Are the British Tossing Facebook?
August 16, 2019
The British are abandoning Facebook in droves and the question is why? Zero Hedge has the answer in the article, “Exodus: Brits Abandon Facebook As Usage Plummets.” For the past twelve months, British use of Facebook own the mobile app has dropped 38%. The drop in usage is directly tied to the Cambridge Analytical scandal. The scandal took place in summer 2018, when Facebook failed to disclose that Cambridge Analytical abused Facebook user data.
Users have also decreased the number of web links and ads they clink on in Facebook on average of 2.6% per month. Zuckerberg claims the opposite and that Europe’s Facebook usage continues to grow. Facebook investors used to view user metrics as a reliable way to determine the platform’s health, but there are large amounts of fake accounts. Facebook also lost $120 billon in July 2018 with slow European growth.
One expert thinks differently:
“Matti Littunen, a social media expert at Enders Analysis, questioned the alternative data – didn’t believe the figures represented an accurate view of Facebook users’ activity across the UK, due to his belief that Facebook’s usage data showed an uptick. Instead, Mixpanel’s data could reflect changes in advertising tactics, he said. Littunen said if usage does begin to fall – advertising prices will start to rise as firms compete for smaller audiences, leading advertisers to shift ad money elsewhere.”
Facebook, like most of the unprotected Internet, takes advantage of user data and sells it to the highest bidder. Also Facebook is an old school platform and younger users do not want to be on it. Facebook might have had its time in the sun and privacy violations are could be driving it into the history books.
Whitney Grace, August 16, 2019
US AI Standards Document
August 15, 2019
DarkCyber learned about “U.S. LEADERSHIP IN AI: A Plan for Federal Engagement in Developing Technical Standards and Related Tools.” The research team poked about and located the report. You can, as of August 15, 2019, download the 52 page document at this link. There are some interesting “targets” in the report; for example, the need for documented case examples. A related document has been prepared by AI insiders. You can download this 112 page report at this link. A bit of Binging and Googling (coupled with patience) reveals similar position papers.
DarkCyber’s view is:
- The authors of these documents are not upfront about the technical balance tipping from the US to other countries’ efforts
- The spectrum of “flavors” of artificial intelligence
- The lag between what specific companies are doing and what the bold vision of a smart future will deliver.
How can these issues be addressed? DarkCyber has been noodling about the gaps, the spectrum, and the Borges like reality and fantasy dichotomy for years.
Based on the information presented in these documents, other issues are of greater concern to those wrestling with AI in a decidedly American venue, with US athletes, and a US definition of “world champion.”
In short, a question: What if Jorge Luis Burges’s observation is correct:
Reality is not always probable, or likely.
DarkCyber assumes one could ask IBM Watson or Amazon SageMaker.
Stephen E Arnold, August 15, 2019
Google Petitions: Like a High School Student Council Campaign
August 15, 2019
Is DarkCyber is getting tired of Googlers who protest Google? Not. The antics are amusing. Has anyone said, “Hey, high schoolers, you took the job. You get money. You are not running the company”?
I read “Google Employees Refuse to Be Complicit in Border Agency Cloud Contract.” The petition, the protests, and the rest of the adolescent antics are getting stale.
I learned:
In a petition circulated today inside Google and on Medium, a group of employees said immigration officials are “perpetrating a system of abuse and malign neglect” at the border. The employees point to the Trump administration’s family separation policy and the recent deaths of children in immigration officials’ custody. “These abuses are illegal under international human rights law, and immoral by any standard,” the petition reads. In the hours after it was released, hundreds of employees added their signatures to the petition.
Are the Googlers unaware of the AI institute in China? Are Googlers aware of the YouTubers who find themselves marginalized? Are Googlers fighting for small companies whose Google traffic disappears overnight? Are Googlers worrying about Android malware? Are Googlers concerned about their contributions to assisting a system which defines reality for grade school children?
There are quite a few problems at the GOOG. Approaching them the way a candidate for a high school student council seat is not likely to be effective.
Why not quit? Why not run for office and work for change? Why not get out of the hypocritical position of accepting a paycheck and demanding that a commercial enterprise change because you don’t like competing for government contracts.
Quick tip: Anduril is thrilled with your high school student campaign.
And a question for Google personnel: “When are you going to do quit your job and embrace the stand up comedy opportunity?” You can sell merch and turn down gigs at military bases too.
Stephen E Arnold, August 15, 2019
Has Google Outfoxed Its Anti Military Staff?
August 15, 2019
Last year, Google faced a strong employee backlash when it was revealed the company had been working with the Department of Defense on its AI drone program through the secretive Project Maven. Lest anyone thought the company’s supposed change of heart was genuine, it seems it has simply become more underhanded about it. The Intercept reports, “Google Continues Investments in Military and Police AI Technology Through Venture Capital Arm.” Writer Lee Fang reveals:
“Rather than directly engage in controversial contracts, Google is providing financial, technological, and engineering support to a range of startups through Gradient Ventures, a venture capital arm that Google launched in 2017 to nurture companies deploying AI in a range of fields. Google promises interested firms access to its own AI training data and sometimes places Google engineers within the companies as a resource. The firms it supports include companies that provide AI technology to military and law enforcement. …”
Evidence? There are emails:
“Google employees — who spoke anonymously, fearing reprisal — said the work embraced by Gradient Ventures startups appears to circumvent the commitment by their employer to carefully vet and disclose military and law enforcement applications of AI technology. The startups not only receive financial support from Google. Google employees shared internal company emails with The Intercept that stated that all firms backed by Gradient Ventures ‘will be able to access vast swaths of training data that Google has accumulated to train their own AI systems’ and ‘will have the opportunity to receive advanced AI trainings from Google.’”
These internal emails also reveal that senior Google engineers rotate into firms backed by Gradient Ventures. This includes CAPE Productions, which supplies drone-surveillance technology to U.S. law enforcement, and Cogniac, which does the same for both law enforcement and the military. See the article for more on each of these companies.
Naturally, Google tries to dismiss the arrangements as run-of-the mill investments with minimal involvement on their part. A company called Enduril may be one beneficiary of Google’s anti government actions, and the company is hiring.
Cynthia Murrell, August 15, 2019
Accusing the Google: A New Blood Sport?
August 14, 2019
Years ago Google provided a Web search system. People used the system because it provided more comprehensive results than AltaVista, Lycos, and similar systems. People accepted Google. There are online users who use no other mechanism for locating online information.
Google was mostly above criticism. Stakeholders were happy. Employees were happy. Search engine optimization experts were happy. The only people who were not happy were a small minority of online users.
Now, accusing Google, seems to be a new a cottage industry.
Sometime today (Wednesday,August 14, 2019), an anonymous Xoogler (the term for a former Google employee) will allegedly leak internal and presumably confidential documents. These documents will explain how objective algorithms allegedly have been adjusted to return non-objective search results. You can read this pre announcement of the alleged Google document dump at “”The Distortion Is Grotesque” – Google Insider Turns Over 950 Pages Documenting Bias To DoJ.”
SparkToro published “Less Than Half of Google Searches Now Result in a Click” contains allegedly accurate information which suggests that Google’s online advertising has a dark side. Here’s a statement which caught DarkCyber’s attention:
We’ve passed a milestone in Google’s evolution from search engine to walled-garden. In June of 2019, for the first time, a majority of all browser-based searches on Google.com resulted in zero-clicks.
If this assertion is accurate, Google is auctioning off the possibility that an ad will yield an interested buyer. There would be no purchase, but the likelihood is that a human would read an ad and then visit the advertiser’s landing page or Web site exists.
This article says that less than half of the Google ads produce a click. There’s a chart which makes the point clear:
The black solid color reports / shows that 50.33 percent of the data collected and compiled by Jumpshot illustrates ads which produce no clicks.
Sounds horrible, right? But advertisers are buying the possibility of a click, not a click. Advertisers don’t pay if there is no click.
Google, if these data are correct, is inefficient for advertisers. Google is also inefficient for users. Google is assumed to be efficient.
DarkCyber interprets these data in a different way:
- Google is rife with inefficiency, at least in the ad click function
- Advertisers may have one perception, and the user behavior illustrates a reality: Ads are not delivering what advertisers need them to deliver; namely, eyeballs
- The erosion of relevance in results and ads combine to suggest that users may be faced with query results which are dissonant; that is, the expected results are supposed to be relevant but may not be and the ads displayed in the results list and around the results list are slightly off kilter. This evokes, at least in my research team’s experience, a statement like “Google is not returning results which match my query.”
Mobile presents another problem. Due to limited screen real estate and embedded ads presented as objective data, the results are difficult to see across a span of hits. A single hit is presented, and most users assume that the search result if the most relevant. DarkCyber has written about the Cuba Libre result before. Standing in front of the restaurant, Google did not display the restaurant on a Google Map. The former Gizmo editor for USA Today was in my group, and that individual pointed out the anomaly. The answer I offered was a question, “Do you think Google’s database is objective?” The tech reporter looked at me and asked, “What?”
So, it’s now early in the US Eastern time zone, 545 am to be exact. Will the Google document dump take place today? Will the Sparktoro data capture attention?
DarkCyber believes that most people are now conditioned by direct and indirect means to perceive Google as objective, essential, an information utility like a 24×7 old school public library reference desk librarian.
Changing user habits and perceptions is difficult. Talking about how search can work, should work, and does work is more difficult. And most difficult is the job of explaining to the goldfish that the school of chums are in something called “water” is most difficult.
Philosophy aside, these two “real news” stories are examples of a new blood sport: Slashing at the GOOG. A thousand cuts will kill. Isn’t that’s the assumption in this catchphrase.
Stephen E Arnold, August 14, 2019
Factualities for August 14, 2019
August 14, 2019
Kick back at the beach, grab a pen, and craft some numbers.
The number of the week is:
3. The rank of medical error as a cause of death in the US. Source: Science Alert
Other notable confections, examples of sleeping in Statistics 101, and the deliria from spreadsheet fever are:
40. Number of Windows drivers which contain privilege of escalation vulnerabilities. Source: Neowin
60. The percent increase in fraud attacks on the food and beverage market. Source: Restaurant Technology
74. Percent of digital transactions handled by Amazon. Source: Search Engine Watch
90. Percentage of startups which fail. Source: Inventiva
200. The percentage increase in destructive malware attacks since January 2019. Source Silicon Angle from IBM
$880. Amount Verizon charged a library for less than 500 megabytes of “roaming” data. Source: ArsTechnica
10,000. Number of medical records lost by the New York Fire Department. Source: Engadget
42,000. Number of fake soldiers receiving pay in Afghanistan. These fakes are called “ghost soldiers.” Source: Military.com
$1 million. Amount Apple with pay for a specific iPhone exploit. Source: Digital Trends
$1.05 million. Amount the US Department of Energy has allocated to a blockchain energy management program. Source: Coin Telegraph
$3 million. Amount Facebook has allegedly promised specific publishers news to participate in a Facebook “news” service. Source: Apple Insider
$8.6 million. Amount Cisco Systems paid as a fine because its security product did not secure. Source: TechDirt
$1.5 billion. Palantir’s government contracts. Source: BizJournals from Lantinx (Note: Paywalls used to protect this high value data about a privately held company doing business related to some low profile work.)
$2 billion. The amount North Korea allegedly stole from cyber crime victims in order to pay for weapons. Source: Computing
$4.25 billion. Amount Apple spent on research and development in the June 2019 quarter1. Source: Apple Insider
$5.24 billion. Uber’s loss in a single 90 day period. In case you are wondering, that works out to more than $50 million per day. Source: MarketWatch
$16 billion. That’s the size of the blockchain solution market in 2023, a mere four years in the future. Evidence? Nope. Source: Crypto browser.io
20 billion. The number of data events Badoo handles each day. Yep, Badoo, not Baido. Evidence: Nah. Source: Infoq
Stephen E Arnold, August 12, 2019
Nigeria in Canada: Snail Mail, Not Email
August 14, 2019
Imagine my surprise when I received a Nigerian type scam letter. Yes, snail mail. Here’s the document:
This is a scam dating from 2017. The explanation of some of the scam’s features appears in “‘Tis the Season for Scams.”
The letter DarkCyber received stated:
“I have worked out all modalities to complete the transaction successfully.”
And what’s the value of the transaction my alleged, but now dead, relative made possible? A mere $47.5 million.
If you want to interact with this individual, here are the details:
- Michael Burlington
- Street address: 77 Bloor Street West
- City: Toronto
- Province: Ontario
- Email: michael.burlington@mburlingtonconsults.org
- Fax number: 512 532 9345
DarkCyber won’t be following up with this lure. However, the example will be included in my lecture at the TechnoSecurity & Digital Forensics Conference in San Antonio in early October 2019.
Plus, I encourage those in search of emails to include Mr. Burlington’s in their list.
Does Mr. Burlington exist? Nah. Does he care if someone spams him? Nah.
The problem is that it takes just a couple of people falling for this Nigeria inspired Canadian confection to work. Any success encourages this type of individual.
Stephen E Arnold, August 14, 2019
LucidWorks: Another $100 Million
August 14, 2019
LucidWorks is an open source “search” play built on Solr. The company is fighting a battle with Elastic. Both companies are likely to face increased pressure from newcomers like Algolia and from the relentless Amazon AWS search system.
According to Crunchbase:
AI-powered search venture Lucidworks has raised $100 million from Francisco Partners and TPG Sixth Street Partners, the company announced today (first reported by Fortune’s Term Sheet).
What’s interesting is that Crunchbase did some math and stated:
The funding amounts to nearly as much (a combined $109 million) as the twelve-year-old company has raised since it was founded in 2007, according to Crunchbase data. Its last raise took place in May 2018 – a $50 million Series E led by Top Tier Capital Partners. So this round is precisely double its last raise.
A free profile of the LucidWorks system is available at www.xenky.com/vendor-profiles.
How different is today’s Lucid from the system available seven or eight years ago? The publicity and marketing collateral generated by the company suggests that artificial intelligence is the core of the “new” LucidWorks.
The question is, “What type of financial payoff is necessary to deliver an upside for those investors who have provided money to the company?”
With investors expecting a dump truck of money, LucidWorks will have to:
- Grow its revenue well beyond “search successes” like Endeca to warrant a big buy out. But Endeca hit a wall at about $100 million in revenue before Oracle bought out the company for an alleged $1 billion. Where is Endeca now?
- Go an an acquisition spree to increase revenues and groom itself for an Autonomy type deal. Autonomy’s $700 million in revenue fetched $11 billion when the well managed Hewlett Packard snapped up the company.
- Revolutionize something, sign up partners, resellers, and licensees, and push for an initial public offering.
The odds are that LucidWorks, which was founded in 2007, has been laboring to achieve success for 12 years. That effort has now required $209 million.
Unlike Palantir, which is essentially a search and retrieval system, LucidWorks lacks the stealth, sparkle, and cachet of its Palo Alto neighbor. Search and retrieval remains a market niche with has a reputation for generating pivots, repositionings, and massive financial shocks. Will LucidWorks follow the Convera trajectory which carried Allen & Co. into a storm?
LucidWorks has to distinguish itself as more than a cash burning machine, and that is getting more difficult, not easier, carrying the color flag which says, “Artificial intelligence.” The AI parade is choked with similar banners. Maybe AI is the secret sauce that will jump start search vendors struggling for revenue and “smart money” investors?
Stephen E Arnold, August 14, 2019
Digital Shadows Raises $10 Million For New Security Platform
August 13, 2019
Digital Shadows is a well-known provider of solutions that identify and mitigate corporate digital risks. In other words, they protect companies from digital threats. VentureBeat shares that Digital Shadows received a fresh cash infusion for their newest security platform: “Digital Shadows Raises $10 Million For Its Business Risk Intelligence Platform.” The National Australia Bank led a series C funding venture for Digital Shadows and scored $10 million for them.
The funding capital will be invested in Digital Shadows’s newest risk intelligence platform as well as allow the company to expand its support team in the Asia Pacific to provide 24/7 threat coverage. Digital Shadows plans to expand its client base from hundreds to thousands of organizations.
Digital Shadows CEO Alastair Paterson said:
“‘Demand for digital risk protection continues to flourish with significant growth in the Asia Pacific market. It’s clear that partnership with a regional specialist in NAB Ventures is exactly what is needed to drive further growth in this massive market and to expand the delivery of our SearchLight service to customers around the world,’ said Paterson, a former Detica principal consultant who partnered with chief innovation officer James Chappell in 2011 to found Digital Shadows. ‘We’re very pleased that our existing investors feel the same and have joined us on this next stage of our journey.’”
Digital Shadows’ leading product is their SearchLight server that works by having their clients register their data: email headers, keywords, employees, document-marking systems, and intellectual property. SearchLight then monitors over 100 million web data sources in over twenty-seven languages for copies. When the copies are spotted, SearchLight alerts its clients with remediation suggestions.
Digital Shadows is in a profitable market. Digital security needs reputable and intelligent companies to protect their data, because the bad actors are getting smarter.
Whitney Grace, August 13, 2019
Microsoft Walks the Fine Line with China
August 13, 2019
US President Donald Trump is daily criticized by US news outlets. One of the latest criticisms is how Trump is handing trade negotiations with China. Trump’s take is that he is fighting for a better trade agreement that does not take advantage of the US, while his opposition says he wants more money in his pocket and is screwing everything up for the US economy. As a result of the Chinese-US trade conflict, rumors circulated that many companies would take their manufacturing jobs elsewhere; among them was Microsoft.
ITProPortal states that the rumor is false in their story, “Microsoft Says It Won’t Be Quitting China.” Microsoft was not the only company that was believed to withdraw from China; Amazon, HP, and Dell were also on the list that would move their factories to southeast Asian countries. The US-China trade war was not the only reason these companies were going to leave. Raising labor costs was a big issue.
Microsoft will stay in China and continue to have its factories manufacture Xbox parts. However, the other companies on the list might leave:
“When HP was asked to discuss the report, the company told Tom’s Hardware it won’t discuss rumors, but that it ‘shares industry concerns that broad-based tariffs harm consumers by increasing the cost of electronics.’”
The trade war affected technology company Huawei, believed to be a threat to national security, and ZTE was almost destroyed.
China is a hard country to abandon. Even if the labor costs go up, nothing can beat the amount of people to market products to and there never is a labor shortage.
Whitney Grace, Augustk 13, 2019
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