Mayochup: Why Machine Translation Can Let You Down
May 20, 2019
Short honk: DarkCyber spotted a story about “mayochup.” The word’s origin is Kraft Heinz. According to The Star:
Kraft Heinz has acknowledged an “unfortunate translation” of its latest buzzy condiment of pre-mixed mayonnaise-ketchup that has reached Canada. Mayochup, which was a crowd-sourced name, can mean something entirely different in some Cree dialects, according to linguists and Cree-speakers.
The newspaper did not spell out the translation of the Cree word. That’s okay. Google did not recognize the word, preferring to render the translation as “mayochup.” Helpful.
Is this important? To the Cree, yes. To Heinz Kraft, probably because it will cost real money to deal with the PR problem. For users of automated translation systems, if the word is a new one, the translation won’t reflect the actual meaning.
That means some high flying technologists will be mayochuped.
Stephen E Arnold, May 20, 2019
Forcing China to Fill the Google Gap
May 20, 2019
I read the Reuters’ exclusive “Google Suspends Some Business with Huawei after Trump Blacklist – source.” The news story presents some information which on the surface is interesting. Google allegedly has “suspended business with Huawei.” There is a caveat; namely, “except those publicly available via open source licensing.” Huawei mobile phone users can chug along for now. Reuters quotes an unnamed source in the rich tradition of “real news.” The source allegedly said:
“Huawei will only be able to use the public version of Android and will not be able to get access to proprietary apps and services from Google.
The number of blog posts and “real” news stories about this Google move is intriguing. Most of these follow the standard impact on business, what about the users, and whither Android lines.
My thought is that innovation often is a result of adversity. If I narrow my focus to topics related to intelligence analysis and a bit of the lawlful intercept activity, this development could have some unintended consequences. Put aside fears of more industrial espionage, hassling of Google and other US firms as a retaliatory measure, and the grousing of US companies faced with losing Huawei and its suppliers as customers.
Chinese engineers may turn their attention from reasonably effective facial recognition and surveillance systems to the job of moving beyond Google’s technology, creating parallels for some US technologies, and innovating in ways to lock out prying eyes from certain types of data transmissions.
The thrill of making life difficult for Huawei and demonstrating that Google is on board with US trade policies may be short lived. Maybe China moves some of its more interesting technology into the “Google gap”? Perhaps China steps up the for functionalities no longer easily available? What if China finds a way to shut certain mechanisms for monitoring information shoved around by Huawei and other Chinese vendors’ equipment?
The unintended consequence is that the US and possibly some of its allies will be forced to become more technologically innovative.
The big question for me is: “What if this is the turning point for Chinese technology?” China could force the US to become makers of buggy whips and seat covers for the new communication vehicles which may come down the information superhighway.
That’s a big and unintended consequence to consider in my opinion.
Stephen E Arnold, May 20, 2019
Microsoft and Misconduct
May 20, 2019
Microsoft acknowledges it has a problem with workplace misconduct, and is dedicating resources to get to the bottom of it. Quartz reports, “Microsoft Is Tripling the Size of its Team Investigating Workplace Misconduct.” Since March 2019, the company has been coping with reports of harassment and discrimination that were first expressed on their internal message board. Within a week of those reports, some preliminary changes were implemented, including increased manager training and a promise of more data transparency. Writer Dave Gershgorn tells us:
“Microsoft’s head of HR, Kathleen Hogan, told employees she had met with 100 men and women who have come forward about misconduct inside the company, a number Microsoft confirmed to Quartz. Hogan will focus on reforming five areas of internal culture: behavior, manager expectations, investigations, accountability, and data transparency. Each of those areas was also mentioned in a letter Nadella sent to Microsoft employees last month. Microsoft chief legal officer Brad Smith also told employees that the company is expanding its Corporate, External, & Legal Affairs (CELA) team, which investigates these matters, from 7 people to 23. The senior leadership team (SLT) now meets every week about this topic, employees were told, though a Microsoft representative notes that company culture has long been a staple of the weekly SLT meetings.”
Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella allegedly said: “I want people to point out my flaws.”
Admitting there is a problem and making an effort to fix it is often the wisest course. We shall see where Microsoft takes it from here.
Cynthia Murrell, May 20, 2019
Amazonia for May 20, 2019
May 20, 2019
The Amazon machine is grinding along. We noted these items from the last seven days’ marketing exhaust.
Amazon Covets Covington, Kentucky
Geekwire’s reported that Amazon plans to use the white elephant airport near Cincinnati as a hub for its air freight delivery business. The Prime Air Hub requires an initial investment of $1.5 billion. The hub will accommodate 100 airplanes. Kentucky, like other Amazon suitors, ponied up $45 million in incentives.
DarkCyber believes that FedEx (Memphis) and UPS (Louisville) may face some headwinds as the Amazon Prime operation picks up steam. The Amazon bulldozer cuts new paths, and it is possible that some of these will cross the paths of these two and other air freight competitors. UPS may have less “economies” to squeeze in its operations. FedEx continues to ponder the impact of email on those once lucrative overnight deliveries for fast trackers.
It’s worth noting that Amazon is headed toward another facet of the shipping business if the information in “Amazon Jumps Into Freight Brokerage” is accurate. The article states:
Amazon.com has jumped into the market of the third-party logistics broker, roiling the waters and raising concern that the Seattle-based e-commerce giant could disrupt the freight industry forever and indelibly. Amazon’s new freight-hauling site — located at freight.Amazon.com — has been up and running since August 2018, but it went largely unnoticed by media until early May, when The Wall Street Journal and others reported on Amazon’s entry into the market. Reports noted Amazon was offering “beta service” full truckload hauling in dry vans. The service is available for pickups in Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.
Amazon Embraces Semi-Abandoned Malls Too
A report in Inc. Magazine explains
Amazon is now moving into precisely those derelict malls. Why? To use the space for its vast and, some might say heartless, fulfillment centers.
Once people visited malls. Perhaps Amazon trucks with the happy face will deliver products to people.
Amazon-a-Roo
The Inquirer noted that Amazon twice tried to acquire the food delivery outfit Deliveroo. Those flopped. Amazon’s response? Invest. Amazon is part of a $575 million funding round for the company. The company’s funding is more than $1.5 billion. Deliveroo operates in more than 14 countries.
Alexa, Will You Stop Listening to Me?
Forbes reported that Alexa is always listening to one’s conversations. The reason is, “Make life better.” According to the capitalist tool:
The fact that Alexa is always listening to her surrounding is easily explained by the technology that Amazon chose to implement for its smart speakers: The Seattle-based technology giant uses cloud computing to process every spoken word captured by its smart speakers. What it means, in layman’s terms, is that every word you say to Alexa is sent to Amazon’s cloud service to be automatically transcribed before it can respond to your request including basic commands like “play music” or “turn on the light”—nothing is processed on the device itself because it doesn’t have the necessary computing power and the intelligence on-board.
Seems efficient and quite delicate, like a bulldozer. But there is one rust spot on the shiny Alexa D-9. According to ZDNet:
Amazon can’t yet completely delete Alexa voice transcriptions. It is working on a solution to deleting data when users request and is planning a bug fix for its Echo Dot Kids Edition.
The article pointed out:
Amazon’s admission that it retains text transcripts indefinitely followed news of a joint complaint filed with the the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over the Amazon Echo Dot Kids Edition devices. A group of 19 consumer and public health advocates claim children’s data is retained even after parents delete voice recordings. A child can use an Alexa feature called “Remember This”, which keeps anything a child says until parents call Amazon customer service to delete the entire profile.
Amazon Travel: Another Amazon Hotels?
Google has been trying to corner the travel bookings market. Now Amazon wants a piece of the action. Is Amazon confronting the Google head on? No, Amazon is starting in India. “Amazon Launches Flight Bookings in India in a Superapp Strategy” reports that Amazon’s angle is to offer cash back on bookings. DarkCyber noted this passage:
Before 2014, Amazon had offered hotels sporadically at steep discounts with vouchers, but it then tried to provide public rates, and build a more ongoing offering, with the initial iteration focusing on weekend getaways from several major cities. But Amazon abruptly shuttered its hotel business in October 2015, perhaps a year after launching it, when it found the going very tough, and after not getting the results it apparently expected. Amazon was coy about its precise reasons for abandoning the hotel effort as it didn’t provide any substantial information about its exodus.
Amazon flopped in the hotel business. Skift opines:
Given Amazon’s stilted try at building a hotel business from scratch, some would argue that an acquisition of a major travel company, such as Expedia or TripAdvisor, for example, might be the way to go. Amazon had $23 billion in free cash flow for the trailing 12 months at the end of the first quarter, so buying either company would be affordable.
More Robots Are Coming to Amazon Warehouses
Reuters reported that Amazon will replace humanoid workers with robots. The robots pack boxes with customers’ goods more quickly than the humans. Over time robots will be more economical: No breaks for personal needs, no vacations, no coffee breaks, and no thinking about diapers, unionizing, or pay. “Amazon Rolls Out Machines That Pack Orders and Replace Jobs” reports:
The new machines, known as the CartonWrap from Italian firm CMC Srl, pack much faster than humans. They crank out 600 to 700 boxes per hour, or four to five times the rate of a human packer, the sources said. The machines require one person to load customer orders.
The first robots will require two or three humans to support the single robot. But it is faster, and a robot is unlikely to think about a union, a vacation, or the personal necessities a humanoid has.
Is Amazon Eco-Friendly in France?
“Does Amazon France Really Destroy Millions of Products? Yes, But –” asserts:
Amazon destroys a lot of products they can’t sell.
Why?
Taxes. Amazon does not like the idea of taxes DarkCyber assumes. The article makes this clear:
Amazon does destroy products, and one reason they do so is taxes
Logical and efficient.
Buffet and Amazon
Business Insider (the odd duck outfit with a pay wall and no pay wall) reported that Warren Buffet, once the world’s richest man, has about $1 billion in Amazon stock. Buffet’s group “it bought 483,300 shares in the first quarter, worth about $904 million.”
According to Yahoo, Amazon’s AWS boss sold $5.9 million worth of Amazon shares. Does Andy Jassy know something that Mr. Buffet does not?
Amazon Pays Employees to Quit and Deliver Instead
“Minecraft Meets the Real World, Amazon Pays its Employees to Quit, and the Scooter Saga Continues,” despite the wonky title, contains an interesting Amazon factoid:
Amazon is offering its employees an incentive to quit their jobs, if they start their own package delivery companies. This is the latest wrinkle in the company’s Delivery Service Partner program.
Efficient and logical. Let the inefficient workers drive around delivering packages hopefully.
Amazon Away Teams
The Register explained how Amazon coordinates its engineering work. The trick is a “hivemind”. We noted that Amazon
has a system of optimizing internal collaboration by organizing development around a collection independently managed services with a fascinating set of policies for governing it all based on A/B testing, pushed-down decision making, and a carefully curated culture of collaboration that makes use of a novel concept: Away Teams.
The article includes other details which may be of interest to a person eager to emulate one of the methods designed to keep Amazon efficient. There is no information about how an Away Team orders a virtual pizza for the ravenous technologists elsewhere in the hive.
Wanna Code in Cannes?
DarkCyber is not sure Cannes and coding go together as well as money, sun, sand, and Campari. If you know how to make AWS sit and fetch, you may want to journey to the Change for Good Hackathon. Those long khaki pants, gray T shirts, and uncut hair will match up to the average Cannes citizen. More information is available at Cannes Lion.
Partner and Integrator Activity
More companies with which DarkCyber is familiar has jumped on the Amazon bandwagon. Some representative examples:
- Advertity is now certified to Amazon digital customer experience work. No, DarkCyber does not know what that means. It’s probably important once one is trapped in the labyrinth of AWS.
- HyTrust has expanded its CloudControl system to handle AWS. Source: Eweek
- Metova is now an AWS advanced partner. Source: Csion
Stephen E Arnold, May 20, 2019
HSSCMM: Real Media Notices That Alphabet Management Misspells Stability
May 19, 2019
HSSCMM means in my small world in rural Kentucky the “high school science club management method.” HSSCMM is a wonderful acronym for many reasons. First, it requires that one have multi-year experience as a member and “officer” of an American high school science club from an era when high schools (public and private) had a Science Club. Second, appreciation blossoms when one thinks about the pranks the high school science club talked about and sometimes pulled off. A modern manifestation of the prank has been MIT students’ putting horses, autos, and MIT on a roof. Heh heh heh. Third, understanding is enriched with a modest brush with honest to goodness Googlers and seeing up close and personal the way in which adolescent thinking and global power blend in delicious ways.
Reading “Inside Google’s Civil War” does take a step in right direction on the path to Googletown. I learned:
Google paid former executive Andy Rubin a $90 million exit package, despite facing a sexual misconduct accusation Google deemed credible.
Intriguing, but were there other interactions of significance between “super” Googlers and the “peasant” Googlers? That might be something to explore.
I noted this insight about the GOOG:
Google was purpose-built to amplify employee voices.
Who knew? How could the HSSCMM foster insider behavior among insiders? How could the shining star of the Silicon Valley implementation of HSSCMM become a digital shibboleth? Perhaps the “we’re better” tendencies extended to the individuals who really were part of the true in crowd. The one percent of the one percent is a reasonable way to visualize the partitioning of the GOOG.
Googletown has to evolve. Twenty years is a reasonable amount of time for the sprout of online advertising to take root and flourish into the mighty oaks of science club experiments nourished by rivers of cash. True, some “oaks” have withered and died or been killed to make room for new developments. WebAccelerator perished to allow Google to focus on solving death. And the progress in cracking that challenge can be viewed through Google Glass I believe.
Now the Google approach to management is attracting the attention of “real” journalists looking at “real” issues inside the company.
In my opinion, the rock to flip is the one spray painted with the graffiti “HSSCMM.” There is a management biome thriving out of the bright Mountain View sunshine. The interpersonal interaction angle is one thread which when pulled may lead to the hemp rope strong enough to pull the good ship USS Google to the dry dock.
Googletown’s demographics, its super stars, and its in- and after-school behaviors may have stories to tell and lessons to teach. I am not sure if the phrase “civil war” captures the reality of digital urbanization. HSSCMM warrants scrutiny, not laments.
Stephen E Arnold, May 19, 2019
BBC Explains the End of the Open Internet After It Ended
May 18, 2019
A 3,500 word story from the BBC explains the end of the open Internet. The main idea is that the US approach of sending anything to anyone is not what China, Russia, and other countries will accept. “The Global Internet Is Disintegrating. What Comes Next?” is not news. The essay is a pinch of intelligence agency analysis (a small pinch I might add), some business school semantics, and the routine quotes from experts.
The “what comes next” is mostly ignored. The reason is that the actions taken by a number of countries over the last decade represent the construction of a series of walled gardens. Blocking access is old hat in Iran. China and Russia have stepped up their efforts with political hand waving. Russia has laws which make the US companies either roll over or shut down. How about LinkedIn in Russia?
China is doing the system administrator squeeze. The twist is that Chinese high technology companies are lending a helping hand. Last time I was in China it took only a few minutes for my mobile phone to become a less than helpful gizmo. Five years earlier it took a couple of days to achieve the near useless state.
The BBC explains:
A separate internet for some, Facebook-mediated sovereignty for others: whether the information borders are drawn up by individual countries, coalitions, or global internet platforms, one thing is clear – the open internet that its early creators dreamed of is already gone.
With the business school jargon “digital deciders” wafting through the article, the question “what comes next” is not answered. The reason is that the reality is unpalatable to many in what China and Russia think of as the West.
The actions of countries attempting to prevent unfettered flows of information are designed to protect the government and commercial sector from the difficulties that arise when using US technology without an old fashioned speed limiter. Smaller countries are not keen on having Facebook and Twitter users coordinate protests and disrupt what these countries’ governments see as “normal” processes.
The so called digital deciders have already decided. The future is in place, and what needs to be described and understood include:
- The actions of China and Russia are designed to control US influence. The future is a shift from control to more aggressive actions.
- The alignment of nation states will be a decision by those countries to sign on for either the China approach or the Russia approach. In short, new blocs are now taking shape.
- The behaviors of US high technology companies are designed to increase the power of these firms. Therefore, the companies will find themselves sued and hassled because some thinkers in China and Russia believe it is their duty to step in and reign in the actions of unregulated US firms.
The future of the Internet is, in my opinion, a battle ground. Bad things can happen in such a place even if it is digital.
Stephen E Arnold, May 18, 2019
digital deciders
Firefox Translation Add In
May 17, 2019
The DarkCyber team encounters information in a number of languages. For years, we relied on Google Translate, but the limits on document size proved an annoyance. FreeTranslate.com has been more useful. We have an older installation of some Systran modules.
DarkCyber learned that Firefox has returned to the “translate now” territory with Translate Man. You can get an overview of the functionality of the add in in “Translate anything instantly in Firefox with Translate Man.” Translate Man uses Google’s API.
We haven’t tested the functionality of the add in in an extensive way. It did translate words and short passages in a helpful way.
The write up identifies useful features that add in delivers. Two are a translate on hover feature and a pronunciation function so you can “hear” the word or passage.
In our experience, some text requires a native speaker of the language to translate with accuracy.
Google has introduced its wonderfully named Translatotron. You can read about that innovation in “Google Unveils Translatotron, Its Speech-to-Speech Translation System.”
Now about these systems’ ability to translate the argot of insiders involved in “interesting” work in North Korea or Iran? What about making sense of emojis in clear text messages?
Someday perhaps.
Stephen E Arnold, May 17, 2019
HPE: The Acquisition Champ Makes a Move
May 17, 2019
I read “HP Enterprise Nears Deal to Buy Supercomputer Pioneer Cray.” The article reports the allegedly accurate rumor that the former owner of Autonomy is poised to snap up another outfit. The idea is that by purchasing a fast growing, high potential company, HPE will increase its revenues.
I noted this statement:
Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. has agreed to buy U.S. supercomputer maker Cray Inc. in a deal valued at about $1.4 billion as the firm works to become more competitive in high-end computing.
The market for high end computing is changing. Cray, founded in 1972, has bounced from owner to owner in the last 47 years. Yep, almost a half century. In the world of computers, that strikes me as a long, long time.
Years ago I worked with a Cray engineer. I recall one comment about her former employer:
It was fun. We mostly solved problems the Cray way.
What was the Cray way? Usually sophisticated, quite original, and very expensive to manufacture.
How much of that tradition persists after 47 years?
HPE’s financial results. There may be some useful comparative data on Top500.org. Cray held down the number 5 spot in November 2018. IBM an China offer solutions which are a bit more zippy. But for tens of millions of dollars, the stakes are high when competing with a country and IBM.
What about Amazon, Google, and Microsoft? These outfits have systems which are not “super”. The companies do generate some hefty revenues.
Stephen E Arnold, May 17, 2019
IBM Hyperledger: More Than a Blockchain or Less?
May 17, 2019
Though the IBM-backed open-source project Hyperledger has been prominent on the blockchain scene since 2016, The Next Web declares, “IBM’s Hyperledger Isn’t a Real Blockchain—Here’s Why.” Kadena president, and writer, Stuart Popejoy tells us:
“A blockchain is a decentralized and distributed database, an immutable ledger of events or transactions where truth is determined by a consensus mechanism — such as participants voting to agree on what gets written — so that no central authority arbitrates what is true. IBM’s definition of blockchain captures the distributed and immutable elements of blockchain but conveniently leaves out decentralized consensus — that’s because IBM Hyperledger Fabric doesn’t require a true consensus mechanism at all.
We noted this statement as well:
“Instead, it suggests using an ‘ordering service’ called Kafka, but without enforced, democratized, cryptographically-secure voting between participants, you can’t really prove whether an agent tampers with the ledger. In effect, IBM’s ‘blockchain’ is nothing more than a glorified time-stamped list of entries. IBM’s architecture exposes numerous potential vulnerabilities that require a very small amount of malicious coordination. For instance, IBM introduces public-key cryptography ‘inside the network’ with validator signatures, which fundamentally invalidates the proven security model of Bitcoin and other real blockchains, where the network can never intermediate a user’s externally-provided public key signature.”
Then there are IBM’s approaches to architecture, security flaws, and smart contracts to consider, as well as misleading performance numbers. See the article for details on each of those criticisms. Popejoy concludes with the prediction that better blockchains are bound to be developed, alongside a more positive approach to technology in general, across society.
Cynthia Murrell, May 17, 2019
Surveillance Use Cases for Smart Software
May 16, 2019
Analytics India describes five use cases for artificial intelligence (smart software). Some of these are applications of AI which cannot or will not be discussed in many US publications. “5 Ways In Which China Uses AI For Mass Surveillance” explains each of these five Chinese implementations:
- Racial profiling. Differentiating a “real” Chinese person from a Uighur.
- Mass surveillance. A digital replacement for the block monitor in houtongs
- Internet censorship. The blocking of Wikipedia is effective and a good use case for AI interaction with certain high level network processes
- Snooping. In the US and Europe this is lawful intercept plus social media filtering and analysis.
- Flagging defaulters. This is a subset of social credit scoring. The person not allowed to buy a high speed train ticket learns this from a smart kiosk. Police use of smart software is a logical level up tactic for anklet bracelet activities.
The article is a useful one to tuck away in a file labeled “The Future”. DarkCyber has a list of other use cases and applications for AI, but these five are representative. Automated pattern matching and bubble gum card generation should have been included, however.
Stephen E Arnold, May 16, 2019
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