New Tor Communication Software for Journalists and Sources Launches
February 29, 2016
A new one-to-one messaging tool for journalists has launched after two years in development. The article Ricochet uses power of the dark web to help journalists, sources dodge metadata laws from The Age describes this new darknet-based software. The unique feature of this software, Ricochet, in comparison to others used by journalists such as Wickr, is that it does not use a server but rather Tor. Advocates acknowledge the risk of this Dark Web software being used for criminal activity but assert the aim is to provide sources and whistleblowers an anonymous channel to securely release information to journalists without exposure. The article explains,
“Dr Dreyfus said that the benefits of making the software available would outweigh any risks that it could be used for malicious purposes such as cloaking criminal and terrorist operations. “You have to accept that there are tools, which on balance are a much greater good to society even though there’s a tiny possibility they could be used for something less good,” she said. Mr Gray argued that Ricochet was designed for one-to-one communications that would be less appealing to criminal and terrorist organisers that need many-to-many communications to carry out attacks and operations. Regardless, he said, the criminals and terrorists had so many encryption and anonymising technologies available to them that pointing fingers at any one of them was futile.”
Online anonymity is showing increasing demand as evidenced through the recent launch of several new Tor-based softwares like Ricochet, in addition to Wickr and consumer-oriented apps like Snapchat. The Dark Web’s user base appears to be growing and diversifying. Will public perception follow suit?
Megan Feil, February 29, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Is Bing Full of Bugs or Is Constant Change And “Agility” the Wave of the Future?
February 29, 2016
The article titled 600 Engineers Make 4,000 Changes to Bing Each Week on WinBeta goes behind the scenes of a search engine. The title seems to suggest that Bing is a disaster with so many bugs that only a fleet of engineers working around the clock can manage the number of bugs in the system. That is actually far from the impression that the article makes. Instead, it stresses the constant innovation that Bing calls “Continuous Delivery” or “Agility.” The article states,
“How about the 600 engineers mentioned above pushing more than 4,000 individual changes a week into a testing phase containing over 20,000 tests. Each test can last from 10 minutes to several hours or days… Agility incorporates two “loops,” the Inner Loop that is where engineers write the code, prototype, and crowd-source features. Then, there’s an Outer Loop where the code goes live, gets tested by users, and then pushes out to the world.”
For more details on the sort of rapid and creative efforts made possible by so many engineers, check out the Bing Visual Blog Post created by a Microsoft team. The article also reminds us that Bing is not only a search engine, but also the life-force behind Microsoft’s Cortana, as well as being integrated into Misrosoft Office 2016, AOL and Siri.
Chelsea Kerwin, February 29, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Alphabet Google Search: Dominance Ending?
February 28, 2016
I read “Will PageRank Expiration Threaten Google’s Dominance.” The main point is that Google’s shift to artificial intelligence “hurt Google Search’s market share and its stock price?”
The write up references the 1997 write up about the search engine’s core algorithms. (There is no reference to the work by Jon Kleinberg and the Clever system, which is understandable I suppose.) Few want to view Google as a me-too outfit, “cleverly” overlooking the firm’s emulation strategy. Think GoTo.com/Overture/Yahoo in the monetization mechanism.
The write up states:
The Google Search today transcends PageRank: Google has a myriad of proprietary technology.
I agree. Google is not an open source centric outfit. When was the last time, Google made it easy to locate its employees’ technical papers, presentations at technical conferences, or details about products and services which just disappear. Orkut, anyone?
The write up shifts its focus to some governance issues; for example, Google’s Loon balloon, solving death, etc. There is a reference to Google’s strategy concerning mobile phones.
Stakeholders may want to worry because Google is dependent on search for the bulk of its revenues. I learned:
From Alphabet’s recent 10-k and Google’s Search revenues from Statista, you will realize that Search has been ~92%, ~90%, ~90% of total revenues in 2013-2015 respectively.
No big news here.
The core challenge for analysts will be to figure out if a shift to artificial intelligence methods for search will have unforeseen consequences. For example, maybe Google has figured out that the cost of indexing the Web is too expensive. AI may be a way to reduce costs of indexing and serving results. Google may realize that the shift from desktop based queries to mobile queries threatens Google’s ability to deliver information with the same perceived relevance that the desktop experience created in users’ perceptions.
Alphabet Google is at a cross road. The desktop model from the late 1990s is less and less relevant in 2016. Like any other company faced with change, Google’s executives find themselves in the same boat as other online vendors. Today’s revenues may not be the revenues of tomorrow.
Will Alphabet Google face the information headwinds which buffeted Autonomy, Convera, Endeca, Fast Search & Transfer, and similar information access vendors? Is Google facing a long walk down the path which America Online and Yahoo followed? Will the one trick revenue pony die when it cannot adapt to the mobile jungle?
Good questions. Answers? Tough to find.
Stephen E Arnold, February 28, 2016
IBM: Transforming to What?
February 28, 2016
I read “Multi-Billion Dollar Question: Is IBM’s Transformation for Real?” The question is being asked by Fortune Magazine, an outfit which certainly has had a front row seat to its own transformation efforts.
The write up focuses on a Wall Street analyst who is not drinking the Big Blue fruit juice. Here’s the passage I highlighted:
IBM’s “core” revenues have declined by a stunning $29.7B, resulting in revenue declines (adjusted for currency and acquisitions and divestitures) in each of the last 4 years. Most sobering, IBM’s revenue growth rate on this normalized basis has not improved during the period.
This is news? I think not.
One of the initiatives which underscores IBM’s performance is the presentation of Watson. As you may know, Watson is a combination of:
- Lucene and other open source bits and pieces
- Home grown scripts
- Acquired technology
These “innovations” are presented as something new, innovative, and significant to businesses and consumers. Each time I read a puff piece like “IBM Watson Machine Learns the Art of Writing a Good Headline.” Text summarization and machine written news stories are not new.
IBM warrants some skepticism. What’s remarkable is that Fortune Magazine has seized on a single analyst’s observations? Good for the analyst. But the reality of IBM has been front and center for years.
Progress?
Stephen E Arnold, February 28, 2016
Weakly Watson: Oscar Ads
February 27, 2016
Short honk. I read “IBM Watson battles Hollywood robot stereotypes with Carrie Fisher and Ridley Scott.” Pretty darned amazing. IBM, an enterprise software company, is advertising on the Oscars award television program. The commercials feature Carrie Fisher and Ridley Scott. All I can say is, “Wow.” Lost in Space may be available after the ads appear.
Stephen E Arnold, February 27, 2016
Around Paywalls? Probably Not Spot On
February 27, 2016
I read “How Google’s Web Crawler Bypasses Paywalls.” I am not confident the write up is spot in. You may find the information useful in your own efforts to do the Connotate-type or Kimono-type thing.
The outfit with the paywall tunnel, according to the write up, is Alphabet’s Google unit. Talk about the tail wagging the dog.
The write up points out that the method uses Referer and User –Agent headers.
The approach is detailed in the article via code snippets. It’s in the cards, so have at it.
Oh, there may be other methods in play, but I will leave you to your experimentation.
Stephen E Arnold, February 23, 2016
Palantir: A Dying Unicorn or a Mad, Mad Sign?
February 26, 2016
I learned that some wag posted a Mad Magazine-type cartoon with an MBA-ish message. I am not sure if this is a message from the heart of a disgruntled Hobbit or someone angling for a writer’s job on a late night talk show.
Here’s the image I saw:
The point seems to be that the value of Palantir is in doubt. With the roiling of the financial valuations for outfits with billion dollar plus valuations, employees who work for stakes in a zoon zoon outfit may be in a cold, cold night.
I have inserted this alleged real-deal poster in my forthcoming overview of Palantir. If you want to reserve a copy, write benkent2020 [at] yahoo dot com. The 50 page report from ArnoldIT is US$99. The report will be available for sale in April 2016.
The report covers Palantir’s differences from Autonomy’s and i2’s augmented intelligence systems, examples of the “helper” interfaces, and a gathering of open source information about the firm. We have examined Palantir’s publicly accessible technical materials and identified 18 interesting technical innovations. A subset of this larger Palantir analysis will be included in the forthcoming Dark Web Notebook. I will offer some general comments in my forthcoming interview for the Singularity One on One video podcast as well.
Exciting if you follow how search-centric systems are shaped to perform value-added services for government and commercial clients. Open source with lipstick is a business model I find quite interesting to think about.
Stephen E Arnold, February 26, 2016
Mondeca Demos
February 26, 2016
Curious about semantic technology. You may want to navigate to the Mondeca.com Web site, read about the firm’s technology and professional services, and then explore its online demos. The page with various demos includes SPARQL Endpoint Status, a Temporal Search Engine, Linked Open Vocabularies, and eight other semantic functions. You can find the demos at this link. The Mondeca Web site is at www.modeca.com.
Stephen E Arnold, February 26, 2016
Clarabridge Knows IPOs
February 26, 2016
i read “New Clarabridge Exec Says IPO the Way to Go.” Clarabridge, as you may know, is a customer experience company. There is some synergy between Clarabridge and MicroStrategy, which is in itself a potential topic for a mini-MBA review.
The point in the article which I highlighted in US currency green was this statement:
For his part, Banerjee confirmed Clarabridge is staying on course for an IPO. “We’re accentuating the path toward an IPO,” Banerjee said. “I’ll be tag-teaming with Yuchun.” Lee said he is pleased with the Lee-Banerjee partnership and said Banerjee is “still the visionary.”
Apparently the senior executives know that the time is right to unlock the value of the Clarabridge operation. On February 21, 2016, 24/7 Wall Street reported in “IPOs Continue Slo-Mo 2016 Start”:
Only four companies have been able to go public this year, all biotechs with substantial insider support. Broader market indices are down across the board, and multiples in the tech sector have been crushed. A whopping 74% of IPOs from last year trade below the offer price, and the year’s average return from IPO is -22%.
Does Clarabridge have a Tolkien seeing stone?
Stephen E Arnold, February 26, 2016
Weekly Watson: IBM Interviews Itself and Does Not Mention Watson as a Favorite App
February 26, 2016
I came across an article in IBM Events called “Dan Magid Chief Technologist, IBM i Solutions.” It appears, and I am thinking in rural Kentucky, not a technology nerve center like Cedar Rapids or Boise, that Dan Magid, the article, reports an interview with Dan Magic (chief technologist) conducted and edited by Dan Magid.
I hope I have that straight.
There were some interesting points in the article / interview / content marketing thingy.
In response to a question about trends, I learned from Dan Magid (interviewer, expert, author, and i Solutions technologist):
Connectivity, Big Data and Cloud. Everything else going on is in some way connected to these three trends.
What? No Watson? Perhaps Mr. Magid, the interviewer, should ask Dan Magid, the technologist at IBM i Solutions, “What about Watson? You remember, don’t you? TV game show winner. Cook book author. Curer of disease.”
I also learned that IBM is concerned about customers. There is a baffling reference to something called Rocket. I know about Rocket, the search vendor, but the “Rocket” in the interview is presented as if the reader knows wherefore of that which Mr. Magid speaks. Sorry, I don’t. I get the main idea: IBM listens to customers. I would add that being a large company with a dedicated IBM capture team helps out the customer support thing.
I noted this question, “How can an organization stay relevant five years from now?” I was hoping that Mr. Magic would consult IBM’s senior management and relate the question to the 14 consecutive quarters of revenue decline, the stock price, the reductions in force, and other oddments of the Big Blue approach to “relevance.” Nope. Here’s what I learned:
The key to staying relevant is to understand your customers, your market and the direction of technology. … You need to understand technology direction so that you can take advantage of emerging technologies that will help your customers and so that you can ensure your organization is not surprised by a new technology that could make your business model obsolete.
Business model obsolescence. I would suggest that IBM’s business model might be a suitable subject for a case study by some eager beaver MBA candidates. Just a thought.
I enjoyed this comment too:
Question from Mr. Magid to Mr. Magid: What app can you not live without?
Answer from Mr. Magid to Mr. Magid:
The Expensable mobile app. I travel 2-3 weeks a month and keeping up to date on expense reports used to be a nightmare. I would return from each trip with an envelope full of receipts and spend a few hours organizing and entering them for reimbursement. I would often get months behind. Now, I use the Expensable app to enter my expenses as they are incurred. I take five minutes to review it when I get home and submit the report. It’s simple.
Yikes. Not Watson.
Remarkable write up which delivers quite an insight into IBM’s thought processes.
Stephen E Arnold, February 26, 2016
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