Quote to Note: One Computer Error Can Lead to a Plan. A Plan?
August 8, 2016
I read “Delta’s Massive Computer Outage Is Part of a Much Bigger Problem.” This is an authoritative write up. The newspaper publishing this insight is owned by Jeff Bezos, owner of Amazon and possibly the world’s smartest man. Here’s the quote I highlighted in hot pink:
Computers and automated systems have increased the efficiency and productivity of businesses in ways that were unimaginable a century, or even decades ago. But whether because of cyber attacks or just plain computer errors, the inter-connectivity built into almost all aspects of our lives means that one problem can quickly cascade into a catastrophe. So companies need to have a plan in place for when something goes wrong.
Yes, a plan. Anyone remember Tandem computers? Next time Amazon goes Wiley Coyote, I will contemplate this parental suggestion.
Stephen E Arnold, August 8, 2016
LucidWorks Bet on Spark. Now What?
August 8, 2016
Many clear night ago, Lucid Imagination offered an open source enterprise search solution. Presidents came. Presidents went. Lucid Imagination morphed into LucidWorks. I promptly referred to the company in this way: Lucid works, really?
The firm embraced Spark and did a not-unexpected pirouette into a Big Data outfit. I know. I know. Lucid Imagination is a company anchored in key word search, but this is the 21st century. Pirouettes are better than mere pivots, so Big Data it is.
I read “Big Data Brawlers: 4 Challengers to Spark” and the write up triggered some thoughts about LucidWorks. Really.
The point of the story is to identify four open source solutions which do what Spark allegedly does so darned well. Each of these challengers:
- Scales
- Handles Big Data (whatever that means)
- Exploits cheap memory so there are no slug like disc writes
- Does the old school batch processing thing.
What are the “challengers” to Spark? Here are the contenders:
- Apache Apex. Once proprietary, now open source, the software does micro batching for almost, sort of real time functions
- Heron. Another real time solution with spouts and bolts. Excited?
- Apache Flink. This is an open source library with a one two punch: It does the Flink stuff and the Spark stuff.
- Onyx. This is a distributed computation system which will appeal to the Java folks.
What do these Spark alternatives have to do with LucidWorks, really? I think there is going to be one major impact. LucidWorks will have to spend or invest in supporting whatever becomes the next big thing. Recommind hit a glass ceiling with its business model. LucidWorks may be bumping into the open source sky light. Instead of being stopped, LucidWorks has to keep investing to keep pace with what the community driven folks generate with little thought to the impact on companies trying to earn a living with open source.
Stephen E Arnold, August 8, 2016
Auditing Algorithms: The Impossible Dream
August 8, 2016
Remember this lyric:
To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
And to run where
the brave dare not go
Yep, killing windmills.
I read “Make Algorithms Accountable.” You may find it online at this link. No promises because the source is a “real journalist’s dream,” the New York Times.
The main point of the write up is to express an impossible dream. Those who craft numerical recipes have to have their algorithms audited. Not the algorithm assembler, mind you, the algorithm itself.
I noted this passage:
…advocates for big data due process argue that much more must be done to assure the appropriateness and accuracy of algorithm results. An algorithm is a procedure or set of instructions often used by a computer to solve a problem. Many algorithms are secret.
A conundrum not as difficult as solving death, but a kissing cousin as some in Harrod’s Creek say.
Are algorithms biased? Do squirrels get shot in Harrod’s Creek? In case you are wondering, the answer is yes. The recipe is not the problem. There are cooks in the mix.
I can hear this now:
This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far
To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march,
march into hell
For that heavenly cause
Stephen E Arnold, August 8, 2016
Dark Web Purchases Potentially More Challenging Than Media Portrays
August 8, 2016
German TV journalists recently discovered acquiring weapons on the Dark Web may be more challenging than media coverage suggests. Vice’s Motherboard published an article on this called TV Journalists Try Buying AK-47 on Dark Web, Fail. Producers for German channel ARD, working for a show “Fear of terror—how vulnerable is Germany” lost about $800 in bitcoin during the attempted transaction through a middleman. We learned,
“It’s not totally clear if this was because the seller wasn’t legitimate, or whether the package had been intercepted. Regardless, this shouldn’t be much of a surprise: The dark web gun trade is rife with scammers. One con-artist previously told Motherboard he would ask legal sellers to send him photos of weapons next to a piece of paper with his username. From here, he would “just send a bag of sugar,” when an order came in. And undercover law enforcement agents also sell weapons in order to identify potential customers.”
Motherboard is careful to reference cases of successful Dark Web gun sales. Not that readers would be so quick to assume guns cannot be easily purchased on the Dark Web after seeing numerous media coverage that is the case. For the average reader, is the knowledge of the Dark Web from media or personal experience? We see a lot of articles reporting number of web sites that exist, perhaps because of the inability to accurately report a number of users on the Dark Web. While that may not be retrievable, perhaps the number of Tor downloads may be.
Megan Feil, August 8, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
There is a Louisville, Kentucky Hidden /Dark Web meet up on August 23, 2016.
Information is at this link: https://www.meetup.com/Louisville-Hidden-Dark-Web-Meetup/events/233019199/
Internet Ad Fraud, Who Knew There Would Be Such a Thing?
August 8, 2016
I hate Internet ads. They pop up everywhere when I am trying to watch a video, read an email, or skim through an article. I know Internet ads are important to commerce and help keep certain services free, but why must they have sounds now? It should not come as a surprise with the amount of Internet ads that fraud would be associated with them at some point. The Register shares how to detect fraud in the story, “Digital Ad Biz Is Fraudulent By Design, Complain Big Brands.”
The World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) is a global trade body that represents the biggest spenders in digital advertising. (MasterCard and Unilever are two of the biggest cash cows.) Adverting fraud not only harms advertising firms, but also brands seeking to sell their products and services. The WFA urges advertising firms that they not only clean up their own acts, devout resources to fight fraud, and not be so desperate for clicks and pocket change.
Businesses end up buying “cheap” traffic to bolster their numbers, but they are throwing their dollars into a money pit. The WFA advises that businesses limit their digital investments to avoid fraud. The WFA also predicts that by 2025 digital ad fraud could exceed $50 billion a year.
Digital ad fraud can take many forms:
“There are many shady practices at work, falling into three categories, the report explains.
- Website fraud is where the operator is an ad network affiliate, such as in conversion fraud schemes.
- Platform fraud includes social network and user-generated-content hosting sites.
- Data fraud includes fiddling the numbers, for example by using a botnet.
Website fraud can be identified because the site sends more traffic to an ad exchange than its size suggests it should – so it could be bumping up the numbers. Website fraud encompasses a range of schemes including hidden ads, cookie stuffing, clickjacking and cloudbot traffic. The latter is where a hosting company’s IP addresses generate traffic.”
Ad fraud is easier than ever, because if you create a simple bot algorithm, paint yourself with a reputable ad business, and snap of a up clients you are set to wheel in the dollars. It is not unsurprising that ad fraud is so common and regulation is slow. Internet standards are hard to regulate, even Google has its own problems.
Whitney Grace, August 8, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
There is a Louisville, Kentucky Hidden /Dark Web meet up on August 23, 2016.
Information is at this link: https://www.meetup.com/Louisville-Hidden-Dark-Web-Meetup/events/233019199/
Hewlett Packard: A Future of Uncertainty
August 7, 2016
I read “Private Equity Ponders Hewlett Packard Enterprise Buyout.” I think this is called a tap out in millennial lingo or quitting in less zippy language. I recognize that absolutely everything I read on the Internet is true. Especially Information.
Hewlett Packard has created some of its problems (Board of Directors’ issues, the exciting Autonomy matter, and the great mitosis which saw ink go one way and enterprise services another.) Other problems are external. Who imagined Amazon, the digital Wal-Mart, becoming the big dog in cloud computing. The economy? Well, let’s leave that to the political and economic wizards with MBAs, CPAs, and lawyers, lots of lawyers.
The write up, which I assume is spot on, informed me with information:
Several private equity firms including KKR, Apollo Global Management and Carlyle Group are sniffing around Hewlett Packard Enterprise, contemplating a buyout of the firm, said a person who has had talks with representatives of the firms. Such a deal would be worth more than $40 billion.
What else does the write up assert? I don’t know because after the “exclusive” and the fetching factoid, I have to pony up dough to learn more. My hunch is that the green eyeshade crowd believes that the individual chunks of HPE are worth more than the company in its present form.
Fortune Magazine, once a unit of America Online, knows of what it speaks in “These Private Equity Firms Could Be Looking to Buy Hewlett Packard Enterprise.” No one is exactly sure what’s afoot. I highlighted this passage:
Regardless of the conflicting reports, it seems that HPE is undergoing another significant transformation again.
I like the “transformation” angle. It reminds me of Dr. Daphne Swartz’s lecture in Biology 101 about the caterpillar to butterfly thing. You know a crawly worm with fur becomes a winged creature with nifty scales. These scales impart the color. Otherwise, the butterfly’s wings, like the emperor without clothes, are not much to look at.
What about Autonomy I ask myself? Well, it seems that it is a race to see who will sell the software first. Hewlett Packard seems to be shopping the unit. But if those fun loving green hued folks get their first, some other pavement pounders will get in on the act.
What’s this mean for licensees of Autonomy? The sunk costs can be fascinating. Unlike the colors of the butterfly’s wings, the costs of training, tuning, and maintaining the system can be spectacular.
The turmoil swirling around HPE is chaotic, maybe disruptive. To some, that’s a good thing. To those who just want to find information, the future looks like a furry caterpillar: Ugly and pesticides infuse the stuff the worm eats.
Stephen E Arnold, August 6, 2016
Looking for Signals to Riches
August 6, 2016
I read “Invested Money Matters Most in Big Data Sentiment Analysis.” I puzzled over the headline for a moment and then realized that if a person or fund holds lots of shares and then criticizes that company on Twitter, the “signal” might be worth heeding.
Was I correct? I read the article and learned:
“Sentiment is something new to the financial industry because when we talk about sentiment we are looking at social media data, the news, blogs and other data. But we don’t stop at unstructured data sets. We also look at the sentiment by transaction. For example, we look at insider trading and some other signals. Actually, this is also called sentiment and, based on transaction datasets, more than the textual datasets. This sentiment factor is the attitude with which traders approach a stock, either positive or negative.
Well, gee whiz. I was correct.
The write up is quite enthusiastic about a company which looks for “sentiment” in order to divine the future. Common sense is much better when supported by nifty technologies; for example:
Kavout [a sentiment company the write up is excited about] is also in the process of deploying deep learning models to its data.
Yes, deep learning. Innovation is alive and well. I will struggle forward with fewer buzzwords, thank you.
Stephen E Arnold, August 7, 2016
Alphabet Google Cannot Sink the Yacht Affair
August 5, 2016
I am not sure why the Google yacht thing continues to make news. One person. One yacht. One death. That’s pretty small potatoes in today’s interesting world. I noticed “Kiss of Death and the Google Exec” and decided to skip it. No, I thought, I may as well skim the “real journalism” and check out what continues to attract the attention of “real journalists.” But the story has one big omission. Spoiler: Google’s people operations and its role in assisting employees.
The write up summarizes the incident, a blip really. A fellow named Forrest Hayes worked at Google. He was involved in the company’s secret projects. He bought a boat. He ended up dead.
The write up reminded me:
On the night of November 22, 2013 … Forrest Hayes was on his yacht … and he didn’t come home that night. And his wife became concerned. She called the captain they retained for this yacht and he went and he got on the boat… Hayes’ body was found lying in the main cabin.
The write up then states:
Hayes had a profile page on a dating website, called SeekingArrangement.com. It would be a critical clue in learning the identity of that mystery tattooed woman.
Yikes.
Then the write up reports that a video camera on the boat recorded drug use. What was the drug for the Google exec? I learned:
As police would learn, the drug of choice that night was heroin.
Interesting.
The video allowed the police to locate the individual recorded on the boat’s video system. The write up explains what the meet up Web site provides its customers.
Using a range of investigative techniques, the police confronted the suspect. The suspect had other relationships and had a “dark” life. The write up explains that
in September of 2013, two months before Forrest Hayes died, Tichelman’s fiancé, Dean Riopelle, died with heroin in his system…
The write up notes:
Alix Tichelman pleads guilty to involuntary manslaughter.
Then the write up jumps back to the family of the Google exec. I learned:
After the hearing, there was another stunning development. Prosecutor Rafael Vasquez says the family of Forrest Hayes told him they never wanted Alix Tichelman charged.
“The family did not want this case to be filed, they would have been very happy if this case had been dismissed,” Vasquez explained. “They were terrified about the prospect of this case going to trial.” The family, he said, did not want that video from Hayes’ boat to ever be made public. “I can only imagine what further pain, what further humiliation they would endure if that video was released out into the public,” said Vasquez.
My reaction to this story is mixed. On one hand, the event is public and is a subject suitable for “real journalism.” On the other, an individual behaved in a manner which seems out of bounds.
Google has people operations. Could the folks involved with this function at Google have implemented programs to assist the Google executive? This question is not addressed in the write up. Also, were co-workers of the Googler aware of the person’s behavior?
Working at companies like Google can be stressful. The write up focuses on the sensational nature of the boat incident. I wonder if the “real journalists” will consider the Google management angle. Searches for information about “Google people operations” return a modest amount of information in my opinion. There may be work to do for the “real journalists” interested in this incident.
Stephen E Arnold, August 5, 2016
IBM Cognitive Storage Creates a Hierarchy of Data Value
August 5, 2016
The article titled IBM Introduces Cognitive Storage on EWeek reveals the advances in storage technology. It may sound less sexy than big data, but it is an integral part of our ability to sort and retrieve data based on the metric of data value. For a computer to determine a hierarchy of data value would also enable it to locate and archive unimportant data, freeing up space for data of more relevance. The article explains,
“In essence, the concept helps computers to learn what to remember and what to forget, IBM said… “With rising costs in energy and the explosion in big data, particularly from the Internet of Things, this is a critical challenge as it could lead to huge savings in storage capacity, which means less media costs and less energy consumption… if 1,000 employees are accessing the same files every day, the value of that data set should be very high.”
Frequency of use is a major factor in determining data value, so IBM created trackers to monitor this sort of metadata. Interestingly, the article states that IBM’s cognitive computing was inspired by astronomy. An astronomer would tag incoming data sets from another galaxy as “highly important” or less so. So what happens to the less important data? It isn’t destroyed, but rather relegated to what Charles King of Pund-IT calls a “deep freeze.”
Chelsea Kerwin, August 5, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Is Google a New Science Fiction Sub-Genre?
August 5, 2016
Science fiction is a genre that inspires people to seek the impossible and make it a reality. Many modern inventors, scientists, computer programmers, and even artists contribute their success and careers from inspiration they garnered from the genre. Even search engine Google pulled inspiration from science fiction, but one must speculate how much of Google’s ventures are real or mere fiction? Vanity Fair questions whether or not “Is Google’s BioTech Division The Next Theranos?”
Verily Life Sciences is GoogleX’s biotech division and the company has yet to produce any biotechnology that has revolutionized the medical field. They bragged about a contact lens that would measure blood glucose levels and a wristband that could detect cancer. Verily employees have shared their views about Verily’s projects, alluding that they are more in line to fanning the Google fanfare than producing real products. Other experts are saying that Google is displaying a “Silicon Valley arrogance” along the lines of Theranos.
Theranos misled investors about its “state of the art” technology and is now under criminal investigation. Verily is supposedly different than Theranos:
“Verily, however, is not positioning itself as a company with a salable product like Theranos. Verily ‘is not a products company,’ chief medical officer Jessica Mega argued Monday on Bloomberg TV. ‘But it’s a company really focused on trying to shift the needle when it comes to health and disease.’ That’s a distinction, luckily for Google, that could make all the difference.”
There is also a distinction between fantasy and a reality and counting your chickens before they hatch. Google should be investing in experimentation medical technology that could improve treatment and save lives, but they should not promise anything until they have significant research and even a prototype as proof. Google should discuss their ventures, but not brag about them as if they were a sure thing.
Whitney Grace, August 5, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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