Dark Web Bitcoin Mixer and Search Service Explained
February 17, 2020
Curious about the methods use to operate a Bitcoin mixer service. The idea is to disguise who owns a Bitcoin. Quite a few interesting details appear in an indictment dated May 7, 2019. The document is stamped “sealed,” but it was available online at this link on February 14, 2020. There was some information about Grams Helix that suggested the service operated from Moscow. But that is not correct. The tumbler service and the search engine were masterminded from Akron, Ohio. The IRS and other government agencies cooperated in the investigation.
Stephen E Arnold, February 17, 2020
Apple: Project Maven and the US Department of Defense? No Go
February 17, 2020
Apple continues to avoid entanglements with the military, we learn from AppleInsider’s brief write-up, “Apple Nixed Xnor.ai’s Involvement in Pentagon’s Project Maven Following Acquisition.” Project Maven’s goal is to develop tech that can autonomously analyze image data from drones and other systems for military intelligence. Though Google famously broke with Maven after employee and public backlash, several private sector companies continue to work with the Pentagon on the project. Xnor.ai was one such company until Apple purchased it early this year. Writer Mikey Campbell reports:
“Spun out of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Xnor.ai focused on low-power, edge-based artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms that can run on-device instead of in the cloud. As noted by the report, running AI processes like image recognition on an iPhone instead of offsite — a practice that edge-based computing enables — could raise privacy concerns. Always the bastion of consumer security, Apple likely recognized the implications — and optics — of Xnor.ai’s involvement in Project Maven and terminated the work before the press caught wind of the relationship. Unlike other big tech firms, like Google which pulled out of Project Maven after protests from employees, Apple typically distances itself from military contracting activities.”
Based in Seattle, artificial intelligence firm Xnor.ai was founded in 2016. Perhaps ironically, the company’s focus on running deep learning algorithms locally instead of in the cloud is popular with companies concerned with privacy. Their clients inhabit the aerospace, automotive, retail, and consumer electronics fields.
Cynthia Murrell, February 17, 2020
Google May Be Facing a Moon Shot Challenge
February 17, 2020
DarkCyber wants to reflect on a challenge, a difficult one.
DarkCyber read “Google Removes 500+ Malicious Chrome Extensions from the Web Store.” No, not a “the” store. The store is Google’s online store toward which every Android phone longs to visit. Some mobile devices have no choice. Other Android phones have some restraints, but “home is home.”
According to the write up:
The removed extensions operated by injecting malicious ads (malvertising) inside users’ browsing sessions. The malicious code injected by the extensions activated under certain conditions and redirected users to specific sites. In some cases, the destination would be an affiliate link on legitimate sites like Macys, Dell, or BestBuy; but in other instances, the destination link would be something malicious, such as a malware download site or a phishing page.
You should read the ZDNet story mentioned above and follow its links. However, the notion that DarkCyber has been noodling involves Google’s large online advertising business. Here are some questions we drafted after our morning call:
- If the Google Android store is disseminating software which generates clicks, how will those affected advertisers be compensated?
- What other ad centric spoofs or manipulations exist within the ad system for YouTube?
- What malware or manipulative techniques operate within the core AdWords’ system?
- What role to click bots or click farms play in manipulating Google’s online advertising data?
- What about human Googler manipulation of advertising systems; for example, as quarters draw to a close?
DarkCyber only has these and a number of other questions. The answer to these questions may call into question the reliability, accuracy, and honesty of the Google online advertising operation.
If the answers fail to reassure advertisers and others, the strength of Google might become its most serious challenge in the company’s rise from objective search system to global online ad giant.
Challenge? Maybe multiple challenges: Credibility, legal, technical, and managerial.
Stephen E Arnold, February
Twitch: A Big, Juicy Target
February 16, 2020
Videogame streamers are some of the Internet’s most popular celebrities and most people have never heard about them. PewDiePie is the reigning streaming king and YouTube is his domain, but dozens of other gamers vie for his throne from the land of Twitch. The San Francisco Gate examines the streaming craze and how tech corporations are trying to hone in on the profits, “Game On: Tech Giants Vs. The Kind Of Streaming.”
Both Facebook and Microsoft have attempted to snag a piece of the streaming profit pie, but nothing rivals Twitch. Twitch started as a startup in San Francisco that Amazon purchased for $1 billion in 2014. Twitch now controls 76% of video game streaming on Europe, North America, and South America. While most people are not aware of the popularity of video game streaming, it is an importance facet in the $180 billion gaming industry and it makes more money than movies and music.
Microsoft is eager to take on Twitch and the company hired one of Twitch’s biggest streamers, Tyler Blevins aka Ninja for an undisclosed amount of amount. Microsoft wants Blevins to promote its streaming service Mixer, but he did little to raise Mixer’s users in 2019. Mixer only accounts for 3.2% of the streaming market, while Twitch continues to grow. Hiring Blevins was not enough for Microsoft, although it was a good move:
“Mixer has been growing steadily since it started, said Ben Decker, head of gaming services at Microsoft, and now has more than 30 million monthly active users. But to really compete with Twitch, which has reported that it has 140 million monthly users, Microsoft needs to do more than spend a few million dollars on a star streamer, said Doron Nir, chief executive of StreamElements. When it comes to having a streaming platform, this is a billion-dollar game,” he said. “It’s going to take a lot more from Mixer to really take away from the enormous audience that Twitch has.”
Nir said he didn’t believe the deal for Blevins was bad for Mixer. It still brought widespread media attention and put it in the conversation. And Microsoft was not discouraged, bringing over Michael Grzesiek, a professional gamer known as Shroud, and Cory Michael, a streamer who goes by King Gothalion, from Twitch.”
Other tech giants are attempting to steal some of Twitch’s success, but Twitch remains strong and will continue to dominant for the time being. There is room for streaming platforms like Mixer and other emerging rivals to join the market, but they will need to bring something new and unique like Twitch did.
Whitney Grace, February 16, 2020
Google Maps: The Map Is Not the Territory?
February 15, 2020
I want to keep this write up short. Navigate to “Google Redraws the Borders on Maps Depending on Who’s Looking.” Main point: Google manipulates information for a variety of reasons. The result? Zero objectivity and zero reliability. New news? Nope. Old, old news. Why? Fun, expediency, whims of wizards, whatever. Why am I not adding some color? I am very tired of repeating what I reveal in my writings like Google Legacy, Google Version 2, Google: The Digital Gutenberg, and my several dozen Google articles for Information Today. (I think one of the team listed these on the LinkedIn Stephen E Arnold biography years ago.) When did these summaries and findings of my research begin to appear? Oh, about 17 years ago. Yep, the Google. Objective information for the clueless? Pretty much.
Stephen E Arnold, February 15, 2020
New Security System: Science Fact or Science Fiction?
February 15, 2020
It is an understatement that digital security is a growing concern, but that could change with a new invention. The Eurasia Review discussed the latest in the security field in the article, “New Security System To Revolutionize Communications Privacy.” An international research team of scientists from the University of St. Andrews, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, and Center for Unconventional Processes of Sciences created an unshakable security system and is described as will “revolutionize communications privacy.”
How does the revolutionary system work?
“The international team of scientists have created optical chips that enable information to be sent from user to user using a one-time un-hackable communication that achieves ‘perfect secrecy’ allowing confidential data to be protected more securely than ever before on public classical communication channels. Their proposed system uses silicon chips that contain complex structures that are irreversibly changed, to send information in a one-time key that can never be recreated nor intercepted by an attacker.”
The optical chips offer perfect secrecy on a global scale and the costs are estimated to be feasible. Current cryptographic techniques are fast and easy to share, but advanced computers with quantum algorithms can crack them. The new encryption systems is supposedly unbreakable, uses existing communication networks, and takes up a lot less space.
Theoretically the system is perfect, because the chip generates keys that unlock each message. The keys are never stored, communicated, nor ever be created. It adds an extra security level that the regular cryptographic technology does not have.
The new security system inventors or academics, not from big technology companies, and they work at organizations in the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. They are not for-profit organizations, but the scientists are searching for commercial applications for the security system.
Whitney Grace, February 15, 2020
InetSoft: Interesting Visualizations of Data
February 14, 2020
Simple graphs and clipart no longer cut it in the professional world. In order to impress clients and bosses, sleek, crisp data visualizations are important. InetSoft specializes in business intelligence software and they are experts in presenting data in beautiful manner. InetSoft recently released new BI Visualization Gallery: Dashboards.
These brand new, beautiful dashboards include interactive visualizations, machine learning, and paginated reports. InetSoft also specializes in big data:
“InetSoft’s Style Intelligence drops into an existing Apache Spark installation. This bring-the-software-to-the-data approach eliminates costly big data movement for analytics and reporting. Style Intelligence can also be deployed with its own built-in Spark cluster.
In this case, only minimal expertise in Spark is required. The cluster is mostly configured and administered by Style Intelligence behind the scenes to maximize data processing and mashup performance.”
Dashboards are the main user interface for customers and employees. Having bright, attractive visualizations retains user attention and makes the data easier to interpret. Being able to understand data, allows employees and customers to understand who, what, when, and how about their information so they can better leveler it for their organizations.
The great thing about InetSoft is that the company is a data and dashboard expert. The company knows how to package data for any and all industries. It does not matter what type of data they are presented with, InetSoft wants the challenge to help people find business intelligence solutions.
Whitney Grace, February 14, 2020
Google Podcasts: How Much Will One Pay to Be a Top Podcast?
February 14, 2020
Podcasts are the talk radio for the mobile thumb adept. Finding podcasts has been a matter of hit and miss. Apple displays some podcasts on topic pages. Then the iPhone outfit provides “see all”, and one gets another subset of available content organized by Apple categories. Just try to locate a Spanish language technology podcast from the US. Interesting exercise. The optimal results are obtained by finding one Spanish podcast and then browsing the other podcasts displayed by the system. My approach is to locate the name of a specific podcast and using Apple’s quite limited “search box” to find the program. Either way, hassle after hassle. Other services offer podcasts. These are variants of the Apple approach. Hassle after hassle.
Now there is an alternative for those who embrace the Google with the intensity of deceased Googler Forrest Timothy Hayes. Late in 2019 Google provided some information about its podcast service which would be available on:
Google Search on all browsers
Google Search App for Android (requires v6.5 or higher of the Google Search App)
Google Podcasts app
Chrome for Android
Google Home
An Action on the Google Assistant
Android Auto
The Google Android podcast app became available in January 2020. Not perfect. One user pointed out that there is no way to search within a podcast episode list and there is no bookmark function. Google responded in a Googley way of course:
We’re always working to improve Google Podcasts, and we’ll take these suggestions into account as we design our upcoming roadmap.
DarkCyber noted a dedicated podcast Web page called Google Podcasts. It looked like this on Thursday, February 13, 2020:
Among our test queries was a search for “cyber law.” The results included a pointer to the Steptoe & Johnson cyber law podcast. After a listing of some random Steptoe & Johnson programs, these suggestions were presented:
Okay, a work in progress as long as the Googlers who worked on this project remain interested or fail to get transferred to a “hot” project within the online ad company. Google’s high school science club management approach does produce some high school science fair type projects. (Observation: There may be more winners at a Santa Clara high school science fair than among the Google “projects.”
Let’s shift gears.
Good, bad, or indifferent, consider this question:
What will a podcaster or a firm funding a podcast play pay to appear on the Google Podcast search splash page?
Or
How much will a podcaster in search of visibility and clicks pay to be in one of the limited “results” displays?
Or
How many ads can Google display when a person uses Google Podcasts search to look for a category like “travel” or “flight”?
For now, Google Podcast search results appear to be without overt advertising. In the future, this may be another monetization play created by segmenting Google’s index.
That’s okay as long as the results are useful. For now, DarkCyber will stick to its old fashioned methods.
Stephen E Arnold, February 14, 2020
Old Book Illustrations
February 14, 2020
A useful collection of illustrations from “old books” is now available at this link. The service says:
Old Book Illustrations was born of the desire to share illustrations from a modest collection of books, which we set out to scan and publish. With the wealth of resources available online, it became increasingly difficult to resist the temptation to explore other collections and include these images along with our own. Although it would have been possible to considerably broaden the time-frame of our pursuit, we chose to keep our focus on the original period in which we started for reasons pertaining to taste, consistency, and practicality: due to obvious legal restrictions, we had to stay within the limits of the public domain. This explains why there won’t be on this site illustrations first published prior to the 18th century or later than the first quarter of the 20th century.
Like many other collections of images, locating an image can be an interesting exercise. DarkCyber entered a query for the word “factory.” The system respond with two pages of thumbnails. One of the “factory” items as this image:
Old Book Illustrations provides documentation for use of the retrieval system. The Navigation How To includes diagrams and explanations for the user.
DarkCyber points out that locating images by key words or concepts makes clear the limitations of today’s information retrieval technology. This is not a criticism of Old Book Illustrations. Our observation is intended to make sure that the tens of millions of “search experts” recognize the limitations of finding technology and perhaps their own understanding of the issues involved when looking for digital information in services that cannot pay for subject matter experts to index using controlled vocabularies and well crafted classification systems.
How advanced is a more mature system like Google’s, for instance? Go to Google Images and try to locate a specific image in the Time Life images stored on Google. How’s that working out?
Image recognition is at the heart of facial recognition systems. There are worries about facial recognition, but image recognition and meaningful mapping to terms remains a very difficult task. Many problems must be solved before image recognition’s accuracy eliminates most of the manual work still required even with today’s most sophisticated systems.
Kudos for those who try. However, the journey is a long one. Travelers will have manual scanning of images in a database to occupy their idle hours.
Stephen E Arnold, February 13, 2020
Google Android: Simple Explanations Ring True
February 14, 2020
I read “Why Google Did Android.” The author of the article is Tim Bray (OpenText, Sun Micro, Google, etc.) The answer in the write up is:
“The iPhone is really good. The way things are going, Apple’s going to have a monopoly on Internet-capable mobile devices. That means they’ll be the gatekeepers for everything, including advertising, saying who can and can’t, setting prices, taking a cut. That’s an existential threat to Google. Android doesn’t have to win, to win. It just has to get enough market so there’s a diverse and competitive mobile-advertising market.”
The person providing the answer is from Vic Gundotra, former Googler and now ex CEO of AliveCor.
The answer suggests to me that Google wanted to go from A to B in a pragmatic way. That’s what Google engineers try to do: Be pragmatic, logical.
Does this suggest that using Java was the logical way to make the journey from fear of the iPhone to Android? Maybe Oracle’s dogged pursuit of a legal resolution is more than a matter of principle? What’s the catchphrase about asking for forgiveness?
Stephen E Arnold, February 14, 2020
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