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I read “Expanding Our Global Footprint with New Cloud Regions.” I skipped most of the announcements about data centers and zoomed to this statement:
The cleanest cloud in the industry. We do all of this while operating the cleanest cloud in the industry, matching 100 percent of the electricity we use with renewable energy. This commitment to sustainability enables our customers to meet their own cloud computing needs with zero net carbon emissions. You can learn more about our global infrastructure, including new and upcoming regions, here.
Okay, clean cloud, no dolphin skin lesion causing actions, no birds into wind farm blades, and no hot exhaust to fricassee feathered friends.
I ran three Google searches on a system which I assume runs on the clean Google cloud. Here are the results of each query:
1. Vegas 18 crack. The clean Google cloud result:
2. Cannabis online. The clean Google cloud result:
3. Hand gun suppressor. The clean Google cloud result:
After running these three queries on the clean Google cloud, one of the researchers working for me, said, “I don’t think your interpretation of the word clean is what Google meant?”
I looked at the researcher and replied, “Clean is clean, right?”
What’s clean mean to you gentle reader, saving the planet with giant data centers or making it easy for anyone to locate stolen software, potential contraband, and silencers for weapons?
I remain baffled about the clean cloud phrase. Presumably Amazon, HP, IBM, and Microsoft are not clean. I am struggling. Time for more marketing from Googlers I assume.
Stephen E Arnold, December 22, 2020
Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Google, Marketing, News | Comments Off on Google Outmarkets Cloud Competitors
Okay, okay, I am not sure if this story is accurate, but it certainly is interesting. Navigate to “Microsoft President Blames Israeli Company for Rash of Cyberattacks, Wants Biden to Intervene.” The write up reports:
Smith [the Microsoft president] has suggested that NSO Group and similar companies are “a new generation of private companies akin to 21st-century mercenaries” who generate “cyber-attack proliferation to other governments that have the money but not the people to create their own weapons. In short, it adds another significant element to the cybersecurity threat landscape.”
If accurate, Mr. Smith may want to validate that industrial strength cyber tools are available from code dumps from other specialized software vendors, downloadable via Microsoft’s own Github, penetration testing tool developers and the third parties creating add on kits to these software, and on certain fora on either encrypted messaging platforms or the handful of remaining Dark Web sites which allow authorized users to buy or download exploits.
In the galaxy of specialized software firms, NSO Group has been illuminated due to its emergence as a PR magnet and the business set up of the company itself. However, there are other specialized software vendors and there are other sources of code, libraries, and information to guide the would be bad actor.
Microsoft itself suffered a security breach and promptly (after five or six months) took action. The company published a report. Now Microsoft is acting to focus attention on a company which may or may not have had an impact on the supply chain matter involving SolarWinds and possibly other cyber security firms.
This Microsoft assertion is almost as interesting as the death star response to the incident.
But the kicker is this report form Techradar: “Microsoft Azure Breach Left Thousands of Customer Records Exposed.” If correct, this statement seems to suggest that Microsoft is into shifting blame:
Thanks to questionable security practices by an app developer, more than half a million sensitive documents of its customers were exposed on the Internet. The documents were housed in an unprotected Microsoft Azure blob storage and could be viewed by anyone with the direct address of the files, without any kind of authentication.
Okay.
Stephen E Arnold, December 21, 2020
You may not remember, but I do. Like yesterday. I wrote an analysis for the late, highly regarded financial services firm and contract bridge epicenter BearStearns. The document was published more than a decade ago. Two things happened. Google immediately rolled out a special event to announce universal search. I heard that the name morphed into unified search and then federated search among some Googlers. The idea is that a user runs a query and expects the content of which he or she is aware will be in the results. Ho ho ho. The merrie search elves know that even at the mighty Google one must search silos of data. Universal, unified, federated. That’s like a Dark Web vendor posting 1 800 YOU WISH as the customer support number for bogus contraband.
Imagine my surprise when I noted this Amazon post:
Announcing Unified Search in the AWS Management Console
Universal, unified, whatever. I find it fascinating how search related terminology comes into vogue and falls out of favor only to return in a weird but actually identifiable Kondratiev waves. Examples include:
- Inference (nifty but there was a search vendor called Inference now essentially forgotten)
- Boolean which several vendors have resurrected after thumbtypers declared the method dead
- indexing now creeping back into favor after metadata and enrichment have not moved the needle for jargon recycling.
Yep, unified. Much better than “federated”, of course. Remember Vivisimo? I sort of do, but IBM repositioned it as some whizzy part of Watson. Is search at AWS or anywhere for that matter what the user expects. Ho ho ho say the merrie search elves. Ho ho ho. That’s a good one.
Stephen E Arnold, December 16, 2020
Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Marketing, News, Search | Comments Off on Amazon Uses Googley Phrase Which Also Was Mostly Marketing Hoo Hah
I noted that China has out-Googled Google in the quantum supremacy horse race. The “real” news outfit South China Morning Post published “China Claims Quantum Computing Lead with Jiuzhang photon Test, Creating Machine One Trillion Times Faster Than Next Best Supercomputer.” I spotted this emission from Intel, the fabrication super company: Intel Debuts 2nd-Gen Horse Ridge Cryogenic Quantum Control Chip.
The question that came to me was:
Do the Jiuzhang engineers use Intel’s Horse Ridge?
I don’t know.
There were two thoughts which surfaced as I read these articles:
- Google has been either equaled or surpassed by China
- Intel’s quantum computing announcements seem out of step; for example:“With Horse Ridge II, Intel continues to lead innovation in the field of quantum cryogenic controls, drawing from our deep interdisciplinary expertise bench across the Integrated Circuit design, Labs and Technology Development teams. We believe that increasing the number of qubits without addressing the resulting wiring complexities is akin to owning a sports car, but constantly being stuck in traffic. Horse Ridge II further streamlines quantum circuit controls, and we expect this progress to deliver increased fidelity and decreased power output, bringing us one step closer toward the development of a ‘traffic-free’ integrated quantum circuit.” –Jim Clarke, Intel director of Quantum Hardware, Components Research Group, Intel
Quantum computing is a lightning rod for claims about supremacy and a convenient band wagon for companies take for a ride. (I really want to say “horse ride” but I will not. I shall trot peacefully along.)
Stephen E Arnold, December 9, 2020
Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Marketing, News, Technology | Comments Off on Intel Whips Its Quantum PR to Horse Ridge II
I read a weird content marketing, predicting the future article called “OpenText CEO: Organizations Must Rethink Approach to Business, Technology.” OpenText is interesting for a number of reasons. It is a Canadian outfit. The company owns more search and retrieval systems than one can remember. Fulcrum, BRS, Dr. Tim Bray’s SGML search, and others. There are content management systems which once shipped with an Autonomy stub. I dimly recall that OpenText was into Hummingbird and maybe Information Dimensions too.
Wow.
Now a company which ostensibly sells content management is suggesting that there is a “new equilibrium” on deck for 2021 is fascinating. I am not sure about the old equilibrium which seemed slightly crazy to me, but, hey, I am just reading what a Canadian outfit sees coming. I would prefer that the said Canadian outfit invest in enhancing the technologies it has, but I am flawed. That’s probably part of the old equilibrium.
The write up reports that the new equilibrium is part of the great rethink:
We are going through the fastest technology disruption in the history of the world. The shift to Industry 4.0 had already resulted in a huge increase in connectivity, automation, AI, and computing power. The response to COVID-19 has accelerated this process and forever changed the business environment.
Okay. How is that working out?
The pandemic has also forced a huge shift in time-to-value. Five years ago, companies would wait two years to deploy an ERP system. Now, the expectation is that you will have a solution in weeks, or even days.
Ah, ha. New system deployments have to be done faster. Is this an insight? I thought James Gleick’s Faster explained this process 20 years ago. That seems as if the OpenText insight has moved slowly through the great Canadian intellectual winter. Where is the management guru who lived on a sailboat in Canada when one needs him?
The new equilibrium for OpenText sounds a whole lot like Amazon Web services or the Microsoft Azure “blue” thing. I noted:
These cloud solutions enable businesses to re-invent processes and seize emerging opportunities faster, easier, and more cost-effectively. Developer Cloud is particularly exciting. It will provide a platform for developers to create custom solutions to manage information, and will help build a community of innovators working together to create better enterprise applications.
From my point of view, this content marketing fluff has not changed my perception of OpenText which is:
OpenText software applications manage content or unstructured data for large companies, government agencies, and professional service firms.
Services, new equilibrium, rethink. Got it. Enterprise search. Jargon.
Stephen E Arnold, November 27, 2020
I spotted “Google’s Verse by Verse AI Can Help You Write in the Style of Famous Poets.” The subtitle illustrates why this Google innovation is probably going to find some Silicon Valley Shakespeares:
Quoth the Bugdroid, “Nevermore.”
The write up guides the reader to this url. Then the page displays:
Okay, let’s write a poem with the Google smart software. I am skeptical because Google set out to solve death. So far, no luck with that project. For poetic style, I quite like the approach of William Abernathy, who wrote a remarkable tribute to Queen Elizabeth called Elisaeis, Apotheosis poeticaas in Latin when he was trying to avoid arrest for religious heresy. (For more info on William Abernathy, navigate to your local university library and chase down Vol. 76, No. 5, Texts and Studies, 1979. “The Elisæis” of William Alabaster (Winter, 1979). Oh, the poem is a tribute to Elizabeth the First. Did I mention the poem was an epic, thousands upon thousands of lines. In Latin too. Hot stuff.)
Well, bummer. Mr. Alabaster is not listed as a stylistic choice on the Google write a poem Web site. I thought AI was smart. Well, let us sally forth with the clever and sometimes interesting Edwin Arlington Robinson who wrote:
Mininver loved the Medici,
Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one.
Yep, sin. But I had to pick other poets with which the smart Google AI is familiar. Trepedatiously I selected the fave of elderly literature teachers: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Plus in a nod to the Rona and rising infection rates, I plunked my mouse cursor on the liquor-loving and raven loving Edgar Allen Poe. Yep, I noted the “nevermore” in the article’s subtitle. Then I clicked “Next.”
I specified a quatrain in iambic pentameter with the rhyming scheme AB AB.
Google’s smart software wanted a chunk of poesy as a “seed” for the smart software. I provided:
Whoa, teenaged mind, cause no sorrow or pain
I want to point out that this is the first line of a poem my junior class English teacher Edwardine Sperling required us to write. (She loved cardinals, the bird, not the baseball team.) My poetic flight of fancy at age 15 on this line motivated Ms. Sperling to try and get me expelled me from high school. No sense of humor had she. (The compromise proposed by the assistant principal was that Ms Sperling could ban me from the National Honor Society as a result of my inappropriate writing, and I had to sit outside the class in the hallway for the remainder of the semester.)
And what was my “Spirit of Nature” poem about? Nothing much. Just sitting in the woods on a sunny day in early autumn. Then the Spirit of Nature emerged from a pile of leaves. I explained that my Spirit of Nature was the October 1959 Playmate of the Month from Playboy magazine. I elaborated via metaphors (terrible metaphors I must confess) how the Spirit of Nature or Miss October helped move away from “sorrow or pain.” I will leave the details to your imagination. My poem was a hoot. But I got the boot.
Back to the Google smart poetry writer, a system which I hypothesized would have zero imagination and would have been an A student in dear Ms. Sperling’s literature class.
I clicked the Next button again. Magic. Google’s fine system spit out after some prompting after I provided the first line in red. Google goodness is in blue:
Whoa, teenaged mind, cause no sorrow or pain
Enlife a phantom of an idle love;
Yet in a fancy I could now attain
Look on the beauty of that world above!
Great stuff those words in blue crafted sharp and true by Lord Google.
Ms Sperling would have relished the “enlife” word. The prefix “en” leads to many coinages; for example, enbaloney, enstupid, and enmarketing. Maybe enAI? Sure. But no Playboy bunnies. No filthy innuendo. No double entendre. The meaning thing eludes me, but, hey, Google couldn’t solve death either. The GOOG is not doing too well in poesie either I opine. Any questions about Google’s query ad matching semantic system? Good.
Stephen E Arnold, November 24, 2020
After two years, Clarity has finally made it out of Beta, we learn from “Microsoft Clarity Debuts as Free Analytics Tool with Heat Maps” at Search & Performance Marketing Daily. The free tool uses heat maps to analyze the behavior of visitors to one’s website. Reporter Laurie Sullivan writes:
“Clarity — designed to have a low impact on page-load times and there are no caps on traffic no matter what the number of visitors to the website — helps give marketers a deeper understanding of why at website performs one way and not another. It also provides anonymized heat maps and data that show where site visitors clicked and scrolled, and enables marketers to analyze use behavior on the website exactly as it happened through a job description code. Some of the data includes the name of the browser, and whether they are using a PC, tablet or mobile phone to access the site. Heat maps provide a visual way to examine large numbers of site visitor interactions. Microsoft built two types: click maps and scroll maps. While the heat maps tell marketers which pages get the most clicks, the click maps tell marketers what website page content visitors interact with the most. Areas in the map marked in red have the highest frequency of clicks and are usually centered on focal points.”
The heat maps let marketers know whether visitors are clicking where they want them to. It also reports certain behaviors—excessive scrolling, dead clicks, and rage clicks. The last term describes users clicking several times on a spot they believe should be a hyperlink but is not—one would want to either fix an intended link or tweak the graphics on those spots. The tool also supplies a dashboard that presents metrics of the overall traffic patterns, time spent on the site, and even concurrent JavaScript errors. Microsoft pledges Clarity complies with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation.
But Pluton, Microsoft’s mystery processor? Pluton?
Cynthia Murrell, November 20, 2020
Here is a possibly useful service—Please-unsubscribe.com does just what its name suggests: Unsubscribe clients from bothersome marketing emails for a small fee. The service’s entrepreneur reassures:
“Forward marketing emails to hey@please-unsubscribe.com and we will take care of the rest. Here is an example. … Each unsubscribe uses 1 Credit. Over time, you should need this service less and less 🙂 Fresh accounts start with 5 Credits. Credits are initially locked to the source email address. For example, if your email is john.smith@example.com, then your credits will only work with that email address. To change your source email address (or add a member), please message: support@please-unsubscribe.com. For example, you can add multiple members of your family or friends to share a single credit pool.”
One begins by simply forwarding any marketing email and the first five credits will be assigned. Once they are used up, the user will be asked to enroll through Stripe or PayPal. We’re told unsubscribe requests are usually processed within 24 hours, and users receive a monthly report describing the junk email that has been halted. The page, which is written in the tone of a casual conversation, ponders the value of moving to a weekly report vs. not cluttering its users’ inbox (when they were tasked to do just the opposite). Depending on how many credits one buys, the cost is between 20 and 50 cents per pesky sender. We are also told the service respects users’ privacy. It pledges to never sell data and to place processed emails into Google Workspace’s trash to be purged within 30 days.
We found this part interesting—For now, anyway, this service is not automated. The job is performed by an actual person. The page specifies:
“Currently, there is no automation. Oftentimes, these marketing emails contain hard-to-find, low-opacity links. But it’s nothing that a real human can’t tackle. At this time, the only processor is my high-school sister. I pay her $15/hour. In the future, automation might be worth it. But for right now, hiring a real human is a pretty good deal for the task.”
One wonders what will happen when and if the service becomes popular; the sister may soon become overwhelmed. Will please-unsubscribe turn to automation or hire more workers? We would be curious to learn the answer.
Cynthia Murrell, November 16, 2020
I read a darned interesting article called “Professional Fighters League to Leverage IBM Technologies to Innovate Next-Gen Proprietary SmartCage.” The write up explains:
The Professional Fighters League (PFL), the fastest growing and most innovative sports league in the world, today announced it will be leveraging Flagship’s capabilities to deliver IBM’s suite of advanced cloud and AI products to enhance the league’s delivery of next-gen SmartCage data and analytics, both live in-broadcast and via the league’s OTT platform, Fight Central.
I think this means that the “boxing ring” becomes intelligent. Boxing is the “sweet science.” I did not know that boxing lacked intelligence. Hmmm.
The goal of harming an opponent will benefit from the tough minded IBM Watson. The article points out:
PFL’s proprietary SmartCage measures real-time MMA fighter performance analytics along with biometric and positional data providing fans with an elevated viewing experience. Moving forward, SmartCage fight data, called Cagenomics, will be enhanced with Watson machine learning to scour data points and uncover new insights for MMA fans, bringing them inside the cage like never before.
I thought IBM’s use of Watson to create a recipe book was a high water point for the high-technology giant. I have been stunned by Watson’s machoness. I am not even in the SmartCage.
Stephen E Arnold, November 13, 2020
Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under IBM Watson, Marketing, News | Comments Off on IBM: Smashing an Elbow Then a Choke. Tap Out!
IEEE Spectrum ran an interview which I thought was a trifle unusual. Watson is going to modernize legacy code. How much of the legacy code is the work of IBM programmers and acolytes trained in the ways of Big Blue: JCL incantations, chants for PL/I, and abracadabra for Assembler? What about the code for the US air traffic control system? What about the code for the AS/400, a machine series I have lost in the mists of marketing? I remember rocking on with RPG.
The article has a killer SEO-centric title; to wit:
IBM Watson’s Next Challenge: Modernize Legacy Code. IBM Research’s Chief Scientist Ruchir Puri says Watson AIOps can take on the tedious tasks of software maintenance so human coders can innovate
What, pray tell, was the first challenge IBM Watson successfully resolved? Maybe winning the Jeopardy game show. I keep thinking about the wonders of television post-production for programs which shoot a week’s worth of goodness in one day. The behind the scenes Avid users labor away to produce a “real” TV show. Sorry. I remain skeptical.
The article presents five questions. These are not exactly colloquial. The wording is similar to that used in semi-scripted reality TV programs. The answers are IBM-ish. Please, read and enjoy the original document. I will focus on two of the questions. Yes, I selected the ones with the most Watson goodness based on my experience with the giant of White Plains.
The first question probes the darned exciting history of IBM Watson and cancer. As I recall, some of the oncologists in Houston’s medical community were not thrilled with the time required to explain cancer to IBM analysts and slightly less thrilled with the outputs. Hasta la vista, Watson. The article explains IBM Watson and healthcare using wordage like this:
The use of AI in healthcare is still evolving, and it’s a journey. To expect AI to be able to give the right answer in all diagnosis scenarios is expecting too much. The technology has not reached that level yet. However, that’s precisely why we say it’s more about augmenting the healthcare experts than it is about replacing in many ways.
My, “yeah, but” is a memory of an IBM Watson presentation which asserted that Watson could deliver actionable diagnoses. I know I am getting old, but I recall those assurances. That presentation gave me the idea for the “Weakly Watson” series of articles in this blog. There were some crazy attempts to make IBM Watson relevant: Free to use model, build an application to match dogs with dog owners for a festival in Mexico, etc. etc.
The second question I want to highlight is natural language processing (!) and content processing. Here’s the snippet from the IBMer’s answer I circled with my Big Blue pen:
Roughly speaking, rule-based systems will be successful in translating somewhere between 50 to 60 percent of a program. It is true that part of the program can be translated reasonably well, however, that still leaves half of the program to be translated manually, and that remaining 50 percent is the hardest part, typically involving very complex rules. And that’s exactly where AI kicks in because it can act like humans.
There you go. AI “can act like humans.” Tell that to the people shafted by AI systems as documented in Weapons of Math Destruction.
Net net: Where’s IBM going with Watson? I think anywhere money can be generated. Game shows are probably less complex than addressing encrypted text messages and figuring out what’s in a streaming video in real time.
Who knows? Maybe Lucene, acquired technology from outfits like Vivisimo, and home brew code from IBM Almaden can work miracles.
Stephen E Arnold, October 28, 2020
Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under IBM Watson, Marketing, News | Comments Off on IBM Watson: Going Back to the Jeopardy Thing
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