Google Enters a Summer of Excuses
May 31, 2020
I wrote about the “dog ate my homework” and Google a few days ago. Now we have an Android release delay. The canine excuse was Covid. No dog this time. “Google Postpones Android 11 Unveiling amid U.S. Protests” reports the delay due to civil disorder, protests, and reprises of LA issues. No big deal, of course, but why not just say, “We’re not ready.” Is the new Google an excuse generation system? Are not software updates handled from the cloud? Does not Google have access to a video conferencing system? Interesting. Facebook, Microsoft, and Zoom services work okay for virtual announcements.
Stephen E Arnold, May 31, 2020
NSO Group and Its Covid Tracker
May 30, 2020
As the COVID-19 virus globally spread, people want know where it is, when an individual was infected, and other pertinent information. Two week self-imposed isolation periods are mandatory for most potential carriers, but that is not enough to ease worried minds. TechCrunch reports that, “A Passwordless Server Run By Spyware Maker NSO Sparks Contact-Tracing Privacy Concerns.”
NSO is an Israeli company known for making mobile hacking tools. The company developed a COVID-19 app that tracks carriers. A security researcher discovered NSO’s content-tracing project “Fleming” online, he contacted them and NSO removed it. Fleming most likely contained fake data. The project was most likely a demonstration of NSO’s technology, but it still causes concern that people’s personal data is kept in a centralized database without proper security measures. The Israeli government has not approved usage of Fleming yet.
When the COVID-19 outbreak worsened in March, the Israeli government granted its security service Shin Bet unprecedented access to collecting mobile phone data to track potential infections. Fleming was one of two systems the government working on and NSO said it used location data purchased from data brokers. Data brokers sell data amassed from apps that collect and sell user data.
Content-tracking apps are beneficial during the pandemic, but an individual’s privacy should be taken into consideration. There are ways to have these apps and protect privacy rights:
“Most countries are favoring decentralized efforts, like the joint project between Apple and Google, which uses anonymized Bluetooth signals picked up from phones in near proximity, instead of collecting cell location data into a single database. Bluetooth contact tracing has won the support of academics and security researchers over location-based contact-tracing efforts, which they say would enable large-scale surveillance.”
NSO has possible ties to the Middle East, including an allegation that the Saudi Arabian government used the company’s Pegasus software to compromise Jeff Bezo’s cell phone. There is also a current legal battle that NSO built a hacking tool for Facebook’s WhatsApp. NSO Group is a provider of specialized services to government entities.
Whitney Grace, May 30, 2020
Governance, Data Management, Digital Revolution! Yeah, Right
May 29, 2020
The digital revolution is not going as planned if the information in a recent Beta News’ article is correct. The headline tells the tale:
Three Quarters of Organizations Fail to Complete Legacy System Modernizations.
The statement is surprising to DarkCyber. The write up explains:
New research from Advanced shows that 74 percent of organizations have started a legacy system modernization project but failed to complete it.
Plus there is more:
The report also suggests a disconnect between business and technical teams could be to blame. CIOs and heads of IT are more interested in the technology landscape of their organization as a whole, whereas enterprise architects are more internally focused.
How does one complete modernization projects? Wave a magic wand? Hire retired people who built the system? Use a mobile app? Organize via Microsoft Teams? Hold Zoom meetings? No, the answer is:
“Collaboration is absolutely essential to successful modernization,” says Brandon Edenfield, managing director of application modernization at Advanced. “To achieve this, technical teams must ensure that senior leadership see the value and broader business impact of these efforts in terms they can understand. Without full commitment and buy-in from the C-Suite, these projects run the risk of complete failure.”
DarkCyber wishes to offer a handful of observations. You may interpret these as reasons for dead end digital renovations:
- Cost. The estimates are incorrect and the bean counters choke off funds.
- Complexity. The 20 somethings and the MBAs afflicted with spreadsheet fever have under estimated how difficult the rework actually is.
- Craziness. The manager with the bright idea leaves or gets fired and in the chaotic aftermath, the project goes away.
Yep, the three Cs and probably the reason for the dismal performance of the modern data management, governance, and digital revolution in most companies. Change is somewhat more difficult that some people armed with PowerPoints and consulting babble wish to know.
Stephen E Arnold, May 29, 2020
AWS Cost Management
May 29, 2020
I am not sure if Amazon AWS cost management was covered in my Accounting 101 class and in the mindless training programs I enjoyed at Halliburton NUS, Booz Allen & Hamilton, and “lectures I could not escape from” at “secure” intelligence conferences. Come to think of it, Amazon AWS cost management is a new and increasingly important discipline. Ah, if I were 25 and looking for a niche, AACM, shorthand for Amazon Aws cost management might be lured by this digital Peitho.
Why is AACM (among the DarkCyber team we pronounce this acronym ah-shazam) a new big thing?
Navigate to “How We Reduced the AWS Costs of Our Streaming Data Pipeline by 67%.” The write up explains what one outfit did to keep $0.67 from the scraper of the Bezos bulldozer. The procedure involved technical analysis, cross tabulation, and detailed tracking of AWS billing.
Do know a cost accountant up to this work? What about a newly minted CPA? What about a financial analyst working at a Silicon Valley money machine?
I don’t. Thus, gentle reader, here’s a practice for a recent college accounting grad or a with-it MBA.
Stephen E Arnold, May 29, 2020
Wiby Search
May 29, 2020
DarkCyber noted the existence of Wiby, a throwback Web search system, in 2017. The idea for the service is to process queries. The queries are matched to shorter or old-fashioned Web pages. Let’s take a look at queries run on May 28, 2020, for some current hot topics. Wiby may be a precursor of the small Web movement. More details about this type of thinking appear in “Rediscovering the Small Web.”
Here’s the query for “Inca stone quarry” and the results:
The results are not directly related to the Inca or quarries. The system did return an off color headline “Results of Suck Off Between Eminem, Rolling Stone, and the Grammy’s.” DarkCyber doubts the relevance methodology used by Wiby.
A less arcane query “Ryzen 3950x” retrieved these results:
One similarity between each result set is the appearance of the morpheme “suck.” DarkCyber finds this interesting. The results are off point.
There is also some basic information about the service on the unlinked About page. We learned:
Search engines like Google are indispensable, able to find answers to all of your technical questions; but along the way, the fun of web surfing was lost. In the early days of the web, pages were made primarily by hobbyists, academics, and computer savvy people about subjects they were interested in. Later on, the web became saturated with commercial pages that overcrowded everything else. All the personalized websites are hidden among a pile of commercial pages. Google isn’t great at finding those gems, its focus is on finding answers to technical questions, and it works well; but finding things you didn’t know you wanted to know, which was the real joy of web surfing, no longer happens. In addition, many pages today are created using bloated scripts that add slick cosmetic features in order to mask the lack of content available on them. Those pages contribute to the blandness of today’s web. The Wiby search engine is building a web of pages as it was in the earlier days of the internet. In addition, Wiby helps vintage computers to continue browsing the web, as page results are more suitable for their performance. What’s the upside of Wiby? The system does generate some surprising results. No query is needed. Wiby offers a link which says “surprise me.”
Wiby also offers an old fashioned “submit a url” form. I entered one of my Web sites. Nothing happened, but maybe there is an editorial review process which struggles with law enforcement and intelligence related content? You can find the “submit a url” page at this link.
When one has an idle moment, a click on surprise me can be interesting.
Stephen E Arnold, May 29, 2020
Google: The Web. Period.
May 29, 2020
A few years ago, DarkCyber noticed that Google hides the url for PDF files. For anyone interested in creating a reference to a PDF, the Google change was an annoyance. There are workarounds, but Google is pretty skilled at creating work which channels users into the firm’s walled garden. If you look for a url in an AMP page, there are no more urls, at least according to Zenexer via this tweet. DarkCyber believes that the Google walled garden, discussed in Google Version 2: The Calculating Predator is taking specific steps to become the “Internet.” I am not going to review information I published in 2006. Are there work arounds? Of course. Will 96 percent of the people relying on Google for information use them? Not in a blue moon. What are the implications of this? Many. But after 14 years of erecting the digital equivalent of Machu Picchu, who cares? Who notices? Who bothers to deal with footnotes provenance, and sources?
Answer: Not the people in regulatory agencies in Washington, DC. And maybe only four cent of Google’s users or products. That Lewis Carroll guy did the garden thing, didn’t he? What were his motives? Yikes.
Stephen E Arnold, May 29, 2020
Smartlogic: Making Indexing a Thing
May 29, 2020
Years ago, one of the wizards of Smartlogic visited the DarkCyber team. The group numbered about seven of my loyal researchers. These were people who had worked on US government projects, analyses for now disgraced banks in NYC, and assorted high technology firms. Was the world’s largest search system in this list? Gee, I don’t recall.
In that presentation, Smartlogic’s wizard explained that indexing, repositioned as tagging was important. Examples of the values of metatagging (presumably a more advanced form of the 40 year old classification codes used in the ABI/INFORM database since — what? — 1983. Smartlogic embarked on a mini acquisition spree, purchasing the interesting Schemalogic company about a decade ago.
What did Schemalogic do? In addition to being a wonderland for Windows Certified Professionals, the “server” managed index terms. The idea was that people in different departments assigned key words to different digital entities; for example, an engineer might assign the key word “E12.” This is totally clear to a person who thinks about resistors, but to a Home Economics graduate working in marketing the E12 was a bit of a puzzle. The idea that an organization in the pre Covid days could develop a standard set of tags is a fine idea. There are boot camps and specialist firms using words like taxonomy or controlled terms in their marketing collateral. However, humans are not too good at assigning terms. Humans get tired and fall back upon their faves. Other humans are stupid, bored, or indifferent and just assign terms and be done with it. Endeca’s interesting Guided Navigation worked because the company cleverly included consulting in a license. The consulting consisted of humans who worked up the needed vocabulary for a liquor store or preferably an eCommerce site with a modest number of products for sale. (There are some computational challenges inherent in the magical Endeca facets.)
Consequently massive taxonomy projects come and then fade. A few stick around, but these are often hooked to applications with non volatile words. The Engineering Index is a taxonomy, but its terminology is of scant use to an investment bank. How about a taxonomy for business? ABI/INFORM created, maintained, and licensed its vocabulary to outfits like the Royal Bank of Canada. However, ABI/INFORM moved into the brilliant managers at other firms. I assume a biz dev professional at whatever owner possesses rights to the vocabulary will cut a deal.
Back to Smartlogic.
Into this historical stew, Smartlogic offered a better way. I think that was the point of the marketing presentation we enjoyed years ago. Today the words have become more jargon centric, but the idea is the same: Index in a way that makes it possible to find that E12 when the vocabulary of the home ec major struggles with engineer-speak.
Our perception evolved. Smartlogic dabbled in the usual markets. Enterprise search vendors pushed into customer support. Smartlogic followed. Health and medical outfits struggled with indexing content and medical claims form. Indexing specialists followed the search vendors. Smartlogic has enthusiastically chased those markets as well. An exit for the company’s founders has not materialized. The dream of many — a juicy IPO — must work through the fog of the post Covid business world.
The most recent pivot is announced this way:
Smartlogic now offers indexing for these sectors expressed in what may be Smartlogic compound controlled terms featuring conjunctions. There you go, Bing, Google, Swisscows, Qwant, and Yandex. Parse these and then relax the users’ query. That’s what happens to well considered controlled terms today DarkCyber knows.
- Energy and utilities
- Financial services and insurance
- Health care
- High tech and manufacturing
- Media and publishing
- Life sciences
- Retail and consumer products
- and of course, intelligence (presumably business, military, competitive, and enforcement).
Is the company pivoting or running a Marketing 101 game plan?
DarkCyber noted that Smartlogic offers a remarkable array of services, technologies (including our favorites semantic and knowledge management), and — wait for it — artificial intelligence.
Interesting. Indexing is versatile and definitely requires a Swiss Army Knife of solutions, a Gartner encomium, and those pivots. Those spins remains anchored to indexing.
Want to know more about Smartlogic? Navigate to the company’s Web site. There’s even a blog! Very reliable outfit. Quick response. Objective. Who could ask for anything more?
Stephen E Arnold, May 29, 2020
Facebook: Slipslidin’ Away from the Filterin’ Thing
May 28, 2020
Censorship, flagged tweets, and technology companies trying to be a nervous parent? Sound familiar. DarkCyber finds the discussion interesting. One of the DarkCyber team spotted “Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg Says Platform Policing Should Be Limited To Avoiding Imminent Harm.” The main point of the write up contains this statement:
… the platform’s criteria for removing content remains “imminent harm” — not harm “down the line.”
The article provides some training wheels for the DarkCyber researcher:
Zuckerberg said several times that, in the balance, he thinks of himself “as being on the side of giving people a voice and pushing back on censorship.”
Some of the companies powering the digital economy appear to be willing to make decisions about what the product (those who use the services) or the customers (advertisers) can access.
The article provides a context for Facebook’s “imminent harm”; for example:
Facebook’s 2.6 billion users give it unprecedented reach, noted Susan Perez, a portfolio manager at Harrington Investments, who brought up the issue of political interference and fraudulent content on the platform. “Society’s risk is also the company’s risk,” she said.
The article includes a “Yes, but…”; to wit:
Nick Clegg, Facebook’s president of global affairs and communications, said during a question and answer session, said the company doesn’t think a private tech company “should be in the position of vetting what politicians say. We think people should be allowed to hear what politicians say so they can make up their own mind and hold the politician to account.”
As censorship becomes an issue in the datasphere, is Facebook “slip sliding away”? Is the senior management of Facebook climbing a rock face using an almost invisible path, a path that other digital climbers have not discerned?
But wait? Didn’t that pop song say?
You know the nearer your destination
The more you’re slip slidin’ away
Sure, but what if Facebook’s slip slidin’ is movin’ closer?
Stephen E Arnold, May 28, 2020
Search Engine Optimization Craziness Continues
May 28, 2020
One of the DarkCyber team spotted a write up. She kept it under wraps because with restaurants reopening, the loyal researcher did not want our lunch spoiled. SEO makes my dander do whatever dander does. Because I pay for lunch for those working for me, the team knows that happy subjects like the wonderfulness of enterprise search innovations are sunnier topics.
She goofed. I snagged a photocopy of “The Four V’s of Semantic Search.” My initial reaction was, “Are these SEO experts channeling IBM’s four V’s of Big Data”? I came to my senses. SEO experts simply borrow acronyms, refit them, and reveal great insights.
SEO or search engine optimization is a runway for selling Google Advertising. When the “organic” content fails to deliver the lusted after clicks, those seeking click validation have one path forward: Pay Google for traffic.
Don’t agree. Well, get in line with those who fail to understand their role in the ad selling pipeline.
What’s the write up explain is the key to “semantic search”?
There are four points, just almost the very same as IBM’s shattering insight after Charlie Chaplin ads and before the most recent round of layoffs at Big Blue.
First, crank out lots of content. Nah, it doesn’t have to advance knowledge. Second, put out the content as fast as possible. Bing, Google, and Yandex algorithms are greedy. Feed them, you click starved Web site owner. Third, mix up your content. We now have three V’s: Volume, velocity, and variety. Are there facts to back up these bold and confident statements? You are kidding, right?
The fourth V is the one that made me take a few deep breaths, chop some wood, and crush two aluminum Perrier in the thin, flimsy cans.
Veracity is the trigger word. Here’s what the write up says:
The fourth V is about how accurate the information is that you share, which speaks about your expertise in the given subject and to your honesty. Google cares about whether the information you share is true or not and real or not, because this is what Google’s audience cares about. That’s why you won’t usually get search results that point to the fake news sites. [Note a DarkCyber editor added the possessive apostrophe in this passage. You know “veractity” which is related to accuracy sort of.]
What’s this have to do with semantic search?
Nothing, zip, zilch, nada.
It should be the four V’s plus a B for baloney. That’s SEO because when you don’t get traffic, buy it.
Stephen E Arnold, May 28, 2020
4iQ Amps Up Its Marketing
May 28, 2020
It is all about volume. Though most of us delete the ubiquitous “sextortion” emails with little thought but a passing sense of distaste, enough victims fork over Bitcoin to make it a lucrative scam. 4iQ’s blog examines the tactic in, “Demystifying ‘Sextortion’ & Blackmail Scams.”
Lest you, dear reader, are so fortunate as to be unfamiliar with such emails, the post includes examples. Dripping scorn for those who would exploit fears and threaten people during a pandemic, writer ClairelfEye explains these deceivers purchase real email addresses and passwords stolen in one of the large-scale data breaches that have become all too common. They then leverage this information to convince marks they possess more, very personal, details. She writes:
“I reached out to my social networks to see if this is widespread, and sure enough, many people confirmed that they — or someone they know — have received these types of scams in the past five weeks. … While most people get annoyed, roll their eyes and delete these blackmail e-mails, this is a numbers game. There will be a few people that fall for these low-level scams. Out of the many sextortion scams forwarded to me by friends and family, one [Bitcoin] address received 0.270616 BTC, which equals $2,082.03 USD as of April 27, 2020.”
Regarding the data breaches that make this scam possible, ClairelfEye explains:
“Working at 4iQ, I am almost too aware of data breaches happening on a daily basis. We investigate, validate and report on breached data every day. In fact, I can probably accurately surmise that this scammer got my email and clear text password in the 1.4 billion clear text credentials trove our breach hunters found back in 2017. Same goes for many of the forwarded scam emails I received. Interesting to see this information run full circle.”
The author’s colleague Alberto Casares, she tells us, is aggregating, investigating, and reporting on these extortion attempts. To participate, receivers of such emails can send them to report.email.threats@gmail.com. Dubbing itself the “Adversary Intelligence Company,” 4iQ offers consumer protection products and curates and normalizes compromised identities to help combat fraud and other crimes. Founded in 2016, the company is based in Los Altos, California.
Another specialized services firm amps up its marketing. This quest for sales and venture funding may be a trend.
Cynthia Murrell, May 28, 2020
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