Stephen E Arnold, February 3, 2020
Google: Changes Coming and Steadily
February 4, 2020
Google’s financial results suggest that the company’s advertising business is facing some headwinds. “Google Lifts Veil on YouTube, Cloud Units” states:
Meanwhile, the company reported disappointing results in its core online advertising operations.
The “meanwhile” is a “nice” way of suggesting that Google’s good news about YouTube and its baby cloud endeavors were supposed to distract from that ominous line:
disappointing results in its core online advertising operations.
And the word “operations.” That is a pregnant choice. The problem perhaps is deeper than softness in companies’ ad spending, more problematic than Amazon’s and Facebook’s expanding advertising initiatives, and more troublesome than the withdrawal of the Silicon Valley sultans, Messrs. Brin and Page.
What is caused the spangled juggernaut to wobble in its “core business”?
DarkCyber’s early morning thoughts include:
- Google’s rush to mobile created an ad inventory gap; that is, more ads for a small space. The fixes have not been satisfying to users or to consumers.
- Trading off relevance for broader results so more ads can be shown in relation to content which is not germane to what the user wanted information about. Even the most jaded consumer of Neverthink content, sort of wants ads relevant to their interests when using Google.
- Overhead is tough to control. Yep, that means productivity from human resources and efficiency in use of capital have to take precedent over moon shots, solving death, and dealing with litigation related to interesting staff issues.
- The Steve Ballmer “one trick pony” assessment of Google is proving accurate. Billions spent and the Google sells ads.
Net net: Worth monitoring the company’s performance and actions whether one has shares, works there, or is just mildly interested in what has defined “search” for billions of people.
Can these people find relevant information online? Nope. That’s probably part of the problem. Can cleverness address the issue? Sure but at what cost. Can Jeff Dean save the overdone cookies? Maybe.
Stephen E Arnold, February 4, 2020
Amazon: How Many Employees?
February 4, 2020
DarkCyber noted a story in Gadgets 360. The title reveals the factoid: “Amazon Now Employs 798,000 People Worldwide, 500,000 in the US.” Is there a company which employs more people?
The answer is, “Yes.”
And that company is Walmart. This outfit allegedly employs 1.5 million people in the US and more than two million worldwide.
The write up has another interesting factoid:
Walmart, however took 35 years to build a workforce of similar size to Amazon today. Amazon reached the milestone in 24 years, more than a decade sooner.”
DarkCyber discovered that Walmart also advertises the availability of DDR2 SPD 800 memory when that product is not available. Hopefully a couple of Walmart employees will update the memory inventory data.
Stephen E Arnold, February 4, 2020
Cellebrite Has Capabilities: Now It Has More
February 4, 2020
Forensic tools firm Cellebrite is broadening its range with an upcoming acquisition. AppleInsider reveals, “Cellebrite Expands to Mac Forensic Tools with $33M BlackBag Purchase.” The Israel-based company is owned by Japan’s Sun Corp. It received an influx of $110 million in June from IGP Capital and is expected to make more acquisitions soon. Until now, Cellebrite has specialized in forensic tools for smartphones and tablets, especially iOS devices. Writer Malcolm Owen writes:
“Its clients largely consist of law enforcement agencies and other government organizations. Cellebrite is thought to have been the firm that provided the FBI with assistance in the San Bernardino investigation in 2016, with it allegedly receiving $900,000 for helping crack the shooter’s iPhone.
We also note:
“While Cellebrite is focused on mobile devices and cloud, BlackBag instead centers its work on computer forensics, including tools for quickly searching through volumes of data stored on servers. The purchase of BlackBag increases the capabilities of Cellebrite, making it capable of operating on more platforms. Part of BlackBag’s work includes accessing Macs and MacBooks, with its MacQuisition tool claimed to perform live data acquisition, targeted data acquisition, and forensic imaging of macOS devices. The tool is said to be the first and only one capable of creating images of Macs equipped with Apple’s T2 chip, which handles encryption and other security-related tasks.”
Those wondering if certain devices and systems can be compromised, ask your Cellebrite contact. For those unaware of Cellebrite’s capabilities, contact the company directly. For some in the US government, awareness of Cellebrite’s new services and products is not apparently up to date.
Cynthia Murrell, February 4, 2020
Tor Deanonymization
February 4, 2020
DarkCyber noted “Deanonymizing Tor Circuits.” The write up may be useful to some wrestling with bot attacks using the Tor “network.” The comments to the post on Hacker News contain some useful information as well. These comments are at this link.
Several of the observations characterize the tone and content of the comment set:
- [On anonymity] “Tor is the only viable alternative and we know it can be at least seriously compromised by the bigger nations.”
- [On guard control] “There’s a second attack. The attacker can run one or more hostile guard nodes. If he can knock me off enough guards, my tor daemon will eventually choose one of his guards. Then he can identify my actual network address and directly attack my server.”
- [The problem] “Censorship is a political problem, technical solutions provide a temporary hot fix, but the political problem has to be solved at one point.”
- [Example of a block] “Operators of Internet sites have the ability to prevent traffic from Tor exit nodes or to offer reduced functionality for Tor users. … The BBC blocks the IP addresses of all known Tor guards and exit nodes from its iPlayer service, although relays and bridges are not blocked.”
Some HackerNews items can be difficult to locate via the site’s search utility. As a result, collecting Tor related information can be challenging.
Stephen E Arnold, February 4, 2020
Why Techno-Babble and Crazy Promises Are Necessary
February 3, 2020
Do you believe the assertions about artificial intelligence, natural language processing, and quantum computing? The question is important because, according to the Nieman Lab, “Humans are hardwire to dismiss facts that don’t fit their worldview.” For those who believe in unicorns and fantasize about unicornification, the wilder and crazier the explanations about technology, the more coherent they sound. But try to provide facts, and the human brain is just not that interested if the research is accurate.
The write up asserts:
In theory, resolving factual disputes should be relatively easy: Just present the evidence of a strong expert consensus. This approach succeeds most of the time when the issue is, say, the atomic weight of hydrogen. But things don’t work that way when the scientific consensus presents a picture that threatens someone’s ideological worldview. In practice, it turns out that one’s political, religious, or ethnic identity quite effectively predicts one’s willingness to accept expertise on any given politicized issue.
What do these references to politicization have to do with technology sales and marketing?
DarkCyber believes that when one points out that an error rate of 85 percent means that there are 15 mistakes per 100 items. People think that error rate is okay, acceptable, maybe great. Apply the error rate to identifying potential bad actors, and someone has to figure out how to explain what happened to the 15 actors put in the bad egg bin.
Present this type of “fact” to a group, and most of the people exposed to the fact will ignore it.
But— and here’s the important point — evoke Star Trek, some magical numerical recipe, or just plain old hocus pocus like Google’s endless yammering about search quality, and people believe this stuff.
Years ago, enterprise search pitch men and pitch women discovered that promising to index “all of an organization’s information” and “eliminating time wasted looking for information” was the key to sales. Explaining that enterprise search was more like crafting a specific search system for a particular and quite specific problem was the more rational approach.
Sales were made, but the users were unhappy. The consequences were dire. Companies failed. Investors lost their money. One search executive was convicted of a criminal offense.
Flash forward to today. Predictive analytics, algorithms, and smart software will improve efficiency, reduce costs, unleash innovation, extract value from dark data, and generate new revenue.
Facts are one thing. Marketing hype another. Guess which takes precedence in search, analytics, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing?
If you said facts, you are in the minority if the Neiman Lab write up is correct.
Stephen E Arnold, February 3, 2020
A Solution to the Blockchain Trilemma?
February 3, 2020
Struggling to deliver a blockchain application which is decentralized, secure, and scalable? A solution may have been developed. Navigate to “Ex-Microsoft Researcher Says He’s Solved the Blockchain Scalability Problem.” Despite the hype about blockchain, there’s a problem mixed with the promise:
…It says that it’s easy to have a blockchain with two of three key attributes: decentralization, security, and scalability. What’s difficult is getting all three; so far, cranking up the volume has always meant sacrificing on another.
The alleged solution comes from Asensys, led by former Microsoft lead researcher JiaPing Wang. The alleged solution is avoiding “going off-chain or sharding transactions.” The idea is to eliminate duplicative processes:
instead spreading the workload across the entire network by creating multiple “zones” within it that work independently and asynchronously.
For now, this is a work in progress. And those marketing assurances about decentralization, security, and scalability? Yeah, right.
Stephen E Arnold, February 3, 2020
Lock In: New Buzzword
February 3, 2020
The idea of subscribing to printer ink seems like an interesting idea. For the vendor of ink, the idea is a winner. Evergreen revenues coupled with opaque “turn off this charge” procedures: It is an innovation.
Subscribe to everything. That works out when one is infected with Excel fever, arguably a more interesting disease than corona virus or wuflu.
How does one describe this idea that a person will subscribe, subscribe, and subscribe until death does part the credit card and the human.
That term is “forever transaction.”
Sounds better than lock in?
For more on this term and its close cousins like “membership economy” navigate to “Is the Forever Transaction Ethical?.”
DarkCyber won’t answer this question. Infinite subscriptions makes a nifty Excel chart. Forever, right?
Adulting: Proof of Excellence or a Somewhat Grim Joke?
February 2, 2020
DarkCyber’s research team noted “Adulting Merit Badges,” an article in Boingboing.
The badges are self awarded. A person wanting to demonstrate accomplishment purchases a set of badges, sews them on an item, and basks in the warmth of accomplishment. What struck DarkCyber as interesting was the language on the badges; which are grouped into categories like You Go Girl, Corporate, and Responsibilities. The wording is interesting, possibly frightening in its psychological implications. Here’s a sampling:
- Only watched one episode
- Save some money
- Paid with cash
- Responded to email
- On time for work
- Packed my lunch
- Took my vitamins
- Flossed
- Drank some water
And DarkCyber’s fave?
- Reduced screen time.
Stephen E Arnold, February 2, 2020
NSO Group: More Lumens Added to the PR Spotlight
February 1, 2020
DarkCyber noted this Thomson Reuters’ story: “FBI Probes Use of Israeli Firm’s Spyware in Personal and Government Hacks.” This is an exclusive story from “sources.” The write up reports:
The FBI is investigating the role of Israeli spyware vendor NSO Group Technologies in possible hacks on American residents and companies as well as suspected intelligence gathering on governments.
Our view is that companies purpose built to serve the needs of government agencies may find themselves struggling to break through a revenue ceiling made of Level 1 bullet resistant acrylic sheet. That may be an issue. Also, some of the specialized tools may be used for extracurricular activities which may not be monitored or authorized.
Why?
- Developing and maintaining the efficacy of special purpose software is expensive. Think in terms of more demand for certain engineers than there are engineers. Think in terms of the time required to figure out how to perform certain tasks.
- Investors have many, many choices of cyber security ventures in which to invest. The companies which have been around for several years may not provide the potential “lift” a funding source requires. (It doesn’t matter if these Borges-like dreams are possible. Dreams about big payoffs are just more interesting. Otherwise, a fund could buy stock in Verint.)
- There are a finite number of really big specialized software buyers. This means that price pressure on licensing fees exists for most of the companies.
- Numerous “me too” services are pushing down prices of specialized tools; possibly Sixgill, another firm based in Israel, with the tag line “deep, dark, and beyond.
- There are unexpected competitors; for example, some specialized tools can be located using off the grid services located via WhatsApp groups, i2p services, or the on-again, off-again Dark Web.
A changing market with more companies facing a need to make sales may push specialized software vendors to look for other sources of revenue. And there may be some enterprise customers who could be repurposing certain systems and methods. Some software may be so useful it can punch holes in that acrylic ceiling.
Net net: What is clear that change is afoot.
Stephen E Arnold, February 1, 2020
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