Oracle: Marketing Experience or MX = Zero?
August 10, 2022
How does one solve the problem MX = 0? One way is to set M to zero and X to zero and bingo! You have zero. If the information in the super select, restricted, juicy article called “Oracle Insiders Describe the Complete Chaos from Layoffs and Restructuring While Employees Brace for More” is accurate, the financially lucrative Oracle database system is unhappy with the firm’s marketing. Not just the snappy PowerPoint decks or the obedient database administrator documentation. Nope. Everything is apparently a bit of indigestion.
The write up which is as I have mentioned is super selected, restricted, and juicy is a bit jumbled. Nevertheless, I noted several observations I found interesting. Let me summarize the 1,100 word report this way: Lots of people from marketing and customer experience (whatever that is) have been fired. Okay. Now let’s look at the comments that struck me as significant. Keep in mind that I love Oracle. Yep, clients just pay those who can make the sleek, efficient, tightly integrated components hum like an electric motor on a fully functioning Ford F 150 Lightning. Here we go. (My comments appear in italics after each bullet.)
- “The common verb to describe ACX is that they were obliterated,” said a person who works at Oracle. (I quite liked the use of the word “obliterated.” Was Oracle using a Predator launched flying ginsu management bomb or just an email or maybe a Zoom call?)
- “There’s no marketing anymore…” (My question is, “Was there ever any marketing at Oracle?” Bombast, yes. Rah rah conferences. Jet flights after curfew at the San Jose airport. But marketing? In my opinion, no.)
- “There’s a sense among many at Oracle of impending doom…” (Yep, upbeat stuff.)
- “We’ve been kind of working like zombies the last couple of weeks because there’s just this sense of ‘What am I doing here?” (The outfit on the former Sea World exit excels at management. Well, maybe it doesn’t? How does the Oracle hit above its weight? That’s a good question. Let’s ask Cerner about the electronic medical record business and its seamless functioning with the Oracle database, shall I? No I shall not.)
- “…Oracle’s code base is so complicated that it can take years before engineers are fully up to speed with how everything works, and workers with over a decade of experience were cut…” (Ah, ha, Oracle is weeding out the dinobabies. Useless deadwood. A 20 something engineer can figure out where an entire database is hiding.)
Net net: I hate to suggest this, but perhaps some database types think using AWS, the GOOG, or the super secure MSFT data management systems is better, faster, and cheaper. Pick two.
Stephen E Arnold, August 10, 2022
How about a Decade of Vulnerability? Great for Bad Actors
August 10, 2022
IT departments may be tired of dealing with vulnerabilities associated with Log4j, revealed late last year, but it looks like the problem will not die down any time soon. The Register reveals, “Homeland Security Warns: Expect Log4j Risks for ‘a Decade or Longer’.” Because the open-source tool is so popular, it can be difficult to track down and secure all instances of its use within an organization. Reporter Jessica Lyons Hardcastle tell us:
“Organizations can expect risks associated with Log4j vulnerabilities for ‘a decade or longer,’ according to the US Department of Homeland Security. The DHS’ Cyber Safety Review Board‘s inaugural report [PDF] dives into the now-notorious vulnerabilities discovered late last year in the Java world’s open-source logging library. The bugs proved to be a boon for cybercriminals as Log4j is so widely used, including in cloud services and enterprise applications. And because of this, miscreants soon began exploiting the flaws for all kinds of illicit activities including installing coin miners, stealing credentials and data, and deploying ransomware.”
Fortunately, no significant attacks on critical infrastructure systems have been found. Yet. The write-up continues:
“‘ICS operators rarely know what software is running on their XIoT devices, let alone know if there are instances of Log4j that can be exploited,’ Thomas Pace, a former Department of Energy cybersecurity lead and current CEO of NetRise, told The Register. NetRise bills itself as an ‘extended IoT’ (xIoT) security firm. ‘Just because these attacks have not been detected does not mean that they haven’t happened,’ Pace continued. ‘We know for a fact that threat actors are exploiting known vulnerabilities across industries. Critical infrastructure is no different.'”
Security teams have already put in long hours addressing the Log4j vulnerabilities, often forced to neglect other concerns. We are told one unspecified US cabinet department has spent some 33,000 hours guarding its own networks, and the DHS board sees no end in sight. The report classifies Log4j as an “endemic vulnerability” that could persist for 10 years or more. That is a long time for one cyber misstep to potentially trip up so many organizations. See the article for suggestions on securing systems that use Log4j and other open-source software.
Cynthia Murrell, August 10, 2022
Machine Learning: Cheating Is a Feature?
August 9, 2022
I read “MIT Boffins Make AI Chips 1 Million Times Faster Than the Synapses in the Human Brain. Plus: Why ML Research Is Difficult to Produce – and Army Lab Extends AI Contract with Palantir.” I dismissed the first item as some of the quantum supremacy stuff output by high school science club types. I ignored the Palantir Technologies’ item because the US Army has to make a distributed common ground system work and leave resolution to the next team rotation. Good or bad, Palantir has the ball. But the middle item in the club sandwich article contains a statement I found particularly interesting.
If you have followed out comments about smart software, we have taken a pragmatic view of getting “AI/ML” systems to work in the 80 to 95 percent confidence range in a consistent way even when new “content objects” are fed into the zeros and ones. To get off on the right foot, human subject matter experts assembled training data which reflected the content the system would be processing in the real world. The way smart software is expected to work is that it learns… on its own… sort of. It is very time consuming and very expensive to create hand crafted training sets and then “update” the system with the affected module. What if the prior content had to be reprocessed? Well, not too many have the funds, time, resources, and patience for that.
Thus, today’s AI/ML forward leaning cost conscious wizards want to use synthetic data, minimize the human SMEs’ cost and time, and do everything auto-magically. Sounds good. Yes, and the ideas make great PowerPoint decks too.
The sentence in the article which caught may attention is this one:
Data leakage occurs when the data used to train an algorithm can leak into its testing; when its performance is assessed the model seems better than it actually is because it has already, in effect, seen the answers to the questions. Sometimes machine learning methods seem more effective than they are because they aren’t tested in more robust settings.
Here’s the link to “Leakage and the Reproducibility Crisis in ML-Based Science in which more details appear. Wowza if these experts are correct. Who goes swimming without a functioning snorkel? Maybe the Google?
Stephen E Arnold, August 8, 2022
DARPA Works to Limit Open Source Security Threats
August 9, 2022
Isn’t it a little late? Open-source code has become an integral part of nearly every facet of modern computing, including military and critical infrastructure applications. Now, reports MIT Technology Review, “The US Military Wants to Understand the Most Important Software on Earth.” It seems military researchers have just realized there is no control over, or even accounting for, the countless contributors to open-source projects like the Linux kernel. That software alone underpins the operation of most computers. And yet the feature that makes open-source software free and, therefore, ubiquitous also makes it vulnerable to bad actors.
Since it cannot turn back the clock and consider security before open-source code got baked into critical software, DARPA will instead scrutinize the people and organizations behind open-source projects. The program, dubbed “SocialCyber,” will take 18 months and millions of dollars to implement. It will use a combination of the latest AI tech and good old-fashioned sociology to pinpoint potential threats. Reporter Patrick Howell O’Neill writes:
“The ultimate goal is to detect and counteract any malicious campaigns to submit flawed code, launch influence operations, sabotage development, or even take control of open-source projects. To do this, the researchers will use tools such as sentiment analysis to analyze the social interactions within open-source communities such as the Linux kernel mailing list, which should help identify who is being positive or constructive and who is being negative and destructive. The researchers want insight into what kinds of events and behavior can disrupt or hurt open-source communities, which members are trustworthy, and whether there are particular groups that justify extra vigilance. These answers are necessarily subjective. But right now there are few ways to find them at all. Experts are worried that blind spots about the people who run open-source software make the whole edifice ripe for potential manipulation and attacks. For Bratus, the primary threat is the prospect of ‘untrustworthy code’ running America’s critical infrastructure—a situation that could invite unwelcome surprises. …This kind of research also aims to find underinvestment—that is critical software run entirely by one or two volunteers.”
The program relies on partnerships between DARPA and several small cybersecurity research firms like New York’s Margin Research. These firms will ascertain who is working on what open-source projects. Margin will focus on Linux, considered the most urgent point of concern. Open-source programming language Python, which is often used in machine-learning projects, is another priority. SocialCyber is quite an undertaking—it is the pound of cure we could have avoided with an ounce of foresight several years ago.
Cynthia Murrell, August 9, 2022
Microsoft and Linux: All Your Base Belong to Us
August 9, 2022
Microsoft has traditionally been concerned about Linux and has never hidden its indigestion — until the original top dogs went to the kennel. Microsoft actually hates all open source software and CEO Steve Ballmer said, ““Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.” Wow! It sounds like someone wants to enforce a monopoly on technology, prevent innovation, and rake in dollars for personal gain. In other words, Ballmer is power and greed at its worst. Open source, on the other hand, inspires innovation and sharing technology. The Lunduke Journal of Technology, run by Bryan Lunduke, details his experience with controlling Microsoft heads and how Bill Gates’s company has slowly decimated Linux: “Microsoft’s Growing Control Of Linux.”
Lunduke recounted he heard Ballmer’s hatred for Linux and even had the CEO’s spittle on his face from an open source rage. Microsoft has slowly gained control over important parts of Linux and open source as whole. This includes: GitHub-the largest host of source code in the world, Linux conferences, Linux organizations-Microsoft is a “Premium Sponsor” of the Open Source Initiative and “Platinum Membership on the Linux Foundation, and hired prominent Linux developers.
Here is what Lunduke heard during a past Linux conference:
“During that keynote, the Microsoft executive (John Gossman) made a few statements worth noting:
‘You do not generally want your developers to understand how the licenses all work. If you’re a larger company, you’re very likely to have a problem of controlling all of the open source activity that’s going on … it can be bad for the company, it can be bad for the community, it can be bad lots of different ways.’
You don’t want developers to understand licenses? Not having corporate control of open source is bad? Not exactly pro-open source statements, eh?”
Microsoft does use Linux for Azure and Ubuntu, two products that make the company’s offerings stronger. This Linux thing will be an interesting challenge. MSFT “owns” GitHub. MSFT wants to sell subscriptions and maybe to what does not matter? Open source may be antithetical to MSFT subscriptions. Open source Linux? How about a subscription to MSFT Linux centric solutions?
Now that’s an idea.
Whitney Grace, August 9, 2022
TikTok: Is It a Helpful Service for Bad Actors?
August 9, 2022
Do you remember the Silicon Valley cheerleaders who said, “TikTok is no big deal. Not to worry.” Well, worry.
“TikTok: Suspected Gangs Tout English Channel Migrant Crossings on Platform” states:
The Home Office [TikTok] said posts which “promote lethal crossings” were unacceptable, but there are calls for more to be done to stop people-smuggling being advertised online.
TikTok is allegedly taking the position that such criminal promotions “have no place” on the China-linked service. The BBC report includes this statement:
A spokesman for TikTok said: “This content has no place on TikTok. We do not allow content that depicts or promotes people smuggling…and have permanently banned these accounts. “We work closely with UK law enforcement and industry partners to find and remove content of this nature, and participate in the joint action plan with the National Crime Agency to help combat organized immigration crime online.”
I am skeptical about TikTok for these reasons:
- Data collection
- Analyses which permit psychological profiling so that potential “insiders” can be identified
- Injection of content which undermines certain social concepts; that is, weaponized information.
Net net: Delete the app and restrict access to the system. Harsh? Maybe too little too late, cheerleaders.
Stephen E Arnold, August 9, 2022
YouTube: Latent Power and a Potential Flash Point within Russia?
August 8, 2022
I read the estimable Murdoch write up called “How YouTube Keeps Broadcasting Inside Russia’s Digital Iron Curtain.” And how about this subtitle?
Access to the video site allows Russians access to one of the few sources of independent information about the Ukraine war
(Keep in mind that you will have to pay to view the article on the WSJ.com site.)
I have suggested that Russia’s regulators see the Google as a giant piggy bank with a ceramic head resembling Godzilla’s. How powerful is Google’s YouTube? The write up suggests that the Alphabet Google YouTube DeepMind thing is pretty powerful. Well, actually what’s powerful is YouTube and its millions upon millions of videos.
Here’s the key statement in the “real” news article:
“Some banks are too big to fail, and some apps are too big to be blocked,” stated Nu Wexler, a former coverage communications staffer at Google, Meta and Twitter. “The Russian government knows they would face a backlash if they were to block a popular app like YouTube in the country.”
Why not enjoy the videos on Rutube, Rumble, or the high quality streamgun.vod site? The reason, according to one attendee at a law enforcement, crime analyst, and intelligence professional centric conference boils down to YouTube being Number One with a bullet.
The idea is that in some of the cheerful outposts in Siberia as well as the toasty towns in Sochi, YouTube is the primary source of entertainment. Okay, but I suggested vodka was the big dog. Wrong, I learned. Despite the quality of Russian state television and the outstanding Russian motion pictures, YouTube kept the young folks busy.
I have yet to see credible data which suggests that YouTube, not Russia billboards, is the information gun in Russia. There is, of course, TikTok and some of the low cost pirate streaming services. YouTube has triumphed it is alleged.
Here’s a factoid from the write up I saw:
YouTube had greater than 85 million month-to-month distinctive viewers in Russia in June, in line with analytics firm.
And how about this allegedly accurate item?
The video website was utilized by 47% of a pattern of Russians surveyed in April by the unbiased Russian pollster Levada Center, making it the nation’s second-most common social community behind native service VKontakte.
Maybe Rutube can displace the GOOG’s YouTube? Maybe:
Russian officers have stated state cash could be invested into Rutube, a unit of the state-owned vitality big Gazprom PJSC that options pro-Moscow content material. It had 9.7 million month-to-month distinctive viewers in Russia in June, SimilarWeb stated.
Net net: No wonder the Alphabet Google YouTube DeepMind operation finds pesky laws enacted by nation-states annoying. YouTube is able to do what Ukraine cannot: Displace that which it finds annoying and a threat to its data collection and advertising efforts. Google is in a position to trigger social unrest in Russia by pulling out of the country’s datasphere. That’s power. What if YouTube were used to incite citizen unrest in Russia and maybe a couple of other countries?
Interesting idea and worth consideration by some I suppose.
Stephen E Arnold, August 8, 2022
Xoogler on AI Ethics at the Google: Ethics? Explain, Please
August 8, 2022
I read a write up which seems to be information I have seen cycled and recycled. Nevertheless” “An Engineer Who Was Fired by Google Says Its AI Chatbot Is Pretty Racist’ and That AI Ethics at Google Are a Fig Leaf” contains an interesting observation; to wit:
“These are just engineers, building bigger and better systems for increasing the revenue into Google with no mindset towards ethics,” Lemoine told Insider. “AI ethics is just used as a fig leaf so that Google can say, ‘Oh, we tried to make sure it’s ethical, but we had to get our quarterly earnings,'” he added.
The statement is interesting from several different vantage points:
First, the Xoogler is directing public criticism at the GOOG by linking Google’s approach to ethics to a fig leaf. The metaphor to a fig leaf. Wikipedia points out:
Some paintings and statues have the genitals of their subjects covered by a representation of an actual fig leaf or similar object, either as part of the work or added afterward for perceived modesty.
Yep, perceived modesty and the evocative idea of a cover up.
Second, the recycling of negative comments could create a target for some of Google’s legal eagles.
Third, the allegations about ethics and its possible subordinate role to achieving goals supports assertions offered by Timnit Gebru et al.
Will a burning pile of fig leaves attract attention? Unlikely. Hey, it’s the Google.
Stephen E Arnold, August 8, 2022
Ah, Ha! The Social Media Conundrum?
August 8, 2022
Facebook and Twitter both began as humble undergrad side projects. Both platforms, and social media in general, have since mutated into something much more consequential. That is why The Next Web declares “Social Media Companies Should Be Converted Into Nonprofits.” Writer David Ryan Polgar asserts:
“Social media companies like Twitter have morphed — whether their founders intended them to or not — into important social institutions with grave consequences for both the future of democracy and the human condition. Yet these platforms still remain constrained by their structures as for-profit companies with a duty to their shareholders. Whether Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk (if the Twitter deal goes through) are acting in the best interest of the public as they lead their respective companies is missing the larger point: They should never have such unchecked power. To allow such is to enter a future where the public is vulnerable to billionaires’ whims as they shape the future of communication. That isn’t a future I’d want to live in.”
You mean we cannot trust a few billionaires to navigate the fine line between protecting free expression and reigning in hate speech, misinformation, and other harmful content? While such a balance is tricky even for governments, Polgar notes, at least there voters have some say in who is making these choices. The write-up continues:
“Twitter’s growth into a ‘de facto public town square,’ I would argue, should necessitate its radically reimagining its business structure, transforming into a nonprofit or benefit corporation, which is a legal structure that includes the overall benefit to society as an objective of the business, not just maximizing profits. If the platform immensely affects the public — as both Jack Dorsey and Elon Musk argue it does — its business model should serve the public interest and not shareholders or the ego of a company leader.”
We cannot argue with that last sentiment, but not all nonprofits benefit society as one would hope. The other direction implied here would be to make social media platforms into government entities, an idea that would float as well as a lead balloon in today’s climate. So what is society to do? The solution continues to elude as we chug along in a landscape paved by social media.
Cynthia Murrell, August 8, 2022
AI-Generated Dirty Pictures! What an Opportunity for Legal Eagles
August 8, 2022
Despite usually being racist, sexist, and dumber than binary code, there are some AI algorithms that are smart and capable of amazing feats. One feat is the ability to create digital, realistic photos of non-existent people. Another amazing ability is how AI can realistically recreate nudity. Fake nudity is as old as art, including the modern mediums of animation, videogames, and CGI. Early animators, videogame developers, and CGI artists have minds as dirty as the rest of humanity. DIY Photography explored fake nudity in, “A Website Sells AI-Generated Nudes Of Non-Existent Women. Why Is It (Not) Okay?”
While fake nudity is an ancient tradition, AI-generated nudity is a relatively new concept. It sounds like an innocuous concept, but could it be harmful?
“Let’s be honest, it was just a matter of time before someone starts using this type of AI to generate nudes (not dunes, nudes). Heck, I’m amazed that it hasn’t happened sooner. At the same time, now that I know AI-nudes of fake ladies exist, I just can’t wrap my head around it. As my DIYP buddy Alex pointed out, this is pretty much like some nerdy guy drawing nude sketches, and her comparison made me chuckle. But then again, these “sketches” could change the adult entertainment industry, beauty standards, and the view of men on women – sadly, not for the better.”
While the Web site in question does not work, it does exist. Visitors pursue a variety of different AI-generated women, select different features, then they can purchase images for $1 after they find the perfect nude. Each image is assigned a “seed number” as a receipt to prove that the buyer owns the unique model. It sounds like a cheaper version of NFTs.
Some of the pros of AI-generated nudes could be safer for women. Since the “women” are fake, no real people would be harmed. It could also mean women could stop be asked for inappropriate photos, maybe even catcalled.
There are more negative points, though. The fake nudes reinforce harmful, sexist stereotypes and it arguably allows people to buy and create a “woman” to suit their desires. The AI-generated nude market also only sells naked women at the moment, because there is not a big demand for the former.
To create the nudes, the AI algorithms needed a large, robust dataset of nude women. Where did that come from and did data scraping hurt anyone?
“‘The verification process for public domain [images] centers around running public domain data through reverse image searches,’ the co-founder told VICE. ‘If we notice that the results are from paywalled/monetized websites, revenge po*n websites, online forums, or behind paywalls, we err on the side of caution and exclude that data since it may not have been gathered ethically.’
But still, as VICE points out, many nude and po*nographic images found online are frequently stolen from actual sex workers. Even those marked as a public domain! ‘People steal sex worker’s content all of the time, posting it to tube sites for free or dumping it into database links.’ This means that women whose images were used to feed the algorithm maybe hadn’t given their consent for something like that.”
Reddit has a discussion thread titled “Technically the Truth.” It is technically the truth these AI-generated images are fake, it is still selling women and exploiting harmful standards for a profit. The “women” are still fake, but is it bad? Enter the science-fiction philosophical questions of the future.
The real winners are likely to be the lawyers. Is LAMdA’s attorney available?
Whitney Grace, August 8, 2022
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