YouTube: Another Big Cost Black Hole?

March 25, 2025

dino orange_thumbAnother dinobaby blog post. Eight decades and still thrilled when I point out foibles.

I read “Google Is in Trouble… But This Could Change Everything – and No, It’s Not AI.” The write up makes the case that YouTube is Google’s big financial opportunity. I agree with most of the points in the write up. The article says:

Google doesn’t clearly explain how much of the $40.3 billion comes from the YouTube platform, but based on their description and choice of phrasing like “primarily include,” it’s safe to assume YouTube generates significantly more revenue than just the $36.1 billion reported. This would mean YouTube, not Google Cloud, is actually Google’s second-biggest business.

Yep, financial fancy dancing is part of the game. Google is using its financial reports as marketing to existing stakeholders and investors who want a part of the still-hot, still-dominant Googzilla. The idea is that the Google is stomping on the competition in the hottest sectors: The cloud, smart software, advertising, and quantum computing.

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A big time company’s chief financial officer enters his office after lunch and sees a flood of red ink engulfing his work space. Thanks, OpenAI, good enough.

Let’s flip the argument from Google has its next big revenue oil gusher to the cost of that oil field infrastructure.

An article appeared in mid-February 2025. I was surprised that the information in that write up did not generate more buzz in the world of Google watchers. “YouTube by the Numbers: Uncovering YouTube’s Ghost Town of Billions of Unwatched, Ignored Videos” contains some allegedly accurate information. Let’s assume that these data, like most information about online, is close enough for horseshoes or purely notional. I am not going to summarize the methodology. Academics come up with interesting ways to obtain information about closely guarded big company products and services.

The write up says:

the research estimates a staggering 14.8 billion total videos on YouTube as of mid-2024. Unsurprisingly, most of these videos are barely noticed. The median YouTube upload has just 41 views, with 4% garnering no views at all. Over 74% have no comments and 89% have no likes.

Here are a couple of other factoids about YouTube as reported in the Techspot article:

The production values are also remarkably modest. Only 14% of videos feature a professional set or background. Just 38% show signs of editing. More than half have shaky camerawork, and audio quality varies widely in 85% of videos. In fact, 40% are simply music tracks with no voice-over.

And another point I found interesting:

Moreover, the typical YouTube video is just 64 seconds long, and over a third are shorter than 33 seconds.

The most revealing statement in the research data appears in this passage:

… a senior researcher [said] that this narrative overlooks a crucial reality: YouTube is not just an entertainment hub – it has become a form of digital infrastructure. Case in point: just 0.21% of the sampled videos included any kind of sponsorship or advertising. Only 4% had common calls to action such as liking, commenting, and subscribing. The vast majority weren’t polished content plays but rather personal expressions – perhaps not so different from the old camcorder days.

Assuming the data are reasonably good Google has built plumbing whose cost will rival that of the firm’s investments in search and its cloud.

From my point of view, cost control is going to become as important as moving as quickly as possible to the old-school broadcast television approach to content. Hit shows on YouTube will do what is necessary to attract an audience. The audience will be what advertisers want.

Just as Google search has degraded to a popular “experience,” not a resource for individuals who want to review and extract high value information, YouTube will head the same direction. The question is, “Will YouTube’s pursuit of advertisers mean that the infrastructure required to permit free video uploads and storage be sustainable?

Imagine being responsible for capital investments at the Google. The Cloud infrastructure must be upgraded and enhanced. The AI infrastructure must be upgraded and enhanced. The quantum computing and other technology-centric infrastructures must be upgraded an enhanced. The adtech infrastructure must be upgraded and enhanced. I am leaving out some of the Google’s other infrastructure intensive activities.

The main idea is that the financial person is going to have a large job paying for hardware, software, maintenance, and telecommunications. This is a different cost from technical debt. These are on-going and constantly growing costs. Toss in unexpected outages, and what does the bean counter do. One option is to quit and another is to do the Zen thing to avoid have a stroke when reviewing the cost projections.

My take is that a hit in search revenue is likely to add to the firm’s financial challenges. The path to becoming the modern version of William Paley’s radio empire may be in Google’s future. The idea that everything is in the cloud is being revisited by companies due to cost and security concerns. Does Google host some sketchy services on its Cloud?

YouTube may be the hidden revenue gem at Google. I think it might become the infrastructure cost leader among Google’s stellar product line up. Big companies like Google don’t just disappear. Instead the black holes of cost suck them closer to a big event: Costs rise more quickly than revenue.

At this time, Google has three cost black holes. One hopes none is the one that makes Googzilla join the ranks of the street people of online dwell.

Net net: Google will have to give people what they will watch. The lowest common denominator will emerge. The costs flood the CFO’s office. Just ask Gemini what to do.

Stephen E Arnold, March 25, 2025

Cyber Attacks in Under a Minute

March 25, 2025

Cybercrime has evolved. VentureBeat reports, "51 Seconds to Breach: How CISOs Are Countering AI-Driven, Lightning-Fast Deepfake, Vishing and Social Engineering Attacks." Yes, according to cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike‘s Adam Meyers, the fastest breakout time he has seen is 51 seconds. No wonder bad actors have an advantage—it can take cyber defense weeks to months to determine a system has been compromised. In the interim, hackers can roam undetected.

Cybercrime methods have also changed. Where malware was once the biggest problem, hackers now favor AI-assisted phishing and vishing (voice-based phishing) campaigns. We learn:

"Vishing is out of control due in large part to attackers fine-turning their tradecraft with AI. CrowdStrike’s 2025 Global Threat Report found that vishing exploded by 442% in 2024. It’s the top initial access method attackers use to manipulate victims into revealing sensitive information, resetting credentials and granting remote access over the phone. ‘We saw a 442% increase in voice-based phishing in 2024. This is social engineering, and this is indicative of the fact that adversaries are finding new ways to gain access because…we’re kind of in this new world where adversaries have to work a little bit harder or differently to avoid modern endpoint security tools,’ Meyers said. Phishing, too, continues to be a threat. Meyers said, ‘We’ve seen that with phishing emails, they have a higher click-through rate when it’s AI-generated content, a 54% click-through rate, versus 12% when a human is behind it.’"

The write-up suggests three strategies to fight today’s breaches. Stop attackers at the authentication layer by shortening token lifetimes and implementing real-time revocation. Also, set things up so no one person can bypass security measures. No, not even the owner. Maybe especially not them. Next, we are advised, fight AI with AI: Machine-learning tools now exist to detect intrusions and immediately shut them down. Finally, stop lateral movement from the breach point with security that is unified across the system. See the write-up for more details on each of these.

Cynthia Murrell, March 25, 2025

Old School Search: Scrunch Can Help You

March 25, 2025

Google, DuckDuckGo, Bing, and other search engines have incorporated AI into their search algorithms. AI, however, remains regulated to generative text and chatbots. It’s also doing very little to assist companies with their Web presences Tech Crunch shares how one startup wants to change that: “Scrunch AI Is Helping Companies Stand Out In AI Search.”

Scrunch AI developed a platform that assists companies with auditing and optimizing how their appear on AI search platforms. The platform shows how a company’s online information interacts with AI Web crawlers. Scrunch also funds inaccuracies and gaps in information.

The CEO and co-founder of Crunch AI Chris Andrew said he got the idea for the platform when he realized that he expected ChatGPT to do the browsing for him. He shared the idea with CMOs who noticed that their companies received high-quality traffic from AI search engines. The rub, however, was that the companies received different results from different platforms.

While there are companies that concentrate o this task, he says Scrunch goes further than then:

“Andrew thinks his startup stands out thanks to its focus on the customer journey as opposed to just how a brand shows up in initial search results. He feels the company is also taking it a step further by not just focusing on search results by a human through an AI search engine, but rather on searches performed by AI agents. ‘I think people were like, ‘How do we use AI to make our website better?’ And my mindset was like, ‘Your website’s going to need to be for an agent or crawler in the future,’” Andrew said. ‘That theory has kind of really played out with our customer base at the enterprise level saying our brand is no longer what we say it is. It’s what ChatGPT, Gemini, Siri, Google AI Overviews say it is.’”

Consistency and accuracy is important in this digital age. Andrew has a great idea but will Scrunch optimize search engine AI or will it generate AI slop?

Whitney Grace, March 25, 2025

AI: Demand Goes Up But Then What?

March 24, 2025

dino orange_thumb_thumbYep, another dinobaby original.

Why use smart software? For money, for academic and LinkedIn fame, for better grades in high school? The estimable publication The Cool Down revealed the truth in its article “Expert Talks Massive Impacts AI Will Have on Us All: I Can Only See the Demand Increasing.”

The expert is Dr. Chris Mattmann, the author of a book about AI and machine learning. He is also the chief data officer at UCLA.

The write up reports:

AI is really just search on steroids, and while training AI models is expensive and energy-consuming, it’s not much different than when Google introduced search for information retrieval and data gathering in 2009.

After reading the statement, I asked myself if smart software implemented in the Telegram smart contracts is about search or it it related to obfuscating financial transaction. Guess not. Too bad I did not understand that AI was just search.

The write up says:

“AI expects the world to look like tables with rows and columns … [but] the world doesn’t look that way. It’s messy, it’s multimodal, it’s video, image, sound, text,” he said, and making sense of all that information and “training AI models” takes the most energy.

I think that energy costs money. How companies make the jump between spending and generating sustainable revenue? Search runs on advertising dollars. Will AI do the same thing?

The Cool Down attempts to clarify certain types of AI use cases; for example, games and videos:

While The Cool Down will continue to report on inefficient uses of AI, it’s also fair to demystify AI as more like “a computer program” and to consider its energy use in a different light if and when it is a tool to replace other work or entertainment. Creating an AI image may often seem like it’s not a justified use of energy, but Mattmann is essentially saying: “Is it much more or less justified than playing video games or watching movies?”

AI has some benefits. Again the expert:

His three kids under age 15 use AI devices like the Amazon Echo to learn things, and Mattmann uses a Timekettle earbud device to immediately translate up to 40 languages in real-time, which he calls “an AI device at the edge.” “I’m excited about traveling. I’m excited about what it will do for our national security, what it will mean for language.” It will be transformative for “those tasks that [require] robotic process automation, intelligent assistance, or whatever can give us back time, which is our only precious commodity here on this planet,” he said.

Will The Cool Down become my go-to source for the real scoop about smart software? We’ll see.

Stephen E Arnold, March 24, 2025

Journalism Is Now Spelled Journ-AI-sm

March 24, 2025

dino orange_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumbAnother dinobaby blog post. Eight decades and still thrilled when I point out foibles.

When I worked at a “real” newspaper, I enjoyed listening to “real” journalists express their opinions on everything. Some were experts in sports and knew little details about Louisville basketball. Others were “into” technology and tracked the world of gadgets — no matter how useless — and regaled people at lunch with descriptions of products that would change everything. Everything? Yeah. I heard about the rigors of journalism school. The need to work on either the college radio station or the college newspaper. These individuals fancied themselves Renaissance men and women. That’s okay, but do bean counters need humans to “cover” the news?

The answer is, “Probably not.”

“Italian Newspaper Says It Has Published World’s First AI-Generated Edition” suggests that “real” humans covering the news may face a snow leopard or Maui ‘Alauahio moment. The article reports:

An Italian newspaper has said it is the first in the world to publish an edition entirely produced by artificial intelligence. The initiative by Il Foglio, a conservative liberal daily, is part of a month-long journalistic experiment aimed at showing the impact AI technology has “on our way of working and our days”, the newspaper’s editor, Claudio Cerasa, said.

The smart software is not just spitting out “real” news. The system does “headlines, quotes, and even the irony.” Wow. Irony from smart software.

According to the “real” journalistic who read the stories in the paper:

The articles were structured, straightforward and clear, with no obvious grammatical errors. However, none of the articles published in the news pages directly quote any human beings.

That puts Il Foglio ahead of the Smartnews’ articles. Wow, are some of those ungrammatical and poorly structured? In my opinion, I would toss in the descriptor “incoherent.”

What do I make of Il Folio’s trial? That’s an easy question:

  1. If the smart software is good enough and allows humans to be given an opportunity to find their future elsewhere, smart software is going to be used. A few humans might be rehired if  revenues tank, but the writing is on the wall of the journalism school
  2. Bean counters know one thing: Counting beans. If the smart software generates financial benefits, the green eye shade crowd will happily approve licensing smart software.
  3. Readers may not notice or not care. Headline. First graf. Good to go.

Will  the future pundits, analysts, marketing specialists, PR professionals, and LLM trainers find the journalistic joy? Being unhappy at work and paying bills is one thing; being happy doing news knowing that smart software is coming for the journalism jobs is another.

I would not return to college to learn how to be a “real” journalist. I would stay home, eat snacks, and watch game show re-runs. Good enough life plan, right?

Why worry? Il Foglio is just doing a small test.

Stephen E Arnold, March 24, 2025

Google Experiment: News? Nobody Cares So Ad Impact Is Zero, Baby, Zero

March 24, 2025

dino orange_thumb_thumbDinobaby, here. No smart software involved unlike some outfits. 

I enjoy reading statistically valid wizard studies from monopolistic outfits. “Our Experiment on the Value of European News Content” reports a wonderful result: Nobody cares if Googzilla does not index “real” news. That’s it. The online ad outfit conclusively proves that “real” news is irrelevant.

The write up explains:

The results have now come in: European news content in Search has no measurable impact on ad revenue for Google. The study showed that when we removed this content, there was no change to Search ad revenue and a <1% (0.8%) drop in usage, which indicates that any lost usage was from queries that generated minimal or no revenue. Beyond this, the study found that combined ad revenue across Google properties, including our ad network, also remained flat.

What should those with a stake in real news conclude? From my point of view, Google is making crystal clear that publishers need to shut up or else. What’s the “else”? Google stops indexing “real” news sites. Where will those “real” news sites get traffic. Bear Blog, a link from YCombinator Hacker News, a Telegram Group, Twitter, or TikTok?

Sure, absolutely.

Several observations:

  1. Fool around with a monopoly in the good old days, and some people would not have a train stop at their town in Iowa or the local gas stations cannot get fuel. Now it is search traffic. Put that in your hybrid.
  2. Google sucks down data. Those who make data available to the Google are not likely to be invited to the next Sundar & Prabhakar Comedy Show.
  3. Google will continue to flip the digital bird at the EU, stopping when the lawsuits go away and publishers take their medicine and keep quiet. The crying and whining is annoying.

One has to look forward to Google’s next research study, doesn’t one?

Stephen E Arnold, March 24, 2025

Dog Whistle Only Law Firm Partners Can Hear: More Profits, Bigger Bonuses!

March 21, 2025

dino orange_thumbDinobaby, here. No smart software involved unlike some outfits. I did use Sam AI-Man’s art system to produce the illustration in the blog post.

Truth be told, we don’t do news. The write ups in my “placeholder” blog are my way to keep track of interesting items. Some of these I never include in my lectures. Some find their way into my monographs. The FOGINT stuff: Notes for my forthcoming monograph about Telegram, the Messenger mini app, and that lovable marketing outfit, the Open Network Foundation. If you want to know more, write benkent2020 at yahoo dot com. Some slacker will respond whilst scrolling Telegram Groups and Channels for interesting items.

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Thanks, Sam AI-Man.

But this write up is an exception. This is a post about an article in the capitalist tool. (I have always like the ring of the slogan. I must admit when I worked in the Big Apple, I got a kick out of Malcolm Forbes revving his Harley at the genteel biker bar. But the slogan and the sound of the Hog? Unforgettable.)

What is causing me to stop my actual work to craft a blog post at 7 am on March 21, 2025? This article in Forbes Magazine. You know, the capitalist tool. Like a vice grip for Peruvian prison guards I think.

“Risk Or Revolution: Will AI Replace Lawyers?” sort of misses the main point of smart software and law firms. I will address the objective of big time law firms in a moment, but I want to look at what Hessie Jones, the strategist or stratagiste maybe, has to say:

Over the past few years, a growing number of legal professionals have embraced AI tools to boost efficiency and reduce costs. According to recent figures, nearly 73% of legal experts now plan to incorporate AI into their daily operations. 65% of law firms agree that "effective use of generative AI will separate the successful and unsuccessful law firms in the next five years."

Talk about leading the witness. “Who is your attorney?” The person in leg cuffs and an old fashioned straight jacket says, “Mr. Gradient Descent, your honor.”

The judge, a savvy fellow who has avoid social media criticism says, “Approach the bench.”

Silence.

The write up says:

Afolabi [a probate lawyer, a graduate of Osgoode Law School, York University in Canada] who holds a master’s from the London School of Economics, describes the evolution of legal processes over the past five years, highlighting the shift from paper-based systems to automated ones. He explains that the initial client interaction, where they tell a story and paint a picture remains crucial. However, the method of capturing and analyzing this information has changed significantly. "Five years ago, that would have been done via paper. You’re taking notes," Afolabi states, "now, there’s automation for that." He emphasizes that while the core process of asking questions remains, it’s now "the machine asking the questions." Automation extends to the initial risk analysis, where the system can contextualize the kind of issues and how to best proceed. Afolabi stresses that this automation doesn’t replace the lawyer entirely: "There’s still a lawyer there with the clients, of course."

Okay, the human lawyer, not the Musk envisioned Grok 3 android robot, will approach the bench. Well, someday.

Now the article’s author delivers the payoff:

While concerns about AI’s limitations persist, the consensus is clear: AI-driven services like Capita can make legal services more affordable and accessible without replacing human oversight.

After finishing this content marketing write  up, I had several observations:

  1. The capitalist tool does not point out the entire purpose of the original Forbes, knock out Fortune Magazine and deliver information that will make a reader money.
  2. The article ignores the reality that smart software fiddling with word probabilities makes errors. Whether it was made up cases like Michael Cohen’s brush with AI or telling me that a Telegram-linked did not host a conference in Dubai, those mistakes might add some friction to smart speeding down the information highway.
  3. Lawyers will use AI to cut costs and speed billing cycles. In my opinion, lawyers don’t go to jail. Their clients do.

Let’s imagine the hog-riding Malcolm at his desk pondering great thoughts like this:

“It’s so much easier to suggest solutions when you don’t know too much about the problem.”

The problem for law firms will be solved by smart software; that is, reducing costs. Keep in mind, lawyers don’t go to jail that often. The AI hype train has already pulled into the legal profession. Will the result be better lawyering? I am not sure because once a judge or jury makes a decision the survey pool is split 50 50.

But those bonuses? Now that’s what AI can deliver. (Imagine the sound of a dog whistle with an AI logo, please.)

PS. If you are an observer of blue chip consulting firms. The same payoff logic applies. Both species have evolved to hear the more-money frequency.

Stephen E Arnold, March 21, 2025

The Gentle Slide Down the Software Quality Framework

March 21, 2025

dino orange_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumb_thumbYep, another dinobaby original.

I listened to a podcast called “The WAN Show,” featuring a couple of technology buffs who sell T shirts, mugs, and screwdrivers. What was notable about the program which is available on Apple podcasts was the opening story. In a nutshell, the two fellows made clear some problems with Apple’s hardware. The key statement made by one of the fellows was, “I will pay my way to Cupertino and help you Apple engineers to fix the problems. I will do it for free.” A number of people younger than I believe that an individual can overcome a bureaucracy.

image

Someone is excited about taking the long slide down in software quality. Thanks, OpenAI, definitely good enough.

I forget about the comment and the pitch to buy a backpack until I read “Apple’s Software Quality Crisis: When Premium Hardware Meets Subpar Software.” The write up hit upon some of the WAN grousing and introduced a number of ideas about Apple’s management focus.

Here’s a comment from the write up I circled:

The performance issues don’t stop at sluggish response times. During these use cases, my iPad overheated, making it uncomfortable to hold or even rest the palm on, raising concerns about potential long-term hardware damage. What made this particularly frustrating is that these aren’t third-party applications pushing the hardware to its limits. These are Apple’s own applications that should be theoretically optimized for their hardware. After demonstrating the issues in person to Apple Store staff (that were courteous and professional), the support representative that was handling my case suggested a hardware replacement. However, after further discussion, we both concluded this was likely a software problem rather than a hardware defect.

To a dinobaby like me, I interpreted the passage as saying, “The problem can’t be fixed. Suck it up, buttercup.”

I then discovered more than 1,000 comments to the “Apple’s Software Quality Crisis” article. I scanned them and then turned to one of the ever reliable smart software systems to which I have access and asked, “What are the main themes of the 1,000 comments.

Here’s what the smart software output, and, please, keep in mind, that smart software hallucinates, goes bonkers, and if a product of Google, really has trouble with cheese-related prompts. The found points output are:

  • Persistent Bugs: Users report long-standing issues, such as date-handling errors in Contacts that have remained unresolved for years. ?
  • Declining User Experience: There’s a sentiment that recent design changes, like the macOS Settings app, have led to a less intuitive user experience. ?
  • Inconsistent Quality Across Platforms: Some users feel that Apple’s software quality has become comparable to other platforms, lacking the distinctiveness it once had.
  • Ineffective Bug Reporting: Concerns are raised about Apple’s bug reporting system, with users feeling their feedback doesn’t lead to timely fixes.

Okay, we have a sample based on one podcast, one blog essay, and a number of randos who have commented on the “Apple’s Software Quality Crisis” article. Let me offer several observations:

  1. Apple, like Amazon, Facebook (Metazuck or whatever), Google, and Microsoft cannot deliver software that does much more than achieve the status of “good enough.” Perhaps size and the limitations of humans contribute to this wide spread situation?
  2. The problem is not fixable because new software comes out and adds to the woes of the previous software. Therefore, the volume of problems go up and there is neither money nor time to pay down the technical debt. In my experience, this means that a slow descent on a quite fungible gradient occurs. The gravity of technical debt creates the issues the individuals complaining identify.
  3. The current economic and regulatory environment does not punish these organizations for their products and services. The companies’ managers chug along, chase their bonuses, and ignore the gentle drift to quite serious problems between the organizations and their customers.

So what? Sorry, I have no solutions. Many of the “fixes” require deep familiarity with origin software. Most fixes are wrappers because rewrites take too long or the information required to fix one thing and not break two others is not available.

Welcome, to the degrading status quo.

Stephen E Arnold, March 21, 2025

Facebook: Always Giving Families a Boost

March 21, 2025

What parent has not erred on the side of panic? We learn of one mom who turned to Facebook in the search for her teenage adult daughter, who "vanished" for ten days without explanation. The daughter had last been seen leaving her workplace with a man who, she later revealed, is her boyfriend. The Rakyat Post of Malaysia reports, "Mom’s Missing Teen Alert Backfires: ‘Stop Embarrassing Me, I’m Fine!’" To be fair, it can be hard to distinguish between a kidnapping and a digital cold shoulder. Writer Fernando Fong explains:

"CCTV footage from what’s believed to be the company dormitory showed Pei Ting leaving with a man around 2 PM on the 18th, carrying her bags and luggage. Since then, she has refused to answer calls or reply to WhatsApp messages, leading her mother to worry that someone might be controlling her phone. The mother said neither her elder daughter nor the employer had seen this man."

Such a scenario would alarm many a parent. The post continues:

"Desperate and frantic, the mother turned to social media as her last hope, only to be stunned when her daughter emerged from the digital shadows – not with remorse or understanding, but with embarrassment and indignation at her mother’s public display of concern."

Oops. In the comments of her mother’s worried post, the daughter identified the mystery man as her boyfriend. She also painted a picture of family conflict. Ahh, dirty laundry heaped in the virtual public square. Social media has certainly posed a novel type of challenge for parents.

Cynthia Murrell, March 21, 2025

Why Worry about TikTok?

March 21, 2025

dino orange_thumb_thumb_thumbWe have smart software, but the dinobaby continues to do what 80 year olds do: Write the old-fashioned human way. We did give up clay tablets for a quill pen. Works okay.

I hope this news item from WCCF Tech is wildly incorrect. I have a nagging thought that it might be on the money. “Deepseek’s Chatbot Was Being Used By Pentagon Employees For At Least Two Days Before The Service Was Pulled from the Network; Early Version Has Been Downloaded Since Fall 2024” is the headline I noted. I find this interesting.

The short article reports:

A more worrying discovery is that Deepseek mentions that it stores data on servers in China, possibly presenting a security risk when Pentagon employees started playing around with the chatbot.

And adds:

… employees were using the service for two days before this discovery was made, prompting swift action. Whether the Pentagon workers have been reprimanded for their recent act, they might want to exercise caution because Deepseek’s privacy policy clearly mentions that it stores user data on its Chinese servers.

Several observations:

  1. This is a nifty example of an insider threat. I thought cyber security services blocked this type of to and fro from government computers on a network connected to public servers.
  2. The reaction time is either months (fall of 2024 to 48 hours). My hunch is that it is the months long usage of an early version of the Chinese service.
  3. Which “manager” is responsible? Sorting out which vendors’ software did not catch this and which individual’s unit dropped the ball will be interesting and probably unproductive. Is it in any authorized vendors’ interest to say, “Yeah, our system doesn’t look for phoning home to China but it will be in the next update if your license is paid up for that service.” Will a US government professional say, “Our bad.”

Net net: We have snow removal services that don’t remove snow. We have aircraft crashing in sight of government facilities. And we have Chinese smart software running on US government systems connected to the public Internet. Interesting.

Stephen E Arnold, March 21, 2025

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