Zuckin and Duckin: Socialmania at Facebook
July 19, 2021
I read “Zuck Is a Lightweight, and 4 More Things We Learned about Facebook from ‘An Ugly Truth’.” My initial response was, “No Mashable professionals will be invited to the social Zuckerberg’s Hawaii compound.” Bummer. I had a few other thoughts as well, but, first, here’s couple of snippets in what is possible to characterize a review of a new book by Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang. I assume any publicity is good publicity.
Here’s an I circled in Facebook social blue:
Frenkel and Kang’s careful reporting shows a company whose leadership is institutionally ill-equipped to handle the Frankenstein’s monster they built.
Snappy. To the point.
Another? Of course, gentle reader:
Zuckerberg designed the platform for mindless scrolling: “I kind of want to be the new MTV,” he told friends.
Insightful but TikTok, which may have some links to the sensitive Chinese power plant, aced out the F’Book.
And how about this?
[The Zuck] was explicitly dismissive of what she said.” Indeed, the book provides examples where Sandberg was afraid of getting fired, or being labeled as politically biased, and didn’t even try to push back…
Okay, and one more:
Employees are fighting the good fight.
Will I buy the book? Nah, this review is close enough. What do I think will happen to Facebook? In the short term, not much. The company is big and generating big payoffs in power and cash. Longer term? The wind down will continue. Google, for example, is dealing with stuck disc brakes on its super car. Facebook may be popping in and out of view in that outstanding vehicle’s rear view mirrors. One doesn’t change an outfit with many years of momentum.
Are the book’s revelations on the money. Probably reasonably accurate but disenchantment can lead to some interesting shaping of non fiction writing. And the Mashable review? Don’t buy a new Hawaiian themed cabana outfit yet. What about Facebook’s management method? Why change? It worked in high school. It worked when testifying before Congress. It worked until a couple of reporters shifted into interview mode and reporters are unlikely to rack up the likes on Facebook.
Stephen E Arnold, July xx, 2021
A Microgoof or a Google PR Opportunity?
July 19, 2021
It is difficult to determine if Google is on the money with its alleged discovery of Russian cyber criminals targeting big wheels via LinkedIn. True or not, it may be another security misstep for the Redmond giant. “Russian Hackers Disguised as LinkedIn Networkers Spreading Malware” asserts:
A new investigation by Google shows that some of the common LinkedIn spam can be quite dangerous. Hackers with possible connections to the Russian government sent fraudulent LinkedIn messages to various officials from European countries with links aimed to exploit vulnerabilities in Windows and iOS. It is not yet known how many LinkedIn users were targeted in this hacking campaign and how many of them were ultimately hacked. Google believes that the cybercriminal gang responsible for the hacking campaign is most likely backed by the Russian government.
If this article is on the money, the odds are getting longer that Sergey Brin will be able to ride a Russian rocket into space. The article includes the statement “backed by the Russian government.” That might toss those orbital dreams into the Caspian Sea, the lowest point in the country. Also, the tecnopolies may be squaring off for a public relations dust up. I mean how could the Chrome love birds spat over a minor security issue. LinkedIn is a Microsoft property, and I assume it is protected by all manner of Microsoft security software as well as systems purchased or licensed.
LinkedIn vulnerable. Some believe LinkedIn lost control of user data earlier this year. Forbes reported that data about 700 million LinkedIn uses was for sale on a hacking forum.
However, if one compares the LinkedIn assertion from the GOOG with the mostly verified PrintNightmare glitch, the Microgoof results from repeated efforts to patch the print spooler. By the way, this gem is in most Windows versions. Here’s a flow chart to guide your remediation efforts:
LinkedIn versus what seems to be an engineered in persistent invitation to bad actors to have a series of great days. No zero days needed it seems.
Pick your Microgoof. Personally I find the print spooler thing more enjoyable than people looking for work.
Stephen E Arnold, July 19, 2021
Quote to Note: Fire, but Not the Wheel, Is a Loser
July 16, 2021
If Google says something, I believe it. Don’t you? Google is the Oracle of Shoreline Drive. No, not the Oracle on Dolphin Way, which is just south on the brilliantly designed Highway 101.
I had my enthusiasm for Google’s brilliance confirmed after I read “Google CEO Still Insists AI Revolution Bigger Than Invention of Fire.” The write up states:
Pichai suggests the internet and electricity are also small potatoes compared to AI.
Absolutely. AI makes possible much more than mere frightening animals at night, cooking said animals if a humanoid was able to kill it, melt substances to fabricate computers, and enable some types of power generation used to produce Google tchotchkes. AI is more, much more.
The write up continues with original secondary research from the Beeb:
“The progress in artificial intelligence, we are still in very early stages, but I viewed it as the most profound technology that humanity will ever develop and work on, and we have to make sure we do it in a way that we can harness it to society’s benefit,” Pichai said. “But I expect it to play a foundational role pretty much across every aspect of our lives. You know, be it health care, be it education, be it how we manufacture things and how we consume information. And so I view it as a very profound enabling technology. You know, if you think about fire or electricity or the internet, it’s like that, but I think even more profound,” Pichai continued.
The article points out that the Google Oracle does not define artificial intelligence. Never mind. Google says it, I believe it. My hunch is that if you want to get hired or become a consultant to Google believing that smart software is more important than fire is a precondition for becoming Googley.
Don’t believe me? Don’t understand the “profoundness” of the Timnit Gebru – Google dust up about AI? Not my problem. I believe. After walking my French bulldog, I will set on fire (a secondary discovery as you know) an America Online CD ROM.
Stephen E Arnold, July 16, 2021
Amazon: Its True Classiness Shines Bright
July 16, 2021
Richard Branson, the UK winner from the land of those who cannot kick straight, flew to the edge of space. If Mr. Branson could get into real space, I assume he could have swapped the Hubble telescope’s computer and made the darned thing work. He did not get into “real” space, and ever classy Amazon apparently suggested that Mr. Branson’s well-publicized ride “didn’t go high enough to make it to what most people consider space.” Hey, this is not my quote. I pulled it from the Metro UK online information service, a super high quality source of “real” news. For the original diss, click here.
The classy Amazon-linked observation points out:
[Amazon] claims that its own spacecraft, New Shepard, makes it above a well-defined boundary between Earth and outer space known as the Kármán Line.
I prefer the Hubble fix idea myself.
As helpful as this space flight observation is the information in “Amazon Gets Waiver from FCC to Monitor Sleep with a Radar Sensor.” First, I like the idea of a waiver because it makes clear that rules are made to be Elastic, just like Amazon’s cloud in India. (Bummer that it went down for a couple of hours on or about US July 12, 2021.) Second, the new sleep tracking device may allow some sysadmins to monitor Mr. Bezos’ sleep (maybe snapping some pix, capturing vids, and recording some spoken words) in the post-Branson era. Third, this is a classy idea: More home surveillance but for a really good reason. On the other hand, maybe Amazon just wants to fatten up the data gathered by its different surveillance devices helpfully connected to Sidewalk. Who doesn’t love Sidewalks?
My take away from these two news items is that rich people and big companies are like medieval kings. Different rules apply. But the outcome is the same. True classiness and the ability to do pretty much what the billionaires want. As I said, classy.
Stephen E Arnold, July 16, 2021
A Xoogler Wants to Do Search: Channeling Exalead and Smoking InfinitySearch?
July 16, 2021
Remember Exalead. This was a search engine created by a person who was asked to join the Google. The system was very good: 64 bit architecture, timely indexing of new and previously indexed sites, and novel features like searching via text for a specific point in an Exalead processed video. Now the system is part of Dassault Systèmes because senior management grew frustrated with one of the aggressively marketed “smart systems” available in the mid 2000s.
Now a Xoogler realizes that Google search is just an artifact of the Backrub search and retrieval system. What was “clever” in 1998 now generally a version of MySpace.com. Maybe anigifs are in the fridge waiting to become the next big thing at the GOOG.
Now there’s a new Google called Neeva, a subscription-based, allegedly non-tracking, ad-free alternative to Google. Plus, Neeva, is out of beta—let the marketing begin! Fast Company explores the new search engine and its developers in depth in, “Inside Neeva, the Ad-Free, Privacy-First Search Engine from Ex-Googlers.” (Keep in mind that InfinitySearch.co is a new search engine with an almost identical subscription business model. Haven’t heart of InfinitySearch? Hmmm. What about Okeano? Oh, not that system either? Hmmm.)
Co-founders Sridhar Ramaswamy and Vivek Raghunathan, who both used to work at Google, had front-row seats to the dominant search engine’s evolution. They were unhappy to see advertising become more and more intrusive over the years. They are betting many users are ready to pay a $4.95 a month to access what Google could have been if it were not in hot pursuit of the almighty ad dollar. Anyone who has been googling for years has watched ads migrate from a relatively unobtrusive position on the right of the page to the top of search results. For a while after that shift they were delineated by a shaded box, but now they suspiciously blend into the organic results. Google also started pushing links to its own services to the top, even when a competitor might better serve the searcher’s needs. The Fast Company write up states:
“Then there’s the fact that Google builds profiles of its users based on their online activity, the better to precisely target them with advertising not only at its own sites but all the other ones across the web whose ads are powered by Google. With no ads to serve up, Neeva shouldn’t leave privacy-conscious types feeling like they’re being monitored for ulterior purposes. (By default, Neeva does hold onto your searches for 90 days to improve the quality of features such as autosuggestions, but you can erase this log or tell the service you don’t want it to keep it in the first place.) In another break from search-engine tradition, Neeva says that it will turn at least 20 percent of its top-line revenue over to publishing partners, including the first two it’s announced, Quora and Medium. Though the details of where this could lead remain vague, it’s another attempt to set Neeva apart from Google, which has often been accused of benefiting from media outlets’ content without adequate compensation, a long-simmering dispute that has led to lawsuits and legislation.”
The founders hired on several other ex-Googlers. The team worked to create a platform that is close enough to their former employer’s to feel familiar while nixing all the advertising misery. To do this, Neeva blends its own indexing with results from Apple, Bing, Yelp, Intrinio, Weather.com, Xignite, and even Google Maps. McCracken reports the platform performs well for most tasks, falling short only on local searches. There is also the small inconvenience that, as of this writing, Chrome is the only browser that lets one set Neeva as the default search platform. Is this an acquisition-friendly move. See the Fast Company article for more on Neeva’s features as well as details on Ramaswamy’s and Raghunathan’s experiences that led them down the path to this adventure.
And you can check out Exalead search at this link. Yep, still online. May I suggest the Web, video, and forums search be expanded and enhanced. As I said, it was quite good.
Cynthia Murrell, July 16, 2021
Social Media and News Diversity
July 16, 2021
Remember the filter bubble phrase. The idea is that in an online world one can stumble into, be forced into, or be seduced into an info flow which reinforces what one believes to be accurate. The impetus for filter bubbling is assumed to be social media. Not so fast, pilgrim.
“Study: Social Media Contributes to a More Diverse News Diet — Wait, What?!” provides rock solid, dead on proof that social media is not the bad actor here. I must admit that the assertion is one I do not hear too often. I noted this passage:
The study found that people who use search engines, social media, and aggregators to access news can actually have more diverse information diets.
The study is “More Diverse, More Politically Varied: How Social Media, Search Engines and Aggregators Shape News Repertoires in the United Kingdom.” With a word like “repertoire” in the title, one can almost leap at the assumption that the work was from Britain’s most objectively wonderful institutions of higher learning. None of that Cambridge Analytica fluff. These are Oxfordians and Liverpudlians. Liverpool is a hot bed of “repertoire” I have heard. You can download the document at this url from Sage, a fine professional publisher, at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/14614448211027393.
The original study states:
There is still much to learn about how the rise of new, ‘distributed’, forms of news access through search engines, social media and aggregators are shaping people’s news use.
That lines up with my understanding of what is known about the upsides and downsides of social media technology, content, its use, and its creators. There’s a handy list of tracked articles read:
The Canary.co is interesting because it runs headlines which are probably intuitively logical in Oxford and Liverpool pubs. Here’s a headline from July 11, 2021:
Boris Johnson Toys with Herd Immunity Despite Evidence Linking Long Covid to Brain Damage.
I am not sure about Mr. Johnson’s toying, herd immunity, and brain damage. But I live in rural Kentucky, not Oxford or Liverpool.
The Sage write up includes obligatory math; for example:
And then charge forward into the discussion of this breakthrough research.
Social media exposes their users to more diverse opinions. I will pass that along to the folks who hang out in the tavern in Harrod’s Creek. Some of those individuals get their info from quite interesting groups on Telegram. SocialClu, anyone? Brain damage? TikTok?
Stephen E Arnold, July 16, 2021
China, Quantum Computing; IBM, Heifers
July 15, 2021
This is probably an unfair comparison but, why not? Navigate to “Chinese Quantum Computer Sets Record in Processing Test.” The write up states:
Scientists in China have claimed another benchmark in computing, saying their quantum device takes just 72 minutes to do a task that would take the most powerful supercomputer at least eight years.
Is this true? Maybe, maybe not. But the PR is fantastic. China, a technology leader. Beating Google and other US quantum wannabes. I can almost hear the applause in the Chinese National People’s Congress.
The write up added:
The Chinese scientists said they used random quantum circuit sampling as a metric to evaluate the power of their quantum processor.
Shortly after spotting this Chinese marketing-centric item, I read “Heifer International and IBM Work with Coffee and Cocoa Farmers in Honduras to Increase Access to Data and Global Markets.” That write up reports:
Heifer International and IBM, together with CATIE, an international organization focused on sustainable and inclusive human well-being in Latin America, are also working with farmers to deploy the Watson Decision Platform for Agriculture. The system combines predictive AI technology with geospatial, weather, environmental and IoT field data in a comprehensive dashboard tailored to a farmer’s land. It delivers weather alerts and other information, such as optimal planting patterns and expected yields linked to market pricing. These insights can help farmers and agribusinesses make more informed decisions for improving crop yield and value, as well as food safety and sustainability. The technology is expected to play an important role in increasing the incomes of coffee and cocoa farmers.
Quite a juxtaposition. A marketing push from China for quantum computing. IBM pushes with the Heifer tie up with good old Watson.
Stephen E Arnold, July 15, 2021
Another New Web Search Engine: Zajjle
July 15, 2021
The DarkCyber research team tries to keep up with the Web search engines. Rarely does one come along with an index of content not generally included in the Bing, Google, Yandex systems or the new-kids-on-the-block like Metager or Neeva. According to “Arabic Search Engine plus Webmail and Data Analytics is Now Available at Zajjle”:
Zajjle is an Arabic search engine with many advantages. Besides offering the primary function as a search engine in the Arabic language, it also has additional features like webmail and website statistics & data analytics. People in Middle East countries can access the website in the Arabic language for searching the current news, website address, videos, and photos.
The write up states:
Ahmad A Najar, the Zajjle founder, is an entrepreneur who established CatchFood and Mazra3a.net. CatchFood is successful web-based restaurant management and food delivery platform. It has served countries like the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Palestine, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, America, and Canada. Mazra3a.net is a popular Arabic agricultural platform connecting people interested in the agriculture industry to change ideas, increase knowledge, and communicate with professionals in the agriculture industry.
Will Zajjle index content deep in the US Department of Energy’s public facing Web sites? Will it snag content in Streamgun? What about content censored by mainstream systems?
You can explore the site at this link: http://www.zajjle.com/
Stephen E Arnold, July 15, 2021
China: Prudence or Protectionism?
July 15, 2021
With many countries struggling with cyber breaches, China seems to be implementing procedures. Are these prudent steps or actions designed to enforce protectionist policies. “China Tightens Rules on Foreign IPOs in New Blow to Tech Firms” reports:
China proposed new rules that would require nearly all companies seeking to list in foreign countries to undergo a cybersecurity review, a move that would significantly tighten oversight over its internet giants.
The write up somewhat optimistically suggests that companies seeking to list on a non-US / non-Euro-centric stock exchange will elect to embrace Hong Kong.
Maybe not.
Is the decision to link listing with cyber security a wild and crazy idea, or is China taking a leadership position in cyber prophylaxis?
Worth monitoring this possible move.
Stephen E Arnold, July 15, 2021
Cyber Crime and Crypto Currency: There Is a Link? Really?
July 15, 2021
I read a remarkable report from the diary of Captain Obvious. The entry was “Quick Take: How Cryptocurrency Turbocharged the Cybercrime Racket.” I was stunned to learn that paying for contraband, stolen videos, and Crime as a Service was helped out with allegedly anonymous digital payments “turbocharged the cybercrime racket.”
The write up reports:
Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, along with the exchanges where they can be traded anonymously, have emerged as key tools for the cyber extortionists.
The article then explains how to use cryptocurrency for cyber crime, explains why bad actors love money flows which sidestep traditional financial institutions, an estimate of the amount of money stolen using cryptocurrency, a comment about how bad actors obtained payment in the pre-bitcoin days, a comment about tracing digital currency transactions, some law enforcement successes, and what steps might address this issue.
Who knew? Maybe the more than 60 vendors engaged in cyber security, the dozens of vendors monitoring obfuscated forums, and savvy bad actors who jumped at the opportunity cryptocurrency created for mixers.
It is outstanding that the Seattle Times, home of the security giant Microsoft, has revealed this startling connection between obfuscated, instant monetary transactions designed to avoid regulatory requirements of outfits like major US banks.
Pulitzer time? Absolutely. Next the hard hitting news team will report on the sun rising each morning in Seattle.
Stephen E Arnold, July
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