JEDI Winner Continues to Excel in Software Updates
June 25, 2020
Will the US Department of Defense be happy with updates to a JEDI system that cause crashes? Probably slightly unhappy. “New Windows 10 Update Fail Breaks Some of Its Best Features” reports:
people have been complaining that after installing the Windows 10 May 2020 Update (also known as Windows 10 version 2004), they cannot access files synced to OneDrive – even if they can be seen in Windows 10.
The write up adds:
Even more embarrassingly for Microsoft, it seems this bug has been around for months in early versions of Windows 10 May 2020 Update, with Windows Insiders, who can try out versions of Windows 10 before other people in order to spot bugs like this, complaining that OneDrive no longer works.
Visualize this. You are in a fire zone. You need cloud data. Bad actors ranging rounds are getting closer.
Take a deep breath and follow this procedure:
Press Windows Key RKey this string: %localappdata%\Microsoft\OneDrive\onedrive.exe /resetAccess needed data.
No problemo. Microsofties may ponder this when they grab a carry out lunch at Bai Tong’s. Stephen E Arnold, June 25, 2020Gullible? Asks Ben Rogers, Friend of Tom Sawyer. Who Me?
June 25, 2020
“Machine Learning Has A Flaw; It’s Gullible” forced me to think about Tom Sawyer and his snookering Ben Rogers into painting Aunt Polly’s fence.
The write up, without the flair of Samuel Langhorne Clemens, states:
Machine learning (ML) – technology in which algorithms “learn” from existing patterns in data to conduct statistically driven predictions and facilitate decisions – has been found in multiple contexts to reveal bias. An example is Amazon.com coming under fire for a hiring algorithm that revealed gender and racial bias. Such biases often result from slanted training data or skewed algorithms. And in other business contexts, there’s another potential source of bias. It comes when outside individuals stand to benefit from bias predictions, and work to strategically alter the inputs. In other words, they’re gaming the ML systems.
Snooze. Old news.
The write up adds in Theodore Mommsen Latin constructions inspired prose:
… patent applicants are permitted by law to create hyphenated words and assign new meaning to existing words to describe their inventions. It’s an opportunity, the researchers explain, for applicants to strategically write their applications in a strategic, ML-targeting way. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is generally wise to this. It has invited in ML technology that “reads” the text of applications, with the goal of spotting the most relevant prior art quicker and leading to more accurate decisions. “Although it is theoretically feasible for ML algorithms to continually learn and correct for ways that patent applicants attempt to manipulate the algorithm, the potential for patent applicants to dynamically update their writing strategies makes it practically impossible to train an ML algorithm to correct for this behavior,” the researchers write.
Surely the “impossible” word deserves a bit of emphasis. If the researchers are correct, the wonderful world of smart software is going to be a thrilling place: Redlining, job rejections, smart drones flying into Sunday school picnics, certain enthusiastic wedding receptions noted from a watcher, etc. etc.
Stephen E Arnold, June 25, 2020
Amazon: Nosing into Telco Land
June 25, 2020
Amazon wants to expand into Asia, but they are avoiding the Chinese hot market and concentrating on India. India’s Zee News explains, “Amazon In Initial Talks To Buy $2 Billion Stake In Bharti Airtel” and Amazon would then own a 5% stake in the company. It would also augment India’s third largest telecommunication company and give them more power to compete against its rivals.
The five percent stake is not the only option Amazon has considered. They also spoke with Bharti Airtel about deals that included stakes worth between 8-10%. Nothing is definitive yet because the deal is in the preliminary stages:
“The talks between Bharti and Amazon are at an early stage and the deal terms could change, or an agreement may not be reached, said two of the three people, all of whom declined to be identified because the discussions are confidential. If talks to buy a stake fail, the companies could also look at a commercial transaction that could give Bharti`s customers cheap access to Amazon products, one of the people said.”
Nothing else is known about the suspected plans, but Bharti Airtel shares rose based on them. While China remains in hot water because of COVID-19, India has come more into focus for technology development. There has always been interest in India, but the subcontinent remains fairly neutral compared to its northern neighbor.
Whitney Grace, June 24, 2020
Professional Publishers: Is Institutional Racism a Thing?
June 24, 2020
DarkCyber found “AI Researchers Say Scientific Publishers Help Perpetuate Racist Algorithms” somewhat unusual. Blending decades old algorithms with professional publishing strikes me as a combo that will not knock peanut butter and jelly off its popular pairing perch. (Yes, alliteration. Next up, anthropomorphish behavior; that is, projecting human qualities to math.)
The main point is that a paper called “A Deep Neural Network Model to Predict Criminality Using Image Processing” has been left in the stop bath. The write up reports:
Citing the work of leading Black AI scholars, the letter debunks the scientific basis of the paper and asserts that crime-prediction technologies are racist. It also lists three demands: 1) for Springer Nature to rescind its offer to publish the study; 2) for it to issue a statement condemning the use of statistical techniques such as machine learning to predict criminality and acknowledging its role in incentivizing such research; and 3) for all scientific publishers to commit to not publishing similar papers in the future. The letter, which was sent to Springer Nature on Monday, was originally written by five researchers at MIT, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, McGill University, and the AI Now Institute. In a matter of days, it gained more than 600 signatures and counting across the AI ethics and academic communities, including from leading figures like Meredith Whittaker, cofounder of the AI Now Institute, and Ethan Zuckerman, former director of the Center for Civic Media at the MIT Media Lab.
Just to sharpen the pencil point. Humans select algorithms and data sets. Humans determine the order of calculation, specify recursions, and cook up thresholds. The algorithms themselves are not, by definition, racist.
Nevertheless, professional publishers now have to figure out a way to explain what’s what. The exercise will probably steal time from the firm’s efforts to get authors to pay for inclusions and corrections. Also, wheedling experts to perform “free” editorial reviews for the good of the community may lose some momentum as well.
Didn’t that bronze in that statue know it was formulating a statement about a certain historical event?
Bronze and professional publishers should know better.
Stephen E Arnold, June 24, 2020
Brazil and WhatsApp: Avoiding an Orkut Moment?
June 24, 2020
Brazil, land of pinga and Covid, is brandishing some Lança-perfumes with malice. “Brazil Suspends WhatsApp’s Payments Service” reports:
Brazil, the second largest market for WhatsApp, has suspended the instant messaging app’s mobile payments service in the country a week after its rollout in what is the latest setback for Facebook. In a statement, Brazil’s central bank said it was taking the decision to “preserve an adequate competitive environment” in the mobile payments space and to ensure “functioning of a payment system that’s interchangeable, fast, secure, transparent, open and cheap.”
This is an interesting development. The banking system in Cariocaland is fascinating. Facebook’s confident leader assumed that WhatsApp was a slam dunk in a nation state where cash transactions take place near cathedrals located in central squares.
The issue, however, may be a lingering digital imprint from the long ago era of Orkut. Google’s failed social network (no, I don’t want to recount the story, gentle reader) was allegedly quite the go-to service for some elements of Brazilian society.
Law enforcement in Brazil is stretched. Orkut was an electronic accelerant for certain activities which the government had determined were detrimental to the country.
DarkCyber believes that usage of WhatsApp emulated some of the exploratory paths used to chop through the Orkut digital undergrowth.
The result? Yo, Facebook, stop.
Perhaps Facebook’s method of ignoring is meeting some resistance? Germany is taking Facebook to task. Plus there are some advertisers waving their checkbooks and saying, “No ads in July.”
What’s self aware mean for Facebook’s management?
One answer is, “You are all stupid.”
A new company motto. Facebook could make its own version of the Brazilian flag and replace “Ordem and Progresso” with “You are all stupid.” Interesting. “All.”
Stephen E Arnold, June 24, 2020
Big Blue, Number Two
June 24, 2020
In the land of IBM, Watson works and the once towering giant, progenitor of OS2, and big disc drives that made “crash” a popular term is in the news again.
“ARM Based Fugaku Supercomputer Now World’s Fastest Supercomputer” reports that
The Fugaku supercomputer located in Kobe, Japan and developed jointly by RIKEN and Fujitsu Limited recently took the top spot in several supercomputer rankings making it the first time since June 2011 that Japan has held the Top500 supercomputer list crown and the first time ever that a supercomputer has simultaneously hit the HPCG, HPL-AI, and Graph500 world records.
And guess what company is Number 2? IBM and its IBM-built Summit system located at the US Oak Ridge National Laboratory. When not working on Covid, Summit matches possible owners to stray dogs.
Stephen E Arnold, June 24, 2020
Web Traffic: Pay Up or Become Mostly Invisible
June 24, 2020
We have been warning our dear readers about a recent uptick in SEO scams, but how bad can it be? Business 2 Community relates a cautionary tale in, “A Small Business SEO Horror Story (and the 7 Qualities to Look for in a Real SEO Professional.)” The post describes the plight of one plumber who surely wishes he had known more about how to choose an SEO firm.
A plumber referred to here as “Joe” began in 2011 with a website that showed up at the bottom of Google’s first results page, and sought to climb higher. He got taken in by an outfit that promised fast results, and handed over responsibility for his online marketing. His rankings, and profits, did improve greatly—at first. Unfortunately, the “expert” he hired was focused entirely on building backlinks, a shady tactic condemned by Google’s Penguin algorithm, released in April 2012. Unaware of the update, Joe just knew he was suddenly getting fewer calls and saw his site was now nowhere to be found in Google’s search results. His SEO service swore it could get him back on track by building even more links, and continued to take his money to do just that. Writer and SEO executive Guy Sheetrit continues:
“A few more months of link building yielded nothing new. Joe’s website still wasn’t in Google’s search results and his so-called ‘experts’ weren’t communicating anything to him. Finally, he reached out to an actual SEO expert to find out what was wrong. Quick checks of Google Analytics and the Google Search Console confirmed that it was a Penguin issue. Worse yet, it wasn’t a manual penalty. It was an algorithmic one. That meant Joe couldn’t even engage in a back-and-forth with Google while he attempted to clean up the bad links. Unfortunately for Joe, the website he’d built back in 2004 was almost worthless to him now. He’d have to start all over again by building a new website. And of course, that also meant investing in new marketing materials, since all the old ones used the old site. And I’m not even mentioning the amount of income his business lost. The rapid growth he’d enjoyed early on disappeared. The new hires and the extra vans had to go as Joe went from prospering to penalized. And all because he fell for the same BS that so many so-called experts spout.”
Stories like Joe’s abound, but Sheetrit goes on to describe what qualities SEO shoppers should look for in a firm to avoid a similar fate: They aren’t desperate for your business; They tell you the truth even if you don’t want to hear it; They have the results (like case studies and testimonials); They don’t claim that you’ll get results overnight (especially noteworthy); they tell you what you need to do (instead of taking over); They know more than just one aspect of SEO; And they use plain English. See the write-up for more details on each of these points. For our part, we keep one major rule in mind—create content that offers value to the user. Any approach that tries to game the algorithm is bound to lose, sooner or later.
If you want traffic, buy online ads.
Cynthia Murrell, June 24, 2020
Geospatial: Context and Opinions
June 24, 2020
DarkCyber spotted a sequence of tweets published by that well managed, completely coherent, and remarkable outfit Twitter. Twitter disseminated brief emissions from Joe Morrison who uses the handle “mouth of Morrison.” Love that Twitter thing!
The write up in Quibi style chunks is about geospatial technology. As it turns out, mobile devices and smart gizmos output geographic coordinates. These are useful to many.
The observations in the stream of tweets explain that geospatial is mostly a bad idea. DarkCyber says, “Ho, ho, ho.”
Two warrant highlighting, but you may find other faves in the list.
Let’s begin:
The most successful and ambitious mapping project of all time, Google Maps, is an advertising platform. There is no “geospatial industry,” only industries with spatial problems.
Yep, the Google. Nevertheless, one must give the GOOG credit for buying Keyhole, morphing an intelligence operation into a cog in ad sales, and then building a large scale geospatial data vacuum cleaner. Remember the comment about capturing Wi-Fi data: “Wow, no idea how that happened.” Does that help you jog down memory lane.
The second emission we noted is:
In geo, you either die a hero or live long enough to make the majority of your revenue from defense and intelligence.
This is sort of accurate. Including law enforcement might be a more accurate characterization of where the money is, however.
These earthworm emissions are amusing; for example, “ESRI is a petty, anti competitive bully”. Are any lawyers paying attention? Also, big companies use open source software and don’t give back. No kidding? Ever hear of code cost reduction?
Worth a look. More context, explanation, and details would add some muscle to the tweeter bones.
Stephen E Arnold, June 24, 2020
Complaints and Protest: But the GOOG Has Been Googling for 20 Years
June 23, 2020
My goodness, we live in the Era of Complaining. The print version of the “flagship podcast” published “Google Employees Demand the Company End Police Contracts.” Let’s put this Google tie up with the US government in context.
Google was poking around the US government as early as 1999 when the chatter about indexing US government content surfaced. The company bid on the FirstGov.gov project and lost. (The US government selected the really interesting solution proposed and provided by AT&T.) Google acquired Keyhole which the CIA investment unit In-Q-Tel supported with cash. In 2005, In-Q-tel sold its shares in Google in 2005. In 2008, Google and In-Q-Tel jointly invested in Recorded Future. Along the way, Google has performed “work” for a number of US government agencies. Despite the low profile of some of these activities, Google has been in the DC game for more than 20 years. I know because I receive a snotty email about why Google should have been selected instead of the AT&T Fast Search solution.
The point is that Google employees are dazzled by their perceptual baloney. The company today is similar to the wonky outfit it was after Backrub took a break, venture money arrived, and in a moment of adulting thrashed about for a way to make money. The solution was, as you and some Googlers may not care to know, was to “be influenced” by Yahoo’s Overture/GoTo online advertising concept. Google settled the Yahoo legal complaint about this “influence’ prior to the firm’s IPO and may have coughed up about $1 billion to grease the skids for the IPO. Yahoo took the deal, and the Google morphed into the online ad outfit it is today.
But employees at Google, based on my limited exposure to these fine individuals, are generally unaware of the company’s interest in US government work, the fascinating way systems and methods arrive at the company, and the old fashioned idea that when you accept money for work you shut up or quit.
Not today.
The online word version of the “flagship podcast” states:
Employees are specifically calling out Google’s ongoing Cloud contract with the Clarkstown Police Department in New York, which was sued for allegedly conducting illegal surveillance on Black Lives Matter protestors in 2015. They’re also highlighting the company’s indirect support of a sheriff’s department in Arizona tracking people who cross the US-Mexico border.
Okay, Google is not the center of the universe when it comes to management sophistication. The company employs what I call “the high school science club management method.” The inability to keep information private and the hiring procedures which seem to favor those who want to decide what a publicly traded commercial enterprise do to earn money illustrates the challenges Google faces.
Mr. Brin’s showing up in senior elected officials’ offices wearing a T shirt and gym shoes with sparklies on them is trivial compared to the larger strategic recent issues at Google.
Not only are employees at Google complaining despite the money, the ping pong tables, and the benefits of working at home — the employees want Google to extricate and no longer pursue revenue producing activities.
Several observations:
- Google does and will continue to do government work despite caving to employee demands over Project Maven. Hey, good news for Anduril, right?
- Employees don’t know much if anything about the history of Google, the type of decisions its founders made, and efforts the company has made to obtain government work. Candidate vetting and employee training is working well at the GOOG, don’t you think?
- Google management cannot contain confidential information. But the larger question is, “Why is the hiring process failing to recruit individuals who do work and make time to complain about Google’s government work. The contracts don’t just drop from the sky. Effort, sometimes years of effort, are necessary to land these projects. So quit tomorrow? Sure, good for the attorneys, not for the government customers.
Complain, complain, complain. There’s nothing like employees grousing. Why not do something other than send email? Here’s a suggestion: Quit.
What’s Google going to do about this quite embarrassing state of affairs?
Many years ago (I can’t provide details because I signed a document wittingly) a Google senior wizard told me:
Some day it will end. Until then, rock and roll.
And to what does this Gnostic phrase refer?
Google has been putting the pedal to the metal for 20 years. Now the company is operating, like a few others, without meaningful constraints, adult leadership, and much of a purpose other than making money, reducing costs, and dealing with backlashes. The push back against Google is manifesting itself in the government investigations, the talk about monopoly behavior, and the dwindling likelihood that a trip to Brussels or Strasbourg will be a holiday. It is possible that some Google attorneys will enjoy discussing the fines and legal restraints fun, but that’s a sign of changing times.
Net net: The employee grousing reflects a lack of meaningful regulation, a failure of Google leadership, and remediating hiring processes which allow the printed version of the “flagship podcast” to explain that lots of Googlers want to tear the house down. Take direct action. Resign. I am old fashioned. Employees accept job offers. Before hooking up with a publicly traded company as an employee (look up the definition, gentle Googlers with protest on your mind) — learn about the company. That’s your obligation. After accepting a job, like it or leave. Easy. I, however, think these complainers will follow the thought processes I characterize as “Casey Newtonesque.”
Wonderful. Flagship podcast. Real news, yeah!
Stephen E Arnold, June 23, 2020
IBM: From the Avocado Festival to Insights about WFH. Sheer Genius!
June 23, 2020
I read “IBM Advises Tighter Cybersecurity in a New Remote Work Era.” Now this is a brilliant insight from the maker of mainframes, terminator of old engineers, and inventor of the outstanding Watson thing.
The write up states:
IBM Indonesia, a wholly owned subsidiary of American technology giant IBM, has called for companies to step up cybersecurity measures and to communicate digital safety to employees in light of the increase in cyber attacks during the “remote working era” of the pandemic. IBM Security, the multinational’s global cybersecurity division, reported an increase of more than 6,000 percent in coronavirus-related spam, including virus-themed malware, malicious domains and phishing scams in March-May.
I would count the number of marketing emails I have received from cyber security companies reporting about work from home security threats. The problem is that these started arriving in February 2020 and have continued to the present. I can reliably count to about 10,000 using the fingers and toes of my research team, an IBM matched dog or two, and most of the people who live in Prospect, Kentucky.
IBM is pushing into a frontier once reserved for desperate search engine optimization marketing firms. What’s impressive about this IBM announcement is that IBM think has been transferred to IBM Indonesia wizards.
Who said company culture could not be imprinted on individuals with a good education, a nuclear family background, and the ability to think independently?
Maybe Mr. Watson, the founder, not the truly astounding billion dollar baby who won a TV show game content when just a bean sprout.
One has to admire Big Blue. The avocado thing was slightly original. The dog matching. Classic Watson. This revelation about security. Well, just a player who arrives late to a party and reads the discarded invitations, “Dear Captain Obvious, the pleasure of your company is…”
Stephen E Arnold, June 23, 2020
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