UFO Data: Online and Available
January 13, 2021
I am not into little green entities. There are some people who are. For that group, I offer this link. You may download the US Central Intelligence Agency’s publicly available unidentified flying object or unidentified aerial phenomena information. I want to point out that the art work for the story does not display the new logo. Are there more data to come? Yep, within the next couple of months allegedly more US government data will be made available. Am I excited? Nope, not too much.
Stephen E Arnold, January 13, 2021
Traffic: Can a Supercomputer Make It Like Driving in 1930?
January 12, 2021
Advertisers work long and hard to find roads which are scenic and can be “managed” with the assistance of some government authorities to be perfect. The idea is that a zippy new vehicle zooms along a stretch of tidy highway (no litter or obscene slogans spray painted on billboards, please). Behind the wheel or the semi-autonomous driver seat is a happy person. Zoom, zoom, zoom. (I once knew a poet named Alex Kuo. He wrote poems about driving. I found this interesting, but I hate driving, flying, or moving anywhere outside of my underground office in rural Kentucky.
I also read a book called Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says about Us). I recall the information about Los Angeles’ super duper traffic management computer. If my memory is working this morning, the super duper traffic computer made traffic worse. An individual with some numerical capability can figure out why. Let those chimpanzees throw darts at a list of publicly traded security and match the furry entity with the sleek MBA. Who wins? Yeah.
I thought about the hapless people who have to deal with driving, riding trains, or whatever during the Time of Rona. Better than pre Rona, but not by much. Humans travel according the habit, the age old work when the sun shines adage, or because clumping is baked into our DNA.
The problem is going to be solved, at least that’s the impression I obtained from “Could a Supercomputer Help Fix L.A.’s Traffic Problems?” Now traffic in Chicago sucks, but the wizards at the Argonne National Laboratory are going to remediate LaLa Land. I learned:
The Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory is leading a project to examine traffic data sets from across the Los Angeles region to develop new strategies to reduce traffic congestion.
And what will make the difference this time? A supercomputer. How is that supercomputer doing with the Covid problem? Yeah, right.
The write up adds:
Super computers at the Argonne Laboratory are able to take a year’s worth of traffic data gathered from some 11,160 sensors across southern California, as well as movement data from mobile devices, to build forecasting models. They can then be applied to simulation projects.
Who in LA has the ball?
Not the LA Department of Transportation. Any other ideas?
And how was driving in LA in 1930? Pretty awful according to comments made by my mother.
Stephen E Arnold, January 12, 2021
Microsoft Teams: More, More, More
January 12, 2021
Last week I was on a Zoom video call. Zoom is pretty easy to use. What’s interesting is that the cyber security organizer of the meeting could not figure out how to allow a participant to share a screen. Now how easy is it to use Microsoft Teams compared to Zoom? In my opinion, Microsoft Teams is a baffler. The last thing Teams needs is another dose of featuritis. Teams and Zoom both need to deal with the craziness of the existing features and functions.
I have given up on Zoom improving its interface. The tiny gear icon, one of the most used components, is tough for some people to spot. Teams has a couple of donkeys laden with wackiness; for example, how about those access controls? Working great for new users, right? But Microsoft who is busy reinventing itself from Word and SharePoint wants to be the super Slack of our Rona-ized world. Sounds good? Yep, ads within Office 10 are truly an uplifting experience for individuals who use Windows 10 to sort of attempt work. Plus, Teams adds Channel calendars. Great! More calendars! Many Outlooks, many search systems, and now calendars! In Teams!
I noted this BBC write up: “Pupils in Scotland Struggle to Get Online Amid Microsoft Issue.” I thought teachers, parents were there to help. The Beeb states:
A number of schools, pupils and parents have reported the technology running slowly or not at all.
What’s Microsoft say? According to the Beeb:
A Microsoft spokesperson said: “Our engineers are working to resolve difficulties accessing Microsoft Teams that some customers are experiencing.” When pressed on whether demand as a result of home schooling was causing the issue, Microsoft declined to comment.
Just like the SolarWinds’ misstep? Nope, just working to make Teams more interesting. Navigate to “Microsoft Teams Is Getting a More Engaging Experience for Meetings Soon.” If the write up is accurate, that’s exactly what Microsoft has planned for its Zoom killer. The write up reports an item from the future:
Microsoft is working on making Teams meetings more engaging using AI and a “Dynamic View” to give more control over meeting presentations.
And what, pray tell, is a more engaging enhancement or two? I learned that in the future (not yet determined):
The Dynamic view is said to let you see what’s being shared and other people on the call at the same time. With the call being automatically optimized in a way that lets participants both see the important information that’s being shared and the people presenting it in a satisfying way.
News flash. The features appear to add controls (hooray, more controls) and the presentation seems just fine for those high-resolution displays measured in feet, not inches.
Bulletin. Just in. More people are using mobile devices than desktop computers. How is Teams on a mobile device with a screen measured in inches, not feet?
Oh, right. Featuritis and tiny displays. Winners. Maybe not for someone over the age of 45, but that’s an irrelevant demographic, right?
Stephen E Arnold, January 12, 2021
Does This Mean Bad Actors Are Now Riding in 10,000 SolarWinds Powered Digital Sailboats?
January 12, 2021
I read “Hackers Breaking into Networks without SolarWinds, CISA Says.” The write up states that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency offered:
“Specifically, we are investigating incidents in which activity indicating abuse of Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) tokens consistent with this adversary’s behavior is present, yet where impacted SolarWinds instances have not been identified,” according to updated guidance published Jan 6. “CISA is continuing to work to confirm initial access vectors and identify any changes to the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs).”
Based upon my limited understanding, is this similar to 10,000 sailboats zipping around a big lake? A couple of coast guard patrols may have difficulty monitoring the carefree scofflaws. To make matters more challenging, the sailboats are used by other people who are trespassing on government land and private property in order to join the digital rave.
To sum up, the SolarWinds’ misstep may have been the one lane road which the visitors are using to explore the great big data lake. And the party has been going on for how long? Oh, right. No one knows for sure.
Stephen E Arnold, January 14, 2021
DarkCyber for January 12, 2021, Now Available
January 12, 2021
DarkCyber is a twice-a-month video news program about online, the Dark Web, and cyber crime. You can view the video on Beyond Search or at this YouTube link.
The program for January 12, 2021, includes a featured interview with Mark Massop, DataWalk’s vice president. DataWalk develops investigative software which leapfrogs such solutions as IBM’s i2 Analyst Notebook and Palantir Gotham. In the interview, Mr. Massop explains how DataWalk delivers analytic reports with two or three mouse clicks, federates or brings together information from multiple sources, and slashes training time from months to several days.
Other stories include DarkCyber’s report about the trickles of information about the SolarWinds’ “misstep.” US Federal agencies, large companies, and a wide range of other entities were compromised. DarkCyber points out that Microsoft’s revelation that bad actors were able to view the company’s source code underscores the ineffectiveness of existing cyber security solutions.
DarkCyber highlights remarkable advances in smart software’s ability to create highly accurate images from poor imagery. The focus of DarkCyber’s report is not on what AI can do to create faked images. DarkCyber provides information about how and where to determine if a fake image is indeed “real.”
The final story makes clear that flying drones can be an expensive hobby. One audacious drone pilot flew in restricted air zones in Philadelphia and posted the exploits on a social media platform. And the cost of this illegal activity. Not too much. Just $182,000. The good news is that the individual appears to have avoided one of the comfortable prisons available to authorities.
One quick point: DarkCyber accepts zero advertising and no sponsored content. Some have tried, but begging for dollars and getting involved in the questionable business of sponsored content is not for the DarkCyber team.
Finally, this program begins our third series of shows. We have removed DarkCyber from Vimeo because that company insisted that DarkCyber was a commercial enterprise. Stephen E Arnold retired in 2017, and he is now 77 years old and not too keen to rejoin the GenX and Millennials in endless Zoom meetings and what he calls “blatant MBA craziness.” (At least that’s what he told me.)
Kenny Toth, January 12, 2021
High School Science Club Management Guidelines: The View from an Engineer Working at Home Alone
January 11, 2021
I have been collecting examples of high school management manifested in high technology companies. I am interested in online, but any firm which embodies the elitism, the “we know better” attitude, and “it’s easier to say sorry that ask for permission” are fair game.
I read “What Silicon Valley “Gets” about Software Engineers that Traditional Companies Do Not” is an outstanding essay. It captures the essence of high school science club management method or HSSCMM.
What are these principles? Let me compress them and urge you to read the source document while thinking about these points:
- Unbridled data capture and the use of these data to manipulate users, advertisers, partners, regulators, and probably moms and dads
- The “we know better” view of solving a problem
- Clever is more important than historical context.
Now let’s look at the compressed points from the source essay:
- Software engineers have to be left alone.
- Software engineers have to solve problems, not function as librarians or amanuenses
- Software engineers want to know everything we define as relevant
- Software engineers want to have access to fundamental data; that is, revenue, trade secrets, legal deals, etc.
- We don’t want to be hamstrung by hierarchies. Anyone we identify as a useful resource must be available to the software engineers.
- Software engineers have to be made and kept happy; otherwise, well, maybe bad things will happen.
- Software engineers deserve more money than any other employee in the organization.
This is a very good list. Now let me pose a few questions for an intrepid reader to ponder:
What type of organization emerges when these principles are implemented?
What’s the likelihood of fair and equal treatment of employees who are not engineers?
What’s the likelihood of actions which “break things” perceived as inefficient?
What is the role of ethical decision making in this type of organization?
For me, we are watching the fruits of the science club’s approach to people, processes, and procedures transform society.
How is that working out? Snort, ho ho, chuckle sound effects, please.
Stephen E Arnold, January 11, 2021
More No Code and Low Code Action
January 11, 2021
I suppose AI is mainstream now, for here we have a version for users who are not computer scientists. “Blaize Launches Open, Code-Free AI Software Platform,” we learn from Australia’s IT Brief. No code, perfect for art history majors and MBA degree holders. We’re told the platform, named AI Studio, carries the user from the spark of inspiration, through deployment, and into software management. It even includes a digital assistant which, sensibly, answers to the phrase “Hey Blaize.” The write-up lists the platform’s features:
- “Code-free assistive user interface (UI)
- Workflow support for open standards including (ONNX, OpenVX, containers, Python, and GStreamer). Support for these open standards allows AI Studio to deploy to any hardware that fully supports the standards.
- Marketplaces collaboration allows users to discover models, data and complete applications from anywhere – public or private – and collaborate continuously to build and deploy high-quality AI applications. It provides support for open public models, data marketplaces and repositories, and provides connectivity and infrastructure to host private marketplaces.
- User friendly application development workflow, with optimized models for specific datasets and use cases. “AI Studio’s unique Transfer Learning feature quickly retrains imported models for the user’s data and use case. Blaize edge-aware optimization tool, NetDeploy, automatically optimizes the models to the user’s specific accuracy and performance needs.”
- Additional MLOps and DevOps features, including deployment, management, and monitoring of edge AI applications”
AI Studio should be available to the general public in the first quarter of next year, though a few select customers can get their hands on it now. Located in El Dorado Hills, California, Blaize was founded in 2010 as Thinci. We do not know why the company changed its name in 2019; perhaps they simply did not like the sound of “Hey Thinci.”
Cynthia Murrell, January 11, 2021
A Tiny Clue about the Entity Interested In the SolarWinds Misstep
January 11, 2021
I read “Putin’s Disinformation Campaign claims Stunning Victory with Capital Hill Coup.” The write up points out that a study by the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society describes a broad campaign against the United States. The article references a Rand study which offers additional color.
However, my interpretation of the write up is that Russia may be just one facet of the “truth decay” approach. Disinformation is complemented by penetration of US networks and systems. Even if no data were exfiltrated, undermining confidence is cyber security methods is another chess move by Russia.
The buzzword is widening the fissures. Serious weakness, exploitable weakness.
Stephen E Arnold, January 11, 2021
Big Numbers But What Is the End Game for Software Quality?
January 11, 2021
I cannot define quality without context. Furthermore, I am skeptical of really big round numbers. How does two trillion sound? Pretty suspicious, right? How does $2.08 trillion sound? Much more credible, right? A report from upscale universities and a standards group offers up the $2.08 trillion number. My problem is that this number appears to be pulled from thin air, and it may be too small. In short, the cost risk of lousy software is under-stated.
Let’s be honest. Exactly how big is two trillion? I know from experience that big numbers are designed to impress, but the reality is that big numbers don’t do much more than cause a person to dis-associate from the main point.
That’s the major flaw in “The Cost of Poor Software Quality in the US: A 2020 Report.” The numbers can be dismissed because software engineers, technical experts, and teenaged wizards laboring in the vineyards of the Google have created a bit of a problem.
What do I mean? I will try to answer this question, after looking at several points set forth in the 46 page document.
First, the report informs me that software quality is bound up with Covid. Yeah, fine. Site5.com, a hosting provider, offered this argument to me when their servers crashed for the sixth time in the last eight weeks. Sorry, Covid is not software unless one considers IBM’s assertion that supercomputers in Tennessee would identify drugs likely to deal with Covid? How is that working out exactly? The cost? Let’s make up some numbers?
Second, there are apparently four categories of crappy software that impose costs. These are, and I quote:
- Cost of unsuccessful IT / software projects
- Cost of poor quality in legacy systems
- Cost of operational software failures
- Cost of cybersecurity and technical debt.
The point about failed projects seems obvious. However, what about failed projects in US, state, country, and local governments systems. What is failure? What is the cost of a life when law enforcement systems cannot communicate and exchange information in near real time? Was that number included? And what about the cost of software which seems to work but levies a massive cost upon users? What’s the “cost” of phone home software or malware not detected by software systems purpose built to detect cyber breaches?
Let’s think about legacy systems at the IRS, those which manage air line reservations and flight control data, and the IBM machines chugging along in large financial institutions. Not only have the big academic brains and the whiz kids failed to create reliable methods for migrating or remediating legacy software, there has been virtually zero progress in the last few decades on using automated mechanisms for improving legacy code. Want an example? How about the failure of New Jersey to have sufficient COBOL programmers to deal with the mess in the state’s labor-related systems.
And those operational failures. It is easy for Amazon to assert that outage X cost us Y in sales. But what about the costs of delayed flights because the systems supporting the Chicago ARTCC functions go down or the rail freight routing systems hiccups and puts tens of thousands of empty freight cars in Texas. What’s the cost of Gmail outage? What’s the cost of glitch in the SWIFT financial system and its impact on a small business awaiting confirmation of a successful financial transaction.
Now we come to the cost of the cybersecurity thing. What’s the cost of the SolarWinds’ misstep? My hunch is that the number is very big, possibly equivalent to the economy of a pick up truck filled with mid sized EC countries GDP. And then the report addresses technical debt, I noted this statement:
In 2018, we reported the amount of software technical debt in the US was approximately $1.145 trillion, which represented just the debt principal without accumulated interest. At that time, we assumed a code growth rate of 35 billion LOC per year, projecting that there would be 1.455 trillion LOC worldwide (US share of 31%). We have since seen that code growth is now up to ~100 billion new LOC per year, or ~7% growth per year. Projecting those figures to 2020, and assuming that very little code has since been retired, there would now be 1.655 trillion LOC worldwide and 513 billion in the US. The US figure for technical debt in 2020 would therefore be $1.31 trillion.
Many numbers which ignore the dependent consequences of software which is either not maintained, maintained at the lowest possible cost, or just not maintained. Isn’t legacy software a component of technical debt? In fact, each day forward for an outfit like Google, the firm’s technical debt goes up. Modern software is often a combination of:
- Undocumented or poorly document software fixes
- Software wrappers which minimize the issues with flawed legacy code well enough to move on … until the next issue arises
- Minimal changes made by contractors who are alleged specialists in legacy code or marginalized code
- Changes introduced by essentially unmanaged, security free offshore “experts.”
But the numbers look interesting and big.
Read the report yourself and answer these questions:
- How much does the report understate the fully loaded cost of lousy software?
- Why is lousy software produced by graduates of prestigious institutions the norm?
- What is the definition of lousy software? (The VC who makes money thinks whatever software is deployed as a zippy Azure security solution is just the greatest thing since sliced bread.)
What’s the fix?
Well, that’s the problem, isn’t it? There is none. There are free hacking courses, junior college Zoom courses, and fora available via interesting Web sites accessible via Tor or i2p. Certifications are possibly helpful if there are national standards. You know. Like the outstanding standards for USB support or the brilliant smart software which is amply documented in Weapons of Math Destruction.
That’s the point. Lousy software has “eaten the world.” There are fix skirmishes. Sometimes the fix wins and sometimes it doesn’t.
The report makes a big deal about numbers. These are the result of spreadsheet fever induced with long Excel sessions. The issue is that the number of two trillion is too small. And the academics yapping about quality. Check out what your students do when unbounded by ethical constraints?
Stephen E Arnold, January 11, 2021
Facial Recognition: Not As Effective As Social Recognition
January 8, 2021
Facial recognition is a sub-function of image analysis. For some time, I have bristled at calls for terminating research into this important application of algorithms intended to identify, classify, and make sense of patterns. Many facial recognition systems return false positives for reasons ranging from lousy illumination to people wearing glasses with flashing LED lights.
I noted “The FBI Asks for Help Identifying Trump’s Terrorists. Internet (and Local News) Doesn’t Disappoint.” The article makes it clear that facial recognition by smart software may not be as effective as social recognition. The write up says:
There is also Elijah Schaffer, a right-wing blogger on Glenn Beck’s BlazeTV, who posted incriminating evidence of himself in Nancy Pelosi’s office and then took it down when he realized that he posted himself breaking and entering into Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s office. But screenshots are a thing.
What’s clear is that technology cannot do what individuals’ posting to their social media accounts can do or what individuals who can say “Yeah, I know that person” delivers.
Technology for image analysis is advancing, but I will be the first to admit that 75 to 90 percent accuracy falls short of a human-centric system which can provide:
- Name
- Address
- Background details
- Telephone and other information.
Two observations: First, social recognition is at this time better, faster, and cheaper than Fancy Dan image recognition systems. Second, image recognition is more than a way to identify a person robbing a convenience store. Medical, military, and safety applications are in need of advanced image processing systems. Let the research and testing continue without delay.
Stephen E Arnold, January 8, 2021
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