Programmers? Just the Top Code Wizards Needed. Sorry.
April 8, 2025
No AI. Just a dinobaby sharing an observation about younger managers and their innocence.
Microsoft has some interesting ideas about smart software and writing “code.” To sum it up, consider another profession.
“Microsoft CTO Predicts AI Will Generate 95% of Code by 2030” reports:
Developers’ roles will shift toward orchestrating AI-driven workflows and solving complex problems.
I think this means that instead of figuring out how to make something happen, one will perform the higher level mental work. The “script” comes out of the smart software.
The write up says:
“It doesn’t mean that the AI is doing the software engineering job … authorship is still going to be human,” Scott explained. “It creates another layer of abstraction [as] we go from being an input master (programming languages) to a prompt master (AI orchestrator).” He doesn’t believe AI will replace developers, but it will fundamentally change their workflows. Instead of painstakingly writing every line of code, engineers will increasingly rely on AI tools to generate code based on prompts and instructions. In this new paradigm, developers will focus on guiding AI systems rather than programming computers manually. By articulating their needs through prompts, engineers will allow AI to handle much of the repetitive work, freeing them to concentrate on higher-level tasks like design and problem-solving.
The idea is good. Does it imply that smart software has reached the end of its current trajectory and will not be able to:
- Recognize a problem
- Formulate appropriate questions
- Obtain via research, experimentation, or Eureka! moments a solution?
The observation by the Microsoft CTO does not seem to consider this question about a trolly line that can follow its tracks.
The article heads off in another direction; specifically, what happens to the costs?
IBM CEO Arvind Krishna’s is quoted as saying:
“If you can produce 30 percent more code with the same number of people, are you going to get more code written or less?” Krishna rhetorically posed, suggesting that increased efficiency would stimulate innovation and market growth rather than job losses.
Where does this leave “coders”?
Several observations:
- Those in the top one percent of skills are in good shape. The other 99 percent may want to consider different paths to a bright, fulfilling future
- Money, not quality, is going to become more important
- Inexperienced “coders” may find themselves looking for ways to get skills at the same time unneeded “coders” are trying to reskill.
It is no surprise that CNET reported, “The public is particularly concerned about job losses. AI experts are more optimistic.”
Net net: Smart software, good or bad, is going to reshape work in a big chunk of the workforce. Are schools preparing students for this shift? Are there government programs in place to assist older workers? As a dinobaby, it seems the answer is not far to seek.
Stephen E Arnold, April 8, 2025
HP and Dead Printers: Hey, Okay, We Will Not Pay
April 8, 2025
HP found an effective way to ensure those who buy its printers also buy its pricy ink: Firmware updates that bricked the printers if a competitor’s cartridge was installed. Not all customers appreciated the ingenuity. Ars Technica reports, "HP Avoids Monetary Damages Over Bricked Printers in Class-Action Settlement." Reporter Scharon Harding writes:
"In December 2020, Mobile Emergency Housing Corp. and a company called Performance Automotive & Tire Center filed a class-action complaint against HP [PDF], alleging that the company ‘wrongfully compels users of its printers to buy and use only HP ink and toner supplies by transmitting firmware updates without authorization to HP printers over the Internet that lock out its competitors’ ink and toner supply cartridges.’ The complaint centered on a firmware update issued in November 2020; it sought a court ruling that HP’s actions broke the law, an injunction against the firmware updates, and monetary and punitive damages. ‘HP’s firmware "updates" act as malware—adding, deleting or altering code, diminishing the capabilities of HP printers, and rendering the competitors’ supply cartridges incompatible with HP printers,’ the 2020 complaint reads."
Yikes. The name HP gave this practice is almost Orwellian. We learn:
"HP calls using updates to prevent printers from using third-party ink and toner Dynamic Security. The term aims to brand the device bricking as a security measure. In recent years, HP has continued pushing this claim, despite security experts that Ars has spoken with agreeing that there’s virtually zero reason for printer users to worry about getting hacked through ink."
No kidding. After nearly four years of litigation, the parties reached a settlement. HP does not admit any wrongdoing and will not pay monetary relief to affected customers. It must, however, let users decline similar updates; well, those who own a few particular models, anyway. It will also put disclaimers about Dynamic Security on product pages. Because adding a couple lines to the fine print will surely do the trick.
Harding notes that, though this settlement does not include monetary restitution, other decisions have. Those few million dollars do not seem to have influenced HP to abolish the practice, however.
Cynthia Murrell, April 8, 2025
Amazon Takes the First Step Toward Moby Dickdom
April 7, 2025
No AI. Just a dinobaby sharing an observation about younger managers and their innocence.
This Engadget article does not predict the future. “Amazon Will Use AI to Generate Recaps for Book Series on the Kindle” reports:
Amazon’s new feature could make it easier to get into the latest release in a series, especially if it’s been some time since you’ve read the previous books. The new Recaps feature is part of the latest software update for the Kindle, and the company compares it to “Previously on…” segments you can watch for TV shows. Amazon announced Recaps in a blog post, where it said that you can get access to it once you receive the software update over the air or after you download and install it from Amazon’s website. Amazon didn’t talk about the technology behind the feature in its post, but a spokesperson has confirmed to TechCrunch that the recaps will be AI generated.
You may know a person who majored in American or English literature. Here’s a question you could pose:
Do those novels by a successful author follow a pattern; that is, repeatable elements and a formula?
My hunch is that authors who have written a series of books have a recipe. The idea is, “If it makes money, do it again.” In the event that you could ask Nora Roberts or commune with Billy Shakespeare, did their publishers ask, “Could you produce another one of those for us? We have a new advance policy.” When my Internet 2000: The Path to the Total Network made money in 1994, I used the approach, tone, and research method for my subsequent monographs. Why? People paid to read or flip through the collected information presented my way. I admit I that combined luck, what I learned at a blue chip consulting firm, and inputs from people who had written successful non-fiction “reports.” My new monograph — The Telegram Labyrinth — follows this blueprint. Just ask my son, and he will say, “My dad has a template and fills in the blanks.”
If a dinobaby can do it, what about flawed smart software?
Chase down a person who teaches creative writing, preferably in a pastoral setting. Ask that person, “Do successful authors of series follow a pattern?”
Here’s what I think is likely to happen at Amazon. Remember. I have zero knowledge about the inner workings of the Bezos bulldozer. I inhale its fumes like many other people. Also, Engadget doesn’t get near this idea. This is a dinobaby opinion.
Amazon will train its smart software to write summaries. Then someone at Amazon will ask the smart software to generate a 5,000 word short story in the style of Nora Roberts or some other money spinner. If the story is okay, then the Amazonian with a desire to shift gears says, “Can you take this short story and expand it to a 200,000 word novel, using the patterns, motifs, and rhetorical techniques of the series of novels by Nora, Mark, or whoever.
Guess what?
Amazon now has an “original” novel which can be marketed as an Amazon test, a special to honor whomever, or experiment. If Prime members or the curious click a lot, that Amazon employee has a new business to propose to the big bulldozer driver.
How likely is this scenario? My instinct is that there is a 99 percent probability that an individual at Amazon or the firm from which Amazon is licensing its smart software has or will do this.
How likely is it that Amazon will sell these books to the specific audience known to consume the confections of Nora and Mark or whoever? I think the likelihood is close to 80 percent. The barriers are:
- Bad optics among publishers, many of which are not pals of fume spouting bulldozers in the few remaining bookstores
- Legal issues because both publishers and authors will grouse and take legal action. The method mostly worked when Google was scanning everything from timetables of 19th century trains in England to books just unwrapped for the romance novel crowd
- Management disorganization. Yep, Amazon is suffering the organization dysfunction syndrome just like other technology marvels
- The outputs lack the human touch. The project gets put on ice until OpenAI, Anthropic, or whatever comes along and does a better job and probably for fewer computing resources which means more profit.
What’s important is that this first step is now public and underway.
Engadget says, “Use it at your own risk.” Whose risk may I ask?
Stephen E Arnold, April 7, 2025
AI May Fizzle and the New York Times Is Thrilled
April 7, 2025
Yep, a dinobaby blog post. No smart software required.
I read “The Tech Fantasy That Powers A.I. Is Running on Fumes.” Is this a gleeful headline or not. Not even 10 days after the Italian “all AI” newspaper found itself the butt of merciless humor, the NYT is going for the jugular.
The write up opines:
- “Midtech” — tech but not really
- “Silly” — Showing little thought or judgment
- “Academics” — Ivory tower dwellers, not real journalists and thinkers
Here’s a quote from a person who obviously does not like self check outs:
The economists Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo call these kinds of technological fizzles “so-so” technologies. They change some jobs. They’re kind of nifty for a while. Eventually they become background noise or are flat-out annoying, say, when you’re bagging two weeks’ worth of your own groceries.
And now the finale:
But A.I. is a parasite. It attaches itself to a robust learning ecosystem and speeds up some parts of the decision process. The parasite and the host can peacefully coexist as long as the parasite does not starve its host. The political problem with A.I.’s hype is that its most compelling use case is starving the host — fewer teachers, fewer degrees, fewer workers, fewer healthy information environments.
My thought is that the “real” journalists at the NYT hope that AI fails. Most routine stories can be handled by smart software. Sure, there are errors. But looking at a couple of versions of the same event is close enough for horse shoes.
The writing is on the wall of the bean counters’ offices: Reduce costs. Translation: Some “real” journalists can try to get a job as a big time consultant. Oh, strike that. Outfits that sell brains are replacing flakey MBAs with smart software. Well, there is PR and marketing. Oh, oh, strike that tool. Telegram’s little engines of user controlled smart software can automate ads. Will other ad outfits follow Telegram’s lead? Absolutely.
Yikes. It won’t be long before some “real” journalists will have an opportunity to write their version of:
- Du côté de chez Swann
- À l’ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs
- Le Côté de Guermantes
- Sodome et Gomorrhe
- La Prisonnière
- Albertine disparue (also published as La Fugitive)
- Le Temps retrouvé
Which one will evoke the smell of the newsroom?
Stephen E Arnold, April 7, 2025
Free! Does Google Do Anything for Free?
April 7, 2025
No AI. Just a dinobaby sharing an observation about younger managers and their innocence.
What an inducement! Such a deal!
How excited was I to read this headline:
Gemini 2.5 Pro Is Google’s Most Powerful AI Model and It’s Already Free
The write up explains:
Google points to several benchmark tests that show the prowess of Gemini 2.5 Pro. At the time of writing it tops the LMArena leaderboard, where users give ratings on responses from dozens of AI chatbots. It also scores 18.8 percent on the Humanity’s Last Exam test—which measures human knowledge and reasoning—narrowly edging out rival models from OpenAI and Anthropic.
As a dinobaby, I understand this reveal is quantumly supreme. Google is not only the best. The “free” approach puts everyone on notice that Google is not interested in money. Google is interested in…. Well, frankly, I am not sure.
Thanks, You.com. Good enough. I have to pay to get this type of smart art.
Possible answers include: [a] publicity to deal with the PR tsunami the OpenAI Ghibli capability splashed across my newsfeeds, [b] a response to the Chinese open source alternatives from eCommerce outfits and mysterious venture capital firms, [c] Google’s tacit admission that its best card is the joker that allows free access to the game, [d] an unimaginative response to a competitive environment less and less Google centric each day.
Pick one.
The write up reports:
The frenetic pace of AI development shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon, and we can expect more Gemini 2.5 models to appear in the near future. “As always, we welcome feedback so we can continue to improve Gemini’s impressive new abilities at a rapid pace, all with the goal of making our AI more helpful,” says Koray Kavukcuoglu, from Google’s DeepMind AI lab.
The question is, “Have the low-hanging AI goodies been harvested?”
I find that models are becoming less distinctive. One of my team handed me two sheets of paper. On one was a paragraph from our locally installed Deepseek. The other was a sheet of paper of an answer from You.com’s “smart” option.
My response was, “So?” I could not tell which model produced what because the person whom I pay had removed the idiosyncratic formatting of the Deepseek output and the equally distinctive outputting from You.com’s Smart option.
My team member asked, “Which do you prefer?”
I said, “Get Whitney to create one write up and input our approach to the topic.”
Both were okay; neither was good enough to use as handed to me.
Good enough. The AI systems reached “good enough” last year. Since then, not much change except increasing similarity.
Free is about right. What’s next? Paying people to use Bing Google?
Now to answer the headline question, “Does Google do anything for free?” My answer: Only when the walls are closing in.
Stephen E Arnold, April 7, 2025
Errors? AI Makes Accuracy Irrelevant
April 4, 2025
This blog post is the work of a humanoid dino baby. If you don’t know what a dinobaby is, you are not missing anything.
We have poked around some AI services. A few are very close to being dark patterns that want to become like Al Capone or moe accurately AI Capone. Am I thinking of 1min.ai? Others just try to sound so friendly when outputting wackiness? Am I thinking about the Softies or ChatGPT? I don’t know.
I did read “AI Search Has A Citation Problem.” The main point is that AI struggles with accuracy. One can gild the lily and argue that it makes work faster. I won’t argue that quick incorrect output may speed some tasks. However, the write up points out:
Premium chatbots provided more confidently incorrect answers than their free counterparts.
I think this means that paying money does not deliver accuracy, judgment, or useful information. I would agree.
A farmer wonders how the steam engine ended up in his corn field. How did smart software get involved in deciding that distorted information was a useful output for students and workers? Thanks, You.com. The train was supposed to be on its side, but by getting the image different from my prompt, you have done the job. Close enough for horse shoes, right?
The write up also points out:
Generative search tools fabricated links and cited syndicated and copied versions of articles.
I agree.
Here’s a useful finding if one accepts the data in the write up as close enough for horseshoes:
Overall, the chatbots often failed to retrieve the correct articles. Collectively, they provided incorrect answers to more than 60 percent of queries. Across different platforms, the level of inaccuracy varied, with Perplexity answering 37 percent of the queries incorrectly, while Grok 3 had a much higher error rate, answering 94 percent of the queries incorrectly.
The alleged error rate of Grok is in line with my experience. I try to understand, but when space ships explode, people set Cybertrucks on fire, and the cratering of Tesla stock cause my widowed neighbor to cry — I see a pattern of missing the mark. Your mileage or wattage may vary, of course.
The write up points out:
Platforms often failed to link back to the original source
For the underlying data and more academic explanations, please, consult the original article.
I want to shift gears and make some observations about the issue the data in the article and my team’s experience with smart software present. Here we go, gentle reader:
- People want convenience or what I call corner cutting. AI systems eliminate the old fashioned effort required to verify information. Grab and go information, like fast food, may not be good for the decision making life.
- The information floating around about a Russian content mill pumping out thousands of weaoonized news stories a day may be half wrong. Nevertheless, it makes clear that promiscuous and non-thinking AI systems can ingest weaponized content and spit it out without a warning level or even recognizing baloney when one expects a slab of Wagu beef.
- Integrating self-driving AI into autonomous systems is probably not yet a super great idea. The propaganda about Chinese wizards doing this party trick is interesting, just a tad risky when a kinetic is involved.
Where are we? Answering this question is a depressing activity. Companies like Microsoft are forging ahead with smart software helping people do things in Excel. Google is allowing its cheese-obsessed AI to write email responses. Outfits like BoingBoing are embracing questionable services like a speedy AI Popeil pocket fisherman as part of its money making effort. And how about those smart Anduril devices? Do they actually work? I don’t want to let one buzz me.
The AI crazy train is now going faster than the tracks permit. How does one stop a speeding autonomous train? I am going to stand back because that puppy is going to fall off the tracks and friction will do the job. Whoo. Whoo.
Stpehen E Arnold, April 4, 2025
YouTube: The Future Has Blown Its Horn
April 3, 2025
YouTube has come a long way in the last two decades. Google wants us to appreciate just how far, apparently. Digiday celebrates the occasion with the piece, "As YouTube Turns 20, Here Are the Numbers You Need to Know." Writer Krystal Scanlon shares several noteworthy statistics. For example, the company states, an average of 500 hours of video is uploaded to the platform every minute. On the other end of the equation, about 30,000 viewers visit the site each day, Neilsen reported in February 2024.
In fact, we learn, YouTube considers itself the "new television." That same Neilsen report shows the platform outperforming other major streaming services. (Though it only beat Netflix by a nose, at 9.2% of total TV usage to its 8.2%.) The platform happily monetizes those eyeballs the old-fashioned way, with ads. However, it has also enticed over 125 million users to at least try its subscription plans. As for content creators, about 500,000 of them have been at it for over 10 years. They must be getting enough out of it to stick around. But for how many that is a viable career and how many it is just a hobby the write-up does not say. Whatever the case, it is clear YouTube has creators to thank for its significant ad revenue. Scanlon writes:
"With Europe’s creator economy projected to reach $41.17 billion by 2030 and U.S. influencer marketing expected to grow 14.2% to $9.29 billion this year, according to eMarketer, it’s clear why YouTube is focused on staying ahead in the creator space. Part of that plan involves doubling down on YouTube’s ability to thrust creators into the cultural mainstream. Which is why the platform has said that creators are becoming the startups of Hollywood. Whether it’s scripting, editing behind the scenes or creators are hiring various staff as part of their new business — YouTube wants to be the launchpad."
Yes, that would be quite the get. It will have to fight certain other streaming services for that honor, we think. The post continues:
"YouTube contributed more than $45 billion to the U.S. GDP in 2023, according to Oxford Economics, and it created more than 430,000 full-time jobs. Similarly, in Europe, YouTube contributed €6.4 billion ($6.94 billion) to the EU’s GDP in 2023, according to the platform’s latest Impact report, not including the jobs created by the 100,000 creators in the region that have built their own businesses including hiring staff."
Here’s the kicker. As changes roil the Google search advertising approach, YouTube might be the Little Engine That Could for Googzilla. Next up? Google Advertising, Broadcast, and Cable. ABC?
Cynthia Murrell, April 3 2025
Original Research: Not-So-Original Assertions about Content Appropriation
April 2, 2025
No AI. Just a dinobaby sharing an observation about younger managers and their innocence.
The Social Science Research Council published the 30-plus page report “Beyond Public Access in LLM Pre-Training Data.” The subtitle reveals the principal finding: “Non-Public Non-Public Book Content in OpenAI’s Models.”
The write up states:
Using a legally obtained dataset of 34 copyrighted O’Reilly Media books, we apply the DE-COP membership inference attack method to investigate whether OpenAI’s large language models were trained on copyrighted content without consent. Our AUROC scores show that GPT-4o, OpenAI’s more recent and capable model, demonstrates strong recognition of paywalled O’Reilly book content (AUROC = 82%), compared to OpenAI’s earlier model GPT-3.5 Turbo. In contrast, GPT-3.5 Turbo shows greater relative recognition of publicly accessible O’Reilly book samples. GPT-4o Mini, as a much smaller model, shows no knowledge of public or non-public O’Reilly Media content when tested (AUROC ? 50%). Testing multiple models, with the same cutoff date, helps us account for potential language shifts over time that might bias our findings. These results highlight the urgent need for increased corporate transparency regarding pre-training data sources as a means to develop formal licensing frameworks for AI content training.
I want to mention that the DE-COP method provide one way to determine whether a specific data record was part of the training dataset for a machine learning model. The result of the SSRC’s research suggests that as OpenAI enhanced its models, the OpenAI organization appears to have used non-public content. Smaller (less capable OpenAI) models seemed to know less about the test set; the bigger models knew more.
The write up concludes that developers of smart software are sucking down data without obtaining permission or entering into licensing deals with publishers, copyright holders, or entities working on content not yet available as public content like this dinobaby blog post.
To sum up: A not-to-original assertion that certain organizations just take content and ignore rights is apparently accurate in this set of research. OpenAI accelerates. Speed is a positive. Breaking speed limits is believed to be no big deal.
A bit of a flashback: Over 40 years ago, I participated in a series of meetings to license the right to create abstracts of original articles from more than 1000 different publications. Our efforts were successful. Most publishers of academic business and management publications knew zero about online information services. The idea of summarizing an eight page article about executive compensation was unfamiliar to most of the people with whom our organization interacted over a period of years. Nevertheless, the owner of the database unit of the Courier Journal & Louisville Times Company insisted that we get signed agreements. The process was time consuming and expensive. Some outfits had representatives. So a negotiation went through layers of bureaucracy. Other publishers wanted a sit down meeting and a dog-and-pony show to explain why we wanted to boil down a 600 word article to about 150 words. There were worries about the impact of online access. There were worries about control of editorial content. There were worries about signing away rights. We couldn’t assuage worries, but we chugged along. The reputations of the Courier Journal and Barry Bingham Jr. helped but our small database operation had to follow the rules.
If the data in the cited document are accurate, the attitude of Barry Bingham Jr. would not have gained much traction at OpenAI. Instead of my getting a pat on the head for setting up the licensing deals with the able help of other Courier Journal professionals, I would have gotten kicked on the shin or worse.
Several observations:
- Observing content ownership remains important despite the acceleration toward illegal behaviors in the online sector
- Using show-and-tells and explaining the benefits of participating in digital innovations remains important. Knowledge minimizes anger and other negative reactions to pre-emptive behavior
- Managing the process is as important as demonstrating an unwillingness to conform to industry, social, and legal norms.
Let’s assume that the findings in the SSRC are off by 50 percent. Does that change what appears to be a strong possibility of some fancy dancing at the OpenAI disco?
My conclusion is that taking short cuts is part of the Silicon Valley approach of doing whatever and just saying, “Wow, I am sorry.”
I asked ChatGPT 4 via You.com this question:
Should I create an online product and just use content from the Harvard Business Review without permission?
Here’s the response:
No, you should not create an online product using content from the Harvard Business Review (HBR) without permission. Doing so would likely violate copyright laws and HBR’s usage policies. Here’s why:
HBR’s Copyright and Usage Policies
- HBR Material is Copyrighted: Harvard Business Review explicitly states that its content is protected by copyright, and no part of its publications may be reproduced without permission.
- Usage Restrictions: HBR has strict policies regarding how its content can be used. For example, even in academic settings, HBR articles cannot be freely distributed unless done through specific channels like creating course packs via "Harvard Business Publishing for Educators"
Permission is Required: If you want to use HBR content, you must obtain explicit permission. This includes reproducing, distributing, or using their material in any form.
Legal and Ethical Implications
- Copyright Infringement: Using HBR content without permission would likely constitute copyright infringement, which can result in legal action, fines, or other penalties.
- Ethical Concerns: Beyond legal issues, using someone else’s intellectual property without authorization is unethical and could harm your reputation or business.
What You Should Do Instead
- Seek Permission: Contact Harvard Business Review to request permission to use their content. They may have licensing options available for your intended use.
- Create Original Content: Instead of using HBR’s material, consider creating your own original content inspired by their ideas (but without copying their text or proprietary materials).
- Use Public Domain or Licensed Content: Look for content that is in the public domain or available under a license (e.g., Creative Commons) that allows commercial use.
Conclusion
Using HBR content without permission is not only illegal but also against their explicit policies. To avoid legal and ethical issues, either seek proper licensing or create your own original material.
In this case, the OpenAI’s AI may be more intelligent that some people engaged in content acquisition at the firm. But I am a dinobaby. I try to follow the social, legal, and ethical rules as my parents who had only high school educations taught me. I am a dinobaby. A sad dinobaby.
Stephen E Arnold, April 2, 2025
A Reminder That Academic Papers Can Be Science Fiction
April 2, 2025
Dinobaby says, “No smart software involved. That’s for “real” journalists and pundits.
For many years, I have been skeptical about peer reviewed papers. There are two reasons.
First, I did some consulting work for an outfit in the UK. It was a crown operation. That means its outputs carried considerable influence. One of the projects in which I was engaged involved peer review of research under the purview of the “institute.” Wow, did I learn why there was a publishing backlog. Wow, did I learn about the cronyism in reviewing “real” research. Wow, did I learn about the wheeling and dealing of peer reviewers among their research assistants. Wowzah. That was an education.
Second, for a short time I was a peer reviewer for a British journal. Let me tell you that my first hand exposure to the mechanics and politics of peer reviewing did not prepare me for the reviewing task. A typical submission contained text edited by several hands. None of these was doing fine needlework. A stab here and a stab these summed up the submitted documents. The data and the charts? I had a couple of my team help me figure out if the chart was semi accurate. Working through a five or six page article sent to me for review took me and two people a week to process. In most cases, we gave the paper a D and sent it back to the editor in chief who had to tell the author and his legion of busy bees that the paper sucked. I bailed after six months. Too much work to fix up stuff that was truly terrible.
Today I read “Sometimes Papers Contain Obvious Lies.” That’s a good title, but my thought would be to include the phrase “and Really Crappy.” But I am a dinobaby, and I live in rural Kentucky. The author Cremieux Recueil is much classier than I.
I noted this passage:
The authors of scientific papers often say one thing and find another; they concoct a story around a set of findings that they might not have even made, or which they might have actually even contradicted. This happens surprisingly often, and it’s a very serious issue…
No kidding. The president of Stanford University resigned due to some allegations of fancy dancing. The — note the the — Harvard University experienced a bit of excitement in its ethics department. Is that an oxymoron? An ethics professors violated “ethics” in some research cartwheels.
I liked this sentence because it is closer to my method of communicating concern:
Lying in scientific papers happens all the time.
Hey, not just in scientific papers. I encounter lying 24×7. If someone is not articulating a fabrication, the person may be living a lie. I hear the roar of a 20 somethings hyper car at the gym. Do you?
The paper focuses on a paper with some razzle dazzle related to crime data. The author’s analysis is accurate. However, the focus on an example does not put the scale of the “crime data” problem in perspective.
Let me give you an example and you can test this for validity yourself. Go to your bank. Ask the “personal banker” to tell you about the bank’s experience with cyber crime. Then ask, “How many fraudulent transactions occur at this bank location each year?” Listen to the answer.
Crime data, like health care data, are slippery fish. Numbers do not correlate to reality when scrutinized. Verifiable, statistically valid data is expensive to generate. We live in a “good enough” world and trust whatever black box (human or mechanical) spits out data.
I do disagree with this statement in the essay:
scientists often lie with far more brazenness.
No. Fabrication is now the business of information and the information of business.
Stephen E Arnold, April 2, 2025
Click Counting: It Is 1992 All Over Again
March 31, 2025
Dinobaby says, “No smart software involved. That’s for “real” journalists and pundits.
I love it when search engine optimization experts, online marketing executives, and drum beaters for online advertising talk about clicks, clickstreams, and click metrics. Ho ho ho.
I think I was involved in creating a Web site called Point (The Top 5% of the Internet). The idea was simple: Curate and present a directory of the most popular sites on the Internet. It was a long shot because the team did not want to do drugs, sex, and a number of other illegal Web site profiles for the directory. The idea was that in 1992 or so, no one had a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval-type of directory. There was Yahoo, but if one poked around, some interesting Web sites would display in their low resolution, terrible bandwidth glory.
To my surprise, the idea worked and the team wisely exited the business when someone a lot smarter than the team showed up with a check. I remember fielding questions about “traffic”. There was the traffic we used to figure out what sites were popular. Then there was traffic we counted when visitors to Point hit the home page and read profiles of sites with our Good Housekeeping-type of seal.
I want to share that from those early days of the Internet the counting of clicks was pretty sketchy. Scripts could rack up clicks in a slow heartbeat. Site operators just lied or cooked up reports that served up a reality in terms of tasty little clicks.
Why are clicks bogus? I am not prepared to explain the dark arts of traffic boosting which today is greatly aided by scripts instantly generated by smart software. Instead I want to highlight this story in TechCrunch: “YouTube Is Changing How YouTube Shorts Views Are Counted.” The article does a good job of explaining how one monopoly is responding to its soaring costs and the slow and steady erosion of its search Nile River of money.
The write up says:
YouTube is changing how it counts views on YouTube Shorts to give creators a deeper understanding of how their short-form content is performing
I don’t know much about YouTube. But I recall watching little YouTubettes which bear a remarkable resemblance to TikTok weaponized data bursts just start playing. Baffled, I would watch a couple of seconds, check that my “autoplay” was set to off, and then kill the browser page. YouTubettes are not for me.
Most reasonable people would want to know several things about their or any YouTubette; for example:
- How many times did a YouTubette begin to play and then was terminated in less that five seconds
- How many times a YouTubette was viewed from start to bitter end
- How many times a YouTubette was replayed in its entirety by a single user
- What device was used
- How many YouTubettes were “shared”
- The percentage of these data points compared against the total clicks of a short nature or the full view?
You get the idea. Google has these data, and the wonderfully wise but stressed firm is now counting “short views” as what I describe as the reality: Knowing exactly how many times a YouTubette was played start to finish.
According to the write up:
With this update, YouTube Shorts will now align its metrics with those of TikTok and Instagram Reels, both of which track the number of times your video starts or replays. YouTube notes that creators will now be able to better understand how their short-form videos are performing across multiple platforms. Creators who are still interested in the original Shorts metric can view it by navigating to “Advanced Mode” within YouTube Analytics. The metric, now called “engaged views,” will continue to allow creators to see how many viewers choose to continue watching their Shorts. YouTube notes that the change won’t impact creators’ earnings or how they become eligible for the YouTube Partner Program, as both of these factors will continue to be based on engaged views rather than the updated metric.
Okay, responding to the competition from one other monopolistic enterprise. I get it. Okay, Google will allegedly provided something for a creator of a YouTubette to view for insight. And the change won’t impact what Googzilla pays a creator. Do creators really know how Google calculates payments? Google knows. With the majority of the billions of YouTube videos (short and long) getting a couple of clicks, the “popularity” scheme boils down to what we did in 1992. We used whatever data was available, did a few push ups, and pumped out a report.
Could Google follow the same road map? Of course not. In 1992, we had no idea what we were doing. But this is 2025 and Google knows exactly what it is doing.
Advertisers will see click data that do not reflect what creators want to see and what viewers of YouTubettes and probably other YouTube content really want to know: How many people watched the video from start to finish?
Google wants to sell ads at perhaps the most difficult point in its 20 year plus history. That autoplay inflates clicks. “Hey, the video played. We count it,” can you conceptualize the statement? I can.
Let’s not call this new method “weaponization.” That’s too strong. Let’s describe this as “shaping” or “inflating” clicks.
Remember. I am a dinobaby and usually wrong. No high technology company would disadvantage a creator or an advertiser. Therefore, this change is no big deal. Will it help Google deal with its current challenges? You can now ask Google AI questions answered by its most sophisticated smart software for free.
Is that an indication that something is not good enough to cause people to pay money? Of course not. Google says “engaged views” are still important. Absolutely. Google is just being helpful.
Stephen E Arnold, March 31, 2025
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