IBM. We Bought a Big Time Player.
October 29, 2018
I read “IBM to Acquire Cloud Computing Firm Red Hat for $34 Billion.” Note that CNN Web page plays truly annoying and unrelated media when one attempts to figure out the article.
I noted
The companies called the deal, which still needs approval from shareholders and regulators, the “most significant tech acquisition of 2018.” The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2019.
Three observations:
- Watson is obviously not doing much for IBM other than roviding marketers with a flow of funds to create spectacular ads.
- IBM appears to know that it is going to be breating Amazon and Microsoft exhaust fumes in the cloud sector unless it does something that sort of makes sense.
- The management decision comes too late for some major procurement wins.
Remarkable. Watson, what’s up? Oh, right.
Stephen E Arnold, October 29, 2018
Microsoft Edges into AI Applications
October 26, 2018
If Microsoft’s history as a late bloomer in the search world with Bing is any indicator, we don’t think Uber and Lyft are too worried about the tech giant’s recent foray into ride hailing. However, some indications point to a novel idea that Microsoft might actually be able to disrupt an industry that is not so close to its vest. We learned more from a recent TechCrunch story, “Microsoft Invests In Grab to Bring AI and Big Data to On-Demand Services.”
According to the story:
“Microsoft has made a strategic investment in ride-hailing and on-demand services company Grab as part of a deal that includes collaborating on big data and AI projects.
We noted:
“Under the agreement, Singapore-based Grab will adopt Microsoft Azure as its preferred cloud platform Azure cloud computing service.”
We’re not saying this will never take off. In fact, there are a lot of optimistic signs that point to this partnership flourishing. For example, Microsoft India has begun to deploy its AI solutions into agriculture and healthcare fields with success. If this technology can help crop rotations, it might just streamline ride sharing apps. We’ll be monitoring this one closely.
Patrick Roland, October 26, 2018
The World Brain Idea Is Back
October 23, 2018
Remember when the Internet was innocent and also a dangerous place? Now the Internet is a necessary tool and an even more dangerous place. World Brain wants to change that. World Brain wants to make the Internet troll free, end the dissemination of false news, users enjoy privacy, and freedom to choose their providers for the best service. I say World Brain is idealistic and naive, but maybe not. Here is their vision:
“Imagine a world where the internet supports a well-informed, less polarized society. Connected communities where individuals enjoy full data ownership, privacy and the freedom to choose the providers they get the best service from, without lock-ins.
This is what World Brain is working to achieve. If you want to be a part of this journey, or are simply interested in our approach, here’s deeper insight into our vision, values and a roadmap.
World Brain is an open-source software collective with the mission of making it 10X+ faster for people to organize, recover, share and discover the most useful and knowledge-expanding content on the web.”
Okay, please stop laughing. World Brain might have something here and their first product is Memex, a free, private browser extension that organizes and finds Web sites. That is actually a good idea. The idea behind Memex is to curate, discover, and share content as well as help researchers.
While Memex is free, World Brain does have a SAS cloud for 10 euros a year (it is a special deal). The Memex cloud offers Memex on all the devices, encrypted cloud backup, ability to search other apps and services, monetize data, WordPress-like plugins, and self hosting.
Okay, World Brain this is a very good idea. I am sold. My question is how will Memex monetize my content?
Whitney Grace, October 23, 2018
Google and Its Smart Software: Stupid?
October 16, 2018
I received an email from the owner of a Web site focused on providing consumers with automobile information. The individual shared with me an email sent to his company by the Google smart entity “publisher-policy-noreply.com”.
The letter was an AdSense Publisher Policy Violation Report. In short, Google’s smart software spotted an offensive article. The Google document said:
- New violations were detected. As a result, ad serving has been restricted or disabled on pages where these violations of the AdSense Program Policies were found. To resolve the issues, you can either remove the violating content and request a review, or remove the ad code from the violating pages.
Translating the Google speak: “You are showing ads on a page which contains pornography, contraband, hate speech, etc. Make this right, or no AdSense money for you.”
Okay, I was intrigued. How can information about cars be about porn, contraband, hate speech, etc.
The offensive item, my colleagues and I determined, was a review of a 2004 Saab 9-3 Arc Convertible, published about 14 years ago. The offense was that the review contained words of a sexual nature.
Does this vehicle and the height of its truck or boot offend you? If it does, you are not Googley.
I read the review and noted that the author of the review does indeed focus on an automobile. The problem is that the review is a long tail news story. That means that old content rarely gets clicks. So what’s Google doing? Processing historical data in order to locate porn, contraband, and hate speech? Must be. This suggests that the company is playing catch up. I thought Google was on top of offensive content and had been for more than a decade. Google forbidden word lists have been kicking around for years.
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I find this extremely suggestive? Perhaps that is why the reviewer described the tiny rear seating area as needful of a way to “ease rear seat access.” I am not sure my French bulldog would fit in the back seat of this Saab nor could he engage in hanky panky.
I noted that the Saab convertible has a “high rear.” Looking at the picture, it looks as if the mechanical engineers did increase the height of the trunk or boot in order to accommodate the folding hard top for this model Saab. I am not sure if I would have thought the phrase “high rear” was sexual because I was reading about how the solid convertible top had been accommodated by the engineering team. Who reads about trunk lids or boots as a sexual reference.
But wait. There’s more lingo about the car described about 14 years ago. Check out this passage:
While the convertible’s interior is similar to the sedan’s, with a semi-wraparound cockpit- style instrument panel, it has unique and very comfortable front seats, with the shoulder straps anchored to the seat frame to ease rear-seat access.
Can you spot offensive language. Well, there’s the cockpit, which I assume could be interpreted in a way different from where the driver sits to drive the vehicle. Then there is “rear seat access.” My goodness. That is offensive. Imagine buying a convertible in which a person could sit in the back seat. Obviously “rear seat” is a trigger phrase. When combined with “cockpit,” the Google smart software becomes. What is the word. Oh, right. Stupid.
Let’s step back. Some observations:
- Google positions itself as having a whiz bang system for preventing offensive content from reaching its “customers.” I must say that the system seems to be doing a less than brilliant job. (See. I did not use the word stupid again.) In my DarkCyber video news program for October 23, 2018, I point out that YouTube offers videos which explain to teens how to buy drugs on the Dark Web. The smart filters, I assume, think these vids are A Okay.
- At the same time Google’s smart software is deciding that car reviews are filthy and offensive, the company is telling elected officials it does not know what it will do about its possible China search system. But today I noted “Sundar Pichai Spoke about Google’s China Plans for the First Time and It Doesn’t Look Like He’s Backing Down.” So Google is thinking more about assisting a government with its censorship effort when it cannot figure out that a car review is not pornographic? Stupid is not the word. Maybe mendacious?
- The company seems to be expending resources to reprocess content which it had already identified, copied, parsed, and indexed. This Saab story was indexed and available 14 years ago. I wonder if Google realized that its index and Web archives are digital time bombs. Could the content become evidence in the event Google was subjected to a thorough investigation by European or US regulators? House cleaning before visitors arrive? Interesting because the smart software may be tweaked to be overzealous, not stupid at all.
Our view from Harrod’s Creek is simple. We think Google is a smart company. These minor, trivial, inconsequential filter failures are anomalies. In fact, the offensive auto reviews must go. What else must go? Another interesting question.
Google is great. Very intelligent.
I suppose one could pop the boot in the high rear and go for some rear seat access. I think there is a vernacular bound phrase for this sentiment.
Stephen E Arnold, October 16, 2018
Quote to Note: Google and Instilling Artificial Intelligence
October 11, 2018
Ah, ha. Another quote to note. This time from “Google Wants to Be Taken Seriously As Enterprise Player.” I highlighted this passage:
In the keynote address, speaking to Google Cloud customers, Diane Greene, Google Cloud CEO, said: “If you think about it, AI is everybody’s biggest opportunity, and cyber security is unfortunately everybody’s biggest threat, and Google has the best of both of these.” She said AI has been a priority at Google since the company was founded. “AI is instilled into everything we do. It is completely infused into G Suite, our applications, which gives us extra insight into how to help you infuse it into your applications.”
So about that Google Plus security breach? Instilled? Perhaps there may be some skepticism that Google will stand behind its products for commercial enterprises? This list may suggest that caution is warranted.
Stephen E Arnold, October 11, 2018
HSSCM Update: Two Little Used Methods
October 9, 2018
In the wake of the sinking of Google Plus, I wanted to highlight two HSSCM methods. You may recall that I use the acronym to mean “High School Science Club Management” to refer to the type of decision making found in secondary school extra curricular programs for students who perceive themselves as being pretty darned smart. I even ran a snap of me in my high school science club. We were a stellar group. Some PhDs, some published authors, and some pretty weird, anti social type dudes if I say so myself.
The first item concerns the apple of Amazon’s eye: the JEDI project for the Department of Defense. I learned from a highly reliable purveyor of information of real news that “Google Drops Out of Pentagon’s $10 Billion Cloud Competition.” That will make the day for some of the folks who labor in the Google’s DC vineyards really happy. Think of the many opportunities to explain, apologize, and reposition. On the other hand, Amazon may try to hire a couple of these Googlers. Getting some types of US government work might be tough.
What’s the management method? Well, surprise for starters. Also, creating enmity among those engaged in the RFP and procurement process. Plus, a clear signal that Google can and will change its mind on what has been a multi year process. Definitely sends a message. Just like the science club president in my high school who said, “Who wants to go to the prom? I have to work at the observatory that night?”
The second item concerns the Google Plus arabesque. If you want to get my take on the non management aspects of that exciting development, navigate to the story at this link.
The management method I want to highlight is revealed in the real news source the Wall Street Journal. You will have to pay to view the write up “Google Exposed User Data, Feared Repercussions of Disclosing to Public.” The main idea is the failure to notify. In my high school science club, I recall the time we broadcast the tune “Great Balls of Fire over the public address system.” We did not tell anyone we did it. Unfortunately it was highly unlikely that members of the football team or the wrestling team pulled off the stunt. As far as I know, our science club had the future electrical engineers in our quasi elite outfit. Google, in its wisdom, figured that keeping quiet was a prudent move.
The HSSCM method is to use exceptional judgment, ignore the advice of those who might have a different viewpoint, and create an opportunity for Google executives to explain themselves in a number of high profile venues. Will this question come up in a Congressional session? Maybe?
Net net: MBA courses can include these HSSCM methods as part of their initiative to reverse sagging enrollments.
Stephen E Arnold, October 9, 2018
Is Bing Stuck Like a 45 RPM Recording?
October 1, 2018
At least twice a year, Microsoft releases a press statement explaining how it has made Bing smarter. The questions are always,”how and in what way?” Bing pales in comparison to rivals DuckDuckGo and Google, but it also has its staunch supporters. Thurott has shared one of the prerequisite Bing cheerleading pieces, “Bing Just Got A Whole Lot Smarter.”
Bing has added a brand new list of features to enhance user experience. One of the new features is a hotel booking option that shows higher-ranked hotels with the same nightly rate to save you money, historical price trends, hotel comparisons, and other neat tools.
If you are frugal and/or always searching for a deal, Bing will now share information about details, such as if it is in stores or expiring soon. This augments Bing’s discount feature that displays different deals in search results.
“The last area where Bing is getting improved is an interesting one: home services. Bing is partnering with Porch, a service that helps you find professionals for home services, to help surface better results within search. It will now show you things like cost ranges, which are meant to help find a “fair” or the average cost for a certain service based on your location. It will also now let you get a quote for supported home service providers from within search.”
Word about whether advertisers will get priority in search results, but they are already labeled in search results. When it comes to making Bing smarter, this is not bad. Good job, Microsoft!
Whitney Grace, October 1, 2018
Amazon: Policeware Capability Microsoft May Not Be Able to Duplicate
October 1, 2018
You, like others, are probably not interested in our Amazon policeware research. That’s super.
I do, however, want to document that Amazon has moved beyond the wonky Loon balloons and Facebook’s airplanes to a more practical view of data from above.
Navigate to “Satellite Company Partners with Bezos’ AWS to Bring Internet Connectivity to the Whole Planet.”
The idea is to get into a flow of data. If you have attended one of my Amazon Policeware lectures, you will recall the diagram that shows the data flowing into a nifty construct built painstakingly since 2008.
The policeware angle is to make sense of these and other data via cross correlation and other functions.
New partners, new data, and new outputs — Amazon is moving forward, and I am not sure Microsoft as well as fellow travelers like Google and Oracle can match Amazon’s forced march in its effort to reword the intelligence and law enforcement intelligence ecosystem.
For me, our analysis of Amazon is a reminder of what we discovered in 2002 when my researchers and I were working on Google’s patents, technical articles, and hires PhD theses.
No one cared until BearStearns paid to recycle some of the more interesting facets of our work. Want to know more. Write the every faithful BenKent2020 at yahoo dot com for information about our for fee briefing on this subject.
Stephen E Arnold, October 1, 2018
Machine Learning Frameworks: Why Not Just Use Amazon?
September 16, 2018
A colleague sent me a link to “The 10 Most Popular Machine Learning Frameworks Used by Data Scientists.” I found the write up interesting despite the author’s failure to define the word popular and the bound phrase data scientists. But few folks in an era of “real” journalism fool around with my quaint notions.
According to the write up, the data come from an outfit called Figure Eight. I don’t know the company, but I assume their professionals adhere to the basics of Statistics 101. You know the boring stuff like sample size, objectivity of the sample, sample selection, data validity, etc. Like information in our time of “real” news and “real” journalists, some of these annoying aspects of churning out data in which an old geezer like me can have some confidence. You know like the 70 percent accuracy of some US facial recognition systems. Close enough for horseshoes, I suppose.
Here’s the list. My comments about each “learning framework” appear in italics after each “learning framework’s” name:
- Pandas — an open source, BSD-licensed library
- Numpy — a package for scientific computing with Python
- Scikit-learn — another BSD licensed collection of tools for data mining and data analysis
- Matplotlib — a Python 2D plotting library for graphics
- TensorFlow — an open source machine learning framework
- Keras — a high-level neural networks API, written in Python and capable of running on top of TensorFlow, CNTK, or Theano
- Seaborn — a Python data visualization library based on matplotlib
- Pytorch & Torch
- AWS Deep Learning AMI — infrastructure and tools to accelerate deep learning in the cloud. Not to be annoying but defining AMI as Amazon Machine Learning Interface might be useful to some
- Google Cloud ML Engine — neural-net-based ML service with a typically Googley line up of Googley services.
Stepping back, I noticed a handful of what I am sure are irrelevant points which are of little interest to a “real” journalists creating “real” news.
First, notice that the list is self referential with python love. Frameworks depend on other python loving frameworks. There’s nothing inherently bad about this self referential approach to shipping up a list, and it makes it a heck of a lot easier to create the list in the first place.
Second, the information about Amazon is slightly misleading. In my lecture in Washington, DC on September 7, I mentioned that Amazon’s approach to machine learning supports Apache MXNet and Gluon, TensorFlow, Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit, Caffe, Caffe2, Theano, Torch, PyTorch, Chainer, and Keras. I found this approach interesting, but of little interest to those creating a survey or developing an informed list about machine learning frameworks; for example, Amazon is executing a quite clever play. In bridge, I think the phrase “trump card” suggests what the Bezos momentum machine has cooked up. Notice the past tense because this Amazon stuff has been chugging along in at least one US government agency for about four, four and one half years.
Third, Google brings up dead last. What about IBM? What about Microsoft and its CNTK. Ah, another acronym, but I as a non real journalist will reveal that this acronym means Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit. More information is available in Microsoft’s wonderful prose at this link. By the way, the Amazon machine learning spinning momentum thing supports the CNTK. Imagine that? Right, I didn’t think so.
Net net: The machine learning framework list may benefit from a bit of refinement. On the other hand, just use Amazon and move down the road to a new type of smart software lock in. Want to know more? Write benkent2020 @ yahoo dot com and inquire about our for fee Amazon briefing about machine learning, real time data marketplaces, and a couple of other most off the radar activities. Have you seen Amazon’s facial recognition camera? It’s part of the Amazon machine learning imitative, and it has some interesting capabilities.
Stephen E Arnold, September 16, 2018
Microsoft Pushes Forward in Its Effort to Be More Like Amazon
September 14, 2018
Amazon is making progress in the policeware sector. The company has contracts and some strong supporters in the US government and elsewhere. Like Amazon, Microsoft covets the JEDI cloud contract. The deal is an important one because the Department of Defense has been a unit which uses and likes Microsoft’s software.
If Amazon snags the JEDI contract, Amazon may be in a position to chew into Microsoft’s revenue streams flowing from the DoD and maybe other US governmental entities. Microsoft already faces a loss of young users to the Chrome approach to personal computing.
What to do?
One answer seems to be to buy another “make it easy to program” tool for machine learning and other red hot buzzwords.
We learned in “Microsoft Acquires AI startup Lobe to Help People Make Deep Learning Models without Code” that Microsoft aqui-hired more programming tools capabilities. The company Lobe, it seems, offers a partial solution to the Amazon SageMaker software systems.
Perhaps this and other acquisitions will give Microsoft a way to scale Mt. JEDI, but we think that’s a long shot for three reasons:
- Amazon has been preparing for policeware for about a decade; Microsoft is late to the game
- Amazon has a hardware and software platform which creates a policeware ecosystem when combined with the Amazon content streams and archives; Microsoft does not have this “vision” and “reality”
- Amazon’s policeware tactic is part of a larger strategy to become more than a provider of cloud resources and some interesting applications.
What’s the big picture? If you want to discuss a presentation of my Amazon policeware lecture delivered in Prague and Washington, DC in the last three months, let me know by writing benkent2020 at yahoo dot com. If not, well, that’s okay with me and probably Amazon, an outfit which does not emit too many chunks of information about this SageMaker thing.
Stephen E Arnold, September 14, 2018
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