Popping Up a Level: Meta-Apps Are Becoming a Thing
August 24, 2022
A long time ago, I heard the word viewshed in a meeting in Crystal City. I liked it. Others did not. One interesting person chimed in and said, “Let’s pop up a level.” Then I heard “level up” as a way to rise above the fray or the mind numbing weirdness of many business meetings. More recently a person at a law enforcement conference use the phrase “meta-view.” The idea is that one needs to take a content object — say, a Facebook post — and think about the content in a broader way.
Each of these ideas suggest what a cranky Dr. Daphne Swartz called “getting lost in the weeds.” Dr. Swartz loved detail but she valued the ability to get untangled from weeds.
I read “AnyMind Adds TikTok Shop, Yahoo Japan Shopping to Shop Management Platform.” The write up explains that a software application “allows online sellers to manage shops on different ecommerce platforms from a single base.”
Yep, this is a meta-app, and I think these will play an important part in how people interact with the datasphere. The idea is simplification. Like WeChat, some users value convenience and having certain routine tasks pushed into the background. Online merchants want to sell and collect money. Fooling around with housekeeping chores is akin to cleaning toilets at summer camp. Wow, fun.
The article points out:
AnyMind launched AnyX in April with a goal of combining management, optimization, and tracking across the growing number of ecommerce channels in the region. It also offers services such as analytics, conversational commerce, digital marketing, and logistics.
Several observations:
Today’s online giants may find themselves reduced to an icon in a meta-app
Successful meta-apps may be similar to TikTok-style videos, and no amount of quasi-alleged monopolistic behavior can stop the train unless the quasi alleged monopolies buy the meta-app outfits
An integration with a China-linked outfit like TikTok makes clear that national boundaries and maybe common sense are less important than making life into a giant customized convenience store in Osaka.
Net net: Worth watching this viewshed, level up, and meta app idea.
Stephen E Arnold, August 24, 2022
Meta: What Does the Modern MySpace Do?
August 24, 2022
Frankly I don’t know what the Zuck and his team of wizards can do. I read “Teens, Social Media and Technology 2022.” The link leads to a study summary, a page of general info, and a summary of the Pew methodology.
One finding from the survey mavens at Pew Research caught my attention. If the methodology was on the money and the data processed in a way that kept the butcher’s thumb off the weighing pan, here’s a thrilling statement:
the share of teens who say they use Facebook, a dominant social media platform among teens in the Center’s 2014-15 survey, has plummeted from 71% then to 32% today.
In the span of 72 months, the Zuckbook watched teens who are considered a part of the future of the datasphere shift to short form videos. The write up included one of those charts colored in such a way to make legibility a bit of a joke. Here’s a screenshot with the bold blue line heading south. Note that despite the legibility, the other lines are heading up. YouTube is a floating dot at the top of the chart because, well, YouTube. Quasi-monopoly. Most popular online service in the “Stans.”
Should YouTube be worried? Not yet. The write up reports:
About three-quarters of teens visit YouTube at least daily, including 19% who report using the site or app almost constantly.
For more Pew data, follow the links in the cited article.
There’s not much analysis of the whys and wherefores, but the data are clear. The allegedly Chinese linked outfit TikTok has access to useful data from young people. What could a crafty person do with these data? Wait until one cluster identified as susceptible individuals and then approach or attempt to influence them.
Stephen E Arnold, August 24, 2022
Google Outages: The Logic of a Quasi Monopoly
August 24, 2022
I read “Google Search Goes Down Around the World, Chaos Ensues.” In today’s world, I am not certain that a quasi monopoly’s technical shortcomings cause chaos. Anger, frustration, and confusion, yes. Chaos already exists in a number of high profile activities; for example, air plane luggage handling, medicines which don’t work as advertised on cable TV, and self driving vehicles. The write up states about one outage:
Google Search went down in dozens of countries. Other Google services, like Google Maps, were affected too.
Then:
The outage followed an “electrical incident” earlier in the day at a Google data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, according to local media and SFGate. The incident critically injured three electricians around midday Iowa time. One person was flown to a nearby hospital and the other two were transported by ambulance.
Now here is the sentence which made the logic of quasi monopolies clear to me and probably no one else in the world, including the 150,000 or so Googlers laboring in the vineyards of truth and advertising revenue:
A Google spokesperson, however, told CNET that the two incidents were unrelated.
Er, one company is the glue that connects the two events. Thus, in my opinion, the one company has failed twice and the events are related: Corporate DNA does not infuse just the Mountain View folks. Everyone has the chemical magic if not the technical skills to demonstrate that technical debt is now too burdensome to address in an effective way. Focus, right?
Stephen E Arnold, August 24, 2022
A 2022 Real Time Classification Taxonomy
August 24, 2022
More than a decade ago, a semi clueless government entity in the European Union asked me to think about real time information flows. We looked around for technical papers, journal articles, and online information from investment banks and government agencies shooting stuff into space. (How about that real time communication from a satellite launched in 2009? Ho ho ho.)
I dug around in my paper files and found this early version of my research team’s approach to the subject of real time online information.
The team identified six principal types of real time information. I suppose today, these six categories are dinobaby eggs.
As evidence, I submit “Why You’re Probably Thinking About Real-Time Systems in the Wrong Way,” which illustrates how out-of-date our research has become. The article explains that there are three types of real time; to wit:
Hardware based real time systems, for example, high precision automated robotic assembly lines
Micro Batch real time systems; for example, ecommerce systems
Event driven real time systems; for example, embedded artificial intelligence systems
I am not sure how to fit our analysis into the three part categorization in the article.
What’s interesting is that the lack of understanding about real time, what’s needed to make them low latency, and affordable persists.
I will end with one question, “Do you think about real time in real time?”
Yes, ah, well, good for you!
Stephen E Arnold, August 24, 2022
Yandex: Has Russia Embraced the Chinese Approach to Social Media and Online?
August 23, 2022
The answer to the question “Has Russia Embraced the Chinese Approach to Technology?” is, “Seems like it.”
Like China, Russia has come to understand the power and threat online services represent to the entities holding nation state power. Technology companies which follow different rules than “regular” countries have to be brought under control or killed outright. Russia is into control.
Vkontakte top dog is the scion of Mr. Putin’s top dog. If you are into Russian names, the boss of Vkontakte is Vladimir Kirienko. Mr. Putin’s confidante and senior administrator is Sergei Kirienko. But a tame CEO is not enough. Threats have to be put in a cage and made subject to a higher power, not people with mobile phones.
Vkontakte is a semi-Facebook, just in Russian. It has about 100 million users. The company’s properties include Mail.ru, the social network Odnoklassniki, and a food delivery outfit. According to “Yandex Reaches Binding Deal to Divest News Service, Homepage to VK”:
Yandex said it is pursuing a “strategic exit from its media businesses” with the sale of Yandex.News, Yandex.ru and the Yandex.Zen blogging tool to VK. The Yandex.ru domain will be renamed dzen.ru under VK’s control and further development. Yandex’s main page — with search, mail and non-media tools — will be renamed ya.ru.
What happens to Yandex email addresses? In addition to being read and analyzed by the watch dogs, the future of Yandex mail is fuzzy.
The key take away for me is that China and Russia recognize the threat social media and online information pose. If these nation states’ concerns are valid, will countries with uncontrolled social media operating without meaningful oversight and regulation tear themselves apart?
China’s and Russia’s strategic military thinkers could be anticipating this result. Which view is correct? Social media is the Zucker’s view of bringing people together or the opposite?
Interesting question to consider.
Stephen E Arnold, August 23, 2022
Google: Redefines Quality. And What about Ads?
August 23, 2022
When I was working on The Google Legacy (Infonortics, 2004), I gathered information about Google’s method for determining quality. Prior to 2006, Google defined “quality” in a way different from the approach taken at professional indexing and commercial database companies. Professional organizations relied on subject matter experts’ views. Some firms — for example, the Courier Journal & Louisville Times, Predicasts, Engineering Index, the American Petroleum Institute, among others — were old fashioned. Commercial database firms with positive cash flows would hire specialists to provide ideas and suggestions for improving content selection and indexing. At the Courier Journal, we relied on Betty Eddison and a number of other professionals. We also hired honest-to-goodness people with advanced degrees to work on the content we produced.
Google pops up with jibber jabber about voting, a concept floated by an IBM Almaden researcher, and the notion of links and their value. As Google evolved, I collected a list of what amount4ed to 140 or so factors which were used by Google to determine the quality of content. At one time, Dr. Liz Liddy used my compilation as illustrative material for her classes in information science.
By 2006, Google shifted quality from its mysterious and somewhat orthogonal factors to what I call “ad quality.” The concept gained steam when Google acquired Applied Semantics and worked hard to relax a user’s query, match the query to a stack of ads to which the query would relate, and display these as “personalized” and targeted messages. Quality, therefore, became an automated process for working through ad revenue.
Since 2006, Google has been focused on ad revenue. My personal view is that Google has one stream of revenue: Ad revenue. Its other ventures have not demonstrated to me that the company can match its first “me too” innovation. If you don’t remember what that was, think about the Yahoo settlement related to the “inspiration” Google obtained from the GoTo.com and Overture “pay to play” system. The idea was that those with Web pages would pay to get their message in front of a service’s users.
Where is Google quality now? Is it anchored in editorial policies, old fashioned ideas like precision and recall? Is the Google using controlled vocabulary lists designed to allow precise queries? Is Google adding classification codes to disambiguate terms like terminal as in “computer terminal” or “airport terminal”?
“Google’s Planned Search Changes Could Upend the Internet” reveals:
Google is trying to improve the quality of search results and reduce the number of misleading sites, misinformation, and clickbait users are subjected to.
I want to point out that the lack of precision and recall in Google’s approach is the firm’s notion that new Web sites are more important than older Web sites, traffic is more important than factual accuracy, and ad revenue goals are the strong force in the Google datasphere.
Thus, after a certain outfit headed by a search engine optimization crazed advanced the SEO “revolution”, the Google is, according the article:
As part of the change, the company will roll out its “helpful content update” to identify content that is primarily written to rank well in search engines and lower its rank. Sullivan says the update seems to especially benefit searches related to tech, online education, shopping, arts, and entertainment. The company is also working to improve access to high-quality reviews, ones that provide helpful, in-depth information.
Does this suggest that Google will focus on high-value content, explicit editorial policies, and professional indexing by subject matter experts?
Nope.
It means quicker depletion of the ad inventory and an effort to cope with the fact that those in middle school and high school use TikTok for information.
Google is officially a dinobaby just one not very good at anything other than selling ads and steering its coal fired steam boat away from the rapids in today’s data flows. For serious information research Google is too consumer oriented. Search based applications are what some researchers prefer. The content in these systems comes from specialized crawls and collections.
The quality list? Old fashioned and antiquated. How much of Google fits in that category? SAIL on, steam boat. Chug chug chug. PR PR PR. Toot toot.
But what about traffic to sites affected by Google’s content rigor?
Just buy ads, of course.
Stephen E Arnold, August 23, 2022
A Hidden Nugget about E2EE Use as a Filter
August 23, 2022
I am not a fan of Silicon Valley type “real” news. Political biases usually color the factoids. I read “Inside Facebook’s Encryption Conundrum.” [Believe it or not you may have to spit out personal info or pay to read this hyperlinked document.] I don’t care too much about Facebook’s conundrums. Mismanaged online services are poorly understood by those who live and die by social media. The goldfish does not know the water in its bowl contains amorphous scales of lead and lead phosphate.
I am going to ignore the description of the Zuckbook’s business processes and focus on what I perceive to be the nugget in the write up:
In recent conversations with Meta employees, I’ve come to understand more about what’s taking so long — and how consumer apathy toward encryption has created challenges for the company as it works to create a secure messaging app that its user base will actually use.
Translating into Beyond Search lingo yields, “People don’t know and don’t care.”
Ergo, anyone using an encrypted messaging app is signaling:
I know;
I care;
Therefore, why not monitor me?
You may have a different conclusion. I believe use of apps like Telegram provides an important signal. Apathy is a filter. Is the opposite important?
Stephen E Arnold, August 23, 2022
Microsoft: A Better PDF?
August 23, 2022
I am not a fan of the Adobe Trapeze (now known as Acrobat). The dongles, the font handling, and the lack of a function to “destroy document” at a specific date and time convinced me that PDF really meant “poor document format.” That was in 1989 I think. As if the Adobe cross platform document rendering mechanism was not exciting enough, Microsoft decided it could create a better solution. Hey, pair that puppy with Visio, and you have a darned exciting combination.
I read “Microsoft Confirms Problems with Opening XPS Documents in Windows 10 and 11.” The write up states:
Besides the inability to open XPS and OXPS documents in non-English languages, XPS Viewer stops responding and starts hogging CPU and RAM resources until it crashes upon reaching 2.5GB of RAM usage.
The article seems mostly unconcerned with this minor problem.
My view is that it may not make much difference. If an XPS document renders, it might be difficult to print. You know the persistent USB printer thing.
Remarkable and consistent excellence in software engineering. I am not worried. I know that Windows Defender and its off spring are 100 percent rock solid. Don’t you?
Stephen E Arnold, August 23, 2022
Predicting the Future: For Money or Marketing?
August 22, 2022
A few days ago I was talking with some individuals who want to rely of predictive methods. These individuals had examples of 90 percent accuracy. Among the factoids offered were matching persons of interest with known bad actors, identifying CSAM in photographs, and predicting where an event would occur. Yep, 90 percent.
I did not mention counter examples.
A few moments ago, I emailed a link to the article titled “High-Frequency Trading Firms Can Easily Get to 64% Accuracy in Predicting Direction of the Next Trade, Princeton Study Finds.” The article states:
In its IPO filing in 2014, Virtu Financial said it had exactly one day of trading losses in 1,238 days. That kind of consistent profitability seems to be still the case: a new study from a team at Princeton University found that predictability in high frequency trading returns and durations is “large, systemic and pervasive”. They focused on the period from Jan. 2019 to Dec. 2020, which includes the turmoil when the coronavirus pandemic first hit the western world. With what they said was minimal algorithmic tuning, they can get to 64% accuracy for predicting the direction of the next trade over the next five seconds.
How accurate can the system referenced become? I noted this statement:
The Princeton researchers also simulated the effect that acquiring some signal on the direction of the order flow would have for the accuracy of the predictions. The idea is that knowledge could be gained by looking at order flow at different exchanges. That would boost the return predictability from 14% to 27%, and price direction accuracy from 68% to 79%.
Encouraging? Yes. A special case? Yes.
Flip the data to losses:
- The fail rate is 36 percent for the 2014 data
- The fail rate achieved by processing data from multiple source was 21 percent.
But 90 percent? Not yet.
What happens if one tries to use synthetic data to predict what an individual in a statistically defined cluster wants?
Yeah. Not there yet with amped up Bayesian methods and marketing collateral. Have these Princeton researchers linked with a high frequency trading outfit yet? Good PR generates opportunities in my experience.
Stephen E Arnold, August 22, 2022
NSO Group: An Award for Pony Excellence
August 22, 2022
I read “Spyware Maker NSO Won Cellphone Hack of the Year But No One Picked Up the Award.” Two things: NSO Group remains in the news but with a twist. The company has become a #humor outfit. The second thing is that NSO Group did not show up at a recent ambiguous actor conference to claim the plastic Pwnie (pony, I think) statuette.
The write up reports:
This year, NSO Group was nominated for the Best Mobile Bug, for the exploit known as Forced Entry, an iPhone exploit that didn’t require any interaction from the victim, meaning targets could get hacked without realizing anything happened. Security researchers praised the technical sophistication of the exploit, calling it “mind-bending,” a bug that “goes into ‘holy smokes, what?!’ area,” with “several truly beautiful aspects,” and “absolutely stunning.”
Intelware as a foundation for humor. Who would have thought that would ever happen? A little plastic, see through pony. Perfect for a transparent outfit, but NSO Group? Whew.
The one saving grace is that Mark the Zuck wandering around in the Zuckerverse is a bigger magnet for humorists. That’s saying something.
Stephen E Arnold, August 19, 2022
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