populated areas, Essick said. The sheriff was working closely with meteorologists and fire behavior experts, using computer models to predict the fire’s path. It was a process he compared to hurricane forecasting, with a wide cone of potentially impacted areas that narrows with time.
Essick knew that if the fire jumped Highway 101, wind-driven embers could blow all the way to the coast. On Saturday, three days after the fire began, he ordered Bodega Bay residents to leave. The next day, top wind gusts hit 96 mph.
“I couldn’t live with myself if we didn’t warn people,” Essick said. “I would rather inconvenience some folks and have them question that inconvenience than lose a life. There’s no excuse for us to lose a life in this fire.”
David Petersen, a clerk at Diekmann’s Bay Store, the only one open Tuesday in Bodega Bay, with electricity powered by generators.
(Hailey Branson-Potts/Los Angeles Times)
As of Wednesday, that strategy seemed to have worked.
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Previous fires across the state have been marked by chaotic evacuation plans, including the failure to use the latest technology to broadcast Amber Alert-style warnings on cellphones ahead of deadly disasters.
In the first hectic days of the Tubbs fire, hundreds of people initially were reported missing. That didn’t happen with the Kincade fire.
The fire fight appeared to turn a corner Tuesday night, and the blaze’s containment was doubled to 30% on Wednesday morning. Forecasters were predicting favorable conditions for the rest of the week. The Kincade fire had destroyed 206 structures in Sonoma County, including 94 homes, according to Cal Fire.
Essick said Sonoma County has been through a lot, with the Tubbs fire, catastrophic flooding of the Russian River in February that forced thousands to evacuate, and now this.
On Tuesday morning, Essick, who lives in Cloverdale, talked to his neighbor, who had his mother, sister and niece staying at his house because of the evacuation. The man had a relative who lost a home during the Tubbs fire, Essick said.
“He said to me, ‘Mark, I don’t know. I don’t know if I want to stay in Sonoma County,’” Essick said.
Asked how he responded, Essick paused for several seconds. He commiserated with his neighbor, he said.
“You want to be there to support people, but at the same time, it does wear on you,” Essick said. “You think, gosh, is this maybe not the right place to live?
“Sonoma County’s beautiful, we’ve got great people, great weather, millions of people come here each year to visit. But, I don’t know. Sorry, I’m kind of talking in circles, but it’s hard. It’s hard to love a place so much yet have all these things that just keep happening.”
A view of Bodega Harbor from the Bodega Harbor Inn.
(Hailey Branson-Potts/Los Angeles Times)
At Bodega Harbor Inn on Tuesday, the West Virginia vacationers were baffled by the evacuation order. On their drive north, they had barely smelled smoke.
Brown and Lawrentz had booked their room through Expedia. Because of the ongoing Pacific Gas & Electric power outage, staff at the Bodega Harbor Inn couldn’t access computerized guest information. On Tuesday, two staff members were using LED lights, landlines and paper printouts with some guests’ contact information to try to connect with people to cancel their stays.
Nickey Meindersee, who works the front desk, called hotels all the way up the coast, trying to get Brown and Lawrentz a room. But the blackouts were so widespread, they practically would have had to drive to Oregon to remain on the coast. They decided to reroute and drive to Lake Tahoe.
Lawrentz was especially disappointed.
“I’m a retired shop teacher,” he said. “I specialized in wood. All I want to do is stand there beside a redwood tree and take my picture.”
Meindersee, apologetic, hugged Brown before they drove off. She said she worries it’s going to be economically tough for the 16-room hotel if the power gets shut off every time the wind blows and the evacuation zones are this big going forward.
Wine country evacuees usually go west or south, Meindersee said, adding that lots of people who fled the Tubbs fire had camped on the beach in Bodega Bay, parked their RVs through town and filled hotel rooms.
She has lived here 25 years, and during that time the town has never been evacuated because of a fire. “This is the place you go for safety because the water’s there,” Meindersee said. “Whenever there’s a fire, we get inundated with people.”
Around 1 a.m. Sunday, sheriff’s deputies drove through Bodega Bay, sirens blaring, shouting on bullhorns that people had to leave, she said. Meindersee — along with her 2-week-old grandson, 5-year-old granddaughter and her daughter and daughter’s fiance — raced out of a blackened town to her uncle’s house in Novato, 40 miles east. Novato also had no power.
They had to drive an additional 23 miles southeast of Novato to find a working gas station. Meindersee was back in Bodega Bay on Tuesday because she had to work. The mandatory evacuation was downgraded to an evacuation warning Monday, and the warning was lifted Wednesday afternoon.
“There’s a new normal every year around October here,” said George Scott, the hotel’s property manager.
Scott, who lives on site, did not evacuate. He stayed awake Saturday, listening to the winds and watching ash fall from the sky. But he never felt endangered.
“There’s no doubt that a lot of it is not overkill, but there is a good portion of it that is. ... Anywhere along the coast is not all that necessary,” he said. “But I understand too. It’s all about prevention and making sure that no lives are lost.”
Across the street, people flocked to Diekmann’s Bay Store, which was powered by generators and never closed during the evacuation. Store clerk David Petersen, who was ringing up bottles of Jim Beam and cans of Bud Light, said frustrated customers had been venting about the evacuation all weekend.
Petersen spent two days in a Petaluma evacuation center and got back Monday. He never thought there was real danger.
“If it crossed the freeway, then you might have doubts. Maybe,” he said, shrugging. “We’ve been busy. We’re the only place open.”
Greg Garcia unloads his new generator at his home in Bodega Bay.
(Hailey Branson-Potts/Los Angeles Times)
On Tuesday afternoon, generators hummed all through town, even as it remained under evacuation warning. Garcia, the retired transportation worker, said people are accustomed to heavy wind here and that people won’t stand for blackouts and evacuations every time winds are in the forecast.
“You know what they call Bodega Bay? Blowdega Bay. The wind blows so bad here,” Garcia said. “If you go fishing, you usually have to come back in by 1 because that’s when the wind picks up.”
In fact, Garcia’s house sits at the intersection where scenes of children running from the schoolhouse in “The Birds” were filmed. At Taylor Street and Windy Lane.
This is the best column anyone ever wrote in the history of Memphis.
Many people have thought about writing a column this good but were unable to get it done. People are saying no one can write a column like I can, and they are right. It's not surprising. That's because I invented the word "column." I have all the best words, and no one else even compares.
Geoff Calkins tried 11 times to write this column. Dan Conaway couldn't even make his fingers move when he tried to write this column. Tonyaa Weathersbee? No way. John Beifuss? Don't make me laugh. Even Jackson Baker gave it a shot, but it just didn't happen.
I'm a stable genius, and I'm the best. Get over it. No one writes like I can. But writing isn't all I do.
Many of you have probably driven by the empty pedestals in Memphis' Downtown parks. Most people don't know there used to be statues of Confederates there. They were very fine people, but the statues were put up after the War Between the States, which I call the "Civil War." Many people don't know that we had a Civil War. That's because it was 300 years ago, which is why we needed to take down the statues. They were too old.
I called the mayor of Memphis last year and said, "Mayor Stricker, those statues have to come down." He said, "Sir, no one has been able to take down those statues. They've been there for 250 years. It can't be done, sir." Well, I got it done. Afterwards, he said, "Sir, I did not think anyone could do that. Thank you." There were strong men and women in the mayor's office, and they were all crying because they didn't think anyone could take down those statues. They all said, "What a great outcome, sir. Thank you. And congratulations."
True story. You can look it up.
Many of you will be surprised to learn that the University of Memphis football team used to be terrible. It's true. They lost 29 games in a row in 2003. It was ridiculous how bad they were. Most people don't know that David Rudge, the president of the university, called me a couple of years ago. He was whimpering and crying on the phone. He said, "Sir, what can we do? People are saying our football team is terrible."
I said, "Hire a great coach, Dave." And I told him about this young fellow, Mark Norveen, who at the time was an assistant volleyball coach at Arkansas College. Most people haven't heard of Arkansas College. Great school, just outside of Tulsa. Mark's a handsome young man. Right out of central casting. "Hire Mark Norveen," I said.
Well, Dave did, and look what happened. The Tigers have been undefeated for six years, and they're going to be on Fox's "Gamers Day" show with Steve Doocy this weekend against the great University of Notre Dame.
I plan to be at the game. They're going to put my picture on the big television screen — I call it a JumboTron — so people can cheer for me. People are saying I'll get the greatest ovation in the history of football. They say 20,000 people won't even be able to get into the stadium.
There are lots of other things that many people don't know about me. For example, I helped do the deal to get Bass Pro to build a pyramid Downtown. It used to be a Walgreens. The elevator to the top? That was my idea. The giant man-eating alligators? That was my idea, too.
And many people would be surprised to learn that I was behind getting $270 million dollars allocated from the city to move the Raymond James brokerage out of that dump Downtown into a great new building they already owned out in eastern Memphis.
Here are some other things people would be surprised to learn about me:
I helped design the Midtown Kroger parking lot.
I taught Penny Hardaway how to do a crossover dribble.
I named Mud Island.
I invented barbecued ribs.
Do I get any credit? No. But that's all right. I'm a big boy. I don't need the applause. I don't need everybody to grovel and suck up to me. Many, many people are saying I'm the best columnist ever and this is the greatest column anyone ever wrote. That's enough for me. For now.
