Factualities for December 19, 2018
December 19, 2018
Real data are hard to come by. We have selected a handful of thrilling items of information which underscore the level of analytic excellence reported today.
One. The number of delivery robots which burst into flames on the
UC Berkeley campus. Source: Business Insider60 billion. Number of chickens killed each year for food. Source: Metro
50 percent. Of the top 10 top apps in the Apple Apps Store, half are from China.
Source: Sensortower$4.6 billion write off. Source: Bloomberg
100. Number of people Google has working on its Chinese search engine which is not really a thing yet. Source: Recode
$7532. Amount Google fined for its failure to comply with Russian law pertaining to search. Source Inquirer
168. Number of mules used to move counterfeit currency from Point A to Point B in Europe. Note: These are humans, not four legged beasties. Security Week
58 million. Number of videos YouTube removed for violating “community guidelines” in the last 12 weeks. 2018. Source: The Hill
Stephen E Arnold, December 18, 2018
Gunning for Google AI
December 19, 2018
With DeepMind teaching itself, can other vendors of smart software catch up to the online advertising giant?
Google is on top of many tech mountains, that’s for certain. However, none may be as big as its far-reaching artificial intelligence sector. That future doesn’t look as solid as it once did, thought, because of some hard charging competition, as we discovered in a recent Eyerys article, “With Google Dominating AI, Microsoft and Facebook Want to ‘Defrag Some of the Complexity.’”
According to the story:
“Microsoft is showing that it would rather help others rather than purely focusing on its own projects. There are reasons behind the partnership…. First of all, Microsoft’s AI has its own strengths. For example, it’s particularly great for building speech recognition systems. Second, Facebook’s PyTorch has gained popularity and has some interesting technical capabilities on its own.”
This is intriguing news, considering a three-horse race between these giants would likely result in some incredible advances. Beyond Search wonders if a closer relationship with Facebook will help or hurt Microsoft’s brand image and AI progress?
But, if you ask Google, you shouldn’t expect the world to change overnight. In fact, the leader in AI actually says artificial intelligence is “very stupid” compared to humans. Is this for real or a misdirection? It’s hard to say, but there’s no doubt that this rivalry is heating up, we predict AI will not be dumb for much longer.
Artificial intelligence appears to be the “go to” buzzword for 2019. Beyond Search thinks it would be helpful if Microsoft could tighten the nuts and bolts on here and now technology like Windows Updates before delivering the future with the likes of Facebook.
Patrick Roland, December 19, 2018
YAGI: Yet Another Google Interview
December 18, 2018
Google’s full page print advertisements about the free information the company makes available are awe inspiring. After reading the ad copy which reminds me I can learn something new every day, I recalled this interview with Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
The Impact Lab shares an interview, originally published in the New York Times, with the company’s relatively new CEO in, “Sundar Pichai of Google: ‘Technology Doesn’t Solve Humanity’s Problems’.” Sundar Pichai joined Google in 2004, where he proceeded to work on the Chrome browser. In 2014 he took the lead in R&D for products and platforms, and was elevated to CEO the next year. Last year, Pichai joined the board of Alphabet (Google’s parent company).
Writer David Gelles asks Pichai questions about his early life in India, his time at Stanford, and his own family’s approach to screen time, so see the article if curious. We are interested in what Pichai has to say about Google, and how things have changed. The interview relates:
You started at Google 14 years ago. Does it still feel like the same company you joined?
“When I first joined Google I was struck by the fact that it was a very idealistic, optimistic place. I still see that idealism and optimism a lot in many things we do today. But the world is different. Maybe there’s more realism of how hard some things are. We’ve had more failures, too. But there’s always been a strong streak of idealism in the company, and you still see it today.
We circled this statement:
An estimated 20,000 Googlers participated in a sexual harassment protest this month. What’s your message to employees right now?
“People are walking out because they want us to improve and they want us to show we can do better. We’re acknowledging and understanding we clearly got some things wrong. And we have been running the company very differently for a while now. But going through a process like that, you learn a lot. For example, we have established channels by which people can report issues. But those processes are much harder on the people going through it than we had realized.”
Really? That is an interesting take. The reigning CEO seems to be relentlessly focused on the positive, and on a message of constructive change. We shall see whether his actions reflect this perspective. Google itself may want to make sure that it is learning something new each day; for example, management methods which do more than generate clicks. The ad, of course, wants me to search Google for information. Nothing like clicks, right?
Cynthia Murrell, December 18, 2018
Deep Fakes: Technology Is Usually Neutral
December 18, 2018
Ferreting out fake news has become an obsession for search and AI jockeys around the globe. However, those jobs are nothing compared to the wave of fake photos and videos that grow increasingly convincing as technology helps to iron out the wrinkles. That’s a scary prospect to more than a few experts, as we discovered in a recent MIT Technology Review article, “Deepfake Busting Apps Can Spot Even A Single Pixel Out of Place.”
According to the story:
“That same technology is creating a growing class of footage and photos, called “deepfakes,” that have the potential to undermine truth, confuse viewers, and sow discord at a much larger scale than we’ve already seen with text-based fake news.”
Deepfakes are fun and possibly threatening to some. The “experts” at high tech firms will use their management expertise to reduce any anxieties the deepfakes spark. But some Luddites think these videos and images have the potential to disrupt governments and elections in countries where online is pervasive. Beyond Search is comforted by the knowledge that bright, objective, ethical minds are on the case. One question: What if these whiz kids are angling for a more selfish outcome?
Patrick Roland, December 18, 2018
DarkCyber for December 18, 2018 Now Available
December 18, 2018
DarkCyber for December 18, 2018, is now available at www.arnoldit.com/wordpress and on Vimeo at https://www.vimeo.com/306639675 .
The program is a production of Stephen E Arnold. It is the only weekly video news shows focusing on the Dark Web and lesser known Internet services.
This week’s story line up includes… an informal agreement among Dark Web drug dealers to cut off sales of fentanyl… NSO, a provider of intelware to governments, is back in the news… Devicesavers can unlock any phone for $4,000… and a father and son Dark Web scheme leads directly to five years in prison.
First, some Dark Web ecommerce vendors are voluntarily cutting off sales of the synthetic opioid fentanyl. The reason is not going straight. The vendors are wary of stepped up police action in order to take down Dark Web sites selling the potent drug. DarkCyber notes that the actions of Dark Web ecommerce vendors are not likely to curtail the sale of the drug. Vendors move their transactions to encrypted chat sessions or private messaging groups on social media systems. Furthermore China prohibits the manufacture of fentanyl, but not some of its analogs.
Second, DarkCyber reports that the vendor of software for government agencies is back in the news. Reports link NSO with Saudi Arabia and allege that the Kingdom used NSO’s Pegasus tool to monitor Omar Abdulaziz and the slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Companies like NSO shun the spotlight. Now NSO finds itself allegedly linked to a high profile news story and the subject of increased attention from the Canadian Lab, an independent research group.
The third story reports that Drivesavers has a proprietary method for unlocking iPhones and Android devices. Apple took steps to eliminate a USB vulnerability which some firms were using to unlock iPhones. Drivesavers technique requires the law enforcement send the iPhone to the Drivesavers’ lab, where the phone is unlocked and its data copied to an external storage device. Drivesavers does not provide details about how its method works, but DarkCyber believes the approach is similar to that used by Cellebrite’s mobile device unlocking service. Drivesavers, DarkCyber reports, is listed on the GSA schedule which means US federal agencies can make use of the service with a minimum of bureaucratic
The final story recounts the fate of a father and son duo. The father hit upon the idea of selling his extra doctor prescribed painkillers on the Internet. When that did not work, he enlisted his son for help in setting up a Dark Web business. Federal agents spotted the ads and made an authorized drug buy. The father and son team were arrested and computing devices, text messages, and narcotics were seized. One of the text messages was from a customer who overdosed on the duo’s product. The message, sent from the hospital where the addict was recovering, wanted to set up another drug buy. The father and son team are now serving five years in prison.
DarkCyber is released each week on Tuesday. The next program will be available on December 25, 2018. In 2019, DarkCyber will introduce a Web log covering the stories in the weekly news program plus additional law enforcement related subjects.
Kenny Toth, December 18, 2018
Quote to Note: Experts from UK Take a Look at US Social Media
December 17, 2018
I read “Silicon Valley’s ‘Belated and Uncoordinated’ Efforts at Dealing with Russian Fake News Revealed.” The report was created by experts in the UK and leaded to the Washington Post.
Here’s a quote which suggests the principal finding:
“Social media have gone from being the natural infrastructure for sharing collective grievances and coordinating civic engagement to being a computational tool for social control, manipulated by canny political consultants and available to politicians in democracies and dictatorships alike,” the authors of the report wrote.
The idea is that technology is neutral until a person figures out how to use it as a weapon or to his or her advantage.
In the case of social media, the companies managed as if they were high school science clubs’ entries in a Science Fair, have created some interesting tools. A few of the tools are similar to the wizard who creates a death ray, uses it to cook a burger, and gives the gizmo away at a yard sale. A clever person picks it up and starts vaporizing the pets and the neighbors.
Remember that technology is neutral mantra. That’s something repeated by individuals who have not read The Technological Bluff by Jacques Ellul.
Does one want to access “all the world’s information”? Not me. Selectivity, editorial controls, policy controls, and informed decision making are helpful.
Anyone remember that Pandora’s box thing? In January 2019, Beyond Search is switching focus, and we are introducing a Web log to complement our video series “DarkCyber.”
Times, they are a-changin’.
Stephen E Arnold, December 17, 2018
Google: Land Because They Are Not Making Any More of It
December 17, 2018
In a modest little purchase, Google has bought an office park. The Mercury News reports on the “Billion-Dollar Deal: Google Pays $1 Billion for Huge Mountain View Business Park.” It is only the second-largest U.S. property purchase this year—after their own $2.4 billion purchase of Manhattan’s Chelsea Market last spring. In fact, the flourishing behemoth has been on a property spending spree the last couple of years; Writer George Avalos observes:
“Google’s Mountain View Purchase means that in the two years since the search giant began to collect properties in downtown San Jose for a proposed transit village, the company has spent at least $2.83 billion in property acquisitions in Mountain View, Sunnyvale, downtown San Jose and north San Jose alone. Adding to the eye-popping numbers: Google’s spending activity in those four markets reaches $3 billion when including the company’s pending purchase in downtown San Jose of several government-owned parcels, along with the minimum value of a big set of surface parking lots that Google intends to buy from Trammell Crow, also downtown near its proposed transit village. Buying Mountain Vew’s Shoreline Technology Park gives Google a 51.8-acre site…”
It is suggested that Google is “land-banking” nearby properties to use later, as it continues to grow. We are curious to see how the company will leverage each these valuable assets.
Cynthia Murrell, December 17, 2018
Amazonia for December 17, 2018
December 17, 2018
The online bookstore has been motoring forward. As Facebook and Google face heat in Europe and the US, Amazon floats in the clouds.
We noted these items this week:
A parrot has used the owner’s Alexa to play music and order products. The parrot allegedly specified strawberries, watermelon, raisins, broccoli and ice cream. — Source: Fox News
You can buy an Alexa enabled twerking stuffed bear. The bear complements the Big Mouth Billy talking fish. Source: PocketLint
Amazon is uniquely well-positioned to dethrone UPS and FedEx’s duopoly. It’s built up a strong logistics infrastructure, counting hundreds of warehouses and thousands of delivery trucks. — Source: Business Insider
AWS used to be easy, but over the last decade it’s become a specialization. Every time I wander back to it, there’s another layer of complexity in the way towards doing something simple. — Source: Hacker News post by Sonny Blarney at https://bit.ly/2SJSQjg
Amazon could be using facial recognition to create ‘database of suspicious persons’ The concept would give homeowners, police a way to more easily ID someone engaged in potential criminal activity. — Source: OCRegister.com
“Use NoSQL and do things the “dumb” way every time. Because the perf characteristics are much more obvious to the programmer and designer, now you can just do a full join, or a full table scan every time for every query. Much more stable!” — Source: Colm Mac Carthaigh at https://bit.ly/2QQ7Vm4
An interesting browser plug in surfaces. “Looking to raise awareness of Amazon’s power in the marketplace and of its HQ2 incentives, a group of tech workers in New York created a Chrome browser plug-in called Block Amazon for Me. ‘We asking people to reconsider what they are supporting and what are the real costs,’ said Woody, who is the project manager for the plug-in project…”– Source: CNet
Amazon is moving in, leaning in, and pressuring both the Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure: “Amazon Outposts, a service scheduled to become available in the second half of 2019, will allow customers to provision physical racks of Amazon Web Services (AWS) servers and have them shipped to their own data centers. The racks will be configured with the same servers that Amazon runs in its AWS data centers; once installed, the racks will connect back to the AWS mothership over the Internet and then can be configured with storage services and virtual machines through Amazon’s AWS Management Console. And just as with services hosted in Amazon’s own data centers, customers won’t own these racks—they’ll rent them. The costs and connectivity requirements associated with Outpost have yet to be determined.” — Source Ars Technica
An Alexa clock is available. Engadget notes that the Amazon Echo clock requires an Amazon Echo in Version 1.0. These Amazon gadgets will connect to gizmos like the Amazon microwave in the near future. — Source: Engadget
The “everything” is hyperbole. But a useful run down of some Amazon developments has been assembled by Vox. Here’s an interesting item: “AWS also partnered with Lockheed Martin to get a competitive edge on faster and cheaper “downlinking” (downloading, basically) of information stored on satellites, making it officially part of the military industrial complex.” — Source: Vox
Stephen E Arnold, December 17, 2018
Microsoft Cortana and Search: About Face, Go in Circles, At Ease
December 16, 2018
Tom’s Hardware reports that Microsoft may be divorcing the odd couple, Cortana and search. “Microsoft May Split Cortana From Search in Windows 10” reports the supposed move this way:
Some Insiders testing the new build observe that Search and Cortana actions, once intertwined to enable search with voice activation, are now separated on the taskbar. This is being interpreted as a signal away from Cortana as an integral part of Windows 10.
Here in Harrod’s Creek, we type to our computers. When we ride in our mule drawn wagon to go to the big city, we don’t talk to our mobile phone. We text and scan headlines.
Is it possible that Microsoft has realized that voice as the interface of the future may be going in different directions. Can Cortana say, “Alexa, what’s Microsoft doing?”
Stephen E Arnold, December 16, 2018
Microsoft and Its Alleged Dark Patterns Aiding User Data Collection
December 15, 2018
We have a couple of Windows 10 machines. One is in the factory default mode, which means, “Take me, your lovable beast you.” The other computer is locked down reasonably well.
If you have not looked into the wild and crazy services and functions of Windows 10, you may want to read “Microsoft Accused of Collecting Data Even When You Opt Out in Windows 10.” We are not sure if the information is accurate. The source appears to be a potato, but we try to keep an open mind.
The argument is that certain privacy controls do not turn off the phone home mechanism for Timeline, for example.
We noted this statement:
On the one hand, one shouldn’t confuse incompetence with malice, and UI design has never been Microsoft’s forte. Given the fact that Windows 10’s basic control systems are still stretched between the XP-era Control Panel and the Fluent Settings panel, with some controls overlapping in both areas and some unique to one menu or the other, it’s not exactly surprising that the company would struggle to refine and centralize its UI. On the other hand, Microsoft is no stranger to the use of so-called dark patterns — patterns of behavior that mislead the user by implying that they are taking one kind of action when they actually aren’t. The wording under AH1 implies that disabling this stops such information from flowing to Microsoft. It doesn’t.
Microsoft cares about its customer experience. I am not sure I buy this particular line of fuzzy speak sophistry, but to each his or her own.
Stephen E Arnold, December 15, 2018
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