Google Quote to Note: We Are Just Like Our Customers
August 18, 2021
I read “Google Cloud’s Top Engineers Explain How They Use Customers Sessions to Build Products.” The write up is information obtained from a single Google engineer. The Googler manifests the here-and-now of customer empathy sessions. Yep, empathy. Google cares about the Cloud it seems.
I noted this statement attributed to the empathetic Google expert:
When I joined Google, we needed to get better at meeting people where they are. That was the idea behind these empathy sessions.—Googler Kelsey Hightower
“Meeting people where they are.” Does that mean in a trade show booth. I thought in Washington, DC, Google relied on partners to meet “customers.” Guess I was incorrect in that but that factoid surfaced in a meeting at a security services outfit on August 9, 2021. One of those people noted that he had performed this function for the Google. Obviously, despite the security of the attendees, the first hand account was disinformation maybe?
Here’s another insightful and human centric statement about Google systems:
When you have good technology, you can fall into this trap of assuming it just works.
Okay, great observation. Is the Google in this trap because empathy is one thing and delivering systems that “work”, useful documentation, that bugaboo customer support are not inherently empathetic. These are business services directly at odds with cost cutting, efficiency, and assuming that Googlers are smarter than everyone else in the whole wide world. News flash: That’s not exactly a good premise in my opinion. If that were true, dead fish like Amazon and Microsoft would not be selling more cloud services than Mother Google.
Now here’s the quote to note:
Empathy engineering is a very humbling experience.
Yep, humbling. Maybe a new catchphrase for Googlers? Just be humble. How does that sound?
I think it is more T-shirtable than Don’t be evil. Evil can generate revenue.
Stephen E Arnold, August 18, 2021
Apple: Change Is a Constant in the Digital Orchard
August 18, 2021
Do you remember how plans would come together at the last minute when you were in high school. Once the gaggle met up, plans would change again. I do. Who knew what was going on? When my parents asked me, “Where are you going?” I answered directly: “I don’t know yet.”
Apple sparked a moment of déjà vu for me when I read “Apple Alters Planned New System for Detecting Child Sex Abuse Images over Privacy Concerns.” The write up explained that the high school science club member have allowed events to shape their plans.
Even more interesting is what the new course of action will be; to wit:
The tech giant has said the system will now only hunt for images that have been flagged by clearinghouses in multiple countries.
How’s this going to work? Mode, median, mean, row vector value smoothing, other? The write up states:
Apple had declined to say how many matched images on a phone or a computer it would take before the operating system notifies them for a human review and possible reporting to authorities.
Being infused with the teen aged high school science club approach to decision making, some give the impression of being confused or disassociated from the less intelligent herd.
I have some questions about how these “clearinghouses in multiple countries” will become part of the Apple method. But as interested as I am in who gets to provide inputs, I am more interested in those thresholds and algorithms.
I don’t have to worry, one of the Apple science club managers apparently believes that the core of the system will return 99 percent or greater accuracy.
That’s pretty accurate because that’s six sigma territory for digital content in digital content land. Amazing.
But that’s the teen spirit which made high school science club decisions about what to do to prank the administrators so much fun. What happens if one chows down on too many digital apples? Oh, oh.
Stephen E Arnold, August 18, 2021
SEO Relevance Destroyers and Semantic Search
August 18, 2021
Search Engine Journal describes to SEO professionals how the game has changed since early days, when it was all about keywords and backlinks, in “Semantic Search: What it Is & Why it Matters.” Writer Aleh Barysevich emphasizes:
“Now, you need to understand what those keywords mean, provide rich information that contextualizes those keywords, and firmly understand user intent. These things are vital for SEO in an age of semantic search, where machine learning and natural language processing are helping search engines understand context and consumers better. In this piece, you’ll learn what semantic search is, why it’s essential for SEO, and how to optimize your content for it.”
Semantic search strives to comprehend each searcher’s intent, a query’s context, and the relationships between words. The increased use of voice search adds another level of complexity. Barysevich traces Google’s semantic search evolution from 2012’s Knowledge Graph to 2019’s BERT. SEO advice follows, including tips like these: focus on topics instead of keywords, optimize site structure, and continue to offer authoritative backlinks. The write-up concludes:
“Understanding how Google understands intent in intelligent ways is essential to SEO. Semantic search should be top of mind when creating content. In conjunction, do not forget about how this works with Google E-A-T principles. Mediocre content offerings and old-school SEO tricks simply won’t cut it anymore, especially as search engines get better at understanding context, the relationships between concepts, and user intent. Content should be relevant and high-quality, but it should also zero in on searcher intent and be technically optimized for indexing and ranking. If you manage to strike that balance, then you’re on the right track.”
Or one could simply purchase Google ads. That’s where traffic really comes from, right?
Cynthia Murrell, August 17, 2021
A Simple Question: Just One Cyber Security Firm?
August 17, 2021
There are quite a few cyber security, cyber intelligence, and cyber threat companies. I have a list of about 100 of the better known outfits in this business. Presumably there are dozens, maybe hundreds of trained analysts and finely tuned intelware programs looking for threats and stolen data 24×7.
I read “Secret Terrorist Watchlist with 2 million Records Exposed Online.” The write up states:
July this year, Security Discovery researcher Bob Diachenko came across a plethora of JSON records in an exposed Elasticsearch cluster that piqued his interest.
Here’s my question: Why was a single researcher the only expert aware of this serious breach (if indeed it is valid)?
My hunch is that the Fancy Dan 24×7 smart systems and the legions of developers refining smart intelware have produced systems that simply don’t work. If they did, numerous alerting services would have spotted the alleged do not fly data. The “single researcher” would have been late to the party. He wasn’t. Thank goodness for this research, Mr. Diachenko.
Those systems, as far as I know, did not. The question remains, “Maybe these commercial services don’t work particularly well?” Marketing is really easy, even fun. Delivering on crazy assertions is a different sort of job.
Stephen E Arnold, August 17, 2021
Facebook: A Force for Good. Now What Does Good Mean?
August 17, 2021
I read Preston Byrne’s essay about the Taliban’s use of WhatsApp. You can find that very good write up at this link. Mr. Byrne asks an important question: Did America just lose Afghanistan because of WhatsApp?
I also read “WhatsApp Can’t Ban the Taliban Because It Can’t Read Their Texts.” The main point of the write up is to point out that Facebook’s encrypted message system makes blocking users really difficult, like impossible almost.
I noted this statement:
the Taliban used Facebook-owned chat app WhatsApp to spread its message and gain favor among local citizens…
Seems obvious, right. Free service. Widely available. Encrypted. Why the heck not?
Here’s a statement in the Vice write up which caught my attention:
The company spokesperson said that WhatsApp complies with U.S. sanctions law, so if it encounters any sanctioned people or organizations using the app, it will take action, including banning the accounts. This obviously depends on identifying who uses WhatsApp, without having access to any of the messages sent through the platform, given that the app uses end-to-end encryption. This would explain why WhatsApp hasn’t taken action against some account spreading the Taliban’s message in Afghanistan.
Let me ask a pointed question: Is it time to shut down Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram? Failing that, why not use existing laws to bring a measure of control over access, message content, and service availability?
Purposeful action is needed. If Facebook cannot figure out what to do to contain and blunt the corrosive effects of the “free” service, outsource the task to an entity which will make an effort. That approach seems to be what is looming for the NSO Group. Perhaps purposeful action is motivating Apple to try and control the less salubrious uses of the iPhone ecosystem?
Dancing around the Facebook earnings report is fine entertainment. Is it time to add some supervision to the largely unregulated, uncontrolled, and frat boy bash? One can serve a treat like Bore Palaw too.
Stephen E Arnold, August 17, 2021
Online and In Control: WhatsApp Fingered
August 17, 2021
I read an interesting article called “Did America just lose Afghanistan because of WhatsApp?” I am not sure the author is going to become the TikTok sensation of policy analysis. The point of view is interesting, and it may harbor some high-value insight.
The write up states:
Open source reporting shows that rather than rocking up and going toe to toe with the Afghan national army, they appear to have simply called everyone in the entire country, instead, told them they were in control, and began assuming the functions of government as they went:
The Taliban let the residents of Kabul know they were in control through WhatsApp, gave them numbers to call if they ran into any problems. https://t.co/TPOZt8AQsm pic.twitter.com/QhggIWYymx
The article contains other references to Taliban communications via social media like Twitter and WhatsApp. The author notes:
WhatsApp is an American product. It can be switched off by its parent, Facebook, Inc, at any time and for any reason. The fact that the Taliban were able to use it at all, quite apart from the fact that they continue to use it to coordinate their activities even now as American citizens’ lives are imperiled by the Taliban advance which is being coordinated on that app, suggests that U.S. military intelligence never bothered to monitor Taliban numbers and never bothered to ask Facebook to ban them. They probably still haven’t even asked Facebook to do this, judging from the fact that the Taliban continues to use the app with impunity. This might explain why Afghanistan collapsed as quickly as it did.
The articles makes another statement which is thought provoking; to wit:
And as a result, they [the Taliban] took Afghanistan with almost no conflict. I suspect this is because they convinced everyone they would win before they showed up.
The write up contains links and additional detail. Consult the source document for this information. I am not sure how long the post will remain up, nor do I anticipate that it will receive wide distribution.
Stephen E Arnold, August 17, 2021
NSO Group: Okay, Now the UN Is Agitated. Good Job!
August 17, 2021
Once upon a time, intelware was essentially unknown. I think back to the late 1990s when relationship diagrams were talked about quietly in rooms with tinfoil on the windows.
Those halcyon days are gone. The go-go-go MBA-thinking masters of the universe decided that public conferences, online advertisements, and explaining their systems to academics with bobble heads was a spiffy idea.
Where are we now?
“Spyware Scandal: UN Experts Call for Moratorium on Sale of Life Threatening Surveillance Tech” is a high-water mark for the flood-lit specialized software and services sector.
Outstanding!
The write up says:
UN human rights experts* today called on all States to impose a global moratorium on the sale and transfer of surveillance technology until they have put in place robust regulations that guarantee its use in compliance with international human rights standards.
How’s this going to work out? Is there a marketing time machine which will undo the conference publicity? Is there a way to undo the content outputs about what should have been secret software and systems? Is there a way to get those investigative journalists redirected to issues like the homeless and gray market gun sales?
Nope.
The UN may not be a pace-setter in many things. But the organization is quite good at outputting reports and news which can ripple through the deciders in more than 190 member states. That pretty much looks like a global reach.
Remarkable, and I am not sure the Berkeley negotiators are going to deal with the problems of this digital Pandora’s box. Whose fingers will get smashed as fixer uppers try to get the lid locked down?
Stephen E Arnold, August 17, 2021
Nifty Interactive Linear Algebra Text
August 17, 2021
Where was this text when I was an indifferent student in a one-cow town high school? I suggest you take a look at Dan Margalit’s and Joseph Rabinoff’s Interactive linear Algebra. The text is available online and as a PDF version. The information is presented clearly and there are helpful illustrations. Some of them wiggle and jump. This is a must-have in my opinion. Linear algebra in the age of whiz-bang smart methods? Yes. One comment: When we checked the online version, the hot links in the index did not resolve. Use the Next link.
Stephen E Arnold, August 17, 2021
Quote to Note: When Is the Best Time to Snag Mobile Data?
August 17, 2021
I read “We’re Late Closing the Barn Door on Pegasus.” The write up contains a statement I found interesting. Here’s the passage I noted:
Intelligence agencies around the world have shifted from collecting data in transit to collecting data at rest, since encryption uptake has made the former less fruitful. Sniffing packets in the air or over the wire has traditionally been the first choice for intelligence agencies only because it was the easiest. Intelligence agencies historically targeted devices, too, but usually only for their top targets. But now that so much traffic is encrypted, it makes more sense to focus on its endpoints.
This may seem obvious to some. The point is that specifically articulating a method in mass media is probably not high on my list of communication musts. This is one more example of the knock-on effect of the NSO Group’s media magnetism. I wish I could say that the NSO Group matter was lost in the ever decreasing news cycle. I cannot.
Stephen E Arnold, August 17, 2021
Quote to Note: Smart Software and Bad Data
August 16, 2021
AI or artificial intelligence is a big deal, particularly to those who are betting big bucks on the technology transforming everything. “Pepperdata CEO Says AI Ambitions Outpace Data Management Reality” is more pragmatic. In an interview with a Silicon Valley type news service, Pepperdata CEO Ash Munshi says:
I’m spending more money, but I’m not understanding anything better.
The key word in my opinion is “understanding.” Knowing is different from saying one knows.
Pepperdata’s big dog adds:
At the end of the day, data provides you insights. Those insights give you the ability to create a gut instinct, and that gut instinct is the fundamental thing that you use to make decisions.
If I understand this statement, smart software makes it easier to make a subjective decision.
This view strikes me as raising an important point: Smart software boils down to guessing to make it easier for the human to use “gut instinct.” Progress?
Stephen E Arnold, August 16, 2021
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