Google Revises Guest Speakers Rule to Avoid Future Controversy
December 2, 2022
Here’s another example of high school science club management in action. Free thinking and cultural sensitivity seem to be in a constant tug-of-war. Finding itself caught in the middle, “Google Fixes Rules for Inviting Guest Speakers to Its Offices After Recent Row Over Indian Speaker,” Gadgets 360 shares. Reuters explains:
“Alphabet’s Google this week introduced rules for inviting guest speakers to its offices, days after it canceled a talk by an Indian historian who has disparaged marginalised groups and their concerns, according to company emails seen by Reuters. The policy released Thursday is Google’s latest effort to preserve an open culture while addressing divisions that have emerged as its workforce has grown.
Workers at Google and other big tech companies in recent years have clashed and protested over politics and racial and gender equity. Also, Alphabet, Apple, and Amazon all face union organising drives whose demands include that the companies adopt progressive policies. The Google speaker rules, seen by Reuters, cite risk to the brand from certain talks and asks workers to ‘consider whether there’s a business reason for hosting the speaker and if the event directly supports our company goals.’ It calls for avoiding topics that could be ‘disruptive or undermine Google’s culture of belonging’ and reiterates that speakers are barred from advocacy of political candidates and ballot measures.”
This clarification follows months of complaints from workers about scheduled appearances by diametrically opposed authors Thenmozhi Soundararajan and Rajiv Malhotra. See the write-up for details on that dustup. Now potential speakers must be approved by a review team, meaning any request must be submitted at least 12 weeks ahead. So much for Googley spontaneity.
Cynthia Murrell, December 2, 2022
Study Concludes Apple Privacy Promises a Sham, Lawsuit Follows
December 2, 2022
Apple would have us believe it is a bastion of privacy protection. Though it talks a good game, Techdirt reports, “Apple Sued After Another Study Finds Its Well-Hyped Privacy Standards Are Often Theatrical.” Researchers at software firm Mysk found Apple’s data tracking basically ignores privacy settings altogether. The study prompted a lawsuit (pdf) under the California Invasion of Privacy Act. Write Karl Bode notes:
“This isn’t the first time Apple’s new privacy features have been found to be a bit lacking. Several studies have also indicated that numerous app makers have been able to simply tap dancing around Apple’s heavily hyped do not track restrictions for some time, often without any penalty by Apple months after being contacted by reporters. That’s a notably different story than the one Apple has gotten many press outlets to tell. Apple desperately wants to differentiate its brand by a dedication to privacy (as you might have noticed from the endless billboards that simply say: ‘Privacy. That’s iPhone.’). And while the company may certainly be better on privacy than many other large tech giants, that’s simply not saying much.”
Good point. The lawsuit observes that details about app usage can be “intimate and potentially embarrassing.” Not to mention financially sensitive. This is why some of us have refused to bring our devices into every aspect of our lives; a suspicious nature pays off occasionally. Yep, Apple privacy… a bit lacking. No kidding?
Cynthia Murrell, December 2, 2022
Elephants Recognize One Another and When They Stomp Around, Grass Gets Trampled
December 1, 2022
I find the coverage of the Twitter, Apple, and Facebook hoe down a good example of self serving and possibly dysfunctional behavior.
What caught my attention in the midst of news about a Tim Apple and the Musker was this story “Zuckerberg Says Apple’s Policies Not Sustainable.” The write up reports as actual factual:
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday (November 30, 2022) added to the growing chorus of concerns about Apple, arguing that it’s “problematic that one company controls what happens on the device.” … Zuckerberg has been one of the loudest critics of Apple in Silicon Valley for the past two years. In the wake of Elon Musk’s attacks on Apple this week (third week of November 2022) , his concerns are being echoed more broadly by other industry leaders and Republican lawmakers….”I think the problem is that you get into it with the platform control, is that Apple obviously has their own interests…
Ah, Facebook with its interesting financial performance partially a result of Apple’s unilateral actions is probably not an objective observer. What about the Facebook Cambridge Analytic matter? Ancient history.
Much criticism is directed at the elected officials in the European Union for questioning the business methods of American companies. The interaction of Apple, Facebook, and Twitter will draw more attention to the management methods, the business procedures, and the motivation behind some words and deeds.
If I step back from the flood of tweets, Silicon Valley “real” news, and oracular (possibly self congratulatory write ups from conference organizers) what do I see:
- Activities illustrating what happens in a Wild West business environment
- Personalities looming larger than the ethical issues intertwined with their revenue generation methods
- Regulatory authorities’ inaction creating genuine concern among users, business partners, and employees.
Elephants can stomp around. Even when the beasts mean well, their sheer size puts smaller entities at risk. The shenanigans of big creatures are interesting. Are these creatures of magnitude sustainable or a positive for the datasphere? My view? Nope.
Stephen E Arnold, December 1, 2022
WikiLeaks: Oh, Oh, Some Folks Are Not Happy
December 1, 2022
I read “WikiLeaks Website Is Struggling to Stay Online—As Millions of Documents Disappear.” If the write up is on the money, one lesson from this alleged cancel culture action is to hit the Print to PDF and save a document.” Assuming that online is forever is one of those weird misperceptions many online users have. Nope.
The write up says:
WikiLeaks’ website appears to be coming apart at the seams, with more and more of the organization’s content unavailable without explanation. WikiLeaks technical issues, which have been ongoing for months, have gotten worse in recent weeks as increasingly larger portions of its website no longer function.
The write up points out:
Although WikiLeaks long boasted that it released more than 10 million documents in 10 years, at current, less than 3,000 documents remain accessible, according to an analysis by the Daily Dot of the website’s leaks archive.
What’s interesting is that no one has claimed responsibility for hitting the delete key. What I find interesting is that the site has been online for many years. Now here’s a question, “Who could have taken this action?” Microsoft would say that it was 1,000 engineers working for a nation state. Others might say, “Oh, just a technical glitch.” A few might say, “Teens fooling around?” Does this list exhaust the possibilities?
Stephen E Arnold, December 1, 2022
Sesamy for Content in Small Bites
December 1, 2022
Here is good news for anyone who would like to purchase a piece of content without a long-term relationship with its host platform. The Next Web reports, “Swedish Startup Sesamy Seeks to Slaughter the Subscription Model.” It is such a good idea, we wonder whether this company will become an Amazon acquisition target. Writer Cate Lawrence tells us:
“[Sesamy is] So far, the Stockholm-based company has partnered with every major book publisher in Sweden and Denmark to offer users the option to purchase digital content as a single purchase. You can then consume it on any app or device. This means you can play Sesamy audiobooks in your favorite audio app and download watermarked ebooks to any ereader. And you actually own the book instead of renting it with a platform like Amazon Kindle. … Publishing companies are struggling to woo readers who look to cut costs, and Sesamy offers them a new business model and potential revenue source. In October, the company launched SmartID with Swedish publication Breakit, enabling publishers to monetize non-subscribed readers, without cannibalizing their existing revenues from digital subscriptions.
The software will also include built-in price optimization that suggests a fair retail cost to readers and publishers, ensuring that the platform remains competitive. And this incremental revenue may add up at a time when people are culling their subscriptions to save money.”
There must be an appetite for this sort of service—the company just raked in €3.3 million in a recent funding round. It will use this capital to make available single issues of newspapers and magazines. Yes please. Lawrence contemplates an extension to academic journal articles. They should really be free, she notes, but single-article access would be an improvement. Sesamy was founded in March 2021 by the folks behind the podcast platform Acast.
Cynthia Murrell, December 1, 2022
AI: Opaqueness ‘R Us Unless You Are Special
December 1, 2022
Humans design and make AI. Because humans design and make AI, we should know how they work. For some reason, humans do not know how AI works. Motherboard on Vice explains that, “Scientists Increasingly Can’t Explain How AI Works.” AI researchers are worried that AI developers focus too much on the end results of an algorithm than how and why it arrives at said results.
In other words, developers cannot explain how an AI algorithm works. AI algorithms are built from layers and layers of deep neural networks (DNNs). These networks are designed to replicate human neural pathways. They are almost like real neural pathways, because neurologists are unaware of how the entire brain works and AI developers do not know how AI algorithms work. AI developers are concerned with the inputs and outputs, but the in-between is the mythical black box. Because AI developers do not worry about how they receive the outputs, they cannot explain why they receive biased, polluted results.
“‘If all we have is a ‘black box’, it is impossible to understand causes of failure and improve system safety,’ Roman V. Yampolskiy, a professor of computer science at the University of Louisville, wrote in his paper titled “Unexplainability and Incomprehensibility of Artificial Intelligence.” ‘Additionally, if we grow accustomed to accepting AI’s answers without an explanation, essentially treating it as an Oracle system, we would not be able to tell if it begins providing wrong or manipulative answers.’”
It sounds like the Schrödinger’s cat of black boxes.
Developers’ results are driven by tight deadlines and small budgets so they concentrate on accuracy over explainability. Algorithms are also (supposedly) more accurate than humans, so it is easy to rely on them. Making the algorithms less biased is another black box, especially when the Internet is skewed one way:
“Debiasing the datasets that AI systems are trained on is near impossible in a society whose Internet reflects inherent, continuous human bias. Besides using smaller datasets, in which developers can have more control in deciding what appears in them, experts say a solution is to design with bias in mind, rather than feign impartiality.”
Couldn’t training an algorithm be like teaching a pet to do tricks with positive reinforcement? What would an algorithm consider a treat?
Whitney Grace, December 1, 2022
Blue Chip Consulting: An Interesting Question with a Painfully Obvious Answer
November 30, 2022
I read “Why Is Booz Allen Renting Us Back Our Own National Parks?” The author is asking a BIG question with what may be a tiny answer.
The essay states:
Today I’m writing about how the giant government contracting firm Booz Allen and 13 government agencies have been renting back to the public access to our own lands by forcing us to pay junk fees to use national parks.
The essay runs through some historical information about land. Interesting, but I tuned that type of information when I had to take a class in US history as a freshman at the third-rate outfit which accepted me as a student. Sure, the professor became a US congress person and had influence. But the lectures about land, Henry Clay, and Manifest Destiny did not compute. (In 1962 I was trying to figure out how to get an IBM computer to accept a program to index Latin sermons. Land was a fungible, and I was and remain on the intangible side of life.)
A US government Web site becomes a point of reference in the essay. Now you may think that US government Web sites are no big deal. Rest assured that in preparing annual budgets, Web sites are indeed a big deal. Did you know that US national laboratories want traffic because click data let’s some labs say to a Congressional committee: “We are pulling in eyeballs because our research is Number One with a bullet.” Believe me. Some people’s jobs depend on getting an elected official to see Web traffic as germane to pulse weapon funding or more esoteric activities.
The Web site referenced is not involved in nuclear research information. Recreation.gov becomes a way for a government agency to demonstrate that it is [a] serving citizens, [b] demonstrating that it is operating as a business, not a service organization, and [c] in step with hip digital trends. The write up points out that my former employer Booz Allen does a great deal of business with the Federal sector. The write up points out that Booz Allen has been involved in interesting and often big dollar projects. Some of these projects are so-so; others not so so-so; and a number of them are home runs. Booz Allen is an organization of hitters, not sitters.
I noted this passage in the write up:
In 2017, Booz Allen got a 10-year $182 million contract to consolidate all booking for public lands and waters, with 13 separate agencies participating, from the Bureau of Land Management to the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration to the National Park Service to the Smithsonian Institution to the Tennessee Valley Authority to the US Forest Service. The funding structure of the site is exactly what George Washington Plunkitt would design. Though there’s a ten year contract with significant financial outlays, Booz Allen says the project was built “at no cost to the federal government.” In the contractor’s words, “the unique contractual agreement is a transaction-based fee model that lets the government and Booz Allen share in risk, reward, results, and impact.” In other words, Booz Allen gets to keep the fees charged to users who want access to national parks. Part of the deal was that Booz Allen would get the right to negotiate fees to third party sites that want access to data on Federal lands.
Then the essay notes:
Yes, Booz Allen gets to steal some pennies, but we have a remarkable system of public lands and waters that are broadly available for all of us to use on a relatively equal basis. And we can still see the power of George-ism in the advocacy of hikers and in the intense view that members of Congress had when they passed the Federal Lands Recreation Enhancement Act in 2004, which strictly regulated fees that Americans would have to pay to access our Federal lands.
Then the essay includes a statement which baffles me:
We are in a moment of institutional corruption, but these moments are transitory as institutions change.
Now let’s answer the question, “Why is Booz Allen renting us back our own national parks?”
My answer is my personal opinion, and you may choose to disagree:
- Government professionals directly or indirectly created a statement of work designed to help a unit of a government agency meet its annual objectives; for instance, cost recovery so citizens benefit without the agency spending government money. Remember that Booz Allen gets paid to create a fee generation system which pays Booz Allen and makes users of Recreation.gov really happy. At the same time, the agency officials get credit for a job well done and possibly some power or money related benefit.
- Booz Allen (in its present form) was shaped in the mid 1970s specifically to capture government contracts of any type. The purpose of the capture is to generate fee based revenue from professional services and in some cases by creating a fungible thing like a cartridge ejection mechanism. The object is to bill in accordance with the tasks set forth in the statement of work and implement applicable scope changes in order to respond to the client agency’s needs.
- The projects — whether Recreation.gov, the structure of the US Department of Navy, or providing inputs to space warfare analysts — give the professionals working in US government agencies a wide range of interesting work tasks. These tasks include, but are not limited to, attending meetings, meeting with sub-contractors, coordinating with other government entities, and in the case of national park projects, a field trip, maybe many field trips.
Thus, the answer to the question is that Booz Allen does not rent back national parks. Booz Allen plus a small number other blue chip consulting firms create work for Federal employees and for those paid directly by Booz Allen. Think of Booz Allen as the engine room of the government machine.
The march through history, the precedents for land use, and the other History 121 topics are completely irrelevant to making an essentially unmanageable and functionally impaired national park system appear to work reasonably well.
I would ask the author of the essay: What would be a better method? Would it be possible to find an optimally performing government agency and transport those systems and methods to those entities involved in Recreation.gov? How about using the Internal Revenue Service as a model? What if one snags the Social Security Agency or Health and Human Services as a model? We can jump branches and emulate the Senate sergeant at arm’s management methods? Do any of these provide a model?
To answer these questions my thought is that some government agencies will hire either Booz Allen or a similar firm.
Why? Booz Allen can do work, give government professionals tasks to complete, and send invoices.
The BIG question has a small, simple answer. Plus one can reserve a space for vanlifers whose rides conform to the National Park guidelines. That’s a deliverable.
Stephen E Arnold, November 30, 2022
France and US Businesses: Semi Permanent Immiscibility?
November 30, 2022
Unlike a pendulum, the French government and two US high-technology poster kids don’t see eye to eye. However, governments, particularly those in France, are not impressed with the business practices of some US firms. The tried and true “Senator, thank you for the question” and assurances that the companies in questions are following the ethical precepts of respected French philosophers don’t work. “France Directs Schools to Stop Using Microsoft Office & Google Workspace” reports:
In a recent response to an interrogation by a Member of the Parliament, the French Minister of Education clarified that French schools should not use Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. The reasons behind the Ministry’s position are twofold. First, the Ministry is concerned about the confidentiality and lawfulness of data transfers. Second, reliance on European providers is coherent with the government’s “cloud at the center” policy.
The write up explains that France’s view of privacy and the practices of Apple and Google are not in sync. Then there is the issue of the cloud and where data and information “are.” Given modern network and data center technology, the “there” is often quite tricky to pin down. Tricky is not a word the current French government feels comfortable using when talking about schools, teachers, students, and research conducted by French universities.
How will this play out? France will get its way. That’s why some chickens have labels which mean conformance. No label on that chicken, no deal.
Stephen E Arnold, November 30, 2022
Collusion? What Do You Mean Collusion?
November 30, 2022
Ah what wise and ethical firms we have at the top of the tech food chain. MacRumors reports, “Amazon and Apple ‘Colluded’ to Make iPhone and iPad More Expensive, Says Antitrust Lawsuit.” The complaint alleges the companies conspired to kick third-party vendors of Apple products from Amazon’s marketplace in order to escalate prices and keep them aloft. Did they think no one would notice? We learn:
“There were around 600 third-party sellers of Apple devices on Amazon Marketplace, which was whittled down to just seven. Amazon began eliminating third-party sellers after it signed a 2019 deal with Apple to limit the number of resellers on Amazon marketplace to 20 per country. In exchange, Apple provided Amazon with a discounted wholesale price for iPhones and iPads. By restricting third-party sellers from offering Apple products, Amazon made itself the dominant seller of Apple products on Amazon Marketplace, which Amazon and Apple both ‘stood to benefit from’ even though it ‘would harm the public.’ The lawsuit claims that prior to the agreement, third-party resellers were offering ‘prices steeply discounted’ from those Apple wanted to have for its online storefront, which resulted in lower prices for consumers.”
That does look bad. But wait, there is an important caveat:
“There is no word on specific devices that went up in price due to the agreement, and no explanation of whether sellers were offering older devices or current products, nor if these were refurbished devices.”
Those would be key distinctions. The write-up does not mention (though commenters have) that purveyors of stolen and counterfeit goods are known to operate through Amazon. Were any of them among the approximately 590 sellers axed? We may never know.
The suit requests an injunction forcing Amazon to allow third-party Apple sellers back on and to reimburse customers who it claims overpaid by as much as 20%. We are curious to see how this lawsuit plays out.
Cynthia Murrell, November 30, 2022
This Is Not About Message Bubbles. We Want Cash, Suggests Apple
November 30, 2022
Telegram is an encrypted message service that has avoided paying Apple fees, but according to TechRadar that has come to an end: “Telegram Forced To Crack Down On Paid Posts Because Apple Wasn’t Getting A Cut.”
Telegram used to allow users to set up paid content posts with third-party payment bots. This allowed content creators to avoid paying Apple’s fees and their fans paid them directly. Content creators received close to 100% of their fans’ donations without sending a chunk to Apple. Unfortunately, Apple wants its 30% and Telegram is forced to comply. If Telegram does not comply with Apple, then it will be removed from the App Store.
Apple has a monopoly in the app market and even other tech giants, like Elon Musk and Spotify, are saying 30% is too much. South Korea passed a law that allowed content creators to use third-party payment services other than Apple:
“You have the likes of Spotify calling the tech giant “anti-competitive” because of App Store rules that make buying an audiobook overly complicated. Newfound Twitter wrangler Elon Musk said back in May that 30 percent is “10 times higher than it should be” and South Korea thought so, too. Last year, the nation passed a law forcing Apple and Google to allow developers to use third-payment systems and not pay the hefty tax.”
Apple does not care that it charges 30%, because they have a monopoly and all its decisions are unilateral. That is what happens when they use an OS other than Windows.
Whitney Grace, November 30, 2022
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