Google: Now That Is a Good Name for a Child
June 26, 2019
“Just Google it, Google”. Or: “Google your report contains irrelevant information from Google. Or: “Google, are you stalking me?”
Who might say these things? Anyone talking to the child of Andi Cahya Saputra and 27-year-old Ella Karina from West Java. These delightful individuals named their child Google.
According to Ubergizmo:
According to the baby’s father, “I told my father, Pak, Google has a great meaning, because I hope Google can help many people, become a useful person to others.” He has also since responded to critics who claimed that this was done in hopes of getting some kind of financial compensation from maybe Google.
Just Google it.
Stephen E Arnold, June 26, 2019
Google: Hunting for Not Us
June 26, 2019
There was a dust up about song lyrics. As I recall, the responsibility did not fall upon the impossibly magnificent Google shoulders. A supplier may have acted in a manner which some “genius” thinks is a third party’s problem. Yep, a supplier.
I just read “Tracing the Supply Chain Attack on Android.” The write up explained that malware with impossible to remember and spell names like Yehuo found its way on to Android phones via the “supply chain.” I don’t know much about supply chains, but I think these are third parties who do work for a company. The idea is that someone at one firm contracts with the third party to perform work. When I worked as a “third party,” I recall people who were paying me taking actions; for example, texting, visiting, emailing, requiring me or my colleagues to attend meetings in which some of the people in charge fiddled with their mobile devices, and fidgeted.
The write up digs through quite a bit of data and reports many interesting details.
However, there is one point which is not included in the write up: Google appears to find itself looking at a third party as a bad actor. What unites the “genius” affair and the pre installed malware.
Google management processes?
Yes, that’s one possible answer. Who said something along the lines that if one creates chaos, that entity must address the problems created by chaos?
But if a third party did it, whose problem is it anyway?
Stephen E Arnold, June 26, 2019
Google Walk Out Leader Walks Out
June 26, 2019
Is diversity possible at Google?
Not too long ago, Claire Stapleton led a series of walkouts at Google related to policies that are sexist towards female employees. Since Stapleton staged the walkouts, she claimed she faced a growing amount of hostility at her job. The Inquirer investigates more in the article, “Googler Who Lead Mass Walkout Leaves The Company Due To ‘Manager Hostility.’”
Stapleton was a YouTube marketing manager and had worked at Google for twelve years. Ever since she took a stand against Google’s sexist policies, Stapleton said that Google has become more hostile toward her. She specifically used the term “scarlet letter” in reference to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book of the same name about a woman who bore a child out of wedlock. The scarlet letter term is ironic, because of that connotation. Stapleton decided to leave to escape from the stress and shame. She also is pregnant and did not want the stress to harm her unborn child.
Google said something different:
“We thank Claire for her work at Google and wish her all the best. To reiterate, we don’t tolerate retaliation. Our employee relations team did a thorough investigation of her claims and found no evidence of retaliation. They found that Claire’s management team supported her contributions to our workplace, including awarding her their team Culture Award for her role in the walkout.”
Google’s response is the standard, inoffensive HR copy. It is impressive that Stapleton’s management team awarded her the Culture Award. Even if Google praised her efforts, the company could still ostracize her. It could have been Google’s entire plan to place undue stress on Stapleton, until she could not handle the pressure anymore and needed to leave for her sanity. This is a nasty business tactic and it is not new, but it is a shame that it is still being used. Stapleton may continue to push for equality and diversity. She was good enough to get hired, but not good enough to stay: Is that a fair assessment?
Whitney Grace, June 26, 2019
Enterprise Search: Decades of Disappointment? Yep, Yep
June 25, 2019
I stumble across allegedly accurate factoids about enterprise search once in a while. The coverage of the systems which can index and make findable data and information in an enterprise is a shadow of its former self. I noted the story in a blog which caters to the content management industry (no, I don’t know what that means). The write up was “9 Takeaways from the Digital Workplace Experience Conference 2019.” No, I don’t know what a “digital experience” is either. But hold on, there was a reference to a study by Simpler Media Group (no, I never had heard of this outfit before I read the article). That study included data. One factoid is allegedly accurate and it makes clear that the outfits selling enterprise search systems face a bit of a challenge. Here’s the passage I noted. Remember. This is an alleged factoid, not something I can verify because I no longer maintain my data and files about the fantastical world of enterprise search:
Enterprise search followed document management in the survey but, again, only 11% said it was effective. “This pattern repeated itself over and over across many tools and technologies,” Fagan [a person who is an expert in Simpler Media] said. “In each instance, the tool’s reported importance far exceeded the actual efficacy.”
Enterprise search has been around a long time. IBM STAIRS? InQuire? NetWeaver? Sophia? My all time fave Entopia. (Search apparently has some relationship to utopia I assume.) In its remarkable 40 or more year history, people cannot use a system to find the information they need within the organization for which they work.
As non text data, encrypted content, and intercepted information proliferates, finding is more difficult today than at any time in my professional career.
There’s a lot of wonky enterprise software floating around. Just read through some Capterra listings. But 11 percent. That’s special. Is the number “true”. Sure, who can doubt Simple Media and a blog about something I can’t define, content management.
After decades of disappointment, it seems that enterprise search has some opportunities for improvement. Simple? Right? Just manage the content? Make information findable? One size fits all? Sure.
Stephen E Arnold, June 25, 2019
DarkCyber Video News for June 25, 2019, Now Available
June 25, 2019
DarkCyber for June 25, 2019, is now available at www.arnoldit.com/wordpress and on Vimeo at https://www.vimeo.com/343915592 .
The program is a production of Stephen E Arnold. It is the only weekly video news shows focusing on the Dark Web, cybercrime, and lesser known Internet services.
This week’s story line up includes: Twitch.tv covers of the Hong Kong protests when YouTube did not; Cellebrite technology unlocks any mobile phone; Virsec’s Shadow Broker report; DarkCyber’s new coverage of intelware for government use; and French police shut down a contraband market with 7,000 customers.
This week’s feature is a report about Amazon Twitch.tv’ live coverage of the Hong Kong extradition protest. The free service streamed programs which provided continuous views of official announcements, confrontations between protestors and police, and stunning images of hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong residents protesting. One stream features nine panels of live video. Each panel provided live video of different protest locations. YouTube Live did not stream the event. Queries about the Hong Kong protest returned hits to archived video of protests. DarkCyber reports that Twitch.tv’s coverage of this important event marks a turning point for both Amazon and for Google.
Other stories covered in this week’s DarkCyber video news program are:
Cellebrite, a company specializing in services for law enforcement and intelligence agencies, announced an important technology achievement. The company can now unlock and access information on any Android or Apple iPhone. Cellebrite’s innovation provides access to iPhones running the most recent version of iOS. Plus, with the new technology, cyber labs will be able to unlock these devices on their premises.
With the surge in ransomware and the stepped up attacks on US cities’ networks, the Virsec white paper “How the Shadow Brokers have Permanently Changed the Cybersecurity Landscape” is a timely and important report. DarkCyber highlights the contents of this free document and explains how a person can obtain a copy of the report.
French police continued its crackdown on hidden Web sites selling contraband. In simultaneous raids in Bordeaux, Nice, and other cities, authorities arrested three individuals believed to be the operators of the ecommerce site. The French Deep Web Market sold drugs, weapons, and forged documents. The operation served more than 5,000 customers and relied on about 700 vendors. Police seized data, hardware, and software.
The final story reports that each weekly video will feature intelligence and investigative software. Systems profiled will make it possible for investigators and intelligence professionals to perform functions like geo-fencing via graphical interfaces, no programming by the user will be required. The story highlights a free bundle of policeware gathered by a former FBI professional. DarkCyber explains how to obtain more than 36 software tools without charge.
DarkCyber video news is a weekly program. It contains no advertising, and it is designed for law enforcement, security, and intelligence professionals interested in software, new developments, and investigative innovations. New programs become available on Tuesday of each week. Programs are available via YouTube and Vimeo.
Kenny Toth, June 25, 2019
Facebook Versa: Do GOOG and MSFT Face a Woulda Coulda Shoulda Moment
June 24, 2019
I saw a number of references to Bill Gates and his biggest regret. The “regret”, according to a person with whom I spoke at the ice skating rink, was not inventing or cloning a phone operating system. I think that meant, “I should have done the DOS thing again.” Information exchanged at a sportsplex is about as useful as Internet content from a “begging for dollars” publisher I assume.
As I thought about this alleged “I shoulda, coulda, woulda” approach, I spotted this write up from: “Bill Gates Says His Greatest Mistake Ever Was Failing to Create Android at Microsoft.” This article may have been the source for the guy in line with his kids. I was unaware of the fact that hockey players know how to read.
The shadow message, in my opinion, is:
Facebook moved forward to create its digital currency. Google and Microsoft have not. Both can. But the initiative or momentum is Facebook’s it seems.
I wonder if the senior management of Google and Microsoft, including the lower profile founders, will look back at Facebook’s decision and roll out the “shoulda, woulda, coulda” line?
What’s remarkable about Facebook’s move strikes me as the company’s actions when it faces its greatest social and political pushback. Some executives would have avoided doing much of anything.
This action triggered three thoughts:
- Facebook doesn’t care what people think. He sees an opportunity and goes for it. Maybe this is good, maybe bad. But he did it. Action, not retreat.
- Libra is an overt, aggressive act which is definitely going to throw politicos and competitors into a tailspin. The privacy angle is a big deal, but now a global currency, essentially outside the span of control of countries?
- Microsoft did not seize on digital currency as it did DOS. Google did not seize this opportunity as it did search. It is possible that time does wither boldness and innovation’s fire?
Net net: Regulating Facebook is going to be interesting. Dithering is abdication. Perhaps Facebook will roll out a new flag featuring yet another hand gesture to customers, governments, and Google.
Google and Microsoft seem to be waiting for the “shoulda, coulda, woulda” bus to arrive.
Stephen E Arnold, June 24, 2019
Amazonia for June 24, 2019
June 24, 2019
The Amazon online bookstore continues to push outside the virtual mall. Some of the more interesting announcements about the landscape changing Bezos bulldozer include:
Bebo Bepops into Amazon Twitch: Name That Gamer Tune
DarkCyber believes that Amazon’s acquisition of Bebo, a moribund social network outfit, is a big deal. You can get the Silicon Valley take on this cheapo acquisition in “Amazon’s Twitch Acquired Social Networking Platform Bebo for Up to $25M to Bolster Its Esports Efforts.” DarkCyber thinks that there are other reasons for this deal. Socializing esports is a great red herring snagged by a public relations hook. There is more behind this deal, but the explanation will not be disclosed in this blog. Catch me after my Amazon lecture in late September 2019. I will be in San Antonio at the TechnoSecurity & Digital Forensics Conference holding forth for law enforcement, security, and intelligence professionals.
Some Amazon game programmers now have an opportunity to drive Amazon delivery vans or flip burgers. Green Man Gaming reports that Amazon Game Studios lays off dozens of staff. We think Google Stadia may be hiring.
Surveillance as a Service
Quite a few pundits and wizards noted that Amazon received a patent for flying a drone with a camera. Now that is one of those inventions which is not on a par with the spat over calculus. If you want to read the document, navigate to this link. Why’s this important? It’s not, but it snaps into the matrix I use for Amazon’s push into policeware. Lecture available for a fee. Just write darkcyber333 at yandex dot com. Although not directly about Amazon, this write up edges close to the revenue potential of the alleged Amazon service.
DHS Has Moved Biometrics to Amazon’s Cloud
Ouch. Google, IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle just took one to the jaw. We noted this article in Geekwire: “DHS Moving Biometric Screening System to Amazon Web Services Amid Debate over Government Tech.” Here’s a statement we circled in bright blue marker:
The Department of Homeland Security is migrating the system it uses to search for people using biometric data to Amazon’s cloud….
The system is a catchall for fingerprints, iris scans, images of faces, and other information collected by the agency’s various departments, like TSA, FEMA, and ICE. It allows officials to scan a database and quickly identify undocumented immigrants, terrorist suspects, and other people of interest. The database is used by “DHS, other Federal agencies, State and local law enforcement, the intelligence community, and international partners to support counterterrorism, immigration and law enforcement, and credentialing efforts pertaining to identity services.”
You may be able to ferret out more clues in this RFI. Keep in mind that if the link goes dead, complain to USA.gov, DHS, or your favorite citizen services office, not DarkCyber.
Is this important? On a par with Bebo, the defunct social network company Amazon bought as most people read about Facebook’s sovereign currency play.
Ring May Amazonify Itself
Quartz reports that the Ring doorbell may undergo what MBAs call “ product extension.” What can Amazon do with Ring beyond connecting a Ring to Amazon’s connected lock service? There’s the sharing of video footage with neighbors and others, including “more than 50 police departments.” According to the “real” news outfit:
Amazon is apparently not stopping there with its one-stop viewing. The company recently received trademarks, uncovered by Quartz, for multiple products that bear the Ring name, including Ring Beams, Ring Halo, and Ring Net. All three trademarks are listed as covering a range of uses, many matching what Ring products currently offer, including internet-connected security cameras, alarm systems, lighting, and cloud video storage. They also mention new applications, such as cameras intended to be mounted on motor vehicles, electronic locks, indoor cameras like pet and baby monitors, and “home and business surveillance systems.” All three trademarks even suggest the marks should cover “navigation software for use with smart, autonomous vehicles and mobile machines for use in connection with internet of things (IoT) enabled devices.”
DarkCyber is disappointed that no “Ring a Dinga Ding Dong” was mentioned.
Amazon Twitch: Copyright Issues and Porn
Most of the people with whom I speak in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky, think a twitch is what grandpa’s leg does when he wants to go to the tavern and grandma won’t let him. Twitch is Amazon’s “game” streaming service. The Verge reported “Twitch sues to unmask trolls that posted violent and pornographic streams.” DarkCyber noted this statement:
The videos were posted last month by an organized group of trolls in Twitch’s Artifact category, who are named in the lawsuit as John and Jane Does 1-100. Aside from the video filmed by the Christchurch shooter, trolls also streamed porn, copyrighted movies and television shows, and other illegal and harmful content.
Is the issue one that took place in the past, or is the problem of copyright violation and questionable content a “here and now” issue? I cover several facets of the Twitch service in terms of law enforcement and intelligence matters in my Dark Web 2 lectures. The reality of Twitch is not well understood.
Has someone like the Verge asked, “If it is your platform, how can you not know the identity of a user?” The answer is, “What?”
Amazon Is a Domain, Not a Jungle, a River, or a Region
We learned from the Conversation (a sort of one way thing) that Dot Amazon is a reality. How happy will be the countries bordering the region, the jungle, and the river? Probably happy enough to order products, buy ebooks, and learn about the AWS cloud. The article “Amazon Wins Amazon Domain Name, Aggravating South American Region and Undermining Digital Commons” reports:
Under international human rights law, the indigenous peoples in the region should have been consulted. Exclusive use of “.amazon” will deprive them of using it for economic opportunities in their historical lands, such as eco-tourism.
Amazon wants “amazon” to do many positive, US company things. The write up states:
The implications for the future of the internet are troubling.
DarkCyber is not sure the real Amazon cares or if the jungle, river, and governments bordering what is real estate care. Navigate to www.amazon.amazon, Amazonians around the world and in the area once uniquely named “Amazon.”
Amazon Bashing?
Fox News ran a story about the Amazon JEDI contract competition. “Amazon, Pentagon Accused of Swampy Dealings over $10B Contract” reported:
Amazon is poised to receive a lucrative government contract with the Pentagon, but a competitor is arguing it’s nothing more than a prime example of D.C. swamp politics.
That’s an interesting bit of prognostication. The Fox report then recounts the claims made by firms likely to be pushed to the gutter if Amazon wins the deal.
The write up points out:
The JEDI Contracting Officer said in a court document that a July 2018 review of potential conflicts of interest related to Ubhi and four other government employees with ties to AWS showed that they did not “negatively impact the integrity of the JEDI procurement.”
But predicting the outcome of a horse race with some of the jockeys wearing the logos of Amazon competitors? Interesting.
Amazon Poster Person
The Wall Street Journal on June 22 or 23, 2019 (love that precision in metatagging, don’t we?) published an encomium to Amazonian Nancy Nims. According to the glowing semi-interview, mostly rah rah rah:
…Nancy Nims pitches in on everything from blank screens to burst pipes.
You can find the story online at wsj.com (paywall) or snag a dead tree edition of the newspaper if you can find one on either June 22 or June 23, 2019.
Amazon Alexa and Yamaha TV Add Ons
Don’t have an Amazon device in your home? Just buy the Yamahas YAS-109 and the YAS-209 TV sound bars, and you have the problem solved. According to Slashgear:
Yamaha has introduced two new home sound bars, the YAS-109 and YAS-209. Both models feature native Alexa voice control, enabling users to directly access Amazon’s voice assistant and its various control functions. In addition, both new models pack wireless connectivity, support for various music streaming services, a discreet design, and more.
“Alexa, what’s the weather?”
Who Sponsored the AWS Public Sector Summit?
That’s a good question. Here’s the list. Where are the presentations? Well, that’s another good question to which DarkCyber does not have the answer. There are some PR type speeches available on YouTube plus the often opaque Amazon blog entries.
Look Out, NYT Best Sellers’ List
Amazon has announced the best books of 2019 “so far”. Yeah, it is June 2019, but this is a real time, year to date, Amazon analytics output. None of that checking with bookstores in places like Charlottesville, Virginia, and Boston, Massachusetts, where people still read old fashioned books. Digital Reader reports:
“We love selecting the Best Book of the Year So Far,” said Sarah Gelman, Editorial Director, Amazon Books. “We’ve read so many great books this year – a heart-wrenching memoir of loss, an intoxicating novel of a ’70s rock band, a psychological thriller worthy of Agatha Christie comparisons, and so much more. But one book stood out for us, Elizabeth Gilbert’s City of Girls. It has so many elements that make reading fun – the sparkle of youth, indiscretions, sassy characters, and freedom in a city that doesn’t sleep – perfect summer reading in our book.”
And the top book? City of Girls: A Novel by Elizabeth Gilbert (Riverhead Books). And where can one acquire this big dog? Did you guess Amazon? If so, you may be Jeopardy material.
Amazon Reveals How to Implement AI
CTOVision explains the ins and outs in “Amazon on How Businesses Can Implement AI.” The method is revealed in an AWS video, a “succinct video” because, as you know, artificial intelligence is really easy using Amazon’s software and its platform. Here’s an example of an explanation in the video:
Yep, easy.
Amazon Is More Than a Bookstore
Amazon is on a PR blitz. The BBC snagged an interview with the former Cornell professor and now big tech person at Amazon. There were some gems in “Amazon’s Next Big Thing May Redefine Big.” The first “big” thing is that DarkCyber must learn a new definition of “big.” Okay, what else? These are items extracted from the Beeb’s somewhat uncritical article:
- Only “mortal humans” ever saw Amazon as merely a retailer.
- Its big data capabilities are now the tool of police forces, and maybe soon the military.
- New Amazon could make today’s Amazon look quaint in both scale and power.
- AWS accounts for most of Amazon’s profits.
- Amazon provides the infrastructure backbone for major firms such as AirBnB and Netflix, as well as more than one million other clients who collectively give Amazon “control” of large swathes of the web.
- Amazon Rekognition can scan video footage and, for example, pick up people’s faces that can then be checked against a client’s database.
- Amazon will need to answer continued questioning about how it handles user privacy, and whether it is being entirely up-front with users when it comes to how data is stored and analyzed.
Interesting stuff. But the police and military? DarkCyber theorizes that these entities will buy something other than boots and tactical vests.
Amazon’s Choice: An Evaluation
Leave it to the real news outfit Buzzfeed. Its story “Amazon’s Choice Does Not Necessarily Mean a Product Is Good.” Shocker. The write up reveals:
A review of dozens of Amazon’s Choice products by BuzzFeed News found listings with troubling product defects and warnings, as well as review manipulation.
DarkCyber’s hunch is that “quality” is defined in terms of revenue and margin. The notion about “troubling” is probably not high on the list of considerations. We noted this passage:
But “Amazon’s Choice” isn’t that at all, and here’s the disappointing news: It’s a label automatically awarded to listings by an algorithm based on customer reviews, price, and whether the product is in stock. And those choices Amazon’s software makes aren’t always reliable — in fact, sometimes they’re Amazon-recommended crap.
We highlighted this snippet as well:
But what consumers are finding is that while a product that performs well on key marketplace metrics might get an “Amazon’s Choice” label, it isn’t necessarily a good product. There are many examples. A forehead-and-ear thermometer with a 3.6-star average rating over 1,509 reviews is distinguished as Amazon’s Choice for an “infant thermometer.” Yet the product description from the manufacturer itself said, “Widely inaccurate and the results could be found from the comments by yourself.” (After BuzzFeed News reached out to the company for comment, that description was removed from the Amazon listing.)
Interesting, if true.
Amazon Fights Human Trafficking
Here’s another example of Amazon PR and a less than obvious reminder of the company’s push into policeware. Quartz’s story “Amazon’s AI Is Being Used to Rescue Children from Sex Trafficking.” We learned:
The nonprofit Thorn, founded by actors Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore in 2009, wants to help to find these children and bring them to safety. To do so, it’s looking to AI… DetectText quickly extracts this information from the images, allowing Thorn to work backwards to find children from their last known number. IndexFaces, meanwhile, detects and matches faces to images of missing and exploited children from open web data sources, such as the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s register of missing children.
Another message is, “Facial recognition is a pretty good thing.”
Now It Is Amazon Reinforcement Learning
Forbes is, it seems, an Amazon believer. “Amazon Dives Deep into Reinforcement Learning” explains:
The company [Amazon] applies RL in combination with other ML methods to optimize its warehouse and logistics operations, and assisting with automation in its various fulfillment facilities. The company has also applied RL to solving supply chain optimization problems and helping to discover optimal paths for delivery.
RL is an acronym for “reinforcement learning.” Useful when talking about ML and AI and APR (Amazon public relations).
The capitalist tool added:
the company has applied RL and other ML approaches to help create the latest iteration of its autonomous drone delivery device.
Okay, drones. What about those drones and RL?
Amazon used machine learning to iterate and simulate over 50,000 configurations of drone design before choosing the optimal approach.
Working at Amazon Twitch
SFGate, which is a bit rah rah for the Silicon Valley thing, published “Here’s What It’s Like to Work at Twitch, One of the Hottest Gaming Companies in the US.” Here’s a snapshot of the main point: Fun, food, autonomy, choice at an entertainment revolution.
Sounds like heaven or a bizarro world, almost the inverse of working at an Amazon warehouse.
Want to work in this paradise digital? I learned:
People who can show that they’re unabashedly passionate about something they do, whether it’s for fun or work, is a really nice cultural fit for us. We think that passion translates to your work, ultimately.—Alleged live streamed statement from a Twitch University Recruiter Gina Greenwalt.
Nothing about the streams which contain commercial TV shows (Russian streamers pump out US TV shows with dubbed Russian), movies (Pokémon is a fave), and the interesting pay-me-to have a private chat services. Odd that.
Next time around maybe SFGate will dig a bit deeper than free donuts. Plus a comparison with an Amazon warehouse job would be quite interesting. Perhaps free adult diapers instead of bagels?
Amazon: PR Diversity or Child Labor?
DarkCyber believes this is a PR play. Amazon is doing a lot of PR it seems. A 10 year old is now working alongside Amazonians who are young at heart if not in years. NBC Washington reports that Karthick Arun will enter the fifth grade. He will also work on robots because he is the youngest person to pass the Amazon AWS Cloud Practitioner examination. Will he take the now retired Google Labs Aptitude Test or GLAT? I once sent a page to an investment banker who told me he was good at math. I never heard a peep from this fellow after the snail mail was delivered to him. Arun would probably ace that confection. Too bad Google dumped its robotics company. You remember the one with the terrifying reindeer wandering the company’s front lawn. Arun wants to build a robot dog. Sorry, Arun, already done.
Amazon: More Planes Because…
DarkCyber’s answer is, “FedEx and UPS are like old, rotting trees to the gleaming blade on the front of the Bezos bulldozer.”
“Amazon Prime Air Gets More Planes to Boost One Day Shipping to You” offers a different explanation. To wit:
Amazon said it agreed to lease 15 more Boeing cargo planes from GE Capital Aviation Services, helping the e-commerce titan continue growing its air fleet so it can speed up Prime deliveries.
FedEx and UPS will take heart with this statement:
Pilots working for Prime Air have regularly complained about poor pay and lousy working conditions.
Hmmm. Different from Twitch working conditions perhaps?
DarkCyber understands the Prime delivery notion. Customers are number one. However, DarkCyber believes the motivation is to leverage Amazon’s infrastructure and robots, a white elephant airport, and the loose regulatory environment to become the same-day delivery giant, none of this overnight, three day, or seven day approach.
Amazon Connect Lex Speech Recognition
Here’s a link to a news story titled “Amazon Connect Lex Speech Recognition advanced Configuration.” The short write up is duplicated plus there’s a link to a video. Lex is Amazon’s speech recognition system. You will have to navigate to the link and figure out what DrVoIP on Collaboration is trying to communicate.
The real news is that Amazon Connect has launched AI powered speech analytics. The idea is to capture speech, convert to text, add metadata, and run numerical recipes across the content. Who is excited about this? Well, marketers, of course. We noted this statement in the write up:
The solution combines Amazon Transcribe to perform real-time speech recognition and create a high-quality text transcription of each call into text; Amazon Comprehend to analyze the interaction, detect the sentiment of the caller, and identify keywords and phrases in the conversation; and Amazon Translate to translate the conversation into an agent’s preferred language. To learn more about AI Powered Speech Analytics for Amazon Connect, see the solution webpage.
Want more? You can read marketing detail in Martech Advisor.
Amazon Partners, Resellers, Innovators
Summer is approaching in rubber boots and with a brolly here in Harrod’s Creek. There was some partner and reseller news. We’ve tossed in innovators because there are some interesting rumblings in the Amazonian digital jungle.
- Datacal supports AWS databases. Source: SD Times
- Digital Asset Partners puts smart contracts on AWS. Source: Coin Telegraph
- Domo has launched Domo on AWS. “Domo for AWS is a new purpose-built package that gives AWS customers an easy way to make data from nearly two dozen AWS services securely accessible to virtually anyone across the company to drive new business value.” Here’s another baffler: “to drive new business value.” Source: MarketWatch
- FINEOS is now competent in AWS financial services. Did you forget that Amazon is into finance but in a different way than privacy-centric Facebook? Source: Digital Journal
- HaTech is named an AWS advanced partner. We’re not sure what it means, but you can read more in the Yahoo write up. Only 10 percent have reached this tier. We have to ask, “10 percent of how many?”
- iBaset, a manufacturing services outfit, is using AWS for aerospace and defense applications. Source: Yahoo.
- IEEE and Amazon are teaming up to encourage entrepreneurs in the IEEE community. Would Amazon invest in a promising start up? Would Amazon encourage a promising start up to use Azure, Google, or another cloud? Source: Business Insider (a source which really wants money)
- SenecaGlobal is now an Amazon EC2 partner for Microsoft Windows Server. Strange bedfellows perhaps? Source: Host Review
- Smartsheet is now AWS government competent. Smartsheet is in the “work execution business.” No, we don’t understand the phrase either. Workflow, project management, and the like we get. But not work execution. Source: Bakersfield Californian
- Solodev is using Amazon AWS as a customer experience platform. We think this means customer service. Source: EContent What’s this have to do with electronic content? [a] Self help Web site, [b] search FAQs, [c] another publication jumping on the Amazon bandwagon for content, [d] who knows. Pick one, please.
- Tripwire signs up for Amazon AWS. Tripwire provides security and compliance services. Source: Host Review
- Legal and General will use AWS’s blockchain service. Source: Forbes
- ZeroNorth is now an Amazon advanced technology partner. Source: Digital Journal
Stephen E Arnold, June 24, 2019
Keeeb: A Personal Google for Everyone
June 24, 2019
That line “a personal Google for everyone” allegedly appeared in the Wall Street Journal. The phrase was a description of Keeeb, a company offering an enterprise intelligence platform. I remembered the phrase when I read the news release titled “Keeeb Adds Former Co-Founder and CTO of Leading Cognitive Search Provider Attivio and VP Technology of FAST Search & Transfer.” According to the news item:
The New York enterprise intelligence company Keeeb reinforces its technical leadership with the addition of Sid Probstein, former co-founder and CTO of the leading cognitive search provider Attivio and former VP Technology of FAST Search & Transfer (acquired by Microsoft in 2017). As new CTO Probstein will lead Keeeb’s global software development team and drive the next generations of the unique platform that unleashes enterprise intelligence.
What’s interesting is that the company Keeeb uses the name “Keeeb Deutschland GmbH and describes itself as a New York company.
Attivio’s tag line “cognitive search provider” struck me as a bit of a piggyback ride on the wild and crazy IBM Watson cognitive computing marketing blitz which has largely slowed to crawl. Remember H&R Block using Watson or Watson curing cancer? I do. Attivio, before embracing cognitiveness, dabbled in customer support, analytics, and a number of other “disciplines” as it worked to grow its sustainable revenue.
Fast Search & Transfer is also an interesting company. Some of the Fast Search & Transfer technology lives on in Microsoft, which bought the company in 2008. There was some legal and law enforcement agitation about Fast Search’s finances. Ultimately there was embarrassment for the founder of that firm.
DarkCyber will add Keeeb to its list of enterprise search vendors, a list is now growing less rapidly than it did in the hay days of “search” between 2002 and 2011. Why did the pace slow?
Several reasons:
- The huge financial payoffs from search did not materialize. In fact, the largest of the search vendors is now embroiled in a high profile trial in England.
- The emergence of Elasticsearch (which I think of as the son of Compass) became available as open source. Proprietary search engines looked less appealing in terms of support and freedom to fiddle with code than proprietary offerings from outfits like Fast Search & Transfer.
- The promises that search vendors made about easy access to enterprise content were impossible to meet. Clients either ran out of patience, money, or time. The few healthy search vendors were bought. Others tightened their belt and carried on.
Where will Keeeb fit into the information access landscape? I don’t’ know. It seems to me as the author of the first three Enterprise Search Reports, that companies like DataWalk and Diffeo are what search should have become. Maybe Keeeb will be forward leaning too?
Stephen E Arnold, June 24, 2019
How Smart Software Goes Off the Rails
June 23, 2019
Navigate to “How Feature Extraction Can Be Improved With Denoising.” The write up seems like a straight forward analytics explanation. Lots of jargon, buzzwords, and hippy dippy references to length squared sampling in matrices. The concept is not defined in the article. And if you remember statistics 101, you know that there are five types of sampling: Convenience, cluster, random, systematic, and stratified. Each has its strengths and weaknesses. How does one avoid the issues? Use length squared sampling obviously: Just sample rows with probability proportional to the square of their Euclidean norms. Got it?
However, the math is not the problem. Math is a method. The glitch is in defining “noise.” Like love, there are many ways to define love. The write up points out:
Autoencoders with more hidden layers than inputs run the risk of learning the identity function – where the output simply equals the input – thereby becoming useless. In order to overcome this, Denoising Autoencoders(DAE) was developed. In this technique, the input is randomly induced by noise. This will force the autoencoder to reconstruct the input or denoise. Denoising is recommended as a training criterion for learning to extract useful features that will constitute a better higher level representation.
Can you spot the flaw in approach? Consider what happens if the training set is skewed for some reason. The system will learn based on the inputs smoothed by statistical sanding. When the system encounters real world data, the system will, by golly, convert the “real” inputs in terms of the flawed denoising method. As one wit observed, “So s?c^2 p gives us a better estimation than the zero matrix.” Yep.
To sum up, the system just generates “drifting” outputs. The fix? Retraining. This is expensive and time consuming. Not good when the method is applied to real time flows of data.
In a more colloquial turn of phrase, the denoiser may not be denoising correctly.
A more complex numerical recipes are embedded in “smart” systems, there will be some interesting consequences. Does the phrase “chain of failure”? What about “good enough”?
Stephen E Arnold, June 23, 2019
Microsoft Security Consistency Involves Prohibition and Discouragement. Yeah, about That Security Thing?
June 22, 2019
I read “No Slack for You! Microsoft Puts Rival App on Internal List of Prohibited and Discouraged software” and had to laugh. Adobe Flash and Microsoft Windows have something in common. These are two of the “systems” which have been the super highway to exploits, hacking, and mischief for years. I am not sure the Mac is more secure; it is less popular. With forced installations, Microsoft’s software has emerged as a go to way for many bad actors to compromise systems. Yep, Word macros, Shadow Brokers’ code dumps, and freebie exploits explained by security researchers — quite a few pivot on Microsoft technology.
The write up explains that Microsoft has identified software which poses security leaks for the one time monopolist and all time champ of questionable browser technology:
- Amazon AWS. Yep, Amazon is a threat. A security threat? Only if those using the service fail to follow the recommended procedures. Plus Amazon is gobbling Microsoft’s mindshare by making it possible to run Microsoft on AWS. There you go.
- Grammarly. Don’t you love it when Word gets grammar incorrectly? Grammarly does some grammar moster correct. How do you solve the problem? Hey, just ban the Grammarly thing. Word’s method is Microsoftianish-like.
- Slack. Use Skype and be happy. Use Outlook and be happier. Use Zoom. Nope, strike that. And didn’t Microsoft try to buy Slack in 2016?
But “git” this: Microsoft owns another banned service GitHub. Now banning something you have owned since late 2018 is straight out of bizarro world.
Why not invest to “fix” GitHub? Why not make your own code less vulnerable to bad actors? Why not? Why not?
One of the TV shows has used the catchphrase, “Come on, man” to call attention to what I would call ill advised on field actions.
It is applicable to Microsoft’s new found concern for security.
Come on, man.
Stephen E Arnold, June 22, 2019
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