Google Question Hub: Is It Here to Stay?
August 23, 2019
Google knows, sees, and predicts all or at least we think it does. Google is the most popular search engine in the United States and other western countries. When Google does not know the answer, we are flummoxed. Your Story shares how Google is trying to answer everyone’s question with its new endeavor, “Google Rolls Out Question Hub, In Case It Cannot Answer Your Question.”
Question Hub allows you to alert Google when you cannot find information to your question. The Question Hub collects all unanswered question, sorts them by topic, then sends the questions to experts/publishers for answers. The idea is to correct better and more insightful content for audiences.
We are unsure how Google notifies the experts/publishers that there is a question they can answer, but the experts/publishers must register with Question Hub to verify their information:
“In order to access Question Hub, the publishers will have to link their account to verified properties in the search console. For publishers without a search console account, other options are available. Once they create an account, they can explore topics relevant to their work by either searching for keywords or browsing categories. Once a topic is added, they can view unanswered questions that are asked by real people.”
Google plans to add more languages to the Question Hub in the future.
The problem, however, is getting publishers/experts to sign up for Question Hub. Free info and content for Google may flow.
Whitney Grace, August 23, 2019
Web Browsers Impede Kazakhstan Surveillance
August 23, 2019
Big browsers are making friends in far places. Engadget reports, “Google and Mozilla to Block Web Surveillance in Kazakhstan (Updated).” Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and (we learn in the updated article) Apple Safari are now auto-blocking Kazakhstan’s latest attempt to spy on its citizens. That attempt revolves around a root certificate that government forced upon its internet users last month. Reporter Amrita Khalid explains:
“The nation forced ISPs to cooperate by making it mandatory for all customers to install the certificate in order to gain access to the internet. Turns out that the root certificate was a Trojan Horse. It allowed the Kazakhstan government to perform a ‘man-in-the-middle’ or MitM attack against HTTPS connections to a list of 37 domains, including Facebook, Twitter, Google and more, according to a study published by University of Michigan’s Censored Planet. Normally, HTTPS websites are encrypted in a way that ISPs or governments won’t be able to access it. In the case of Kazakhstan, the MitM attack broke the encryption in these sites, allowing the government to freely spy on private internet activity.”
Kazakhstan has since backed down after legal challenges within its borders. Google, Mozilla, and Apple are taking no chances, though, and will continue to block the certificate, just in case the government changes its mind again. Khalid writes:
“Given Kazakhstan’s track record, it’s not unlikely that such a vulnerability will be exploited again. In its 2018 Freedom on the Net report, Freedom House classified Kazakhstan as ‘not free’ due to the authoritarian regime’s tight controls on media and internet. Internet censorship in the nation is currently at an all-time high under the regime of its current leader, President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. The government regularly blocks news sites and shuts down the internet and messaging services following protests. Due to a 2014 law, state agencies can freely block websites without a court order.”
Mozilla has said it will keep an eye on Kazakhstan and will act to deflect any similar certificates down the line. We expect Google and Apple will be similarly vigilant.
Cynthia Murrell, August 23, 2019
Search: Useless Results Finally Recognized?
August 22, 2019
I cannot remember how many years ago it was since I wrote “Search Sucks” for Barbara Quint, the late editor of Searcher. I recall her comment to me, “Finally, someone in the industry speaks out.”
Flash forward a decade. I can now repeat her comment to me with some minor updating: “Finally someone recognized by the capitalist tool, Forbes Magazine, recognizes that search sucks.
The death of search was precipitated by several factors. Mentioning these after a decade of ignoring Web search still makes me angry. The failure of assorted commercial search vendors, the glacial movement of key trade associations, and the ineffectuality of search “experts” still makes me angry.
There are other factors contributing to the sorry state of Web search today. Note: I am narrowing my focus to the “free” Web search systems. If I have the energy, I may focus on the remarkable performance of “enterprise search.” But not today.
Here are the reasons Web search fell to laughable levels of utility:
- Google adopted the GoTo / Overture / Yahoo approach to determining relevance. This is the pay-to-play model.
- Search engine optimization “experts” figured out that Google allowed some fiddling with how it determined “relevance.” Google and other ad supported search systems then suggested that those listings might decay. The fix? Buy ads.
- Users who were born with mobile phones and flexible fingers styled themselves “search experts” along with any other individual who obtains information by looking for “answers” in a “free” Web search system.
- The willful abandonment of editorial policies, yardsticks like precision and recall, and human indexing guaranteed that smart software would put the nails in the coffin of relevance. Note: artificial intelligence and super duped automated indexing systems are right about 80 percent of the time when hammering scientific, technical, and engineering information. Toss is blog posts, tweets, and Web content created by people who skipped high school English and the accuracy plummets. Way down, folks. Just like facial recognition systems.
The information presented in “As Search Engines Increasingly Turn To AI They Are Harming Search” is astounding. Not because it is new, but because it is a reflection of what I call the Web search mentality.
Here’s an example:
Yet over the past few years, search engines of all kinds have increasingly turned to deep learning-powered categorization and recommendation algorithms to augment and slowly replace the traditional keyword search. Behavioral and interest-based personalization has further eroded the impact of keyword searches, meaning that if ten people all search for the same thing, they may all get different results. As search engines depreciate traditional raw “search” in favor of AI-assisted navigation, the concept of informational access is being harmed and our digital world is being redefined by the limitations of today’s AI.
The problem is not artificial intelligence.
A List of Eavesdroppers: Possibly Sort of Incomplete and Misleading?
August 22, 2019
DarkCyber noted “Here’s Every Major Service That Uses Humans to Eavesdrop on Your Voice Commands.” Notice the word “major.” Here’s the list from the write up:
- Amazon
- Apple
- Microsoft
DarkCyber wonders if these vendors/systems should be considered for inclusion in the list of “every” eavesdropping service:
- China Telecom
- Huawei
- Shoghi
- Utimaco
DarkCyber is confused about “every” when five candidates are advanced. The six we have suggested for consideration are organizations plucked from our list of interesting companies which may be in the surveillance sector. We await more comprehensive lists from the “real news” outfit “Daily Beast.” Growl!
Stephen E Arnold, August 22, 2019
Google and Its Amazing, Proliferating Services
August 22, 2019
It is all about the live streaming, backed by strong DVR capabilities. Digital Trends asks and answers, “What Is YouTube TV? Here’s Everything You Need to Know.” At a pricy $50 a month (minimum), the service is quite the entertainment investment. For some, though, it may be worth it. Writer Josh Levenson insists that the available features, particularly YouTube TV’s version of a cloud-storage DVR, more than make up for its limitations. These shortfalls include fewer channels than competitors, like AT&T TV Now (formerly DirecTV Now) and Sling TV, and support for fewer devices. He tells us:
“Out of all the various features baked into YouTube TV, one stands out from the crowd: Cloud DVR. Granted, that’s a tool that most live TV streaming services offer these days, but Google has hit the nail on the head offering a more natural experience—letting you record as much content as you want, which can be stored for up to nine months at an end, putting an end to the storage limits that most competitors impose. …
We also noted:
“Like most streaming services, YouTube TV also offers its customers the option to watch the content on multiple screens at once. To be specific, you’ll have the option to create up to six sub-accounts for family members, of which three can watch at the same time. There is no option to upgrade to a higher plan, either—so that’s a firm cap at three streams at the same time, but that should be more than enough for most families.”
But will most households have a device on hand that can play YouTube TV? To run the service on a 4K television, one needs a set-top stream-capable box or a dedicated streaming stick. And as with any service but PlayStation Vue, viewing on a Playstation 4 is out, but all Xbox Ones are supported. It can be run through a Chrome or Firefox browser on a PC or from the operating system on Android and Apple devices. YouTube TV is also supported on Android TV, Apple TV, Chromecast, Fire TV, Roku OS, Vizio SmartCast televisions, and post-2016 smart TVs from LG and Samsung.
Yes, most could probably find something on which to watch YouTube TV. Is it worth the monthly cost? How long will Google stick with the service? Who has time for multiple streaming services? What about Twitch.tv? How can a YouTuber message another? What about child suitable options? Perhaps benched AI whiz Mustafa Suleyman is available to contribute to resolving thorny YouTube questions?
Many questions for a company with remarkable management acumen.
Cynthia Murrell, August 22, 2019
Smart Software but No Mention of Cathy O’Neil
August 21, 2019
I read “Flawed Algorithms Are Grading Millions of Students’ Essays.” I also read Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy by Cathy O’Neil, which was published in 2016. My recollection is that Ms. O’Neil made appearances on some podcasts; for instance, Econ Talk, a truly exciting economics-centric program. It is indeed possible that the real news outfit Motherboard/Vice did not. Before I read the article, I did a search of the text for “O’Neil” and “Weapons of Math Destruction.” I found zero hits. Why? The author, editor, and publisher did not include a pointer to her book. Zippo. There’s a reference to the “real news” outfit ProPublica. There’s a reference to the Vice investigation. Would this approach work in freshman composition with essays graded by a harried graduate student?
Here’s the point. Ms. O’Neil did a very good job of explaining the flaws of automated systems. Recycling is the name of the game. After all, DarkCyber is recycling this “original” essay containing “original” research, isn’t it?
I noted this passage in the write up:
Research is scarce on the issue of machine scoring bias, partly due to the secrecy of the companies that create these systems. Test scoring vendors closely guard their algorithms, and states are wary of drawing attention to the fact that algorithms, not humans, are grading students’ work. Only a handful of published studies have examined whether the engines treat students from different language backgrounds equally, but they back up some critics’ fears.
Yeah, but there is a relatively recent book on the subject.
I noted this statement in the write up:
Here’s the first sentence from the essay addressing technology’s impact on humans’ ability to think for themselves…
I like the “ability to think for themselves.”
So do I. In fact, I would suggest that this write up is an example of the loss of this ability.
A mere 2,000 words and not a room or a thought or a tiny footnote about Ms. O’Neil. Flawed? I leave it to you to decide.
Stephen E Arnold, August 21, 2019
Graph Theory: Moving to the Mainstream
August 21, 2019
Physics helps engineers master their craft and binary is the start of all basic code, but graph theory is the key to understanding data science. Few people understand the power behind data science, but it powers Web sites they visit everyday: eBay, Facebook, and the all-powerful Google. Graph theory is part of mathematics and allows data to be presented in a clear, concise manner. Analytics India shares a list of game theory software that will make any data scientist’s job easier: “Top 10 Graph Theory Software.” The article explains that:
“Apart from knowing graph theory, it is necessary that one is not only able to create graphs but understand and analyze them. Graph theory software makes this job much easier. There are plenty of tools available to assist a detailed analysis. Here we list down the top 10 software for graph theory popular among the tech folks. They are presented in a random order and are available on major operating systems like Windows, MacOS and Linux.”
Among the recommended software are Tikz and PGF used in scientific research to create vector style graphs. Gephi is free to download and is best used for network visualization and data exploration. NetworkX is a reliable Python library for graphs and networks. LaTeXDraw is for document preparation and typesetting with a graphics editor. It is built on Java. One popular open source tool for mathematics projects is Sage. It is used for outlining graphs and hyper graphs.
MATLAB requires a subscription, but it is extremely powerful tool in creating graph theory visualizations and has a bioinformatics toolbox packed with more ways to explore graph theory functions. Graphic designers favor Inkscape for its ease of use and ability to create many different diagrams. GraphViz is famous for various graphical options for graph theory and also has customizable options. NodeXI is a Microsoft Excel template that is exclusively used for network graphs. One only has to enter a network edge list and then a graph is generated. Finally, MetaPost is used as a programming language and an interpreter program. It can use macros to make graph theory features.
Most of these graph theory software are available with free downloads with upgraded subscription services.
Whitney Grace, August 21, 2019
Factualities for August 21, 2019
August 21, 2019
Editorial note: Factualities will not appear in September and October 2019. Due to international travel and conference commitments, it will be able to post this summary each week. If significant “fact related” news surfaces and we have access to our publishing system, we will put the item in the daily DarkCyber posts. (The posts between September 10 and September 21, 2019, will be published automatically. Internet access in some of the areas from which the team will be operating may not be available.)
The craziness factor of some of the “facts” served up in the last seven days is keeping pace with the heat wave in the United States. Our factuality of the week is a stunner from ScienceAlert:
55.1. Hours per week a female performs housework when the male is the breadwinner. Here’s a table of the data “proving” women work harder than men.
Other “factualities” which caught our attention in the last seven days include these numerical wonderments:
10. Number of hours per day senior citizens in the US spend accessing and using their computing devices. Source: Economist
15. Percent of log in attempts which use compromised passwords. Source: IT Pro
20 percent. Percentage of California law makers identified as criminals by Amazon Rekognition facial recognition system. Source: Vice
45. The percentage increase in R&D spend by the Top 100 Chinese Internet companies. The spend amounts to 10 percent of the firms’ overall revenue. Source: ZDNet
278. The earnings of US CEO are 278 greater than the average workers’ compensation. Source: Common Dreams
9,088. Number of patents granted to IBM in 2018. (Note: Google obtained 2,597 in the same time period.) Source: PCMag
10,057. Number of pages in one person’s Facebook profile. Source: Slate
293,000. Number of products Amazon sent to a garbage dump in a nine month period. Source: Verge
$629,000. Amount the government of Columbia will fine Uber for obstructing a regulatory visit. Source: Reuters
1.2 million. The number of Dutch citizens who were victims of cyber crime in 2018. [Note: The population of the Netherlands is about 18 million.] Source: NLTimes
$2 million. Rumored amount WordPress’ parent paid Verizon for Tumblr. [Note: Yahoo paid more than $1.1 billion for Tumblr in 2013.]
24 million. Number of jobs which Apple is responsible. Source: Apple Insider
$5.2 million. Amount France spent for 30,000 square feet (0.6 kilometers) of solar road. The solar road project was cancelled because it did not stand up to traffic, leaves, and harsh weather. Source: Science Alert
$1.5 billion. Amount the Trump administration has paid Palantir Technologies for its surveillance system and services. Source: The Next Web
US$17.6 billion. Operating profit of the top 10 Korean conglomerates. One year ago the operating profit of this group was more than US$30 billion. Source: Korea Times
$400 billion. The value of Amazon’s cloud business. Source: Motley Fool
1.5 quintillion. The number of calculations per second the new HP Cray Shasta supercomputer can compute. (Notes: [a] 1.5 quintillion is 1.5 ExaFLOPs. [b] A quintillion is one billion billion operations per second, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000. An iPhone X can perform only five trillion operations per second or 5,000,000,000,000, but the iPhone is smaller and consumes less energy.) Source: Tom’s Hardware
Stephen E Arnold, August 21, 2019
Web Site Accessibility
August 20, 2019
Over the years, the DarkCyber team has had to create Web sites which conform to the ADA and 508 guidelines for Web site accessibility. In that same span of time, Web sites have become more and more difficult to use, not just for individuals with disabilities but for people in general.
We noted “The Internet’s Accessibility Reckoning.” We found the information and point of view in the article generally in line with our ideas.
This passage captures the sentiment often expressed:
In order to be accessible to consumers with disabilities, businesses often need to update their website’s software code to work with screen readers and other technologies that make websites more accessible to those with disabilities.
This observation seems accurate as well:
Inconsistent court rulings and regulatory positions on the issue over the years have brought little clarity on whether businesses have to legally update their software, leaving millions of Americans unable to access retail and consumer websites.
DarkCyber wants to point out that Web sites evokes an image of a large computer and a desktop monitor. The reality is that the majority of Internet access is from:
- Mobile devices, some of which have tiny screens and interface elements which are impossible for a person with a vision impairment, no matter how slight, to identify and press accurately.
- Internet of Things devices which assume a person can talk to the gizmo and it will deliver the desired function.
- Behind-the-scenes or predictive services which display what an algorithm determines the user requires.
The problem with each of these interface “spaces” is that the article does not discuss them, few Web designers think about them, and most regulators are unable to perceive these issues.
To sum up, making Web sites accessible is a bit more difficult than writing a regulation that adequately addresses each of these three areas. The word “reckoning” might be missing the mark. Perhaps “impossibility”?
Stephen E Arnold, August 20, 2019
Scalability: Assumed to Be Infinite?
August 20, 2019
I hear and read about scalability—whether I want to or not. Within the last 24 hours, I learned that certain US government applications have to be smart (AI and ML) and have the ability to scale. Scale to what? In what amount of time? How?
The answers to these questions are usually Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft, or some other company’s cloud.
I thought about this implicit assumption about scaling when I read “Vitalik Buterin: Ethereum’s Scalability Issue Is Proving To Be A Formidable Impediment To Adoption By Institutions.” The “inventor” of Ethereum (a technology supported by Amazon AWS by the way), allegedly said:
Scalability is a big bottleneck because Ethereum blockchain is almost full. If you’re a bigger organization, the calculus is that if we join it will not only be full but we will be competing with everyone for transaction space. It’s already expensive and it will be even five times more expensive because of us. There is pressure keeping people from joining, but improvements in scalability can do a lot in improving that.”
There are fixes. Here’s one from the write up:
Notably, Vitalik is known to be a supporter of other crypto currencies besides Ethereum. In July, Buterin suggested using Bitcoin Cash (BCH) to solve the scalability barrier in the short-term as they figure out a more permanent solution. Additionally, early this month, he supported the idea of integrating Bitcoin Lightning Network into the Ethereum smart contracts asserting that the “future of crypto currencies is diverse and pluralist”.
Questions which may be germane:
- What’s the limit of scalability?
- How do today’s systems scale?
- What’s the time and resource demand when one scales to an unknown scope?
Please, don’t tell me, “Scaling is infinite.”
Why?
There are constraints and limits. Two factors some people don’t want to think about. Better to say, “Scaling. No problem.”
Wrong. Scaling is a problem. Someone has to pay for the infrastructure, the know how, downstream consequences of latency, and the other “costs.”
Stephen E Arnold, August 20, 2019
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