Category: Information Operations (IO)

SPACtacular Palantir Tech Gets More Attention: This Is Good?
Palantir is working to expand its public-private partnership operations beyond security into the healthcare field. Some say the company has fallen short in its efforts to peddle security software to officials in Europe, so the data-rich field of government-managed healthcare is the next logical step. Apparently the pandemic gave Palantir the opening it was looking for, paving the way for a deal it made with the UK’s National Health Service to develop the NHS COVID-19 Data Store. Now however, CNBC reports, “Campaign Launches to Try to Force Palantir Out of Britain’s NHS.” Reporter Sam L. Shead states that more than 50 organizations, led by tech-justice nonprofit Foxglove, are protesting Palantir’s involvement.

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Google and Unreliable Results: Like the Jack Benny One Liner, I Am Thinking, I Am Thinking

read a “real” news story called “Google Is Starting to Warn Users When It Doesn’t Have a Reliable Answer.”  (No, I will not ask, What’s reliable mean.)

Here’s the statement which snagged my attention in the write up:

“When anybody does a search on Google, we’re trying to show you the most relevant, reliable information we can,” said Danny Sullivan, a public liaison for Google Search. “But we get a lot of things that are entirely new,” Sullivan said the notice isn’t saying that what you’re seeing in search results is right or wrong — but that it’s a changing situation, and more information may come out later.\

I think Mr. Sullivan, a former search engine optimization guru and conference organizer, is the “new” Matt Cutts, a Google professional helping to point the way to the digital future at the US government. Is key word packing the path to more patents than China?

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Why Messrs Brin and Page Said Adios

Years ago I signed a document saying I could not reveal any information obtained, intuited, learned, or received by any means electrical or mechanical from an interesting company for which I did some trivial work. I have been a good person, and I will continue of that path in this short blog post based on open source info and my own cogitations.

Yes, the GOOG. I want to remind readers that in 2019, the dynamic duo, the creators of Backrub, and the beneficiaries of some possible inspiration from Yahoo, GoTo.com, and Overture stepped away from their mom and pop online advertising store. With lots of money and eternal fame in the pantheon of online superstars, this was a good decision. Based on my understanding of information in open sources, the two decades of unparalleled fun was drawing to a close. Thus, hasta la vista. From my point of view, these visionaries who understood the opportunities to sell ads rendered silly ideas like doing good toothless. Go for the gold because there was no meaningful regulation as long as their was blood lust for tchotchkes like blinking Google pins or mouse pads with the Google logo.

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Smart Software: Perhaps Objective Processes Are Inherently Biased?
Is prejudice innate or learned? Does language contain biases which are unnoticed by those who speak one? “The Efforts to Make Text-Based AI Less Racist and Terrible” answers these questions clearly. Smart software is going to generate remarkable distinctions.

The summary of the the projects which are laboring to deal with this built in behavior is interesting. The notion of amplification is fascinating as well. There are different types of “amplification” and none of them is immune to the magic of software ingesting human content and outputting — I hate to say it — outputs.

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Clear Signals of Deeper, Less Visible Flaws, Carelessness, and Corner Cuts

I read “State of the Windows: How Many Layers of UI Inconsistencies Are in Windows 10?” I found the listing of visual anomalies interesting. I don’t care much about Windows. We run a couple of applications and upgrade to new versions once the point releases and bugs have been identified and mostly driven into dark holes.

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