Stephen E. Arnold: Bing versus Google

IO Impotency
Stephen E. Arnold
Stephen E. Arnold

A Look at Bing vs Google

Over at Search Engine Watch, Mark Jackson reminds us that Google was not always top dog in the search field. His article, “Could Bing Ever Overtake Google in Search?” emphasizes that competition is a good thing. While this is true, could the SEO CEO have any other reasons to hope for the search giant’s wane? Vicious pandas and penguins, perhaps? After all, Jackson opens with an admission that he is angry at Google for ceasing to push keyword data into the public realm (where search engine gamers, er, optimizers can get to it) while continuing to supply that data to paid advertisers. The nerve!

Jackson does make some interesting points. He cites a recent Pubcon keynote address given by Google’s own Matt Cutts, which discusses some major developments for the leading search engine. Knowledge Graph, of course, will continue to play a role, as will voice search and “conversational” search. Jackson picks up on Cutt’s last item, “deep learning.”

He writes:

“Google is focused on deep learning and understanding what users want so searchers don’t have to use simple keyword phrases to search Google. Bing, on the other hand, has partnerships with every major social site and receives data directly from those sources. So, rather than trying to understand what users mean and predicting it, Bing actually knows what user want based on actual data from social sites.”

Continue reading “Stephen E. Arnold: Bing versus Google”

Owl: Madsen on Low-Tech No-Cost Avoidance of NSA Surveillance in Africa

IO Impotency
Who?  Who?
Who? Who?

Madsen: Low-Tech and Cheap Solutions to Getting Around NSA Surveiling in Africa

Madsen omits mention of it in this otherwise well-informed article, which provides a comprehensive summary/history of US signals intel activities in Africa, but at least in the past, Africans also communicated over long distances using coded drum beats. He is quite correct in saying NSA personnel live and work in Africa, as I have known a retired NSA officer who shared with me years ago stories of his adventures there over lunch a number of times. Nothing “secret” was shared, of course, he was very careful about that, but the fact he and other NSA agents spent so much time there was remarkable in itself.
“In fact, NSA personnel are found in so many exotic locations in Africa and elsewhere in the world, one NSA briefing slide released by Snowden, titled “Know your cover legend,” instructs NSA personnel on covert assignment abroad to “sanitize personal effects” and bars them from sending home any postcards or buying local souvenirs. In reality, the fastest means of communications in Africa remains the «jungle telegraph,» the word of mouth alerts that travel from town to town and village to village warning the local residents that there are Americans in their midst. It is the one means of communications NSA cannot automatically tap unless NSA’s agents overhear conversations and understand obscure African dialects. Somali insurgents have stymied NSA eavesdroppers by using coded smoke signals from networks of burning 55-gallon drums to warn of approaching U.S., Kenyan, Ethiopian, and other foreign troops.

Africa: The Forgotten Target of NSA Surveillance

4th Media: Israeli Babylon Network Dishonest to the Core — a Global Thief Shocks Even Google Evil Into Banning Them

Commerce, Corruption

4th media croppedGoogle Bans Israeli Babylon

Internet giant Yahoo! announced on November 10, 2013, that it won’t end its revenue sharing contract with Israeli Babylon, despite Google terminating its similar contract on November 30.

Google provided above 40% of Babylon’s revenues during the second quarter of 2013; Yahoo! provided over 30%, which amounts to almost $20 million.

Shiksa's Don't Count....
Shiksa's Don't Count….

Mystery Babylon – When Jerusalem Embraces The Antichrist

Babylon is the largest company in what is mockingly known as the Israeli Download Valley,* or in a more serious term the field of directing users. Israel has conquered several internet and information-technology niche markets. This is true to the extent that most American citizens are unwillingly sharing their secrets with the State of Israel.

I reviewed Babylon a few months ago in Microsoft Strikes Israeli Software after the American giant limited the activity of Babylon and similar companies on its browsers. Google decision was the result of pressure coming from users of its browser Chrome that correctly understood they were being robbed by Babylon.

“But, they are just nice kids translating stuff!”

On paper, Babylon looks like an inoffensive provider of online dictionaries. In the screenshot reproduced below, one can see the home page featured in many Bolivian internet kiosks. It is a Babylon search page, designed to look like a Google search page; note the odd code appearing in its address line (a long string of nonsense numbers and letters serving as directives to the company’s server, in contrast look at the address of this page), that’s the first sign something is wrong.

The second sign appears while using it; the computer reacts slowly since it is busy sending data to its Babylonian masters. This happens despite Bolivians being unable to spend money on the web; Bolivian money is not a free floating currency and thus it is banned by the international financial system. This search page is defined as a default in the user’s browser while installing Babylon’s dictionary.

Since the page looks like Google’s, few users realize that their home page has been replaced, or that they had clicked on a button asking for this change while installing the dictionary. “Same, same” they say to themselves and begin telling Babylon everything about themselves. The following week, they buy a book named “French Cooking;” a few days later—so that they won’t suspect the link between the events—they get a pamphlet advertising a French restaurant near their home. In thanks for the blunt violation of privacy, the Babylonian masters in Israel get a few silver coins.

Read full article with graphics and links.

SchwartzReport: Truths That Matter

Commercial Intelligence, Cultural Intelligence

I am supporter of Elizabeth Warren; she is one of the few people in the Congress, Bernie Sanders is another, who actually speaks truth to power in a rational way. I hope she is a harbinger of a new trend to end the vampire capitalism which dominates the American economy.

Elizabeth Warren’s Populist Insurgency Enters Next Phase
DAVID DAYEN, Contributing Writer – Salon

Here is the counter-movement to Warren's socially progressive policies. The Theocratic Right is toxic and dangerous, and very well funded. The following is an excerpt from Crucifying America: the unholy alliance between the Christian Right and Wall Street by CJ Werleman (Dangerous Little Books, 2013).

How the Unholy Alliance Between The Christian Right and Wall Street is ‘Crucifying America'
CJ WERLEMAN – AlterNet (U.S.)

Phi Beta Iota: The extreme left is stupider and less wealthy.  One bird, two wings, same shit.  It is time to reject the two-party tyranny and demand electoral reform.  Sadly, the smaller parties are if anything, less well endowed and just as challenged morally and intellectually.  The independents have not found their voice, in part because they have been subverted and mis-directed by various Bloomberg entities.

The American Gulag grows like tumor in the body of our society, and we are in nearly complete denial. Worse privatization is spreading in the incarceration industry and corporations are requiring 92 per cent occupancy. It is not that way in every country. In Sweden, for instance, things are going in the opposite, and healthier, direction. Why isn't this happening here?

Sweden Closes Four Prisons as Number of Inmates Plummets
RICHARD ORANGE – The Guardian (U.K.)

This is how powerful carbon energy is in this country, and how weird their greed gets, and the lengths to which they will go.

Texas Frackers Sue Victim of Their Water Pollution for $3 Million for Exposing Them
Daily Kos

Jon Rappoport: Why GMO Labeling Failed in Washington State

01 Agriculture, 03 Economy, 04 Education, 06 Family, 07 Health, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Commerce, Corruption, Government
Jon Rappoport
Jon Rappoport

Why GMO labeling really failed in Washington State: stop whining

by Jon Rappoport

November 12, 2013

www.nomorefakenews.com

Here's a question for you. During the campaign for prop 37 in California, and the campaign for Prop 522 in the state of Washington, the ballot measures to label GMO food, did you see political ads like this:

“Hello. My name is… I'm a researcher with a long track record. I study what's in your food. I know that Monsanto, the company that puts genes in your food and sells a toxic herbicide called Roundup, which is also in your food, wants Prop 522 to fail. They don't want you to know what's in your food. I'm willing to debate Monsanto anytime, anywhere. Their GMOs and their Roundup are toxic, unhealthy. Vote Yes on 522, so you don't have to eat Monsanto.”

No, you didn't see an ad like that.

So why did Prop 522 go down to defeat?

Continue reading “Jon Rappoport: Why GMO Labeling Failed in Washington State”

Chuck Spinney: Kurdistan Emergent

05 Iran, 08 Wild Cards, Cultural Intelligence, Peace Intelligence, Strategy
Chuck Spinney
Chuck Spinney

The below Reuters report describes one of the emerging regional complexities being unleashed by the Syrian civil war.  At issue is Syria's Kurdish Question — yet another legacy of the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire that continues to haunt the Middle East and the world after almost 100 years.  President Wilson's reckless promises of nationhood to all minorities in his 14 Points were not fulfilled by the machinations and back room deals of the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919.  Today the Kurds, with a population of about 25 million, are the world's largest ethnic group without a state.  But this population sits astride the modern borders Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, as the map below shows.  And so, the Kurdish Question is grounded in the tectonic fault lines of (1) Turkish-Arab-Persian-Kurdish cultures, (2) the shared Fertile Crescent water resources of the Tigris/Euphrates watershed, (3) the larger Sunni-Shia religious schism (most Kurds are Sunni, but some Kurds in Iran are Shia), (4) the wealth and poverty of the northern tier of the Persian Gulf oil basin, and (5) the toxic legacy of Western colonialism (including the Israeli poison pill inserted into the region by an opportunistic then guilt ridden West).  In recent years, most of the world's attention has been focused on the Kurdish subquestions in Turkey and Iraq, and to a lesser extent in Iran (don't forget the US sellout of the Iraqi Kurds with the help of the Shah of Iran, who had his own Kurdish problem), while Syria's Kurds have been the most forgotten of these minority questions — but as the attached report shows, the Syrian civil war has unleashed a new dimension to active Kurdish separatism that greatly complicates an already complicated regional situation.

Click on Image to Enlarge
Click on Image to Enlarge

Syrian Kurds' military gains stir unease

BY ERIKA SOLOMON AND ISABEL COLES

BEIRUT/ARBIL Mon Nov 11, 2013

(Reuters) – With a string of military gains across northeastern Syria, a Kurdish militia is solidifying a geographic and political presence in the war-torn country, posing a dilemma for regional powers.

Long oppressed under Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his father before him, Kurds view the civil war as an opportunity to gain the kind of autonomy enjoyed by their ethnic kin in neighboring Iraq.

But their offensive has stirred mixed feelings, globally, regionally and locally, even among some fellow Kurds, who say the Kurdish fighters have drifted into a regional axis supporting Assad, something they deny.

Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Kurdistan Emergent”

Steven Aftergood: Secrecy News Combined Federal Campaign Number is 11539 — Support Secrecy News If You Can

Ethics
Steven Aftergood
Steven Aftergood

SUPPORT SECRECY NEWS, IF YOU CAN

We hope that all Secrecy News readers will give generously to charitable causes that help relieve those who are in distress, near and far.

But if you have something left over and you find our work interesting or useful for your own purposes, then we hope you may also contribute to Secrecy News and the FAS Project on Government Secrecy.

If your situation permits, please consider making a tax deductible contribution to the Federation of American Scientists to support Secrecy News.  (Thanks to those who have already done so!)

Donations can be made online (specify that your donation should be directed to “government secrecy”).  If contributing via Paypal or CFC (account number 11539), send us a separate email to let us know you want your contribution allocated to the FAS Project on Government Secrecy.  Checks payable to FAS may also be mailed to:

Secrecy News
Federation of American Scientists
1725 DeSales Street N.W.
6th Floor
Washington D.C. 20036

Phi Beta Iota: Across the years, there have been a small handful of individuals and very small organizations that have consistently demonstrated deep integrity and an abiding commitment to the public interest.  Steven Aftergood and Secrecy News are among them.  Our own contribution to CFC will be split between Special Operations and Secrecy News.  We urge one and all to consider earmarking a portion of the their annual CFC contribution to Secrecy News, account 11539.

noble gold