Amusing Mistake Illustrates Machine Translation Limits
May 12, 2016
Machine translation is not quite perfect yet, but we’ve been assured that it will be someday. That’s the upshot of Business Insider’s piece, “This Microsoft Exec’s Hilarious Presentation Fail Shows Why Computer Translation is so Difficult.” Writer Matt Weinberger relates an anecdote shared by Microsoft research head Peter Lee. The misstep occurred during a 2015 presentation, for which Lee set up Skype Translator to translate his words over the speakers into Mandarin as he went. Weinberger writes:
“Part of Lee’s speech involved a personal story of growing up in a ‘snowy town’ in upper Michigan. He noticed that most of the crowd was enraptured — except for a few native Chinese speakers in the crowd who couldn’t stop giggling. After the presentation, Lee says he asked one of those Chinese speakers the reason for the laughter. It turns out that ‘snowy town’ translates into ‘Snow White’s Town.’ Which seems innocent enough, except that it turns out that ‘Snow White’s town’ is actually Chinese slang for ‘a town where a prostitute lives,’ Lee says. Whoops.
“Lee says it wasn’t caught in the profanity filters because there weren’t actually any bad words in the phrase. But it’s the kind of regional flavor where a direct translation of the words can’t bring across the meaning.”
Whoops indeed. The article notes that another problem with Skype Translator is its penchant for completely disregarding non-word utterances, like “um” and “ahh,” that often carry necessary meaning. We’re reminded, though, that these and other problems are expected to be ironed out within the next few years, according to Microsoft Research chief scientist Xuedong Huang. I wonder how many more amusing anecdotes will arise in the meantime.
Cynthia Murrell, May 12, 2016
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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
Microsoft Goes Mobile with Delve
April 30, 2015
Microsoft has made enhancements to the core functionality of Delve, as well as rolling out native mobile app versions for iOS and Android. ZDNet breaks the news in their article, “Microsoft Delivers iOS, Android Versions of Delve.”
The article begins:
“Microsoft has made native mobile versions of its Delve search and presentation app available for Android phones, Android wear devices and iPhones. Delve presents in card-like form information from Exchange, OneDrive for Business, SharePoint Online and Yammer enterprise-social networking components. Over the coming months Delve will be adding more content sources, including email attachments, OneNote and Skype for Business.”
This seems like a Microsoft component that has great potential for mobile use, since its focus is “at a glance” information retrieval. Keep an eye on ArnoldIT.com to see what Stephen E. Arnold has to say about it in coming months. Arnold has made a career out of following all things search and enterprise, and he reports his findings at ArnoldIT.com. His dedicated SharePoint feed collects a lot of interesting reporting regarding SharePoint and the rest of Microsoft productivity offerings.
Emily Rae Aldridge, April 30, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Microsoft Delve and PowerBi Make Data User Friendly
March 30, 2015
Microsoft Delve is a new part of the Office 365 package and it is similar to Facebook Graph Search or your Internet browsing history. ChannelWorld posted “Microsoft Rolls Out Delve To Office 365, Previews PowerBi And Skype For Business.” Microsoft will release Delve soon and it comes as demand for relationship-building tools grow in demand. Delve tracks information from Office 365 applications such as Outlook, PowerPoint, Bing, Word, and more. Microsoft is calling the collected data the Office Graph, showing how people interact with the software.
PowerBI is another rollout from Microsoft:
“Microsoft also announced that it has now rolled out the technical preview of PowerBI for Excel around the world, following its launch a year ago. PowerBI is designed to be a tool for non-techies to access technical data, quickly composing their own sales reports through natural-language queries against robust data sources–typing in a query like “what was our most popular product in Brazil last year?” should deliver a graph or even a map of those results. Incorporating Google Analytics, Microsoft Dynamics Marketing, Acumatica, Zuora and Twilio will come soon, Microsoft said.”
Microsoft will also incorporate Skype in Office 365. Office 365’s is one of Microsoft’s most viable products and people have complained they have not done much with it in recent years. Upgrades like Skype, Delve, and OfficeBI demonstrate that Microsoft is still invested in making Office 365 a competitive, usable, and reliable product.
Whitney Grace, March 30, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
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