What Is the Sum of Online Videos and Zoom? Answer: Duh
November 14, 2022
The pandemic casts a long shadow, both medically and socially. For example, Insider reveals, “US Math Skills Suffered Their Biggest-Ever Setback During COVID, with Just 26% of 8th Graders Meeting the Mark.” Sounds like a lubricant for future financial fraud. Reporter Ayelet Sheffey cites the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation’s Report Card. She writes:
“The results were stark — math scores for eighth graders dropped in nearly every state, with just 26% of them proficient in the subject, down from 34% in 2019. For fourth graders, the average math score fell by five points, and reading scores for both grades fell by three points. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said during Monday remarks that these findings should be ‘an urgent call to action.'”
Wait, down from 34% pre-pandemic? We weren’t exactly doing great then either. The write-up continues:
“As [Education Secretary Miguel Cardona] noted during his Monday remarks, these results cannot be solely attributed to the pandemic, saying that ‘the data prior to the pandemic did not reflect an education system that was on the right track. The pandemic simply made that worse. It took poor performance – and dropped it down even further.’ He called out lack of investment in education under previous administrations. Cardona said that in the coming days, his department will inform educators on how they can use funding for schools from the 2021 American Rescue Plan stimulus package to address learning loss and launch a series on tools to accelerate students’ learning in math and reading.”
It is true that schools are in desperate need of funding, so that is welcome news. But can this problem really be solved by throwing money at it? It is far from assured the added dollars will address problems like over-testing, systemic inequity, and entrenched practices that squash students’ innate love of learning. And don’t even get us started on factors outside school. It is tempting to blame the pandemic for poor student performance, but the dramatic plunge in scores only highlights a long-term problem.
Cynthia Murrell, November 14, 2022
Amazon: The Bezos Bulldozer Shoves Customers and Crushes Competitors
November 11, 2022
The myth of the enlightened technology company led by an ethical, socially-minded leadership team seems to be dissipating like fog in a Kentucky hollow on a spring morning. Whether it was the craziness of blue and gray checks on Twitter or the public confessions of the Zuck, there is mounting evidence that knowledge of programming does not translate into effective management. In our nifty money centric country, money means brilliance, leadership skills, wisdom, and a quantum link to JP Morgan, Jay Gould, Andrew Carnegie, et al.
I want to shift from the public chaos to an interesting article from a Silicon Valley type of “real” news outfit. The article which caught my attention is “Basically Everything on Amazon Has Become an Ad.” The write up reveals that Amazon is not an old-fashioned Sears catalog. Nope, Amazon is a more expensive variant of eBay. I noted:
Amazon has designs to boost its ad business to new heights by selling more video commercials on Amazon properties like the video game livestreaming service Twitch and during live sporting events streamed on Prime Video; and by offering audio ads on Amazon Music. The company has also invested heavily in in-house software tools that allow brands to purchase highly targeted ads around the web.
The write up then misses what I think is the main thrust of the Bezos bulldozer. The article states:
Amazon has become a power player in yet another industry, adding advertising to a list that already includes e-commerce, logistics, entertainment, cloud computing, and voice assistants.
Sort of like other close-enough-for-horseshoes’ analysis.
The direction at Amazon is institutionalizing dark patterns. Users/customers think one thing, and the company is moving them like cattle in a Chicago stock yard to the meat packing plant.
Advertising is manipulative communication. Consider these methods at Amazon:
- Complex pricing mechanisms within AWS
- Lack of transparency about the data flowing into its commercial database business
- Functionality provided to certain government agencies within the Amazon Government regions and clouds
- Functionality within “free” music designed to create a need for a more expensive version of the service so users can create playlists.
There are other dark patterns as well. (I won’t mention the security mechanism for certain AWS cloud services which are extra cost options, not the default.)
Net net: More attention may be warranted by regulatory entities in the US and other countries. The Bezos bulldozer is reshaping landscapes, and everyone thinks that these “developments” are good for everyone. How many rabbits and squirrels are crushed by the Bezos bulldozers each day? Give up. The answer is a lot. Who wants to give up the one-click service, the subscription to common products, and the mythical one-day delivery?
Stephen E Arnold, November 11, 2022
Evolution? Sure, Consider the Future of Humanoids
November 11, 2022
It’s Friday, and everyone deserves a look at what their children’s grandchildren will look like. Let me tell you. These progeny will be appealing folk. “Future Humans Could Have Smaller Brains, New Eyelids and Hunchbacks Thanks to Technology.” Let’s look at some of the real “factoids” in this article from the estimable, rock solid fact factory, The Daily Sun:
- A tech neck which looks to me to be a baby hunchback
- Smaller brains (evidence of this may be available now. Just ask a teen cashier to make change
- A tech claw. I think this means fingers adapted to thumbtyping and clicky keyboards.
I must say that these adaptations seem to be suited to the digital environment. However, what happens if there is no power?
Perhaps Neanderthal characteristics will manifest themselves? Please, check the cited article for an illustration of the future human. My first reaction was, “Someone who looks like that works at one of the high tech companies near San Francisco. Silicon Valley may be the cradle of adapted humans at this time. Perhaps a Stanford grad student will undertake a definitive study by observing those visiting Philz’ Coffee.
Stephen E Arnold, November 11, 2022
LinkedIn Helps Users Spot Fake Accounts it Lets Slip Through
November 11, 2022
Fake LinkedIn accounts are a fact of life. One might wonder how it is a professional social media site does not require member verification. It seems like a must have, but then LinkedIn is a Microsoft property after all. Now the site is making at least a show of doing something about the issue. No, not increasing efforts to prevent or remove fake profiles; don’t be silly. This is a case of user beware. According to CNN, “LinkedIn Knows There Are Fake Accounts on Its Site. Now It Wants to Help Users Spot Them.” Reporter Clare Duffy writes:
“LinkedIn is rolling out to some users the opportunity to verify their profile using a work email address or phone number. That verification will be incorporated into a new, ‘About this Profile’ section that will also show when a profile was created and last updated, to give users additional context about an account they may be considering connecting with. If an account was created very recently and has other potential red flags, such as an unusual work history, it could be a sign that users should proceed with caution when interacting with it. The verification option will be available to a limited number of companies at first, but will become more widely available over time, and the ‘About this Profile’ section will roll out globally in the coming weeks, according to the company. The platform will also begin alerting users if a message they have received seems suspicious — such as those that invite the recipient to continue the conversation on another platform including WhatsApp (a common move in crypto currency-related scams) or those that ask for personal information.”
We are told detecting and removing bots or fake accounts is just too tricky and subjective to expect LinkedIn to get it right. It is funny how “empowering users” often translates to “passing the buck.” So for those who must use LinkedIn, just remember it is up to you to verify others are who they say they are.
Cynthia Murrell, November 11, 2022
Robotics Firms Sternly Bid Customers Not to Weaponize their Products
November 11, 2022
For anyone troubled by visions of armed robots roaming the streets, patrolling our workplaces, or invading our homes, rest assured robotics firms are addressing the concern. Can they implement some sort of failsafe? Well, no. ZDNet reports, “Boston Dynamics: We Won’t Weaponize our Robots and Neither Should our Customers.” So there. That lukewarm declaration should dissuade anyone inclined to MacGyver weapons onto an innocent machine, right? Reporter Liam Tung writes:
“Boston Dynamics, the formerly Google-owned firm behind the Spot robot dog and its humanoid equivalents, has published an open letter vowing to counter attempts by buyers to weaponize its products. The company released the pledge, saying it was worried by recent ‘makeshift efforts’ by people to weaponize commercially available robots. Several other robotics firms have signed the commitment.
The firm doesn’t mention which efforts it is worried about, but one example of this trend, as Vice reported in July, is shown in a video on YouTube, where a robot dog is rigged up with a gun and is shooting at targets. ‘Robots should be used to help, not harm. We prohibit weaponization, while supporting the safe, ethical, and effective use of robots in public safety,’ Boston Dynamics said in a blog post. The company’s open letter highlights that consumers’ trust in robots has waned after seeing weapons combined with autonomous and remotely controlled robots. Other companies that have signed the commitment are Agility Robotics, ANYbotics, Clearpath Robotics, Open Robotics, and Unitree Robotics.”
Great! Or it might be if these companies had any way to enforce this mandate stronger than the threat of a voided warranty. Besides the basic threat to humanity, robotics firms seem to have an even greater concern: The public might question the wisdom of unleashing their products on the world. Oh, are there wars underway?
Cynthia Murrell, November 11, 2022
About Fancy Math: Struggles Are Not Exciting, Therefore Ignored
November 10, 2022
Ask yourself, “How many of my colleagues understand statistical procedures?” I am waiting.
Okay, enough time.
Navigate to “Pollsters Struggle to Improve Forecasts.” If you have a dead tree version of the Wall Street Journal, the story appears on page A4. If you have the online version of the paper, pay up and click this link. If you cannot locate the story, well, that’s life in the Murdoch high tech universe.
The article reports:
Overall, national polls in 2020 were the most inaccurate in 40 years, a study by the main association of survey researchers found, and state-level polls in 2016 were significantly off the mark.
So what?
Check out “Nate Silver Admits He Got Played by the GOP But Blames the Democrats for Not Using Poor Polling Practices.” The write up explains how a wizard fumbled the data ball. How many other whiz kids fumble data balls but do not come up with lame excuses and finger pointing?
Smart software relies on procedures not too distant from those used by pollsters. How accurate are the outputs from these massively hyped systems? Close enough for horseshoes? Good enough? Are you ready to let smart software determine how to treat your cancer, drive your vehicle, and grade your bright young 10-year-old?
Stephen E Arnold, November 10, 2022
Twitter and Ad Revenue: Not a Surprise
November 10, 2022
Advertisers are interested in reaching prospects. Some advertisers worry about their image or in today speak, their “brand.” Therefore, what advertisers do is avoid trouble. When the dust settles, advertisers assess what channels sell and push money to them. The decision is part handwaving (early stage) and then making sales (middle and late stage) of the sales funnel.
We have some musky evidence that advertisers are in the early stage of the the new Twitter. “Twitter CEO Elon Musk Says Ad Revenue Has Dropped Massively” reports:
Elon Musk has revealed that Twitter has seen a “massive drop” in revenue since he took over the platform. He claims that activists have been putting pressure on advertisers to pause their ads on the micro blogging service. Elon didn’t state how much revenue the platform had lost, but companies that have paused ads include General Motors, Audi, General Mills, and IPG.
This is not particularly surprising. The Elon’s handling of staff issues sets a new high water mark for high school management methods. Firing people is often hired with some care and people massaging. The Elon’s approach appears to be more like a 24 year old American football lineman charging at Tom Brady. Ouch.
What’s next for the tweeter thing? The Beyond Search research team is unable to prognosticate. The Elon defies our predictive analytic methods. Remember. The Elon shot a car into space. PR or just a high school science club prank? We suggest it was a hybrid; that is, a little of both. Firing people via email is pure high schoolery in our opinion. Let loose the legal eagles!
Stephen E Arnold, November 10, 2022
Sonic: an Open Source Elasticsearch Alternative for Lighter Backends
November 10, 2022
When business messaging platform Crisp launched in 2015, it did so knowing its search functionality was lacking. Unfortunate, but least the company never pretended otherwise. The team found Elasticsearch was not scalable for its needs, and the SQL database it tried proved ponderous. Finally, in 2019, the solution emerged. Cofounder Valerian Saliou laid out the specifics in his blog post, “Announcing Sonic: A Super-Light Alternative to Elasticsearch.” He wrote:
“This was enough to justify the need for a tailor-made search solution. The Sonic project was born.
What is Sonic? Sonic can be found on GitHub as Sonic, a Fast, lightweight & schema-less search backend. Quoting what Sonic is from the GitHub page of the project: ‘Sonic is a fast, lightweight and schema-less search backend. It ingests search texts and identifier tuples, that can then be queried against in microseconds time. Sonic can be used as a simple alternative to super-heavy and full-featured search backends such as Elasicsearch in some use-cases. Sonic is an identifier index, rather than a document index; when queried, it returns IDs that can then be used to refer to the matched documents in an external database.’ Sonic is built in Rust, which ensures performance and stability. You can host it on a server of yours, and connect your apps to it over a LAN via Sonic Channel, a specialized protocol. You’ll then be able to issue search queries and push new index data from your apps — whichever programming language you work with. Sonic was designed to be fast and lightweight on resources.”
Not only do Crisp users get the benefits of this tool, but it is also available as open-source software. A few features of note include auto complete and typo correction, compatibility with Unicode, and user friendly libraries. See the detailed write-up for the developers’ approach to Sonic, the benefits and limitations, and implementation notes.
Cynthia Murrell, November 10, 2022
When a Space Station Burns Up: The Facebook Trajectory
November 10, 2022
Mark Zuckerburg was so sure his company’s path to continued relevance lay in the Metaverse that last year he changed its name from Facebook to Meta. But after investing over $10 billion and dragging many workers from social media into virtual reality, the firm is traveling a rocky road. Not only is the Metaverse push expected to lose a significant amount of money, but the Facebook division is now suffering from the lack of attention. The Financial Times reveals, “Zuckerberg’s Metaverse Rush Pauses for ‘Quality Lockdown’ (paywall).” Reporters Hannah Murphy, Patrick McGee, and Christina Criddle write:
“According to memos and conversations with 10 current and former employees, [Zuckerberg’s] 3bn user-strong social media empire is experiencing disruption and challenges as part of the pivot to Meta, and has already been forced to delay future launches and adjust expectations. In a September memo seen by the Financial Times, Vishal Shah, the vice-president of Meta’s metaverse arm, warned that users and creators had complained that Horizon Worlds — its social virtual reality experience and the closest thing it has to a metaverse so far — was low quality and full of bugs. He ordered a ‘quality lockdown’ for the rest of the year, telling staff that they need to improve fundamentals before any aggressive expansion. Staffers working on the product had to ‘reprioritize or slow some things we had planned’, said Shah, adding that he was lowering its user numbers target for the second half of the year. Some employees warned morale was suffering as teams got restructured to accommodate Zuckerberg’s new vision, which many have not yet bought into. ‘There are a lot of people internally who have never put on a [virtual reality] headset,’ said one metaverse employee.”
Shah insists that simply will not do, and demands workers start using the buggy Horizon World at least once a week. They must be so pleased. It cannot help morale that Zuckerberg announced an upcoming hiring freeze and cost cutting measures while demanding workers demonstrate “increased intensity” and a “sense of urgency.” If he is not careful, he may have no need for that hiring freeze after all. As the Insider notes in its related coverage, the company is also dealing with a slowdown in ad revenue, a steep decline in market valuation, and the loss of former COO Sheryl Sandberg’s considerable talents. Furthermore, investors suspect the company is on the wrong track and, as analyst Rich Greenfield notes, “Meta continues to get its clock cleaned by TikTok.” We are curious to see whether the company can correct its course from here.
Cynthia Murrell, November 10, 2022
The Google: Indexing and Discriminating Are Expensive. So Get Bigger Already
November 9, 2022
It’s Wednesday, November 9, 2022, only a few days until I hit 78. Guess what? Amidst the news of crypto currency vaporization, hand wringing over the adult decisions forced on high school science club members at Facebook and Twitter, and the weirdness about voting — there’s a quite important item of information. This particular datum is likely to be washed away in the flood of digital data about other developments.
What is this gem?
An individual has discovered that the Google is not indexing some Mastodon servers. You can read the story in a Mastodon post at this link. Don’t worry. The page will resolve without trying to figure out how to make Mastodon stomp around in the way you want it to. The link to you is Snake.club Stephen Brennan.
The item is that Google does not index every Mastodon server. The Google, according to Mr. Brennan:
has decided that since my Mastodon server is visually similar to other Mastodon servers (hint, it’s supposed to be) that it’s an unsafe forgery? Ugh. Now I get to wait for a what will likely be a long manual review cycle, while all the other people using the site see this deceptive, scary banner.
So what?
Mr. Brennan notes:
Seems like El Goog has no problem flagging me in an instant, but can’t cleanup their mistakes quickly.
A few hours later Mr. Brennan reports:
However, the Search Console still insists I have security problems, and the “transparency report” here agrees, though it classifies my threat level as Yellow (it was Red before).
Is the problem resolved? Sort of. Mr. Brennan has concluded:
… maybe I need to start backing up my Google data. I could see their stellar AI/moderation screwing me over, I’ve heard of it before.
Why do I think this single post and thread is important? Four reasons:
- The incident underscores how an individual perceives Google as “the Internet.” Despite the use of a decentralized, distributed system. The mind set of some Mastodon users is that Google is the be-all and end-all. It’s not, of course. But if people forget that there are other quite useful ways of finding information, the desire to please, think, and depend on Google becomes the one true way. Outfits like Mojeek.com don’t have much of a chance of getting traction with those in the Google datasphere.
- Google operates on a close-enough-for-horseshoes or good-enough approach. The objective is to sell ads. This means that big is good. The Good Principle doesn’t do a great job of indexing Twitter posts, but Twitter is bigger than Mastodon in terms of eye balls. Therefore, it is a consequence of good-enough methods to shove small and low-traffic content output into a area surrounded by Google’s police tape. Maybe Google wants Mastodon users behind its police tape? Maybe Google does not care today but will if and when Mastodon gets bigger? Plus some Google advertisers may want to reach those reading search results citing Mastodon? Maybe? If so, Mastodon servers will become important to the Google for revenue, not content.
- Google does not index “the world’s information.” The system indexes some information, ideally information that will attract users. In my opinion, the once naive company allegedly wanted to achieve the world’s information. Mr. Page and I were on a panel about Web search as I recall. My team and I had sold to CMGI some technology which was incorporated into Lycos. That’s why I was on the panel. Mr. Page rolled out the notion of an “index to the world’s information.” I pointed out that indexing rapidly-expanding content and the capturing of content changes to previously indexed content would be increasingly expensive. The costs would be high and quite hard to control without reducing the scope, frequency, and depth of the crawls. But Mr. Page’s big idea excited people. My mundane financial and technical truths were of zero interest to Mr. Page and most in the audience. And today? Google’s management team has to work overtime to try to contain the costs of indexing near-real time flows of digital information. The expense of maintaining and reindexing backfiles is easier to control. Just reduce the scope of sites indexed, the depth of each crawl, the frequency certain sites are reindexed, and decrease how much content old content is displayed. If no one looks at these data, why spend money on it? Google is not Mother Theresa and certainly not the Andrew Carnegie library initiative. Mr. Brennan brushed against an automated method that appears to say, “The small is irrelevant controls because advertisers want to advertise where the eyeballs are.”
- Google exists for two reasons: First, to generate advertising revenue. Why? None of its new ventures have been able to deliver advertising-equivalent revenue. But cash must flow and grow or the Google stumbles. Google is still what a Microsoftie called a “one-trick pony” years ago. The one-trick pony is the star of the Google circus. Performing Mastodons are not in the tent. Second, Google wants very much to dominate cloud computing, off-the-shelf machine learning, and cyber security. This means that the performing Mastodons have to do something that gets the GOOG’s attention.
Net net: I find it interesting to find examples of those younger than I discovering the precise nature of Google. Many of these individuals know only Google. I find that sad and somewhat frightening, perhaps more troubling than Mr. Putin’s nuclear bomb talk. Mr. Putin can be seen and heard. Google controls its datasphere. Like goldfish in a bowl, it is tough to understand the world containing that bowl and its inhabitants.
Stephen E Arnold, November 9, 2022
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