Oh, Brother, What a Marketing Play HP Has Made
January 24, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I must admit I am not sure if the story “HP CEO Says Customers Who Don’t Use the Company’s Supplies Are Bad Investments” is spot on. But its spirit highlights some modern management thought processes.
The senior boss type explains to his wizards the brilliance of what might be called “the bricking strategy.” One executive sighs, “Oh, brother.” At the same time, interest in Brother’s printers show signs of life. Thanks, MSFT Copilot Bing thing, second string version. You have nailed isolated, entitled senior executives in this original art. Good enough. How’s security of your email coming along?
I love this quote (which may or may not be spot on, but let’s go with it, shall we?):
“When we identify cartridges that are violating our IP, we stop the printers from working.”
Brilliant. Hewlett Packard, the one that manufacturers printers, perceives customers who use refilled cartridges as an issue. I love the reference to intellectual property (IP). What company first developed the concept of refillable cartridges? Was it the razor blade outfit cherished as a high-water mark in business schools in the US? But refillable is perceived as a breakthrough innovation, is it not? Give away the razor; charge a lot for the blades which go dull after a single use.
The article reports:
When asked about the lawsuit during an interview with CNBC, Lores said, “I think for us it is important for us to protect our IP. There is a lot of IP that we’ve built in the inks of the printers, in the printers themselves. And what we are doing is when we identify cartridges that are violating our IP, we stop the printers from working.”
I also chuckled at this statement from the cited article:
Lores certainly makes no attempt to conceal anything in that statement. The CEO then doubled down on his stance: “Every time a customer buys a printer, it’s an investment for us. We are investing in that customer, and if that customer doesn’t print enough or doesn’t use our supplies, it’s a bad investment.”
Perfect. Customer service does not pay unless a customer subscribes to customer service. Is this a new idea? Nah, documentation does not pay off unless a customer pays to access a user manual (coherent or incoherent, complete or incomplete, current or Stone Age). Knowledgeable sales professionals are useless unless those fine executives meet their quotas. I see smart software in a company with this attitude coming like gangbusters.
But what I really admire is the notion of danger from a non-HP cartridge. Yep, a compromised cannister. Wow. The write up reports:
Lores continued to warn against the dangers of using non-HP cartridges and what will happen if you do. “In many cases, it can create all sorts of issues from the printer stopping working because the ink has not been designed to be used in our printer, to even creating security issues.” The CEO made it sound as if HP’s ink cartridge DRM was there solely for the benefit of customers. “We have seen that you can embed viruses into cartridges, through the cartridge go to the printer, from the printer go to the network, so it can create many more problems for customers.” He then appeared to shift from that customer-first perspective by stating, “Our objective is to make printing as easy as possible, and our long-term objective is to make printing a subscription.”
One person named Puiu added this observation: “I’m using an Epson with an ink tank at work. It’s so easy to refill and the ink is cheap.”
I have been working in government and commercial organizations, and I cannot recall a single incident of a printer representing a danger. I do have a number of recollections of usually calm professionals going crazy when printers [a] did not print, [b] reported malfunctions with blinking lights not explained in the user manual, [c] paper lodged in a printer in a way that required disassembly of the printer. High speed printers are unique in their ability to break themselves when the “feeder” does not feed. (By the way, the fault is the user’s, the humidity of the paper, or the static electricity generated by the stupid location the stupid customer put the stupid printer. Printer software and drivers — please, don’t get me started. Those suck big time today and have for decades.)
HP continues to blaze a trail of remarkable innovation. Forget the legacy of medical devices, the acquisition of Compaq, the genius of Alta Vista, and the always-lovable software. HP’s contribution to management excellence is heart warming. I need to check my printer to make sure it is not posing a danger to me and my team. I’m back. The Ricoh and the Brother are okay, no risk.
Subscribe to HP ink today. Be safe. Emulate the HP way too because some users are a bad investment.
Stephen E Arnold, January 24, 2024
Search Market Data: One Click to Oblivion Is Baloney, Mr. Google
January 24, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Do you remember the “one click away” phrase. The idea was and probably still is in the minds of some experts that any user can change search engines with a click. (Eric Schmidt, the adult once in charge of the Google) also suggested that he is kept awake at night worrying about Qwant. I know? Qwant what?
“I have all the marbles,” says the much loved child. Thanks, MSFT second string Copilot Bing thing. Good enough.
I read an interesting factoid. I don’t know if the numbers are spot on, but the general impression of the information lines up with what my team and I have noted for decades. The relevance champions at Search Engine Roundtable published “Report: Bing Gained Less Than 1% Market Share Since Adding Bing Chat.”
Here’s a passage I found interesting:
Bloomberg reported on the StatCounter data, saying, “But Microsoft’s search engine ended 2023 with just 3.4% of the global search market, according to data analytics firm StatCounter, up less than 1 percentage point since the ChatGPT announcement.”
There’s a chart which shows Google’s alleged 91.6 percent Web search market share. I love the precision of a point six, don’t you? The write up includes a survey result suggesting that Bing would gain more market share.
Yeah, one click away. Oh, Qwant.com is still on line at https://www.qwant.com/. Rest easy, Google.
Stephen E Arnold, January 24, 2024
How Do You Foster Echo Bias, Not Fake, But Real?
January 24, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Research is supposed to lead to the truth. It used to when research was limited and controlled by publishers, news bureaus, and other venues. The Internet liberated information access but it also unleashed a torrid of lies. When these lies are stacked and manipulated by algorithms, they become powerful and near factual. Nieman Labs relates how a new study shows the power of confirmation in, “Asking People ‘To Do The Research’ On Fake News Stories Makes Them Seem More Believable, Not Less.”
Nature reported on a paper by Kevin Aslett, Zeve Sanderson, William Godel, Nathaniel Persily, Jonathan Nagler, and Joshua A. Tucker. The paper abstract includes the following:
Here, across five experiments, we present consistent evidence that online search to evaluate the truthfulness of false news articles actually increases the probability of believing them. To shed light on this relationship, we combine survey data with digital trace data collected using a custom browser extension. We find that the search effect is concentrated among individuals for whom search engines return lower-quality information. Our results indicate that those who search online to evaluate misinformation risk falling into data voids, or informational spaces in which there is corroborating evidence from low-quality sources. We also find consistent evidence that searching online to evaluate news increases belief in true news from low-quality sources, but inconsistent evidence that it increases belief in true news from mainstream sources. Our findings highlight the need for media literacy programs to ground their recommendations in empirically tested strategies and for search engines to invest in solutions to the challenges identified here.”
All of the tests were similar in that they asked participants to evaluate news articles that had been rated “false or misleading” by professional fact checkers. They were asked to read the articles, research and evaluate the stories online, and decide if the fact checkers were correct. Controls were participants who were asked not to research stories.
The tests revealed that searching online increase misinformation belief. The fifth test in the study explained that exposure to lower-quality information in search results increased the probability of believing in false news.
The culprit for bad search engine results is data voids akin to rabbit holes of misinformation paired with SEO techniques to manipulate people. People with higher media literacy skills know how to better use search engines like Google to evaluate news. Poor media literacy people don’t know how to alter their search queries. Usually they type in a headline and their results are filled with junk.
What do we do? We need to revamp media literacy, force search engines to limit number of paid links at the top of results, and stop chasing sensationalism.
Whitney Grace, January 24, 2024
Online Journalism Reveals the Omnispert Mentality in Full Bloom
January 23, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
PREAMBLE
I am a dinobaby. I worked in big, rapacious outfits. I worked for a family-owned newspaper. I worked for a giant, faceless professional publisher. I worked alone, serving as the world’s ugliest Kelly Girl (a once-proud rental agency). Over the last couple of decades, I have watched as “real” journalists have broken from a run-down stable and headed toward the green, shimmering pasture on the horizon. Some died and became Wal-Mart greeters. Others found their way to the promised land.
The journey and its apparently successful conclusion caused a change in the mindset of some “real” journalists. A few morphed into YouTube-type video stars; a smaller number became talking heads on a cable or broadcast channel with fewer viewers than the iconoclastic NoAgenda.com podcast. Others underwent an intellectual transformation. From reporting the news, these fortunate (possibly chosen) individuals became what I call “omnisperts”; that is, my word for an “everything” expert. The shift is fascinating, mostly because I observed “real” news people in the companies for which I worked either as an officer or a consultant.
An expert on everything is usually self-appointed. These “everything experts” or “omnisperts” can find fault and simultaneous emit entitlement. The idea is that “you are stupid” and “I am smart.” The approach is often a key component of “real” journalism today. Social media has, like radiation, altered the DNA from reporter to source of divine wisdom. Thanks, MSFT Copilot Bing thing. Definitely good enough and illustrative of the system’s biases: White, mail, big city, and money.
The shift in the DNA of a “real” journalist from a person assigned a story or, in the case of a feature writer, a finder of a story in alignment with the “desk” issuing the work order, has been caused by the flow of digital bits via Facebook, Twitter, and other social media conduits. Bombard a rat with enough gamma radiation, and what happens? Well, the rats — before their life force takes a vacation can exhibit some interesting behavior and a lucky few output some baby rats. These can be objects of radiation specialists’ learning trajectory. Surprised because I relate radiation to bits from social media? Some are; some are not.
I thought about my experiences with “real” journalists when I read “The 20-Year Boondoggle.” The boondoggle is the Department of Homeland Security. The subtitle to the write up asks, “So What the Hell Happened?”
MY APPROACH
Now before I address, the language in the headline, the “real” news in the write up, or the confusion of doing what I thought journalists in the organizations at which I worked years ago did, I want to comment on the presentation of the textual information.
The publication in which this “real” news story appears is the Verge. Some of the stories are difficult for me to read. An essay about Google was a baffler. I just gave up because blocks of text and graphics jumped around. This Boondoggle piece is a mix of flickering background images and text. (I made a note of the illustrator. I don’t want to be involved with this fellow, his firm, or his “school” of graphics for business information in the future.) The essay (because I am not sure it is “real” news) features a puppet. I don’t think a puppet is a positive, but it does a good job of communicating the idea that “someone” is pulling strings. There is a big graphic showing people sliding down something and into flickering water. Remember, please, that this is a “real” news article, but it is trying, really trying, to be a TikTok-meme machine I think. Then there is an illustration of people with their heads either in the “clouds” (which are vibrating like a DaVinci Fusion effect or a giant swarm of blue bees). The image is not a positive one in my opinion. The illustration which troubled me is one that shows people falling out of the fourth floor of an office building to their death. A sketch of a motion picture or made-for-streaming spy story surveillance room suggests that the world outside of the office and on the computer monitors is a chaotic mess. That’s okay. Has the world ever been something other than a chaotic mess?
These illustrations make clear that the 8,000 or so words in the “real” news report that the author and the publisher find a US government agency to be a problem. I know this because the subhead “The Problem Is” is used six times. Helpful. The repetition makes clear that the article itself is revealing information that is definitely super problematic. If a grade school teacher or an entitled Google-type executive says “The problem is” to someone six times, it’s safe to say that you are [a] going to have a chance to find your future elsewhere, [b] what you and your agency have done is really, really bad and you must be punished, and [c] we know better than anyone else how to do your work. “Listen up, losers” the article shouts, jiggles, and repeats more than Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” or a knock off disco tune in a bar in Ibiza.
But what about the information in the write up. Okay, okay. Let me offer three comments, and invite you to read the 8,000 word original, award winning, knock out “real” news story yourself. (I had to down this puppy in three separate sessions because it exemplifies the journalist as omnispert in a top shelf way. (I think I should spell omnispert as omnispurt to better capture the flood of “real” news.)
THREE IRRITATIONS
First, the write up points out that the US Department of Homeland Security sucks. I find it fascinating that those who have not had an opportunity to work in either law enforcement, intelligence, or allied fields find that a Federal agency is a failure. I don’t have an easy way to address this “certain blind spot.” Maybe a couple of ride alongs or working on a project focused on locating a bad actor would provide some context. I know that words won’t do it. The gulf between “real” journalists and the individuals who work to enforce applicable laws is a wide one. I will not suggest that “real” journalists fall to their deaths from an office window. I am a dinobaby, not a “real” journalist criticizing the work of people who — believe it or not — are in harm’s way every single day. Think about that when ordering a cinnamon latte tomorrow morning.
Second, no one pays any attention to DHS. Once again, it would be helpful for a “real” journalist to step back and ask, “Are large government agencies in the UK, France, Germany, or Japan functioning in a materially different way? With perspective, one can appreciate the problem of a work force cut free from the social norms, shared beliefs, and willingness to compromise once part of industrial societies’ culture. The “government agencies” reflect the people who work there. And guess what, “real” journalist, those people are like you. They exhibit the same strengths and weaknesses. I would submit that you are providing more information about your weaknesses, preferences, and biases than actionable information about a government agency.
Third, the cherry picking of examples is part of the “real” news game. I get it. What I don’t get is the sense of entitlement oozing from the word choice, the dorky headlines, and the boy, these people are stupid approach. Here’s one example and not the most egregious one by the way:
The lack of control starts at headquarters and trickles down.This means DHS has trouble keeping track of what’s in its warehouses, from electronic equipment to antiviral medication, as well as what warehouses it even controls. It means that there have been times when a single deportation officer has been assigned to supervise nearly 10,000 non-detained migrants. It means the department lacks consistent, enforceable requirements for subcontractors around price, schedule, and capability, such that in 2015, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found only two of 22 major programs at DHS were on track — racking up an estimated $9.7 billion more than expected.
A POSSIBLE FIX
Wow, DHS is supposed to “fix” this problem. Maybe the “real” journalists would like to apply for a job, rise through the ranks, and make everything better. Fat chance.
Net net: How quickly can AI replace certain human “real” journalists? Answer: Not soon enough.
Stephen E Arnold, January 23, 2024
More Google Gems: The January 2024, Week 3
January 23, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Quite a big week in the Google gem store. I suppose I have to identify a couple which I found authentic knee slappers. This is tough because the GOOG was performing at a peak level of excellence.
I enjoyed selecting this week’s Google Gems. Sparkly and not cubic zirconia. Thanks, MSFT Copilot second string thing. Good enough.
In the midst of the news coverage of Google’s smart software new skill, there was a bit of a “we are heading out, pardner” excitement. Okay, what can Google’s AI do? Sit down. I don’t want to be responsible for an injury. The Googley AI can solve geometry problems. I know, I know. Geometry. Well, the Google smart software can solve difficult geometry problems. Read about the achievement at this link to the Technology Review story. (Has anyone checked out Stephen Wolfram’s software lately? No, okay, never mind.)
My number one story (which may not be spot on but it is a zinger) is “California Google Engineer Found Spattered With Blood, ‘Staring Blankly’ Next to Wife’s Severely Beaten Body, Prosecutors Say.” The Messenger write up reports:
… officers with the Santa Clara Police Department made entry into the home and found Chen “spattered with blood” and “with his wife’s body nearby,” prosecutors said. She [spokesperson] said “blunt force injuries to her head” and swelling in her right hand. And Chen’s arm was scratched up, and he had blood on his clothing.
I am definitely going to mind my Ps and Qs when around Googlers
My number two favorite is the revelation that Google’s incognito mode is not. Who knew? I think this type of word play is the core strength of the mobile phone companies which have made clear that “unlimited” does not mean “without limits.” But Google is in the game of slippery lingo.
My number three favorite is that Leo Laporte and Steve Gibson, hosts of Security Now, love Google’s putting ad auction technology in the Chrome browser. Well, sort of. The This Week in Google program offered a different point of view; namely, not so fast. You can find links to both of these programs (once supported by advertising and now supported by begging for dollars) at this link. (No, I don’t subscribe. I do what is called play at 1.5 speed and fast forward through the sponsored messages.) But the key point here is that one’s Chrome browser is going to need a beefy infrastructure to do the heavy lifting for Google’s money machine in my opinion.
Okay, here are the other gems:
- Some of Google’s smart software team seem to be heading for greener pastures. More personnel management excitement for the GOOG’s crack HR professionals. Another former Google AI wizard opined that AI could run one’s business in five years. Hmm. Maybe AI will run Google? And a Googler opined that AI is a labor replacing “tool.” There you go.
- The brilliant Googler who directed Googzilla’s epic online game initiative has been RIFFed. Did someone say, “We got him.”
- Another Google professional is finding his future elsewhere and documenting the anguish of the journey. Read that document at this link.
- Another write up about how lousy Google Web search results are. (I am suggesting you give Google Dorks a whirl.)
- Google explains that it is not really, no, really, not slowing YouTube when ad blockers are used by a “user.” Believe it not after you read this story. Oh, there is some management musical chairs underway at YouTube as well.
- Google is a good boy. Search results in Europe conform to the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA). Good boy. Does Googzilla want a cookie?
More next week.
Stephen E Arnold, January 23, 2024
IBM Charges Toward Consulting Services: Does Don Quixote Work at Big Blue?
January 23, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
It is official. IBM consultants will use smart software to provide answers to clients. Why not ask the smart software directly and skip the consultants? Why aren’t IBM consultants sufficiently informed and intelligent to answer a client’s questions directly? Is IBM admitting that its consultants lack the knowledge depth and insight necessary to solve a client’s problems? Hmmm.
“IBM Introduces IBM Consulting Advantage, an AI Services Platform and Library of Assistants to Empower Consultants” asserts in corporate marketing lingo:
IBM Consulting Assistants are accessed through an intuitive conversational interface powered by IBM Watsonx, IBM’s AI and data platform. Consultants can toggle across multiple IBM and third-party generative AI models to compare outputs and select the right model for their task, and use the platform to rapidly build and share prompts and pre-trained assistants across teams or more widely across the consulting organization. The interface also enables easy uploading of project-specific documents for rapid insights that can then be shared into common business tools.
One of the key benefits of using smart software is to allow the IBM consultants to do more in the same billable hour. Thus, one can assume that billable hours will go up. “Efficiency” may not equate to revenue generation if the AI-assisted humanoids deliver incorrect, off-point, or unverifiable outputs.
A winner with a certain large company’s sure fire technology. Thanks, MSFT second string Copilot Bing thing. Good enough.
What can the AI-turbo charged system do? A lot. Here’s what IBM marketing asserts:
The IBM Consulting Advantage platform will be applied across the breadth of IBM Consulting’s services, spanning strategy, experience, technology and operations. It is designed to work in combination with IBM Garage, a proven, collaborative engagement model to help clients fast-track innovation, realize value three times faster than traditional approaches, and transparently track business outcomes. Today’s announcement builds on IBM Consulting’s concrete steps in 2023 to further expand its expertise, tools and methods to help accelerate clients’ business transformations with enterprise-grade AI…. IBM Consulting helps accelerate business transformation for our clients through hybrid cloud and AI technologies, leveraging our open ecosystem of partners. With deep industry expertise spanning strategy, experience design, technology, and operations, we have become the trusted partner to many of the world’s most innovative and valuable companies, helping modernize and secure their most complex systems. Our 160,000 consultants embrace an open way of working and apply our proven, collaborative engagement model, IBM Garage, to scale ideas into outcomes.
I have some questions; for example:
- Will IBM hire less qualified and less expensive humans, assuming that smart software lifts them up to super star status?
- Will the system be hallucination proof; that is, what procedure ensures that decisions based on smart software assisted outputs are based on factual, reliable information?
- When a consulting engagement goes off the rails, how will IBM allocate responsibility; for example, 100 percent to the human, 50 percent to the human and 50 percent to those who were involved in building the model, or 100 percent to the client since the client made a decision and consultants just provide options and recommendations?
I look forward to IBM Watsonx’s revolutionizing consulting related to migrating COBOL from a mainframe to a hybrid environment relying on a distributed network with diverse software. Will WatsonX participate in Jeopardy again?
Stephen E Arnold, January 23, 2024
The Future of One Kind of Publishing: It Is Unusual (Sorry, Tom Jones)
January 23, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Today’s equivalent of a famous journalist like Walter Winchell, Paul Harvey, or (bow down now) Edward R. Murrow owe their fame to Twitter.com. Now that service has changed, so the new ink stained celebrities take their followers and move to aggregation platforms. Some of these notables charge subscriptions. Unencumbered by the miserable newsroom management ethos, these super stars of wordsmithing want things like their online vehicles to be just so.
Now in an X.com world, a duel of influencers is playing out in the blogosphere. At issue: Substack’s alleged Nazi problem. The kerfuffle began with a piece in The Atlantic by Jonathan M. Katz, but has evolved into a debate between Platformer’s Casey Newton and Jesse Singal of Singal-Minded. Both those blogs are hosted by Substack.
To get up to speed on the controversy, see the original Atlantic article. Newton wrote a couple posts about Substack’s responses and detailing Platformer’s involvement. In “Substack Says It Will Remove Nazi Publications from the Platform,” he writes:
“Substack is removing some publications that express support for Nazis, the company said today. The company said this did not represent a reversal of its previous stance, but rather the result of reconsidering how it interprets its existing policies. As part of the move, the company is also terminating the accounts of several publications that endorse Nazi ideology and that Platformer flagged to the company for review last week.”
How many publications did Platformer flag, and how many of those did Substack remove? Were they significant publications, and did they really violate the rules? These are the burning questions Sengal sought to answer. He shares his account in, “Platformer’s Reporting on Substack’s Supposed ‘Nazi Problem’ Is Shoddy and Misleading.” But first, he specifies his own perspective on Katz’ Atlantic article:
“In my view, this whole thing is little more than a moral panic. Moreover, Katz cut certain corners to obscure the fact that to the extent there are Nazis on Substack at all, it appears they have almost no following or influence, and make almost no money. In one case, for example, Katz falsely claimed that a white nationalist was making a comfortable living writing on Substack, but even the most cursory bit of research would have revealed that that is completely false.”
Sengal says he plans a detailed article supporting that assertion, but first he must pick apart Platformer’s position. Readers are treated to details from an email exchange between the bloggers and reasons Sengal feels Newton’s responses are inadequate. One can navigate to that post for those details if one wants to get into the weeds. As of this writing, Newton has not published a response to Sengal’s diatribe. Were we better off when such duels took place a hundred characters at a time?
I am looking forward to the next turn of the journalistic wheel. Exciting because “real” journalists are morphing into pundits, consultants, gurus, predictors of the future, and T shirt vendors. What happened to the good old days of “yellow journalism”?
Cynthia Murrell, January 23, 2024
Cyber Security Investing: A Money Pit?
January 22, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Cyber security is a winner, a sure-fire way to take home the big bucks. Slam dunk. But the write up “Cybersecurity Startup Funding Hits 5-Year Low, Drops 50% from 2022” may signal that some money people have a fear of what might be called a money pit. The write up states:
In 2023, cyber startups saw only about a third of that, as venture funding dipped to its lowest total since 2018. Security companies raised $8.2 billion in 692 venture capital deals last year — per Crunchbase numbers — compared to $16.3 billion in 941 deals in 2022.
Have investors in cyber security changed their view of a slam-dunk investment? That winning hoop now looks like a stinking money pit perhaps? Thanks, MSFT Copilot Bing thing with security to boot. Good enough.
Let’s believe these data which are close enough for horseshoes. I also noted this passage:
“What we saw in terms of cybersecurity funding in 2023 were the ramifications of the exceptional surge of 2021, with bloated valuations and off-the-charts funding rounds, as well as the wariness of investors in light of market conditions,” said Ofer Schreiber, senior partner and head of the Israel office for cyber venture firm YL Ventures.
The reference to Israel is bittersweet. The Israeli cyber defenses failed to detect, alert, and thus protect those who were in harm’s way in October 2023. How you might ask because Israel is the go-to innovator in cyber security? Maybe the over-hyped, super-duper, AI-infused systems don’t work as well as the marketer’s promotional material assert? Just a thought.
My views:
- Cyber security is difficult; for instance, Microsoft’s announcement that the Son of SolarWinds has shown up inside the Softies’ email
- Bad actors can use AI faster than cyber security firms can — and make the smart software avoid being dumb
- Cyber security requires ever-increasing investments because the cat-and-mouse game between good actors and bad actors is a variant of the cheerful 1950s’ arms race.
Do you feel secure with your mobile, your laptop, and your other computing devices? Do you scan QR codes in restaurants without wondering if the code is sandbagged? Are you an avid downloader? I don’t want to know, but you may want answers.
Stephen E Arnold, January 22, 2024
Microsoft Security: Are the Doors Falling Off?
January 22, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
“Microsoft Network Breached Through Password-Spraying by Russian-State Hackers” begs to be set to music. I am thinking about Chubby Checker and his hit “Let’s Twist Again.” One lyric change. Twist becomes “hacked.” So “let’s hack again like we did last summer.” Hit?
A Seattle-based quality and security engineer finds that his automobile door has fallen off. Its security system is silent. It must be the weather. Thanks, MSFT second class Copilot Bing thing. Good enough but the extra wheel is an unusual and creative touch.
The write up states:
Russia-state hackers exploited a weak password to compromise Microsoft’s corporate network and accessed emails and documents that belonged to senior executives and employees working in security and legal teams, Microsoft said [on January 19, 2024]. The attack, which Microsoft attributed to a Kremlin-backed hacking group it tracks as Midnight Blizzard, is at least the second time in as many years that failures to follow basic security hygiene has resulted in a breach that has the potential to harm customers.
The Ars Technica story noted:
A Microsoft representative said the company declined to answer questions, including whether basic security practices were followed.
Who did this? One of the Axis of Evil perhaps. Why hack Microsoft? Because it is a big, juicy target? Were the methods sophisticated, using artificial intelligence to outmaneuver state-of-the-art MSFT cyber defenses? Nope. It took seven weeks to detect the password guessing tactic.
Did you ever wonder why door fall off Seattle-linked aircraft and security breaches occur at Seattle’s big software outfit? A desire for profits, laziness, indifference, or some other factor is causing these rather high-profile issues. It must be the Seattle water or the rain. That’s it. The rain! No senior manager can do anything about the rain. Perhaps a solar wind will blow and make everything better?
Stephen E Arnold, January 22, 2024
An Astounding Finding! Who Knew This about Mobile Phone Usage by Kids?
January 22, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
Let me answer the question, please. Every parent with a clue.
Why is anyone surprised that yet another round of research demonstrates that too much screen time is bad for kids? ABC News shares the not-so-resounding discovery in: “Screen Time For Kids Under 2 Linked To Sensory Differences In Toddlerhood: Study.” Kids under the age of two exhibit sensory differences when they are exposed to a lot of screen time.
JAMA Pediatrics published a study from Drexel University that analyzed 1500 surveys from parents and caregivers. The surveys asked about kids’ sensory preferences, including questions about preference or avoidance to textures, noises, and lights. The survey only focused on television and not mobile devices because the data was gathered before 2014. The survey results showed that kids who watched TV at 12 months were twice as a likely to develop “atypical sensory processing” by the time they were 3 years old. The more kids were exposed to the boob tube after 1.5 years had a 20% greater chance of having sensory processing differences.
Drexel University’s study augments previous research that found more screen time impacted how kids communicated and felt. Screen time exposure in young kids is linked to developmental delays in problem-solving, critical thinking, and other communication. Sensory processing disordered are linked to other mental aliments, such as autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and obsessive compulsive disorder. The study didn’t examine if the kids were diagnosed with these issues.
Johns Hopkins pediatrician and neonatal hospitalist Dr. Jade Cobern encourages parents and caregivers to be mindful of screen time. She notes it is impossible to avoid screens in modern society:
“Cobern also recommends tailoring approaches to the specific family and patient, and collaboratively brainstorming accessible ways to decrease non-interactive screen time and increase healthy developmental activities, such as reading, playing with objects, and socializing with other children, even if those activities might entail screens. “ ‘Everyone has to be realistic when we’re talking about how parents can support their children’s development,’ Cobern said, adding of research like the Drexel study, ‘It’s not to shame screentime exposure because the reality is we live in a world where screens are part of our daily lives.’
She continued,
‘It really is inevitable that most kids will see some screen time even early in life, but it is something I encourage families to be mindful of.’”
Why not pick up a picture book and read to the kid? Or play a game with the kid? Or take the kid outside? Or play an interactive screen game with the kid? It’s hard to find the time but other generations did it.
Whitney Grace, January 22, 2024
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