Beyond Search

Google and Personnel Management: New Taco Truck Operators Available

2026-05-31T15:13:10Z

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

I located another great example of the failure of modern hiring practices. The source of this information is the Alphabet Workers Union. I admit that it is a biased source. Those who work at Google are, by definition, the world’s smartest and most capable humans on planet earth. These humans create the must-have services that beg for personally identifiable information and do their level best to extract essential signals from clicks on their assorted online properties.

I read “We Are a Fighting Union.” I am not sure if the information in the Web page that displays is a call to action, a bunch of misfits complaining about work, or a disinformation operation powered by a Gemini agentic bot chain. Frankly I don’t care. What interests me is that the existence of “We Are a Fighting Union” provides a glimpse of the consequence of what might be called “flawed human resource intake, vetting, and training programs.” In a nutshell, the Web page illustrates the real or attributed behaviors of Google leadership. (Of course, I know the company is Alphabet, but, hey, I coined the word Googzilla for my monograph published by the now-defunct Infonortics Ltd. in the UK. Therefore, I stick with “Google” as an umbrella term and use “Googzilla” to signal brilliant actions taken by the company’s leadership.

I assume Google personnel has larger images of these individuals. I assume Google’s Lens technology or a variant can identify each individual as well. This snap from the AWU Web site suggests some Googlers are not happy campers:

What is the “problem” the union wishes to address. It is not working conditions. The offices, if one actually shows up, are comfy and provide some essentials like bean bag chairs, approved beverages, and some okayed snacks. Based on my scanning of the “We Are a Fighting Union,” the problem seems to be Google’s management failings. If Google were doing a good job, there would be no need to create a union. The AWU says:

Our union strives to protect Alphabet workers, our users, and our world.

The union in my opinion is unlikely to prevail. The typical Silicon Valley type of company is a caste system or a Great Chain of Being. The idea is that “leadership” is at the top of the hierarchy. Next in line are the smartest and most endorsed technical employees. Below the second tier are serf; that is, people who do work. The set up is efficient when viewed in terms of revenue, performance metrics, or other outputs deemed important to leadership. Thus, it is possible for some serfs to move up in the hierarchy. Certain “groups” of serfs have more difficulty moving up than others. Lawyers not skilled in technology face headwinds and may work from a trailer in a parking lot about a mile from Carpetland on Shoreline Drive. Others like a 17 year old whiz can go aloft carried by a hot air balloon of a technical breakthrough that produced a “big win” in the eyes of leadership.

The unionizers face a reality: Google wants compliant serfs. Dr. Timnit Gebru is the poster child for how Google responds to nails that stick up. The “no tech for apartheid” crowd found themselves free to operate a taco lunch wagon in Redwood City. And there are other examples.

The “We Are a Fighting Union” information says it wants:

Job protection
Fair pay for serfs
Flexible work conditions
Privacy protection
Racial and economic justice.

Okay, this is a great list for a discussion group in a high school sociology class. The five items are simply not part of the modern Silicon Valley-type company operating modality. Here’s what’s expected of serfs and what the Boards of Directors want to happen:

Screw up or are deemed not essential, a person will be terminated. The Meta email firings provide a good example of the modern management methods for personnel procedures
Pay is based on the tier and an “employee’s big wins.” No wins? You are out.
Work must be done within the “time” defined by leadership. This means a standard work day plus whatever additional hours are required and continuously over a seven day work week. Work, not the serf’s needs, comes first. Fail and the serf is pushed out.
Privacy does not exist. The idea is 24×7 surveillance with analytics identifying the non compliant.
Justice. Give me a break. Leadership defines the rules. Keep up and follow them or you will be in a taco truck in San Carlos.

Is this a good way to run a company? It depends on one’s point of view. From the leadership level, the answer is, “Absolutely.” From the mid-level, on the way up perspective, it’s not great, but it’s going to make me rich and I get nifty opportunities. From the serf level, it sucks. But throughout history, serfs have not been happy. Suck it up or quit strike me as the options.

Trust me. The creation of a union in a Silicon Valley type company is unlikely to result in the outcome the organizers and members expect.

Remember. Money and power in Silicon Valley type companies foster the emergence of Dark Age management methods.

Stephen E Arnold, June 5, 2026

Is the Oura Ring Thing a Handy Dandy Data Sucker Upper?

2026-05-29T17:50:10Z

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

I read a zero-slop article titled “Oura Says It Gets Government Demands for User Data. Will It Share How Many?” The Oura is a fitness device that gathers data about its wearer. The idea is that wearing a smart ring is better than wearing a big, clunky watch, toting a super sized mobile phone, or just being a person of interest with a black SUV following along as you go from home to Starbuck’s to your workplace in Managua.

The article includes some interesting factoids; for example:

In 2026, “… health wearable maker Oura became embroiled in a social media shitstorm after inking a deal with the Department of Defense and Palantir.”
…”many (if not most) companies design their systems to allow their staff to access user data, perhaps for troubleshooting customer issues or because it was the easiest and cheapest setup for a once cash-strapped startup.”
… “Oura data is not end-to-end encrypted.”
“Oura has sold over 5.5 million rings to date” …

But the most intriguing comment in the article, in my opinion, is this passage:

A spokesperson told me at the time [September 2025] that while Oura does not publish a transparency report, the company said it was “actively evaluating how to share aggregate data in a way that maintains security and does not introduce risk to our members.” It’s been eight months, dear reader. I recently reached out to Oura again to see if it would release a transparency report, and after several follow-up emails, the once-responsive Oura has not yet replied to any of my inquiries, or committed to releasing the numbers.

The pattern of taking an inquiry and offering a vague comment and then going radio silence is not unusual when [a] a firm is working with certain government entities, [b] lacks the PR savvy to spin a response that does not create more problems for a company, or [c] has something it does not want to be known by its 5.5 million customers, investigative journalists, or its staff.

Which is it? I have no clue. But like South Korea, each step in data acquisition seems to lead to an us versus them. The “us” are the organizations and professionals working for or in government entities. The “them” is any individual or group that allows paranoia or a threat to a mission to exist.

The longest journey begins with a single data broker. Where does it end? Ponder that.

Stephen E Arnold, June 5, 2026

One AI Bottleneck Workaround: From the WEF No Less

2026-05-31T17:46:08Z

The World Economic Forum discusses the barriers AI is finding when it comes to development: “AI Is Hitting A Wall. Here’s How We Rethink The Hardware To Break It.” When AI models grow larger that more time and energy needs to be spent moving data between memory and processors. It’s called “memory wall” and language-processing model grew 5,000 fold in size over four years.

Memory wall is a problem because large scale AI systems are increasing. This drives up costs and infrastructures. A second reason is that many valuable AI uses rely on fast decisions made locally instead of the cloud. Medical devices, autonomous vehicles, rescue drones, and more can’t rely on sharing information with data centers and waiting on responses. They need hardware that makes the AI more practical.

There are ways to overcome the AI memory wall bottleneck:

“…there are three main ways to ease this bottleneck: move computation closer to the data, draw on the brain’s event-driven information-processing method and use lower-precision or stochastic computing where exact arithmetic is unnecessary. Together, these approaches could support a new generation of AI hardware that is faster, more efficient and better suited to large-scale infrastructure and edge applications.”

These three options are the most powerful when they’re part of a single design solution. AI hardware that is designed in the future can’t rely on a single chip then fitting the algorithms on it as an afterthought. They need to be considered as part of the architecture during the design phase. Here’s what should be done:

“That is why hardware-algorithm co-design is becoming so important. Some workloads may benefit most from compute-in-memory; others may benefit from spiking networks and event-based sensing; and still others may rely on mixed-precision or stochastic methods. In many cases, the best solution may combine these approaches on the same platform. The larger implication is that the future of AI depends as much on hardware design as on model design. More efficient AI hardware could help contain the growing resource demands of large-scale systems while improving the safety and reliability of devices in the field.”

Interesting. But what if there is something other than the Google Transformer-centric method? The WEF will pivot, of course.

Whitney Grace, June 5, 2026

Microsoft May View AI As a Super App

2026-05-31T12:46:52Z

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

One of the simplest tricks in debate has a bunch of names. Game players like to say “pop up a level” or just “level up, dude.” Those with exposure to the rigors of traditional indexing say, “Just put it in a different cluster.” Silicon Valley types infused with the zeitgeist of incomprehensibility offer, “Do the meta play.” A rose by any other name still smells like an old age home on Sunday morning.

A great thinker wonders if a rose is actually a cat. Perhaps he can sell this concept and make lots of money? Thanks, MidJourney. Good enough.

The concept is that one has a thing and one wants to make that thing appear more profound, new, zippier, or imbued with qualities a person unfamiliar with “level upping” does not understand, see, or comprehend.

I want to point to an example described in “Exclusive: Microsoft Is Building a Super App That Combines Coding, Chat, and Other Copilot AI Tools.” (I like the exclusive part because by my count there are about a dozen outfits building super apps; however, as a dinobaby, I am generous. I think the “exclusive” is that no other big time real business news outfit has ever reported on Microsoft doing the clustering play or the “pop up a level, dude” tactic.)

Be that as it may, the “exclusive” write up reports:

The software giant is working on a one-stop shop that would connect its GitHub Copilot coding assistant, Copilot chat function, Copilot Cowork tool, and a new agentic workflow capability internally named Autopilot into a single app, according to two sources familiar with the project, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a platform that hasn’t yet been released.

Yep, a meta-app that will deliver a “cohesive product.” Isn’t this an admission that after three years of AI innovation, users of Microsoft software, hardware, and services are generally confused about what Copilot does what and how. The effort to data has caused a number of Microsoft users to want a way to turn off AI everything in Microsoft “experiences.” Some third parties have been paid big bucks to make the Copilot thing more obedient. But for most users, AI has begun to morph from “gee, this is cool” to “gee, this is a bit of a problem.”

The write up continues:

There may also be a toggle function for a user to go back and forth between their personal and enterprise 365 Copilots. A user will still be able to access their Copilots outside of the super app.

If this statement is indeed true, doesn’t this suggest that Microsoft is just foolin’? There will be many Copilots, not a single super app like the ones available from a Chinese outfit or from the alleged criminal Pavel Durov of Telegram and VKontakte fame. I won’t mention the others because then I will be revealing some of my upcoming lecture for the cyber fraud folks in Virginia in a few weeks. Some of my information, in my dinobabyish opinion, is indeed “exclusive.”

How lost in AI weirdness is Microsoft? May I suggest that this statement from the Fortune article helps answer the question? Here you go:

Microsoft in the past year has undergone one of the largest corporate reshuffles in its history that has included a string of high-profile departures and reorgs throughout its businesses. In April, it announced its first-ever employee buyout offer, aimed at its most long-tenured employees. At next week’s Build conference, Microsoft AI Chief Executive Mustafa Suleyman is expected to unveil new proprietary AI models. Suleyman, who once led consumer Copilot, has focused on models since the restructuring in March.

This is not recalibration in my view. This is scrambling and then trying to figure out how to put the eggs back in their shells.

Can Microsoft level up? Will the company survive the other super app developers? Will there be a reframing of the Microsoft AI strategy that includes security, defense against open source options, and the predatory instincts of Googzilla-type organizations in the US and from — yes, it is really true — other countries?

Confident in your answer? Hit those prediction markets.

Stephen E Arnold, June 4, 2026

eTools: Privacy and a New Swiss Search Service

2026-05-29T17:49:33Z

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

In one of my feeds, I spotted a link to a service more than 15 years old as I recall. I think the operator is Comcepta. The firm’s Web site explains enterprise metasearch.

There is a mobile, consumer facing version of the system. eTools.ch pops up an interesting message:

I know this is difficult to read. Here’s the text:

On this website we use cookies and similar functions to process end device information and personal data (e.g. such as IP-addresses or browser information). The processing is used for purposes such as to integrate content, external services and elements from third parties, statistical analysis/measurement, personalized advertising and the integration of social media. Depending on the function, data is passed on to up to 304 third parties and processed by them. This consent is voluntary, not required for the use of our website and can be revoked at any time using the icon on the bottom left.

I captured the names of the third party outfits this Swiss outfit works with. A person using this system on a mobile device will have some information shared with lots of companies. Here’s a snip from the master list of 304. I pulled the vendors from “G” to “L.” How many do you recognize? Also, in the screenshot of the cookie control panel, please, notice there is no option to disable “all” of these third party services.

GeoEdge
GfK GmbH
Glomex GmbH
Google Ads
Google Advertising Products
Google Analytics
Google General
Google Recaptcha
Grabit Interactive Media Inc. dba KERV Interactive
GumGum Australia, Inc.
GumGum, Inc.
Happydemics
Hearts and Science München GmbH
Human
Hybrid Adtech GmbH
ID5 Technology Ltd.
Impactify SARL
Improve Digital
Index Exchange Inc.
INFOnline GmbH
Innovid LLC
InMobi Technology Services Pte. Ltd.
Inskin Media LTD
Intercept Interactive Inc. dba Undertone
Invibes Group
IPONWEB GmbH
jsdelivr.com
Kairos Fire
Knorex
Krush Media LLC
Kupona GmbH
Kwanko
LIFT DSP LIMITED
LinkedIn
LinkedIn Ireland Unlimited Company
LiveIntent Inc.
LiveRamp
LoopMe Limited

I did not run any queries on the mobile service because I did not have one of my special devices with me. I am not sure how much storage these thrid party services consume. I am not sure I want to be “tracked.”

My recollection is that this eTools.ch service sends a user’s queries to open source indexes and some commercial services. Different deals are offered to gain access to a Web index outfit’s content. The results are retrieved and displayed to the user. The method is called “metasearch.” A similar service (originally developed by a finance type in New York City) is StartPage.com. (I am not sure who owns this service now.) Comcepta does provide some information about how its system works. I looked at the block diagram. The approach uses the same XML configuration file approach that Vivisimo did when it was in the search business.

The eTools.ch service emphasizes that it is “transparent.” I want to point out that the system has been around for more than a decade. What’s interesting is that Switzerland is one of the countries that harbors a number of private and privacy centric services. Banks come to mind as well as Proton’s services.

I want to point out that “privacy” in Switzerland does not pay much attention to what third party vendors do with information. The idea is that the vendor allegedly does not performl server-side profiling of users and doesn’t monetize query logs. What these third-party vendors do is not a problem for the regulators or the vendor.

The reason I posted this is to answer the question, “Where can I get a current list of third party vendors who might enter into a deal to help a Web site or service operator to generate some revenue?”

Here’s your answer: eTool.ch.

PS. I did not see “artificial intelligence” or “smart software” mentioned when I checked out the Web site.

Stephen E Arnold, June 4, 2026

Good Enough AI May Not Be Good Enough

2026-05-31T17:47:01Z

Rest Of World explains something that we all knew: “The Agentic Divide: Why “Good Enough” AI Isn’t Enough To Survive The New Economy.” What this means is that many AI chatbots are being released and some are better than others. That is to be expected, but no one expected there to be chatbot inequality and its economic consequences.

Chatbots are expected to take on monotonous tasks thus freeing up employees for other work. A problem, however, is that most chatbots still fail at basic facts and Big Tech companies are still launching agents to handle more complex tasks. Here is what will happen:

“As AI agents become more integrated into the economy, companies and entities that deploy them will benefit disproportionately compared to those that cannot, Nick Srnicek, a senior lecturer in digital economy at King’s College London, told Rest of World. ‘We will see new inequalities of access, scale, quality and trust: divides between those who have agents and those who don’t; those who have good agents and those who have bad agents; those who have many agents and those who have few agents; and those who can trust their agents and those who cannot,’ he said.”

China and Singapore apparently introduced frameworks to regulate AI to focus on accountability and safety. Chinese local governments are boasting single-employee companies that rely on AI chatbots. India is even embracing AI to cut costs and scale quicker.

Better chatbots are already advancing companies, saving them money, and advancing in the markets. Another problem is that if governments and companies rely on chatbots, they can be canceled at anytime without notice. There are also security concerns:

Matthew Sharp, a research affiliate at the Oxford Martin AI Governance Initiative [said]:

‘The same infrastructure can become a surveillance layer if the data flows, defaults, and oversight are wrong,” Sharp said. “The safeguards around consent, purpose limitation, auditability, and political independence would need to be real, not merely architectural.’”

My fear is that “good enough” is the new standard of excellence. A race to dumbing down. Outstanding.

Whitney Grace, June 4, 2026

Telegram AI: A Coocoon Sort of Emerging

2026-06-03T13:45:53Z

Telegram has continued to nudge its AI initiative forward. Unlike the infrastructure approach taken by US big AI tech outfits (BAITs in my lingo), Telegram has designs on a cheaper approach. The company wants to rent AI compute from data centers with unused cycles. Telegram Notes takes a look at the approach in a new article titled “The Telegram’s Cocoon AI: Not Yet Mature.” (“Mature” is a more sophisticated way of suggesting that the AI initiative is not yet aloft.) The company continues to make strategic and tactical shifts. Some of these are more dramatic that renting cycles; for example, dumping the TONcoin “name” for the original Telegram crypto called “GRAM.” Telegram is definitely an interesting organization.

Stephen E Arnold, June 3, 2026

Google AI: Speed Means Googlers Do Not Know What Is Happening to Users

2026-05-29T17:45:35Z

Another dinobaby post. No AI unless it is an image. This dinobaby is not Grandma Moses, just Grandpa Arnold.

I just read “Gemini User Hits 5-hour Usage Cap after a Single Prompt, Google Responds.” The article explains that the many changes to Google’s smart services are not understood by users or Googlers. Remarkably the article explains that no one knew AI usage limits would cause prompts to fail. Plus the write up includes a stunning quote from a Googler; to wit:

“Yikes, let us take a look!”

Okay, but it is clear from the story, that Googlers just released changes. No one took a “look.” Isn’t this interesting? Let me share some thoughts about why unintended consequences are rarely considered and why those involved in online products and services don’t bother to do what I would call “real work.”

Thanks, Midjourney. Good enough.

Don’t get me wrong. I understand the management problem. When I was in high school, I took classes at the University of Illinois. The lead professor (Dr. Shattuck, if I recall correctly) told us, “You are exceptional.” Who cared? We were living in a dorm, not a parent within miles. Then when I was talking with a smooth operator at the blue chip consulting firm, Ron Something said, “You are one in 10,000.” Both of these people were in the cow herd waste output business. I think the Google does the same thing. I had the thrill of being in a meeting at the Big Dog of Search when one senior manager said, “Here’s our GLAT.” I looked at the weird green document and replied, “It looks like the SAT. What is it?” The Googler laughed and said, “Some people who want to work here have to take the test because we’re Google.”

Yeah, right. In each of these cases, the people desperately want to convince themselves that they are gifted, the blessed ones, or psychologically off the norm. What happens in each of these “organizational constructs” that blend self-delusion with a task and those involved in the task is the following:

People do their think. These individuals know they are special. Therefore, just do it. One person with whom I worked at an outfit in Columbus, Ohio, loved the word “decider.” These people are deciders. What’s the result of an organization of deciders? Here are some characteristics:

Most people in the organization have no idea what the other person in the adjacent cube or chair is doing.
The rarely attentive middle managers whether in person or in some hippy dippy digital form like a Slack or a Zoom don’t know what questions to ask. Consequently, only a big win or a catastrophic screw up captures their attention. Most of the time, modern managers are clueless and “don’t have time” to be enriched by clues.
The leadership of the organization floats weirdly in a bubble which blocks most negative or unpleasant inputs. Thus, most “leadership” slips into or actively embraces the “I’m special” thought process. Rules and social norms are not that important.

The Google craziness is not localized in Google. It exists, to greater and lesser degrees, at the BAIT outfits (BAIT is my lingo for big AI tech). These firms want to make the rules for everyone else. Most of them operate as if they were sovereign powers. This explains the disdain Elon Musk seems to display to the French judiciary’s criminal charge against X.com/Grok and why Meta’s cooperation with UK authorities is not exactly a priority when one’s firm is struggling in the AI World Cup.

The result, if my analysis is accurate even if based on my personal experiences, are situations like the one described in the article. The same approach has manifested itself in Microsoft’s crawfishing on some of its AI initiatives. The key point I want to make is that these type of management methods are now the norm. Whether it is the hapless owner of a Dodge RAM truck or a person who buys no name ear buds from an Amazon-type vendor, the new management methods virtually guarantee problems for a client, customer, or user.

Whom can one blame? Sorry. There is no one. The failure to do the basics of a “good job” have been displaced by the idea that superior individuals exist, can make decisions in a vacuum or a small circle of contacts, or just don’t care due to incentives. I am not blaming anyone, not even the surprised Google AI wizard. Welcome to the datasphere circa 2026. I am glad I am old.

Stephen E Arnold, June 3, 2026

Surveillance Pricing Is Dynamic

2026-05-31T12:14:30Z

What an outstanding idea? Put an app on a customer’s mobile device. Allow the user to opt in for special offers and automatically allow tracking. Combine these cute ideas with digital shelf pricing and what do you get?

One answer is a Ph.D. making videos called “They Call It Dynamic Pricing. It’s Surveillance Pricing.” As a YouTube video that explains how something works in Corporate America. El is a good presenter. But she does point out that when people watch a price change in real time, some folks get edgy.

Brick and mortar retail is the definition of competition. Most US big-time retail outfits want to extract the most profit possible from their customers. One way they ramp up the competition and increase their bottom dollar using surveillance pricing-a form of dynamic pricing.

Dynamic pricing once meant cutting the cost of paying humanoids to put little printed stickers on shelves with dog food. No more. Just feed in the parameters and let the digital tags respond. What happens when the system in a Kroger-type store “recognizes” a humanoid known to buy premium products?

The prices change according to that “customer’s” personal data: browsing history, location, purchasing behavior, etc. That’s why you see digital price tags everywhere in stores these days. Automatgically retailers can change prices or let a smart algorithm do the boosting. Scripps News published “Maryland Becomes First State To Pass Bill Banning ‘Surveillance Pricing.’”

The Protection From Predatory Pricing Act was passed in Maryland in April 2026. Governor Wes Moore will sign the bill into law. Retailers who violate the law will be met with deceptive trade practices fines and lawsuits.

“ ‘Marylanders deserve to know that the price they see on the shelf is the price they will pay at the register,’ Moore said in January. ‘Our administration is laser-focused on protecting Marylanders from skyrocketing costs. At a time when Marylanders are already stretched by the rising cost of groceries, housing and everyday necessities, we must ensure that new technologies are not used to drive up the bill for working families.’”

It wouldn’t be a big deal if that meant people got lower prices based on their data, but we know that’s not what will happen. Prices will be jacked up and supply and demand are no longer part of modern economics. Maryland, I salute you. My hunch is that the big corporates will win and Maryland’s attempt to make one facet of modern life less dystopian will flame out.

Whitney Grace, June 3, 2026

AI: The Political Tool on Steroids

2026-05-31T15:22:10Z

Dictators and other authoritarian bad actors use whatever tools they can for propaganda. Propaganda is an extremely powerful way to shape people’s minds. It’s only gotten more powerful with the advent of social media and now AI algorithms. Vox reports that there are new and exciting ways the manipulate people with AI: “The Hidden Way Dictatorships are Shaping What AI Tells You.”

Here’s an alarming fact: more than a billion people turn to chatbots for advice and information, erotica, robot-plagiarism, and other stuff. ChatGPT has 900 million weekly users.

As more people use AI chatbots, they will be able to shape how people perceive information and society. They’re already changing how people perceive things. The biggest fear is how bad actors could use AI chatbots for propaganda:

“This has generated fears about chatbots’ potential to spread state propaganda. Such anxieties generally center on the prospect of major AI labs consciously designing their LLMs to favor pro-regime perspectives while suppressing dissident ones. And there is some basis for this worry: The Chinese AI company Deepseek programmed its model to evade discussion of the Tiananmen Square massacre and other topics inconvenient to the Chinese Communist Party.”

How are governments responding to AI? I shudder to think.

Whitney Grace, June 3, 2026