Is AI Another VisiCalc Moment?
February 14, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
The easy-to-spot orange newspaper ran a quite interesting “essay” called “What the Birth of the Spreadsheet Can Teach Us about Generative AI.” Let me cut to the point when the fox is killed. AI is likely to be a job creator. AI has arrived at “the right time.” The benefits of smart software are obvious to a growing number of people. An entrepreneur will figure out a way to sell an AI gizmo that is easy to use, fast, and good enough.
In general, I agree. There is one point that the estimable orange newspaper chose not to include. The VisiCalc innovation converted old-fashioned ledger paper into software which could eliminate manual grunt work to some degree. The poster child of the next technology boom seems tailor-made to facilitate surveillance, weapons, and development of novel bio-agents.
AI is going to surprise some people more than others. Thanks, MSFT Copilot Bing thing. Not good but I gave up with the prompts to get a cartoon because you want to do illustrations. Sigh.
I know that spreadsheets are used by defense contractors, but the link between a spreadsheet and an AI-powered drone equipped with octanitrocubane variants is less direct. Sure, spreadsheets arrived in numerous use cases, some obvious, some not. But the capabilities for enabling a range of weapons systems strike me as far more obvious.
The Financial Times’s essay states:
Looking at the way spreadsheets are used today certainly suggests a warning. They are endlessly misused by people who are not accountants and are not using the careful error-checking protocols built into accountancy for centuries. Famous economists using Excel simply failed to select the right cells for analysis. An investment bank used the wrong formula in a risk calculation, accidentally doubling the level of allowable risk-taking. Biologists have been typing the names of genes, only to have Excel autocorrect those names into dates. When a tool is ubiquitous, and convenient, we kludge our way through without really understanding what the tool is doing or why. And that, as a parallel for generative AI, is alarmingly on the nose.
Smart software, however, is not a new thing. One can participate in quasi-religious disputes about whether AI is 20, 30, 40, or more years old. What’s interesting to me is that after chugging along like a mule cart on the Information Superhighway, AI is everywhere. Old-school British newspapers like it to the spreadsheet. Entrepreneurs spend big bucks on Product Hunt roll outs. Owners of mobile devices can locate “pizza near me” without having to type, speak, or express an interest in a cardiologist’s favorite snack.
AI strikes me as a different breed of technology cat. Here are my reasons:
- Serious AI takes serious money.
- Big AI is going to be a cloud-linked service which invites consolidation just like those hundreds of US railroads became the glorious two player system we have today: One for freight and one for passengers who love trains more than flying or driving.
- AI systems are going to have to find a way to survive and thrive without becoming victims of content inbreeding and bizarre outputs fueled by synthetic data. VisiCalc spawned spreadsheet fever in humans from the outset. The difference is that AI does its work largely without humanoids.
Net net: The spreadsheet looks like a convenient metaphor. But metaphors are not the reality. Reality can surprise in interesting ways.
Stephen E Arnold, February 14, 2024
Hewlett Packard and Autonomy: Search and $4 Billion
February 12, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
More than a decade ago, Hewlett Packard acquired Autonomy plc. Autonomy was one of the first companies to deploy what I call “smart software.” The system used Bayesian methods, still quite new to many in the information retrieval game in the 1990s. Autonomy kept its method in a black box assigned to a company from which Autonomy licensed the functions for information processing. Some experts in smart software overlook BAE Systems’ activity in the smart software game. That effort began in the late 1990s if my memory is working this morning. Few “experts” today care, but the dates are relevant.
Between the date Autonomy opened for business in 1996 and HP’s decision to purchase the company for about $8 billion in 2011, there was ample evidence that companies engaged in enterprise search and allied businesses like legal work processes or augmented magazine advertising were selling for much less. Most of the companies engaged in enterprise search simply went out of business after burning through their funds; for example, Delphes and Entopia. Others sold at what I thought we inflated or generous prices; for example, Vivisimo to IBM for about $28 million and Exalead to Dassault for 135 million euros.
Then along comes HP and its announcement that it purchased Autonomy for a staggering $8 billion. I attended a search-related event when one of the presenters showed this PowerPoint slide:
The idea was that Autonomy’s systems generated multiple lines of revenue, including a cloud service. The key fact on the presentation was that the search-and-retrieval unit was not the revenue rocket ship. Autonomy has shored up its search revenue by acquisition; for example, Soundsoft, Virage, and Zantaz. The company also experimented with bundling software, services, and hardware. But the Qatalyst slide depicted a rosy future because of Autonomy management’s vision and business strategy.
Did I believe the analysis prepared by Frank Quatrone’s team? I accepted some of the comments about the future, and I was skeptical about others. In the period from 2006 to 2012, it was becoming increasingly difficult to overcome some notable failures in enterprise search. The poster child from the problems was Fast Search & Transfer. In a nutshell, Fast Search retreated from Web search, shutting down its Google competitor AllTheWeb.com. The company’s engaging founder John Lervik told me that the future was enterprise search. But some Fast Search customers were slow in paying their bills because of the complexity of tailoring the Fast Search system to a client’s particular requirements. I recall being asked to comment about how to get the Fast Search system to work because my team used it for the FirstGov.gov site (now USA.gov) when the Inktomi solution was no longer viable due to procurement rule changes. Fast Search worked, but it required the same type of manual effort that the Vivisimo system required. Search-and-retrieval for an organization is not a one size fits all thing, a fact Google learned with its spectacular failure with its truly misguided Google Search Appliance product. Fast Search ended with an investigation related to financial missteps, and Microsoft stepped in in 2008 and bought the company for about $1.2 billion. I thought that was a wild and crazy number, but I was one of the lucky people who managed to get Fast Search to work and knew that most licensees would not have the resources or talent I had at my disposal. Working for the White House has some benefits, particularly when Fast Search for the US government was part of its tie up with AT&T. Thank goodness for my counterpart Ms. Coker. But $1.2 billion for Fast Search? That in my opinion was absolutely bonkers from my point of view. There were better and cheaper options, but Microsoft did not ask my opinion until after the deal was closed.
Everyone in the HP Autonomy matter keeps saying the same thing like an old-fashioned 78 RPM record stuck in a groove. Thanks, MSFT Copilot. You produced the image really “fast.” Plus, it is good enough like most search systems.
What is the Reuters’ news story adding to this background? Nothing. The reason is that the news story focuses on one factoid: “HP Claims $4 Billion Losses in London Lawsuit over Autonomy Deal.” Keep in mind that HP paid $11 billion for Autonomy plc. Keep in mind that was 10 times what Microsoft paid for Fast Search. Now HP wants $4 billion. Stripping away everything but enterprise search, I could accept that HP could reasonably pay $1.2 billion for Autonomy. But $11 billion made Microsoft’s purchase of Fast Search less nutso. Because, despite technical differences, Autonomy and Fast Search were two peas in a pod. The similarities were significant. The differences were technical. Neither company was poised to grow as rapidly as their stakeholders envisioned.
When open source search options became available, these quickly became popular. Today if one wants serviceable search-and-retrieval for an enterprise application one can use a Lucene / Solr variant or pick one of a number of other viable open source systems.
But HP bought Autonomy and overpaid. Furthermore, Autonomy had potential, but the vision of Mike Lynch and the resources of HP were needed to convert the promise of Autonomy into a diversified information processing company. Autonomy could have provided high value solutions to the health and medical market; it could have become a key player in the policeware market; it could have leveraged its legal software into a knowledge pipeline for eDiscovery vendors to license and build upon; and it could have expanded its opportunities to license Autonomy stubs into broader OpenText enterprise integration solutions.
But what did HP do? It muffed the bunny. Mr. Lynch exited and set up a promising cyber security company and spent the rest of his time in courts. The Reuters’ article states:
Following one of the longest civil trials in English legal history, HP in 2022 substantially won its case, though a High Court judge said any damages would be significantly less than the $5 billion HP had claimed. HP’s lawyers argued on Monday that its losses resulting from the fraud entitle it to about $4 billion.
If I were younger and had not written three volumes of the Enterprise Search Report and a half dozen books about enterprise search, I would write about the wild and crazy years for enterprise search, its hits, its misses, and its spectacular failures (Yes, Google, I remember the Google Search Appliance quite well.) But I am a dinobaby.
The net net is HP made a poor decision and now years later it wants Mike Lynch to pay for HP’s lousy analysis of the company, its management missteps within its own Board of Directors, and its decision to pay $11 billion for a company in a sector in which at the time simply being profitable was a Herculean achievement. So this dinobaby says, “Caveat emptor.”
Stephen E Arnold, February 12, 2024
A Reminder: AI Winning Is Skewed to the Big Outfits
February 8, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I have been commenting about the perception some companies have that AI start ups focusing on search will eventually reduce Google’s dominance. I understand the desire to see an underdog or a coalition of underdogs overcome a formidable opponent. Hollywood loves the unknown team which wins the championship. Movie goers root for an unlikely boxing unknown to win the famous champion’s belt. These wins do occur in real life. Some Googlers favorite sporting event is the NCAA tournament. That made-for-TV series features what are called Cinderella teams. (Will Walt Disney Co. sue if the subtitles for a game employees the the word “Cinderella”? Sure, why not?)
I believe that for the next 24 to 36 months, Google will not lose its grip on search, its services, or online advertising. I admit that once one noses into 2028, more disruption will further destabilize Google. But for now, the Google is not going to be derailed unless an exogenous event ruins Googzilla’s habitat.
I want to direct attention to the essay “AI’s Massive Cash Needs Are Big Tech’s Chance to Own the Future.” The write up contains useful information about selected players in the artificial intelligence Monopoly game. I want to focus on one “worm” chart included in the essay:
Several things struck me:
- The major players are familiar; that is, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Salesforce. Notably absent are IBM, Meta, Chinese firms, Western European companies other than Mistral, and smaller outfits funded by venture capitalists relying on “open source AI solutions.”
- The five major companies in the chart are betting money on different roulette wheel numbers. VCs use the same logic by investing in a portfolio of opportunities and then pray to the MBA gods that one of these puppies pays off.
- The cross investments ensure that information leaks from the different color “worms” into the hills controlled by the big outfits. I am not using the collusion word or the intelligence word. I am just mentioned that information has a tendency to leak.
- Plumbing and associated infrastructure costs suggest that start ups may buy cloud services from the big outfits. Log files can be fascinating sources of information to the service providers engineers too.
My point is that smaller outfits are unlikely to be able to dislodge the big firms on the right side of the “worm” graph. The big outfits can, however, easily invest in, acquire, or learn from the smaller outfits listed on the left side of the graph.
Does a clever AI-infused search start up have a chance to become a big time player. Sure, but I think it is more likely that once a smaller firm demonstrates some progress in a niche like Web search, a big outfit with cash will invest, duplicate, or acquire the feisty newcomer.
That’s why I am not counting out the Google to fall over dead in the next three years. I know my viewpoint is not one shared by some Web search outfits. That’s okay. Dinobabies often have different points of view.
Stephen E Arnold, February 8, 2024
Google Gems for 6 February 2024
February 6, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
The Google has been busy. In order to provide an easy way to highlight groups of Googley action, we have grouped these into four clusters. These are arbitrary. Links are provided to the source of the gems.
Looking for Google Gems, a creation of MSFT Copilot Bing thing.
BIG MOVES
In the last week, everyone’s favorite online advertising entity worked tirelessly to demonstrate its lovable nature. Here are several big moves my research team and I found notable:
The first item concerns the estimable Google Play “store.” Customers were able to download what The Sun described as “spy apps.” What’s this situation, if true, say about Google’s ability to screen apps for its store? To learn more, navigate to this link.
The second “big” item is that Google’s management expertise was on display at an “all hands” meeting. According to Inc. Magazine:
“We’re talking about simplifying areas where we have unnecessary layers and removing bureaucracy to make sure the company works better,” Pichai said. The thing is, the only reason any of that is true is because Google has built that bureaucracy and added those layers. That didn’t happen on accident. It happened over time as the company grew and added managers and processes and products. It happened because of intentional choices about how to run the business. It just turns out that some of those choices didn’t pan out. “Part of leadership is also making the tough decisions that are needed,” Pichai said in response to one question.
The munchkins at the Google do not seem to be happy. Whose fault is this? I assume that the 23andMe approach is the explanation: “It’s your fault.”
The third item illustrates Google’s deft tactical actions when “responsible innovation” needs amping up. According to Wired Magazine, Google split up the team. If you are Google, creating a duplicative structure makes perfect sense particularly in the artificial intelligence sector. More complexity is a plus I assume.
The fourth item touches upon Google’s effort to make sure its users don’t wander off the reservation. The PressGazette reports:
Google is planning to force news publishers to group their websites into sets of five if they want to use certain functions in its new Privacy Sandbox online advertising system, which it has proposed will replace cookie functionality. Each group of five will then be published on GitHub, the coding website, where anyone will be able to see them.
The final Brobdingnagian item is Google’s unsurprising appeal of its recent jury trial loss to Epik, the online game outfit. No surprise, of course, but it’s the spirit of the Google which I find admirable: Never give up when one has numerous lawyers.
HELPING USERS
Google cares about its users. Users equal revenue. This is a basic fact among those who understand the company’s motivations. Let’s run down a handful of user-centric actions:
First, Google has dumped public access to cached Web pages, according to SERoundTable. The work-around is for the user to go to the woefully incomplete Internet Archive which is a far from comprehensive repository of Web pages. Helpful.
Second, users of Google Pixel phones or some Samsung mobiles. What about users of other Android devices? Sorry, according to Forbes, you are out of luck.
Third, Google and AI aggregator Hugging Face are cozying up in the cloud. Will this have an impact on the competitive AI space? Of course, not. Read more in the Verge, the explanation for the informed elite.
Fourth, Google has a “secret” browser. Learn more from Matan-h. Is this the first one? Nope, the second.
Fifth, if you own a Samsung TV and used the Google Assistant, you may have to find a new helper. TomsGuide.com reports that Google is removing this feature.
Sixth, Google’s smart watch can be used as — wait for it — a television remote. Learn more from Techradar.
Finally, Google continues its war against ad blockers. The goal is revenue. The AndroidPolice thinks the Google is behaving in a less than user-friendly way. Imagine that.
HORN TOOTING
Last week displayed some subdued Google horn toots. Let’s take a look:
Google is strapping AI to Google Maps. The idea is to make suggestions. What if a person just wants directions? Dumb question. Users will get smart recommendations. For a breathy explanation of Google wonderfulness, check out the Verge story.
Plus, after 14 months, the Google has rolled out image generation that is the apex of artistic excellence. How great is that? VentureBeat explains the achievement. Tom’s Hardware take a more techy approach to the announcement.
MONEY
One cannot overlook Google’s towering financial skyscrapers.
First, its annual revenue continues to climb. Details appear in Alphabet’s report.
Second, YouTube has become the little money factory Googlers lusted after. Even Variety lets its respect for cash flow sparkle in the insider’s news service. I want to point out that AndroidPolice asserted that YouTube has fewer paid subscribers than does Spotify. Is the solution an acquisition, predatory pricing, or removing Spotify from search results. These are actions Google would avoid, of course.
Third, Google is pinching pennies, not just firing employees to boost margins. Nope. According to Marketwatch, Google showed a $1.2 billion loss due to dumping office space. Is this important? Not to the former employees, but the landlords and banks counting on Google lease deals might be irritated.
A GEM TO REMEMBER
I mentioned Google’s management excellence elsewhere in this catalog of gems. I want to close with a nod to Yahoo News (who knew the Yahooligans did news?). The story recycles information about Google’s terminating employees, thus creating Xooglers in abundance. “Google’s Layoffs Already Impacted Its Culture. Now They’re Affecting Its Bottom Line” reports that employees (Xooglers) belonged to a “happy family.” Really?
Stephen E Arnold, February 6, 2024
Internet Governance and Enforcement Needed: Not Just One-Off Legal Spats
February 5, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
“Web Publisher Seeks Injunctive Relief to Address Web Scraper’s Domain Name Maneuvers Intended to Avoid Court Order” at first glance is another tale of woe about a content or information publisher getting its content sucked down and into another service. This happens frequently, and the limp robots.txt file does not thwart the savvy content vacuum cleaner which is digitally Hoovering its way to a minimally viable product.
An outfit called Chegg creates or recycles information to create answers to homework problems. Students, who want to have more time for swiping left and right, subscribe and use Chegg to achieve academic certification. The outfit running the digital Hoover uses different domains; for example, Homeworkify.EU and then to Homeworkify.st. This change made it possible for Homeworkify to continue sucking down Chegg’s content.
One must know where to look, have the expertise to pull away the surface, and exert effort to eliminate the problem. Thanks, MSFT Copilot Bing thing. How’s the email security today? Oh, too bad.
The write up explains that the matter is in court, the parties are seeking a decision which validates their position, and the matter bumbles onward.
My take on this is different, and I am reasonably confident that it may make pro-Chegg and pro-Homeworkify advocates uncomfortable. Here are my observations:
- Neither outfit strikes me as particularly savvy when it comes to protecting or accessing online content. There are numerous Clear Web and Dark Web sites which engage in interesting actions, and investigators often have difficulty figuring out who is who, and what what is a who doing. One example from our own recent research has been our effort to determine “who” or “what” is behind the domain altenen.is. There are some hurdles to get over before the question can be answered. The operators of certain sites like the credit card outfit move around from domain to domain. This is accomplished automatically.
- The domain name registrars are an interesting group of companies. Upon examination, an ISP can be a domain reseller, operate an auction service buyers and sellers of “registered” domains, or operate as an ISP, a provider of virtual hosting, a domain name seller, and a domain name marketplace with connections to other domain name businesses. Getting lost in this mostly unregulated niche is quite easy. The sophisticated operators can appear to be a legitimate company with alleged locations in France or Russia. One outfit engaged in some interesting “reseller” activities appears to be in jail is Israel. But his online operation continues to hum along.
- The obfuscation of domains is facilitated by outfits based in salubrious locations like the Seychelles. Drop in and check out the businesses sometime when you are in Somalia or cruising the Indian Ocean off the west coast of Africa. The “specialists” located in remote regions provide “air cover” for individuals engaged in interesting business activities like running encrypted email services for allegedly bad actors and strong supporters of specialist “groups.”
Now back to the problem of Chegg and Homeworkify. My take on this dust up is:
- Neither outfit is sufficiently advanced to [a] prevent content access or [b] getting caught.
- Dumping the matter into a legal process means [a] spending lots of money on lawyers and [b] learning that no one understands what is taking place and why these actions are different from what’s being Hoovered by some of the most respected techno feudalists in the world. The cloud of unknowing will be thick as these issues are discussed.
- The focus should include attention and then action toward what I call “the enablers.” Who or what is an enabler? That’s easy. The basic services of the Internet governance entities and the failure to license certain firms who provide technology to facilitate problematic online activity.
Net net: Until regulation and consequences are imposed on the enablers, there will be more dust ups like the one between Chegg and Homeworkify.
PS. I am not too keen on selling short cuts to learning.
Stephen E Arnold, February 5, 2024
Google Gems: January 30, 2024
January 30, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
The dinobaby wants to share another collection of Google gems. These are high-value actions which provide insight into one of the world’s most successful online advertising companies. Let’s get rolling with the items which I thought were the biggest outputs of behavioral magma movements in the last week, give or take a day or two. For gems, whose keeping track?
The dinobaby is looking for Google gems. There are many. Thanks, MSFT Copilot Bing thing. Good enough, but I think I am more svelt than your depiction of me.
GOOGLE AND REAL INNOVATION
How do some smart people innovate. “Google Settles AI-Related Chip Patent Lawsuit That Sought US$1.67-Billion in Damages” states:
Singular, founded by Massachusetts-based computer scientist Joseph Bates, claimed that Google incorporated his technology into processing units that support AI features in Google Search, Gmail, Google Translate and other Google services. The 2019 lawsuit said that Bates shared his inventions with the company between 2010 and 2014. It argued that Google’s Tensor Processing Units copied Bates’ technology and infringed two patents.
Did Google accidentally borrow intellectual property? I don’t know. But when $1.67 is bandied about as a desired amount and the Google settles right before trial, one can ask, “Does Google do me-too invention?” Of course not. Google is too cutting edge. Plus the invention allegedly touches Google’s equally innovative artificial intelligence set up. But $1.67 billion? Interesting.
A TWO’FER
Two former Googlers have their heads in the clouds (real, not data center clouds). Well, one mostly former Googler and another who has returned to the lair to work on AI. Hey, those are letters which appear in the word lAIr. What a coincidence. Xoogler one is a founder of the estimable company. Xoogler two is a former “adult” at the innovative firm.
Sergey Brin’s, like Icarus, has taken flight. He didn’t. His big balloon has. The Travel reports in “The World’s Largest Airship Is Now A Reality As It Took Flight In California”:
Pathfinder 1, a prototype electric airship designed by LTA Research, is being unveiled to the public as dawn rises over Silicon Valley. The project’s backer, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, expects it will speed the airship’s humanitarian efforts and usher in a new age of eco-friendly air travel. The airship has magnified drone technology, incorporating fly-by-wire controls, electric motors, and lidar sensing, to a scale surpassing that of three Boeing 737s. This enlarged version has the potential to transport substantial cargo across extensive distances. Its distinctive snow-white steampunk appearance is easily discernible from the bustling 101 highway.
The article includes a reference to the newsreel meme The Hindenburg. Helpful? Not so much. Anyway the Brin-aloon is up.
The second item about a Xoogler also involves flight. Business Insider (an outfit in the news itself this week) published “Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt Quietly Created a Company Called White Stork, Which Plans to Build AI-Powered Attack Drones, Report Says.” Drones are a booming business. The write up states:
The former Google chief told Wired that occasionally, a new weapon comes to market that “changes things” and that AI could help revolutionize the Department of Defense’s equipment. He said in the Wired interview, “Einstein wrote a letter to Roosevelt in the 1930s saying that there is this new technology — nuclear weapons — that could change war, which it clearly did. I would argue that [AI-powered] autonomy and decentralized, distributed systems are that powerful.”
What if a smart White Stork goes after Pathfinder? Impossible. AI is involved.
WAY FINDING WITH THRILLS
The next major Google gem is about the map product I find almost impossible to use. But I am a dinobaby, and these nifty new products are not tuned to 80-year-old eyes and fingers. I can still type, however. “The Google Maps Effect: Authorities Looking for Ways to Prevent Cars From Going Down Steps” shares this allegedly actual factual functionality:
… beginning in December, several drivers attempted to go down the steps either in small passenger cars or lorries that wouldn’t even fit in the small space between the buildings. Drivers blamed Google Maps on every occasion, claiming they followed the turn-by-turn guidance offered by the application. Google Maps told them to make a turn and attempt to go down the steps, so they eventually got stuck for obvious reasons.
I did a job for the bright fellow who brought WordStar to market. Google Maps wanted me to drive off the highway and into the bay. I turned off the helpful navigation system. I may be old, but dinobabies are not completely stupid. Other drivers relying on good enough Google presumably are.
AI MARKETING HOO-HAH
The Google is tooting its trumpet. Here are some recent “innovations” designed to keep the pesky OpenAI, Mistal, and Zuckbookers at bay:
- Google can make videos using AI. “Google’s New AI Video Generator Looks Incredible” reports that the service is “incredible.” What else from the quantum supremacy crowd? Sure, and it produces cute animals.
- Those Chromebooks are not enough. Google is applying its AI to education. Read more about how an ad company will improve learning in “Google Announces New AI-Powered Features for Education.”
- More Googley AI is coming to ads. If you are into mental manipulation, you will revel in “YouTube Ads Are About to Get Way More Effective with AI-Powered Neuromarketing.” Hey, “way more” sounds like the super smart Waymo Google car thing, doesn’t it?
LITTLE CUBIC ZIRCONIAS
Let me highlight what I call little cubic zirconias of Google goodness. Here we go:
- The New York Post published “Google News Searches Ranked AI-Generated Rip-offs Above Real Articles — Including a Post Exclusive.” The main point is that Google’s estimable system and wizards cannot tell diamonds from the chemical twins produced by non-Googlers. With elections coming, let’s talk about trust in search results, shall we?
- Google’s wizards have created a new color for the Pixel phone. Read about the innovative green at this link.
- TechRadar reported that Google has a Kubernetes “flaw.” Who can exploit it? Allegedly anyone with a Google Gmail account. Details at this Web location.
Before I close this week’s edition of Gems, I want to mention two relatively minor items. Some people may think these molehills are much larger issues. What can I do?
Google has found that firing people is difficult. According to Business Insider, Googlers fired in South Korea won’t leave the company. Okay. Whatever.
Also, New York Magazine, a veritable treasure trove of technical information, reports that Google has ended the human Internet with the upgrade Chrome browser. News flash: The human Internet was killed by search engine optimization years ago.
Watch for more Google Gems next week. I think there will be sparkly items available.
Stephen E Arnold, January 30, 2024
Ho-Hum Write Up with Some Golden Nuggets
January 30, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
I read “Anthropic Confirms It Suffered a Data Leak.” I know. I know. Another security breach involving an outfit working with the Bezos bulldozer and Googzilla. Snore. But in the write up, tucked away were a couple of statements I found interesting.
“Hey, pardner, I found an inconsistency.” Two tries for a prospector and a horse. Good enough, MSFT Copilot Bing thing. I won’t ask about your secure email.
Here these items are:
- Microsoft, Amazon and others are being asked by a US government agency “to provide agreements and rationale for collaborations and their implications; analysis of competitive impact; and information on any other government entities requesting information or performing investigations.” Regulatory scrutiny of the techno feudal champions?
- The write up asserts: “Anthropic has made a “long-term commitment” to provide AWS customers with “future generations” of its models through Amazon Bedrock, and will allow them early access to unique features for model customization and fine-tuning purposes.” Love at first sight?
- And a fascinating quote from a Googler. Note: I have put in bold some key words which I found interesting:
“Anthropic and Google Cloud share the same values when it comes to developing AI–it needs to be done in both a bold and responsible way,” Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said in a statement on their relationship. “This expanded partnership with Anthropic, built on years of working together, will bring AI to more people safely and securely, and provides another example of how the most innovative and fastest growing AI startups are building on Google Cloud.”
Yeah, but the article is called “Anthropic Confirms It Suffered a Data Leak.” What’s with the securely?
Ah, regulatory scrutiny and obvious inconsistency. Ho-hum with a good enough tossed in for spice.
Stephen E Arnold, January 30, 2024
Apple, Now Number One, But Maybe Not in Mobile Security?
January 26, 2024
This essay is the work of a dumb dinobaby. No smart software required.
MIT Professor Stuart E. Madnick allegedly discovered that iPhone data breaches tripled between 2013-2022. Venture Beat explains more in the article “Why Attackers Love To Target Misconfigured Clouds And Phones.”
Hackers use every method to benefit from misconfiguration, but ransomware is their favorite technique. Madnick discovered a near 50% increase in ransomware attacks in organizations in the first six months of 2023 compared to 2022. After finding the breach, hackers then attack organizations’ mobile phone fleets. They freeze all communications until the ransom is paid.
Bad actors want to find the easiest ways into clouds. Unfortunately organizations are unaware that attacks happen when they don’t monitor their networks:
Merritt Baer, Field CISO at Lacework, says that bad actors look first for an easy front door to access misconfigured clouds, the identities and access to entire fleets of mobile devices. “Novel exploits (zero-days) or even new uses of existing exploits are expensive to research and discover. Why burn an expensive zero-day when you don’t need to? Most bad actors can find a way in through the “front door”– that is, using legitimate credentials (in unauthorized ways).”
Baer added, ‘This avenue works because most permissions are overprovisioned (they aren’t pruned down/least privileged as much as they could be), and because with legitimate credentials, it’s hard to tell which calls are authorized/ done by a real user versus malicious/ done by a bad actor.’”
Almost 99% of cloud security breaches are due to incorrectly set manual controls. Also nearly 50% of organizations unintentionally exposed storage, APIs, network scents, and applications. These breaches cost an average of $4 million to solve.
Organizations need to rely on more than encryption to protect their infrastructures. Most attacks occur because bad actors use authenticate credentials. Unified endpoint management, passwordless multi-factor authentication, and mobile device management housed on a single platform is the best defense.
How about these possibly true revelations about Apple?
Whitney Grace, January 26, 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
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
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