Blockchain: A Loser in 2020?
December 31, 2019
I recently completed a report about Amazon’s R&D work in blockchain. If you want a free summary of the report, write darkcyber333 at yandex dot com. If not, no problem. You will want to read “Please Blockchain, Prove Me Wrong.” The author likes to use words on some online services stop list, but that’s okay. The writer is passionate about the perceived failings of blockchain.
Blockchain is, according to the write up:
a solution looking for a problem.”
More proof needed, you gentle but skeptical reader? How about this?
According to Gartner’s Hype Cycle, blockchain is still “sliding into the trough of disillusionment,” meaning the technology is struggling to live up to the expectations created by the hype around it.
There you go. Proof from a marketing company.
DarkCyber’s view is that encryption is likely to continue to toddle forward. Also, the charm of the distributed database continues to woe some people’s attention.
There may be hope, and perhaps that is why Amazon has more than a dozen patents related to blockchain technology. We learn from the impassioned analysis:
Blockchain’s purported promise is such that everyone is willingly taking a multi-faceted approach, not giving much thought to the possibility that its potential may, in fact, be limited. Or maybe blockchain is just the first iteration of something far more powerful, a base we can build on to restore our faith in decentralized systems.
To sum up, for a dead duck, there are some feathers afloat. And there are those Amazon patents? Maybe Mr. Bezos is just off base and should stick to bulldozing outfits like mom and pop stores and outfits like FedEx?
Stephen E Arnold, December 31, 2019
Online Consumption of Data: A Mental Architecture Built on Inherent Addictive Patterns??
December 27, 2019
Two items caught my attention. The first explains that more than 80 percent of a sample group use a “second screen” when watching television. Yep, the boob tube and the vast wasteland. Marshall McLuan, a controversial figure, explained that TV is a kick back and vegetate medium. Punching buttons and formulating a thought for a tweet is hot. The article “88% of Americans Use a Second Screen While Watching TV. Why?” references the factoid that humans are not very adept at multi tasking. Interesting because humans can walk and chew gum, breathe, and think about crossing the street at the same time. But whatever. Also, the write up ignores the McLuhanesque approach that each type of media has its own “construct” or “mental evocation.”
The answer to “Why?” may be as simple as, “Addiction. Just a TV and a computing device.” Can one get the monkey off one’s back? Not easily.
Who can assist another? Consider if this item of information is correct: “70% Parents Cannot Control Their Own Online Activity.” This write up reports:
Around 70 per cent of parents admit that they themselves spend too much time online and 72 per cent feel that internet and mobile device usage in general is impeding family life…
Net net: No wonder information has to be crunchy. Easy to use is becoming a strategy for control. Interesting implications for 2020 and beyond if these two reports are mostly accurate.
Stephen E Arnold, December 27, 2019
Sentiment Analysis: Can a Monkey Can Do It?
June 27, 2019
Sentiment analysis is a machine learning tool companies are employing to understand how their customers feel about their services and products. It is mainly deployed on social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The Monkey Learn blog details how sentiment analysis is specifically being used on Twitter in the post, “Sentiment Analysis Of Twitter.”
Using sentiment analysis is not a new phenomenon, but there are still individuals unaware of the possible power at their fingertips. Monkey Learn specializes in customer machine learning solutions that include intent, keywords, and, of course, sentiment analysis. The post is a guide on the basics of sentiment analysis: what it is, how it works, and real life examples. Monkey Learn defines sentiment analysis as:
“Sentiment analysis (a.k.a opinion mining) is the automated process of identifying and extracting the subjective information that underlies a text. This can be either an opinion, a judgment, or a feeling about a particular topic or subject. The most common type of sentiment analysis is called ‘polarity detection’ and consists in classifying a statement as ‘positive’, ‘negative’ or ‘neutral’.”
It also relies on natural language processing (NLP) to understand the information’s context.
Monkey Learn explains that sentiment analysis is important because most of the world’s digital data is unstructured. Machine learning with NLP’s assistance can quickly sort large data sets and detect their polarity. Monkey Learn promises with their sentiment analysis to bring their customers scalability, consistent criteria, and real-time analysis. Many companies are using Twitter sentiment analysis for customer service, brand monitoring, market research, and political campaigns.
The article is basically a promotional piece for Monkey Learn, but it does work as a starting guide for sentiment analysis.
Whitney Grace, June 27, 2019
The Challenge of Filtering: One Reason to Hire Human Editors
May 17, 2018
In an effort to keep innocent bystanders and children safe from all the nastiness of the net a decade ago, British officials created the greatest firewall this side of China. The results are finally starting to be seen with clear hindsight and they are not a glowing view of the project. We discovered more of this botched attempt at government oversight from a recent BoingBoing piece, “Britain’s Great Firewall Blocks Access to Official Disney Sites, Internet Safety Guides, VPNs and Coding Sites for Kids.”
According to the story the wall is intended to create a:
“[H]armful content blocklist that UK ISPs are using to keep UK children safe.
“Unsurprisingly, the list is full of embarrassing false positives, including disney.co.uk (the official UK site of the Walt Disney Company), as well as Disney’s disneymoviesanywhere.com. More awkward: the UK’s largest ISPs are blocking internetsafetyday.org, a website that teaches kids to use the internet safely; also blocked is kidsandcode.org, which teaches children to write software.”
Despite this kind of gaffe, other nations are not being scared off by firewalls. Perhaps that’s a sign of each government’s views on civil liberties, because the UK is trying to fix its problem while Russia is considering adopting a similar firewall. This is a developing front worth following because the way we interact with other nations is at stake.
Patrick Roland, May 17, 2018
SEO Tips for Featured Snippets
March 26, 2018
We like Google’s Featured Snippets feature, at least when the information it serves up is relevant to the query. That is the tool that places text from, and links to, a site that (ideally) answers the user’s question at the top of search results. Naturally, Search Engine Optimization pros want their clients’ sites to grace these answer boxes as often as possible. That is the idea behind VolumeNine’s blog post, “Featured Snippets in Search: An Overview.” Writer Megan Duffy sees Featured Snippets as an opportunity for those already well-positioned in the search rankings. She explains,
There’s no debate that holding the primary spot on a search engine results page helps drive a ton of traffic. But it takes a long, disciplined approach to climb to the top of an organic search result. The featured snippet provides a bit of a shortcut. The featured snippet is an opportunity for any page ranked in the top ten of results to jump straight to the top with less effort compared to building a page’s search rank from, for example, from eighth to first. Having a featured snippet effectively puts you at search result zero and allows your business to earn traffic as the top search result.
Duffy goes on to make recommendations for maximizing one’s chances of being picked for that Snippet spot. To her credit, she emphasizes that good content is key; we like to see that is still a consideration.
Cynthia Murrell, March 26, 2018
Bigquery Equals Big Data Transfers for Google
March 16, 2018
Google provides hundreds of services for its users; these include YouTube, AdWord, DoubleClick Campaign Manager, and more. Google, however, is mainly used as a search engine and all of the content on its other services are fed into the search algorithm so they can be queried. In order for all of the content to be searchable, it needs to be dumped and mined. That requires a lot of push power, so what does Google use? According to Smart Data Collective, Google uses the, ““Big Query Service: Next Big Thing Unveiled By Google On Big Data”.“”
Google and big data have not been in the news together for a while, but the BigQuery Data Transfer Service shows how it is moving away from SaaS. How exactly does this work?
According to a Google’s blog post, the new service automates the migration of data from these apps in BigQuery in a scheduled and managed manner. So good so far, the service will support data transfers from AdWords, DoubleClick Campaign Manager, DoubleClick for Publishers, and YouTube Content and Channel Owner Reports and so forth. As soon as the data gets to BigQuery, users can begin querying on the immediate basis. With the help of Google Cloud Dataprep, users cannot only clean and prep the data for that analysis but also further think of analyzing other data alongside that information kept in BigQuery.
The data moves from the apps within 24 hours and BigQuery customers can schedule their own data deliveries so they occur regularly. Customers who already use BigQuery are Trivago and Zenith.
The article turns into a press release for other services Google provides related to machine learning and explains how it is the leading company in the industry. It is simply an advertisement for cloud migration and yet another Google service.
Whitney Grace, March 16, 2018
Come on Google, Stop Delivering Offensive Content
March 14, 2018
Sentiment analytics is notoriously hard to program and leads to more chuckles than accurate results. Throughout the year, Google, Facebook, and other big names have dealt with their own embarrassing sentiment analytics fiascos and they still continue. The Verge shares, “Google’s Top Search Results Promote Offensive Content, Again” in an unsurprising headline.
One recent example took an offensive meme from the swathe subreddit when “gender fluid” was queried and made it the first thing displayed. Yes, it is funny, but stuff like this keeps happening without any sign of stopping:
The slip-up comes just a month after Google briefly gave its “top stories” stamp of approval to two 4chan threads identifying the wrong suspect in the recent Las Vegas mass shooting tragedy. This latest search result problem appears to be related to the company’s snippet feature. Featured snippets are designed to answer queries instantly, and they’ve often provided bad answers in the past. Google’s Home device, for example, used a featured snippet to answer the question ‘are women evil?’ with the horrendously bad answer ‘every woman has some degree of prostitute in her.’
The ranking algorithm was developed to pull the most popular stories and deliver them regardless of their accuracy. Third parties and inaccurate sources can manipulate the ranking algorithm for their own benefit or human. Google is considered the de facto source of information. There is a responsibility of purveying the truth, but there will always be people who take advantage of the news outlets.
Whitney Grace, March 14, 2018
Is Google The Victim or the Aggressor in Prager Case?
March 8, 2018
Courtroom drama is reaching a high point in an interesting case that might have flown under your radar. Online university Prager U is suing YouTube for taking many of its videos off of YouTube. Seems like an odd choice, until you start to realize just how political this move is and the first amendment can of worms is spilling all over the place. We learned more in a recent FrontPage Mag story, “Prager U Video: Who Will Google Silence Next?”
According to the video shown, Google claimed that some of the company’s educational five minute videos were not appropriate for children.
“Google and YouTube dominate internet search with over 75% of the market. If you disappear on Google, your ability to voice your opinion disappears too. PragerU is an educational non-profit that has had over 40 of their videos restricted by YouTube. That’s why they have recently filed a lawsuit against the tech giant.”
Prager is claiming that this is a misunderstanding and a violation of their first amendment rights, since they say that their short videos are age appropriate across the board. Google, however, is firing back with a surprising defense: It’s actually Google’s first amendment rights that are being violated. They say: “PragerU’s motion is a radical attempt to rewrite the rules governing online services, one that would transform nearly every decision that service providers make about how content may be displayed on their platforms into a constitutional case to be arbitrated by the courts.”
Grab some popcorn, because this is going to be an interesting fight. Adam Carolla is a semi-partner with Mr. Prager. Mr. Carolla has a podcast, and he can create some traction for issues which interest him. Does anyone remember the patent troll who took on the comedian? The patent troll does, I believe.
Patrick Roland, March 8, 2018
Big Data, Search, and Artificial Intelligence: Quite a Mash Up
January 29, 2018
I read a consultant-technology mash up marketing essay. The write up is “Big Data and Search: The Time for Artificial Intelligence Is Now.” The write up is mostly jargon. I wonder if the engineer driving the word processing train pushed the wrong button.
Here are the “keywords” I noted in the write up:
Analytics
Artificial intelligence
Big Data
Blockchain
Business action and business use cases
Chatbots
Cognitive (presumably not the IBM which maybe doesn’t work as advertised)
Consumer services
Customer / citizen facing (some government speak too)
Digital assistants
False or biased results (yes, fake news)
Keywords
Machine learning
Natural language processing
Platforms
Real time results
Resources
SQL databases
Search
Transparency
Trust
Video
Google Tries Like Crazy to End Extreme Content Controversy
January 16, 2018
Google is having a tough time lately. When it purchased YouTube few thought extremist videos and wonky children’s programming would be its most concerning headaches. But their solutions remain strained, as we discovered in a recent Verge story, “YouTube Has Removed Thousands of Videos from Extremist Cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki.”
Google removed hundreds of al-Awalaki’s videos in 2010 which directly advocated violence, following the conviction of Roshonara Choudhry, a radicalized follower who stabbed British MP Stephen Timms earlier that year. At the time, a YouTube spokesperson cited the site’s guidelines against inciting violence. But al-Awalaki posted tens of thousands of other videos, and in subsequent years, was cited as an influence in other notable terrorist attacks at Fort Hood, the Boston Marathon, San Bernardino, and Orlando, Florida.
This comes on the heels of another Verge story with a similar issue, “YouTube Says it Will Crack Down on Bizarre Videos Targeting Children.”
We’re in the process of implementing a new policy that age restricts this content in the YouTube main app when flagged,” said Juniper Downs, YouTube’s director of policy. “Age-restricted content is automatically not allowed in YouTube Kids.” YouTube says that it’s been formulating this new policy for a while, and that it’s not rolling it out in direct response to the recent coverage.
Google is trying to do better, but it seems like they are fighting off an avalanche with a snow shovel. Luckily, as Washington Post points out, the United States leads the world in terms of big data. One can hope that a solution lies in their somewhere, but good luck predicting what it will be.
Patrick Roland, January 17, 20186
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