A Hidden Nugget about E2EE Use as a Filter
August 23, 2022
I am not a fan of Silicon Valley type “real” news. Political biases usually color the factoids. I read “Inside Facebook’s Encryption Conundrum.” [Believe it or not you may have to spit out personal info or pay to read this hyperlinked document.] I don’t care too much about Facebook’s conundrums. Mismanaged online services are poorly understood by those who live and die by social media. The goldfish does not know the water in its bowl contains amorphous scales of lead and lead phosphate.
I am going to ignore the description of the Zuckbook’s business processes and focus on what I perceive to be the nugget in the write up:
In recent conversations with Meta employees, I’ve come to understand more about what’s taking so long — and how consumer apathy toward encryption has created challenges for the company as it works to create a secure messaging app that its user base will actually use.
Translating into Beyond Search lingo yields, “People don’t know and don’t care.”
Ergo, anyone using an encrypted messaging app is signaling:
I know;
I care;
Therefore, why not monitor me?
You may have a different conclusion. I believe use of apps like Telegram provides an important signal. Apathy is a filter. Is the opposite important?
Stephen E Arnold, August 23, 2022
Microsoft: A Better PDF?
August 23, 2022
I am not a fan of the Adobe Trapeze (now known as Acrobat). The dongles, the font handling, and the lack of a function to “destroy document” at a specific date and time convinced me that PDF really meant “poor document format.” That was in 1989 I think. As if the Adobe cross platform document rendering mechanism was not exciting enough, Microsoft decided it could create a better solution. Hey, pair that puppy with Visio, and you have a darned exciting combination.
I read “Microsoft Confirms Problems with Opening XPS Documents in Windows 10 and 11.” The write up states:
Besides the inability to open XPS and OXPS documents in non-English languages, XPS Viewer stops responding and starts hogging CPU and RAM resources until it crashes upon reaching 2.5GB of RAM usage.
The article seems mostly unconcerned with this minor problem.
My view is that it may not make much difference. If an XPS document renders, it might be difficult to print. You know the persistent USB printer thing.
Remarkable and consistent excellence in software engineering. I am not worried. I know that Windows Defender and its off spring are 100 percent rock solid. Don’t you?
Stephen E Arnold, August 23, 2022
Predicting the Future: For Money or Marketing?
August 22, 2022
A few days ago I was talking with some individuals who want to rely of predictive methods. These individuals had examples of 90 percent accuracy. Among the factoids offered were matching persons of interest with known bad actors, identifying CSAM in photographs, and predicting where an event would occur. Yep, 90 percent.
I did not mention counter examples.
A few moments ago, I emailed a link to the article titled “High-Frequency Trading Firms Can Easily Get to 64% Accuracy in Predicting Direction of the Next Trade, Princeton Study Finds.” The article states:
In its IPO filing in 2014, Virtu Financial said it had exactly one day of trading losses in 1,238 days. That kind of consistent profitability seems to be still the case: a new study from a team at Princeton University found that predictability in high frequency trading returns and durations is “large, systemic and pervasive”. They focused on the period from Jan. 2019 to Dec. 2020, which includes the turmoil when the coronavirus pandemic first hit the western world. With what they said was minimal algorithmic tuning, they can get to 64% accuracy for predicting the direction of the next trade over the next five seconds.
How accurate can the system referenced become? I noted this statement:
The Princeton researchers also simulated the effect that acquiring some signal on the direction of the order flow would have for the accuracy of the predictions. The idea is that knowledge could be gained by looking at order flow at different exchanges. That would boost the return predictability from 14% to 27%, and price direction accuracy from 68% to 79%.
Encouraging? Yes. A special case? Yes.
Flip the data to losses:
- The fail rate is 36 percent for the 2014 data
- The fail rate achieved by processing data from multiple source was 21 percent.
But 90 percent? Not yet.
What happens if one tries to use synthetic data to predict what an individual in a statistically defined cluster wants?
Yeah. Not there yet with amped up Bayesian methods and marketing collateral. Have these Princeton researchers linked with a high frequency trading outfit yet? Good PR generates opportunities in my experience.
Stephen E Arnold, August 22, 2022
NSO Group: An Award for Pony Excellence
August 22, 2022
I read “Spyware Maker NSO Won Cellphone Hack of the Year But No One Picked Up the Award.” Two things: NSO Group remains in the news but with a twist. The company has become a #humor outfit. The second thing is that NSO Group did not show up at a recent ambiguous actor conference to claim the plastic Pwnie (pony, I think) statuette.
The write up reports:
This year, NSO Group was nominated for the Best Mobile Bug, for the exploit known as Forced Entry, an iPhone exploit that didn’t require any interaction from the victim, meaning targets could get hacked without realizing anything happened. Security researchers praised the technical sophistication of the exploit, calling it “mind-bending,” a bug that “goes into ‘holy smokes, what?!’ area,” with “several truly beautiful aspects,” and “absolutely stunning.”
Intelware as a foundation for humor. Who would have thought that would ever happen? A little plastic, see through pony. Perfect for a transparent outfit, but NSO Group? Whew.
The one saving grace is that Mark the Zuck wandering around in the Zuckerverse is a bigger magnet for humorists. That’s saying something.
Stephen E Arnold, August 19, 2022
TikTok: Allegations of Keylogging
August 22, 2022
I am not a TikTok person; therefore, I exist in a trend free zone. Others are sucking down short videos with alacrity. I admire a company, possibly linked to China’s government, which has pioneered a next generation video editor and caused the Alphabet Google YouTube DeepMind thing to innovate via its signature “me too” method of innovation.
Now TikTok has another feature, which is an interesting allegation. “TikTok’s In-App Browser Can Monitor Your Every Click and Keystroke” asserts:
When Krause [a security researcher] dug a little deeper into what these apps’ in-app browsers really do, he’d found that TikTok does some bad things, including monitoring all of users’ keyboard inputs and taps. So, if you open a web page inside of TikTok’s app, and enter your credit card details there, TikTok can access all of those details. TikTok is also the only app, out of all the apps Krause has looked into, that doesn’t even offer an option to open the link in the device’s default browser, forcing you to go through its own in-app browser.
Let’s assume this finding is spot on. First question: Does anyone care? Second question: So what?
I don’t have answers to either question. I do, however, have several observations:
- Oracle, for some reason, seems to care. The estimable database company is making an effort to find information that suggests TikTok data are kept in a cupboard. Only grandma can check out who will be an easy target for psychological manipulation. No results yet, but if TikTok is a neutral service, why’s Oracle involved?
- A number of Silicon Valley pundits have pointed out that TikTok is no big deal. That encapsulates the “so what” issue. “Put that head in the sand and opine forward” is the rule of thumb for these insightful folks.
- Keyloggers are a fave of certain actors. TikTok may have found them useful for benign purposes.
Quite an allegation.
Stephen E Arnold, August 22, 2022
Not a Eulogy for the Semantic Web, Maybe an Elegy
August 22, 2022
If you are into the semantic Web, you will enjoy “The Semantic Web is Dead – Long Live the Semantic Web!” The article has examples, some explanation, and a prediction. Spoiler: The Semantic Web will rise like Lazarus, just wearing Amazon normcore clothing. You know: For everyone.
I noted one passage and circled it in blue:
The political economy of academia and its interaction with industry is the origin of our current lack of a functional Semantic Web. Academia is structured in a way that there is very little incentive for anyone to build useable software. Instead you are elevated for rapidly throwing together an idea, a tiny proof of concept, and to iterate on microscopic variations of this thing to produce as many papers as possible. In engineering the devil is in the detail. You really need to get into the weeds before you can know what the right thing to do is. This is simultaneously a devastating situation for industry and academia. Nobody is going to wait around for a team of engineers to finish building a system to write about it in Academia. You’ll be passed immediately by legions of paper pushers. And in industry, you can’t just be mucking about with a system that you might have to throw away. We have structured collaboration as the worst of both worlds. Academics drop in random ideas, and industry try them, find them useless, and move on.
I believe in the Tooth Fairy, not Jack Benny’s Blue Fairy. The write up, like me, is mostly optimistic. I learned:
The Future of the Semantic Web is there, the Semantic Web will rise, but it will not be the Semantic Web of the past. Humanities access to data is of ever increasing importance, and the ability to make resilient and distributed methods of curating, updating and utilizing this information is key. The ideas which drove the creation of the Semantic Web are nowhere near obsolete, even if the tool chain and technologies which have defined it up to day are fated to go the way of the dinosaur.
Now I am a dinobaby. What about Web 3-ized well-formed XML? Great idea, right?
Stephen E Arnold, August 22, 2022
Microsoft and Its Consumer Focus
August 19, 2022
Blurry or blind? I am not sure. I noted “Microsoft Reportedly Lays Off Team Focused on Winning Back Consumers.” Is the story spot on? I don’t know, but if it is, the write up reveals some interesting information. Here’s an example:
In 2018 the software giant originally detailed its efforts to win back the non-enterprise customers it let down, forming a Modern Life Experiences team to focus on professional consumers (prosumers).
I am not sure what a “Modern Life Experience” is. Maybe the Google outage, the airline baggage theme parks, or living in downtown San Francisco? Also, I have no idea what a Microsoft prosumer is? Maybe a customer? Maybe a power user of outstanding Microsoft software like the auto numbering champion Word?
I noted that Microsoft allegedly has 180,000 employees. So RIFing a mere 200 people amounts to about 0.11 percent of the Microsoft family. What this tells me is that Microsoft was not putting much commitment behind the Modern Life Experiences’ initiative.
But not to worry:
Microsoft’s consumer efforts are now focused on Windows, Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams for consumer, Surface, and of course Xbox.
Plus Microsoft has a new senior manager to direct the “consumer” efforts. Guess where this individual worked before the Microsoft gig?
That pinnacle of management excellence Uber. That’s a “life experience” I would not want on my résumé.
Stephen E Arnold, August 19, 2022
Can Ducks Crawfish? DuckDuckGo Gives Reverse a Go
August 19, 2022
I read “DuckDuckGo removes Carve Out for Microsoft Tracking Scripts after Securing Policy Change.” I learned:
A few months on from a tracking controversy hitting privacy-centric search veteran, DuckDuckGo, the company has announced it’s been able to amend terms with Microsoft, its search syndication partner, that had previously meant its mobile browsers and browser extensions were prevented from blocking advertising requests made by Microsoft scripts on third party sites.
The write up contains Silicon Valley-type talk about how its bold action and deep thinking sparked the backwards duck walk.
I am not sure if ducks can walk backward. In fact, after a security company assured some folks that privacy was number one and then was outed as a warm snuggler of tracking, will I trust the Duck metasearch thing?
The answer is the same for any online service with log files: Nope.
Oh, for the record, some ducks can waddle backwards for a couple of steps and then they try to walk, hop, or swim forward. The backwards thing is an anomaly. Perhaps you have seen a duck do a bit of nifty backwards walking? I have but it was laughable. Some of my test queries on the Duck have been almost as amusing.
Stephen E Arnold, August 19, 2022
An Amusing Take on Pearson and Non Fungible Tokens for Textbooks
August 19, 2022
I read “Absolutely Terrible Textbook Publishing Giant Pearson Wants To Make Everything Even Worse With NFTs.” The write up states:
There’s an oligopoly of just five giant publishers, and they long ago learned that they are in the best market ever: the buyers of their textbooks (the students) have no choice and are forced to buy the books if their professors assign them — and more such books will get sold every semester that the professor requires it. Therefore, textbook prices are insane by any imaginable standard.
I think the viewpoint is one widely held. However, why not consider the issue from the point of view of the oligopolies themselves.
First, creating textbooks is an expensive, time consuming business. Once one of these textbooks is adopted widely, then that book becomes the goose that lays golden revenue eggs semester in an semester out. A professional involved with the turgid and generally crazy economics textbook was known as “Sammy” where the professional worked. This person told me that “Sammy” was in double digit editions and would continue on this path of persistent revisions to keep that money coming in. Losing the Sammy thing, the publisher’s textbook division could plunge into red ink quite rapidly. Therefore, the oligopolists want to hang on to their winners, keep others like professors who will write a book and make it available under Creative Commons or some similar nonsense, and make old editions useless to students in class now. I thought that was useful information when I learned it a decade ago. I have no reason to believe that the insight remains valid today.
Second, some countries won’t buy or authorize use of US textbooks unless those books are in the languages identified by the country as acceptable. Canada, for instance, once required that Ukrainian be used in textbooks in one province because a majority of students spoke that language. Of course, the textbooks had to be available in French and English too. Translating nearly incomprehensible gibberish about economic, political science, or organic chemistry is expensive. Don’t forget the workbooks, the online tutorials, and other collateral required to land the “adoption”.
Third, professional publishers are not well known as businesses. One doesn’t learn how to build a monopoly on legal, accounting, or government regulatory information in business school. One learns the art and craft of taking essentially jargon filled content and converting it into something that a person skilled in a field can use to justify high fees. This “learning” occurs when a person studying law gets to buy textbooks. A tiny percentage of lawyers accept work at a professional publishing house and can practice the art of monopoly.
Each of these three factors is expensive — creating books, getting adopted and conforming to buyer rules, and hiring people and letting them learn how to be professional publishers.
I remember a meeting at Cornell University years ago. The topic of publishing papers in an online journal or a peer reviewed journal would be acceptable for those on a tenure track. The answer was [a] writing a widely adopted textbook was important, [b] publishing in a peer reviewed journal owned by a professional publishing outfit was very helpful, and [c] doing anything without the blessing of the professional publishers was stupid. Today it may be different.
But high prices mean quality. Why shouldn’t certifiers of the best and brightest charge a lot of money? Professional publishers will point out that that is the way oligopolistic certifiers work. Don’t like it? Don’t go to school. Besides NFTs are hip, and professional publishers want to be with it.
Stephen E Arnold, August 19, 2022
TikTok Says Hello, Spotify, Hello, Apple Music
August 19, 2022
Like Facebook before it, Spotify may soon find itself in a defensive position against TikTok. The Hustle briefly describes “TikTok’s Grand Plans to Take Over Our Ears.” Writer Jacob Cohen reveals:
“For the last couple years the trend for many has been to hear a song on TikTok, then listen to it on Spotify. TikTok is, in fact, that much better at discovery: 63% of users discover new music on TikTok before any other platform. As a result, TikTok finds itself in a position where it should probably just start hosting music itself. And it’s already starting. Abroad, in India, Brazil, and Indonesia, TikTok operates an app called Resso, which is like a more social Spotify. Stateside, Insider recently spotted a trademark filing for a “TikTok Music” app. Yesterday, TechCrunch reported similar filings in the UK, Singapore, New Zealand, Mexico, Malaysia, and Costa Rica.”
It is no surprise that Resso‘s approach is to be like Spotify, but more social. The write-up notes social media’s recent emulation of TikTok has spread to the audio content field. We wonder—once the thriving app conquers sound, what will it take on next?
Cynthia Murrell, August 19, 2022
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