Criticizing the Digital Czarina of Silicon Valley
May 31, 2019
DarkCyber would not criticize Kara Swisher. We think that her method of talking over those whom she interviews is just an outstanding way to deliver understandable audio. We find her summaries of her stellar career in journalism necessary because some of the DarkCyber team (like me) has a lousy memory for some crucial information. We enjoy her interactions with the kind, patient, and deeply informed author of The Algebra of Happiness a remarkable opportunity to learn how life is to be lived in the 21st century.
But TechDirt has a different point of view, expressed clearly in “Dear Kara Swisher: Don’t Let Your Hatred of Facebook Destroy Free Speech Online.” See, that’s what a brave person, steeped in the law, will share about a digital czarina of Silicon Valley.
We noted this statement in the 1362 word epistle:
This is wrong on so many levels that it makes me wonder where Swisher is getting her information from.
The “wrong” refers to Ms. Swisher’s posture toward Facebook censorship.
We also circled in blue, this statement:
…her analysis is simply incorrect.
Yikes. An error in analysis. The “incorrect” refers to Section 230 and other legal matters.
We also underlined this passage:
For quite some time now, we’ve been talking about the “impossibility” of doing content moderation at scale well. There are always going to be disagreements. But Section 230 is what allows for experimentation. People can (and should) criticize Facebook when they think the company made the wrong call, but to blithely toss Section 230 under the bus as the reason for Facebook failing to meet her own exacting standards, Swisher is actually throwing the open internet and free speech under the bus instead. It’s a horrifically bad take, and one that Swisher should know better about.
There it is. Ms. Swisher is not fully informed. (My mother used to tell me “You should know better.” I assume this phrasing is part of the adulting movement.
To wrap up, my hunch is that two important people in the world of Silicon Valley may exchange further communications.
Will the Czarina respond directly, or will a colleague or former colleague (of which there appear to be many) pick up the gauntlet and slap TechDirt in the head in order to knock some sense and appreciation into it?
Worth watching. There’s nothing like a lawyer and czarina dust up to reveal why Silicon Valley is held in such high regard by millions of people. DarkCyber will watch from a safe distance, of course. When elephants fight, only the grass suffers.
Stephen E Arnold, May 31, 2019
New Yorkers: Go to the Library for Declassified Documents
May 31, 2019
The New York Public Library published “US Declassified Documents Online.” According to the write up:
This archive allows researchers to access more than 700,000 pages of selected previously classified government documents online. The archive includes declassified documents from agencies and organizations such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the White House, United Nations, and the Atomic Energy Commission. Content from this archive includes: diary entries, FBI surveillance and intelligence correspondence and memoranda, CIA intelligence studies and reports, Joint Chiefs papers, and technical studies.
Like most collections of this type, allow time for searching and browsing. DarkCyber poked around, and our team will restrain from making any further comment.
Stephen E Arnold, May 31, 2019
AT&T: Amazon Telephone & Telegraph
May 31, 2019
The Bell heads are dazed with the ringing in their ears. The “real” news out Thomson Reuters published “Amazon Interested in Buying Boost from T-Mobile, Sprint.” Amazon’s chief bulldozer driver Jeff Bezos has a sixth sense for creating buzz, generating distraction, and whipping stakeholders into a frenzy of upside.
According to the real news story:
It was not immediately clear why the largest U.S. online retailer would want the wireless network and spectrum.
Yep, that’s the insight in the write up.
How about this factoid or opinionette:
The U.S. Justice Department would need to scrutinize the buyer of a divested asset to ensure it would stay viable and preserve competition.
DarkCyber may be able to do a bit more creating thinking.
The juiciest opportunity to obtain data is? Here are your choices for this one question test:
[a] Amazon wants to extend its data acquisition capabilities beyond the Alexa enabled devices
[b] Amazon believes that in the present regulatory environment, it can construct a 21st century version of the pre-Judge Green AT&T
[c] Amazon wants to kick start its data marketplace with information about “calls”, metadata about those calls, and enrich certain cross dataset analyses
[d] Amazon understands that the regulatory environment is struggling with the old school methods of Facebook and Google and has not a clue about the Amazon construct.
What’s the answer? You will have to sign up for my for fee Amazon lecture about policeware. Write us at darkcyber333 at yandex dot com for details. (Tip: The webinar costs money.)
Stephen E Arnold, May 31, 2019
A Math Cheat Sheet with 212 Pages
May 30, 2019
When I was in high school, there was one student who wrote on his arm. Fortunately I just remembered the information. I wonder if this person will be interested in the “Mathematics Cheat Sheet.” The “sheet” contains 200 plus pages. I assume that if one could write tiny numbers and letters, a page or two might be recorded on an arm, the back of one’s hand, one’s palm, and maybe another body part. On the other hand, it is probably easier to use a smart phone and look for the information surrounded by ads for one of those “help you children learn” services. If you fancy a cheat “sheet” for math which will consume three fifths of a ream of paper (plus or minus a percent or two), enjoy. (I must confess that I browsed the “sheet” and was stunned to learn how much I have forgotten. Power? When did I confront this equation, when I was 14? Maybe 15?
But at age 75, I am lucky if I can remember how to get money from an automatic teller machine which asks me which language I prefer. Still thinking. Thinking.)
Stephen E Arnold, May 30, 2019
Amazon Twitch: Streaming Copyright Protected Content? You Betcha!
May 30, 2019
I found the “insight” in “Twitch Is Temporarily Suspending New Creators from Streaming after Troll Attack” amusing. The least popular game on Twitch, an Amazon property, has been outed as a streamer of copyright protected content. Yeah, that’s news.
I would point out at 0733 am US Eastern on May 30, 2019, that Ciklonica, one of Twitch’s more interesting chat performers, is eating and streaming the Big Bang television program dubbed in Russian.
Here’s a snap taken at 0730 am US Eastern on May 20, 2019:
How is Amazon’s SageMaker artificial intelligence system doing when it comes to recognizing streaming content with titling? What about the human reviewers who are working valiantly to manage the game lovers?
Maybe Google’s decision to kill its game streaming service is the equivalent of a mixed martial art corner man throwing in the towel.
I describe some of the more interesting content in my Dark Web 2.0 lecture next week at the TechnoSecurity & Digital Forensics Conference. The scope of copyright protected content theft is remarkable. Amazon Twitch is just a chuckle because regular Amazon does what it can to prevent its customers from stealing the “regular” service’s content.
Maybe the Amazon smart software technology can’t police Twitch? Maybe Amazon is looking the other way so it can assert plausible deniability about SweetSaltyPeach chatting? Maybe Amazon simply lacks the management expertise to deal with Twitch’s “how to cheat your friends at cards” information.
Games. Let them begin at the “real” news outfits and in the Twitch-verse.
Stephen E Arnold, May 30, 2019
Google and UX: Ads Like It or Not
May 30, 2019
I love it when a large company become desperate. A bit of history is in order. In the pre-monopoly days, Google survived the Yahoo allegation that the then-Web search company was influenced to an unusual degree by the ad system developed by GoTo.com. That system morphed into Overture, and then disappeared into the purple morass. After some early influencers of the GOOG suggested that revenue was a good idea, Google rolled out its ad platform. To my untrained eye and to those in other organizations, the influence was more than coincidence. After a bit of legal wrangling before the Google IPO and a bit of “real” money, the allegations went away. Google, between 2003 and 2006 enjoyed the glory days of online advertising. No one paid any attention. The access was via desktop computers (often described as boat anchors by the mobile believers), and there was zero friction between an advertiser and Google selling access to its traffic.
Ah, the good old days.
As the mobile revolution managed traction from some flawed limited slip differentials, the diffusion of tiny screens began. A trickle at first soon grew into a flood. Today, more than two thirds of online activity takes place on mobile devices; that is, tiny screens.
So here’s the problem. Google’s infrastructure is a money eating machine. To make matters worse, former Googlers working at Facebook have tweaked that wild and crazy social service to sell ads too. The Bezos bulldozer has pulled its left tractor control and is guiding the big orange machine into the lucrative world of selling product ads with more types soon to follow. Just check out what Amazon is doing and ask, “What will advertisers pay to reach profiled, data mapped, verified users who are interested in these services?”
Against this background I read “Google to Restrict Modern Ad Blocking Chrome Extensions to Enterprise Users” and chuckled. The write up states:
Google is essentially saying that Chrome will still have the capability to block unwanted content, but this will be restricted to only paid, enterprise users of Chrome. This is likely to allow enterprise customers to develop in-house Chrome extensions, not for ad blocking usage. For the rest of us, Google hasn’t budged on their changes to content blockers, meaning that ad blockers will need to switch to a less effective, rules-based system. This system is how blockers like AdBlock Plus currently work.
Okay, now back to the historical information provided above. Google is trimming certain functionality; for example, depth of spidering, more aggressive implementation of the bluebirds, canaries, and sparrows approach, and killing off services which do not produce revenue or which impose money chewing functions. Where’s that enterprise search thing? Google Plus? WebAccelerator?
In the ethos of the Google, ad blocking is not going to be part of the game plan. I have no doubt that in a slide deck is information about making darned sure ads appear everywhere most of the time. Enjoying that free YouTube video about how to make a 3D shape in Adobe Illustrator. You will enjoy the ads stuck in the middle of the stream as you are watching even more. You will like it! Got that?
The Google ads-everywhere policy is okay with me. I have considerable enthusiasm for searches in quotes which return results not related to my query. I like looking for US government data which are not in the index any more. I find the complaints of bloggers who find their backfiles disappeared.
That’s life in the access road leading to the Google information highway. Ads are the toll, and payment is necessary. Google blocks YouTubers, is blocking individual users who access Google content with a browser that blocks ads be a thing?
Worth thinking about. Well, actually maybe not. Google’s data reveals that there are lots of Google service users who accept an ad filled walled garden. The messages are personalized and something relevant, just like Google search results.
Google needs every penny of advertising money it can get; otherwise, the cracks in Googzilla will bring down the system.
Stephen E Arnold, May 30, 2019
Google: AMPs Up One Doubter of the One True Way, an Old Way at That
May 29, 2019
If you want the North American and Western European Internet on your mobile phone, you may have to deal with AMP. “Cake or Death: Amp and the Worrying Power Dynamics of the Web” is one more person who has figured out how online coalesces into a monopoly or two. Is this news? No, but it sure is for some people.
The write up explains that there are three issues with Google’s unification of what one obtains when querying the “Internet”. These are technical, user experience, and commercial.
Technical. We noted the explanation of Google’s portal state. Not new. The idea is that one never leaves the Google walled garden.
User experience. Our reaction is that it is too late. With more than 60 percent of Google’s queries coming from mobile. One’s experience is what Google wants to deliver. Example: I disabled the Play store on my Android device. Google sends messages when I listen to voice mail. As a result, voice mail is broken. Does Google care about this experience? Nope. Amp experiences? Nope.
Commercial. The write up dances around the obvious. Google has to generate revenue from sources other than giant Web pages with ads. Now the Amp pages are tiny and the old school revenue is shrinking. Yikes. Solution? Sell anything and everything to whoever will pay. The user experience on most Google services delivered on a mobile device are terrible. Can you use a Google Map? Can you figure out how to get rid of messages that cover up the map?
To sum up, this is an interesting article, but it is coming about a decade after the plumbing was explained in excruciating detail in Google technical papers (no longer online by the way) and Google patents from a decade ago. I explain some of these “inventions” in my decade old monograph “Google Version 2.0: The Calculating Predator.” If you want a copy, let me know. Write darkcyber333 at yandex dot com.
Stephen E Arnold, May 29, 2019
Amazon Twitch Shakes Its Digital Fist Which Hits the Bits
May 29, 2019
In my talk on June 4, 2019, I have a couple of comments to make about illegal streaming services. One of my examples of outright copyright violation is Twitch. The DarkCyber team has been tracking popular music streamed during “game related chats” like pole dancing and body stretching exercise sessions. Individuals who play US television shows dubbed in Russian are waving their Fortnite weapons at US television producers. We also have examples of a Russia Today affiliate streaming the more visual incidents associated with yellow jacket protects. There are other examples of how the game streaming system is being manipulated. No Dark Web needed.
Amazon Twitch tries to curtail these activities. Some of them are just futile. There is a streamer from Florida who happily drives and live streams. The “star” often moves the camera around. Distracted driving? No just another example of what gamers can access without doing much more than clicking a link and popping a word or phrase into the Twitch search system.
Now the “real” media has discovered what the young at heart have known for quite a while: Amazon Twitch, like Facebook and YouTube live video, is a bit of a challenge. “Twitch Is Temporarily Suspending New Creators from Streaming after Troll Attack” documents one facet of the “live streaming” problem. From banning BadBunny (a star whom one pays to insult her followers) to SweetSaltyPeach (a star known for wearing interesting clothing and assembling toys), Amazon Twitch needs a rethink. DarkCyber is not sure cursing, soft porn, and stolen content are what some individuals think the service should be delivering. But there’s always the chance that DarkCyber cannot divine the master plan of the Bezos bulldozer.
The write up points out:
Twitch’s statement acknowledged that they “became aware of a number of accounts targeting the Artifact game directory” over the weekend. Twitch’s team also recognized trolls were using the category “to share content that grossly violates our terms of service.” The majority of the accounts that “shared and viewed content were automated.”
Now about Amazon’s Sagemaker system. Is it able to deal with Amazon Twitch? Humans to the bulldozer controls. On the double.
Stephen E Arnold, May 29, 2019
Factualities for May 29, 2019
May 29, 2019
Numbers, particularly nice round ones, have been zipping around the interwebs in the last seven days. Here’s a tasty selection of some which caught our attention.
8. Number of people with whom a Google Duo user can chat simultaneously on one mobile phone screen. Source: Esquire
2,000. Number of Mannequin Challenge videos Google used to train its smart software. Source: Igyhaan
14. Number of years Google stored some customers’ passwords in plain text. Source: Next Web
3. Number of years to elapse before IBM commercializes quantum computing. Source: Interesting Engineering
$30 million. Palantir Technologies’ losses in 2018. Note: The company was founded in 2003. Source: Bloomberg
885 million. Number of customer records “exposed” online by a Fortune 500 insurance company named First American Financial. Source: Krebs on Security
71 percent. Percentage of student who would buy an Apple Mac computer if the students could afford the Apple product. Source: Tech Radar
50 percent. Percentage of businesses unable to handle cloud computing security. Source: IT Pro Portal
$425 million. How much money Google will not capture due to the Huawei ban. Source: Mr. Top Step
$2.5 billion. Dollar size of the cloud game market (aka online games) in 24 months. Source: IHS
120 minutes. The length of Microsoft’s E3 2019 press conference. Source: Game Rant
Stephen E Arnold, May 29, 2019
US Government Social Media Archive
May 28, 2019
Library of Congress, hello, LOC, are you there? What about other US government agencies? Do you have these data?
Maybe not?
I read “U.S. Navy Creating a 350 Billion Record Social Media Archive” and there is not one word about the Library of Congress. The US Navy wants to build a social media collection. Based on the sketchy information available, the content scope will include:
- Messages from 200 million unique users (about 30 percent of social media users)
- Time window: July 1, 2014, to December 31, 2016
- 100 languages
- Metadata (date, time, location, etc.).
The RFP is located on FedBizOps.
Stephen E Arnold, May 28, 2019
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