Verizon: Hypothetically Thinking about Yahoo
January 28, 2016
I read “Yahoo! Rises on Pivotal Upgrade as Verizon Eyes Core Assets.” Much investment “news” relates to churn. You know when your financial advisor calls and suggests story A means buy or sell stock B. Churn. It keeps the commissions train running.
I found the news that Pivotal Research has put a happy face on the Yahooligans’ ticker symbol. The write up said:
Yahoo! Inc. shares rallied as much as 2% during pre-market hours today, after Pivotal Research analyst Brian Weiser bumped its rating from Hold to Buy. The upward revision was made ahead of the company’s fourth quarter of fiscal 2015 (4QFY15) earnings, scheduled for next week.
Ah, ha, the Xoogler has the ship sailing in calm waters.
Here’s the tasty morsel:
According to recent rumors, Verizon Communications have launched an acquisition bid worth $8 billion for Yahoo’s core business. Pivotal Research analysts believe that the deal could have a positive impact on the company, as well as on Verizon, which intends to cement its presence in the digital advertising space.
I love rumors. Wait. I hear the whistle of the commission train now. Gotta run.
Stephen E Arnold, January 28, 2016
Google Maps: Blurred Spots
January 28, 2016
Short honk: You might be able to search by lat and long, but you will not see “it.” To get a partial run down on what’s not visible in Google Maps, navigate to “Controversial Places That Google Maps Won’t Let You See.”
The question becomes, “How does one see these blurred locations?” There are some options, but that’s the information covered in my lectures for Telestrategies’ “Now That Google Doesn’t Work, What Does an Investigator Do.” There are some free and for fee services which are quite useful.
A good question to ponder is, “Why?”
Why are some locations visible via Google and the same locations are not visible in Bing?
If it is not there, one cannot search it. If it is there and blurred, one has to find an option. Life online. Such a drag.
Stephen E Arnold, January 28, 2016
Anonymity Not Always Secured for Tor and Dark Web Users
January 28, 2016
From the Washington Post comes an article pertinent to investigative security technologies called This is how the government is catching people who use child porn sites. This piece outlines the process used by the FBI to identify a Tor user’s identity, despite the anonymity Tor provides. The article explains how this occurred in one case unmasking the user Pewter,
“In order to uncover Pewter’s true identity and location, the FBI quietly turned to a technique more typically used by hackers. The agency, with a warrant, surreptitiously placed computer code, or malware, on all computers that logged into the Playpen site. When Pewter connected, the malware exploited a flaw in his browser, forcing his computer to reveal its true Internet protocol address. From there, a subpoena to Comcast yielded his real name and address.”
Some are concerned with privacy of the thousands of users whose computers are also hacked in processes such as the one described above. The user who was caught in this case is arguing the government’s use of such tools violated the Fourth Amendment. One federal prosecutor quoted in the article describes the search processes used in this case as a “gray area in the law”. His point, that technology is eclipsing the law, is definitely one that deserves more attention from all angles: the public, governmental agencies, and private companies.
Megan Feil, January 28, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Customize Your News with Semantic Search
January 28, 2016
There are many apps available that can aggregate news stories that cater to your interests: Feedly, Google News, Pulp, and other RSS feeders. While these apps have their strengths and weaknesses, one question you need to ask is: do they use semantic search? If you want a news app designed specifically to bring you news stories using semantic search there is “Algo: Semantic Search Engine For Customizable News” and it can be purchased on iTunes.
SkyGrid developed Algo and Apple named it a “Best News App”. It has earned a 4.5 star rating. Algo was designed to keep users up-to-date on news, follow topics of interest, and your favorite publications to create your own personalized newspaper.
Algo is described as:
“The only true real-time news aggregator. Simple, fast, and reliable, Algo is the only place to follow all of your favorite topics and interests. Search for anything you want! From people to TV shows to companies to finance, follow your interests on Algo. Set notifications for each topic and be notified as information updates in real-time.”
Other Algo features are ability to share articles on any service, save favorite articles, notification settings, and up-to-date news in real time. Algo’s reliance on semantic search is one of the reasons why it has gained such favor with Apple and iTunes users.
Whitney Grace, January 28, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Palantir: Revenue Distribution
January 27, 2016
I came across a write up in a Chinese blog about Palantir. You can find the original text at this link. I have no idea if the information are accurate, but I had not seen this breakdown before:
The chart from “Touchweb” shows that in FY 2015 privately held Palantir derives 71 percent of its revenue from commercial clients.
The report then lists the lines of business which the company offers. Again this was information I had not previously seen:
Energy, disaster recovery, consumer goods, and card services
- Retail, pharmaceuticals, media, and insurance
- Audit, legal prosecution
- Cyber security, banking
- Healthcare research
- Local law enforcement, finance
- Counter terrorism, war fighting, special forces.
Because Palantir is privately held, there is not solid, audited data available to folks in Kentucky at this time.
Nevertheless, the important point is that the Palantir search and content processing platform has a hefty valuation, lots of venture financing, and what appears to be a diversified book of business.
Stephen E Arnold, January 27, 2016
Cheerleading for the SAS Text Exploration Framework
January 27, 2016
SAS is a stalwart in the number crunching world. I visualize the company’s executives chatting among themselves about the Big Data revolution, the text mining epoch, and the predictive analytics juggernaut.
Well, SAS is now tapping that staff interaction.
Navigate to “To Data Scientists and Beyond! One of Many Applications of Text Analytics.” There is an explanation of the ease of use of SAS. Okay, but my recollection was that I had to hire a PhD in statistics from Cornell University to chase down the code which was slowing our survivability analyses to meander instead of trot.
I learned:
One of the misconceptions I often see is the expectation that it takes a data scientist, or at least an advanced degree in analytics, to work with text analytics products. That is not the case. If you can type a search into a Google toolbar, you can get value from text analytics.
The write up contains a screenshot too. Where did the text analytics plumbing come from? Perchance an acquisition in 2008 like the canny purchase Teragram’s late 1990s technology?
The write up focuses on law enforcement and intelligence applications of text analytics. I find that interesting because Palantir is allegedly deriving more than 60 percent of the firm’s revenue from commercial customers like JP Morgan and starting to get some traction in health care.
Check out the screenshot. That is worth 1,000 words. SAS has been working on the interface thing to some benefit.
Stephen E Arnold, January 27, 2016
Microsoft: Deep Learning Freebie
January 27, 2016
Every big out in the money collecting biz wants to give away smart software tools. A trend methinks. Navigate to “Microsoft Releases CNTK, Its Open Source Deep Learning Toolkit, on GitHub.” The write up reveals:
In internal tests, Huang said CNTK has proved more efficient than four other popular computational toolkits that developers use to create deep learning models for things like speech and image recognition, because it has better communication capabilities. “The CNTK toolkit is just insanely more efficient than anything we have ever seen,” Huang [Microsoft wizard] said.
Who would not believe this? A person struggling to get the new Surface to work? An individual bedeviled by Windows 10 nag screens? A hapless corporate information technology person trying to recover a corrupted PowerPoint from Microsoft’s cloud service? A Bing user trying to figure out where the shopping side of the world’s best search system for Yahooligans is hiding?
The write up also asserted:
Huang said it was important for his team to be able to address Microsoft’s internal needs with a tool like CNTK, but they also want to provide the same resources to other researchers who are making similar advances in deep learning. That’s why they decided to make the tools available via open source licenses to other researchers and developers.
Absolutely. Google gives away Chromebooks and Microsoft gives away its smart software tools. Altruism, your time has come.
Stephen E Arnold, January 26, 2016
Trust and Security Lessons Offered by the Dark Web
January 27, 2016
Spreading lessons about trust is not what most people think when they think of the drug dealers, hackers and cyber criminals of the Dark Web, but an article from Medium begs to differ. Let’s hear it for the bad guys: What the Dark Web can teach us about trust focuses on the idea that these “bad guys” are successfully and efficiently making transactions, ultimately based on trust. The article states:
“Crucially, they offer the same kind of reliability of experience rather than ripping people off, thus creating a sustainable business model. Transactions are made using digital currency Bitcoin and are recorded and verified through a distributed public ledger called the block chain. In this way, such sites build trust by offering a straightforward transaction built on transparency, albeit achieved with complete anonymity.”
This trust may be seen as missing from many internet sites where collection of personal data is the price of admission; the Dark Web offers an alternative with the promise of information not being tracked. Ironically, the issue of information being collected, albeit through other means, and sold through channels in the Dark Web means the problem of security is not eradicated.
Megan Feil, January 27, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Beware: Spyware Disguised as Search
January 27, 2016
Do you know how when you type an incorrect Web address into the search bar and you are redirected to a search page saying it could not find the address? According to PCRisk one of these redirected pages could mean you serious harm, “Snjsearch.com Redirect.” If you have ever heard of snjsearch.com, you should get off the page as quickly as possible.
Snjsearch masquerades as a legitimate Internet search engine with more relevant results than Google. However, this is a false claim! The Snjsearch.com developers include spyware within an installation packet to track browsing history and other sensitive information.
The biggest question you are probably asking is how snjsearch.com gets installed on your computer?
“This deceptive website is promoted as a ‘bundle’ with other software. The developers know that many users do not pay enough attention when downloading and installing software. Therefore, bundled applications (or in this case, modification of browser settings) are usually concealed within the ‘Custom/Advanced’ settings. Many users rush these processes and skip virtually all steps, leading to inadvertent installation of potentially unwanted programs. This exposes their systems to risk of further infection and compromises their privacy.”
The easiest way to avoid downloading snjsearch.com is to monitor all downloads, making sure that snjsearch.com is not included in an installation bundle. Another preventive measure would be to know where you download an item. Remember the saying, “don’t take candy from strangers”? Well, do not take free downloads from strange Web sites.
If you believe you have snjsearch.com on your computer, the article contains steps to remove it. If you are a curious person, do not experiment with snjsearch.com unless appropriate precautions are taken; namely, using a separate, non-work computing device not connected to an office or work related network.
Whitney Grace, January 27, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Unogs: A Third Party Netflix Search
January 26, 2016
My wife loves Netflix. She finds programs that strike me as a bit fanciful, but that’s okay. How do she, her friends, and millions of other people locate just the right video confection for snowmageddon weekend?
Not with the Netflix search and recommendation as far as I know. I dabbled with this service a couple of times and formed two opinions:
- The folks have a lot of work to do in basic findability
- The interface is not my cup of hot chocolate. (If you love that Netflix search system, have at it. I still read.)
An alternative seems to be available if the information in “This Site Lets You Search the Worldwide Netflix Library” is on the money. I learned one can use Unogs. Here’s some color:
The “unofficial Netflix online Global Search” (uNoGS) takes most of the guesswork out of the process: it lets you search by movie or actor, narrow the results by a few extra fields, and then spits out what movies are available in which countries. From there, users just need to use one of many cheap VPN services, fake the correct country, and let the back episodes of Doctor Who trickle in. The site is also a wealth of data on which countries have the best and worst libraries, and what VPNs give access to which countries. According to an interview with TorrentFreak, the site’s creator ‘Brian’ initially created the site solely for his own personal use, before putting it online last year.
Keep those brain cells in idle mode. Gobble the videos, gentle reader. Some of the large online outfits really covet people who find video consumption more fun that reading the works of James Clerk Maxwell.
Stephen E Arnold, January 27, 2016
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