Hackers Revive Dark Web Forum Called Hell
February 8, 2016
After personal details of over four million Adult Friend Finder users was found on the Dark Web site called Hell, this notorious internet hacking forum was shut down by authorities around July 2015. Reported by Instant Tricks, an article Hell is back with Hell Reloaded on the Dark Web explains Hell is currently accessible again on the Dark Web. The article states,
“The exact date of the website’s returning on-line is troublesome to determine, for the posts don’t have a date next to them for security functions. However, judgement by the quantity of posts, it’s honest to mention that the web site came back simply over every week past. Hell is a web portal on the Dark internet that’s employed by hackers everywhere the globe to share their hacking tricks moreover as transfer and post taken knowledge.”
Hell is one of the world’s largest hacking forums on the Dark Web and, as such, is difficult to imagine the site will ever kick the bucket. Interestingly, in its re-emergence, it has been rendered with the same branding as if nothing had changed. “Stephen E Arnold’s Dark Web Notebook” describes this Dark Web resource. We recommend this read for security, law enforcement and information technology officials as these industries’ landscapes evolve due to the enduring presence of sites like Hell on the Dark Web.
Megan Feil, February 08, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Management 101: Sensitivity to Staff
January 24, 2016
I read “Yahoo CEO Cruelly Instills Fear in Her Workforce with Ominous Joke: No Layoffs This Week.”
I love this approach to motivation. I remember hearing Charles Colson, the pre-reformation version, gentle reader, explain to me and others in the meeting the value of fear and intimidation. By golly, I perked up. We may have been contractors to the president’s science advisor, but I got the message. Let’s see. I think that was in the early 1970s. I was useful to my employer because my father and his brother had been fund raisers for Senator Dirksen and Congressman Michel. As a result, I found myself in some darned interesting opportunity spaces when I was in Washington, DC. I saw the “hearts and mind” wall art.
If you are not familiar with the pre reformation Mr. Colson, you might find this obituary helpful. I highlighted this passage:
Charles W. Colson, the Republican political operative who boasted that he would “walk over my own grandmother” to ensure the reelection of President Richard M. Nixon and went on to found a worldwide prison fellowship ministry after his conversion to evangelical Christianity.
The write up about the fascinating Yahoo and its Xoogler leader reported:
The backlash is mounting against Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer for a horrible joke she attempted to make recently at a companywide meeting, and now many in her presumably deflated workforce fear for their jobs. Mayer reportedly told the company that there will be “no layoffs… this week,” and although her comments were intended to be humorous, many who call the tech giant home are left wondering about their employment status within the company. “This is the reason employee morale is so low,” said one employee to the New York Post, who wished to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution.
Yep, humor works really well as a management mechanism. Nothing relaxes an individual like a reminder that the mortgage may go unpaid, one’s home life is disrupted, and one’s professional standing is decimated.
Good stuff. Mr. Colson would have approved. My recollection is that he liked to be a bit more colorful. You know. The grandmother thing was a nice rhetorical touch. Xoogler management 101, gentle reader. Think what one does in management 102.
Stephen E Arnold, January 23, 2016
IBM and Severance: An Arbitrary Winter Chill
January 22, 2016
I read “IIBM Alters Severance Terms.” The idea is that an IBMer gets a review and learns that s/he is no longer needed. The reason may be incompetence; the reason may be downsizing; or the reason may be part of the IBM’s desire to outsource. Who knows? Saving money makes sense after 15 consecutive quarters of revenue decline and the massive spending to make Watson a household word, pay off Bob Dylan, and visit every possible media outlet with the tidings of gladness and joy about cognitive computing.
The write up points out:
Employees who took the IBM Separation Allowance Plan used to get 6 months pay. Now it’s one month.
That sounds fair. Some money may be better than zero money. The write up quotes the IBM explanation, which I find just thrilling for the employees soon to be affected by the change:
The separation allowance payment available under the Individual Separation Allowance Plan, regardless of the circumstance under which ISAP is offered, is one month of pay. For employees covered by IBM’s Growth Driven Profit-sharing program or on any type of sales or services incentive plan or any special program which is offered in lieu of the IBM Growth Driven Profit-sharing program, the one month of pay made under ISAP is paid in a lump sum, using the employee’s base pay amount (also known as reference salary) (full or part time). Any separation allowance payment under any of IBM’s plans is in lieu of any other form of separation pay to which the employee is, may, or might have become entitled. An individual separation allowance is not an automatic entitlement and will not accrue or be paid for reasons other than those listed above. No separation allowances under any of IBM’s plans will accrue if an employee has outstanding indebtedness to IBM or debts for which IBM may be responsible. However, if an employee makes arrangements satisfactory to IBM to repay any such outstanding debts, a separation allowance may be paid. Indebtedness to IBM could include, but is not limited to, a debit commission balance, an IBM US Mobility Plan equity loan, an unpaid balance on an installment purchase of an IBM product, credit card debt, excess tax loan, an outstanding travel expense account or failure to return IBM-owned property. In the event of rehire by IBM or any of its subsidiaries as a regular employee within 30 days after separation of employment with a payment under the Plan, IBM reserves the right to require repayment of the full ISAP payment.
Did IBM Watson assist in the writing of these statements? The conditionals add a bit of spice. Just what one needs as Joshua makes its way to IBM Federal Systems in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
Stephen E Arnold, January 22, 2016
She Is a Meme Librarian
January 20, 2016
Memes are random bits of Internet culture that come and go faster than the highest DSL speed. There are so many memes out there that it seems impossible to catalog the trends, much less each one. The Independent tells us that Amanda Brennan has made a career out of studying and documenting memes, becoming the world’s first meme librarian: “Meet Tumblr’s ‘Meme Librarian,’ The Woman With The Best Job On The Internet.”
Brennan works at Tumblr and her official title is content and community manager, but she prefers the title “meme librarian.” She earned a Master’s in Information from Rutgers and during graduate school she documented memes for Know Your Meme, followed by Tumblr.
“[In graduate school] immediately I knew I did not want to work in a traditional library. Which is weird because people go to library school and they’re like ‘I want to change the world with books!’ And I was like ‘I want to change the world of information.’ And they started a social media specialization in the library school, and I was like, ‘This is it. This is the right time for me to be here.’”
Brennan is like many librarians, obsessed with taxonomy and connections between information. The Internet gave her an outlet to explore and study to her heart’s content, but she was particularly drawn to memes, their origins, and how they traveled around the Internet. After sending an email to Know Your Meme about an internship, her career as a meme librarian was sealed. She tracks meme trends and discovers how they evolve not only in social media, but how the rest of the Internet swallows them up.
I wonder if this will be a future focus of library science in the future?
Whitney Grace, January 20, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Machine Learning Hindsight
January 18, 2016
Have you ever found yourself saying, “If I only knew then, what I know now”? It is a moment we all experience, but instead of stewing over our past mistakes it is better to share the lessons we’ve learned with others. Data scientist Peadar Coyle learned some valuable lessons when he first started working with machine learning. He discusses three main things he learned in the article, “Three Things I Wish I Knew Earlier About Machine Learning.”
Here are the three items he wishes he knew then about machine learning, but know now:
- “Getting models into production is a lot more than just micro services
- Feature selection and feature extraction are really hard to learn from a book
- The evaluation phase is really important”
Developing models is an easy step, but putting them in production is difficult. There are many major steps that need attending to and doing all of the little jobs isn’t feasible on huge projects. Peadar recommends outsourcing when you can. Books and online information are good reference tools, but when they cannot be applied to actual situations the knowledge is useless. Paedar learned that real world experience has no comparison. When it comes to testing, it is a very important thing. Very much as real world experience is invaluable, so is the evaluation. Life does not hand perfect datasets for experimentation and testing different situations will better evaluate the model.
Paedar’s advice applies to machine learning, but it applies more to life in general.
Whitney Grace, January 18, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Meg Whitman Prediction: From Advocates of Quitting
January 15, 2016
I love predictions. Most folks forget the ones which do not materialize. The others get a moment of Internet fame and then die like day lilies.,
I read an interesting chunk of prognosticative fluff in “Meg Whitman Will Leave HP and 4 Other Predictions For 2016.”
The prediction is that Ms. Whitman will “declare victory” and head to a more halcyon place. Fortune asks, “Who could blame her?”
That’s nifty. A quitter. I suppose when one works at Fortune, the idea of quitting is a pretty attractive one.
Will Ms. Whitman depart? I don’t know. I do know that the litigation she spawned will continue through 2016 and probably years to come.
When she departs, the law firms dealing with her Autonomy allegations may give her a bouquet of —what?—day lilies?
Stephen E Arnold, January 15, 2016
The Duck Quacks 12 Million Queries
January 14, 2016
DuckDuckGo keeps waddling through its search queries and quacking that it will not track its users information. DuckDuckGo has remained a small search engine, but its privacy services are chipping away at Google and search engines’ user base. TechViral shares that “DuckDuckGo The Anti-Google Search Engine Just Reached A New Milestone” and it is reaching twelve million search queries in one day!
In 2015, DuckDuckGo received 3.25 billion search queries, showing a 74 percent increase compared to the 2014 data. While DuckDuckGo is a private oasis in a sea of tracking cookies, it still uses targeted ads. However, unlike Google DuckDuckGo only uses ads based on the immediate keywords used in a search query and doesn’t store user information. It wipes the search engine clean with each use.
DuckDuckGo’s increase of visitors has attracted partnerships with Mozilla and Apple. The private search engine is a for profit business, but it does have different goals than Google.
“Otherwise, it should be noted that although he refuses to have the same practices as Google, DuckDuckGo already making profits, yes that’s true. And the company’s CEO, Gabriel Weinberg, stop to think it is necessary to collect information about users to monetize a search engine: ‘You type car and you see an advertisement for a car, Google follows you on all these sites because it operates huge advertising networks and other properties. So they need these data for search engines to follow you.’ ”
DuckDuckGo offers a great service for privacy, while it is gaining more users it doesn’t offer the plethora of services Google does. DuckDuckGo, why not try private email, free office programs, and online data storage? Would you still be the same if you offered these services?
Whitney Grace, January 14, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Google: Autos and Virtual Reality. Search? Not So Important?
January 13, 2016
I read two stories about the new Alphabet Google thing and its foci for 2016.
The first report comes from McPaper in the story “Google Forms Virtual Reality Division As Facebook Rivalry Heats Up.” The main idea is that Facebook is pitching virtual reality and getting lots of media coverage. The response for the Alphabet Google thing has been to do a reorganization.
Now I don’t much about virtual reality and I know zippo about modern management theory. I do think that when a giant company with many interests outside of the firm’s core technology does a reorganization after the Consumer Electronic Show, that’s a signal of note.
Has Google pulled a “let’s buy Motorola” or a “let’s reorganize now” maneuver?
Sure, looks like a knee jerk.
Meanwhile the Google is showing some signs of promiscuity. I read “Google Self-Driving Car Boss to Automakers: ‘We Hope to Work with Many of You Guys’.” I presume that the Alphabet Google thing will answer phone calls from those who want to work with the GOOG. The write up points out that there is a new president of the “self driving car project.” Hmm. President of project. I thought the title for that type of work was “project manager.”
The new Alphabet Google thing seems to be batting its Jack Benny blue eyes at anyone who finds the cachet of the search vendor alluring.
Zebras can change their stripes one assumes.
And search. Er, what?
Stephen E Arnold, January 13, 2016
Weekly Watson: The Internet of Things
December 17, 2015
Yep, there is not a buzzword, trend, or wave which IBM’s public relations professionals ignore. I read “IBM Is Bringing Its Watson Supercomputer to IoT.” The headline puzzled me. I thought that Watson was:
- Open source software like Lucene
- Home brew scripts
- Acquired technology.
The hardware part is moving to the cloud. IBM is reveling in a US government supercomputing contract which may involve quantum computing.
But Watson runs on hardware. If Watson is a supercomputer, I see some parallels with the Google and Maxxcat search appliances.
The write up reports:
IBM has announced today it is bringing the power of its Watson supercomputer to the Internet of Things, in a bid to extend the power of cognitive computing to the billions of connected devices, sensors and systems that comprise the IoT.
Will the Watson Internet of Things be located in Manhattan? Nope. I learned:
the company announced that the new initiative, the Watson Internet of Things, will be headquartered in Munich, Germany. The facility will serve as the first European Watson innovation super centre, built to drive collaboration between IBM experts and clients. This will be complemented by eight Watson IoT Client Experience Centers spread across Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Why Germany? IBM has a partner, Siemens.
Will the IoT venture use the shared desk approach. According to EndicottAllilance.org Comment 12/10/15, this approach to work has some consequences:
I wouldn’t get too excited about the new “Agile Workspace” in RTP. Basically it is management forcing workers back to the office and into a tense, continuously monitored environment with no privacy. It will be loud, you’ll have no space of your own, and it will be difficult to think. Mood marbles? Better be sure you always choose the light-colored ones! And make sure your discussion card is always flipped to the green side. What humiliation! The environment will be great for loud-mouthed managers, terrible for workers who do all the work. Worse than cubicles.
From cookbooks to cancer, IBM Watson seems to be where the buzzwords are. I wonder if the Watson revenues will reverse the revenue downturns IBM has experienced for 14 consecutive quarters.
Stephen E Arnold, December 17, 2015
Management Observations about Yahoo from a Real Newspaper
December 16, 2015
I am fascinated when publishers offer management advice and opinions. The newspaper publishing sector has done a bang up job with digital in the last 30 years.
I read the UK newspaper written by “real” journalists online and spotted this article: “Don’t Blame Marissa Mayer: nobody Was Going to Save Yahoo.”
That’s a great headline from a newspaper. I think it also emphasizes the value a Xoogler has despite the somewhat tarnished performance of the company the Xoogler is “turning around.”
I highlighted a couple of passages as particularly interesting observations.
For example, I highlighted in Yahoo purple:
All of it [Yahoo’s management actions], sadly, has been pretty irrelevant.
I like the “all”. There is nothing quite like a categorical affirmative to add heft to an argument.
I noted:
It would be easy to blame Mayer for this [revenue malaise]; in several ways she has done herself few favors – hiring and firing a chief operating officer who earned $58m in 15 months, cancelling working from home while bringing her newborn son and a full-time nanny to the office, and overseeing an exodus of top executives.
Well, I am not sure that the assertion “it’s not clear that anybody could have saved Yahoo.”
Again a categorical, embracing lots of folks” does not provide much insight into the Yahoo we know and love.
Too bad for those who rely on generalizations to navigate the tough business climate for information, whether in print or online.
I wonder how newspapers are doing. I assume super peachy. These outfits, including the Telegraph, are paragons of management excellence, organic revenue growth, hefty profits, and keen thinking.
Thank goodness for “real” journalists. These outfits and their professionals will make bang up consultants.
Stephen E Arnold, December 16, 2015
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