Alphabet Google: Alleged Election Manipulation Goal
August 5, 2019
In the best tradition of 2019 news reporting, an opinion has become “real news.” I read “Google Wants Trump to Lose in 2020: Former Engineer for Tech Giant Says: That’s Their Agenda.” DarkCyber prefers watching Twitch’s live stream of the Hong Kong protests to the “experts” who appear on Fox News.
However, Fox issued an actual “real news” story with old school words. The write up reports the actual non real fake words of Kevin Cernekee, a former Google engineer, who allegedly departed Google in 2018. The reason? Rumors about misuse of equipment was one possible reason, which strikes DarkCyber as unsubstantiated.
We noted this statement in the write up:
“They have very biased people running every level of the company,” Cernekee continued. “They have quite a bit of control over the political process. That’s something we should really worry about.”
The “they” appears to refer to individuals who work at Alphabet Google, although the floating in space pronouns create some ambiguity.
Here’s another sound bite, but in text on Web site form:
“They really want Trump to lose in 2020. That’s their agenda. They have very biased people running every level of the company.”
If you want more, please, navigate to the “real news” story.
A few observations:
- A single source, particularly a person who no longer works at Google and who may have an interesting historical interaction with the firm, may or may not be delivering actual factual information. A second or third source would be helpful.
- The likelihood of a Google conspiracy to alter an election exists, of course. But Google relies on smart software. The allegations in the write up suggest that actual factual humanoids interact with the smart software to fiddle search results. DarkCyber thinks some data, sample searches, and supporting testimony would be useful. Sure, the other sources might be biased, but more than one voice plus some data would be helpful.
- Why is this former Google engineer now actualized? Is it a book deal? A desire for revenge? A way to get hired by a company who wants someone with a sharp edge to write code? Context and motive would be interesting to DarkCyber.
To sum up: Without more than one person’s headline making statement, DarkCyber asks, “Is Google sufficiently organized to fiddle search results in a consistent sustained manner over time?”
Example: Google killed its Hangouts service and just added a new feature to the marginalized service.
Example: Google continues to push the amusing Loon balloon as more adventurous innovators are moving to satellites.
DarkCyber asks, “Is Google capable of a manipulation on this scale?”
We need more than one de-hired Xoogler’s statements.
Stephen E Arnold, August 5, 2019
Endgame Now Runs On Elastic
August 1, 2019
The Marvel Cinematic Universe “ended” a few weeks ago with Avengers: Endgame, so all and any news with the keyword “endgame” were overshadowed by Disney’s superhero franchise. It goes without saying that Elasticsearch’s acquisition of digital security company Endgame went unnoticed, but you can read about here at Computer Weekly: “Robust For Your Pleasure: Elastic Acquires Endgame.”
Elastic is a popular, open source text and analytics engine and its parent company also invented the Elastic Stack data analysis and visualization toolset. Purchasing Endgame was a practical decision for Elasticsearch, because moving into security technology is the next logical step for a company that specializes in data search, analytics, and visualization. Endgame specializes in endpoint prevention, detection, and response. Elastic wants its Stack Exchange to be more secure, particularly Security Information and Even Management (SIEM).
Elastic founder and CEO Shay Banon, Endgame CEO Nate Flick, and Endgame CTO Jamie Butler are excited about their team up. While it might not be as epic as a Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers mashup, Elastic and Endgame are committing to transparency, user enablement, and openness as well as gaining more customers.
Elastic and Endgame offer their customers some of the best technology for data analytics, management, and security:
“As the creators of the Elastic Stack (Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, and Logstash), Elastic builds self-managed and SaaS offerings that claim to make data usable in real time at scale for use cases like application search, site search, enterprise search, logging, APM, metrics, security and business analytics. Endgame makes endpoint protection using machine learning technology that is supposedly capable of stopping everything from ransomware, to phishing and targeted attacks. The company says its USP lies in its hybrid architecture that offers both cloud administration and data localization that meets industry, regulatory and global compliance requirements.”
Together Elastic and Endgame will combine their powers for their customers’ benefit that could possibly deliver technology to rival even Shield or something Tony Stark could invent.
Whitney Grace, July 1, 2019
Elastic App Search Ready for On-Premise Deployment
July 29, 2019
One of the most successful enterprise search companies, Elastic, is bringing its cloud-based App Search platform down to Earth. The company announces this development in its blog post, “Elastic App Search: Now Available as a Self-Managed Download.” Their director of product marketing, Diane Tetrault, writes:
“Empowered with valuable feedback from the community over the last few months’ beta program, the team has worked hard to bring the simplicity and power of the Elastic App Search Service to any infrastructure. It’s now available to download and deploy at scale, alongside the default distribution of Elastic Stack 7.2 (or later), anywhere.
We noted:
“While Elastic App Search has been around for over a year as a cloud-based solution, this release represents an important milestone. It highlights our commitment to offer the greatest flexibility in how and where developers deploy next-generation search experiences. Whether it be an online store, a geolocal directory, a vast music collection, or a SaaS application, Elastic App Search is the quickest way to build fluid and engaging search experiences. … “It is no secret that Elasticsearch is a powerhouse for search use cases of all kinds. That said, with great power comes great configurability. Our team worked relentlessly to channel the limitless potential of Elasticsearch into a streamlined package, purpose-built for application search use cases. In other words, you can now bring the relevance, scale, and speed of Elasticsearch to any application you’re building.”
App Search is free to use alongside the default distribution of the Elastic Stack. Naturally, the platform includes features Elastic users have come to rely on, like schema-free indexing, language-specific text analysis, pre-configured algorithms, relevance tuning, astute analytics, and impressive APIs and UI frameworks. In addition, they are introducing new user-management features that allow for easy-to-use role-based access controls or the built-in user management. Interested readers can check out the free trial.
Elastic began as Elasticsearch Inc. in 2012, simplified its name in 2015, and went public in 2018. The company is based in Mountain View, California, and maintains offices around the world. It also happens to hiring for quite a few positions at the time of this writing, in case any readers are interested.
Cynthia Murrell, July 29, 2019
Search Engine Optimization: Why Search Delivers Irrelevant Results and Ad Budgets Can Go Poof
July 23, 2019
DarkCyber noted “What Are Click Farms? A Shadowy Internet Industry Is Booming in China.” A diligent “real news” professional noted that one can buy clicks. DarkCyber spotted these services on gig economy sites like SEOExperts, Fiverr, and similar services some time ago. Think in terms of years.
The write up explains: Click farms
are plugged in and programmed to search, click, and download a certain app over and over again. The goal is to manipulate the system of app store rankings and search results.
The procedure is:
Click farms use an automated process hacks into the normal App Store Optimization (ASO) practice — which requires developers to use certain keywords in descriptions and attract users by being a useful product — and are programmed to promote apps by imitating a real user by searching for certain keywords, clicking on the app, downloading, and even writing positive reviews.
The write up focuses on apps and China.
DarkCyber wants to suggest that click farms are available to perform tasks like these:
- Target a company’s online ads, click on them, and burn through the budget for a keyword so a second place owner of a keyword pops up and presumably gets the “real” clicks from an actual interested person. (Keep in mind that a savvy competitor can have this technique used against his or her campaign.)
- Target a concept and click links. The result is what DarkCyber and its beloved leader calls “augmentext.” The idea is that a concept, not a site, can be converted into an attractor for a Google-type relevance system
- Click on an entity and cause that entity to have “magnetism.” With the loopholes and weaknesses inherent in the core algorithms, an entity can become “hot” or a “trend.”
The write up points out that click farms are illegal. Perhaps the estimable search engine optimization industry should police its behaviors? Perhaps online disinformation consultants should not use these services?
I am not sure that click farms are new, particularly shadowy, or going to go away. Spoofing relevance is too darned easy and there’s zero incentive for certain vendors selling ads or offering to manipulate opinion to change.
Stephen E Arnold, July 23, 2019
Qwant Pitches Map Privacy
July 14, 2019
Digital maps are an indispensable tool, especially if you ceaselessly use a GPS. While digital maps are accurate, fast, and reliable, the also track and store user information. One semi-logical argument is that if you have nothing to hide, what is the big deal about information being stored. On the other hand, you should have the right to protect your privacy whether or not you have anything to hide. Qwant Maps believes in preserving user privacy, so it is an open source and privacy-preserving map tool. Qwant Maps was created so users have exclusive control over their geolocated data.
Qwant Maps built its tool on OpenStreetMap, a free and collaborative geographical database supported by more than one million voluntary contributors. OpenStreetMap is not an out-of-the box solution and requires some tech savviness to use it. Qwant Maps’s team developed a geoparsing engine to make OpenStreetMap more user friendly.
“To overcome these shortcomings and to meet the needs of most of people, Qwant Maps has developed — or participated to the development — its own software components. The will of Qwant Maps is to create a virtuous synergy between Qwant Maps and OpenStreetMap. Thus Qwant Maps uses OpenStreetMap data to generate its own vector tiles, its own base map, its own web APIs. Also Qwant Maps feeds its geoparsing web service as well as its online applications thanks to OpenStreetMap data.”
All of the code for both the Qwant Maps geosparsing tool and OpenStreetMap are open source. Qwant Maps also uses Mimirsbrunn as its search engine, Kartotherian as a visual rendering tool based on vector tiles, and Idunn is used to highlight all information on the tiles.
Whitney Grace, July 5, 2019
A Complete List of Google Alternatives: Not Just Incomplete but a Reflection of Misinformation
July 10, 2019
Let’s start with the title: “A Complete List of Alternatives To The Google Search Engine.” Why? Google is not a particularly useful system if I understand the argument in the Collective Evolution write up. DarkCyber believes that Google is useful, but it is one source of Web content pointers.
What is on the complete list? How about 10 search systems. Here they are:
- StartPage – StartPage gives you Google search results, but without the tracking (based in the Netherlands).
- Searx – A privacy-friendly and versatile metasearch engine that’s also open source.
- MetaGer – An open source metasearch engine with good features, based in Germany.
- SwissCows – A zero-tracking private search engine based in Switzerland, hosted on secure Swiss infrastructure.
- Qwant – A private search engine based in France.
- DuckDuckGo – A private search engine based in the US.
- Mojeek – The only true search engine (rather than metasearch engine) that has its own crawler and index (based in the UK).
- YaCy – A decentralized, open source, peer-to-peer search engine.
- Givero – Based in Denmark, Givero offers more privacy than Google and combines search with charitable donations.
- Ecosia – Ecosia is based in Germany and donates a part of revenues to planting trees.
Several observations:
- StartPage (formerly IxQuick, created by a former Wall Street type) is a metasearch system. The company uses results from other sources, passes the query against these sources, and displays a single list of results. Like DuckDuckGo, MetaGer, and similar systems, one is getting spider output from third parties. Sources can range from Bing, Common Crawl, or other sources. DarkCyber is not enthusiastic about metasearch engines because it is very difficult to know what’s in and what’s out, if the de-duplication function actually works, and the rate of refresh for the system.
- Omissions include Bing.com, Yandex.com, plus Exalead. Despite the unusual marketing of the Exalead Web search system — that is to say, none — you can use it at this link. DarkCyber recommends running queries against Google as well as these systems for general search results.
- DarkCyber makes use of specialist search systems as well. Some of these are provided to us by the intelware companies with which we interact. Two sources worth mentioning are Talkwalker and Webhose. Neither is based in the US, but each provides affordable and useful content to those serious about information spidered from open sources.
- Those who want to access information may find the list of tools compiled by MK Bergman a helpful place to begin. Many are not specific to searching via an ad supported system, but there are some gems in the list. DarkCyber also consults sources like Swiss Leaks, which can be quite useful.
DarkCyber’s point is that calling the systems in the “complete” list “complete” is not helpful. In fact, it is filled with information that is unlikely to result in a thorough search.
Is DarkCyber surprised? Nah, par for the “experts” who are writing about search today.
Stephen E Arnold, July 10, 2019
Enterprise Search: Decades of Disappointment? Yep, Yep
June 25, 2019
I stumble across allegedly accurate factoids about enterprise search once in a while. The coverage of the systems which can index and make findable data and information in an enterprise is a shadow of its former self. I noted the story in a blog which caters to the content management industry (no, I don’t know what that means). The write up was “9 Takeaways from the Digital Workplace Experience Conference 2019.” No, I don’t know what a “digital experience” is either. But hold on, there was a reference to a study by Simpler Media Group (no, I never had heard of this outfit before I read the article). That study included data. One factoid is allegedly accurate and it makes clear that the outfits selling enterprise search systems face a bit of a challenge. Here’s the passage I noted. Remember. This is an alleged factoid, not something I can verify because I no longer maintain my data and files about the fantastical world of enterprise search:
Enterprise search followed document management in the survey but, again, only 11% said it was effective. “This pattern repeated itself over and over across many tools and technologies,” Fagan [a person who is an expert in Simpler Media] said. “In each instance, the tool’s reported importance far exceeded the actual efficacy.”
Enterprise search has been around a long time. IBM STAIRS? InQuire? NetWeaver? Sophia? My all time fave Entopia. (Search apparently has some relationship to utopia I assume.) In its remarkable 40 or more year history, people cannot use a system to find the information they need within the organization for which they work.
As non text data, encrypted content, and intercepted information proliferates, finding is more difficult today than at any time in my professional career.
There’s a lot of wonky enterprise software floating around. Just read through some Capterra listings. But 11 percent. That’s special. Is the number “true”. Sure, who can doubt Simple Media and a blog about something I can’t define, content management.
After decades of disappointment, it seems that enterprise search has some opportunities for improvement. Simple? Right? Just manage the content? Make information findable? One size fits all? Sure.
Stephen E Arnold, June 25, 2019
Keeeb: A Personal Google for Everyone
June 24, 2019
That line “a personal Google for everyone” allegedly appeared in the Wall Street Journal. The phrase was a description of Keeeb, a company offering an enterprise intelligence platform. I remembered the phrase when I read the news release titled “Keeeb Adds Former Co-Founder and CTO of Leading Cognitive Search Provider Attivio and VP Technology of FAST Search & Transfer.” According to the news item:
The New York enterprise intelligence company Keeeb reinforces its technical leadership with the addition of Sid Probstein, former co-founder and CTO of the leading cognitive search provider Attivio and former VP Technology of FAST Search & Transfer (acquired by Microsoft in 2017). As new CTO Probstein will lead Keeeb’s global software development team and drive the next generations of the unique platform that unleashes enterprise intelligence.
What’s interesting is that the company Keeeb uses the name “Keeeb Deutschland GmbH and describes itself as a New York company.
Attivio’s tag line “cognitive search provider” struck me as a bit of a piggyback ride on the wild and crazy IBM Watson cognitive computing marketing blitz which has largely slowed to crawl. Remember H&R Block using Watson or Watson curing cancer? I do. Attivio, before embracing cognitiveness, dabbled in customer support, analytics, and a number of other “disciplines” as it worked to grow its sustainable revenue.
Fast Search & Transfer is also an interesting company. Some of the Fast Search & Transfer technology lives on in Microsoft, which bought the company in 2008. There was some legal and law enforcement agitation about Fast Search’s finances. Ultimately there was embarrassment for the founder of that firm.
DarkCyber will add Keeeb to its list of enterprise search vendors, a list is now growing less rapidly than it did in the hay days of “search” between 2002 and 2011. Why did the pace slow?
Several reasons:
- The huge financial payoffs from search did not materialize. In fact, the largest of the search vendors is now embroiled in a high profile trial in England.
- The emergence of Elasticsearch (which I think of as the son of Compass) became available as open source. Proprietary search engines looked less appealing in terms of support and freedom to fiddle with code than proprietary offerings from outfits like Fast Search & Transfer.
- The promises that search vendors made about easy access to enterprise content were impossible to meet. Clients either ran out of patience, money, or time. The few healthy search vendors were bought. Others tightened their belt and carried on.
Where will Keeeb fit into the information access landscape? I don’t’ know. It seems to me as the author of the first three Enterprise Search Reports, that companies like DataWalk and Diffeo are what search should have become. Maybe Keeeb will be forward leaning too?
Stephen E Arnold, June 24, 2019
Have Fun Searching Nonprofit Tax Records
June 21, 2019
If you work at a nonprofit organization, the word free is magical! Databases are also a magical source of information and the life blood for anyone writing grants. A free, authoritative database is like a magic wand. ProPublica is a news source focused on nonprofits and it recently published the story about a free way to search IRS records: “You Can Now Search The Full Text Of 3 Million Nonprofit Tax Records For Free.”
Along with being a newsroom ProPublica also launched a brand new tool: the Nonprofit Explorer database that searches the full text of three million digitally filed IRS nonprofit tax filings. Nonprofit Explorer contains tax records from more than 1.8 million nonprofits as well as names for key employees and organization directors. Users can search for terms anywhere in the tax records. The only catch is the that the nonprofits needed to file their taxes digitally, but nearly two-thirds do so.
How can you use the Nonprofit Explorer:
“For one, this feature lets you find organizations that gave grants to other nonprofits. Any nonprofit that gives grants to another must list those grants on its tax forms — meaning that you can research a nonprofit’s funding by using our search. A search for “ProPublica,” for example, will bring up dozens of foundations that have given us grants to fund our reporting (as well as a few filings that reference Nonprofit Explorer itself).
Just another example: When private foundations have investments or ownership interest in for-profit companies, they have to list those on their tax filings as well. If you want to research which foundations have investments in a company like ExxonMobil, for example, you can simply search for the company name and check which organizations list it as an investment.”
Usually a database like this requires a yearly subscription. Most nonprofits cannot afford subscription fees, so ProPublica is providing a public service that will assist millions. ProPublica probably uses their own database to apply for grants to fund it.
Keep in mind that some bad actors set up non profit organizations for some interesting purposes. Access to these records may provide useful to some investigators.
Whitney Grace, June 21, 2019
Google Has Changed Search Results Again
June 20, 2019
Google cannot let anything rest. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of opinion, to others it turns into annoyance. Has Google’s latest changes to search results confounded its users once again? Inc. looks into Google’s newest change in the article, “Google Just Announced A Major Change To Your Search Results.”
The new change appears to be a simple one. Google will no longer show multiple results from the same Web site, except occasionally. What is even more uncanny is that Google deployed it right under our noses. The search engine did not change anything in the search algorithm, however, this could be bad for content creators and businesses centered on content curation.
More unique Web sites will be introduced into the top search results, most people click on the first few results displayed. What this means for content people is that:
“A lot of you spend a lot of resources creating content for the very purpose of showing up at the top of organic search results. This change means that you’ll have to consider how to adjust your content and search engine optimization strategy knowing that less of your pages will show up for relevant searches…Google says there is an exception. When the company’s search algorithm thinks that more than one result from the same site is especially relevant to a search, it will continue to display them in the top results. It doesn’t give specific examples as to what this means or when it will make this exception, but Google does say they will continue to make adjustments as it rolls out across search results.”
Google fiddles the ad giant engine has made assurances that multiple results from the same page will display they are the most pertinent. As a librarian, perhaps some of these changes will restore relevance and add a pinch of precision and recall?
Whitney Grace, June 20, 2019
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