Posts Tagged ‘Google’

Foundation and Google Earth

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future.

The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine “goes beyond search” by “looking at the ‘invisible links’ between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events.”

The idea is to figure out for each incident who was involved, where it happened and when it might go down. Recorded Future then plots that chatter, showing online “momentum” for any given event.

“The cool thing is, you can actually predict the curve, in many cases,” says company CEO Christopher Ahlberg, a former Swedish Army Ranger with a PhD in computer science.

Which naturally makes the 16-person Cambridge, Massachusetts, firm attractive to Google Ventures, the search giant’s investment division, and to In-Q-Tel, which handles similar duties for the CIA and the wider intelligence community.

So, the banally evil bedfellows at Google and the CIA are into playing Hari Seldon now, which would be hilarious were it not so obscenely obnoxious.  Meanwhile, Julian Assange has dropped a 1.4 gig file of what may or may not be highly volatile dirt to WikiLeaks’ Afghanistan page, to be decrypted in the event of his capture, and some scumfuck congressfiend has called (may it not be returned) for Bradley Manning‘s head on a plate.

Mad props to Assange and Manning, unripe raspberries to yinz  psychohistorians and cuídate.

Upadate, 8-7-2010

“If I look at enough of your messaging and your location, and use Artificial Intelligence,” Schmidt said, “we can predict where you are going to go.”

“Show us 14 photos of yourself and we can identify who you are. You think you don’t have 14 photos of yourself on the internet? You’ve got Facebook photos! People will find it’s very useful to have devices that remember what you want to do, because you forgot…But society isn’t ready for questions that will be raised as result of user-generated content.”

In addition to predicting personal behavior, diseases and other crises will become predictable as well, Schmidt said.

On the misuse of information for criminal or anti-social purposes:

“The only way to manage this is true transparency and no anonymity. In a world of asynchronous threats, it is too dangerous for there not to be some way to identify you. We need a [verified] name service for people. Governments will demand it.”

“Google CEO Schmidt: ‘People Aren’t Ready for the Technology Revolution’” by Marshall Kirkpatrick, ReadWriteWeb 8-4-10

That wretched demiurge the Gangster Computer God has again redefined obnoxiousness: Facebook and Google are going to war getting all Republican and Democrat, with Google dropping some kind of social networking shit called Google Me.

Unfuck you.

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Unsettled

Friday, February 19th, 2010

At yesterday’s Google Book Settlement Fairness Hearing, 26 folks took the stand before Judge Chin – 21 said, “No fair!”, 5 said, “All’s fair in love, war and the transparent society.”  Those 5 were Howard U Law School’s Lateef Mtima, Sony’s Janet Cullum, National Federation of the Blind’s Marc Maurer, U of Michigan librarian Paul Courant and Center for Democracy and Technology’s John Morris (who has, like, some minor concerns, but still supports the settlement).  Predictably, the harshest criticism came not from Microsoft’s or Amazon’s representatives (guess this means no Googlezon, yeah?) but from EPIC‘ s.

Cindy Cohn, of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, represented 28 authors and publishers concerned with privacy issues. “The court is asked to approve a library/bookstore combination that has unlimited ability to track readers.” She said that the plaintiff’s supplemental brief says they agree with Cohn’s position, but offers no specifics on what the parties would do. Chin asked for clarification, pointing to the example of when he orders a book via Amazon, saying that he gets a message that says, “if you like this book, try this one.”  “Should I get concerned?” he asked.

Cohn said the ability “to track what you read is granular and continual.” Chin asked if it was fixable; Cohn responded that Google should be required to have a court order to turn over personal information to law enforcement officials. “This is a fight libraries and bookstores have fought,” she said. Later, she suggested Google should mitigate privacy concerns by deleting user data after 30 days.

***

Marc Rotenberg, of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, offered a more critical take on privacy than previous speakers. “I disagree that the problem can be cured.”

The settlement parties have untethered the privacy obligations that public libraries are subject to, he said. “There is simply no precedent for tracking people in this fashion,” he argued, citing processes like user authentication and watermarking.

Chin asked why it couldn’t be fixed. “It must be in the design of the technology,” Rotenberg said.

“Objectors Outnumber Supporters in First Half of Google Settlement Fairness Hearing” by Norman Oder, Library Journal 2-18-10

Judge Chin said he’ll make a decision when he makes a decision.  More at ResourceShelf.

Also left in legal limbo yesterday was local violist Jordan Miles.

A hearing for a Homewood teen who claims three Pittsburgh police officers beat him during his arrest last month was postponed for a second time Thursday while the FBI and the city investigate the officers’ actions.

Attorney Kerry Lewis, who argued against the delay, said his client Jordan Miles is entitled to a timely hearing and asked District Judge Oscar Petite Jr. to dismiss his charges.

Mr. Miles, 18, is due in court March 4. He was charged with aggravated assault and resisting arrest in a Jan. 12 incident in which police said he was “sneaking around” a house on Tioga Street in Homewood with a heavy object in his coat that they thought was a gun.

Mr. Miles criminal complaint says he ran from plainclothes officers Richard Ewing, Michael Saldutte and David Sisak when they ordered him to stop and assaulted two of them. Police said object in his coat turned out to be a bottle of Mountain Dew, which Mr. Lewis denied Thursday.

“Hearing on hold for teen who claims he was beaten” by Sadie Gurman, P-G 2-19-10
Whose criminal complaint?  Mr. Miles’, perhaps?  No police but punctuation police!
Have fun and – hang on, I’m getting a beep.

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Ursula Le Guin vs. Google

Monday, January 25th, 2010

Now that Google has declared war on China, can it take on a diminutive 80-year-old science-fiction and fantasy author? Probably, but Ursula K. Le Guin is not going down without a fight. It all started when the formidable author of the classic Earthsea novels and, most recently, the Virgil-inspired Lavinia, resigned her long membership in the Authors Guild over the group’s support of the Google settlement on copyrighted material; that letter here. Le Guin is also trying to enlist as many writers as she can to oppose what she calls the Google Putsch.

“Will The Google Settlement Leave Ursula Le Guin Dispossessed?” by Scott Timberg, io9 1-25-09

The Google Putsch!

May it fail like its namesake.

From the 18th, Here’s Le Guin and Margaret Killjoy.

The whole thing’s inspiring and worth a view (Le Guin reads from The Dispossessed and Always Coming Home, Killjoy presents re: anarchist fiction, they both answer questions) but at around 57 min., Le Guin pitches her petition and talks copyright briefly.

Can’t say I’m surprised by any of it – Google’s been one of the most wretched boils on the arse of the infoscape for, what, over eleven years now?  Anyhow, for whatever good it all does, the Laboratorium remains on top of it.

Unfuck Google, have fun and cuídate.

UPDATE, 2-5-10

Odd couple?  Webster Tarpley schools this RT talking head (though props, once again, to RT for even going there in the first place) on Spookle’s sordid origins,

and Steve Watson sums the situation up nicely at Prison Planet.  We’ll see how the book settlement shit shakes out on the 18th.

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William Connolley Through the Climategate

Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009

Connolley has supposedly been defrocked as a Wikipedia administrator. Or so Wikipedia claimed in its feeble, there’s-really-not-much-we-can-do response to anxious questions from one of Watts Up With That’s readers.

In September 2009, the Wikipedia Arbitration Committee revoked Mr. Connolley’s administrator status after finding that he misused his administrative privileges while involved in a dispute unrelated to climate warming.

If this is true, it doesn’t seem to have made much difference to his creative input on the Wikipedia’s entries. Here he is – unless its just someone with an identical name – busily sticking his oar in to entries on the Medieval Warm Period (again) and the deeply compromised, soon-to-be-leaving (let’s hope) IPCC head Dr Rajendra Pachauri. And here he is again just three days ago, removing a mention of Climategate from Michael Mann’s entry. And here is an example of one of his Wikipedia chums – name of Stephan Schulz – helping to cover up for him by ensuring that no mention of that embarrassing Lawrence Solomon article appears on Connolley’s Wikipedia entry. And here he is deleting criticism of himself.

“Climategate: the corruption of Wikipedia” by James Delingpole, Telegraph 12-22-09

I live in Coton. I work for CSR making teeny tiny radios. I have a blog, a twitter feed and a facebook page. In a former life I was a climate modeller at BAS; even further back I was a mathematician at SEH. My username is my real name.

/For me; + -

FROM that law of nature by which we are obliged to transfer to another such rights as, being retained, hinder the peace of mankind, there followeth a third; which is this: that men perform their covenants made; without which covenants are in vain, and but empty words; and the right of all men to all things remaining, we are still in the condition of war. And in this law of nature consisteth the fountain and original of justice. For where no covenant hath preceded, there hath no right been transferred, and every man has right to everything and consequently, no action can be unjust. But when a covenant is made, then to break it is unjust and the definition of injustice is no other than the not performance of covenant. And whatsoever is not unjust is just Leviathan, chapter XV

User: William M. Connolley, Wikipedia

Chapter 15, yo.

Whatevs, compared to Google and Facebook, Wikipedia ain’t so bad.  It’s a crapshoot, but it’s still useful for relatively controversy-poor subjects, long as you don’t trust it farther than you can click away from it.

Have fun and cuídate.

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Searchable Riches, Virtual Worlds

Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008

Yesterday, my pal Josh told me about Jonathan Lee Riches and the wonderful lawsuits he’s brought against people, organizations, stuff, and ideas.  Justia’s archive delivers Riches’ gems in abundance, including this one filed on 11/24/07.

Plaintiff charges that defendant Theodore John Kaczynski is trying to unabomb his life because plaintiff won’t return his manuscript that he received from the Washington Post. Plaintiff also alleges that defendant is rounding up all the Teds in the world to hurt him, including Ted Kennedy, Ted Bundy, Ted Turner, Bill and Ted, Ted Nugent, Teddy Bears, and Teddy Rumpskin.

link

Here’s Riches’ latest motion, filed on 11/3/08 against Blizzard Entertainment.

World of Warcraft caused Riches mind to live in a virtual universe, where Riches explored the landscape committing Identity theft and fighting cybermonster rival hackergangs.  Riches was addicted to video games and lost touch with Reality because of defendants.  This caused Riches to commit fraud to buy defendants video games.  Riches chose World of Warcraft over working a legit job.  Riches mind became a living video game.  I hold defendants liable and support Plaintiffs.  I move for Amicus Cuaie, I can provide this court with my medical charts, credit and receipts of buying their video games with fraud.  I have newly discovered evidence.  I pray this court will grant Intervenors motions for relief.

link

With that, I’m off to the Building Virtual Worlds Show at CMU, amped to see the next generation’s developers in action right out of the ivory gate.

Despite CMU’s well-known ties to Google, DARPA, Koopa, Count Dracula, and so forth, I promise not to sue the venerable institution for mind rape… at least, not until after I’ve eaten dinner.

UPDATE, 9:43 pm

BVW kicked off with a slew of uninspired, dialogue-free short films accompanied by grating electropop, followed by a primer on the Entertainment Technology Center and how important and awesome it is.  Conceived by Last Lecturer Randy Pausch, the ETC’s mission statement does make it sound cool.

We do not intend to take artists and turn them into engineers, or vice-versa.  While some students will be able to achieve mastery in both areas, it is not our intention to have our students master “the other side.”  Instead, we intend for a typical student in this program to enter with mastery/training in a specific area and spend his or her two years at Carnegie Mellon learning the vocabulary, values, and working patterns of the other culture.

link

In the main, I was underwhelmed by the BVW students’ projects, though, to be fair, they had only two weeks to put them together, and there were numerous crashes and hardware issues unrelated to the conceptual/creative aspects of the projects.  One dingus which could be developed interestingly, but which worked wonkily at the show, was the shadow-sensitive PlayMotion.  Here’s a video of PlayMotion actually working like its supposed to.

The piece that came off best for me (which had folks interacting with rendered stuff but which wisely relied on timing instead of on the uncooperative PlayMotion) was based on a Chinese myth about a princess who destroys her kingdom’s “guardian drum” so that an invading army, led by her beloved prince, can attack without warning.  Anyhow, dropped in the midst of the cutesy stuff, like Kirby in Candyland and the Nacho Brothers’ Vacation Machine and this thing about a grumpy cloud you sing to to cheer it up, was an ultra-brief mention of a mysterious project commissioned by Lockheed Martin, with whom CMU and the ETC are under a non-disclosure agreement, called “Omega.”

No joke.

The student biography of Devdatta Nerurkar, who’s working on it, yields very little in the way of information regarding what the heck it is.

The Omega project is comprised of a group of 4 individuals of various backgrounds and disciplines. Working with Lockheed Martin, the team will be experimenting with various guest experiences, identifying some of the most cutting edge technologies, while developing new interactive programs according to our client’s specifications.

link

I suspect Omega is software for killer/vendor drones to distinguish targets from potential customers using advanced shadow-recognition algorithms.  Once, some sunny day, all humanoid bioforms in a given battlefield/market have been indexed according to shadow type, geoengineering goo could be sprayed causing grumpy clouds to coalesce, scrambling the shadow analysis of enemy/competitor dronecraft.

Time to build some virtual worlds in my dreams.

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