Amazon and Microsoft Team up Again on Machine Learning
November 21, 2017
Recently, tech giants Amazon and Microsoft made public a new partnership. No, they’re not splitting Seahawks season tickets in their mutual hometown of Seattle. In fact, they are pooling their collective brain powers to advance machine learning and we should all sit up and take notice. We learned this from a recent InfoQ article, “Microsoft and Amazon Collaborate on Machine Learning.”
As the article states about the pair’s new AI product, Gluon:
Gluon is an open-source deep learning and neural network solution that is exposed through a Python-based API. It comes with prebuilt neural network components that can be created on the fly and used to train algorithms making it easier to define, debug, iterate and reuse components.
Gluons brings support for programming techniques not found in other frameworks, such as dynamic graphs, and has deep support for sparse data which is often found in natural language processing.
This might sound like a strange one-off, but we are actually seeing this kind of partnership cropping up more and more. In fact, these two recently paired to make sure their virtual assistant programs could communicate with one another, which were met with great acclaim. Perhaps the days of incompatibility are over in the tech world and it will no longer matter if you are a Mac or a PC, maybe someday, if partnerships like this continue, they will work together no matter what.
Patrick Roland, November 21, 2017
Google Relevance: A Light Bulb Flickers
November 20, 2017
The Wall Street Journal published “Google Has Chosen an Answer for You. It’s Often Wrong” on November 17, 2017. The story is online, but you have to pay money to read it. I gave up on the WSJ’s online service years ago because at each renewal cycle, the WSJ kills my account. Pretty annoying because the pivot of the WSJ write up about Google implies that Google does not do information the way “real” news organizations do. Google does not annoy me the way “real” news outfits handle their online services.
For me, the WSJ is a collection of folks who find themselves looking at the exhaust pipes of the Google Hellcat. A source for a story like “Google Has Chosen an Answer for You. It’s Often Wrong” is a search engine optimization expert. Now that’s a source of relevance expertise! Another useful source are the terse posts by Googlers authorized to write vapid, cheery comments in Google’s “official” blogs. The guts of Google’s technology is described in wonky technical papers, the background and claims sections of the Google’s patent documents, and systematic queries run against Google’s multiple content indexes over time. A few random queries does not reveal the shape of the Googzilla in my experience. Toss in a lack of understanding about how Google’s algorithms work and their baked in biases, and you get a write up that slips on a banana peel of the imperative to generate advertising revenue.
I found the write up interesting for three reasons:
- Unusual topic. Real journalists rarely address the question of relevance in ad-supported online services from a solid knowledge base. But today everyone is an expert in search. Just ask any millennial, please. Jonathan Edwards had less conviction about his beliefs than a person skilled in the use of locating a pizza joint on a Google Map.
- SEO is an authority. SEO (search engine optimization) experts have done more to undermine relevance in online than any other group. The one exception are the teams who have to find ways to generate clicks from advertisers who want to shove money into the Google slot machine in the hopes of an online traffic pay day. Using SEO experts’ data as evidence grinds against my belief that old fashioned virtues like editorial policies, selectivity, comprehensive indexing, and a bear hug applied to precision and recall calculations are helpful when discussing relevance, accuracy, and provenance.
- You don’t know what you don’t know. The presentation of the problems of converting a query into a correct answer reminds me of the many discussions I have had over the years with search engine developers. Natural language processing is tricky. Don’t believe me. Grab your copy of Gramatica didactica del espanol and check out the “rules” for el complemento circunstancial. Online systems struggle with what seems obvious to a reasonably informed human, but toss in multiple languages for automated question answer, and “Houston, we have a problem” echoes.
I urge you to read the original WSJ article yourself. You decide how bad the situation is at ad-supported online search services, big time “real” news organizations, and among clueless users who believe that what’s online is, by golly, the truth dusted in accuracy and frosted with rightness.
Humans often take the path of least resistance; therefore, performing high school term paper research is a task left to an ad supported online search system. “Hey, the game is on, and I have to check my Facebook” takes precedence over analytic thought. But there is a free lunch, right?
In my opinion, this particular article fits in the category of dead tree media envy. I find it amusing that the WSJ is irritated that Google search results may not be relevant or accurate. There’s 20 years of search evolution under Googzilla’s scales, gentle reader. The good old days of the juiced up CLEVER methods and Backrub’s old fashioned ideas about relevance are long gone.
I spoke with one of the earlier Googlers in 1999 at a now defunct (thank goodness) search engine conference. As I recall, that confident and young Google wizard told me in a supercilious way that truncation was “something Google would never do.”
What? Huh?
Guess what? Google introduced truncation because it was a required method to deliver features like classification of content. Mr. Page’s comment to me in 1999 and the subsequent embrace of truncation makes clear that Google was willing to make changes to increase its ability to capture the clicks of users. Kicking truncation to the curb and then digging through the gutter trash told me two things: [a] Google could change its mind for the sake of expediency prior to its IPO and [b] Google could say one thing and happily do another.
I thought that Google would sail into accuracy and relevance storms almost 20 years ago. Today Googzilla may be facing its own Ice Age. Articles like the one in the WSJ are just belated harbingers of push back against a commercial company that now has to conform to “standards” for accuracy, comprehensiveness, and relevance.
Hey, Google sells ads. Algorithmic methods refined over the last two decades make that process slick and useful. Selling ads does not pivot on investing money in identifying valid sources and the provenance of “facts.” Not even the WSJ article probes too deeply into the SEO experts’ assertions and survey data.
I assume I should be pleased that the WSJ has finally realized that algorithms integrated with online advertising generate a number of problematic issues for those concerned with factual and verifiable responses.
Solve BI Woes with This Listicle
November 20, 2017
Business intelligence is a key component in any business that wants to be competitive, turn a profit, and make themselves a known entity. The problem, however, is betting your business intelligence plan off the ground. CIO shares the top, “Three Reasons Your Business Intelligence Adoption Has Stalled.” Old-fashioned BI plans relied heavily on putting technology at the forefront and having a dedicated staff to manage it. The traditional model has changed because everyone in an organization can have access to the same type of technology that once was specialized.
The problem with implementing a BI plan is more than likely than the company culture. The first problem is that employees (and everyone) are resistant to change. Forcing employees to use new technology not only creates conflict, but there is also the problem with data literacy. It usually takes a lot of training sessions to get everyone’s skills on par.
Another problem is that some companies rely too heavily on their gut instinct that confirmed data:
BI leaders spend a disproportionate amount of time trying to convince instinct-based decision-makers that analytic insight beats intuition. Unfortunately, this rarely changes deep-rooted beliefs and has little-to-no impact on the use of BI. Consequently, BI teams are better served engaging leaders who understand the value of analytics and are willing and able to influence business process change. Top-down support from organizational leaders to challenge the status quo, and push for business process transformation, is mandatory for success. It will quickly become evident to senior leaders which of their key decision-makers are furthering – or hindering – the organization’s BI and analytic adoption goals.
The third problem is that organizations implement a BI plan, usually around an IT project, and once it is rolled out and on the go, nothing else is done with it. Companies think that once a BI plan is in place, then it will not need to evolve in the future. A fluid mentality, rather than a check-box one is how organizations will have successful BI deployments.
Whitney Grace, November 20, 2017
AI Tech Companies Had Better Watch Their Backs
November 20, 2017
In a case of perhaps getting too big for one’s own britches, there’s a lot of scuttlebutt about how our tech giants are in for a rude awakening, either from the government or competition. We learned more in a US News and World Report story, “Tech Companies Must Regain Trust.”
With all the negative publicity organizations like Facebook and Google have gotten has raised concerns, as we saw in the article:
Google and Facebook are not natural monopolies and ought not to be regulated as such. The history of the internet is a history of defunct giants that once oozed monopolistic power: Netscape, AltaVista, MySpace, AOL, among many others. Unlike constructing a news power grid, dislodging an incumbent does not require investing billions into new infrastructure. In principle, it only requires novel ideas.
(T)ech companies themselves can do a lot themselves in order not to actively invite onerous regulation. If they can invest in editorial judgment and quality control, crack down on bots and increase the transparency of their advertising schemes, the political case for new rules will become much weaker.
It’s a moment we will look back on and see as a watershed moment. Clearly, tech companies need better policing. Now is the moment they decide whether it will be themselves who make the change. Otherwise, the Googles and Facebooks of the world will suffer either from government regulation or from competition doing the job in question better.
Patrick Roland, November 20, 2017
HonkinNews Returns as Dark Cyber
November 17, 2017
On November 21, 2017, HonkinNews returns. The new look and approach focuses on the less visible products and services associated with the Internet. The new series is called “Dark Cyber.” The program has a new look while retaining the fact-and-opinion approach in the original HonkinNews series. HonkinNews Dark Cyber draws its information from the content in the free blog Beyond Search and from the research conducted for Stephen E Arnold’s CyberOSINT and Dark Web Notebook monographs. For information about Dark Web Notebook, click this link. Watch for the YouTube link for Dark Cyber on November 21, 2017.
Kenny Toth, November 17, 2017
Google and Its Plague of Evil Unicorns
November 17, 2017
Real journalists are Google’s picadors. I read “Inside Google’s Struggle to Filter Lies from Breaking New.” I almost feel the bull’s pain. “Who are these pointy word wielders anyway?”
The answer is Bloomberg, the “real” news outfit.
I learned from the write up:
“Evil unicorns” — a term some Google engineers once coined, according to a former executive — are unverified posts on obscure topics, full of lies.
Okay. The write up added:
For years, Google fought and won a similar battle with spammers, content farms and so-called search engine optimization experts over which web pages should be shown at the top of search results. But these latest web manipulators are causing greater havoc by targeting a slightly different part of Google — its real-time news and video results. They’re exploiting a weakness that cuts to the core of Google’s main proposition: Delivering trusted information online.
I like the assumption that Google results were different somehow in the past. Ah, the fog of memory and time.
I noted this statement:
…vetting news sources is an unwelcome task. Critics have ripped into Google and Facebook for categorizing certain publications, and not others, as news. It’s a political mire Google’s search unit is very reluctant to wade into.
Well, who can vet news? Maybe “real” journalists? Of course.
Stephen E Arnold, November 17, 2017
Ichan Makes It Easier to Access the Dark Web
November 17, 2017
A new search engine for the Dark Web may make that shady side of the Internet accessible to more people. A piece at DarkWebNews introduces us to “Ichidan: A New Darknet Search Engine.” Writer Richard tells us:
Ichidan is a brand new darknet search engine platform that lets users search and access Tor-powered ‘.onion’ sites. The format and interface of the platform bear much similitude with the conventional search engines like Bing and Google. However, the darknet search engine has been designed with an entirely different purpose. While Google was created with the aim of collecting user information and analyzing the behavior across several platforms, Ichidan specifically aims to render selfless services to the users who access the darknet and are looking for some particular Tor site to get the necessary information. Owing to its simplicity and ease of use, the darknet search engine has now managed to be an incredibly helpful tool for individuals using the dark web. Security research professionals, for instance, are quite happy with the services of this new darknet search engine.
The article notes that one way to use Ichan seems to be to pinpoint security vulnerabilities on Dark Web sites. A side effect of the platform’s rise is, perhaps ironically, its revelation that the number of Dark Web marketplaces has shrunk dramatically. Perhaps the Dark Web is no longer such a good place for criminals to do business as it once was.
Cynthia Murrell, November 17, 2017
Toronto Is the City of the Future
November 17, 2017
Canada is regarded as a calm, nice country that enjoys hockey and maple syrup. It is not seen as a technology bastion, but Google’s Larry Page decided to make Toronto a digital innovation says the San Francisco Gate in “Larry Page’s Urban Innovation Unit Picks Toronto For First Digital Neighborhood.”
Page dubbed Toronto is now dubbed the “city of the future” (sorry Disney and Tomorrowland). Alphabet Inc. and Waterfront Toronto plan to build a technology-friendly community along Lake Ontario. The city will incorporate green energy systems, self-driving transportation, and construction techniques that will lower housing costs. The new city of the future has been on the drawing board for ten years. With its construction, Eric Schmidt expressed that the goal is it will improve human lives.
Sidewalk Toronto will dedicate $50 million to planning the project, which will begin with a new neighborhood called Quayside and eventually extend into the Eastern Waterfront, more than 800 acres in one of North America’s largest undeveloped urban parcels. Google’s Canadian headquarters will relocate to the development from the west end to support the project.
Toronto is in the midst of a technology boom, startups are popping up all over the place, and AI research has received increased funding from the government. The hope is that the new community will help combat the city’s housing crunch.
All we can do is wait and see if Toronto really does become a model city for the future.
Whitney Grace, November 17, 2017
Palantir and Google: Surprising Allegation from St Louis
November 16, 2017
I read “Thiel Gave Money to Missouri Attorney General Going after Google.” The article reports:
Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist who backed Donald Trump’s presidential run, gave $300,000 to a political campaign of Josh Hawley, the Missouri attorney general who opened an antitrust investigation into Google this week.
My reaction was, “Is there a connection between this donation and the investigation of Google by Josh Hawley, the Missouri attorney general?”
The article appears to make this connection. I am not so quick to seize upon this implication. From my point of view, without more factual information, the story leaves me as cold as a catfish pulled from the Crooked River.
Stephen E Arnold, November 16, 2017
Fake Hitman Dark Web Site Rakes in the Bitcoin
November 16, 2017
No one can accuse these scammers of not going all in. Motherboard reports, “This Fake Hitman Site Is the Most Elaborate, Twisted Dark Web Scam Yet.” Reporter Joseph Cox describes the almost-certainly fake hitman-services website Besa Mafia. He writes:
Although many already suspected the site was a sham, Risk Based Security reported last week that supposedly hacked data shining more light on its behind-the-scenes dealings had been posted online. Included in that dump were alleged lists of ‘hitmen,’ photos of targets customers had uploaded, orders made on the site, and a large cache of messages purportedly between users and site admins.
Although the site is almost definitely a scam—and a seemingly profitable one at that—the sheer effort its creators have gone to puts Besa Mafia head and shoulders above just about anything else on the dark web.”
Yes, to protect its stream of bitcoin profit (apparently about $23,000 by the time of the data dump), the site admins literally threaten to burn the cars of those who give them negative reviews. Less dramatically, they also seem to be seeding the Dark Web with positive reviews of their own non-existent services
Another interesting point from the data dump—in a hedge, the website has been supplying information on would-be clients and contractors to law enforcement. The article reports:
In one message from the dump, the admin writes that the site not only cheats people out of their bitcoin; it also provides information to law enforcement about ordered hits. ‘This website is to scam criminals of their money. We report them for 2 reasons: to stop murder, this is moral and right; to avoid being charged with conspiracy to murder or association to murder, if we get caught,’ the admin writes.
They certainly thought this through. See the article for more details on this fake purveyor of violent services.
Cynthia Murrell, November 16, 2017
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