Data in One or Two Places: What Could Go Wrong?
July 11, 2018
Silos of data have become the term du jour for many folks thinking about search and machine learning. By piling all that info into one convenient place, we can accomplish amazing feats. However, as those silos get larger and start gobbling up smaller silos, what are we left with? This was a concern brought up in a recent Tech Dirt think piece, “The Death of Google Reader and the Rise of Silos.”
According to the story:
“Many people have pointed to the death of Google Reader as a point at which news reading online shifted from things like RSS feeds to proprietary platforms like Facebook and Twitter. It might seem odd (or ironic) to bemoan a move by one of the companies now considered one of the major silos for killing off a product…”
While this piece holds a pseudo-funeral for Google Reader and, somewhat poignantly, points that this is the downfall of the Internet it overlooks the value of silos. Maybe it’s not all so bad?
That’s what one commentator for the Daily Journal pointed out remarking on the amount of innovation that has come about as a result of these mega silos. Clearly, there’s no perfect balance and we suspect your opinion on silos depends on what industry you are in.
Federation of information seems like a good idea. But perhaps it is even better when federation occurs in two or three online structures? If data are online, those date are accurate. That’s one view.
Patrick Roland, July 11, 2018
WhatsApp: Electronic Messages Exert Force
July 11, 2018
WhatsApp, the social messaging wunderkind app, has been making major headway in the market, nearing usage rates of early Facebook and Twitter. Nowhere is WhatsApp making a greater impact than in Brazil, where the political landscape itself is being transformed via the app, as we discovered in a recent Washington Post story, “WhatsApp is Upending the of Unions in Brazil, Next it May Transform Politics.”
According to the story:
“Nearly two-thirds of Brazil’s 200 million people use WhatsApp to share memes, set up meetings and, increasingly, vent about politics. Now, the messaging app is helping Brazilians undermine established power structures, injecting a level of unpredictability and radicalization into a country beset by economic and political crises.”
It’s not just Brazil that is being impacted by WhatsApp and its ability to connect people. The South American nation is only one of a handfuls of examples, many of the life-and-death variety. For example, The Guardian claims that several political activists embedded in repressive regimes have been using WhatsApp to skirt punishment and organize groups aimed at upending the government. This is promising news and a great example of the disruption that many Silicon Valley startups envisioned when they created their social media platforms. Three cheers for more of this.
Patrick Roland, July 11, 2018
Goggle Missing the Blockchain Boat? Really?
July 10, 2018
I have zero idea if this story is accurate. It is, however, intriguing to think about its key point. I highlighted this statement in “Sergey Brin Claims Google Should Have Been The “Bleeding Edge” Of Blockchain”; to wit:
Google co-founder Sergey Brin said regretfully that his company missed out at being at the forefront of the nascent technology, claiming “we probably already failed to be on the bleeding edge, I’ll be honest.”
I have underlined a couple of words which I found interesting.
I heard a comment from one of my colleagues to the effect that Mr. Brin mines Ethereum with his son. Obviously the notion of digital currency seems to be child’s play.
How has Amazon responded to the digital currency trend? I believe the company supports Ethereum and HyperLedger. The implementation is anything but child’s play.
A few days ago I mentioned that Google invested in baby Segways. Amazon, at about the same time, bought a convenience prescription drug company.
Is this a good question?
Has Google lost its ability to think outside of the online advertising box?
Oh, that’s a bad question. Google is inside the online advertising box, and it appears that Amazon wants to become more aggressive with regards to its online advertising business.
Questions are tricky, just like statements about failure and honesty I suppose. My hunch is that the Googler moon shot wizards are working away on distributed databases which Google has thought about before.
Stephen E Arnold, July 10, 2018
Amazon: Its Artificial Intelligence Is Not Up to Snuff
July 10, 2018
I read “AI Is The Weakness In Amazon’s Push To Take On Google And Facebook.” I am not sure I can hop on board this train. One reason is technologies like Amazon’s Integration Based Anomaly Detection Service. I do not want to slog through this particular artifact from 2011, but it does reveal that the online bookstore has some reasonably sophisticated smart software.
The capitalist tool, however, takes a different viewpoint. I learned from the article:
Amazon has made a good start but to really move forward it will need to make its targeting much more effective. There are many users who have been on the receiving end of Amazon advertisements for products that they have already purchased. If Amazon’s advertising system is not even able to get this bit right, it will be a long time before it can really understand user behavior and make its advertising that much more effective.
Okay, Amazon does not use smart software the way Facebook and Google do. I think I understand.
The article continues:
This comes down the quality of the AI algorithms that it uses to understand its users and work out what products and services they are more likely to respond to. When it comes to this, Amazon is way behind Google but ahead of Facebook meaning that advertisers currently using Facebook might be lured away more easily. That being said, Amazon has been losing some sellers to Instagram (see here) where product discovery is easier given the lower volume of sellers and where the costs and conditions of selling are not nearly as onerous. Hence, for the simple stuff on its own website, Amazon’s advertising revenues should continue to grow nicely.
I like the idea that Amazon’s approach lacks the quality of Facebook’s and Google’s approach. Nifty assertion. I would suggest that perhaps Amazon offers advertisers a different value proposition based on cross correlation and specific real time browsing and purchasing behavior.
Probabilities are useful. But knowing what a person wants to buy at a particular point in time might cause some advertisers to sit up and take notice.
Artificial intelligence hoo-hah is sort of fun, just not as compelling as real time streaming data about specific user intent and actions.
Stephen E Arnold, July 10, 2018
DarkCyber for July 10, 2018, Now Available
July 10, 2018
The DarkCyber video news program for July 10, 2018, is now available at www.arnoldit.com/wordpress and on Vimeo at https://vimeo.com/278891411.
This week’s program includes four stories.
The first story reports that Brave has introduced Tor tabs. The security-centric browser makes obfuscated Internet access easier to implement. The system is activated with a mouse click. Users do not have to download, install, and configure the Tor software bundle. DarkCyber reveals how to get a beta copy of this Tor-equipped browser.
Second, facial recognition systems captured some space in the news cycle. The Annapolis police were able to identify the Capital Gazette shooter using a commercial facial recognition system. The accuracy of these systems is not usually discussed. DarkCyber reveals the accuracy achieved by systems from Chinese, Russian, and US vendors.
Stephen E Arnold, author of Dark Web Notebook, said: “Facial recognition systems generate false positives. This means that unless the system generates a high probability match, human investigators and analysts have to examine the matched images. With accuracy rates for the best systems achieving 70 percent, facial recognition is a work in progress.”
The third story explains how a person with python and network expertise can configure MalTrail to identify malicious network traffic. The open source solution makes it possible to avoid the costs and contractual work associated with commercial malicious traffic analysis systems. DarkCyber points out the important differences between commercial software and the open source equivalent.
The fourth story points to a free report from the security organization InfoSec. The document includes useful information about weaknesses identified in Tor botnets and sources of malicious software. DarkCyber provides the download information for this free report and recommends that those interested in malware obtain a copy.
Next week’s program features a report about the NSO Pegasus source code slip up and a new introduction to the video program.
Kenny Toth, July 10, 2018
Amazon Wake Up Call Arrives Late
July 9, 2018
I read “Jeff Bezos and Amazon Have the Adveretising Industry Looking over Its Shoulder.” In my mind, the dusty alarm clock has emitted a “ringy dingy.” But some appear to have overslept.
Google and its DoubleClick goodies have been sucking ad dollars for years. Facebook jumped on the bandwagon. Even the Silicon Valley fave Twitter has seen the light.
Now is it a surprise that Amazon is likely to nose into the advertising business?
Not in Harrod’s Creek. Product question? Check out Amazon. One can learn about a product. Get information about alternatives. See charts which make it easy to compare products.
CNBC reports:
Amazon has what many in the advertising industry regard as the most important piece of the puzzle: what people buy.
It is interesting that CNBC has now recognized that quite specific data anchored directly to an individual identity in real time has value. Spewing probable ads to individuals who may be interested in a probably interesting ad is different from knowing that a specific person buys a specific type of probiotic for a dog. You get frequency. You get method of payment. You get delivery location. You get quite a bit of cross correlated data. In short, you get identify of the first order kind, not a probabalistic pot of possibllities.
The article notes that Amazon is a disruptive force.
No kidding?
Check out this factoid:
A big part of Amazon’s advantage is its use as a search engine, with one consumer survey finding almost half of all product searches start on Amazon rather than Google.
As you may surmise, the Beyond Search and DarkCyber research teams think that advertising may be important to Amazon.
We would like to point out that advertising is not where the Amazon big buck revenue will originate. Advertising is one revenue stream, not the revenue stream.
What’s the bigger picture? CNBC doesn’t reveal this point. Should Facebook and Google worry? I think both companies are already worried but like CNBC, both may have overslept.
Stephen E Arnold, July 9, 2018
Google: The Bibliophile
July 9, 2018
I love to read. Apparently Google is reading more than I ever could. According to Quartz, Google is officially going to start reading more and turning to books to answer questions: “Google’s Astounding New Search Tool Will Answer Any Question By Reading Thousands of Books.”
Google’s brand new search engine is called “Talk To Books.” The best way to describe Talk To Books is that it is like a huge full text, academic database, but instead of the content being listed individually it is all completely searched. Google described it more eloquently: thousands of writers discussing one question. Talk To Books works like a regular Google search, except the search engine searches for results in 100,000 Google Book entries.
What makes this interesting is that this could potentially be an academic and research worthy search engine. Futurist Randy Kurzweil and TED curator Chris Anderson discussed Talk to Books in a recent TED talk and how it will not take over regular Google search:
“Kurzweil noted that Talk to Books is not meant to replace keyword search. It uses “semantic search,” drawing on the ability of the tool’s AI to understand natural human language. Results range from goofy to profound, but semantic search’s goal is to call up a sentence that sounds like a plausible retort a person might say in a conversation.
The main goal of Talk To Books is to stimulate creativity and generate new ideas. As Google struggles to innovate, perhaps this service can jump start Google Ventures, Google X initiatives, and Google acquisitions. Ideas are one thing. Meaningful innovation is another. Google, it seems, is discovering books as a source of knowledge value.
Whitney Grace, July 9, 2018
Facebook: Information Governance?
July 9, 2018
Anyone else annoyed by the large amount of privacy disclosures filling your index and slowing down your favorite Web site? User data privacy and how companies are collecting and/or selling that information is a big issue.
Facebook is one of the more notorious data management case studies. Despite the hand waving, it may be easy for Facebook data to be appropriated.
Josip Franjkovi? writes how user data can be stolen in the post, “Getting Any Facebook User’s Friend List And Partial Payment Card Details.”
There are black hat and white hat hackers, the latter being the “good guys.” It is important for social media Web sites to hack themselves, so they can discover any weaknesses in their structures. Franjkovi? points out that Facebook uses a GraphQL endpoint that is only accessible their first part applications. He kept trying to break into the endpoint, even sending persisted queries on a loop. The same error message kept returning, but it did return information already available to the public and the privately held friends list.
The scarier hack was about credit card information:
“A bug existed in Facebook’s Graph API that allowed querying for any user’s payment cards details using a field named payment_modules_options. I found out about this field by intercepting all the requests made by Facebook’s Android application during registration and login flow.”
Thankfully Franjkovi? discovered this error and within four hours and thirteen minutes the issue was resolved. Credit card information was stolen this time around, but how much longer until it is again? We await Franjkovi?’s analysis of Google email being available to certain third parties.
Whitney Grace, July 9, 2018
Amazon Factoid: Home Speaker Department
July 9, 2018
Short honk: I read “What Cracking Open a Sonos One Tells Us aboiut the Sonos IPO.” In the write up was an interesting to me item of information. Here is what I noted:
Even though both [Sonos and Echo Plus] of these products are different in pretty much every decision that was made surrounding the hardware, they use the same backend Alexa service (where most of the IP is) from Amazon.
Interesting. Amazon’s approach allows it to generate revenue from a customer (maybe partner?) and from its own product line.
This appears to be a double dipping approach of value. What happens if Amazon decides to raise its prices for a customer (partner)? I suppose the Sonos-type outfit can hightail it to IBM’s, Google’s, or Microsoft’s cloud.
That may pose costs, timing challenges, and technical hoops. The time required by a Sonos-type outfit might be enough to allow Amazon to shave a few seconds off its lap time.
With Google slashing prices for its home gizmos, the home data ecosystem may become more interesting in the months ahead.
Stephen E Arnold, July 9, 2018
Digital Assistants Working Hard to Be More Human
July 8, 2018
Whether you use Alexa, or Siri, or Cortana, or a host of other AI-infused digital assistants, the producers of that technology have something in common: they want those electronic personalities to be more human. Interesting moves are being made in this world to make that happen, according to a recent Inquirer story, “Microsoft Snaps Up Semantic to Make Cortana Seem a Bit Less Robotic.”
According to one Microsoft exec:
“Combining Semantic Machines’ technology with Microsoft’s own AI advances, we aim to deliver powerful, natural and more productive user experiences that will take conversational computing to a new level.”
The story continued:
“Google, of course, has Duplex which can make natural sounding voice calls on your behalf. It has also suggested it is looking into the idea of giving Assistant a back story.”
However, this comes with a consequence. As Wired pointed out, as these assistants get more comfortable with inflection and reading our voices, the opportunity for manipulation becomes eerily more present. These near-human tools are not to that point yet, but we don’t doubt that it’ll arrive soon. Who wants to type when one can talk, think a human is on the other end of the connection, and be so much more efficient.
Patrick Roland, July 10, 2018
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