Meatbags Prevent Google’s Self-Driving Car
July 2, 2015
Driving is a privilege not a right…for humans and Google wants it for its self-driving cars. Google, however, is still in the test phasing for its self-driving cars and announced that they would publish results of the study on a monthly basis. They first report recently came out and it says that Google cars were in twelve accidents when they were on real roads. The Register takes a snarky, informative approach to self-driving cars in “Google: Our Self-Driving Cars Would Be Tip-Top If You Meatheads Didn’t Crash Into Them.”
Google has twenty-three Lexus SUVs that have driven 1,011,338 miles with the self-driving software and 796, 250 miles with a human behind the wheel. Many of the cars have taken to the real road, but nine are still restricted to the private track.
Google blames all twelve of the accidents on human error, not the software, and it is due to either the human driver in the autonomous car or the driver in the other car. The Google cars, being rear-ended from driving too slow, caused seven accidents. One accident was due to the Google car braking trying to avoid a collision and two more were when non-Google cars failed to obey traffic signs. The worst accident caused when a Google car was driving at 63 mph and was sideswiped by a car changing lanes. No one was hurt. The last two accidents were the fault of Google’s employees: both accidents resulted in Google cars rear-ending the cars in front of them.
Google is quick to point out the software’s positive aspects:
“The report also highlighted some of the smarter aspects of the cars’ software. Google cars can identify emergency vehicles, for example, and automatically give way in a fashion many fleshy drivers are irritatingly unwilling to do. The other example given was Google cars dealing with cyclists who didn’t obey the rules of the road. One cyclist veered in front of the car at night, and the software was clever enough to stop immediately to avoid a crash.”
Google will have its cars drive ten thousand miles a week on the software. A recent luxury car ad campaign was critical of the self-driving car, saying people want the luxury of driving themselves with all the benefits of said luxury car. It will be the TV vs. radio battle again, but the one thing holding back the self-driving car will be human error. Stupid, stupid humans.
Whitney Grace, July 2, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Compound Search Processing Repositioned at ConceptSearching
July 2, 2015
The article titled Metadata Matters; What’s The One Piece of Technology Microsoft Doesn’t Provide On-Premises Or in the Cloud? on ConceptSearching re-introduces Compound Search Processing, ConceptSearching’s main offering. Compound Search Processing is a technology achieved in 2003 that can identify multi-word concepts, and the relationships between words. Compound Search Processing is being repositioned, with Concept Searching apparently chasing Sharepoint Sales. The article states,
“The missing piece of technology that Microsoft and every other vendor doesn’t provide is compound term processing, auto-classification, and taxonomy that can be natively integrated with the Term Store. Take advantage of our technologies and gain business advantages and a quantifiable ROI…
Microsoft is offering free content migration for customers moving to Office 365…If your content is mismanaged, unorganized, has no value now, contains security information, or is an undeclared record, it all gets moved to your brand new shiny Office 365.”
The angle for Concept Searching is metadata and indexing, and they are quick to remind potential customers that “search is driven by metadata.” The offerings of ConceptSearching comes with the promise that it is the only platform that will work with all versions of Sharepoint while delivering their enterprise metadata repository. For more information on the technology, see the new white paper on Compoud Term Processing.
Chelsea Kerwin, July 2, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Palantir Explains Palantir
July 1, 2015
I read a question about Palantir on Quora. You may be able to access it at http://bit.ly/1LUPgtd but no promises. A person named Abhiram and then Kevin Simler provided some information. Here’s are three items I found interesting:
- At Palantir we specialize in analysis.
- The first important thing to note is that we don’t actually do the analysis ourselves.
- You could say that we help summarize large data sets, in the sense that we have to provide the analyst with a rich library of techniques and algorithms.
I think I understand.
Stephen E Arnold, July 1, 2015
Google, Search, and Swizzled Results
July 1, 2015
I am tired of answering questions about the alleged blockbuster revelations from a sponsored study and an academic Internet legal eagle wizard. To catch up on the swizzled search results “news”, I direct your attention, gentle reader, to these articles:
- “Google Manipulates Search Results, According to Study from Yelp and Legal Star Tim Wu”
- “Study Offers New Evidence That Google Skews Search Results”
I don’t have a dog in this fight. I prefer the biases of Yandex.ru, the wonkiness of Qwant, the mish mash of iSeek, and the mixed outputs of Unbubble.eu.
I don’t look for information using my mobile devices. I use my trusty MacBook and various software tools. I don’t pay much, if any, attention to the first page of results. I prefer to labor through the deeper results. I am retired, out of the game, and ready to charge up my electric wheel chair one final time.
Let me provide you with three basic truths about search. I will illustrate each with a story drawn from my 40 year career in online, information access, and various types of software.
Every Search Engine Provides Tuning Controls
Yep, every search system with which i have worked offers tuning controls. Here’s the real life story. My colleagues and I get a call in our tiny cubicle in an office near the White House. The caller told us to make sure that the then vice president’s Web site came up for specific queries. We created for the Fast Search & Transfer system a series of queries which we hard wired into the results display subsystem. Bingo. When the magic words and phrases were searched, the vice president’s Web page with content on that subject came up. Why did we do this? Well, we knew the reputation of the vice president and I had the experience of sitting in a meeting he chaired. I strongly suggested we just do the hit boosting and stop wasting time. That VP was a firecracker. That’s how life goes in the big world of search.
Key takeaway: Every search engine provides easy or hard ways to present results. These controls are used for a range of purposes. The index just does not present must see benefits information when an employee runs an HR query or someone decides that content is not providing a “good user experience.”
Engineers Tailor Results Frequently
The engineers who have to deal with the weirdness of content indexing, the stuff that ends up in the exception file, a broken relevance function when an external synonym list is created, whatever—these issues have to be fixed one by one. No one talking about the search system knows or cares about this type of grunt work. The right fix is the one that works with the least hassle. If one tries to explain why certain content is not in the index, a broken conversion filter is not germane to the complainer’s conversation. When the exclusions are finally processed, these may be boosted in some way. Hey, people were complaining so weight these cont4ent objects so they show up. This works with grumpy advertisers, cranky Board members, and clueless new hires. Here’s the story. We were trying to figure out why a search system at a major trade association did not display more than half of the available content. The reason was that the hardware and memory were inadequate for the job. We fiddled. We got the content in the index. We flagged it so that it would appear at the top of a results list. The complaining stopped. No one asked how we did this. I got paid and hit the road.
Key takeaway: In real world search, there are decisions made to deal with problems that Ivory Tower types and disaffected online ecommerce sites cannot and will not understand. The folks working on the system put in a fix and move on. There are dozens and dozens of problems with every search system we have encountered since my first exposure to STAIRS III and BRS. Search sucked in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and it sucks today. To get relevant information, one has to be a very, very skilled researcher, just like it was in the 16th century.
New Hires Just Do Stuff
Okay, here’s a fact of life that will grate on the nerves of the Ivy League MBAs. Search engineering is grueling, difficult, and thankless works. Managers want precision and recall. MBAs often don’t understand that which they demand. So why not hard wire every darned query from this ivy bedecked whiz kid. Ask Jeeves took this route and it worked until the money for humans ran out. Today new hires come in to replace the experienced people like my ArnoldIT team who say, “Been there done that. Time for cyberOSINT.” The new lads and lasses grab a problem and solve it. Maybe a really friendly marketer wants Aunt Sally’s home made jam to be top ranked. The new person just sets the controls and makes an offer of “Let’s do lunch.” Maybe the newcomer gets tired of manual hit boosting, writes a script to automate boosting via a form which any marketer can complete. Maybe the script kiddie posts the script on the in-house system. Bingo. Hit boosting is the new black because it works around perceived relevance issues. Real story: At a giant drug company, researchers could not find their content. The fix was to create a separate search system, indexed and scored to meet the needs of the researchers, and then redirect every person from the research department to the swizzled search system. Magic.
Key takeaway: Over time functions, procedures, and fixes get made and managers, like prison guards, no longer perform serious monitoring. Managers are too busy dealing with automated meeting calendars or working on their own start up. When companies in the search business have been around for seven, ten, or fifteen years, I am not sure anyone “in charge” knows what is going on with the newcomers’ fixes and workarounds. Continuity is not high on the priority list in my experience.
What’s My View of the Wu-velations?
I have three observations:
- Search results boosting is a core system function; it is not something special. If a search system does not include a boosting function, programmers will find a way to deliver boosting even if it means running two queries and posting results to a form with the boosted content smack in the top spot.
- Google’s wildly complex and essentially unmanageable relevance ranking algorithms does stuff that is perplexing because it is tied into inputs from “semantic servers” and heaven knows what else. I can see a company’s Web site disappearing or appearing because no one understands the interactions among the inputs in Google’s wild and crazy system. Couple that with hit boosting and you have a massive demonstration of irrelevant results.
- Humans at a search company can reach for a search engineer, make a case for a hit boosting function, and move on. The person doing the asking could be a charming marketer or an errant input system. No one has much, if any, knowledge of actions of a single person or a small team as long as the overall system does not crash and burn.
I am far more concerned about the predictive personalization methods in use for the display of content on mobile devices. That’s why I use Unbubble.eu.
It is the responsibility of the person looking for information to understand bias in results and then exert actual human effort, time, and brain power to figure out what’s relevant and what’s not.
Fine beat up on the Google. But there are other folks who deserve a whack or two. Why not ask yourself, “Why are results from Bing and Google so darned similar?” There’s a reason for that too, gentle reader. But that’s another topic for another time.
Stephen E Arnold, July 1, 2015
CSC Attracts Buyer And Fraud Penalties
July 1, 2015
According to the Reuters article “Exclusive: CACI, Booz Allen, Leidos Eyes CSC’s Government Unit-Sources,” CACI International, Leidos Holdings, and Booz Allen Hamilton Holdings
have expressed interest in Computer Sciences Corp’s public sector division. There are not a lot of details about the possible transaction as it is still in the early stages, so everything is still hush-hush.
The possible acquisition came after the news that CSC will split into two divisions: one that serves US public sector clients and the other dedicated to global commercial and non-government clients. CSC has an estimated $4.1 billion in revenues and worth $9.6 billion, but CACI International, Leidos Holdings, and Booz Allen Hamilton might reconsider the sale or getting the price lowered after hearing this news: “Computer Sciences (CSC) To Pay $190M Penalty; SEC Charges Company And Former Executives With Accounting Fraud” from Street Insider. The Securities and Exchange Commission are charging CSC and former executives with a $190 million penalty for hiding financial information and problems resulting from the contract they had with their biggest client. CSC and the executives, of course, are contesting the charges.
“The SEC alleges that CSC’s accounting and disclosure fraud began after the company learned it would lose money on the NHS contract because it was unable to meet certain deadlines. To avoid the large hit to its earnings that CSC was required to record, Sutcliffe allegedly added items to CSC’s accounting models that artificially increased its profits but had no basis in reality. CSC, with Laphen’s approval, then continued to avoid the financial impact of its delays by basing its models on contract amendments it was proposing to the NHS rather than the actual contract. In reality, NHS officials repeatedly rejected CSC’s requests that the NHS pay the company higher prices for less work. By basing its models on the flailing proposals, CSC artificially avoided recording significant reductions in its earnings in 2010 and 2011.”
Oh boy! Is it a wise decision to buy a company that has a history of stealing money and hiding information? If the company’s root products and services are decent, the buyers might get it for a cheap price and recondition the company. Or it could lead to another disaster like HP and Autonomy.
Whitney Grace, July 1, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
ClearStory Is On the Move
July 1, 2015
The article on Virtual-Strategy Magazine titled ClearStory Data Appoints Dr. Timothy Howes as Chief Technology Offiver; Fromer Vice President of Yahoo, CTO of HP Software, Opsware, and Netscape discusses Howe’s reputation as an innovative thinker who helped invent LDAP. His company Rockmelt Inc. was acquired by Yahoo and he also co-founded Loudcloud, which is now known as Opsware, with the founders of VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, who are current backers of ClearStory Data. Needless to say, obtaining his services is quite a coup for ClearStory. Howe discusses his excitement to join the team in the article,
“There’s a major technology shift happening in the data market right now as businesses want to see and explore more data faster. ClearStory is at the forefront of delivering the next-generation data analysis platform that brings Spark-powered, fast-cycle analysis to the front lines of business in a beautiful, innovative user experience that companies are in dire need of today,” said Howes. “The ClearStory architectural choices made early on, coupled with the focus on an elegant, collaborative user model is impressive.”
The article also mentions that Ali Tore, formerly of Model N, has been named the new Chief Product Officer. Soumitro Tagore of the startup Clari will become the VP of Engineering and Development Operations. ClearStory Data is intent on the acceleration of the movement of data for businesses. Their Intelligent Data Harmonization platform allows data from different sources to be quickly and insightfully explored.
Chelsea Kerwin, July 1, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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