Factualities for April 3, 2019
April 3, 2019
Believe ‘em or not. Each week we ask ourselves, “What happened to those students who received D grades in Statistics 101? We think we know.
< 1 percent. The percentage of criminalized money seized by investigators from the funds flowing through the international financial system. Source: BBC
2 percent. Percentage of carbon emissions for which Volkswagen says it is responsible. Source: One News Page
3. Number of stickers required to crash a Tesla’s smart software. The stickers must be placed on the road on which the vehicle is traveling. Source: Extremetech
Four. Number of beers per day required to stunt developing brain growth by 47 percent. Source: New Atlas
13. Number of languages in which the US census will collect data. Source: NPR
21 days. If Mr. Trump closes the border, Americans run out of avocados in three weeks. Source: Guardian
30. Number of video games China’s information authority has just approved. Source: Reuters
33 percent. Businesses which will not invest in smart software. Source: Digital Journal
50 percent. Percentage of third generation keyboards at Basecamp which have failed. Source: TechRepublic
50 percent. The percentage of the Sony smartphone workforce to be terminated by 2020. Source: Nikkei
51.2 percent. Ownership stake of Google in Burning Man. Source: MixMag
70 percent. Chromium’s share of Web browsers. Source: Samuel Maddock
83 percent. Percentage of people happy to work alongside robots and 78 percent “are ready to take on new roles.” Source: Computer Weekly
300. The maximum number of search results Google returns for a query. Source: Digital Reader
1,000. The number of Google professionals objecting to the composition of the Google ethics group for artificial intelligence. Source: Technology Review
$172,222. The amount of money Knight Capital lost per second during a 45 minute outage. Source: Hmmz.org
$117 million. Amount Intel has recently invested in 14 start ups. Source: Venture Beat
1.5 billion. Number of Gmail users. Daiji World
Stephen E Arnold, April 3, 2019
Apple Conforms. No Wonder Certain US Government Officials Are Agitated with the Cupertino Elite
April 3, 2019
Apple’s attitude toward certain government officials has legs. San Bernadino, foot dragging, and China supplication — Not the best way to win friends and influence people in DC. The information in “Apple Censoring the News” may not be 100 percent accurate. But the description of how Apple has engineered a way to dress in a government regulation uniform is interesting.
The write up states:
To accomplish this censorship Apple is using a form of location fingerprinting that is not available to normal applications on iOS. It works like this: despite the fact that your phone uses a SIM from a US carrier it must connect to a Chinese cellular network. Apple is using private APIs to identify that you are in mainland China based on the name of the underlying cellular network and blocking access to the News app. This information is not available via public APIs in iOS1 specifically to improve privacy for users.
Why the razzle dazzle? To make certain that a mobile with a non-Chinese SIM cannot access blocked online services. Apple is taking a page from Burger King’s approach. Certain customers can indeed have it their way. An express window for some customers, and another line for “other” people where some news is only $10 per month.
Stephen E Arnold, April 3, 2019
Japan Times Interprets Google Behavior and Gomen Nasai Will Not Be Enough
April 3, 2019
I don’t want the Japan Times analyzing my behavior. Google, however, gets to enjoy this East Meets West experience. You can too. Just navigate to “Google Needs a Lesson in Patriotism.” The article is authored by Hal Brands, Johns Hopkins University.
The hook for the criticism of Google is the world’s largest online ad supported search system’s work on Dragonfly. That is/was the code word for a search engine tailored to meet the tastes of the Chinese government’s leaders.
Google tap-danced around Dragonfly, but the fact of creating a search system which would fit the needs of China’s leader like a personalized online ad annoyed some people. One of those who interpreted Google’s actions as unpalatable was General Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
General Dunford, according to the Japan Times’ article, turned the spotlight on a
“larger problem with Google’s behavior. A company that prides itself on seeing around the corner of history is living in a world that no longer exists.”
In short, smart Google is stupid.
The article points out:
It is no surprise, then, that Dunford and other U.S. officials have been seething over Google’s behavior. A company that has grown fantastically wealthy, in part because it is based in the United States and benefits from the American-led global order, has decided that its “values” don’t allow it to cooperate with Washington, but that it is happy to help the Chinese Communist Party defend an authoritarian political system and scale the commanding heights of global technological superiority. Google’s conduct, in turn, reveals a deeper intellectual failing: The inability to see, or perhaps the refusal to acknowledge, that the post-Cold War era has ended and the world has entered the Age of Rivalry.
The bro culture may be leading Google into a “showdown with an angry Congress—or an angry president—in the future.
Messrs. Page and Brin, the prime movers of the culture of exceptionalism, have distanced themselves from Google. The current management team may not be able to fancy dance their way into the finals of the marathon which awaits them.
And once the US prom wraps up, other countries will strike up their bands. Google may end up with more than sore feet and some taps from an academic.
Why did the Japan Times run this essay? Google’s behaviors have offended more than General Dunford. I surmise that Google is indifferent to criticism of its business practices.
The article references a lack of patriotism, but it implies a much deeper problem. A serious malfunction which a simple fix cannot repair. Sad.
Stephen E Arnold, April 3, 2019
Thoughts about Search: A Word That Means Almost Anything
April 3, 2019
We have long been frustrated that search technology has not come very far since its early days. Sure, Google has made tweaks over the years, but even many of those incremental changes are designed to maximize that company’s ad revenue. Now, though, AI technology may fundamentally change how we find information online. Forbes asks, “Might AI Spell the Death of Search?” Writer Michael Ashley observes:
“‘This is the first time since 1994 when the search paradigm has changed,’ says David Seuss, CEO of Northern Light, a Boston-based strategic research portal provider I consult with that offers a cloud-based SaaS to global enterprises. ‘In 1994, you went to a search box, filled in a query, hit the search button, and received a list of documents. You manually reviewed these, picking the most relevant item to download. Fast forward to 2019 and it’s still the same thing. Find me one other part of the tech landscape that has not changed since the ’90s, whether it be broadband, wireless, mobile cloud computing, artificial intelligence—everything has changed. Everything except search.’”
The man has a point. He also claims it is Millennials that are pushing for change. Older users were just so happy to search from their desks instead of in the library stacks, he posits, that most of them remain satisfied with 90s-style online search. The younger generation, though, find manually reviewing search results inefficient, and they recognize that a lot of good information tends to get buried later in the search results—especially as paid listings claim the top spots. Ashley writes:
“With the help of A.I., tasks once relegated to flesh and blood researchers can be now accomplished by computers. Drawing on the latter’s pattern-forming and predictive abilities, it can observe users’ actions, discerning their interests based on what they download, share, comment on or bookmark. Informed by this knowledge, an A.I. can proactively—and without manual prompting—recommend relevant content to users. Disrupting the traditional search model to its page ranking core, content can seek out the user instead of the other way around.”
Ah, Northern Light sails again with the AI flag whipping in the marketing breeze with help from puffs of insight in “Why Are So Many People Wasting Their Time with Web Search?” Trim the jib!
Cynthia Murrell, April 3, 2019
Echosec: Dark Web Search for Those Who Qualify
April 2, 2019
A Canadian company has devised a way to search the Dark Web without the hassle of the Tor browser or proxy servers. HotHardware reports: “Beacon, a Dark Web Search Engine Can Be Your Eyes in the Internet Underworld.” The catch—one must prove to the company behind Beacon, Echosec, that they have a legitimate reason to use the “Google of the Dark Web.” The intention, we’re told, is for organizations to monitor whether any of their sensitive data has made it onto a Dark Web marketplace. Reporter Rod Scher writes:
“This could include stolen corporate emails, company documents, personal info, or other such data that could be detrimental to a company, its brand, or its customers. After all, if your data has been compromised, it’s always better to know than not to know. …
We noted this statement:
“While [CTO Mike] Raypold notes that it is possible to misuse Beacon, since the tool makes it easier for users to locate data they might otherwise have difficulty finding, he says that the company has taken steps to mitigate that danger. ‘First, every Echosec customer must go through a use-case approval process to determine how the customer is using the application and to make sure they are in compliance with the vendors from whom the data Is sourced,’ says Raypold. ‘If a potential customer cannot pass the use-case approval process, they do not get access to the system.’ Second, the company has built automated tools and manual processes into its platform and into the company workflows to notify the Echosec team if users attempt to run searches that are in violation of their approved use case.”
Not only will Echosec know if a user violates their agreement, certain queries simply cannot be run through Beacon. The company shares their acceptable-use policy here, and it is thorough. Founded in 2013, Echosec is based in Vancouver, British Columbia. If you want to see selected screenshots of the system’s output, check out the Dark Cyber video for March 26, 2019, at this link.
Stephen E Arnold, February 27, 2019
Google: News Corp. Wants to Grill Some Digital Shrimp
April 2, 2019
An article at The Sydney Morning Herald, “What Rupert Murdoch Really Wants from Google and Facebook,” points out that political opposites Rupert Murdoch and Elizabeth Warren agree on one thing—Google has too much power. While Warren vows to promote tech competition by breaking up Google (along with Amazon and Facebook), should she become US president, Murdoch’s company News Corp has petitioned its country’s regulatory agency to do the same. Writer John McDuling observes that it is unlikely, for several reasons, that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) will take such an action. He writes:
“So, what are Murdoch and News Corp really up to then? Playing hardball, as usual. The call to break up Google kept the pressure on the search giant, and made the ACCC’s existing proposals to regulate it (and Facebook) seem tame by comparison. Back in December, the ACCC proposed a new body to scrutinize the opaque algorithms that power Google searches and Facebook’s news feed, and their conduct in the ad market. The tech giants and their supporters have dismissed the proposal as a weird, intrusive overreach. But now, all of a sudden, with the global media talking about a Google split, it seems relatively uncontroversial. …
We also circled with our yellow marker pen:
“[News Corp] also proposed a system where Google (and presumably Facebook) could pay ‘license fees’ to publishers to compensate them for the benefit they derived from their content. … The new proposal sounds more like the systems used around the world to decide royalties paid by streaming services and radio stations to songwriters and record labels. It would involve a new statutory framework, and independent economic analysis of the benefits of news to the platforms to help determine payments to publishers.”
As for Warren, the article notes voters across the US political spectrum are nervous about the power wielded by tech giants, implying she is after political points. (Whether the famously divided US Congress can or will actually do anything about the issue remains to be seen, we’re reminded.) Another wrinkle, McDuling observes, is the growing “tech-driven cold war” between the US and China. Anything that disempowers the companies in question could help China—a talking point they are likely to wield in their defense. Apparently, the conversation around the power of tech giants is just salivating at the thought of throwing some digital shrimp on the barbie.
Cynthia Murrell, April 2, 2019
DarkCyber for April 2, 2019, Now Available
April 2, 2019
DarkCyber for April 2, 2019, is now available at www.arnoldit.com/wordpress and on Vimeo at https://www.vimeo.com/327544822.
The program is a production of Stephen E Arnold. It is the only weekly video news shows focusing on the Dark Web, cybercrime, and lesser known Internet services.
This week’s story line up includes: Online censorship increases; Dark Web drug czar goes offline; Dark Web tech comes to the Firefox browser; and more evidence of change in the Dark Web; plus a look at Megaputer’s fraud detection technology.
This week’s feature reviews Megaputer’s fraud detection technology. The firm uses a number of advanced mathematical and linguistic methods to make sense of large flows of data. Based in Bloomington, Indiana, the company serves a wide range of clients from finance, government, pharmaceuticals, and consulting services. The firm was the first to put advanced text analytics on the desktop at a time when other firms required Unix workstations and client server computing resources. The firm’s PolyAnalyst H makes it possible to process large volumes of data at extremely high speed.
This week’s “Cybershots” cover four subjects:
There are more indications that online censorship is becoming more aggressive. Russia has implemented regulations governing what sites can be accessed and what type of content is permissible. Germany’s statement legislators have begun work on a bill to criminalize use of Tor and other hidden Internet tools.
The individual who created RAMP or the Russian Anonymous Marketplace asserted that his customized encrypted chat client was one reason his site had eluded government authorities. The site is now offline.
Letterboxing, a technology which prevents certain types of online tracking, will be introduced in an upcoming release of Firefox, a popular Web browser. This feature has been part of the Tor browser since 2016 and is one more indication of Dark Web technology seeping into the public Internet or “Clear Net”.
The program explains how to get a summary of software and tools to access hidden Internet sites and service. Written by Veracode, a cyber security firm, the video provides information necessary to obtain a copy of this useful report.
A new blog Dark Cyber Annex is now available at www.arnoldit.com/wordpress. Cybercrime, Dark Web, and company profiles are now appearing on a daily basis.
Kenny Toth, April 2, 2019
Centralizing and Concentrating: Works Great Until It Does Not
April 1, 2019
No joke or joke? Let’s assume the story is true.
US airlines are proving that centralizing and concentrating online services works great until the system fails. I read “Computer Outage Affecting Major US Airlines including Southwest, Delta and United Causes Hundreds of Flight Delays Nationwide.” (I first saw the news in a UK stream from the Daily Mail, a British newspaper.) As I write this at 910 am US Eastern (April 1, 2019), the story is now appearing in other feeds. The problem appears to be one with software called Aerodata. By 840 am US Eastern time, more than 700 flights were affected.
What seems to be lousy systems administration, engineering, or business processes have made April 1, 2019, into unpleasant anecdotes, not frothy jokes.
Aerodata’s Web site cheerfully reports my public IP address which, not surprisingly, is not what my IP address is. The Web site requires Flash, a super unsecure software in my opinion. I was not able to locate current news from the company. I noticed that VMWare mentions that the company uses VSAN to power a modern software defined data center. You can read the marketing inspired explanation at this link or you could at 917 am US Eastern on April 1, 2019.
According the a Chicago NBC outlet, all is well again. You can get this take at this link.
What happens if a cyber attack takes down a concentrated service?
Stephen E Arnold, April 1, 2019
Amazonia for April 1, 2019
April 1, 2019
These are not April Fool items. Each appeared before publication in the sources identified below. If some of the items seem wonky, not my doing.
Was Bezos a Victim of Policeware?
Is this true or false? We don’t know. The Daily Beast reported on March 30, 2019, that an Amazon investigation suggested that Jeff Bezos was a victim of policeware spying. The story “Bezos Investigation Finds the Saudis Obtained His Private Data” contains the allegedly accurate details. Thinking about the political and legal implications of the information in the allegedly accurate article is outside the scope of this humble run down of news items about everyone’s favorite online bookstore. Perhaps others can answer such questions as when, who, why and how?
Amazon and Its Economists
Economists and I assume behavioral psychologists are surprised at the attention each professional group receives from the tech savvy crowd. According to “Amazon Gets an Edge with its Secret Squad of PhD Economists”:
Amazon is now a large draw from the relatively small talent pool of PhD economists, which in the United States grows by about only 1,000 new graduates every year. Although the definition of “economist” is fuzzy, the discipline is generally understood as the study of how people use resources and respond to incentives.
Amazon allegedly has on its team more than 150 economists. If the economists are students of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism,” staff meetings may be more thrilling than a mid term lecture in Economics 101.
Will one of these professionals become a Hal Varian-scale thinker?
Apple Leaves Amazon an Opening, Free and Clear
The Verge reported that Amazon is “working on a free Fire TV news app.” Free may be more appealing that $120 a year for 300 magazines. Some in the weird scrollable PDF like format and others in Apple’s own proprietary format. The Verge sees the inspiration as Roku. Amazon may know that print centric services are not selling like hot cakes on the Amazon online store; thus, the focus is on where the eyeballs are—video. But there’s more free stuff from Amazon. If you are a Prime member, you get Switch online. Free is a compelling value proposition, or it is if you are into Nintendo games.
Africa and Amazon’s Banking Play
In my lectures about Amazon’s policeware, I described the financial information flowing through the firm’s infrastructure. It is interesting that Amazon is becoming more overt in its efforts to become a global financial systems. The company has cut a deal to become what Forbes called “Africa’s first bank in the cloud.” Amazon’s partner is Standard Bank. Note that Microsoft has been chugging away in Africa as well. Google, the Chinese, and assorted colonial nations are making moves as well. The financial services angle is an important one because Amazon has kept its financial moves under wraps for some time. Are regulators on top of this?
Amazon and Cost Management
Amazon received some coverage in the Seattle Times in the story “Amazon Finds an Alternative Workforce through Northwest Center, a Seattle Nonprofit Helping People with Disabilities.” The story explains Amazon’s employment of people with disabilities. I noted this statement:
In 2015, 22 people with disabilities were hired for part-time jobs in Amazon’s Kent sortation center as part of the pilot program. Their performance was tracked against the general employee population on retention, safety, productivity, quality and attendance.
The information in the article seemed dated and did not provide much data about pay and current number of individuals with disability engaged at Amazon.
Does Amazon Have a Lock on the CIA Cloud Business?
The answer may be, “Nope.” According to Bloomberg, a real news service which sometimes does not have sources for its information:
The CIA is preparing to significantly increase its reliance on cloud-computing services, with plans to solicit tens of billions of dollars of work divided among multiple tech companies.
Source: Bloomberg
Amazon and Columbia
South America is on the economic and political radar for 2020. Amazon has announced that it will open an infrastructure operation in Columbia. The region is unsettled in some ways, but Amazon obviously believes the risk is minimal. More information is available from Reuters. Reuters links do go dead, so you may be on your own if this source does not resolve. Complain to Thomson Reuters, not to me, please.
Caipirinha, Anyone?
It’s official. ZDNet reports that Alexa is alive in Brazil. DarkCyber thinks that Brazil’s new president may be interested in Amazon’s policeware too.
The Great Vendor Purge: Walking the Cat Back
Digiday reported that Amazon’s vendor purge is underway in reverse. According to Digiday’s online information service:
Amazon has walked back the decision to terminate a majority of the vendor purchase orders it stopped fulfilling last Monday, but the action has served as a bit of a wake-up call to sellers who are now planning how to protect their businesses by relying less on the e-commerce retailer.
Confusion at the controls of the Bezos bulldozer?
Proprietary Alexa Skills
There’s no mention of Amazon data capture or voice analysis in “Create an Alexa Skill for Your Organization with Alexa for Business Blueprints.” Be aware that this link may not resolve. You may be able to find the post at https://developer.amazon.com/blogs/alexa and scrolling through items. The blog post states:
Private skills are voice-powered capabilities that enhance the Alexa experience while remaining private to members of an Alexa for Business organization. Skill Blueprints are so easy to use, people have used them extensively to create Alexa skills for their households. Now anyone at the office can do the same for their workplace, simply by filling in custom requests and responses in one of dozens of easy-to-use Blueprints. IT administrators can then review and enable that content for the company’s users and managed Alexa-enabled devices.
Interesting? DarkCyber wonders if the data from these private skills will flow into Amazon’s policeware system?
Why Is AWS So Appealing to Some Developer Palates?
“The #AWS EC2 Windows Secret Sauce” is a reminder that Amazon is the new Microsoft, which may come as a bit of news to Google. The online ad giant wants to be Microsoft. If you want a run down of some of the issues one may encounter with Windows in the cloud, Tehnodrone spells how Amazon handles Windows provisioning. Hint: Lots of engineering and more automated functions.
More AWS Computing Horsepower
“Nvidia’s T4 GPUs Are Coming to the AWS Cloud” reports:
The T4, which is based on Nvidia’s Turing architecture, was specifically optimized for running AI models. The T4 will be supported by the EC2 compute service and the Amazon Elastic Container Service for Kubernetes.
Your play Google.
Redshift Scales
Who knows what Redshift does? If you are on the Redshift clue train, you will be delighted to learn that Amazon’s data warehouse offer concurrency and is allegedly better and faster than alternatives. More rah rah is available in “AWS Announces General Availability of Concurrency Scaling for Amazon Redshift.”
S3 Glacier: Cheap Archiving
Amazon rolled out discounted storage. This is called Glacier, presumably because near line retrieval move slowly. More information is available in “AWS Announces General Availability of Amazon S3 Glacier Deep Archive—the Lowest Cost Storage in the Cloud.”
Amazon Aurora: Another Complexity Block to Master
If AWS is the next Windows, these components are the equivalent of the chunks of capability stuffed in a DLL. The write up in Acolyer’s blog states:
Managing quorum failures is complex. Traditional mechanisms cause I/O stalls while membership is being changed….Aurora is designed for a world with a constant background level of failure.
The idea is to improve reliability. The key point is that the AWS system generates automatic adaptive actions. Some of these may cost money. Automated services which posts increments to fees, is it?
New Partnerships
Here are some of the new partnerships and integration vendors which appear to have Amazon AWS expertise.
- Lightstream, a global leader in cloud technology solutions, network integration and managed-network services now supports Amazon Chime. Chime is a communications service that lets licensees meet, chat, and place business calls inside and outside an organization. Source: New Kerala
- Sisense delivers its analytics via the Amazon Cloud. The service is called the “Elastic Data Hub.” Please, don’t confuse this with the Elastic company or the Elasticsearch open source system. Source: New Kerala
Know What NSA NIPA Means?
Somebody thinks those on LinkedIn do. Monkton.io (no, it is not a town in Maryland and it has nothing to do with monks) said via Harold Smith III on LinkedIn “NSA NIAP compliant mobile apps in weeks, not years.” Source: LinkedIn and search for “Harold Smith III”.
Stephen E Arnold, April 1, 2019
Artificial Intelligence Over Hyped. Believe It or Not
April 1, 2019
Again, not an April Fool’s spoof. “Concerns Over AI‘s Ability to Create Fake News Are a Little Overhyped, Says Salesforce Chief Scientist.” The write up includes this statement:
“I think it’s a little overhyped,” Richard Socher, chief scientist at software firm Salesforce, told CNBC in an interview during his trip to Singapore. That’s because humans are already adept at creating fake news without the help of algorithms, Socher said. Furthermore, fake news usually has some sort of “agenda” behind it — something that AI inherently lacks, he added.
DarkCyber like the “little overhyped” phrase. Why would a technology company engage in over statement? Oh, money. Right.
Stephen E Arnold, April 1, 2019
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