Google and Obfuscation: Who Cares?
March 24, 2021
Google began the process of obfuscating the source of Web pages years ago. There were services which would convert a weird Google version of a PDF’s url into something one could use in a footnote. I have one tool which performs this function now, but I am reluctant to identify it. Why? Google will kill it.
I noted the GitHub item “Addon Unavailable on Google Chrome” which explains that ClearURLs were blocked by Google seven hours ago. The short item explains:
ClearURLs has made it to its mission to prevent tracking via URLs and that’s how Google makes money.
Yep, this is a good statement.
However, let me add several observations:
- Google, like Facebook, IS the Internet for many people. Both companies want to keep users within the sheep pen. The reasons include tracking, monetization, and, oh, did I mention, tracking?
- Looking up search results adds computational cost; therefore, serving Google identified as relevant content from caches near a user makes economic sense. How does one know the “provenance” of a Google item? Well, it’s from Google, so it has to be good.
- The walled garden has been part of the Google system and method for many years. I wrote about this years ago in the Google Legacy and expanded on some of the ideas in Google Version 2.0.
Net net: Thumbtypers, seniors in a haze, and most online “users” are blissfully unaware of the power of obfuscation. In the good old days, one had a url which provided the source domain and a mostly human readable string pointing to the page.
Hasta la vista. The corral is a clean, well lighted place for those who own the ranch. Who cares? Hey, visit a sheep ranch and let me know how many out of flock sheep there are. What happens to those sheep? Sheep dogs chase them back to the flock or wolves just eat the recalcitrant.
Why not think in terms of a digital delicacy?
Stephen E Arnold, March 24, 2021
Historical Revisionism: Twitter and Wikipedia
March 24, 2021
I wish I could recall the name of the slow talking wild-eyed professor who lectured about Mr. Stalin’s desire to have the history of the Soviet Union modified. The tendency was evident early in his career. Ioseb Besarionis dz? Jughashvili became Stalin, so fiddling with received wisdom verified by Ivory Tower types should come as no surprise.
Now we have Google and the right to be forgotten. As awkward as deleting pointers to content may be, digital information invites “reeducation”.
I learned in “Twitter to Appoint Representative to Turkey” that the extremely positive social media outfit will interact with the country’s government. The idea is to make sure content is just A-Okay. Changing tweets for money is a pretty good idea. Even better is coordinating the filtering of information with a nation state is another. But Apple and China seem to be finding a path forward. Maybe Apple in Russia will be a similar success.
A much more interesting approach to shaping reality is alleged in “Non-English Editions of Wikipedia Have a Misinformation Problem.” Wikipedia has a stellar track record of providing fact rich, neutral information I believe. This “real news” story states:
The misinformation on Wikipedia reflects something larger going on in Japanese society. These WWII-era war crimes continue to affect Japan’s relationships with its neighbors. In recent years, as Japan has seen an increase in the rise of nationalism, then–Prime Minister Shinzo Abe argued that there was no evidence of Japanese government coercion in the comfort women system, while others tried to claim the Nanjing Massacre never happened.
I am interested in these examples because each provides some color to one of my information “laws”. I have dubbed these “Arnold’s Precepts of Online Information.” Here’s the specific law which provides a shade tree for these examples:
Online information invites revisionism.
Stated another way, when “facts” are online, these are malleable, shapeable, and subjective.
When one runs a query on swisscows.com and then the same query on bing.com, ask:
Are these services indexing the same content?
The answer for me is, “No.” Filters, decisions about what to index, and update calendars shape the reality depicted online. Primary sources are a fine idea, but when those sources are shaped as well, what does one do?
The answer is like one of those Borges stories. Deleting and shaping content is more environmentally friendly than burning written records. A python script works with less smoke.
Stephen E Arnold, March24, 2021
Watching Hoops: Watching Microsoft Defensive Scramble
March 24, 2021
Air ball. I read “Microsoft Defender Will Automatically Prevent Exchange Server Exploits.” Technical foul! The write up contains this statement:
The tech giant warns, however, that this is just an interim mitigation meant to protect customers while they’re in the midst of implementing the comprehensive security update for Exchange it released earlier this month.
Over and back!
The Redmond Wizards have great cheerleaders, but the opponents own the auditorium. The clock is ticking.
The Wizards’ coach is yelling at the officials. Oh, another technical foul.
Quick. Print out the play.
Wait, Microsoft Windows 10 updates broke the printer.
Whistle. Another technical foul.
Stephen E Arnold, March 24, 2021
What Makes MIT a Great Institution: No, Not Jeffrey Epstein
March 24, 2021
News flash. Complex math is a challenge. People who can parse in a meaningful way said complex math are not plentiful compared to Wendy’s workers and art history majors.
“Auditors Are Testing Hiring Algorithms for Bias, but Big Questions Remain” presents a brilliant insight. This is a eureka moment unequalled in MIT’s rich history of research, analysis, and judicious decision making. (No, I am not talking about Jeffrey Epstein, the cover up, and the sweep under the rug response.)
What is this brilliant empirical insight? I quote:
For all the attention that AI audits have received, though, their ability to actually detect and protect against bias remains unproven. The term “AI audit” can mean many different things, which makes it hard to trust the results of audits in general.
I have to sit down, take a breath, calm myself.
Complex numerical procedures, smart software, and outputs with opaque programmer controls are very hard to audit.
What’s the fix?
None other than ideas like “let the government do it.”
Yeah, brilliant.
Stephen E Arnold, March 24, 2021
Microsoft: Your Computer, Your Data. That Is a Good One
March 23, 2021
The online news stream is chock full of information about Microsoft’s swing-for-the-fences PR push for Discord. If you are not familiar with the service, I am not going to explain this conduit for those far more youthful than I. Like GitHub, Discord is going to be an interesting property if the Redmond crowd does the deal. If we anticipate Discord becoming part of the Xbox and Teams family, the alleged censorship of software posted to GitHub will be a glimpse of the content challenges in Microsoft’s future.
The more interesting development is the “real” news story “Microsoft Edge Could Soon Share Browsing Data with Windows 10.” The idea is that a person’s computer and the authorized users of the computing device will become one big, happy data family.
The article states:
Called share browsing data with other Windows features, it is designed to share data from Edge, such as Favorites or visited sites, with other Windows components. Search is a prime target, and highlighted by Microsoft at the time of writing. Basically, what this means is that users who run searches using the built-in search feature may get Edge results as well.
And what does Microsoft get? Possibilities include:
- Federated, fine grained user behavior data
- Click stream data matched to content on the user’s personal computer
- Real-time information flows
- Opportunities to share data with certain entities.
What happens to the user’s computer if said user does not accept such integration? The options range from loss of access to certain data to pro-active interaction to alter the functioning of the user’s computing device.
Why is this such a good idea? Microsoft, like Amazon, Facebook, and Google realize that the days of the Wild West are coming to an end. There are new sheriffs with new ideas about right and wrong.
Thus, get what one can while the gittin’ is good as the old times used to say.
But “What about security and privacy?” you ask? One response is, “That’s a good one.” Why not try stand up?
Stephen E Arnold, March 23, 2021
Google: Its Feedback Loop Explained
March 23, 2021
I read “Google Profits from Spreading Fake News — Here’s How.” Google’s been leveraging its “inspiration” from Yahoo-GoTo-Overture ad innovations for decades. Imagine my surprise when the “truth” of feedback was finally revealed. (Yep, it took decades for whiz kids to crack the somewhat high-school auditorium sound system concept.)
Here’s a passage I found revelatory about how little awareness “expert” Google watchers know about the systems and methods of the online ad giant:
When you click on a search result, the search algorithm learns that the link you clicked is relevant for your search query. This is called relevance feedback. This feedback helps the search engine give higher weight to that link for that query in the future. If enough people click on that link enough times, thus giving strong relevance feedback, that website starts coming up higher in search results for that and related queries. People are more likely to click on links shown up higher on the search results list. This creates a positive feedback loop – the higher a website shows up, the more the clicks, and that in turn makes that website move higher or keep it higher.
What other Google magic awaits discovery?
Remarkable. That feedback has baffled for so long.
Stephen E Arnold, March 23, 2021
Symbolic AI Inbenta Is Numero Uno
March 23, 2021
I know that you are intimately familiar with Inbenta Technologies. No fair asking, “What?” I read “Inbenta Announced As The Number One Service Provider In Latest ECommerce Conversational AI Benchmark Study.”
Inbenta, as you definitely know and think about each waking moment, is a global leader in symbolic AI based customer interaction applications.
A study focused on “resolution rates.” I think this means that a customer interacts with a smart Web site or a smart answering system, that customer finds out what’s needed. I assume that a customer who hangs up or clicks away in frustration, anger, and a sense of being dismissed is happy.
Well, guess what? Inbenta’s system ripped the Marika Eclipse Tummy Control yoga gear off IBM, Google, and Microsoft. These were underperformers. IBM Watson, Google, and Microsoft “underperformers”?
Who knew?
Inbenta, according to the PR write up:
Inbenta also scored the highest rate across all topic categories (order taking, shipping and payments) and having the best capabilities to detect and translate interactions to modeled intent.
Interesting. Inbenta may position itself to be purchased by one of these underperformers. With a study like this in hand, a bidding war could ensue.
The Inbenta loser would be “bent outa” shape too.
Stephen E Arnold, March 23, 2021
DarkCyber for March 23, 2021, Now Available
March 23, 2021
DarkCyber for March 23, 2021, is now available at this link.
The March 23, 2021, program contains four stories.
The feature is an interview with the director of GovWizely, Erik Arnold. A former Lycos and Vivisimo executive, Mr. Arnold was a principal researcher on a study about the SolarWinds’ breach. The client for this report was an investment firm. The focus, therefore, was different from the obfuscation and marketing reports generated by cyber security firms and consultants.
Some of the report’s more interesting finding are discussed in the video. A more comprehensive review of the SolarWinds’ breach will be provided on March 25, 2021. Mr. Arnold will conduct an informational webinar on March 25, 2021, at 11 am Eastern time. Registration is required, but there is not charge for the one hour program. You can sign up at https://www.govwizely.com/contact/.
Other stories in the March 23, 2021, program are:
- A look at the management and credibility challenges the Microsoft Exchange Server security lapses create
- How anyone can implement an email tracking function. Three commercial services are mentioned and a GitHub repository is provided for those who want to reuse open source surveillance and monitoring code
- The Russian GROM. This is a weapons capable drone which has been upgraded to carry 10 mini-drones. Each mini-drone can perform kinetic (micro munition) or reconnaissance functions. The 10 drones can function as a swarm, coordinated via artificial intelligence to adapt to changing battled conditions.
DarkCyber is a video news program published twice each month. The videos are available on YouTube. The video news program covers the Dark Web, cyber crime, and lesser known Internet services. The producer is Stephen E Arnold, publisher of Beyond Search which is available at www.arnoldit.com/wordpress.
Kenny Toth, March 23, 2021
Brin Balloons His Bet on Buoyancy
March 22, 2021
I spotted the story “Is Sergey Brin Really Building the World’s Biggest Aircraft? Here’s Everything We Know.” Darned uplifting. The drift of the write up is:
… the ninth richest person in the world’s focus has been on exactly that: building a giant “sky yacht.”
As the IRS might term it, this is a hobby.
The write up explains:
… the LTA [Lighter Than Air] website states only humanitarian goals: “LTA airships will have the ability to complement — and even speed up — humanitarian disaster response and relief efforts, especially in remote areas that cannot be easily accessed by plane and boat due to limited or destroyed infrastructure.
Ah, ha. Tax deduction maybe?
How big you ask?
At this size [650 feet or two soccer pitches], the flying machine would definitely be the world’s largest aircraft today — although it would still be smaller than the ill-fated Hindenburg zeppelin of the 1930s, which was 804 feet long. For context, that’s more than three times the length of a Boeing 747 and more than four times the length of your typical Goodyear Blimp.
Several observations:
- The write up does not explore the Loon balloon initiative. It drifted into oblivion by the way.
- The airship’s size is bigger than Roman Abramovich’s Solaris super yacht which is about 200 feet smaller in the length department. But the ship is fungible; the balloon is plein d’air chaud.
- The science club project will prove that buoyancy is a verifiable phenomenon.
Soon the uplifting impact of the world’s largest humanitarian balloon will cast its long shadow over the land. Quick question: Will Mr. Abramovich undertake an even larger inflatable object with a possible tax deduction. Solaris is difficult to shape into tax benefit, but it could be done with surplus Loon balloons.
Stephen E Arnold, March 22, 2021
Microsoft Security: An Ominous Signification
March 22, 2021
IT News published “White House Taskforce Meets over Microsoft Software Weaknesses.” The “real news” story included a statement which I placed in the predictive bucket. Here’s the prose which caught my attention:
The security holes in the widely used mail and calendaring software leave the door open to industrial-scale cyber espionage, allowing malicious actors to steal emails virtually at will from vulnerable servers or to move elsewhere in the network.
Microsoft is pretty good at issuing magic fixes; for example, “Microsoft Releases One-Click Patch for Exchange Vulnerability” reveals:
Microsoft has released a one-click patch, the Microsoft Exchange On-Premises Mitigation tool, to help customers apply new security updates in the face of the Exchange Server cyber attack.
This IT Pro article points out:
ESET research found that Microsoft Exchange servers had been targeted by “at least ten hacker groups” and that they had managed to install backdoors on more than 5,000 servers in over 115 countries.
In this context the phrase “industrial scale cyber espionage” is doubly chilling.
Now about that JEDI contract for the US Department of Defense?
Stephen E Arnold, March 22, 2021
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