Online Shopping: Held Back by HTML and Google. Hmmm.
April 20, 2018
e-Commerce has certainly marginalized some traditional retail stores. But, Main Street still exists and so do the some shops. What works in Silicon Valley, does not work very well in some cities. Think Peoria, Illinois.
The new monopolists have found their niche. The question becomes, “Why are there some functions and businesses which have not be more dramatically changed by online?” We were surprised to read the views of one expert who claims two reasons: HTML and Google. According to a Tech Crunch piece, “The Sudden Death of the Website.” The reason is that HTML is not robust enough to handle e-Commerce’s demands, but also Google is the problem:
“The second problem with the Web is Google. When we started to build websites in the ’90s, everyone was trying to design their virtual stores differently. On one hand, this made them interesting and unique; on the other, the lack of industry standards made them hard to navigate — and really hard to “index” into a universal card catalog.”
Hardly convincing stuff. But according to other experts, search isn’t the only thing slowing down e-commerce. The big data powering Amazon and others has allowed for fast shipping and hassle-free returns. According to Forbes, that’s actually what will take down e-commerce. They describe the return policies as a ticking time bomb and use LL Bean’s recent decision to stop no-questions asked returns as an example.
There you have it: HTML and Google. Unfortunately the Beyond Search goose is not convinced. Some digital magic does not make sense in rural Kentucky. Walking to the local store works pretty well because what works in San Mateo does not work in Harrod’s Creek.
Cynthia Murrell, April 20, 2018
Online Tracking of Weapons Can Be a Challenge
April 17, 2018
Gun sales online are prompting a lot of governmental concern, but not just in America. Australia, a nation with one of the lowest gun violence rates in the world, recently began cracking down on dark web sales of firearms with the help of US authorities. The results were promising, but still a little concerning. We learned more from a recent Daily Mail article, “Gun Trafficking Groups Selling to Australia Have Been Sentenced.”
According to the story, a seller of guns that were sent to Australia recently got three years in prison for the illegal transactions. We learned:
“The Atlanta-based group advertised guns for sale on the underground website BlackMarketReloaded that operated on The Onion Router, which masks the identity of its users, according to prosecutors.”
However, finding them through the murky waters of covert internet sites was nearly as tough as physically locating the guns. The story also pointed out, “In an attempt to avoid detection in the US Post or overseas the group hid the firearms in electronic equipment before placing them in packages.”
The Herculean effort needed to capture this dark web gun lord sounds similar to the recent arrest of one of Europe’s biggest online arms dealers, who was tracked down in Spain. This was the result of multiple countries and multiple agencies working for months to find this single person.
Clearly, the task of wiping the Dark Web clean of guns is difficult, but thankfully not impossible. We hope to hear about more success stories like this in the future. For more information, learn more about CyberOSINT (the Dark Web) here.
Patrick Roland, April 17, 2018
Ah, Information Weaponization. Who Would Do That?
April 11, 2018
People are always asking how companies like Facebook, Google, Spotify, and Amazon are able to get to the top of their industries. The answer is very simple: data. While the data these companies use is ordinary by industry standards, how they use it is the most important factor. Facebook, Spotify, Amazon, and Google receive user data and leverage or weaponize it. Forbes explains how important leveraged data is in the article, “How To Successfully Weaponize Your Data.”
Companies receive terabytes of data, but they can weaponize it by using artificial intelligence algorithms to perform specific tasks. As AI becomes more widespread, it will be easier to adopt and figure out how to use it to augment your company. They key will not be getting more or different data than your competition, it will be acquiring better data and then:
“In order to use this information effectively, you must first decide what your goal is — more sales, higher foot traffic in stores, higher awareness of a product, etc. — and then look at the data to see if it is in the right format for use with deep learning. This is something that’s hard to explain simply, but fundamentally, data has to be in a disaggregated state. That means you don’t really need to know how many people visited a store, but instead when exactly each person visited. You no longer need to understand how many sales you’ve made, but what each sale was and to whom. This is important because it allows you to break down the impact that various decisions or strategies have, and evaluate whether or not it’s something you want to continue in the long term. It also allows you to see how trends emerge and follow their trajectory.”
The article then fades into details about the importance of deep learning and how a company’s future success depends on adopting it and leveraging data. Weaponized data is important and will be crucial in the future, but do not forget about the basics of running a company.
Whitney Grace, April 11, 2018
Payoff in Shopping Speed Up
March 30, 2018
Mobile shopping is a major priority for just about anyone who does sales outside of only a brick and mortar store. The increasing attention to this economy has led to the big names online beefing up their services and the results are astounding. We learned more from a recent IT ProPortal story, “Google Reveals New Mobile Shopping Tools.”
According to the story:
“Businesses have not prioritized their mobile sites and now that more online shopping than ever is done from a smartphone, this needs to change. Google’s analysis suggests that by improving mobile load time from six to three seconds that an average site could see an increase of $255,000 in annual revenue.”
That’s an incredible number, especially for smaller businesses. But that’s not all. Oddly, some of the most impressive innovations in mobile shopping comes from the restaurant industry. Coffee shops and pizza delivery joints have led the way, but recently, places like Burger King are getting in on the action and seeing an impact. What kind of conclusion can we draw from this? Not a ton, but just that your mobile shopping experience is going to increase, but we have a hunch that along with this money that is to be made the proliferation of advertisements will soon follow in ingenuity.
Patrick Roland, March 30, 2018
Palantir Executive Reveals How Silicon Valley Really Works
March 5, 2018
I usually ignore the talking heads on the US television cable channels. I did perk up when I heard a comment made by Alex Karp, one of the founders of Palantir Technologies. The company’s Gotham and Metropolitan product lines (now evolved to a platform called Foundry), its licensing deals with Thomson Reuters, and the company’s work for commercial organizations is quite interesting. Most consumers and many users of high profile online services are unaware of Palantir. Some click centric outfits like Buzzfeed rattle the Palantir door knob with revelations about the super low profile company. The reality is that Palantir is not all that secret. In fact, a good online researcher can unearth examples of the company’s technology, including its plumbing, its interfaces, and its outputs. Dig further, and one can pinpoint some of the weaknesses in the company’s technology, systems, methods, and management approach.
In the CNBC interview, which appeared as an online story “CNBC Exclusive: CNBC Transcript: Palantir Technologies Co-Founder & CEO Alex Karp Joins CNBC’s Josh Lipton for Rare Interview Airing Today,” I noted several insights. Critics of Palantir might describes these comments in another way, but for me, I thought the ideas expressed were interesting and suggestive.
Here’s the first one:
I believe that Silicon Valley is creating innovation without jobs, and it’s really hurting our world.
I read this to mean that if one cannot get hired in a world infused with smart software, job hunters and seekers are dead in the water. Those homeless people, by extension, will replicate the living conditions in shanties in Third World countries. Most Silicon Valley cheerleaders sidestep what is a massive phase change in society.
The second statement I noted is:
Realize that most Silicon Valley companies don’t care and nor do they have a corporate responsibility to care.
For me, Mr. Karp is making clear that chatter from FAGMA (Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Apple) about doing the right thing, trying to be better, and accepting the responsibility which falls upon the shoulders of quasi-monopolies is just that—chatter. Palantir, it seems, is a critic of the Silicon Valley way. I find this fascinating.
The third statement I circled is:
We are primarily a creative organization, so that means we create, we try not to look at what other people are doing, or obviously not overly.
This statement does not hint at the out of court settlement with i2 Group. The legal dust up, which I discussed in this post, was not mentioned by either the interlocutor or Mr. Karp. The omission was notable. I don’t want to be skeptical of this “creative organization” phrase, but like many people who emerged from the start up scene, the “history” of innovation often has an important story to tell. But unless the CNBC interviewer knows about the allegations related to the ANB file format and other Analysts Notebook functions, the assertion creeps toward becoming a fact about Palantir’s innovation. (Note: I was an adviser to i2 Group Ltd., before the company’s founders sold the enterprise.)
The original interview is interesting and quite revelatory. Today, I believe that history can be reshaped. It’s not fake news; it’s a consequence of how information is generated, disseminated, and consumed in an uncritical way.
Stephen E Arnold, March 5, 2018
The Next Stage in Information Warfare: Quantum Weaponization
February 20, 2018
We have been tracking the emergence of peer to peer technologies. Innovators have been working to deal with the emergence of next generation mainframe computing architectures like those available from Amazon, Facebook, and Google. The idea is that these new mainframes have popped up a level and are using software to integrate individual computing devices into larger constructs which are command and control systems.
Examples of the innovations can be found in the digital currency sector with the emergence of IOTA like systems. There are other innovation nodes as well; for example, discussed in online publications like Medium, technical fora, and implemented by outfits like Anonymous Portugal.
One of the popular methods used by my former colleagues at Halliburton Nuclear Utility Services was to look at a particular problem. The nuclear engineers would then try to fit the problem into a meta-schema. The idea was that a particular problem in some nuclear applications could not be tackled directly. A nuclear engineer tried to find ways to address the problem without poking the specific issue because once probed, the problem morphed. Hence, the meta-method was more useful.
Here’s a diagram which I think shows one facet of the approach:
The idea is to come at a problem in different way. Edward de Bono called it “lateral thinking.” For me, the idea is to pop outside a problem, not in two dimensions, but three or four if time plays a part. Maybe “meta-thining” or “meta-analysis”?
What’s ahead for “the Internet” is what I conceptualize as urban warfare in the online world.
Non-traditional approaches to security, messaging, and data routing will combine to create a computing environment that’s different. Smart software will allow nodes or devices to make local decisions, and then that same smart software will use random message pathways to accomplish a task like routing. The difference between today’s concentrated Internet will be similar to Caesar’s Third Legion engaging in urban warfare. Caesar’s troops have swords; the urban fighters have modern weapons. Not even mighty Caesar can deal with the mismatch in technology.
Several observations:
- More robust encryption methods will make timely sense making of intercepted data very, very difficult
- Smart software will create polymorphic solutions to what are today difficult problems
- The diffusion of intelligent computing devices (including light bulbs) generate data volumes which will be difficult to process for meaningful signals by components not embedded in the polymorphic fabric. (Yes, this means law enforcement and intelligence entities).
- The era of the “old” Internet is ending, but the shift is underway. The movement is from a pointed stick to a cellular structure filled with adaptable proteins. The granularity and the “intelligence” of the tiny bits will be fascinating to observe.
In one sense, the uncertainty inherent in many phenomena will migrate into online.
The shift is not inherently “bad.” New opportunities will arise. The shift will have significant impacts, however. Just as the constructs of the industrial age have been reshaped by the “old” Internet, the new polymorphic, quantum-ized Internet will usher in some interesting changes.
Is digital Ebola replicating now, gentle reader?
Stephen E Arnold, February 20, 2018
Digital Currencies: Now You Have It, Now You Do Not
February 2, 2018
We noted an interesting assertion in “Cryptocurrency ICOs: It’s Impossible to Police What You Can’t See.” The passage points attention to the ease with which initial coin offerings and tokens can be converted into “scams.” We noted:
ICOs have paved the way for so-called “exit scams,” in which fake companies launch an ICO and make off with investor proceeds. BitConnect is one of the latest companies which wound up its exchange operations, crashing the price of its BitConnect Coin (BCC) in the process. Investors were promised converted funds in BCC, but as their original investment had to be made in ETH, they have suffered countless losses as BCC’s value crashed and burned, leading many to believe the whole system was a scam — and one, unfortunately, which has cost its investors millions of dollars.
We loved this quote, attributed to Arianne King, managing partner and Solicitor Advocate of Al Bawardi Critchlow:
“It’s hard to police what you can’t even see.”
The Beyond Search DarkCyber research team would like to point out that modest strides have been made in deanonymizing some activities related to digital currencies.
The write up pointed out:
Investor cryptocurrency funds can be whisked away to multiple wallets and potentially “washed” through Dark Web services to become extremely difficult to track, and without cold, hard currency in a scammer’s bank account, little can be done.
Online is an interesting “environment,” fostering fake news, teen anxiety, and good old fashioned fraud.
Stephen E Arnold, February 2, 2018
Casetext: A Disrupter
January 21, 2018
Legal information is of interest to legal eagles. However, a business move by Casetext may cause pain at professional publishing shops operated by LexisNexis and Westlaw. Both companies pride themselves on their technology savvy. But a four year old company may have become the little engine that could run over executives napping on the train tracks.
According to a company statement:
Casetext’s new Holdings feature is the largest searchable collection of concise case summaries ever assembled. To create Holdings, Casetext applied a tactic they call “judicial language processing,” exploiting patterns within the case law corpus to excerpt summaries directly from judicial opinions. Holdings is invaluable for any attorney looking to quickly familiarize herself with the crux of a judicial opinion and nimbly compare and contrast similar holdings across a particular area of law.
To add to the competitive thrust, Casetext uses smart software which seems to be a competitive advantage.
Founded in 2013, Casetext has attracted more than $20 million in venture funding.
Worth watching how this battle of legal eagles plays out.
Stephen E Arnold, January 21, 2018
Online: Welcome to 1981 and 2018
January 8, 2018
I have been thinking about online. I met with a long-time friend and owner of a consumer-centric Web site. For many years (since 1993, in fact), the site grew and generated a solid stream of revenue.
At lunch, the site owner told me that in the last three years, the revenue was falling. As I listened to this sharp businessperson, I realized that his site had shifted from ads which he and his partners sold to ads provided by automated systems.
From direct control to the ease of automated ad provision created the current predicament: Falling revenue. At the same time, the mechanisms for selling ads directly evolved as well. The shift from many industry events to a handful of large business sector conferences took place. There were more potential customers at these shows, but the attendance shifted from hands-on marketers to people who wanted to make use of online automated sales and marketing systems began to dominate.
He said, “In the good old days of 1996, I could go to a trade show and meet people who made advertising and marketing decisions based on experience with print and TV advertising, dealer promotions, and ideas.”
“Now,” he continued, “I meet smart people who want to use methods which rely on automated advertising. When I talk about buying an ad on our site or sponsoring a section of our content, the new generation look at me like I’m crazy. What’s that?”
I listened. What could I say.
The good, old days maybe never existed.
I read “Facebook and Google Are Free. They Shouldn’t Be.” The write up has a simple premise: Users should pay for information.
I am not certain if the write up realizes that paying for online information was the only way to generate revenue from digital content in the past. I know that partners in law firms realize that running queries on LexisNexis and Westlaw have to allocate cash to pay for the digital information about laws, decisions, and cases. For the technical information in Chemical Abstracts, researchers and chemists have to pay as well. Financial data for traders costs money as well.
Internet Wake Up: You Have Overslept
December 27, 2017
On a call yesterday, I agreed to do three talks for a law enforcement and intelligence conference company. On that call, one of the individual’s said:
The Internet has become a problem for investigators.
No disagreement from the ArnoldIT contingent who has been engaged for many years in tracking cyberOSINT, the Dark Web, the tools for thwarting Fullz, etc. I don’t think the “problem” will become easier to solve in the coming months.
Electronic data is tough to contain even when a nation state clamps down on telcos, ISPs, users, and Web site owners.
I found “My Internet Mea Culpa” a bit surprising because I assumed that most people had figured out that digital information is not exactly the happy grandmother viewing her daughter’s second birthday party on a mobile phone.
I noted this passage:
For the last twenty years, I believed the internet prophets of old. I worshipped at the altar of Stewart Brand and Kevin Kelly. I believed that the world would be a better place if everyone had a voice. I believed that the world would be a better place if we all had no secrets. But so far, the evidence points to an escapable conclusion: we were all wrong.
Yep, but today’s Internet has been around for a long time.
Read the full “mea culpa.”
Enjoy the implications of this statement:
What if Silicon Valley’s core beliefs — even the benign ones — are wrong?
Science club methods are not for grandmothers. Never will be.
How many artists were in my high school science club?
Exactly zero.
And there was a reason. When “Revenge of the Nerds” was a thing, I for one thought, “Now we’re talking.” Grandmothers did not get it. Never will.
In my experience, the Google-types “got it” from the git-go.
Stephen E Arnold, December 27, 2017
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