Standard Operating Procedure for High School Science Club Leaders?
March 14, 2022
Unfortunately the tech industry remains predominantly white and male. Tech companies state they have taken initiatives to boost the number of women and ethnic minorities employees. The Conversation discusses the lack of diversity in the article, “The Tech Industry Talks About Boosting Diversity, But Research Shows Little Improvement.” The Conversation conducted a study to see if the numbers of women and ethnic minorities increased. The news Web site used machine learning and firm level data on employment diversity from 6,163 tech companies.
Despite all the hype from the tech industry, the study results are surprising and yet not so much:
“We found that 80% of firms displayed a pattern of very minimal increases in diversity in their professional labor force, primarily driven by small increases in the employment of Asian men and Asian women, with declines among non-Asian women and no change among other minority men. We also found that this widespread pattern reflects much slower movement toward employment diversity in this sector than in the rest of the U.S. labor force.”
There was some diversity growth with a 5.9% decline in the amount of white male executives. More women and ethnic minorities were moved to leadership positions, but it could be a PR stunt/defensive response to demonstrate companies are diverse. In reality, the companies are not dedicating resources to diversifying their labor force.
Companies that exhibited the most diversity had the most growth, so were hiring more employees. Diversity looks good for businesses and/or newer, innovative companies know how to effectively have diverse employees.
Tech companies, however, strongly remain in their attached to their outdated hiring practices. Newer companies are likely to make these practices extinct, but it will be a while before they dominate the industry. It could also be a marketing ploy, because that takes less effort.
Whitney Grace, March 14, 2022
DuckDuckWent: Can a Search System Float in the Same Content Stream Again?
March 11, 2022
I read “DuckDuckGo Ends Neutrality, Will Down-Rank Sites Associated with Russian Disinformation.” Recognizing disinformation can be tricky. Using the word Russian may make the job easier.
I am not going to get into a philosophical discussion.
For me the important point of DuckDuckGo’s decision to have an editorial policy (often called censorship) is captured in this passage from the source document:
A change in direction.
I would like to see DuckDuckGo be upfront about:
- The source of its search index
- The number of content objects compared to the indexes of Swisscows, Google, and Brave Search
- How deduplication works
Responding to Russia is a waddle but more steps are needed. Waddle along, DuckDuck, please.
Stephen E Arnold, March 11, 2022
Google and Mandiant: Will Google Be Able to Handle a People Business?
March 11, 2022
Talk about Google’s purchasing Mandiant is a hot topic. I want to comment about Protocol’s article “Google Wants to Be the Full-Service Security Cloud.” The write up is one of several mentioning an important fact:
The company currently has 2,200 employees, including 600 consultants and 300 intelligence analysts who respond to security breaches.
Mandiant, therefore, has about half of its employees performing consultant type work. Not long ago, Google benefited from the sale of Recorded Future, a company which was in the cyber security business AND had a capability that Google had not previously possessed. What was Recorded Future’s magic ingredient? My answer is, “Ability to index by time.” There were other Recorded Future capabilities. In-Q-Tel found the company interesting as well.
Now the Google is embracing the consultative business in which Mandiant has done well. How will the Google management method apply to the individuals who make up about half the Mandiant work force?
If the past is an indication, Google does okay when the staff are like Google’s previous and current management. Google does less well when the professionals are less like those high school science club members who climbed the ladder at the Google.
To sum up: This deal is going to be interesting to watch. Microsoft is likely to be keen on following the tie up. Mandiant is, as you may recall, the outfit which blew the whistle on the SolarWinds’ misstep. Microsoft was snagged in the subsequent forensic analyses. Plus, the cyber security industry is enjoying some favorable winds. The issue, however, is that as threats become breaches, the flaws of the present approach to cyber security become more obvious. Online advertising, cloud computing, and cyber security — a delightful concoction or a volatile mix?
Stephen E Arnold, March 11, 2022
Google Shown to Rewrite Over Half of those Carefully Crafted Title Tags
March 11, 2022
Apparently Google is taking liberties with one of search engine optimizations’ favorite tools. SEO software vendor Zyppy shares its own recent research in the blog post, “Study Shows Google Rewriting 61% of Title Tags.” Writer Cyrus Shepard tells us:
“Like most Google ranking signals, titles play only a small part in the overall algorithm. But because they are typically the first things users see in Google results, titles can have a large impact on click-through rates and the number of visits your site ultimately receives. Traditionally, Google used title tags to generate the page title in its search results. Over the years, it wasn’t uncommon to see Google make small changes to the title—typically because of length or relevancy—but these changes were mostly minor. More recently, Google became much more aggressive with title rewriting, incorporating additional HTML tags and generally rewriting far more titles than previously. Many site owners find that the titles they carefully craft almost all get rewritten. Fortunately, here at Zyppy, we have a large database of titles thanks to our title tag analysis tool. Armed with this data, we set out to determine how often Google rewrites titles and the scenarios which trigger this behavior.”
They study checked out 80,959 title tags across 2370 websites and found Google had rewritten 61.6% of them. Shepard notes the findings generally concur with those of two previous studies. He explores factors that affect whether Google is likely to meddle with one’s title: character length, brackets vs. parentheses, and title separators. Curious readers can navigate to the write-up for those details. What is an SEO tagger to do? The write-up recommends matching one’s title to the H1 (main heading) tag—the researchers found doing so dramatically reduced the chance of a Googley rewrite. Naturally, the post concludes by recommending and linking to Zyppy’s own title optimization tool. So helpful because it makes ad matching so much “better.”
Cynthia Murrell, March 11, 2022
Some Cellebrite Customers Revealed
March 11, 2022
This headline from Apple Insider should not be surprising, but it is bound to shock some individuals: “Most US Cabinet Departments Have Bought Cellebrite iPhone Hacking Tool.” The Intercept reported that fourteen out of the fifteen US Cabinet Departments purchased Cellebrite, technology designed to unlock Apple iOS.
Cellebrite is a common tool law enforcement, government agencies, military personnel and bad actors use to unlock iPhones. It is globally used. All of the major US Cabinet Departments, sans one, are not the only government entities that use Cellebrite:
“The Intercept claims that Federal purchasing records and Cellebrite securities documents seen by the publication, also show that several other federal agencies. Government buyers of Cellebrite include:
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
- Department of Agriculture
- Department of Education
- Department of Veterans Affairs
- Housing and Urban Development
- Social Security Administration
- US Agency for International Development
- US Fish and Wildlife Service
In those securities filings, the Cellebrite company reported having over 2,800 government customers in North America.”
Cellebrite has other major clients, including six out of the ten largest oil refiners and six out of then largest pharmaceutical companies. Cellebrite is a tool used by those with money and power. The bigger question is if the so-called “good guys” are using it for good or if they use Cellebrite in the same manner as the bad actors.
Whitney Grace, March 11, 2022
See. See! Google Does Good
March 10, 2022
I love art history majors who work in PR and marketing. Some of the ideas are delightful. A good example appears in the “real news” publication Verge. “DeepMind’s New AI Model Helps Decipher, Date, and Locate Ancient Inscriptions” explains:
an AI model created by Alphabet-subsidiary DeepMind … helps not only restore text that is missing from ancient Greek inscriptions but offers suggestions for when the text was written (within a 30-year period) and its possible geographic origins.
See. See! Doing good. Unlocking the mysteries of the past.
The write up explains via an anigif provided by the helpful wizards at Alphabet Google DeepMind how gaps are filled and missing facts conjured by the systems and methods of the Google.
The original text [translation provided by Tibby, the French bulldog in my office responsible for linguistic wonders] noted that the corrected text says:
Stop by the Dimitra Wine Shop. You can find us on Google Maps. Check out our ad on Google Local. (Discount for Google employees.)
The marvels of the new system include:
- Use of synthetic data to fabricate missing data
- Inclusion of references to Google online advertising
- Cross messaging for Google Maps and Google Local.
See. See! Google is doing good. Art history majors working in marketing are the pros everyone can thank for making sense when there are voids.
Stephen E Arnold, March 10, 2022
TikTok: Child Harm?
March 10, 2022
I will keep this brief. Navigate to “TikTok under Investigation in US over Harms to Children.” The article explains why an Instagram probe is now embracing TikTok. From my point of view, this “harm” question must be addressed. Glib statements like “Senator, I will send you a report” have allowed certain high technology firms to skate with the wind at their backs. Now the low friction surface is cracking. The “environment” of questioning is changing. Will the digital speed skaters fall into chilly water or with the help of legal eagle glide over the danger spots? Kudos to the US attorneys general who, like me, believe that more than cute comments are needed. Note: I will be speaking at the 2022 National Cyber Crime Conference. The professionals at the Massachusetts’ Attorney General’s office are crafting another high value program.
Stephen E Arnold, March 10, 2022
Doing Good for Data Harvesting
March 10, 2022
What a class act. We learn from TechDirt that a “Suicide Hotline Collected, Monetized the Data of Desperate People, Because Of Course it Did.” The culprit is Crisis Text Line, one of the largest nonprofit support services for suicidal individuals in the US. Naturally, the organization is hiding behind the assertion of anonymized data. Writer Karl Bode tells us:
“A Politico report last week highlighted how the company has been caught collecting and monetizing the data of callers… to create and market customer service software. More specifically, Crisis Text Line says it ‘anonymizes’ some user and interaction data (ranging from the frequency certain words are used, to the type of distress users are experiencing) and sells it to a for-profit partner named Loris.ai. Crisis Text Line has a minority stake in Loris.ai, and gets a cut of their revenues in exchange. As we’ve seen in countless privacy scandals before this one, the idea that this data is ‘anonymized’ is once again held up as some kind of get out of jail free card. … But as we’ve noted more times than I can count, ‘anonymized’ is effectively a meaningless term in the privacy realm. Study after study after study has shown that it’s relatively trivial to identify a user’s ‘anonymized’ footprint when that data is combined with a variety of other datasets. For a long time the press couldn’t be bothered to point this out, something that’s thankfully starting to change.”
Well that is something, we suppose. The hotline also swears the data is only being wielded for good, to “put more empathy into the world.” Sure.
Bode examines several factors that have gotten us here as a society: He points to the many roadblocks corporate lobbyists have managed to wedge in the way of even the most basic privacy laws. Then there is the serious dearth of funding for quality mental health care, leaving the vulnerable little choice but to reach out to irresponsible outfits like Crisis Text Line. And let us not forget the hamstrung privacy regulators at the FTC. That agency is understaffed and underfunded, is often prohibited from moving against nonprofits, and can only impose inconsequential penalties when it can act. Finally, the whole ecosystem involving big tech and telecom is convoluted by design, making oversight terribly difficult. Like similar misdeeds, Bode laments, this scandal is likely to move out of the news cycle with no more repercussion than a collective tut-tut. Stay tuned for the next one.
Cynthia Murrell, March 10, 2022
Cybersecurity and Human Error. Pesky Humans
March 10, 2022
Workers make honest mistakes. And sometimes those mistakes lead to security breaches. Darktrace describes how to guard against human imperfection in its DarkReading blog post, “Insider Threats Are More than Just Malicious Employees.” There is the worker who implements a shortcut they believe is benign but actually opens a route for attack. Another may simply forget everything they were taught in security training. Then there is the employee who is more focused on their next gig than on maintaining security practices at a firm they are leaving.
One answer to such risks, writes features editor Fahmida Y. Rashid, is zero trust. Though it sounds cynical, the practice protects organizations from human error. Citing Darktrace threat analyst Toby Lewis, Rashid explains:
“Zero trust treats every connection and action as suspicious. There are signals to verify, such as the device being used, the time of the day, and the order of applications being accessed. If the user is straying outside what’s expected, it triggers an investigation, even if the activity is originating from inside the environment. … In a zero-trust organization, it would be harder for insiders to act badly, Lewis notes. By managing identity, security teams understand who the users are and determine what ‘normal’ looks like. This way, they can assess the level of risk for each person and get a sense of when to ask for more information.”
Network segmentation is the other suggestion. We learn:
“If the network has been divided into different compartments, then users have to authenticate each time they cross into a new area. Different parts of the network can be carved out based on risk and where sensitive data is stored. ‘Each part of your network should be behind its own set of locked doors,’ Lewis says. ‘You could only cross this barrier if you are a trusted person.’”
In an ideal world, workers would reliably adhere to best practices and security teams would have no reason to track employees’ work patterns. But since we are stuck in this imperfect world, companies must do what they can to guard against human imperfection.
Cynthia Murrell, March 10, 2022
AI Tools to Eliminate the Human Touch from Digital Marketing
March 9, 2022
For both better and worse, algorithms can help humans do many things. For example, it can now automate junk content. Oh goodie. Digital marketing blog Crunch Hype shares its “Top 9 Free AI Tools that Make your Life Easier.” The first is a tool that may be angling for my job. Writer Adil Ahmad tells us:
“First one on the list is copy.ai. It is an AI based copy writer tool. Basically what a copywriter tool does is, it gives you content that you can post on your blog or video when you give it a few descriptions about the topic you want content on.So copy ai can help you write instagram captions gives you blog idea, product descriptions, facebook content, startup ideas, viral ideas, a lot of things it can do, you just make an account in this website, then select a tool and fill in the necessary description and the AI will generate content on what you ask for. For tutorials go to their official Youtube channel .An awesome tool that is going to be really handy in the future.”
Thank goodness our dear leader Stephen E Arnold cares enough about quality content to employ actual people. For anyone who is curious, a quick search suggests Ahmad is also human. He also goes on to list several tools that clean up or augment images, including one he really likes but recognizes can be a bit disturbing, Deep Nostalgia:
“So what makes it really cool is that fact that you can upload an old photo of your family and see them animate and living. Which is pretty cool and creepy at the same time if they are dead already.. Really amazing service from myheritage, I created a lot of cool animations with my old photos as well as with the photos of my grandparents.”
Navigate to the site for a taste of this disquieting tool. Also included in the list is a marketing video maker, a logo generator, and a tool that can generate both a logo and suggest brand names based on keywords. Some of these could be helpful—creating a logo is a famously difficult task, for example, and those tools could at least offer a starting point. But I have to hope algorithms will not replace content creators entirely. At least not before I am ready to retire.
Cynthia Murrell, March 9, 2022
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