Borjes was a surrealist who could see societal trends despite his blindness.
Russia and Iran: Beards (in the Medieval Sense) Are Back
November 6, 2019
Here is a terrific example of how Russian cyber attackers skillfully sow confusion. The Financial Times reveals, “Russian Cyber attack Unit ‘Masqueraded’ as Iranian Hackers, UK Says.” A joint investigation by the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre and the US’s National Security Agency reveals the espionage group first hacked an Iranian hacking group, then attacked over 35 other countries posing as that group. The Russian group, known as Turla, has been linked to Russian intelligence. Reporters Helen Warrell and Henry Foy write:
“The Iranian group is most likely unaware that its hacking methods have been hacked and deployed by another cyber espionage team, security officials involved in the investigation said. Victims include military establishments, government departments, scientific organizations and universities across the world, mainly in the Middle East. Paul Chichester, NCSC director of operations, said Turla’s activity represented ‘a real change in the modus operandi of cyber actors’ which he said ‘added to the sense of confusion’ over which state-backed cyber groups had been responsible for successful attacks. ‘The reason we are [publicizing] this is because of the different tradecraft we are seeing Turla use,’ he told reporters. ‘We want others to be able to understand this activity.’ Mr Chichester described how Turla began ‘piggybacking’ on Oilrig’s attacks by monitoring an Iranian hack closely enough to use the same backdoor route into an organization or to gain access to the resulting intelligence. … But the Russian group then progressed to initiating their own attacks using Oilrig’s command-and-control infrastructure and software.”
We’re told the group successfully hacked about 20 countries using this tactic. It let them tap into Oilrig’s operational output to gain access to victims faster and easier. Not surprisingly, the Kremlin refused to comment; Russia consistently denies it hacks other states, describing such allegations as “mythical.”
Cynthia Murrell, November 6, 2019
Microsoft Displays Its Amazon AWS Neutralizer
November 5, 2019
I read about Microsoft’s victory over the evil neighbor Amazon. What was Microsoft’s trump card, its AWS neutralizer, its technology innovation?
The answer may have appeared in “Microsoft Unveils Azure Arc, Aiming to Fend Off Google and Amazon with New Hybrid Cloud Tech.” Here’s the once closely-held diagram.
Like most AWS-hostile diagrams, it includes three features which customers like the Pentagon and other entities desire:
- The ability to integrate multiple clouds, on premises computers, and edge computers into one homogeneous system. (Latency? Don’t bring that up, please.)
- The Azure stack in one’s own computer center where it can be managed by an Azure-certified staff with the assistance of Azure-certified Microsoft partners. (Headcount implications. Don’t bring that up, please.)
- An Azure administrative system which provides a bird’s-eye view of the client’s Azure-centric system. (Permissions and access controls. Don’t bring that up, please.)
Microsoft has rolled out a comprehensive vision. The challenge is that Amazon and Google have similar visions.
Microsoft may want to check out Amazon’s security and access control technology. But that’s a minor point for a company which struggles to update Windows 10 without disabling user’s computers.
Great diagram though. Someone once observed, “The map is not the territory.” And then there is the increasingly relevant Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges who wrote:
Nothing is built on stone; All is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.
Stephen E Arnold, November 4, 2019
Facebook: Following the Credge of Innovation
November 5, 2019
Cue the music. There’s nothing like a logo. Nothing in this world. DarkCyber noted the Credge logo innovation. Not to be outdone, Facebook, a very popular and profitable company, has added a logo. It looks like this.
See the innovation. The logo changes colors depending upon what a happy and possibly insecure Facebook user is doing at a particular time. A context aware logo! And DarkCyber thought Einstein was insightful and semi-creative. Al, you are not in Facebook’s league.
Why? Well that answer appears in a Facebook post called “Introducing Our New Company Brand.” DarkCyber learned:
The new branding was designed for clarity, and uses custom typography and capitalization to create visual distinction between the company and app.
Facebook is quite expert at clarity.
Is DarkCyber Confused?
No, DarkCyber understands. A new logo takes companies to the credge of innovation.
Stephen E Arnold, November 4, 2019
Google: A Ray of Light?
November 5, 2019
Google’s algorithms may not be so bad after all—it seems that humans are the problem yet again. Wired discusses a recent study from Penn State in its article, “Maybe It’s Not YouTube’s Algorithm That Radicalizes People.” Extreme ideological YouTube channels have certainly been growing by leaps and bounds. Many reporters have pointed to the site’s recommendation engine as the culprit, saying its suggestions, often running on auto-play, guide viewers further and further down radicalization rabbit holes. However, political scientists Kevin Munger and Joseph Phillips could find no evidence to support that view. Reporter Paris Martineau writes:
“Instead, the paper suggests that radicalization on YouTube stems from the same factors that persuade people to change their minds in real life—injecting new information—but at scale. The authors say the quantity and popularity of alternative (mostly right-wing) political media on YouTube is driven by both supply and demand. The supply has grown because YouTube appeals to right-wing content creators, with its low barrier to entry, easy way to make money, and reliance on video, which is easier to create and more impactful than text.”
The write-up describes the researchers’ approach:
“They looked at 50 YouTube channels that researcher Rebecca Lewis identified in a 2018 paper as the ‘Alternative Influence Network.’ Munger and Phillips’ reviewed the metadata for close to a million YouTube videos posted by those channels and mainstream news organizations between January 2008 and October 2018. The researchers also analyzed trends in search rankings for the videos, using YouTube’s API to obtain snapshots of how they were recommended to viewers at different points over the last decade. Munger and Phillips divided Lewis’s Alternative Influence Network into five groups—from ‘Liberals’ to ‘Alt-right’—based on their degree of radicalization. … Munger and Phillips found that every part of the Alternative Influence Network rose in viewership between 2013 and 2016. Since 2017, they say, global hourly viewership of these channels ‘consistently eclipsed’ that of the top three US cable networks combined.”
The Penn State team also cites researcher Manoel Ribeiro, who insists his rigorous analysis of the subject, published in July, has been frequently misinterpreted to support the bad-algorithm narrative. Why would mainstream media want to shift focus to the algorithm? Because, Munger and Phillips say, that explanation points to a clear policy solution, wishful thinking though it might be. The messiness of human motivations is not so easily dealt with.
Both Lewis and Ribeiro praised the Penn State study, indicating it represents a shift in this field of research. Munger and Phillips note that, based on the sheer volume of likes and comments these channels garner, their audiences are building communities—a crucial factor in the process of radicalization. Pointing fingers at YouTube’s recommendation algorithm is a misleading distraction.
Cynthia Murrell, November 4, 2019
Zuck Under Fire
November 5, 2019
Mark Zuckerberg might be the lead smart dude at Facebook, but that is only one facet of his career. The Sydney Morning Herald published an editorial about Zuckerberg called, “Mr. Zuckerberg, Have You Considered Retirement?” and it opened with the following description of him:
“If I were Mark Zuckerberg — newfound defender-to-the-death of liberal free expression even if it includes outright lying except if there are female nipples, a would-be curer of all the world’s disease, side-gig education reformer, immigration crusader, quirky dad, fifth wealthiest person in the world, hobnobber to pundits and politicians and all-around do-gooder digital hegemony who is also now vying to run the world’s money supply, I mean my God, Mark, where does all this end?”
Whoa! Zuckerberg has his hands full! Farhad Manjoo, the editorial’s author, suggested that Zuckerberg should vanish from the spotlight and retire to a nice, quiet Pacific island. He draws a similarity between Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who stepped down from the company and transformed himself into a philanthropic billionaire. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin pulled back too and are basically ghosting society.
Manjoo did state that Zuckerberg’s commitment to addressing hot topics might be seen as admirable, but his responses to his opponents are confusing and have mixed up what is good for Facebook vs. what is good for the US. Democrats have turned him into one of the party’s villains and the republicans are not to fond of him either.
Zuckerberg has a lot of power due to his wealth, most of which he earned by applying his intelligence to a product that became part of everyday life. He bows, however, to making money and “supporting” anyone that will put more dollars in his pocket.
Do not forget that Zuckerberg has high functioning autism spectrum disorder, which explains his awkward behavior in public. That does not excuse his behavior towards politics and amassing more and more wealth without a conscious. He is socially awkward, not ignorant of the world.
Whitney Grace, November 4, 2019
Azure Stability, Bonked Win 10 Updates, and C for Credge
November 4, 2019
Yep, do the ABCs. I spotted “Microsoft’s Edge Browser Gets a New Chromium Logo.” The main point of the story is a log for Microsoft’s version of the Google Chrome browser. Some pundits have dubbed this shotgun marriage of two giants with thoughts of an unassailable market position Credge. Here’s the logo in its swirliness.
Perhaps the effort put into this Credgey logo took away from some other tasks at the new Microsoft; for example, the Fast Search engine “improvements”, making Microsoft Word’s image placement more intuitive after many, many years, and providing clear, simple explanations for common problems?
What’s DarkCyber’s assessment of the Credge logo? It appears that someone (possibly a contractor) knows how to manipulate Adobe Illustrator gradients.
But the logo looks a bit like this antecedent from Deposit Photos, a photo and vector image licensing vendor:
Maybe, just maybe, Azure issues, botched updates, and a possibly derivative logo are more difficult than fiddling with stock art?
Stephen E Arnold, November 4, 2019
What Country Is Number One in AI?
November 4, 2019
China says, “It is not our country.” The US says, “It is not our country.”
“China Experts: US Still Out Front in Tech Race Despite Pentagon Claim” presents the Chinese side of the argument. There’s nothing like the “I’m just a back country AI expert. What do I know?” argument.
Abacus News states:
Chinese experts said China’s progress had been exaggerated and many of its achievements were only partial successes so far.
We noted this statement used to support the “we’re behind” argument:
“The US military wants more budget, more new equipment, more new R&D projects. And the theory of a China threat is, of course, a handy excuse,” Ni [Lexiong, a Shanghai-based military commentator] said.
Whom does one believe?
DarkCyber believes that one need only look at the demographics of computer scientist, engineering, and mathematics students in MA and PhD programs to get a sense of where technology innovation is heading.
What are those data? What’s the demographics in the US and China? What percentage of graduates from each country’s top schools remain in country?
Without these data, the assertions are meaningless. With these data, the Chinese assertion may not reveal the scope of the country’s information efforts.
Stephen E Arnold, November 4, 2019
China Public Security Expo: Emotion Detection a Hot Surveillance Trend
November 4, 2019
DarkCyber loves hot trends, particularly when the technology is not particularly reliable. The idea is that smart software looks at one’s image and decides if the image is suggestive of a bad actor or a person of interest.
We noted a Boing Boing article called “Report from a Massive Chinese Surveillance Tech Expo, Where Junk-Science Emotion Recognition Rules.” That write up pointed to a series of tweets with pictures posted by Sue-Lin Wong, a journalist.
You can find the tweets and images of the event at this link.
Some of the assertions and factoids I noted in the tweets include:
- China is using emotion detection in some surveillance systems at this time
- Facial recognition developers are starting to bump into outfits like Huawei, which are poking around the technology which might fit nicely into some Huawei systems
- Emotion detection has many applications, schools, dormitories, data mining, health care
- Smart prisons and smart beds are getting attention
- Unclassified miniature cameras were exhibited; for example, glasses with a camera in the nose piece frame.
DarkCyber does not think it will be productive to call an agent of the government wearing spy glasses a glasshole.
Stephen E Arnold, November 3, 2019
Visual Data Exploration via Natural Language
November 4, 2019
New York University announced a natural language interface for data visualization. You can read the rah rah from the university here. The main idea is that a person can use simple English to create complex machine learning based visualizations. Sounds like the answer to a Wall Street analyst’s prayers.
The university reported:
A team at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering’s Visualization and Data Analytics (VIDA) lab, led by Claudio Silva, professor in the department of computer science and engineering, developed a framework called VisFlow, by which those who may not be experts in machine learning can create highly flexible data visualizations from almost any data. Furthermore, the team made it easier and more intuitive to edit these models by developing an extension of VisFlow called FlowSense, which allows users to synthesize data exploration pipelines through a natural language interface.
You can download (as of November 3, 2019, but no promises the document will be online after this date) “FlowSense: A Natural Language Interface for Visual Data Exploration within a Dataflow System.”
DarkCyber wants to point out that talking to a computer to get information continues to be of interest to many researchers. Will this innovation put human analysts out of their jobs.
Maybe not tomorrow but in the future. Absolutely. And what will those newly-unemployed people do for money?
Interesting question and one some may find difficult to consider at this time.
Stephen E Arnold, November 4, 2019
Moderation: Feedback Loops Are Not Particularly Interested… Unless
November 3, 2019
I read the Los Angeles Review of Books’ essay “Why Technologists Fail to Think of Moderation as a Virtue and Other Stories About AI.” The write up explores Possible Minds: 25 Ways of Looking at AI. The essay and Possible Minds are worth reading.
DarkCyber wants to add one very small, probably angstrom-sized point:
Technology thrives on feedback loops.
Like a screech from the sound system in a 1960s’ school auditorium, feedback loops are not into moderation. The one attribute some of the most interesting technology giants share is the thrill of a fast ride on a feedback loop. Amazon is not alone with momentum, flywheels, and magnetism.
Do something. Money arrives. Do that something again. Money arrives. Like the auditorium’s sound system, zap. Whine.
Stephen E Arnold, November 3, 2019
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