CyberSpark Billed as New Cybersecurity Capital for Israel
February 24, 2016
Beersheba, a city in Israel with a population of about 200,000 has become the site of several connected academic and technological influences, led by government and industry, which may position it to be the cyber capital of the country. The article Israel’s Cyber Sector Blooms in the Desert article from Security Week covers Beersheba’s industrial park, CyberSpark. A project leader for the Israeli National Cyber Bureau is quoted explaining how this area is primed to become a leader in cyber security. The report describes CyberSpark’s projected growth,
“Two more complexes comprising 27 buildings are to be added, and the municipality expects the population to grow by 100,000 in the next 10 years. About 30,000 soldiers, including 7,000 career officers, will move in the coming years to bases and a technology campus to be built on 100 hectares (250 acres) near CyberSpark and around Beersheba. As a lure from the bustle of cosmopolitan Tel Aviv, the government plans a bonus of $18,000 for single officers and $50,000 for families who spend at least five years in Beersheba.”
More often than not, we hear about cybercriminals taking the initiative while law enforcement, intelligence and others attempt to catch up. While the article frames CyberSpark as a case of proactive collaboration with necessary partners for the sake of forwarding the cyber security industry and protecting citizens, we are not sure it can be called proactive. Let’s not forget, as the article mentions, Israel may be the most heavily targeted country in the world with reports suggesting as many as a thousand web attacks per minute.
Megan Feil, February 24, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Fun with Google Search Delivers Fun for Google
February 24, 2016
The article on Value Walk titled Top 10 Ways to Have Fun With Google Search invites readers to enjoy a few of the “Easter Eggs” that those nutball programmers over at Google have planted in the search engine. Some are handy, like the spinning coin that gives you a heads or tail result when you type “flip a coin” into Google. Others are just funny, like the way the page tilts if you enter the word “askew.” Others are pure in their nerd factor, as the article explains,
“When you type “Zerg rush” into the search box and hit enter you get a wave of little Google “o”s swarming across and eating the text on your page. Of note, Zerg rush was a tactic used by Zerg players in the late 90s video game StarCraft, which meant the sending many waves of inexpensive units to overwhelm an opponent. Typing “Atari Breakout”…leads to a nostalgic flashback for most people older than 45…”
Speaking of nostalgia, if you type in “Google in 1998” the page reverts to the old layout of the search engine’s early days. In general, the “Easter Eggs” are kind of like watching your uncle’s magic tricks. You aren’t really all that impressed, but every now and then a little surprise makes you smile. And you are definitely going to make him do them again in front of your parents later.
Chelsea Kerwin, February 24, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Google Tax Tidbit
February 23, 2016
I have zero idea if the information in “Google Paid Just $3.1m EU Tax on $13 Billion Revenue: Report.” Tax time in the US is here. The 1099s are in flight and spring with its showers sweet is on its way. Spring makes me hungry for a Dutch sandwich.
The write up reports:
Search giant Google – now a subsidy of Alphabet Inc. – transferred around 11.7 billion euros ($13 billion) from its European operations to its accounts in Bermuda in 2014, in order to limit the tax burden on this income. This tax avoidance practice is often known as “Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich,” and helps corporations avoid what they see as excessive tax rates in their home countries.
What caught my attention is the tax tactic which involves references to two countries and one sandwich.
Tasty if true. Perhaps the Dutch sandwich will be served when Google CEO Sundar Pichai will meet the European Union’s competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager in Brussels?
Stephen E Arnold, February 23, 2016
Quote to Note, Nay, Memorize from Yahoo
February 23, 2016
I read “Yahoo Forms Panel to Explore Strategic Options.” I looked past the notion that a committee can come up with options beyond sell this puppy. I did find a gem of a phrase in the write up. Here’s the keeper:
Mayer said in a statement, while emphasizing that everyone at Yahoo wanted to return the “iconic company to greatness”.
I like the notion of Yahoo as an icon. I think directories from the 1990s should be icons. The concept of greatness is a good one. My hunch is that revenue would be a help for whatever Yahoo is going to return to.
My thought is that the Yahooligans and the Xoogler look more like a business school case study for a course covering Touchstones in Internet Successes and Failures. I am debating whether Yahoo is a success or a failure. I have decided. Failure: Geocities, the Google GoTo Overture legal matter, the Semel reign, the CEO with sketchy credentials, the internal squabbling, et al.
Yep, let’s have a committee meeting. Great idea. Thank goodness I have IBM Watson to pick up the slack created by the silliness at Yahoo.
Stephen E Arnold, February 23, 2016
Are Unicorns Selling Their Horns?
February 23, 2016
I don’t think too much about start ups with valuations in the billions of dollars. Most of these companies do not do much business in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky. I think more about the local truck stop’s supply of air filters than unicorns.
I did not, however, several items which may provide some insight into life after the slow down in the flows of easy investor cash.
The first item concerns some stakeholders’ efforts to convert their shares into cash. “Secondary Shops Flooded With Unicorn Sellers” reports:
the phones of secondary buyers are beginning to ring with a little more urgency, along with discounted offers of up to 30 percent off companies’ most recent valuations. Partly, such nervousness owes to employees, some of whom are getting laid off as companies cut back on costs in order to lengthen their runway. These former staffers have to exercise their options within 90 days or else lose them, and they’re calling secondary firms for help in figuring out what to do. Some sellers are venture capital firms that thought they could exit some of their investments in 2016 and are now concluding that they can’t.
The second article I noticed was “The £1.8 Billion London Tech Unicorn That’s Struggling to Pay Its Staff Is Worried about Going Bust.” I never heard of Powa Technologies. I learned:
London-based Powa is struggling to pay staff and suppliers. Accounts show it raised a total of $50 million (£34.9 million) last year from investors, but as of February 5, 2016, when the accounts were approved, it only had $250,000 (£174,600) in the bank. Meanwhile, the group owes $16.4 million (£11.4 million).
The unicorn zoo warrants a visit. Are smart unicorns selling their horns in an effort to survive? Are some unicorns starving? What about the pygmy unicorns in the search and content processing markets? How will these tiny creatures fend for themselves. Interesting? Without horns to sell, the baby unicorns may face an unpleasant fate.
Stephen E Arnold, February 23, 2016
No Evidence That Terrorists Are Using Bitcoin
February 23, 2016
If you were concerned virtual currencies like Bitcoin are making things easier for Islamic State (aka IS, ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh), you can rest easy, at least for now. The International Business Times reports, “Isis: Bitcoin Not Used by Daesh.” That is the conclusion reached by a Europol investigation performed after last November’s attacks in Paris. Though some had suggested the terrorists were being funded with cyber money, investigators found no evidence of it.
On the other hand, the organization’s communication networks are thriving online through the Dark Web and a variety of apps. Writer Alistair Charlton tells us:
Better known by European law enforcement is how terrorists like IS use social media to communicate. The report says: “The internet and social media are used for communication and the acquisition of goods (weapons, fake IDs) and services, made relatively safe for terrorists with the availability of secure and inherently encrypted appliances, such as WhatsApp, Skype and Viber. In Facebook, VKA and Twitter they join closed and hidden groups that can be accessed by invitation only, and use coded language.”
se of Tor, the anonymising browser used to access the dark web where sites are hidden from search engines like Google, is also acknowledged by Europol. “The use of encryption and anonymising tools prevent conventional observation by security authorities. There is evidence of a level of technical knowledge available to religiously inspired terrorist groups, allowing them to make their use of the internet and social media invisible to intelligence and law enforcement agencies.”
Of course, like any valuable technology, anonymizing apps can be used for weal or woe; they benefit marginalized peoples trying to make their voices heard as much as they do terrorists. Besides, there is no going back to a disconnected world now. My question is whether terrorists have taken the suggestion, and are now working on a Bitcoin initiative. I suppose we will see, eventually.
Cynthia Murrell, February 23, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Study Determines Sad News for People Who Look on Facebook “Likes” as Friendship
February 23, 2016
The article on Independent titled Facebook Friends Are Almost entirely Fake, Study Finds illuminates the cold, cold world of Facebook. According to the study, out of the hundreds of “friends” accumulated on Facebook, typically only about four are true blue buds. Most of them are not interested in your life or sympathetic to your problems. 2% are actively trying to stab you in the back. I may have made up the last figure, but you get the picture. The article tells us,
“The average person studied had around 150 Facebook friends. But only about 14 of them would express sympathy in the event of anything going wrong. The average person said that only about 27 per cent of their Facebook friends were genuine. Those numbers are mostly similar to how friendships work in real life, the research said. But the huge number of supposed friends on a friend list means that people can be tricked into thinking that they might have more close friends.”
This is particularly bad news considering how Facebook has opened the gates to all populations meaning that most people have family members on the site in addition to friends. Aunt Mary may have knit you a sweater for Christmas, but she really isn’t interested in your status update about running into your ex and his new girlfriend. If this article teaches us anything, it’s that you should look offline for your real relationships.
Chelsea Kerwin, February 23, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Google Ad Change: Good for the GOOG
February 22, 2016
What’s good for the GOOG is good for the gander, okay? I read “Google Ditches Right-Side Desktop Ads: Who’s Screwed?” Let me congratulate ZDNet for its elegant phrasing. I particularly like the Miltonian touch of “Who’s screwed.” Classy.
The main point of the write up is that Google is shifting around the ads displayed when one does a free search on the Google search engine.
The purpose of a change related to advertising is to increase Google’s revenue. The write up seems to struggle with the impact of this concept. The points which catch the attention of the ZDNet folks are:
- Fewer ad slots on search results pages. Hmm. I thought that there would be the same number of ads but the cheaper ads are mostly a bad idea remedied.
- Organic results—that is, a euphemism for non paid or non SEO’d content—get less opportunity to reach a Google user who only looks at one page of results and rarely bothers to look outside the results which initially display. I am not sure that Google results have been particularly relevant for years, but maybe I am missing the point of Google’s search system. “Search” does not strike me as the vehicle for delivering relevant, on point results.
- Bidding wars will become more intense. Yep, and this makes the job of the online marketing decider that much more exciting.
How does one get relevant search results? Well, that is a good question. Hint: There are other online search systems, but these are getting more and more difficult to use from mobile devices. Give iseek.com a whirl from your mobile phone or try out qwant.com. How are these working out for you? Easier to use Google because, believe it or not, we are raising a generation of expert searchers who perceive information delivered via Google as correct. Do you want a grill for charcoal with your auto parts order?
Stephen E Arnold, February 22, 2016
SAP: Statistics Need Sizzle
February 22, 2016
The underlying data? Important, yeah, but the action is Hollywood style graphics. Taking a page from the Palantir game plan, SAP is getting with the visual sizzle program. Navigate to “SAP Buys All the Pretty Data Firm Roambi.” The article states:
The data prettifier’s angle is it that displays data using deliciously slick and dynamically updating charts, graphs and sliders that are native apps for iOS and Android. Roambi’s front ends tap into back ends including Excel, SQL Server, Cognos, Box, Salesforce and – yes – SAP.
Special effects matter in videos, Web pages, and business analytics.
What if the analyst gets the underlying data out of joint? What if the person using the graphic output does not understand what analytic choices were made to give the visual some zing?
What? Who worries about details? It is the visual snap that crackles.
Stephen E Arnold, February 22, 2016
Yahoo Moves Undermine Content Is King Assertion
February 22, 2016
I don’t Yahoo. I did read a coven of content about the slimming down of the original content at Google’s neighbor, Yahoo. A representative write up is “If It’s Wednesday, It’s Layoffs Day at Yahoo: Today, Digital Magazines Get Hit.” The main thrust of this and the other writes up I worked through is that the Xoogler is amputating the arms and legs of its original content business.
Among the casualties are subsites or Web pages about food, travel, real estate, health, and others consumerish topics.
Based on my sample, determined by my fatigue with the Yahoo thing and the speed with which different articles on this subject rendered, is biased. I was able to formulate one notion; to wit:
Yahoo seems to be proving that content, as practiced by Yahoo, is not king.
I thought that content, particularly great content, would produce revenue. Apparently not. The Yahoo cuts suggest that content is not even a baron or an earl. Perhaps content is a wounded vassals? Are those cast out of the Yahoo serfs?
Stephen E Arnold, February 22, 2016
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