It Is Official: One Cannot Trust Lawyers Working from Coffee Shops
November 16, 2021
I knew it. I had a hunch that attorneys who work from coffee shops, van life vehicles, and basements were not productive. Billing hours is easy; doing work like reading documents, fiddling with eDiscovery systems, and trying to get Microsoft Word to number lines correctly are harder.
I read “Contract Lawyers Face a Growing Invasion of Surveillance Programs That Monitor Their Work.” The write up points out that what I presume to be GenX, GenY and millennials don’t want to be in a high school detention hall staffed by an angry, game losing basketball coach. No coach, just surveillance software dolled up with facial recognition, “productivity” metrics, and baked in time logging functions.
Here’s a passage I noted:
Contract attorneys such as Anidi [Editor note: a real lawyer I presume] have become some of America’s first test subjects for this enhanced monitoring, and many are reporting frustrating results, saying the glitchy systems make them feel like a disposable cog with little workday privacy.
With some clients pushing back against legal bills which are disconnected from what law firm clients perceive as reality, legal outfits have to get their humanoid resources to “perform”. The monitoring systems allow the complaining client to review outputs from the systems. Ah, ha. We can prove with real data our legal eagles are endlessly circling the client’s legal jungle.
My take is different: I never trusted lawyers. Now lawyers employing lawyers don’t trust these professionals either. That’s why people go to work, have managers who monitor, and keep the professionals from hanging out at the water fountain.
Stephen E Arnold, November 16, 2021
OSINT: As Good as Government Intel
November 16, 2021
It is truly amazing how much information private citizens in the OSINT community can now glean from publicly available data. As The Economist puts it, “Open-Source Intelligence Challenges State Monopolies on Information.” Complete with intriguing examples, the extensive article details the growth of technologies and networks that have drastically changed the intelligence-gathering game over the last decade. We learn of Geo4Nonpro, a project of the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation
Studies (CNS) at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies at Monterey, California. The write-up reports:
“The CNS is a leader in gathering and analyzing open-source intelligence (OSINT). It has pulled off some dramatic coups with satellite pictures, including on one occasion actually catching the launch of a North Korean missile in an image provided by Planet, a company in San Francisco. Satellite data, though, is only one of the resources feeding a veritable boom in non-state OSINT. There are websites which track all sorts of useful goings-on, including the routes taken by aircraft and ships. There are vast searchable databases. Terabytes of footage from phones are uploaded to social-media sites every day, much of it handily tagged. … And it is not just the data. There are also tools and techniques for working with them—3D modeling packages, for example, which let you work out what sort of object might be throwing the shadow you see in a picture. And there are social media and institutional settings that let this be done collaboratively. Eclectic expertise and experience can easily be leveraged with less-well-versed enthusiasm and curiosity in the service of projects which link academics, activists, journalists and people who mix the attributes of all three groups.”
We recommend reading the whole article for more about those who make a hobby of painstakingly analyzing images and footage. Some of these projects have come to startling conclusions. Government intelligence agencies are understandably wary as capabilities that used to be their purview spread among private OSINT enthusiasts. Not so wary, though, that they will not utilize the results when they prove useful. In fact, the government is a big customer of companies that supply higher-resolution satellite images than one can pull from the Web for free—outfits like American satellite maker Maxar and European aerospace firm Airbus. The article is eye-opening, and we can only wonder what the long-term results of this phenomenon will be.
Cynthia Murrell November 16, 2021
Semantics and the Web: A Snort of Pisco?
November 16, 2021
I read a transcript for the video called “Semantics and the Web: An Awkward History.” I have done a little work in the semantic space, including a stint as an advisor to a couple of outfits. I signed confidentiality agreements with the firms and even though both have entered the well-known Content Processing Cemetery, I won’t name these outfits. However, I thought of the ghosts of these companies as I worked my way through the transcript. I don’t think I will have nightmares, but my hunch is that investors in these failed outfits may have bad dreams. A couple may experience post traumatic stress. Hey, I am just suggesting people read the document, not go bonkers over its implications in our thumbtyping world.
I want to highlight a handful of gems I identified in the write up. If I get involved in another world-saving semantic project, I will want to have these in my treasure chest.
First, I noted this statement:
“Generic coding”, later known as markup, first emerged in the late 1960s, when William Tunnicliffe, Stanley Rice, and Norman Scharpf got the ideas going at the Graphics Communication Association, the GCA. Goldfarb’s implementations at IBM, with his colleagues Edward Mosher and Raymond Lorie, the G, M, and L, made him the point person for these conversations.
What’s not mentioned is that some in the US government became quite enthusiastic. Imagine the benefit of putting tags in text and providing electronic copies of documents. Much better than loose-leaf notebooks. I wish I have a penny for every time I heard this statement. How does the government produce documents today? The only technology not in wide use is hot metal type. It’s been — what? — a half century?
Second, I circled this passage:
SGML included a sample vocabulary, built on a model from the earliest days of GML. The American Association of Publishers and others used it regularly.
Indeed wonderful. The phrase “slicing and dicing” captured the essence of SGML. Why have human editors? Use SGML. Extract chunks. Presto! A new book. That worked really well but for one drawback: The proliferation of wild and crazy “books” were tough to sell. Experts in SGML were and remain a rare breed of cat. There were SGML ecosystems but adding smarts to content was and remains a work in progress. Yes, I am thinking of Snorkel too.
Third, I like this observation too:
Dumpsters are available in a variety of sizes and styles. To be honest, though, these have always been available. Demolition of old projects, waste, and disasters are common and frequent parts of computing.
The Web as well as social media are dumpsters. Let’s toss in TikTok type videos too. I think meta meta tags can burn in our cherry red garbage container. Why not?
What do these observations have to do with “semantics”?
- Move from SGML to XML. Much better. Allow XML to run some functions. Yes, great idea.
- Create a way to allow content objects to be anywhere. Just pull them together. Was this the precursor to micro services?
- One major consequence of tagging or the lack of it or just really lousy tagging, marking up, and relying of software allegedly doing the heavy lifting is an active demand for a way to “make sense” of content. The problem is that an increasing amount of content is non textual. Ooops.
What’s the fix? The semantic Web revivified? The use of pre-structured, by golly, correct mark up editors? A law that says students must learn how to mark up and tag? (Problem: Schools don’t teach math and logic anymore. Oh, well, there’s an online course for those who don’t understand consistency and rules.)
The write up makes clear there are numerous opportunities for innovation. And the non-textual information. Academics have some interesting ideas. Why not go SAILing or revisit the world of semantic search?
Stephen E Arnold, November 16, 2021
DarkCyber for November 16, 2021, Now Available
November 16, 2021
DarkCyber, Program 23, is now available at this link. The mid-November 2021 DarkCyber (Number 23 in the 2021 series) includes six stories.
There are two cyber “bytes”. The first reports about the legal pressure being applied to Signal, a maker of secure messaging software. The second explains that an international team of police arrested more than 100 people in Operation HunTor. Sixty-five of these bad actors resided in the United States.
Malware is tough to stamp out. In fact, Rootkits, a well-known method of compromising targets is returning, is regaining popularity. Plus, bad actors have begun placing malware in computer source code. The targets are unaware that their systems have been compromised. The program provides a link to a report about the Trojan Source method. the US government has blacklisted the NSO Group, a developer of specialized software and systems. What’s interesting is that three other firms have been blacklisted as well. One of the organizations responded to the US action with a sign and indifference. Amazon and Microsoft have learned that their customers/users have been subject to somewhat novel attacks. For Amazon, the Twitch “bit” reward system was used for money laundering. Google ads were used to distribute malware via a old-fashioned spoofed pages which looked legitimate but weren’t.
The drone news in this program reveals that Russia presented more than 200 war fighting technologies at a recent trade show in Lima, Peru. The point DarkCyber makes is that Russia perceives South America as a market ripe for sales. DarkCyber is produced every two weeks by Stephen E Arnold, publisher of the Beyond Search blog at www.arnoldit.com/wordpress and subject matter expert in some interesting technical specialties.
Kenny Toth, November 16, 2021
Want High-Value Traffic? Buy Ads
November 15, 2021
I read a number of stories pivoting on “Apple Quietly Buying Ads Via Google For High-Value Subscription Apps To Capture App Publisher Revenue.” The main idea is that someone — maybe Apple — is buying ads for hot services; for example, Babble and HBO. The user clicks on the ad and is promptly delivered to the App app store. Who is buying the ads? The information is not the type that convinces me that Apple is punching buttons directly.
The main point for me is that “organic” traffic and the baloney about search engine optimization is filled with ground up pine cones. If Apple can’t generate “organic” traffic from its walled garden orchard, who can?
Answer: Those with the money to buy ads, make them look as if the Bumblers and HBO wizards were behind the ads. The customer gets conveyed to the Apple store where those tasty fruits are marked up.
How does one find “objective” ads? The same way one finds “objective” information. One doesn’t unless one invests considerable time and money in research and analysis.
Disinformation, misinformation, and reformation are the currency of success perhaps?
Stephen E Arnold, November 15, 2021
Enterprise Search: What Did Shakespeare Allegedly Write?
November 15, 2021
The statement, according to my ratty copy of Shakespeare’s plays edited by one of the professors who tried to get me out of the university’s computer “room” in 1964, presents the Bard’s original, super authentic words this way:
The play is Hamlet. The queen, looking queenly, says to the fellow Thespian: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
Ironic? You decide. I just wanted to regurgitate what the professor wanted. Irony played no part in getting and A and getting back to the IBM mainframe and the beloved punch card machine.
I thought about “protesting too much” after I read “Making a Business Case for Enterprise Search.”
I noted this statement:
In effect you have to develop a Fourth Dimension costing model to account for the full range of potential costs.
Okay, the 4th dimension. Experts (real and self anointed) have been yammering about enterprise search for decades.
Why does an organization snap at the marketing line deployed by vendors of search and retrieval technology? The answer is obvious, at least to me. Someone believes that finding information is needed for some organizational instrumentality. Examples include finding an email so it can be deleted before litigation begins. Another is to locate the PowerPoint which contains the price the now terminated sales professional presented to close a very big contract. How about pinpoint who in the organization had access to the chemical composition of a new anti viral? Another? A shipment went walkabout. Some person making minimum wage has to locate products to be able to send out another shipment.
The laughable part of “enterprise search” is that there is no single system, including the craziness pitched by Amazon, Microsoft, Google, start ups with AI centric systems, or small outfits which have been making minimal revenue headway for a very long time from a small city in Austria or a suburb of the delightful metropolis of Moscow.
The cost of failing to find information cannot be reduced to the made up data about how long a person spends hunting for information. I believe a mid tier consulting outfit and a librarian cooked up this info-confection. Nor is any accountant going to be able to back out the “cost” of search in a cloud database service provided by one of the regulators’ favorite monopolies. No system manager I know keeps track of what time and effort goes into making it possible for a 23 year old art history major locate the specific technical innovation in an autonomous drone. Information of this type requires features not included in Everything, X1, Solr, or the exciting Amazon knock off of Elastic’s follow on to Compass.
Enterprise information retrieval has been a thing for about 50 years. Where has the industry gone? Well, one search executive did a year in prison. Another is fighting extradition for financial fancy dancing. Dozens have just failed. Remember Groxis? And many others have gone to the search-doesn’t-work section of the dead software cemetery.
I find it interesting that people have to explain search in the midst of smart software, blockchain, and a shift to containerized development.
Oh, well. There’s the Sinequa calculator thing.
Stephen E Arnold, November 15, 2021
Bias in Polynomials
November 15, 2021
I don’t want to do a mathy-type post. I want to point interested readers to the article “Mathematicians Find Structure in Biased Polynomials.” The idea is that certain expressions “favor particular outputs.” I worked through the write up and looked at a couple of the referenced papers.
Three observations:
- Biased polynomials may provide some insight into why certain machine learning methods go off the rails
- The “cementing” of certain outputs to a particular type of operation warrants review in the context of biased polynomials.
- Smart software may not be smart enough to recognize repetitive outputs, assuming — like some machine learning wizards — that math is objective. It is, but it may be biased.
Net net: An interesting area for inquiry by bright 17 year olds. Maybe there is a connection between biased polynomials and some of the surprising outputs from a Bayesian-dependent process.
Stephen E Arnold, November 15, 2021
Facebook: Whom Do We Trust?
November 15, 2021
Despite common sense, people continue to trust Facebook for news. Informed people realize that Facebook is not a reliable news source. Social media and communication experts are warning the US government about the dangers. Roll Call delves into the details in, “Facebook Can’t Be Trusted To Stop Spread Of Extremism, Experts Tell Senate.”
Social media and communication experts testified at the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. They explained to the US Senate that social media platforms, especially Facebook, are incapable of containing the spread of violent, extremist content. Facebook personalization algorithms recommend extremist content and it becomes an addiction:
“Karen Kornbluh, who directs the Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, described how social media algorithms can quickly lure a user from innocuous political content to instructional videos for forming a militia. ‘This is a national security vulnerability,’ Kornbluh said, giving a small number of content producers the ability to exploit social media algorithms to gain enormous reach.‘Social media goes well beyond providing users tools to connect organically with others,’ she testified. ‘It pulls users into rabbit holes and empowers small numbers of extremist recruiters to engineer algorithmic radicalization.’”
Social media platform companies prioritize profit over societal well-being, because the extremist and polarizing content keeps users’ eyeballs glued to their screens. Experts want the US government to force social media platforms to share their algorithms so they can be studied. Facebook and its brethren argue their algorithms are proprietary technology and poses business risks if made public.
Social media companies know more their users than the public knows about the companies. The experts argue that social media platforms should be more transparent so users can understand how their views are distorted.
Whitney Grace, November 15, 2021
Psychopathy: Do the Patients Referenced by Richard Kraft Ebing Gravitate to Work in High Tech?
November 12, 2021
First, who is Richard Kraft Ebing? He was an Austro-German psychiatrist with some interesting research. Wowza. He described selected human behaviors in a way which caught the attention of a couple of the Psychology Today professional when we were talking after I delivered a report. Yep, that was a memorable day. The big dog in overalls; the marketing wizard chatting intensely with an intern in gym clothes; and the sun sparkling on the beach behind the house in Del Mar, California. I recall there was some talk about the computer company providing hardware and software to the firm which owned Psychology Today, Intellectual Digest, and a few other high IQ publications. The main point was that the computer sales people lied. “Those guys cheated us. We were raped.” That’s when I referenced good old Richard Kraft Ebing?
Flash forward to “Science Reveals the Fascinating Link between Lying and Technology.” The story is paywalled, of course. One pays for the truth, Silicon Valley infused journalism, and the unvarnished truth about high technology in its assorted manifestation.
But before looking that the article itself, let me highlight two of the rules for high technology sales and and marketing effectuators.
Rule Number One; herewith:
Tell the prospect what he or she wants to hear.
Now for Rule Number Two:
Hyperbole and vaporware are not really falsehoods. Sell sizzle, not steak.
The article in Fast Company is quite like some of T George Harris’ faves. (T George, described as a visionary journalist, was a big wheel at the outfit which owned Psych Today and ID decades ago.)
The main point of the write up published online on November 12, 2021, struck me as:
The belief that lying is rampant in the digital age just doesn’t match the data.
There you go. Definitive evidence that truth reigns supreme. Example: when Verizon uses the word “unlimited.” Example: Charter Spectrum sells 200 megabit connectivity. Example: FAANG statements under oath.
Yep, truth, integrity, and the best of what’s good for “users.” Psychopathia whatever.
Stephen E Arnold, November 12, 2021
When a Senior Manager Talks about What Top Dogs Know That Could Come Back and Bite Hard
November 12, 2021
I read “Facebook Knew What It Was Doing, Eric Schmidt Says.” Of course, Facebook knew what it had been doing. The company is effectively the personal sandbox of Mr. Zuckerberg. The write up says:
Facebook, now known as Meta Platforms Inc., “went a little too far on the revenue side and not enough on the judgment side,” Schmidt said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. “You can see that from the Facebook leaks that have been occurring.”
This astute observation could be the verbal equivalent of a dog that bites its master. Google executives have been somewhat vague in their public statements and Congressional testimony about certain Google practices.
The top dog in a company knows what’s going on, eh? What do Google senior managers know about Google’s boots-on-the-ground practices? Probably a lot.
Stephen E Arnold, November 11, 2021
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