Want to Cash In on the TikTok AI?
July 8, 2021
If you want to license the artificial intelligence which chainsaws away IQ points, you can. The vendor is a company called BytePlus, and, yes, it is an official source of the TikTok goodness. Just bring cash and leave your concerns about having data from your use of the system and method winging its way to the land that won over Marco Polo.
“ByteDance Starts Selling TikTok’s AI to Other Companies” states (if you pay up to read the original write up in the weird orange newspaper):BytePlus offers businesses the chance to tap some of TikTok’s secret ingredient: the algorithm that keeps users scrolling by recommending them videos that it thinks they will like. They can use this technology to personalize their apps and services for their customers. Other software on offer includes automated translation of text and speech, real-time video effects and a suite of data analysis and management tools.
Just think you can hook your prospects on short videos about such compelling subjects as enterprise search, the MBA life, personnel management at Google, and cooking on a burning Tesla Plaid.
Stephen E Arnold, July 8, 2021
Amusing Confusing Wizards
July 7, 2021
More from the Redmond wizards’ humor generating machines.
Microsoft has found a way to deflect attention from yet another security issue. Do you print over the Internet? “Microsoft Acknowledges PrintNightmare Remote Code Execution Vulnerability Affecting Windows Pint Spooler Service” says:
IT Admins are also invited to disable the Print Spooler service via Powershell commands, though this will disable the ability to print both locally and remotely. Another workaround is to disable inbound remote printing through Group Policy, which will block the remote attack vector while allowing local printing.
So what distracts one from a print nightmare? That’s easy. Just try to figure out if your PC can run Windows 11? TPM, you say? Intel what?
PrintNightmare aptly characterizes Microsoft’s organizational acumen perhaps?
Stephen E Arnold, July 7, 2021
China Chipping Away at Chips: Progress Evident
July 7, 2021
Intel is paying a third party to fab some super duper chips using the same teeny weeny traces rumored to be used in Apple’s next gen, does-everything chip. But Intel itself is not making the chips. China, however, seems to be plugging along with its chip fabbing efforts. It seems that China is moving forward in fabrication and technology for embedding AI in silicon. Global Times reports, “Chinese Tech Giant Baidu Spins Off $2 Billion AI Chip Unit, Gears Up for Homegrown Production Amid Fierce Competition.” Does this mean the bias will now be hardwired in? Who will know until it is too late.
The chip unit Kunlun will soon become an independent company, with the Baidu chip’s chief architect as its CEO. It is hoped the move will bring Kunlun more funding and more flexibility. Shares of Baidu climbed since the announcement. The brief write-up reports:
“Kunlun chips are designed to optimize AI workload and improve cloud cost structure. The project was first announced by Baidu CEO Robin Li at Baidu AI Developer Conference in 2018. It can be widely applied in scenarios such as computer vision and natural language processing. The first generation of Kunlun chips has seen the mass production in early 2020. The second generation with the performance of three times higher than that of the first generation, will be mass produced in the second half of 2021, according to media reports. Chips, which play a crucial role in the Internet of Things era, have become a new focus of competition for China’s technology giants. The competition has intensified amid the recent global shortage of chips and the US restriction on chip supplies to Chinese companies, according to industry experts.”
We are reminded AI chips are crucial to growing fields like unmanned vehicles and cloud servers, so there is much money to be made for companies that act quickly. Will China consider such issues as the unintentional harm biased AI can wreak on individuals and society. Nope. I think in the next six to nine months, there will be harm, and it may affect outfits like Intel which are working overtime to regain some of their former glory in the Great Chip Derby.
News releases are much easier to churn out than advanced semiconductors in our opinion. Maybe Wingtech via Nexperia will buy Newport Wafer Fab. This Newport outfit is the largest chip maker in the UK? Could this be a signal that China wants to make sure it can be a player in the chip game? The answer is, “Looks like it.”
Cynthia Murrell, July 7, 2021
Deloitte Acquires Terbium Labs: Does This Mean Digital Shadows Won the Dark Web Indexing Skirmish?
July 7, 2021
Deloitte has been on a cybersecurity shopping spree this year. The giant auditing and consulting firm bought Root9B in January and CloudQuest at the beginning of June. Now, ZDNet reports, “Deloitte Scoops Up Digital Risk Protection Company Terbium Labs.” We like Terbium. Perhaps the acquisition will help Deloitte move past the unfortunate Autonomy affair. Writer Natalie Gagliordi tells us:
“The tax and auditing giant said Terbium Labs’ services — which include a digital risk protection platform that aims to helps organizations detect and remediate data exposure, theft, or misuse — will join Deloitte’s cyber practice and bolster its Detect & Respond offering suite. Terbium Labs’ digital risk platform leverages AI, machine learning, and patented data fingerprinting technologies to identify illicit use of sensitive data online. Deloitte said that adding the Terbium Labs business to its portfolio would enable the company to offer clients another way to continuously monitor for data exposed on the open, deep, or dark web. ‘Finding sensitive or proprietary data once it leaves an organization’s perimeter can be extremely challenging,’ said Kieran Norton, Deloitte Risk & Financial Advisory’s infrastructure solution leader, and principal. ‘Advanced cyber threat intelligence, paired with remediation of data risk exposure requires a balance of advanced technology, keen understanding of regulatory compliance and fine-tuning with an organization’s business needs and risk profile.’”
Among the Deloitte clients that may now benefit from Terbium tech are several governments and Fortune 500 companies. It is not revealed how much Deloitte paid for the privilege.
Terbium Labs lost the marketing fight with an outfit called Digital Shadows. That company has not yet been SPACed, acquired, or IPOed. There are quite a few Dark Web indexing outfits, and quite a bit of the Dark Web traffic appears to come from bots indexing the increasingly shrinky-dink obfuscated Web.
Is Digital Shadows’ marketing up to knocking Deloitte out of the game? Worth watching.
Cynthia Murrell, July 6, 2021
Microsoft in Perspective: Forget JEDI. Think Teams Together
July 7, 2021
I received some inputs from assorted colleagues and journalistic wizards regarding JEDI. The “real” news outfit CNBC published “Pentagon Cancels $10 Billion JEDI Cloud Contract That Amazon and Microsoft Were Fighting Over.” The write up stated:
… the Pentagon is launching a new multivendor cloud computing contract.
What caused this costly, high-profile action. Was it the beavering away of the Oracle professionals? Were those maintaining the Bezos bulldozer responsible? Was it clear-thinking consultants who asked, “Wasn’t Microsoft in the spotlight over the SolarWinds’ misstep?” I don’t know.
But let’s put this in perspective. As the JEDI deal was transported to a shelf in a Department of Defense store room at the Orchard Range Training Site in Idaho, there was an important — possibly life changing — announcement from Microsoft. Engadget phrased the technology breakthrough this way: Microsoft Teams Together Mode test lets just two people start a meeting. I learned:
Together Mode uses AI-powered segmentation to put all participants in a meeting in one virtual space.
I assume that this was previously impossible under current technology like a mobile phone, an Apple device with Facetime, Zoom, and a handheld walkie talkie, a CB radio, a ham radio, FreeConference.com, or a frequently sanitized pay phone located in a convenient store parking lot near the McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas.
I have a rhetorical question, “Is it possible to print either the news story about the JEDI termination or the FAQ for Together in the midst of — what’s it called — terror printing, horror hard copy effort — wait! — I have it. It is the condition of PrinterNightmare.
I have to stop writing. My Windows 10 machine wants to reboot for an update.
Stephen E Arnold, July 7, 2021
Institutional Knowledge: A Metric about the Google
July 6, 2021
I read an unusual “I left Google” essay called “Leaving Google.” I am not sure I understand how an apparently valued employee would find bureaucratic processes a reason for leaving what seems to be an okay job. You can read the write up by a Xoogler who worked at the mom-and-pop online ad company for 17 years.
I noted one factoid which struck me as quite interesting. Here it is:
At the time I left, out of ~150k employees, only ~300 had worked there longer than me.
That means that the institutional “knowledge” of Google, its thousands of technical components, its hundreds of thousands contracts, its millions of inter- and intra-process dependencies from the days of Backrub to the weirdness of solving death to the incredibly brilliant but Floc’ed solution to user tracking resides in exactly 0.1935 percent of the staff.
Perhaps some of Google’s more interesting behaviors, products, pronouncements, and personnel decisions have drifted from what the company was first engineered to deliver?
Questions:
- When a component buried deep in code created in 1999 goes wrong, who knows how to fix it?
- What if the issue cannot be fixed? What then?
- How much of modern Google is code wrappers slapped over something that mostly works?
- Are disconnects between engineering and marketing created by this loss of institutional knowledge?
I suppose one can use a Web search engine like Bing, Swisscows, or Yandex to seek answers. Google search is not particularly useful for this type of query.
Stephen E Arnold, July 6, 2021
Click Rattling: Tech Giants Explain Their Reality to China
July 6, 2021
Will this end well? Do US technology giants — Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple and others — believe that operating in concert will alter Chinese policy? “American Internet Giants Hit Back at Hong Kong Doxxing Law” reports that “an industry group representing the largest American Internet companies warned Hong Kong’s government that changes to the city’s data-protection laws could impact companies’ ability to provide services in the city.” [You will have to pay up to read this Gray Lady confection, gentle reader.]
What? “Warn”, “could”, “data protection.”
I must be missing something. Isn’t China is a nation state? Its citizens and companies wishing to operate within its boundaries must conform to its rules and regulations or interesting things happen; for example, mobile death vans and a variation on adult day care.
It’s great that there is a Singapore outfit called the Asia Internet Coalition. I think that collaboration among largely unregulated, money centric US corporations is able to take place for such noble purposes as selling ads. However, what nuance of “China is a nation state” eludes this association and its US technology company members?
The write up reports: Shortly after the law was enacted, Facebook, Google and Twitter all said they had suspended responding to data requests from the Hong Kong authorities. Last month, police officers in the city invoked the law to briefly pull down a website that called for unity among expatriate Hong Kongers in the pro-democracy movement.
Will a refusal to respond to a nation state’s requests constitute behavior deemed illegal or seditious by a country like China?
If this news report is on the money, my hunch hypothesis is that some American technology giants are legends in their own minds. They seem to be acting as if they were real countries, just minus the fungible apparatuses of a country. I have a suggestion. Why doesn’t the Asia Internet Coalition invite the top 12 senior managers of those big US companies to a cruise up the Yangtze? The execs can tour the Shanghai Qingpu Prison and check out the abandoned cities of China’s “forced resettlement” policy.
Issue some warnings in a big news conference before boarding the boat. Warn? Hey, great idea. Issue a news release too. Post on social media. Tweet pictures of interesting structures.
Stephen E Arnold, July 6, 2021`
IBM: Watson, What Email Service Should Big Blue Use?
July 6, 2021
Watson, yes, you, IBM Watson. What mail system should IBM use? I am waiting… in the meantime:
This is a one liner offered at lunch by one of my DarkCyber researchers. This individual finds IBM amusing. I, on the other hand, feel for the company.
“IBM’s 18 Month Company Wide Email System Migration Has Been a Disaster, Sources Say” may not be 100 percent spot on. However, I believe it is indeed possible that the former Big Dog of computing may have itself swimming in an Olympic sized pool filled with Schwartzs Kosher Dill Pickles.
The write up reports:
“Outlook won’t work with the new system, IBM Notes won’t work and the online email called Verse has now gone down,” a tipster told us. “Everyone has been affected and no fix is in sight.”
The write up adds:
a blog post to IBM’s internal network w3 said the migration had been planned for 18 months and that everything should go fine provided everyone follows the instructions emailed to them. Evidently, this did not happen.
Now back to my question: Watson, what email service should Big Blue user?
Answer: Proton Mail. Are you sure?
Stephen E Arnold, July 6, 2021
TikTok and the Ecommerce Revolution
July 6, 2021
Online shopping is going through a major shakeup, and China is the epicenter. Verdict declares, “Watch Out Amazon, TikTok Is Coming for You with Short-Video Ecommerce.” Writer Elles Houweling introduces us to “618” (June 18th), an annual Chinese cybershopping festival that combines advertising with entertainment. Alongside traditional tactics like exclusive offers and discounts, retailers compete for attention with interactive live streaming events and the participation of internet influencers. Transactions can be made right on the social platforms that engage customers, smoothing the path to profits. Such developments may be no surprise from the nation that has the highest rate of ecommerce, according to research firm GlobalData. Houweling writes:
“Something that may come as news, however, is the speed at which short-video apps and live streaming ecommerce are taking over. Relatively new to the 618 game are social media platforms Douyin (China’s version of TikTok) and similar apps Kuaishou and Xiaohongshu, which are rapidly making their mark in the world of ecommerce. These apps have achieved something that traditional online retailers have long neglected: seamlessly merging shopping with entertainment. Chinese netizens are increasingly turning to social media platforms to make purchases. In the West, TikTok is not yet widely associated with the idea of ecommerce, but this may soon change. Recently, TikTok announced that it had entered into partnerships with several companies, including Wal-Mart, Shopify and L’Oréal, to bring the app’s ecommerce platform to a Western audience. We may soon find a cohort of Millennials and GenZs not only learning their latest dance moves from TikTok but also buying their daily products, a trend that may threaten well-established ecommerce behemoths such as Amazon. Moreover, social media platforms have introduced new forms of cybershopping. Soon short-video advertisements and live broadcasts may replace the traditional search and click model of online retail.”
TikTok is now testing in-app sales features in Europe. Wal-Mart just partnered with TikTok on live-stream shopping, a move GlobalData sees as a real threat to Amazon. Though that company now has Amazon Live, the feature seems unlikely to capture nearly as much attention as TikTok will command on Wal-Mart’s behalf. The article notes one of TikTok’s strengths is its recommendation algorithm, which factors in what users do not like as well as what they do. The AI’s uncanny knack for discerning preferences makes for a strong marketing advantage. Perhaps that was the plan all along?
Didn’t some hyperactive rich person call this method ACommerce? The A does not mean what you think it means. The A is for algorithmic. I think.
Cynthia Murrell, June 30, 2021
Microsoft: Innovation Never Stops
July 6, 2021
Big news weekend. Forget the terror printer nightmare thing. Ignore the REvil ransomware issue. Get behind the big news. Navigate to “Microsoft’s Blue Screen of Death Is Changing to Black in Windows 11” and imbibe the super important announcement. Microsoft’s blue screen of death — affectionately known as BSOD — will be black. Energy saving? Of course. Massively significant? Of course. Truly innovative? Outdoing Einstein is routine for the Redmond outfit.
Now the question becomes, “What does one call BSOD?” I suggest:
[a] blod
[b] lacks
[c] baloney
I love baloney. Don’t you?
PS. Hats off to the Silicon Valley “real” news outfit for this factoid:
It’s the first major change to the BSOD since Microsoft added a sad face to the screen in Windows 8 in 2012
Really. Great.
Stephen E Arnold, July 6, 2021
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