Do It Yourself Surgery: An Unexpected YouTube Consequence
December 5, 2019
DarkCyber noted the CNBC real news story “Doctors Are Turning to YouTube to Learn How to Do Surgical Procedures, But There’s No Quality Control.”
Quality control. What a quaint concept.
The write up states:
YouTube has become a fixture of medical education.
Fix a broken lamp? YouTube. Take out an appendix? YouTube.
DarkCyber learned:
CNBC found tens of thousands of videos showing a wide variety of medical procedures on the Google-owned video platform, some of them hovering around a million views. People have live streamed giving birth and broadcast their face-lifts. One video, which shows the removal of a dense, white cataract, has gone somewhat viral and now has more than 1.7 million views. Others seem to have found crossover appeal with nonmedical viewers…
Maybe there’s an opportunity for Google:
Google’s vice president of health, David Feinberg, noted at a recent medical conference in the fall that a lot of surgeons are flocking to YouTube. He implied, without sharing specifics, that his team would look to do a better job of managing the content as part of its broader focus on combating health misinformation across Google. Medical experts say they’re more than willing to work with YouTube to help curate medical content.
The advertising model seems ideal for this type of “professional” curation. Will medical device manufacturers sponsor curated videos?
Opportunity beckons for:
- Do it yourselfers
- Medical product and service providers
- Google itself.
A management challenge? Nothing Google cannot overcome with assistance. Think the flying car tapping Boeing for expertise.
Stephen E Arnold, December 5, 2019
Google Avoids a Prince Andrew Like Interview
December 5, 2019
Yep, prime time. After a football game. A hard hitting interview with a PR message. You can read and watch some of the talk in the self referential, Google indexing friendly news story “How Does YouTube Handle the Site’s Misinformation, Conspiracy Theories and Hate? YouTube’s Mission Is to Give Everyone a Voice, But the Site’s Open Platform Has Opened the Door to Hate. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki Tells Lesley Stahl What the Company’s Doing about It.”
Now that’s a headline.
A couple words in this 43 word headline caught my attention. First the word “mission”, the phrase “everyone a voice,” “tells,” and “company’s doing.” Interview? More like a sales pitch, perhaps?
Very PR like. Almost Prince Andrewish.
The main point: The quantity of video is a problem, an excuse. The numbers sure sound impressive.
What’s the fix? Limit the video uploads. Presto. No more cost challenges. Editorial guidelines. Responsibility. Conformance to the laws of nation states. (Think how silly Apple looks changing the maps to make the Russian government happy. Crimea? Just upload a YouTube video and make your voice heard, right?)
Users are, after all is said and done, the point of the service.
Here’s a telling comment in response to a question about providing a YouTube video of murders in New Zealand:
Susan Wojcicki: This event was unique because it was really a made-for-Internet type of crisis. Every second there was a new upload. And so our teams around the world were working on this to remove this content. We had just never seen such a huge volume.
Yep, unique plus the fact that Google/YouTube was obviously unprepared. Like this sign:
Prince Andrewish or not? You decide:
- A lack of awareness of the situation Google sustains?
- Is there a “certain blindness” to examine the content findable by individuals who know where to look for stolen software’s unlock codes, images of interest to bad actors, and content designed to promote activities which can harm a person?
- Is a slow waltz required to mute the perception that advertising revenue is more important than Austrian concert master virtues?
- Why not explain that the goal of YouTube is engagement is to keep children and the young at heart clicking, viewing, and sticking. The more engagement, the greater the real estate for ads. (See item 3 above, please.)
Prince Andrew’s train wreck interview underscored his interesting behavior and caused the Queen to take away his flag. (Yep, he had his own flag!) Google still has its flag for the sovereign state of Google, just a new and beloved leader.
Did the CBS news team get a Google mouse pad before leaving the Google office? Probably but the big numbers about the YouTube videos may have left the team addled. Big is good. PR is gooder. Google advertising? The absolute goodest.
This interview was not Andrewesque; it was Googley.
Stephen E Arnold, December 5, 2019
WWAD: What Will Amazon Do?
December 4, 2019
Silicon Angle published “Commentary: Andy Jassy Aims to Reinvent Amazon Web Services for the Cloud’s Next Generation.” The story carries the subtitle “In an exclusive one-on-one conversation, Amazon’s cloud chief reveals how he views the future of the cloud, the competition, market shifts, customer demands and controversies.”
Several statements in the write up warranted an orange highlight:
- It’s time to embrace the next cloud wave or get crushed by it.
- The cloud has completely “flipped the business and startup model on its head.”
- “Enterprises realize that if they want to be successful, sustainable companies over time, they can’t just make small, incremental changes,” he said.
- The “vast majority” of organizations pursuing a multicloud strategy tend to pick a predominant provider and then, if they feel like they want another one, either because there’s a group that really is passionate about them or they want to know they can use a second cloud provider in case they fall out of sorts with the initial cloud provider, they will. Jassy went on to say that for customers implementing multiple clouds the workloads are split between a primary and secondary cloud more like 70/30 or 80/20 or 90/10, not 50/50.
- “Companies are going to want to eliminate network hops and find a way to have the compute and the storage much more local to the 5G network edge.”
- Next year roughly 82% of all new workloads will run Linux.
Net net: Crushing is part of the game plan. The interview is a component of the AWS re:Invent PR push. Prime stuff, not Grade A, but okay for consumption by Amazon shoppers.
Stephen E Arnold, December 4, 2019
Kitty Hawk: Dreaming Is Different from Doing When One Seeks Management Guidance
December 4, 2019
I read in the capitalist’s tool this story: “Inside Larry Page’s Turbulent Kitty Hawk: Returned Deposits, Battery Fires And A Boeing Shakeup.” The business story as a business school case study is an interesting journalistic niche.
The main idea is that Larry Page, founder of Google and all-around business Lionel Messi, has scored an own goal with its flying car business. Kitty Hawk has suffered a couple of minor setbacks; for example, battery fires and disenchanted supporters.
To add insult to injury, Forbes, the capitalist’s tool, sagely observes:
Kitty Hawk’s promise to bring personal flying to the masses has failed to take wing yet amid technical problems and safety issues with Flyer and unresolved questions about its practical use, according to four former Kitty Hawk employees who were among six who spoke to Forbes on the condition of anonymity due to non-disclosure agreements.
Yep, management of a science club project underscores the difference between thinking about a flying car and actually building one are different. Just a tiny bit.
Which company can “save” Kitty Hawk. What about Boeing (the 737 Max outfit) for business guidance?
Amazing.
Something a Hollywood screenwriter might struggle to conceive. Faulty software and burning batteries managed by Boeing and Google.
Here’s a summary of this interesting case study from the hollows of Kentucky: Another Googley DNW or “did not work.”
Stephen E Arnold, December 4, 2019
Facebook Helps Employees Think
December 4, 2019
I read the headline “Facebook Gives Workers a Chatbot to Appease That Prying Uncle. The “Liam Bot” Teaches Employees What to Say If Friends or Family Ask Difficult Questions about the Company over the Holidays.”
I thought “Liam” was a misspelling of “liar.” Upon a second look, I realized that “Liam” was a friendly, neutral, even trustworthy word.
Is this a photograph of one of Liam’s ancestors? DarkCyber believes that this is not Facebook’s Liam. But the possibility of this individual’s DNA finding its way to Facebook is interesting to contemplate.
The main point of the write up is that Facebook is not sure what employees will say when asked a question. To address the problem, the company has rolled out a smart system to provide some digital support to the Facebookers who have to answer spontaneously.
The write up explains that answer should point out that Facebook seeks information from experts. No definition of an “expert” is provided it seems. But that’s a minor point because we’re are doing damage control here, not thinking.
Other steps Facebook is taking to deal with interesting content includes contractors who review information before it goes live, identify hate speech, and other hand waving.
Google explained that volume makes it difficult to catch certain types of interesting content. Bigness is a burden for sure, right?
I circled in True Blue marker this statement from the write up:
In its answers, the Liam Bot often links to company blog posts and news releases. It doesn’t just provide answers to difficult questions about Facebook’s role in the world, either. Liam Bot is also practical with personal technology advice.
Several observations:
- A brain implant might be a useful supplement to Liam
- Activating the employee’s mobile phone to video and record conversation would provide useful training data
- Chat bots are quite useful, particularly when interacting in a spontaneous manner with friends and family. Why look a person in the eye. Just read from the mobile phone.\
Facebook is a pioneer following in the footsteps of individuals who wanted to control thinking and speaking. Who were these individuals?
Ask Liam, please. Not even IBM Watson can help with this question.
Stephen E Arnold, December 4, 2019
Comedian Meets Times of Israel: A Draw?
December 3, 2019
News about Borat – I mean Baron Cohen – has been flowing. A US pundit gushed over a speech by Mr. Cohen, a comedian. The Times of Israel took another approach to the Cohen critique of social media. “It’s not Facebook, Sacha, It’s Humanity” stated:
Baron Cohen is charismatic, well-spoken, and appeals to the most primal emotion of all mankind: fear. This makes him an excellent propagandist. That does not mean he is completely wrong, but it does not make him entirely right, either.
DarkCyber noted this statement in the write up:
The main argument Baron Cohen made in his speech, which is neither original nor new, is that social media platforms do not assume the mantle of preventing the numerous lies and profound hatred that is disseminated through them. Baron Cohen echoed the global criticism of the ease by which one can spread conspiracy theories, invent news headlines, make up figures, and incite against sectors, genders, minorities, and religions.
The write up pointed out:
Human history shows that where information does not flow freely and in times when information is blocked by geographical barriers and can only slowly creep out to the rest of the world — that is when the worst kind of atrocities take place.
Is there a fix? The article suggests:
There are many issues with the way Facebook, Twitter, and Google operate, but very few of them stem from the lack of regulation of the content posted on them. If anything, it would be much more practical and appropriate to review these companies’ conduct as service providers.
The comedian or the journalist? Where does the truth set up a camp site?
Stephen E Arnold, December 3, 2019
AWS: A Semi Critical Look
December 3, 2019
DarkCyber found “Unbundling AWS” interesting. We decided to label the write up as semi critical. We will reveal the reasons at the foot of this post.
The write up explains one reason why AWS has become one of the leaders in cloud service. (Yes, we are hedging our bets because it is not clear how the cloud vendors in China are keeping score for their “growth.”)
The article includes this chart. Its story is clear. AWS is growing. The article highlights some important attributes of Amazon. First, there’s the old saw about AWS being a juggernaut, a word I like better than flywheel. Second, there’s this observation:
Getting a new software product to market has never been as cheap or fast as it is today, despite the fact that the surface area of in-depth knowledge required to build high-performing software has never been higher.
DarkCyber thinks this is a very, very important facet of Amazon’s approach. Why? You will have to wait until my chapter in a forthcoming book becomes available or attend my lecture in Washington, DC, on December 11, 2019, at the DG Vision conference.
Third, the article includes this important observation, often overlooked by retail crazed MBAs:
The availability of open source tooling and the ease of access to infrastructure on AWS and other IaaS providers, and infrastructure turning into software, which means it’s programmable and, increasingly, thinly-sliced.
Big implications ahead, gentle reader.
But what DarkCyber found particularly rewarding was the overt statement that entrepreneurs will just use AWS. We noted this bulleted list:
- “Frameworks and deployment tools that make application software agnostic to the underlying infrastructure provider. Things like the Serverless framework, containers + orchestration, or IAC tools like Saltstack, Terraform, Ansible, etc
- The overlapping areas of logging, APM, and monitoring. This is a hot area right now, with IPO’s like Dynatrace or Datadog, or acquisitions like SignalFX. Related: Cloudwatch is terrible!
- Data science workflows – this is my subjective, anecdotal experience, but most data scientists I know have a preference for Google Cloud for a lot of their work, and custom hardware like TPUs likely play a role here
- Authentication and identity – Auth0, LoginRadius, Okta, etc … where it may make sense to have a third-party handle
- Paradigms that lead to different stack choices – I’m a big proponent of the JAMstack, and it’s a prime example of a paradigm where AWS may not be a natural choice for parts of this architecture. I believe that we will continue to see this and other new architectural paradigms evolve.”
We think the write up gets one thing off center; specifically:
we should all be so lucky to be at a scale and level of popularity where this becomes a problem. It’s hard for me to see a lot of cases where AWS will be competing with companies before they reach scale.
We think AWS will compete with its entrepreneurs and big buck customers. Amazon Essentials makes that clear.
Stephen E Arnold, December 3, 2019
Why Is MiningLamp Getting Ink?
December 3, 2019
The question “Why is MiningLamp getting ink?” is an interesting one to some people. The firm was founded in 2014. The company was a product of bunsha practiced by Miaozhen Systems, a company engaged in advertising “analysis.” The company is funded by Tencent, China Renaissance, and Sequoia Capital China. The firm may have revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Data about the influence of the Chinese government is not available to the DarkCyber team at this time. MiningLamp may have received as much as $290 million from its backers.
Companies want publicity to get sales leads, attract investors, create buzz to lure new hires, and become known to procurement professionals in government agencies.
We noted talk about MiningLamp at a couple of law enforcement and intelligence conferences. The company provides policeware and intelware to customers in China and elsewhere. You can read about the firm on its Web site at this link. (Be patient. The service seems to provide a high latency experience.) Product pages also seem to be missing in action.
Nevertheless, “Chinese Data Mining Firm MiningLamp, Now a National AI Champion, Began by Helping Police Solve Crimes” does not talk about a dearth of public information. The write up states that “MiningLamp’s business analytics tools are used by more than 200 companies in the Fortune 200.” That’s a lot of big companies embracing investigative software. Judging from the attendees at law enforcement and intelligence conference, these big companies are finding out about a Chinese company somehow.
The news story states that “Like Palantir, this Chinese start up uses AI to help corporate clients convert huge volumes of data into actionable information.” Palantir is a big ticket item. Perhaps price is a factor or Fortune 200 companies want to rely on a business intelligence system operated by a company located outside the span of control of some government authorities.
The company has been named a Chinese champion. The article reveals:
Although not as well known as US equivalent Palantir Technologies, which reportedly contributed to America’s success in hunting down Osama bin Laden, MiningLamp’s data mining software is used to spot crime patterns, track drug dealers and prevent human trafficking.
DarkCyber thinks that any company which has 200 Fortune listed companies as customers is reasonably well known.
We learned:
“Cases are being resolved on our platforms every day” in more than 60 cities and regions in China, said founder and CEO Wu Minghui. “We can run fast analysis on potential drug dealers or major suspects, improving the overall case-solving efficiency several hundred times.”
DarkCyber for December 3, 2019, Now Available
December 3, 2019
DarkCyber for December 3, 2019, is now available at on Vimeo, YouTube, and on the DarkCyber blog.
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 program features an interview with Trent Livingston, founder and chief executive officer of ESI Analyst. Livingston highlights the principal features of ESI Analyst. The cloud-centric software generated positive discussion at a recent law enforcement and digital security conference.
In the 10 minute interview, Livingston explains what makes ESI Analyst different from other investigative and eDiscovery systems. He said, “The system’s principal differentiators are its ease of use and affordability.” Livingston explained that licenses pay for blocks of data processed for an investigation or a legal discovery process. There are no per-user fees or annual fees. Cost savings range from 30 to 70 percent in typical use cases.
Other features of ESI Analyst include one-click analytics, options to display data on a map, and link analysis. Plus the system does not require classroom instruction. He noted, “Some users are up and running in as little as 30 minutes.”
In the next release of the software, Livingston’s team will be adding connectors and new report formats. Users will be able to output chat streams and maps in a form suitable for use in a legal matter. Livingston also revealed support for Amazon Web Services and Elasticsearch to add additional information access flexibility to ESI Analyst.
Stephen E Arnold, author of CyberOSINT: Next Generation Information Access, said, “ESI Analyst advances beyond the challenging interfaces and rigid pricing models for IBM Analysts Notebook- and Palantir Technologies Gotham-type systems. More predictable pricing and eliminating tedious classroom instruction reduces costs and improves efficiency. ESI Analyst makes clear the value of innovation for policeware.”
DarkCyber is a weekly production of Stephen E Arnold. The currency series of videos ends with the August 27, 2019, program. The new series of DarkCyber videos begins on November 5, 2019. The new series will focus on policeware with an emphasis on Amazon’s products and services for law enforcement, intelligence professionals, and regulatory authorities in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.
DarkCyber programs are published twice each month without a charge, advertising, or commercial endorsements.
Stephen E Arnold will be speaking on December 11, 2019, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC. The event is sponsored by DG Vision. Media interested in speaking with Stephen can write darkcyber333 at yandex dot com to arrange a time to discuss the Dark Web and its impact on corporate governance.
Kenny Toth, December 3, 2019
China: Marketing Blockchain
December 2, 2019
For two decades, China has been referred to as a sleeping dragon due to its growing economic prominence. China has yet to overtake the United States as the world’s top economic power and there are many reasons for this. One reason is China’s authoritarian government and another is the country’s substandard business practices. Lying is an international business tool, but one is more likely to be held accountable in the US than China. The International Business Times shares one of China’s newest tall tales, “China’s Blockchain Tech Adoption Inflated? New Expose Reveals Truth Behind Tall Claims.”
As part of China’s desired economic dominance, President Xi Jinping wants his country to be a leader in computer technology, such as blockchains. Xi wants blockchain technology adopted into commercial, economic, and industrial practices, but most Chinese companies that claim to offer blockchain do not.
“According to the Global Times, which is a Chinese state-run media house, numerous companies in China seem to find it simpler to claim that they are utilizing blockchain technology than to truly practice its application. Various Chinese firms across a variety of industries reportedly state that they are employing the use of blockchain tech in some form or another, but lack real evidence to prove that they are doing so. Global Times in their expose report that out of over 3,000 registered businesses, about 500 firms claim to be incorporating blockchain tech in their day-to-day operations, but only about 40 of these companies have been able to demonstrate that they are actively doing so.”
One of China’s problems is that when the government makes demands, the people are forced to adapt or else. Companies say they are harnessing blockchain technology to appease Xi and other leaders, but also to appeal to clients due to its buzzword power. Another problem in China is the amount of “get rick quick” scams. All Chinese industries are loaded with them and due to the country’s lack of checks and balances, they are a lot easier to run. The National Emergency Center of China states there are 755 tokens in the Chinese crypto currency market (crypto currencies use blockchain to operate) and 102 are believed to be Ponzi schemes, while most of the crypto currencies do not have funding.
China’s government, corrupted businesses, and other factors are keeping the sleeping dragon in a long doze.
Whitney Grace, December 2, 2019
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