Googlers Face Another Ka-Ching Moment in the United Kingdom
December 5, 2024
This write up is from a real and still-alive dinobaby. If there is art, smart software has been involved. Dinobabies have many skills, but Gen Z art is not one of them.
Mr. Harold Carlin, my high school history teacher, made us learn about the phrase “The sun never sets on the British empire.” It has, and Mr. Carlin like many old-school teachers forced our class to read about protectionism, subjugation of people who did not enjoy beef Wellington, or assorted monopolies.
Two intelligent entities discuss how to resolve legal problems. Thanks, MidJourney. Good enough.
Now Google may want to think about the phrase, “The sun never sets on Google legal matters related to its alleged behavior in the datasphere.”
“Google Must Face £7B UK Class Action over Search Engine Dominance” reported:
The complaint centers around Google shutting out competition for mobile search, resulting in higher prices for advertisers, which were allegedly passed on to consumers. According to consumer rights campaigner Nikki Stopford, who is bringing the claim on behalf of UK consumers, Android device makers that wanted access to Google’s Play Store had to accept its search service. The ad slinger also paid Apple billions to have Google Search as the default for the Safari browser in iOS.
The write up noted:
According to Stopford [a UK official], Google used its position to up prices paid by advertisers, resulting in higher costs to consumers. “What we’re trying to achieve with this claim is essentially compensate consumers,” she said.
Google has moved some of its smart software activities to the UK. One would think that with Google’s cash resources, its attorneys, and its smart software — mere government officials would have zero chance of winning this now repetitive allegation that dear Google has behaved in an untoward way.
If I were a government litigator, I would just drop the suit, Jack Smith style.
Will the sun set on these allegations against the “do no evil” outfit?
Nope, not as long as the opportunity for a payout exists. Google may have been too successful in its decades long rampage through traditional business practices. The good news is that Google has an almost limitless supply of money. The bad news is that countries have an almost limitless supply of regulators. But Google has smart software. Remember the film “The Terminator”? Winner: Google.
Stephen E Arnold, December 5, 2024
China Seeks to Curb Algorithmic Influence and Manipulation
December 5, 2024
Someone is finally taking decisive action against unhealthy recommendation algorithms, AI-driven price optimization, and exploitative gig-work systems. That someone is China. ”China Sets Deadline for Big Tech to Clear Algorithm Issues, Close ‘Echo Chambers’,” reports the South China Morning Post. Ah, the efficiency of a repressive regime. Writer Hayley Wong informs us:
‘Tech operators in China have been given a deadline to rectify issues with recommendation algorithms, as authorities move to revise cybersecurity regulations in place since 2021. A three-month campaign to address ‘typical issues with algorithms’ on online platforms was launched on Sunday, according to a notice from the Communist Party’s commission for cyberspace affairs, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and other relevant departments. The campaign, which will last until February 14, marks the latest effort to curb the influence of Big Tech companies in shaping online views and opinions through algorithms – the technology behind the recommendation functions of most apps and websites. System providers should avoid recommendation algorithms that create ‘echo chambers’ and induce addiction, allow manipulation of trending items, or exploit gig workers’ rights, the notice said.
They should also crack down on unfair pricing and discounts targeting different demographics, ensure ‘healthy content’ for elderly and children, and impose a robust ‘algorithm review mechanism and data security management system’.”
Tech firms operating within China are also ordered to conduct internal investigations and improve algorithms’ security capabilities by the end of the year. What happens if firms fail? Reeducation? A visit to the death van? Or an opportunity to herd sheep in a really nice area near Xian? The brief write-up does not specify.
We think there may be a footnote to the new policy; for instance, “Use algos to advance our policies.”
Cynthia Murrell, December 5, 2024
Legacy Code: Avoid, Fix, or Flee (Two Out of Three Mean Forget It)
December 4, 2024
In his Substack post, “Legacy Schmegacy,” software engineer David Reis offers some pointers on preventing and coping with legacy code. We found this snippet interesting:
“Someone must fix the legacy code, but it doesn’t have to be you. It’s far more honorable to switch projects or companies than to lead a misguided rewrite.”
That’s the spirit: quit and let someone else deal with it. But not everyone is in the position to cut and run. For those actually interested in addressing the problem, Reis has some suggestions. First, though, the post lists factors that can prevent legacy code in the first place:
- “The longer a programmer’s tenure the less code will become legacy, since authors will be around to appreciate and maintain it.
- The more code is well architected, clear and documented the less it will become legacy, since there is a higher chance the author can transfer it to a new owner successfully.
- The more the company uses pair programming, code reviews, and other knowledge transfer techniques, the less code will become legacy, as people other than the author will have knowledge about it.
- The more the company grows junior engineers the less code will become legacy, since the best way to grow juniors is to hand them ownership of components.
- The more a company uses simple standard technologies, the less likely code will become legacy, since knowledge about them will be widespread in the organization. Ironically if you define innovation as adopting new technologies, the more a team innovates the more legacy it will have. Every time it adopts a new technology, either it won’t work, and the attempt will become legacy, or it will succeed, and the old systems will.”
Reiss’ number one suggestion to avoid creating legacy code is, “don’t write crappy code.” Noted. Also, stick with tried and true methods unless shiny a new tech is definitely the best option. Perhaps most importantly, coders should teach others in the organization how their code works and leave behind good documentation. So, common sense and best practices. Brilliant!
When confronted with a predecessor’s code, he advises one to “delegacify” it. That is a word he coined to mean: Take time to understand the code and see if it can be improved over time before tossing it out entirely. Or, as noted above, just run away. That can be an option for some.
Cynthia Murrell, December 4, 2024
FOGINT: Telegram and Its Race Against Time
December 3, 2024
The article is a product of the humans working on the FOGINT team. The image is from Gifr.com.
The Financial Times recently stirred debate in the cryptocurrency community with its article, “Telegram Finances Propped Up by Crypto Gains As Founder Fights Charges.” Telegram’s ambitions for an initial public offering (IPO) hinge on proving it has a sustainable, profitable business model.
According to the FT, Telegram sold off cryptocurrency holdings to shore up its balance sheet, reporting revenue of $525 million. The financials, based on unaudited statements, framed the crypto sale as a “tactical” move, with Durov’s confinement in France having no material impact on the company.
CCN added flair with its piece, “Pavel Durov’s Telegram Nets $335M Windfall: Can It Ride a Crypto Bull to a $30B IPO by 2026,” highlighting that while crypto revenues and TON reserves have helped Telegram stay afloat, the firm still faces substantial debt and operating losses—$259 million in 2023 alone.
Crypto.news zeroed in on debt in its article, “How Telegram Made Over Half a Billion Dollars Thanks to Crypto?” Telegram, wholly owned by Durov, has raised $2.4 billion in debt financing, with repayment looming in 2026. In September, it used part of its crypto proceeds to repurchase $124.5 million in bonds. (Note: None of the news sources we reviewed noted that Telegram is using a variant of the MicroStrategy strategy of acquiring crypto currency to pump up the company’s “value.” See DLNews for more detail.)
The FOGINT research team identifies three key dynamics:
- Cash Flow Through Crypto Sales: Telegram’s crypto transactions inject much-needed liquidity, transforming a significant 2023 loss into a manageable red blot on its financial history.
- Tight Links to The Open Network Foundation (TON): Despite TON’s ostensible independence, the Foundation is deeply intertwined with Telegram. This relationship traces back to the U.S. SEC’s 2019 intervention against GRAM (now TON), which forced Telegram to offload its blockchain to the “independent” Foundation in 2023. Regulators in the U.S., UAE, and Switzerland appear to tolerate this arrangement for now.
- Racing Against the Clock: Telegram is fast-tracking innovations, like the BotFather’s high-speed processing and partnerships with firms such as Ku Group. Its developer meetups and funding programs are designed to rapidly build out its ecosystem. The urgency stems from a softening stance toward law enforcement—Telegram now appears more willing to share user data, potentially feeding into global investigative pipelines.
This newfound openness aligns with Telegram’s aggressive push to monetize its TON blockchain. At the November 1-2 Gateway Conference in Dubai, Telegram launched an all-out campaign to promote its crypto ecosystem. From YouTube videos and meetups to venture fund pitches, the effort signals a company operating in overdrive.
Blockchain researcher Sean Brizendine said: “”The Telegram hype is definitely real, and the Durov brothers’ future is on the line. Now is the time to pay attention as Telegram’s moves are breaking fast and furious.”
Why the rush? Telegram’s 900 million users and its wildly popular crypto games have been critical growth engines. But with its ethos of “do what you want” giving way to “use our crypto platform,” the stakes are higher than ever. The “leader” is in the grasp of French authorities. Fast-fashion-like life cycles of its crypto ventures underline a harsh reality: For Telegram, succeeding in crypto is no longer optional—it’s a turning point for the company and its affiliated organizations. Cornered animals can be more dangerous than some people think.
Stephen E Arnold, December 3, 2024
Directories Have Value
November 29, 2024
Why would one build an online directory—to create a helpful reference? Or for self aggrandizement? Maybe both. HackerNoon shares a post by developer Alexander Isora, “Here’s Why Owning a Directory = Owning a Free Infinite Marketing Channel.”
First, he explains why users are drawn to a quality directory on a particular topic: because humans are better than Google’s algorithm at determining relevant content. No argument here. He uses his own directory of Stripe alternatives as an example:
“Why my directory is better than any of the top pages from Google? Because in the SERP [Search Engine Results Page], you will only see articles written by SEO experts. They have no idea about billing systems. They never managed a SaaS. Their set of links is 15 random items from Crunchbase or Product Hunt. Their article has near 0 value for the reader because the only purpose of the article is to bring traffic to the company’s blog. What about mine? I tried a bunch of Stripe alternatives myself. Not just signed up, but earned thousands of real cash through them. I also read 100s of tweets about the experiences of others. I’m an expert now. I can even recognize good ones without trying them. The set of items I published is WAY better than any of the SEO-optimized articles you will ever find on Google. That is the value of a directory.”
Okay, so that is why others would want a subject-matter expert to create a directory. But what is in it for the creator? Why, traffic, of course! A good directory draws eyeballs to one’s own products and services, the post asserts, or one can sell ads for a passive income. One could even sell a directory (to whom?) or turn it into its own SaaS if it is truly popular.
Perhaps ironically, Isora’s next step is to optimize his directories for search engines. Sounds like a plan.
Cynthia Murrell, November 29, 2024
Apple: Another Problem Becoming Evident
November 25, 2024
Apple is a beast in Big Tech with its cult of loyal devotees, technology advancement (especially in mobile devices), and Apple TV. Apple TV invested big money in developing original content for its streaming service and has garnered many accolades, but it’s a misnomer in the entertainment industry. Why? ArsTechnica has the lowdown on that: “Apple TV+ Spent $20B On Original Content. If Only People Actually Watched.”
Apple spent $20 billion to make a name for itself in the prominent streaming wars. While its original content shows have loyal followings, Nielsen says that its attracted only 0.3% of US eyeballs. Bloomberg wrote: “Apple TV+ generates less viewing in one month than Netflix does in one day.”
Ouch! Here are some numbers to support that statement:
“Apple doesn’t provide subscriber numbers for Apple TV+, but it’s estimated to have 25 million subscribers. That would make it one of the smallest mainstream streaming services. For comparison, Netflix has about 283 million, and Prime Video has over 200 million. Smaller services like Peacock (about 28 million) and Paramount+ (about 72 million) best Apple TV+’s subscriber count, too.”
Apple only has 259 shows compared to Netflix’s 18,000. Also Apple’s marketing efforts are minimal, but the company has used big names like Leonardo DiCaprio, Reese Witherspoon, Idris Elba, and Martin Scorsese. Here are some more numbers for comparisons sake:
“To put this into perspective, Apple spent $14.9 million on commercials for Apple TV+ in October 2019 versus $28.6 million on the iPhone, per iSpot.TV data cited by The New York Times. Online, Apple paid for 139 unique digital ads for Apple TV+ in October 2019 compared to 245 for the iPhone (about $1.7 million versus about $2.3 million), per data from advertising analytics platform Pathmatics cited by The Times.”
Apple plans to raise its viewership by licensing its content to foreign marketplaces and adopting more common streaming practices. These include bundling through Comcast and Amazon Prime Video.
Apple had smart intentions but its lackluster performance begs its intelligence in the entertainment department. Apple sure didn’t replicate the success Steve Jobs had by investing in Pixar.
Whitney Grace, November 25, 2024
China Smart, US Dumb: LLMs Bad, MoEs Good
November 21, 2024
Okay, an “MoE” is an alternative to LLMs. An “MoE” is a mixture of experts. An LLM is a one-trick pony starting to wheeze.
Google, Apple, Amazon, GitHub, OpenAI, Facebook, and other organizations are at the top of the list when people think about AI innovations. We forget about other countries and universities experimenting with the technology. Tencent is a China-based technology conglomerate located in Shenzhen and it’s the world’s largest video game company with equity investments are considered. Tencent is also the developer of Hunyuan-Large, the world’s largest MoE.
According to Tencent, LLMs (large language models) are things of the past. LLMs served their purpose to advance AI technology, but Tencent realized that it was necessary to optimize resource consumption while simultaneously maintaining high performance. That’s when the company turned to the next evolution of LLMs or MoE, mixture of experts models.
Cornell University’s open-access science archive posted this paper on the MoE: “Hunyuan-Large: An Open-Source MoE Model With 52 Billion Activated Parameters By Tencent” and the abstract explains it is a doozy of a model:
In this paper, we introduce Hunyuan-Large, which is currently the largest open-source Transformer-based mixture of experts model, with a total of 389 billion parameters and 52 billion activation parameters, capable of handling up to 256K tokens. We conduct a thorough evaluation of Hunyuan-Large’s superior performance across various benchmarks including language understanding and generation, logical reasoning, mathematical problem-solving, coding, long-context, and aggregated tasks, where it outperforms LLama3.1-70B and exhibits comparable performance when compared to the significantly larger LLama3.1-405B model. Key practice of Hunyuan-Large include large-scale synthetic data that is orders larger than in previous literature, a mixed expert routing strategy, a key-value cache compression technique, and an expert-specific learning rate strategy. Additionally, we also investigate the scaling laws and learning rate schedule of mixture of experts models, providing valuable insights and guidance for future model development and optimization. The code and checkpoints of Hunyuan-Large are released to facilitate future innovations and applications.”
Tencent has released Hunyuan-Large as an open source project, so other AI developers can use the technology! The well-known companies will definitely be experimenting with Hunyuan-Large. Is there an ulterior motive? Sure. Money, prestige, and power are at stake in the AI global game.
Whitney Grace, November 21, 2024
Management Brilliance Microsoft Suggests to Customers, “You Did It!”
November 21, 2024
No smart software. Just a dumb dinobaby. Oh, the art? Yeah, MidJourney.
I read an amusing write up called “Microsoft Says Unexpected Windows Server 2025 Automatic Upgrades Were Due to Faulty Third-Party Tools.” I love a management action which points the fingers at “you” — Partners, customers, and anyone other than the raucous Redmond-ians.
Good enough, MidJourney. Good enough.
The write up says that Microsoft says:
“Some devices upgraded automatically to Windows Server 2025 (KB5044284). This was observed in environments that use third-party products to manage the update of clients and servers,” Microsoft explained. “Please verify whether third-party update software in your environment is configured not to deploy feature updates. This scenario has been mitigated.”
The article then provides a translation of Microsoftese:
In other words, it’s not Microsoft – it’s you. The company also added the update had the “DeploymentAction=OptionalInstallation” tag, which patch management tools should read as being an optional, rather than recommended update.
Several observations:
- Pointing fingers works in some circumstances. Kindergarten type interactions feature the tactic.
- The problems of updates seem to be standard operating procedure.
- Bad actors love these types of reports because anecdotes about glitches and flaws say, “Come on in, folks.”
Is this a management strategy or an indicator of other issues?
Stephen E Arnold, November 21, 2024
After AI Billions, a Hail, Mary Play
November 19, 2024
Now it is scramble time. Reuters reports, “OpenAI and Others Seek New Path to Smarter AI as Current Methods Hit Limitations.” Why does this sound familiar? Perhaps because it is a replay of the enterprise search over-promise and under-deliver approach. Will a new technique save OpenAI and other firms? Writers Krystal Hu and Anna Tong tell us:
“After the release of the viral ChatGPT chatbot two years ago, technology companies, whose valuations have benefited greatly from the AI boom, have publicly maintained that ‘scaling up’ current models through adding more data and computing power will consistently lead to improved AI models. But now, some of the most prominent AI scientists are speaking out on the limitations of this ‘bigger is better’ philosophy. … Behind the scenes, researchers at major AI labs have been running into delays and disappointing outcomes in the race to release a large language model that outperforms OpenAI’s GPT-4 model, which is nearly two years old, according to three sources familiar with private matters.”
One difficulty, of course, is the hugely expensive and time-consuming LLM training runs. Another: it turns out easily accessible data is finite after all. (Maybe they can use AI to generate more data? Nah, that would be silly.) And then there is that pesky hallucination problem. So what will AI firms turn to in an effort to keep this golden goose alive? We learn:
“Researchers are exploring ‘test-time compute,’ a technique that enhances existing AI models during the so-called ‘inference’ phase, or when the model is being used. For example, instead of immediately choosing a single answer, a model could generate and evaluate multiple possibilities in real-time, ultimately choosing the best path forward. This method allows models to dedicate more processing power to challenging tasks like math or coding problems or complex operations that demand human-like reasoning and decision-making.”
OpenAI is using this approach in its new O1 model, while competitors like Anthropic, xAI, and Google DeepMind are reportedly following suit. Researchers claim this technique more closely mimics the way humans think. That couldn’t be just marketing hooey, could it? And even if it isn’t, is this tweak really enough?
Cynthia Murrell, November 19, 2024
AI and Efficiency: What Is the Cost of Change?
November 18, 2024
No smart software. Just a dumb dinobaby. Oh, the art? Yeah, MidJourney.
Companies are embracing smart software. One question which gets from my point of view little attention is, “What is the cost of changing an AI system a year or two down the road?” The focus at this time is getting some AI up and running so an organization can “learn” whether AI works or not. A parallel development is taking place in software vendors enterprise and industry-centric specialized software. Examples range from a brand new AI powered accounting system to Microsoft “sticking” AI into the ASCII editor Notepad.
Thanks, MidJourney. Good enough.
Let’s tally the costs which an organization faces 24 months after flipping the switch in, for example, a hospital chain which uses smart software to convert a physician’s spoken comments about a patient to data which can be used for analysis to provide insight into evidence based treatment for the hospital’s constituencies.
Here are some costs for staff, consultants, and lawyers:
- Paying for the time required to figure out what is on the money and what is not good or just awful like dead patients
- The time required to figure out if the present vendor can fix up the problem or a new vendor’s system must be deployed
- Going through the smart software recompete or rebid process
- Getting the system up and running
- The cost of retraining staff
- Chasing down dependencies like other third party software for the essential “billing process”
- Optimizing the changed or alternative system.
The enthusiasm for smart software makes talking about these future costs fade a little.
I read “AI Makes Tech Debt More Expensive,” and I want to quote one passage from the pretty good essay:
In essence, the goal should be to unblock your AI tools as much as possible. One reliable way to do this is to spend time breaking your system down into cohesive and coherent modules, each interacting through an explicit interface. A useful heuristic for evaluating a set of modules is to use them to explain your core features and data flows in natural language. You should be able to concisely describe current and planned functionality. You might also want to set up visibility and enforcement to make progress toward your desired architecture. A modern development team should work to maintain and evolve a system of well-defined modules which robustly model the needs of their domain. Day-to-day feature work should then be done on top of this foundation with maximum leverage from generative AI tooling.
Will organizations make this shift? Will the hyperbolic AI marketers acknowledge the future costs of pasting smart software on existing software like circus posters on crumbling walls?
Nope.
Those two year costs will be interesting for the bean counters when those kicked cans end up in their workspaces.
Stephen E Arnold, November 18, 2024
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