The Use Case for Digital Currency
January 12, 2022
A question I have been asked by those in my law enforcement lectures is, “What’s digital currency good for?” This question is easy to answer, and I think the officers in my sessions know the answer. The question is designed to elicit my opinion as a student of intelware. The former world chess champion Gary Kasparov says that crypto means freedom. Why? Math protects you.
Okay, but the answer I give is, “Criminal activity.”
Sure, one can gild the lily and say that digital currency offers an alternative to traditional legal tender. Digital currency is a way to work around the traditional banking system. Digital currency is a way to automate many financial transactions via smart contracts.
The reality is that digital currency solves one big problem for bad actors: Keeping otherwise noticeable financial transactions less visible to government entities and financial institutions.
What’s the factual basis for my view?
Navigate to “Crypto Crime Trends for 2022: Illicit Transaction Activity Reaches All-Time High in Value, All-Time Low in Share of All Cryptocurrency Activity.” Here’s the relevant statement:
Cryptocurrency-based crime hit a new all-time high in 2021, with illicit addresses receiving $14 billion over the course of the year, up from $7.8 billion in 2020.
The write up adds:
Cryptocurrency usage is growing faster than ever before. Across all cryptocurrencies tracked by Chainalysis, total transaction volume grew to $15.8 trillion in 2021, up 567% from 2020’s totals. Given that roaring adoption, it’s no surprise that more cybercriminals are using cryptocurrency. But the fact that the increase was just 79% — nearly an order of magnitude lower than overall adoption — might be the biggest surprise of all.
The answer to the question, in my opinion, is, “Criminal activity.”
Stephen E Arnold, January 11, 2022
The Fast Descent to Mediocrity Revealed
January 12, 2022
I read “Google’s Director of Engineering Hiring Test.” I love these inside looks at what Google thinks is important to the company’s success. I email several questions from the decades of GLAT to a Fancy Dan financial whiz. He was unable to make sense of any of the wonky questions. Since the whiz kid and Google are wallowing in financial oceans filled with molecules of money, I am not sure there is much value in certain types of smart filters.
Tucked into the questions and answers, however, is considerable insight into what the company thinks is funny like the GLAT or why a firm is accelerating its ski slope ride to meh. Here’s the statement that caught my attention:
Hiring people that know things that you don’t know helps more than hiring people who merely know what everybody knows.
My hunch is that the issues at Google — for instance, the new phone that doesn’t do phone stuff — is an example of making assumptions about what’s right. Apply this to super duper automated content indexing for machine learning training sets and what happens? Perhaps you get a variation of the phones that don’t do phone stuff? Smart software may end up learning what it already knows. Great for cost reduction but not so great for finding one’s way through a snow storm near Tahoe.
Stephen E Arnold, January 12, 2022
Amazon: Emulating the Big Apple
December 23, 2021
I love the idea that giant technology companies operate in a space untethered from too many conventions, regulatory constraints, and ethical meshes. Apple I have heard entered into a two-buck deal with China. Okay, okay, the dollar amount was closer to US$ 3 billion. What’s the big deal?
Now it seems that Amazon has channeled its inner apple core. “Amazon Partnered with China Propaganda Arm” reports in a truthy and trustworthy way:
That [once confidential Amazon] briefing document, and interviews with more than two dozen people who have been involved in Amazon’s China operation, reveal how the company has survived and thrived in China by helping to further the ruling Communist Party’s global economic and political agenda, while at times pushing back on some government demands. In a core element of this strategy, the internal document and interviews show, Amazon partnered with an arm of China’s propaganda apparatus to create a selling portal on the company’s U.S. site, Amazon.com – a project that came to be known as China Books. The venture – which eventually offered more than 90,000 publications for sale – hasn’t generated significant revenue. But the document shows that it was seen by Amazon as crucial to winning support in China as the company grew its Kindle electronic-book device, cloud-computing and e-commerce businesses.
Is it a surprise that China’s ruling elite told the dog outside the online bookstore to bite the digital hand of any human or bot daring to give a very special book a bad review.
What is the book, one might ask? It appears that the instant best seller and biographical high water mark is “Xi Jinping: The Governance of China.
The answer, one supposes, is money. The truthy and trustworthy report says:
Amazon Web Services, or AWS, is now one of the largest providers to Chinese companies globally, according to a report this year by analysis firm iResearch in China, and people who have worked for AWS.
Gee, Leader Xi can ping Amazon and Apple any time he chooses. Let’s make a TikTok on a mobile and a desktop too while dining at a TikTok restaurant. Endangered animal stir fry, anyone? It is called Kung Pao Democracy I think.
Stephen E Arnold, December 23, 2021
Meta Mark Gets an F from the British Medical Journal
December 20, 2021
I don’t know anything about Covid, medical data, or Facebook. I do recognize a failing “mark” when I see one. I noted “Researcher Blows the Whistle on Data Integrity Issues…” [Note: the editor has trimmed certain stop words because trigger warning software is a fascinating part of life these days.’’]
The Harvard drop out who has garnered a few dollars via a “friend”, “like”, and “social online” service is unlikely to be personally affected by the big red F.
The write up states:
We are aware that The BMJ is not the only high quality information provider to have been affected by the incompetence of Meta’s fact checking regime. To give one other example, we would highlight the treatment by Instagram (also owned by Meta) of Cochrane, the international provider of high quality systematic reviews of the medical evidence.[3] Rather than investing a proportion of Meta’s substantial profits to help ensure the accuracy of medical information shared through social media, you have apparently delegated responsibility to people incompetent in carrying out this crucial task. Fact checking has been a staple of good journalism for decades. What has happened in this instance should be of concern to anyone who values and relies on sources such as The BMJ. We hope you will act swiftly: specifically to correct the error relating to The BMJ’s article and to review the processes that led to the error; and generally to reconsider your investment in and approach to fact checking overall.
I was disappointed to see the letter’s close; that is, “best wishes.” A more British expression could have been “Excuse me.” But excusing a stupid “mark” is impolite.
Stephen E Arnold, December 20, 2021
Scientific Research Might Not Work The Second Time Around or the First Time Either
December 20, 2021
Scientific research is one way humanity advances, but Science Alert brings into question if studies’ results can be replicated: “Strenuous 8-Year Effort To Replicate Key Cancer Research Finds An Unwelcome Surprise.” Common sense and the scientific process tells that if results cannot be replicated a second time, then they are not going to work. Cancer research is facings a stigma about scientific studies being replicated:
“The research looked at 193 different experiments found in 53 cancer-related papers published in high-profile journals between 2010 and 2012, and found that none of the experiments could be set up again using only the information published. After getting help from the original study authors, 50 experiments from 23 papers were reproduced.
That only a quarter of the experiments could be rerun at all is concerning – some of the original authors never responded to requests for help – but the results showed that these reproduced tests showed effect sizes that were often smaller than what the original studies yielded.”
The findings of the replicated studies discovered that the evidence was weaker than the original experiments. This does not mean that findings are false, but further testing is needed. Furthermore, time, money, and resources are wasted in clinical trials on patients where drugs do not affect diseases. Demands for results shape cancer biology and other scientific research.
These mounting pressures hinder scientific research and delay eventual cancer cures. There is a saying, “Art for art’s sake,” so why cannot there not be “Research for research’s sake” in order to advance science? Plus one can make up data, fiddle the results, or contact colleagues for some STM SEO goodness.
Whitney Grace, December 20, 2021
Right or Wrong to Be Forgotten?
December 2, 2021
While it is still possible to disappear, it is nearly impossible to forget some past mistakes. In 2014, the Court of Justice of the European Union recognized the “right to be forgotten.” The Irish Times reported that Google has something to say on that law, “Google Should Not Get A Say In What Is To Be Forgotten.”
The EU Court of Justice ruled in favor of the “right to be forgotten” against Google’s Spanish subsidiary by Spain’s data protection agency AEPD and a Spanish citizen. The right to be forgotten forces Google to delist information in searches, but the AEPD argued it was in the public’s benefit for information to remain listed.
The biggest issue in question is the current case of the Quinn family against the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation. Should information related to ongoing litigation and national economic concern be removed from the Internet? There is an even bigger question:
“The more fundamental issue which these delistings have drawn attention to, however, is the power of a private company to decide when, and whether, an individual’s right to be forgotten can be enforced. At present, right-to-be-forgotten claims (such as those made in the Quinn case) are considered and decided on by employees of the search-engine operators to whom the request is made. While these search engines publish annual transparency reports which include statistics about how many right-to-be-forgotten applications are made – and how many are successful – these reports do not detail the content of the decisions in right-to-be-forgotten cases – or the factors used in reaching those decisions. The result is that private companies have the power not only to delist articles but to do so based on their own assessment of whether a legitimate right-to-be-forgotten claim exists, what public interest, if any, would require the item to continue appearing in search results, and how to balance any public interest with the data-protection rights of the requesting party.”
There are very few guidelines about how “right to be forgotten” law is applied. Private companies determine who has the right, but how and why do they make that decision?
It sounds like another case of where the present is going to make the standard by which the future will abide.
Whitney Grace, November December 2, 2021
MIT, Facebook, and Google: Estimable Outfits Indeed
November 21, 2021
In 2019, MIT was the outfit issued a letter to the MIT community with this statement:
Here are the core facts, as best as we can determine: Over the course of 20 years, MIT received approximately $800,000 via foundations controlled by Jeffrey Epstein. All of those gifts went either to the MIT Media Lab or to Professor Seth Lloyd. Both Seth and Media Lab Director Joi Ito have made public statements apologizing to Jeffrey Epstein’s victims and others for judgments made over a series of years.
I read “How Facebook and Google Fund Global Misinformation.” I noted this passage:
But there’s a crucial piece missing from the story. Facebook isn’t
just amplifying misinformation. The company is also funding it. An MIT Technology Review_ _investigation, based on expert interviews, data analyses, and documents that were not included in the Facebook Papers, has found that Facebook and Google are paying millions of ad dollars to bankroll clickbait actors, fueling the deterioration of information ecosystems around the world.
What did the 2019 Epstein related missive from L. Rafael Reif and the MIT Technology Review article spark in my mind?
Here’s the summary:
- How many Facebook and Google employees are former students or graduates of these two estimable companies?
- Why does MIT rely on confidential documents appropriated by a Harvard graduate? Was this action by the Harvard graduate legal?
- The MIT – Epstein interactions took place over 20 years; Facebook and Google have been breaking moral ground for the same interval. Why is so much time required to identify, research, and apologize for certain behaviors?
I have other thoughts as well, but these convey the direction in which these “revelations” are drifting. MIT, Facebook, and Google — estimable outfits indeed.
Stephen E Arnold, November 21, 2021
Expert Surprised That Health Club Billing Methods Are Used by SaaS and Cloud Companies
November 19, 2021
I enjoy write ups which reveal the obvious. Consider health clubs or gym memberships. One gym located in the whiskey and fried chicken capital of the flyover states is about 3,000 square feet. How many members does the facility have? The answer is 3,000. How many use the gym on a regular basis? About 100. How does the outfit make money? Billing the “members” who never use the equipment. Plus, the billings each month are facilitated by the smart software at Visa, MasterCard, and banks with auto-withdrawal capability. Is this a scam? Nope, it’s the business model of health clubs. Just sign up and never come. Works like a champ by the way.
“I Analyzed SaaS Billing Dark Patterns” and learned that the author was surprised, shocked, horrified, and troubled that cloud providers use the health club approach to revenue. The write up reveals:
SaaS providers are more than willing to use dark billing patterns to increase their growth metrics and revenue. They exploit positive user acquisition loops in recurring subscriptions to get money from users as surreptitiously as possible.
Yep, shocker.
I loved this rhetorical question? Why do SaaS providers deploy the dark patterns?
The answer is, “The method generates money.”
But, but, but…. That’s bad.
Well, it depends on what point of view one adopts, doesn’t it.
Hollowing out is dumbing down in my book. The surprise in the write up illustrates the failure of basic management oversight.
What’s this mean? Higher costs, people who cannot figure out why something doesn’t work, and a lack of awareness about the obvious. Yep, the thumbtyper world is a fascinating construct.
Stephen E Arnold, November 19, 2021
It Is Official: One Cannot Trust Lawyers Working from Coffee Shops
November 16, 2021
I knew it. I had a hunch that attorneys who work from coffee shops, van life vehicles, and basements were not productive. Billing hours is easy; doing work like reading documents, fiddling with eDiscovery systems, and trying to get Microsoft Word to number lines correctly are harder.
I read “Contract Lawyers Face a Growing Invasion of Surveillance Programs That Monitor Their Work.” The write up points out that what I presume to be GenX, GenY and millennials don’t want to be in a high school detention hall staffed by an angry, game losing basketball coach. No coach, just surveillance software dolled up with facial recognition, “productivity” metrics, and baked in time logging functions.
Here’s a passage I noted:
Contract attorneys such as Anidi [Editor note: a real lawyer I presume] have become some of America’s first test subjects for this enhanced monitoring, and many are reporting frustrating results, saying the glitchy systems make them feel like a disposable cog with little workday privacy.
With some clients pushing back against legal bills which are disconnected from what law firm clients perceive as reality, legal outfits have to get their humanoid resources to “perform”. The monitoring systems allow the complaining client to review outputs from the systems. Ah, ha. We can prove with real data our legal eagles are endlessly circling the client’s legal jungle.
My take is different: I never trusted lawyers. Now lawyers employing lawyers don’t trust these professionals either. That’s why people go to work, have managers who monitor, and keep the professionals from hanging out at the water fountain.
Stephen E Arnold, November 16, 2021
The Final Disintermediation: Are Libraries Marked for Death?
November 9, 2021
Brewster Kahle founded the Internet Archive, but according to the Time article: “I Set Out To Build The Next Library Of Alexandria. Now I Wonder: Will There Be Libraries In 25 Years?” he is pondering if he did the right thing. Kahle wanted the Internet Archive to preserve Web sites and television as well as digitize books. Out of necessity, libraries have become more digital.
While digital information has a multiple benefits, there is an extreme downside tied to corporate control:
“But just as the Web increased people’s access to information exponentially, an opposite trend has evolved. Global media corporations—emboldened by the expansive copyright laws they helped craft and the emerging technology that reaches right into our reading devices—are exerting absolute control over digital information. These two conflicting forces—towards unfettered availability and completely walled access to information—have defined the last 25 years of the Internet. How we handle this ongoing clash will define our civic discourse in the next 25 years. If we fail to forge the right path, publishers’ business models could eliminate one of the great tools for democratizing society: our independent libraries.”
The problem is the larger book publishers, not the small prints. The larger publishers limit the number of digital copies available to public libraries. Publishers are extorting money from public and academic libraries over every small thing related to books. It hinders the freedom and dissemination of information.
The Internet Archive doubles as a lending library. It lends out digitized books one user at a time, works with independent publishers to ensure their rights are respected. This is the proper way to manage “controlled digital lending.”
This happened in 2020:
“Last year, four of the biggest commercial publishers in the world sued the Internet Archive to stop this longstanding library practice of controlled lending of scanned books. The publishers filed their lawsuit early in the pandemic, when public and school libraries were closed. In March 2020, more than one hundred shuttered libraries signed a statement of support asking that the Internet Archive do something to meet the extraordinary circumstances of the moment. We responded as any library would: making our digitized books available, without waitlists, to help teachers, parents, and students stranded without books. This emergency measure ended two weeks before the intended 14-week period.”
The publishers’ lawsuit demands that the Internet Archive delete all the digital copies of books it acquired legally. Many states have reacted against the publishers’ demand as harmful to libraries. The publishers counter that it is unconstitutional.
Kahle believes libraries will still exist in twenty-five years in the current argument between publishers and libraries is handled well. He is right, but he is also discounting that libraries are technology media centers, provide free Internet, have free community programs, are meeting centers, and do much more than check out books.
Will libraries be disintermediated? Good question.
Whitney Grace, November 9, 2021
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
