DarkCyber Exclusive: Steele Aims for the Hearts of Wall Street Short Sellers
May 23, 2020
We posted a follow up interview with Robert David Steele, a former CIA professional. This video expands on the allegations of wide spread, systemic fraud. Steele explains why a government task force is needed. He describes the scope of the audit, involving six financial giants and a back office operation. If you are interested in learning about alleged skyscraper-sized financial misbehavior, you can view the video on Vimeo at this link.
Stephen E Arnold, May 23, 2020
Facebook: Reducing Overhead and Maybe Management Oversight
May 22, 2020
NBC News (I know “real news” is thriving) published “Mark Zuckerberg: Half of Facebook May Work Remotely by 2030.” The article quotes the fellow who was not really in touch with Cambridge Analytica’s activities as saying:
“We are going to be the most forward-leaning company on remote work at our scale,” the Facebook CEO said in an interview.
The article points out:
Still, Facebook’s move — and Zuckerberg’s expectation of a 50-50 split between in-office and at-home workers by 2030 — marks a seismic shift for Silicon Valley and American business generally, especially if other companies are inspired to follow suit.
One obvious point is that Facebook is aiming to reduce the costs for office space, heat, electricity, and related facility services.
The motivation may be simpler than the complex verbal gymnastics reveal: Facebook can be more profitable, distance itself from certain office behaviors, and use monitoring technology to keep the gerbils running.
How many commercial real estate professionals agree with me? Yep, that’s what I thought.
Stephen E Arnold, May 22, 2020
Translation: Improvement Attracts Money
May 21, 2020
Foreign languages remain a problem for modern society, even with the bevy of translation software available. Most translation software lack native language fluidity and are unreliable. Lilt makes AI-powered business translation software and Venture Beat says that: “Lilt Raises $25 Million For AI Enterprise Translation Tools.” Lilt plans to use the money for further NLP research and go-to-market strategy acceleration.
Lilt’s clients translate information into seven languages and find the manual translation process slows down business practices. Lilt overcomes translation issues with:
“Lilt tackles this with human translators and CAT, a tool that helps them work more efficiently, using hotkeys, style guides, and a proprietary neural machine translation engine. CAT can be tailored to a company’s content, translation history, and other linguistic assets and configured to automatically add in previously translated segments when it finds matches within documents. The tool’s termbase and lexicon features help translators use the correct terminology in a given context, chiefly by showing them a range of possible translations for a certain word. And the engine taps AI and machine learning to analyze translation data and make predictive suggestions.”
Like most AI technology, Lilt’s systems requires new data, in this case languages, to learn. Translators work with the engine to accept, amend, or reject its translations.
The company has competitors such as Unbabel and the market for AI-based translation software is projected to be worth $983.3 million by 2022.
Didn’t Google “solve” machine translation already too? Obviously not completely.
Whitney Grace, May 21, 2020
Harvard Channels MIT: Academic Funding Magnetism
May 20, 2020
The study of mathematical principles that guide evolution is a fascinating field, and Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics is a worthy research and teaching program. Its goals include, among others, finding cures for cancer and for infectious diseases. Unfortunately, like many poised in an ivory tower, its director seems to have been afflicted with greed. The Harvard Crimson Reveals, “FAS Places Prof. Nowak on Leave after Report Finds Epstein Used His Program to Rehabilitate Image.” Reporter James S. Bikales writes:
“A University report found Epstein attempted to use Harvard and the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, which Nowak directs, as a tool to rehabilitate his image following his 2008 conviction for solicitation of minors for prostitution. Epstein likely made more than 40 visits to PED’s offices at One Brattle Square between 2010 and 2018, according to the report, which also states that Nowak approved the posting of flattering and false descriptions of Epstein’s philanthropy and support of Harvard on the PED website.”
Though no evidence was found that donations from the (alleged) underage-sex-ring facilitator and serial abuser were accepted after his conviction, he had donated millions to the PED in the recent past. Epstein also helped facilitate a John Templeton Foundation grant to the program in 2015, which was accepted. Certain pre-conviction perks were also supplied to the convict-to-be, including a fellowship he was unqualified for and an office complete with keycode access to the PED building. There is no evidence Epstein interacted with students during his approximately 40 visits, aside from sitting in on one undergrad math class.
While awaiting trial on federal charges of trafficking and sexually assaulting at least 80 underage girls, Epstein died in August 2019 in his prison cell. Though likely to be less dramatic, Nowak’s fate is still to be decided pending an investigation.
Cynthia Murrell, May 20, 2020
DarkCyber Exclusive: Litigation Likely for Naked Short Selling
May 18, 2020
In a conversation with former CIA professional Robert David Steele, DarkCyber learned of an impending legal action. Steele revealed in a video conference information about naked short selling, a Wall Street tactic to make money outside the boundaries of existing rules and regulations. DarkCyber obtained permission to create a summary of Steele’s main points. You can view the six minute exclusive at this link. In the question-and-answer session, Mr. Steele referenced additional information about this matter. You can access some associated information at:
- http://stopnakedshortselling.org
- Task force recommendation here
- Information provided to the White House here
DarkCyber finds the subject, the allegations, and the concept interesting. Financial fancy dancing is not new, and Steele is focused on an activity pushed out of the public eye due to the torrent of pandemic information.
Stephen E Arnold, May 18, 2020
Semantic SEO: Solution or Runway for Google Ads, Formerly AdWords?
May 14, 2020
I participated in a conversation with Robert David Steele, a former CIA professional, and a former Google software engineer named Zack Vorhies. One of the topics touched upon was Google’s relaxing of its relevance thresholds. A video of extracts from the conversation contains some interesting information; for example, the location of a repository of Google company documents Mr. Vorhies publicly released.
My contribution to the discussion focused on how valuable “relaxed” relevance is. The approach allows Google to display more ads per query. The “relaxed” query means that an ad inventory can be worked through more quickly than it would be IF old fashioned Boolean search were the norm for users. Advertisers’ eyes cross when an explanation of Boolean and “relaxing” a semantic method have to be explained.
DarkCyber’s research team prefers Boolean. None of the researchers need training wheels, Mother Google (which seems to emulate Elsa Krebs of James Bond fame) and WFH Googlers bonding with their mobile phones like a fuzzier, semantic Tommy Bahama methods.
The team spotted “The Newbie’s Information to Semantic Search: Examples and Instruments.” Our interpretation of “newbies” is that the collective noun refers to desperate marketers who have to find a way to boost traffic to a Web site BEFORE going to his or her millennial leader and saying, “Um, err, you know, I think we have to start buying Google Ads.”
Yes, there is a link between the SEO rah rah and the Google online advertising system. The idea is simple. When SEO fails, the owner of the Web page has to buy Google Ads (formerly Google AdWords). In a future post, someone on the team will write about this interesting business process. Just not in this post, thank you.
The article triggering this essay includes what looks like simplified semi-technical diagrams. Plus, there are screenshots featuring Yo Yo Ma. And SEOish jargon; for example:
Coding
Elements
Knowledge as in “knowledge of any Web page.” DarkCyber finds categorical affirmatives a crime against logicians living and semantically dead.
Mapping as in “semantic mapping”
Markup
Semantic
Plus, the write up some to be an advertorial weaponized content object for a product called Optimizer. DarkCyber concluded that the system is a word look up tool, sort of a dumbed down thesaurus for hustlers, unemployed business administration junior college drop outs, and earnest art history majors working in the honorable discipline of SEO.
What’s the semantic analysis convey to a reader unfamiliar with the concepts of “semantic,” “mark up,” and “knowledge.”? The answer, in the view of the DarkCyber team, is less and less useful search results. Mr. Vorhies makes this point in the video cited above. In fact, he wants to go back to the “old Google.” Why? Today’s Google outputs frustratingly off point results.
The article’s main points, based on the DarkCyber interpretation of the article, are:
First, statements like this: “…don’t actually recognize how troublesome it’s to elucidate what’s being communicated with out the assistance of all “beyond-words” indicators.” Yeah, what? DarkCyber thinks the tortured words imply that smart software and data can light up the dark spaces of a user’s query. Stated another way: Search results should answer the user’s question with on point results. Yes, that sounds good. A tiny percentage of people using Google want to conduct an internal reference interview to identify what’s needed, select the online indexes to search, formulate the terms required for a query, and then run the query on multiple systems. Very few users of online search systems wants to scan results, analyzed the most useful content, dedupe and verify data, and then capture facts with appropriate bibliographic information. Many times, this type of process is little for than input for a more refined query. Who has time for a systematic, thorough informationizing process. Why? Saying the word “pizza” to a mobile phone is the way to go. If it works for pizza, the simple query will work for Inconel 235 chemical properties, right? This easy approach is called semantic. In reality it is a canned search with results shaped by advertisers who want clicks.
Second, a person desperately seeking traffic to a Web site must index content on a Web page. Today, “index” is a not-so-useful term. Today one “tags” a page with user assigned terms. Controlled vocabularies play almost no role in modern Web search systems. Just make up a term, then to a TikTok video and become a millionaire. Easy, right? To make tags more useful, one must use synonyms. If a page is about pizza, then a semantic tag is one that might offer the tag “vegetarian.” At least one of the DarkCyber team is old enough to remember being taught how to use a thesaurus and a dictionary. Today, one needs smart software to help the art major navigate the many words available in the English language.
Third, to make the best use of related words, the desperate marketer must embrace “semantic mapping.” The idea is to “visualize relationships between ideas and entities.” (The term “entity” is not defined, which the DarkCyber team is perfectly okay for newbies who need help with indexing.) The idea of a semantic map is a Google generated search page — actually a report of allegedly related data — created by Google’s smart software. In grade school decades ago, students were taken to the library, taught about the “catalog”. Then students would gather information from “sources.” The discovered information was then winnowed and assembled into an essay or a report. If something looked or seemed funny, there was a reference librarian or a teacher to inform the student about the method for verifying facts. Now? Just trust Google. To make the idea vivid, the article provides another Google output. Instead of Yo Yo Ma, the topic is “pizza.” There you go.
The write up reminds the reader to use the third party application Text Optimizer for best results. And the bad news is that “semantic codes” must be attached to these semantically related index terms. One example is the command for deleted text. Indeed, helpful. Another tag is to indicate a direct quotation. No link to a source is suggested. Another useful method for the practicing hustler.
Let’s step back.
The article is all too typical of search engine optimization expertise. The intent is wrapped in the wool of jargon. The main point is to sell a third party software which provides training wheels to the thrashing SEO hungry individual. Plus, the content is not designed to help the user who needs specific information.
The focus of SEO is to add fluff to content. When the SEO words don’t do the job, what does the SEO marketer do?
Buy Google Ads. This is “pay to play”, and it is the one thing that Google relies upon for revenue.
Stephen E Arnold, May 14, 2020
JEDI: A Way Out of the Legal Quagmire
May 14, 2020
DarkCyber noted “Bulging Deficits May Threaten Prized Pentagon Arms Projects.” The write up states:
The government’s $3 trillion effort to rescue the economy from the coronavirus crisis is stirring worry at the Pentagon. Bulging federal deficits may force a reversal of years of big defense spending gains and threaten prized projects like the rebuilding of the nation’s arsenal of nuclear weapons.
The cash crunch may be somewhat less problematic than the news report implies. JEDI, the multi-billion JEDI project, has spawned expensive litigation and interesting publicity for the Administration.
The budget crunch sets the stage for a simple, clean resolution: There’s no money to move forward.
Who wins?
Since a reset will create another round of bids, that’s difficult to say.
A reset becomes an option without besmirching the reputations of those involved.
The bean counters did it again.
Stephen E Arnold, May 14, 2020
Google: Responding to the Bezos Bulldozer Just Slowly
May 14, 2020
Bulldozers have a top speed of what 10 kilometers per hour, maybe less if grinding through abandoned retail store fronts? As part of the DarkCyber research for our Amazon blockchain report, we put in our files “Amazon considers Entering Insurtech Market.” The date of this write up was 2017. The bulldozer has been making progress. AWS seems to be making progress. Amazon’s outstanding online marketing and documentation provides a semi-clear picture of what the Bezos bulldozer has accomplished. See, for example, Insurance.
We found the “truth” centric Thomson Reuters’ story “Insurer Brit and Google Cloud to Launch First Digital Lloyd’s Syndicate” intriguing. We learned:
Insurance company Brit and Google Cloud are together launching the first digital Lloyd’s of London syndicate, accessible from anywhere and at any time.
Thomson Reuters’ perceives that insurers are “in a race to team up with tech giants such as Google.”
Several questions:
- Did the Amazon insurance push fizzle and Thomson Reuters miss the two year old story?
- Did Google overlook the Amazon announcements which began flowing in 2017? For instance, “Amazon Is Coming for the Insurance Industry – Should We Be Worried?”
- Will regulators pay more attention to the financial services push from US technology giants?
DarkCyber cannot answer these questions. However, it would be helpful if a time context for Google’s activities were provided. The information makes clear how quickly or slowly Google responds to the slow moving Bezos bulldozer which is chugging along in some interesting financial markets. Are those camels watching the bulldozer moving forward? Nah, the bulldozer is probably delivering groceries.
Stephen E Arnold, May 14, 2020
Google: Trimming Expenses Signals an Abstemious Tremor
May 12, 2020
Times are changing at the Google. Despite being the world’s best and biggest online advertising service, the company is slowly morphing into an MBA centric operation.
CNBC published “Google Tells Employees They Can’t Expense Food or Other Perks When Working from Home.” The write up states:
The company issued an updated policy in the last week that states employees cannot expense perks while working from home, including food, fitness, home office furniture, decoration or gifts… The policy also states that employees cannot use unused budgets to do things like purchase meals for themselves or their teams during virtual meetings or donate to charities of their choice.
What’s interesting is that I saw Googlers living in their vehicles on or near Google properties in Mountain View. These individuals either chose van life to avoid the pre-Covid commute or because they could not afford a house or apartment.
Since these people live in some cases on Google premises, the change in perk policy may be particularly interesting. For Googlers who relied on the company for food face other hurdles. Nuking burritos in a microwave can get old fast.
What other financial tweaks will be forthcoming as the online ad giant tries to deal with the impact of the natural force of Covid and the unnatural force of the Bezos bulldozer scraping product search and advertising dollars from underneath Googzilla’s paws?
Stephen E Arnold, May 12, 2020
JEDI Warriors: Amazon and Microsoft Soldier On for Money
May 11, 2020
DarkCyber noted “Bid High, Lose, Try Again. Amazon Continues to Push for a JEDI Re-Do.” The main point of the write up is to point out that Amazon is not happy with the disposition of the Department of Defense’s decision to award JEDI to Microsoft.
What’s interesting about the article is that Microsoft implies that it is the provider of the “latest and best technology available.” The author is a corporate vice president of communications. The viewpoint is understandable.
The blog post points out:
Amazon has filed yet another protest – this time, out of view of the public and directly with the DoD – about their losing bid for the JEDI cloud contract. Amazon’s complaint is confidential, so we don’t know what it says. However, if their latest complaint mirrors the arguments Amazon made in court , it’s likely yet another attempt to force a re-do because they bid high and lost the first time.
That’s an interesting assertion. If the bid data were available, perhaps some characterization of what “high” means in this context would be helpful.
DarkCyber understood that Amazon lost the procurement because of a combination of factors, not “price.” Factors included alleged interference by the White House, Amazon’s assurances that on premises and cloud systems would work in the security environment required / envisioned by the DoD, and a lack of support for essential applications like PowerPoint. Price is an important factor, but data about the fees is not floating around in the miasma of rural Kentucky.
Microsoft’s PR VP states:
This latest filing – filed with the DoD this time – is another example of Amazon trying to bog down JEDI in complaints, litigation and other delays designed to force a do-over to rescue its failed bid. Think about it: Amazon spent the better part of last month fighting in court to prevent the DoD from taking a 120-day pause to address a concern flagged by the judge and reevaluate the bids. Amazon fought for a complete re-do and more delay. Amazon lost. The judge granted the DoD’s request for a timeout in the litigation to address her concerns. And now Amazon is at it again, trying to grind this process to a halt, keeping vital technology from the men and women in uniform – the very people Amazon says it supports.
The conclusion of the blog post is that Amazon should tip over its king and concede defeat.
DarkCyber finds this procurement to be interesting. Neither side is likely to walk away.
The reason, however, has little to do with technology or concern with the DoD, war fighters, or any other uplifting notion.
There are 10 billion reasons or more plus additional payments as a result of scope changes, engineering change orders, and ancillary tasks.
The battle is less about ideals and more about money, prestige, and the JEDI deal as a Dyson vacuum cleaner for more government work. The best technology? Yeah, right.
Stephen E Arnold, May 11, 2020
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