Microsoft Looks Slightly Desperate Paying People to Use Edge and Bing
September 28, 2016
The article on Business Insider titled Microsoft Will Actually Pay You to Use Its Newest Web Browser shows the evolution of Microsoft’s program from using Bing Rewards to their own Microsoft Rewards. Originally, just using Bing could earn users points towards Starbucks, Amazon, and Hulu, to name a few. Microsoft is now rebranding and expanding the program to incentivize users to spend time on Microsoft Edge, the child of Internet Explorer. The article states,
So long as you’re actively using Microsoft Edge — defined as having the Edge window open and actually using it to browse the web…— you’ll accrue points that can be redeemed for prizes, up to 30 hours’ worth a month. While Windows 10 is on over 350 million active devices, the Edge browser hasn’t quite made the splash that Microsoft had hoped for. Current numbers place Edge usage at just over 4.2% of the overall browser market.
The article makes a point of mentioning that for this program to work for users, they can’t just have Microsoft Edge open. They also must use Microsoft Bing as their default search engine. Without that setup, no points for you. Some users might jump at the chance to get paid for doing practically nothing, but others might be less than willing to expose themselves to being tracked by Microsoft. Still others might wince at the idea of giving up their Google default. Microsoft Edge: the broke person’s Google Chrome.
Chelsea Kerwin, September 28, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
SearchBlox 8.5 Now Available
September 28, 2016
A brief write-up at DataQuest, “AI-Based Cognitive Business Reasoning with SearchBlox v8.5,” informs us about the latest release of the enterprise-search, sentiment-analysis, and text-analytics software. The press release describes this edition:
“Version 8.5 features the addition of new connectors including streaming, API and storage data sources bringing the total number of available sources to 75. This new release allows customers to use advanced entity extraction (person, organization, product, title, location, date, time, urls, identifiers, phone, email, money, distance) from 18 different languages within unstructured data streams on a real time basis. Use cases include advanced federated search, fraud or anomaly detection, content recommendations, smart business workflows, customer experience management and ecommerce optimization solutions. SearchBlox can use your existing data to build AI based cognitive learning models for your most complex use cases.
The write-up describes the three key features of SearchBlox 8.5: The new connectors mentioned above include Magento, YouTube, ServiceNow, MS Exchange, Twilio, Office 365, Quandl, Cassandra, Google BigQuery, Couchbase, HBase, Solr, and Elasticsearch. Their entity extraction tool functions in 18 languages. And users can now leverage the AI to build learning models for specific use cases. The new release also fixes some bugs and implements performance improvements.
Cynthia Murrell, September 28, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
HonkinNews for September 27, 2016, Now Available
September 27, 2016
This week’s HonkinNews video tackles Yahoo’s data breach. Stephen E Arnold reveals that Beyond Search thinks Yahoo is a hoot and tags the company Yahoot. Plus, HonkinNews suggests that Oliver Stone may want to do a follow up to Snowden. The new film could be “Marissa: Purple Sun Down.” Other stories include Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s opportunity to see the light with Dr. Michael Lynch’s Luminance. The video explains puppy bias and comments on Harvard’s interest in sugar and fat. You can view the seven minute video at https://youtu.be/64rJdlj4Lew.
Kenny Toth, September 27, 2016
Key Words and Semantic Annotation
September 27, 2016
I read “Exploiting Semantic Annotation of Content with Linked Data to Improve Searching Performance in Web Repositories.” The nub of the paper is, “Better together.” The idea is that key words work if one knows the subject and the terminology required to snag the desired information.
If not, then semantic indexing provides another path. If the conclusion seems obvious, consider that two paths are better for users. The researchers used Elasticsearch. However, the real world issue is the cost of expertise and the computational cost and time required to add another path. You can download the journal paper at this link.
Stephen E Arnold, September 27, 2016
Snowden Revelations: Many Clicks, Few Will Access Documents
September 27, 2016
I read “This Is Everything Edward Snowden Revealed in Just One Year of Unprecedented Top-Secret Leaks.” I love “everything” articles. If you follow the Snowden documents, you know that these are scattered across different sites. Most of the write ups referencing the documents point to mini versions of the slides. I had high hopes that this write up would create a list of direct links to downloadable PDFs. No such luck. My conclusion about the article is that it does little to make the Snowden documents more readily available. Nevertheless, I love writes ups with the word “everything” in their title. Easy to say. Either too difficult, too time consuming, or to risky to do.
Stephen E Arnold, September 27, 2016
Recent Developments in Deep Learning Architecture from AlexNet to ResNet
September 27, 2016
The article on GitHub titled The 9 Deep Learning Papers You Need To Know About (Understanding CNNs Part 3) is not an article about the global media giant but rather the advancements in computer vision and convolutional neural networks (CNNs). The article frames its discussion around the ImageNet Large-Scale Recognition Challenges (ILSVRC), what it terms the “annual Olympics of computer vision…where teams compete to see who has the best computer vision model for tasks such as classification, localization, detection and more.” The article explains that the 2012 winners and their network (AlexNet) revolutionized the field.
This was the first time a model performed so well on a historically difficult ImageNet dataset. Utilizing techniques that are still used today, such as data augmentation and dropout, this paper really illustrated the benefits of CNNs and backed them up with record breaking performance in the competition.
In 2013, CNNs flooded in, and ZF Net was the winner with an error rate of 11.2% (down from AlexNet’s 15.4%.) Prior to AlexNet though, the lowest error rate was 26.2%. The article also discusses other progress in general network architecture including VGG Net, which emphasized depth and simplicity of CNNs necessary to hierarchical data representation, and GoogLeNet, which tossed the deep and simple rule out of the window and paved the way for future creative structuring using the Inception model.
Chelsea Kerwin, September 27, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
There is a Louisville, Kentucky Hidden Web/Dark Web meet up on September 27, 2016.
Information is at this link: https://www.meetup.com/Louisville-Hidden-Dark-Web-Meetup/events/233599645/
The Uncertain Fate of OpenOffice
September 27, 2016
We are in danger of losing a popular open-source alternative to the Microsoft Office suite, we learn from the piece, “Lack of Volunteer Contributors Could Mean the End for OpenOffice” at Neowin. Could this the fate of open source search, as well?
Writer William Burrows observes that few updates for OpenOffice have emerged of late, only three since 2013, and the last stable point revision was released about a year ago. More strikingly, it took a month to patch a major security flaw over the summer, reports Burrows. He goes on to summarize OpenOffice’s 14-year history, culminating it the project’s donation to Apache by Oracle in 2011. It appears to have been downhill from there. The article tells us:
It was at this point that a good portion of the volunteer developer base reportedly moved onto the forked LibreOffice project. Since becoming Apache OpenOffice, activity on project has diminished significantly. In a statement by Dennis Hamilton, the project’s volunteer vice president, released in an email to the mailing list it was suggested that “retirement of the project is a serious possibility” citing concerns that the current team of around six volunteer developers who maintain the project may not have sufficient resources to eliminate security vulnerabilities. There is still some hope for OpenOffice, though, with some of the contributors suggesting that discussion about a shutdown may be a little premature, and that attracting new contributors is still possible.
In fact, OpenOffice was downloaded over 29 million times last year, so obviously it still has a following. LibreOffice is currently considered more successful, but that could change if OpenOffice manages to attract a resurgence of developers willing to contribute to the project. Any volunteers?
Cynthia Murrell, September 27, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
There is a Louisville, Kentucky Hidden Web/Dark Web meet up on September 27, 2016.
Information is at this link: https://www.meetup.com/Louisville-Hidden-Dark-Web-Meetup/events/233599645/
Palantir: On the Radar of the Dept of Labor. Yes, Labor
September 27, 2016
I received an email from a friend who works in Washington. He wanted me to read “Palantir Alleged to Have Discriminated against Asian Job Seekers.” I read the article. The main point is that the US Department of Labor
sued data miner Palantir for discriminating against Asian job applicants for software engineering positions, the government…
Palantir is a government contractor. Government contractors have to follow the “rules of the road” where government contracts are concerned. Discrimination, like excessive profits on government work, is not a plus when seeking government contracts.
What is interesting to me is the timeline. Palantir filed suit against the US Army in June 2016. Now nine weeks the Department of Labor is finding fault with the high profile Palantir.
I noted this statement in the article cited above:
If Palantir doesn’t end the practice, the OFCCP will request the cancellation of the company’s contracts, as well as bar it from getting federal contracts in the future.
I no longer work in Washington. Heck, I no longer work. I do recall my experiences, however. I wonder if Palantir may find itself on the radar of the IRS and the Securities & Exchange Commission? What happens if the Office of Personnel Management reviews certain clearances?
I know that many events occur in Washington circles which are just coincidences. Sheer chance. I assume it is possible that Event A could be a trigger for Event B. I do not know. I have to do more thinking.
I do know from my own experiences that lighting up the radar of certain government institutions with enforcement authority can add considerable friction to the normal course of business in Washington.
The author of the article heard radar pings, and I assume Palantir might be able to pick them up as well. Foe me, this ping from the Department of Labor’s radar is like the gentle strumming of acoustic guitar. Other US enforcement agencies’ pings make an amped up Metallica guitar seem subdued. Ah, the legal Pathétique.
Stephen E Arnold. September 27, 2016
US Government: Computer Infrastructure
September 26, 2016
Curious about the cost of maintaining a computer infrastructures. Companies may know how much is spent to maintain the plumbing, but those numbers are usually buried in accounting-speak within the company. Details rarely emerge.
Here’s a useful chart about how much spending for information technology goes to maintain the old stuff and the status quo versus how much goes to the nifty new technology:
The important line is the solid blue one. Notice that the US Federal government spent $0.68 cents of every IT dollar on operations and maintenance in 2010. Jump to the 2017 estimate. Notice that the status quo is likely to consume $0.77 cents of every IT dollar.
Progress? If you want to dig into the information behind this chart, you can find the report GAO 677454 by running queries on the Alphabet Google system m. The title of the report is “Information Technology. Federal Agencies Need to Address Aging Legacy Systems.” Don’t bother trying the search box on the GAO.org Web site. The document is not in the index.
If you are not too keen on running old school mobile queries or talking to your nifty voice enabled search system, you can find the document at this link.
I want to point out that Palantir Technologies may see these types of data as proof that the US government needs to approach information technology in a different manner.
Stephen E Arnold, September 26, 2016
Google: The Power of Consumer Appeal
September 26, 2016
Ah, Google and technology. The two go together like bread and butter. I read “Google Maps Adds Support for Logging Caught Pokémon.” Quite a breakthrough. When a person snags a Squirtle, it is important to capture the details.
I noted this passage:
Google added support for Niantic Labs’ mobile game in the latest Maps update. More specifically, Google Maps Timeline feature now allows logging of Pokémon caught in Niantic Labs’ mobile game. For the uninitiated, Timeline is basically a geo-journal of sorts which shows Maps’ users where they’ve been and when.
Google’s potent timeline combined with Pokémon logging means that competitive Pokémon GO trackers can get lost. The consumer appeal of the Google Pokémon logging illustrates how technology continues to improve lives, further education, and generate savvy hunter gatherers of digital fantasy characters.
Stephen E Arnold, September 26, 2016
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