Microsoft: Innovation Never Stops
July 6, 2021
Big news weekend. Forget the terror printer nightmare thing. Ignore the REvil ransomware issue. Get behind the big news. Navigate to “Microsoft’s Blue Screen of Death Is Changing to Black in Windows 11” and imbibe the super important announcement. Microsoft’s blue screen of death — affectionately known as BSOD — will be black. Energy saving? Of course. Massively significant? Of course. Truly innovative? Outdoing Einstein is routine for the Redmond outfit.
Now the question becomes, “What does one call BSOD?” I suggest:
[a] blod
[b] lacks
[c] baloney
I love baloney. Don’t you?
PS. Hats off to the Silicon Valley “real” news outfit for this factoid:
It’s the first major change to the BSOD since Microsoft added a sad face to the screen in Windows 8 in 2012
Really. Great.
Stephen E Arnold, July 6, 2021
Google: Me Too, a Refrigerator, and Innovation
June 23, 2021
Okay, pantry, refrigerator, on ice, whatever. Google is not an innovator; it is a me too outfit. I read “Si! Das Ist Richtig! Google’s Reportedly Building a Duolingo Competitor.” The write up reveals:
the company is preparing a new product called Tivoli that’ll be rolled out later this year. It’ll initially work on text, and will live in Google Search.
I thought I saw a Google slide deck in 2006 which had this in a dot point. Oh, well, history is not exactly what thumbtypers do these days.
The write up states:
Whenever Google launches its efforts, it might a heavy competition from other industry leaders such as Babel, Duolingo, and Rosetta Stone. According to a report by Meticulous Research analytics firm, the online language learning market is set to reach $21.2 billion by 2027. And it wouldn’t surprise me if the search giant is gearing up to grab a big chunk of that booty.
Okay, big numbers and competitors who are entrenched.
What’s interesting is that Google is pulling some of its preserved groceries out of the warehouse and presenting them as alternatives to self driving cars which are sort of self driving, solving death which is a thorny problem, and floating ideas which show that the mom and pop online advertising store is not out of ideas.
There’s a freezer in the company garage stuffed with me toos. Just add marketing, shake, and serve.
Stephen E Arnold, June 23, 2021
Microsoft Teams: More Search, Better Search? Sure
June 23, 2021
How about the way Word handles images in a text document? Don’t you love the numbering in a Word list? And what about those templates?
Microsoft loves features. It is no surprise that Teams is collecting features the way my French bulldog pulls in ticks on a warm morning in the woods in June.
Here is an interesting development in search. We learn from a very brief write-up at MS Power User that “Microsoft Search Will Soon Be Able to Find Teams Meeting Recordings Based on What Was Said.” It occurs as the company moves MS Teams recordings to OneDrive and SharePoint. (We note Zoom offers similar functionality if one enables audio transcription and hits “record” before the meeting.) Writer Surur reports:
“Previously, Teams meeting recordings were only searchable based on the Title of the meetings. You will now be easily able to find Teams meeting recordings based on not just the Title of the meeting, but also based on what was said in the meeting, via the transcript, as long as Live Transcription was enabled. Note however that only the attendees of the Teams meeting will have the permission to view these recordings in the search results and playback the recordings. These meetings will now be discoverable in eDiscovery as well, via the transcript. If you don’t want these meetings to be discoverable in Microsoft Search or eDiscovery via transcripts, you can turn off Teams transcription.”
This is a handy feature. It does mean, however, that participants will want to be even more careful what they express in a Teams meeting. Confirmation of any surly utterances will be just a search away. How does the system index an expletive when the dog barks or a Teams’ session hangs?
Cynthia Murrell, June 23, 2021
China Innovation: No Big Deal, Right?
June 22, 2021
I spotted a short news item in Nikkei Asia called “China Beats US in Patent Filings for Second Straight Year.” The main point is:
China is number one in patent filings.
“Patents,” you say. “These are science fiction or legal hand waving.”
Maybe.
I found it interesting that both the US and Germany slipped in the rankings. Germany was knocked out to the fourth spot by South Korea. Japan hangs in at third.
The write up states:
Chinese applicants submitted 68,720 patent requests last year, up 16% from 2019 despite the coronavirus pandemic, according to data from the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). China’s Huawei Technologies, the world’s leading telecommunications equipment manufacturer, remained the top applicant for the fourth straight year. The U.S. remained in second place, with filings inching up 3% to 59,230. The numbers show clear signs of peaking out. Both the administrations of President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump have found fault with China’s infringement of intellectual property rights and forced technological transfers. The battle for hegemony in advanced technology will likely ramp up.
I like the word hegemony. One doesn’t see it too often in US news write ups. Is there any correlation with education in these data?
Stephen E Arnold, June 22, 2021
Google and the Institutionalization of Me Too, Me Too
April 8, 2021
Never one to let a trend pass it by un-mimicked, Google has created a new YouTube feature. Ars Technica reports, “YouTube’s TikTok Clone, ‘YouTube Shorts,’ Is Live in the US.” The feature actually launched in India last September and has done well there—possibly because TikTok has been banned in that country since June. The feature but has now made its way to our shores. Writer Ron Amadeo tells us:
“The YouTube Shorts section shows up on the mobile apps section of the YouTube home screen and for now has a ‘beta’ label. It works exactly like TikTok, launching a full-screen vertical video interface, and users can swipe vertically between videos. As you’d expect, you can like, dislike, comment on, and share a short. You can also tap on a user name from the Shorts interface to see all the shorts from that user. The YouTube twist is that shorts are also regular YouTube videos and show up on traditional channel pages and in subscription feeds, where they are indistinguishable from normal videos. They have the normal YouTube interface instead of the swipey TikTok interface. This appears to be the only way to view these videos on desktop. A big part of TikTok is the video editor, which allows users to make videos with tons of effects, music, filters, and variable playback speeds that contribute to the signature TikTok video style. The YouTube Shorts editor seems nearly featureless in comparison, offering only speed options and some music.”
Absent those signature features, it seems unlikely Short will successfully rival TikTok. Perhaps it will last about as long as Stadia, Orkut, or Web Accelerator. At least no one can say Google shies away from trying things that may not work out.
Cynthia Murrell, April 8, 2021
Neuroscience To the Rescue if Developers Allow
February 5, 2021
Machine learning has come a long way, but there are still many factors that will confuse an algorithm. Unfortunately, these adversarial examples can be exploited by hackers. The Next Web offers hope for a defense against some of these assaults in, “Here’s How Neuroscience Can Protect AI from Cyber attacks.” As is often the case, the key is to copy Mother Nature. Reporter Ben Dickson writes:
“Creating AI systems that are resilient against adversarial attacks has become an active area of research and a hot topic of discussion at AI conferences. In computer vision, one interesting method to protect deep learning systems against adversarial attacks is to apply findings in neuroscience to close the gap between neural networks and the mammalian vision system. Using this approach, researchers at MIT and MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab have found that directly mapping the features of the mammalian visual cortex onto deep neural networks creates AI systems that are more predictable in their behavior and more robust to adversarial perturbations. In a paper published on the bioRxiv preprint server, the researchers introduce VOneNet, an architecture that combines current deep learning techniques with neuroscience-inspired neural networks. The work, done with help from scientists at the University of Munich, Ludwig Maximilian University, and the University of Augsburg, was accepted at the NeurIPS 2020, one of the prominent annual AI conferences, which will be held virtually this year.”
The article goes on to describe the convolutional neural networks (CNNs) now used in computer vision applications and how they can be fooled. The VOneNet architecture works by swapping out the first few CNN layers for a neural network model based on primates’ primary visual cortex. Researchers found this move proved a strong defense against adversarial attacks. See the piece for the illustrated technical details.
The researchers lament the tendency of AI scientists toward pursuing larger and larger neural networks without slowing down to consider the latest findings of brain mechanisms. Who can be bothered with effectiveness when there is money to be made by hyping scale? We suspect SolarWinds and FireEye, to name a couple, may be ready to think about different approaches to cyber security. Maybe the neuro thing will remediate some skinned knees at these firms? The research team is determined to forge ahead and find more ways to beneficially incorporate biology into deep neural networks. Will AI developers take heed?
Cynthia Murrell, February 5, 2021
Yikes! Fund People, Not Projects
January 18, 2021
“Fund People, Not Projects III: The Newton Hypothesis; Is Science Done by a Small Elite?” addresses innovation, procurement assumptions, and MBA chestnuts. The write up is long, running about 6,300 words. Here’s my summary of the argument in the research paper:
You bet your bippy, pilgrim.
Here’s the academic version of my summary:
The Newton hypothesis seems true, as far as citations are concerned: science is advanced by a small elite. This is not just “Einstein-level” breakthroughs, the small elite may not be 0.01% but 1-5% of the total number of practicing scientists. Even 10% would still cohere with the idea of scientific elitism. Citations at least on a first pass do seem to correlate with “good science” both casually (Highly cited classic papers) and by assessment of peers (Nobel prize panels; Nobel-winning papers are highly cited, and cite highly cited research).
The write up also explains why some technology organizations decline; for example, the Google. The reason is that really good people leave for greener pastures either mentally or physically. The result? Gmail goes down, Intel can’t make chips, and IBM can’t get Watson to deliver that mythical billion dollar business. Common sense, yes. Will significant change take place in staff management, procurement, or MBA thinking about innovation?
Nope.
Stephen E Arnold, January 18, 2021
A Beefed Up Elasticsearch Presages an Interesting Future
December 31, 2020
The write up “Elasticsearch New Features: 2020 Year in Review” makes several “enterprise search” issues clear:
- Key word retrieval is not enough
- Additions to basic search signals that Elasticsearch is following the Entopia, FAST Search & Transfer, and other proprietary systems down the path of exponential complexity
- Specialists in the time series and geospatial sector have cause to rejoice and be worried.
The article provides a summary of the feature landscape for Elasticsearch. It is worth pointing out that many commercial vendors rely on Elasticsearch or its cousin Lucene for information retrieval functions.
The article illustrates why. A single firm lacks the resources to build, enhance, and support what now is a retrieval and analysis platform. What’s interesting is how few vendors report their open source roots. Most prefer to concentrate on their proprietary add ons. These are the differentiators, but I must admit that most of these commercial vendors appear to me like an iguanas in a Caribbean iguana farm pen. I can no longer tell them apart. When I encounter a “new” enterprise or specialized search system positioned as a problem solver for the enterprise, I see iguanas. I suppose each iguana has a quite distinct personality, but I am not smart enough to perceive the difference.
Net net: Enterprise search is a utility. As an information service accretes features and functions, the basics become less important. At some point, the enterprise search systems, whether free or proprietary, bangs straight into the accounting department’s Zoom meeting.
The results are not pretty. Complexity, triage costs, customization costs, and special add ons set the stage for more Delphes, Fulcrums, SMARTs and STAIRS. Will vendors of enterprise search figure out how to get off this pathway to a Dante-like digital netherworld?
My prediction for 2021? Nah.
Stephen E Arnold, December 31, 2020
Innovation Shift: Not Just in China and Singapore
November 23, 2020
How much innovation will $700 million buy? I think I will find out in the next six to 12 months. “COVID Hit Startups Badly – but Something Surprising Is Happening” contains an interesting factoid, if the datum is accurate. Here’s the passage I noted:
Research from MAGNiTT, a startup data platform, revealed that $704m was invested across 564 different startups across the region in 2019. “To put it into perspective, 2009 saw $15m of funding in five venture deals,” the company noted.
The article emphasizes Covid. My thought is that other factors are contributing to this old-school Silicon Valley type surge. Regardless of the reason, some of these “deals” were ones which just a few years ago would have involved lots of Philz Coffee conversations. Not now it seems.
Stephen E Arnold, November 23, 2020
Google Reveals Its Aspiration: Everything
October 30, 2020
An online publication called Gadgets360 published “Google Renames the Chromebook Search Button to the Everything Button.” The lowly capitalization lock key has been identified as expendable. By repurposing a way to create CAPS, Google has performed two vital services:
- Easier access to search
- A way to reveal its aspiration: To be “everything” to a human user.
The article states:
Google is renaming a button on Chrome OS PC keyboards to ‘Everything Button. … Google said that the new name for the Launcher button was chosen to reflect user feedback; the search giant hoped that the inclusion of the new name for the button will help highlight that Chromebook laptops have a dedicated button on their keyboards. Clicking on the Everything Button will open up a search bar through which you can search for things on Google, as well as for apps and files on the Chrome OS machine.
Interesting. What about confusion with the freeware application called Everything. David Carpenter at Voidtools.com has offered his useful information retrieval software for several years. Google is indeed innovative and proving that it is “everything” a me-too outfit would want to be.
Stephen E Arnold, October 30, 2020
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