Targeting 101: Disabling Google and Finding Software Alternatives
June 30, 2019
I read “Completely Block Google and Its Services.” If you are concerned about Google’s data policies, you may want to read the article and follow the instructions in the pihole-google.txt file. It appears that there are more than 7,000 services which Google uses to obtain one’s personal information.
Is this a surprise? No, what’s interesting is that disabling items one by one in an Android device is not going to do the job. I particularly liked the listing of DoubleClick add ons. Here’s a sampling of the more than two dozen items:
analytics.txt
firebase.txt
fonts.txt
mail.txt
products.txt
Some readers of DarkCyber may find the DoubleClick patents interesting. An overview of the cookie method appears in “Method and Apparatus for Transaction Tracking Over a Computer Network.” You can locate the document at this link. DoubleClick has other interesting inventions as well. I covered more of these in my 2003 The Google Legacy and the follow-up monograph, Google Version 2. I am not returning to the Museum of Googzilla.
Once Google has been removed from your Android device, you may want to find replacement for the Google Play and Google provided apps. You can find a useful list in “The Complete List of Alternatives to All Google Products.” The “all” makes me nervous because DarkCyber has heard rumors than not even Google has a list which is comprehensive. Like the personnel data the US government once requested, that’s just too difficult. Creating such a list is impossible because once the list has been whipped up, it might leak. Google still tries to be as secretive as possible, but its track record has changed as the firm has aged.
Stephen E Arnold, June 30, 2019
Google Maps: A Metaphor for the Here and Now Google
June 28, 2019
In a way, I have some sympathy for the GOOG. The company, allegedly an online search service, demonstrated the inherent irrelevance of its systems and methods. I read the allegedly true story “EasyAsk Drive 7-% More Revenue” which was the headline displayed over the CNN story about Google Maps directing more than 100 individuals to a muddy field. Yep, the ad covered up the story. That’s our here and now Google.
Sure, the story was amusing even if the title was obliterated in a quest to get me to license a product in which I have zero interest. According to the write up:
Technology isn’t always foolproof, as about 100 Colorado drivers learned when Google Maps offered them a supposedly quick way out of a traffic jam.
That’s a refreshing assessment of a really screwed up mess.
I learned:
The alternate route took drivers down a dirt road that rain had turned into a muddy mess, and cars started sliding around. Some vehicles couldn’t make it through the mud, and about 100 others became trapped behind them.
Google explained the problem this way:
“We take many factors into account when determining driving routes, including the size of the road and the directness of the route,” the company said in a statement. “While we always work to provide the best directions, issues can arise due to unforeseen circumstances such as weather. We encourage all drivers to follow local laws, stay attentive, and use their best judgment while driving.”
I love the royal we.
Let’s review the flaws this single incident and news story reveal:
- Just bad information. Google Maps direct people to routes which are not passable
- Sheep like humans. Humans depend on Google to do the thinking for them and end up with incorrect information
- Talk down rhetoric. Google explains the problem with parent type talk.
- Desperate advertisers. Marketers are paying to put their message in front of people indifferent to the annoyance a person like me experiences when an irrelevant ad covers up the headline of something that interests me.
The drivers are not the only ones stuck in the mud. Quite a mess.
Stephen E Arnold, June 28, 2019
DeepMind Studies Math
June 27, 2019
It’s like magic! ExtremeTech reports, “Google Fed a Language Algorithm Math Equations. It Learned How to Solve New Ones.” While Google’s DeepMind is, indeed, used as a language AI, it’s neural network approach enables it to perform myriad tasks, like beating humans at games from Go to Capture the Flag. Writer Adam Dachis describes how researchers taught DeepMind to teach itself math:
“For training data, DeepMind received a series of equations along with their solutions—like a math textbook, only without any explanation of how those solutions can be reached. Google then created a modular system to procedurally generate new equations to solve, with a controllable level of difficulty, and instructed the AI to provide answers in any form. Without any structure, DeepMind had to intuit how to solve new equations solely based on seeing a limited number of completed examples. Challenging existing deep learning algorithms with modular math presents a very difficult challenge to an AI and existing neural network models performed at relatively similar levels of accuracy. The best-performing model, known as Transformer, managed to provide correct solutions to 50 percent of the time and it was designed for the purpose of natural language understanding—not math. When only judging Transformer on its ability to answer questions that utilized numbers seen in the training data, its accuracy shot up to 76 percent.”
Furthermore, Dachis writes, DeepMind’s approach to math suggests a solution to a persistent problem facing those who would program computers to do math—while our mathematics is built on a base-10 system, software “thinks” in binary. The article goes into detail, with illustrations, about why this is such a headache. See the write-up for those details, but here is the upshot—computers cannot represent every possible number on the number line. They rely on strategic rounding to get as close as they can. Usually this works out fine, but on occasion it does produce a significant rounding error. Dachis hopes analysis of the Transformer language model will point the way toward greater accuracy, through both changes to the algorithm and new training data. Perhaps.
Cynthia Murrell, June 27, 2019
Google: Now That Is a Good Name for a Child
June 26, 2019
“Just Google it, Google”. Or: “Google your report contains irrelevant information from Google. Or: “Google, are you stalking me?”
Who might say these things? Anyone talking to the child of Andi Cahya Saputra and 27-year-old Ella Karina from West Java. These delightful individuals named their child Google.
According to Ubergizmo:
According to the baby’s father, “I told my father, Pak, Google has a great meaning, because I hope Google can help many people, become a useful person to others.” He has also since responded to critics who claimed that this was done in hopes of getting some kind of financial compensation from maybe Google.
Just Google it.
Stephen E Arnold, June 26, 2019
Google: Hunting for Not Us
June 26, 2019
There was a dust up about song lyrics. As I recall, the responsibility did not fall upon the impossibly magnificent Google shoulders. A supplier may have acted in a manner which some “genius” thinks is a third party’s problem. Yep, a supplier.
I just read “Tracing the Supply Chain Attack on Android.” The write up explained that malware with impossible to remember and spell names like Yehuo found its way on to Android phones via the “supply chain.” I don’t know much about supply chains, but I think these are third parties who do work for a company. The idea is that someone at one firm contracts with the third party to perform work. When I worked as a “third party,” I recall people who were paying me taking actions; for example, texting, visiting, emailing, requiring me or my colleagues to attend meetings in which some of the people in charge fiddled with their mobile devices, and fidgeted.
The write up digs through quite a bit of data and reports many interesting details.
However, there is one point which is not included in the write up: Google appears to find itself looking at a third party as a bad actor. What unites the “genius” affair and the pre installed malware.
Google management processes?
Yes, that’s one possible answer. Who said something along the lines that if one creates chaos, that entity must address the problems created by chaos?
But if a third party did it, whose problem is it anyway?
Stephen E Arnold, June 26, 2019
Google Walk Out Leader Walks Out
June 26, 2019
Is diversity possible at Google?
Not too long ago, Claire Stapleton led a series of walkouts at Google related to policies that are sexist towards female employees. Since Stapleton staged the walkouts, she claimed she faced a growing amount of hostility at her job. The Inquirer investigates more in the article, “Googler Who Lead Mass Walkout Leaves The Company Due To ‘Manager Hostility.’”
Stapleton was a YouTube marketing manager and had worked at Google for twelve years. Ever since she took a stand against Google’s sexist policies, Stapleton said that Google has become more hostile toward her. She specifically used the term “scarlet letter” in reference to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book of the same name about a woman who bore a child out of wedlock. The scarlet letter term is ironic, because of that connotation. Stapleton decided to leave to escape from the stress and shame. She also is pregnant and did not want the stress to harm her unborn child.
Google said something different:
“We thank Claire for her work at Google and wish her all the best. To reiterate, we don’t tolerate retaliation. Our employee relations team did a thorough investigation of her claims and found no evidence of retaliation. They found that Claire’s management team supported her contributions to our workplace, including awarding her their team Culture Award for her role in the walkout.”
Google’s response is the standard, inoffensive HR copy. It is impressive that Stapleton’s management team awarded her the Culture Award. Even if Google praised her efforts, the company could still ostracize her. It could have been Google’s entire plan to place undue stress on Stapleton, until she could not handle the pressure anymore and needed to leave for her sanity. This is a nasty business tactic and it is not new, but it is a shame that it is still being used. Stapleton may continue to push for equality and diversity. She was good enough to get hired, but not good enough to stay: Is that a fair assessment?
Whitney Grace, June 26, 2019
Twitch Aces YouTube Again
June 21, 2019
I did a quick check of YouTube Live, the finder for live streams available on YouTube. You can locate this dashboard at this link. I scrolled through the results on YouTube at 0630 US Eastern time. I located this video link on the YouTube Live page:
YouTube Live has zero Hong Kong protest streams which are actually “live.” Queries run at 0630 am US Eastern time.
The “Police HQ Blocked” points to a “recent live stream.” That’s okay but the link appears on the YouTube Live page, and there is no live stream of the Hong Kong protest streaming live.
What? A live index pointing to an archived file.
Now contrast that with Twitch.tv, an Amazon property. I entered the query “Hong Kong protest” in the Twitch search box at this link: https://bit.ly/2sRPekp and got hits to actual live streams. Here’s a screen shot taken shortly after my visit to the YouTube Live page.
A Twitch live stream captured about 630 am US Eastern time.
The quality of the video is excellent. None of that low res stuff.
A couple of observations:
- YouTube Live is supposed to provide links to live content. Obviously YouTube does not have live video of the historic Hong Kong protests on June 21, 2019, US time zone, or YouTube chooses not to make these streams available
- Twitch.tv provides live streams of high quality from different Twitch content providers and the Twitch.tv search engine makes the content easy to find. This is a feat that mainstream US media sites cannot achieve.
- The cognitive disconnect of YouTube Live’s listing archived footage as “live” is baffling to me.
Net net: Amazon Twitch continues to provide interesting and often significant content of news value. YouTube looks increasingly arthritic when compared to the more agile Twitch service. Plus Twitch delivers high quality streams. To be fair, Amazon does display some annoying and repetitive advertisements. That’s a small price to pay for feet on the street information about activities in Hong Kong.
Twitch is focused and apparently on the steraming ball. Google is not in the game when it comes to Hong Kong’s protests.
If you were Hong Kong government authorities, which service would you use to track protest activities? Sure, the government’s camera network is a first choice, but right behind might be the Twitch.tv service. YouTube? Probably not.
Stephen E Arnold, 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
Alphabet Google: Reality Versus Research in Actual Management Activities
June 19, 2019
For a few months, I have been using my Woodruff High School Science Club as a source of ideas for understanding Silicon Valley management decisions. I termed my method HSSCMM or “high school science club management method.” A number of people have told me that my approach was humorous. I suppose it is. One former colleague from a big name consulting name observed that I was making official, MBA-endorsed techniques look like a shanked drive at a fraternity reunion golf scramble. (MBA students seem to be figuring out that their business degrees may open doors at Lyft or Uber, not McKinsey & Company.
Where the HSSCMM differs from “situational thinking without context” (this is DarkCyber jargon), Google research has identified best practices for management. However, HSSCMM is intuitive and easy to explain. My touchstone for management appears in the article “Google Tried to Prove Managers Don’t Matter. Instead, It Discovered 10 Traits of the Very Best Ones.” Google’s original goal involved figuring out if a sports team manager was important or not. Google’s brilliant analysts crunched numbers and found that coaches matter. The best ones shared some data-backed characteristics. Let’s compare what Google found with the HSSCMM.
I made an a MBA-influenced table to keep thoughts clear.
| # | Google Research Says | HSSCMM Approach | Observations |
| 1 | Be a good coach | Be arrogant because you understand differential equations | Google is working on discrimination |
| 2 | Empower | Others are stupid | The smartest person is in charge |
| 3 | Inclusive team | Exclusivity all the way. | Google hires best talent, and Google defines “best” |
| 4 | Be results oriented | Do what you want. Outsiders don’t get it. | Boost ad sales |
| 5 | Communicate | Don’t get it? You’re fired. | Explain YouTube is too big to be fixed |
| 6 | Have a strategy | React. Ignore the uninformed | Make quick decisions like buying Motorola |
| 7 | Support career development | Learn it yourself | Find a team or leave |
| 8 | Advise the team | Figure it out, or you don’t belong | First day at work confusing? Try flipping burgers |
| 9 | Collaborate | Work alone | Fix the problem or quit |
| 10 | Be a strong decision maker | Do what I say, dummy | Obvious, right? |
Answer this question: How many of the characteristics from each column match actions from Silicon Valley-type companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, etc.?
 |
| Which type of management method is exemplified in this allegedly true incident? The Google management research findings or the high school science club management methods? Answer: HSSCMM. |
As you formulate this answer, consider the decision making evidenced in this allegedly accurate article from 2017 about a Silicon Valley executive.
Stephen E Arnold, June 19, 2019
Supercomputer Time!
June 18, 2019
DarkCyber noted “Top 500: China Has 219 of the World’s Fastest Supercomputers.” The list contains one interesting factoid:
Lenovo was the top vendor both by the number of systems and combined petaflops. Its machines achieved upwards of 302 petaflops, to be exact, followed by IBM’s with 207 petaflops.
A petaflop is the number of floating point operations per second a computer can deliver. A floating point operation is, according to the ever reliable Wikipedia:
arithmetic using formulaic representation of real numbers as an approximation so as to support a trade-off between range and precision. For this reason, floating-point computation is often found in systems which include very small and very large real numbers, which require fast processing times. A number is, in general, represented approximately to a fixed number of significant digits (the significand) and scaled using an exponent in some fixed base; the base for the scaling is normally two, ten, or sixteen.
Just for fun, I was thinking about defining each of the assorted words and phrases, but then this blog post would be very big endian.
The killer fact, however, is that China has 219 of these puppies. Here’s the passage which garnered a yellow circle from my marker:
China surpassed the U.S. by total number of ranked supercomputers for the first time in Top500 rankings two years ago, 202 to 143. That trend accelerated in the intervening year; according to the Top500 fall 2018 report, the number of ranked U.S. supercomputers fell to 108 as China’s total climbed to 229.
DarkCyber thinks this is an important message. In fact, it seems more significant than IBM’s announcement, reported in “We’ve Made World’s Most Powerful Commercial Supercomputer.” The implication is that the faster computers are not commercial, right? The enthusiastic recyclers of IBM’s marketing information reported as “real” news:
The IBM-built Pangea III supercomputer has come online for French energy giant Total, bringing 31.7 petaflops of processing power and 76 petabytes of storage capacity. It’s now the world’s most powerful supercomputer outside government-owned systems.
But there is a bit of intrigue surrounding this “commercial” angle. I have done a small amount of work in France, and I learned that the difference between a French company and the French government is often difficult for a person from another country to understand. It’s not the tax policies, not the regulatory net, and not the quasi government committees and advisory groups. Nope, it’s the reality that those who go to the top French universities generally keep in touch. The approach is similar to India’s graduates of elite secondary schools. Therefore, I am not sure I am confident about the “outside government owned systems” statement in the write up.
Skepticism aside, the supercomputer you can buy from IBM is going to be outgunned by 10 other systems.
The other interesting allegedly true factoid in the write up is a node which includes the French, of course, IBM, and the ever lovable Google. IBM and Google, while not like graduates of GEM (Groupe des écoles des mine). Google’s hook up with IBM warrants some consideration.
Stephen E Arnold, June 18, 2019
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