#software testing service provider

[informativebloggggg]

Why GKV Software Solutions Is (Actually) the Best Software Testing Service Provider

Let’s be honest. When you think of software testing services, the words “exciting,” “creative,” or “human” don’t immediately jump to mind. Most of us imagine bug reports, test cases, maybe a very tired QA team hunched over a keyboard, sipping cold coffee.

But what if we told you that somewhere between all the crash logs and Selenium scripts, there’s a company quietly making software safer, smarter, and smoother?

Meet GKV Software Solutions—a team that’s not just ticking boxes but redefining what great QA looks like. If you’ve ever wondered what separates “just okay” testing from “wow, everything just works,” this is your answer.

We Don’t Just Test Software—We Torture It (Lovingly)

GKV doesn’t believe in the “click it once and move on” philosophy. Nope.

We poke, prod, stress, and straight-up roast your software (in a good way). From functional testing that checks every button, to performance testing that asks, “What if 10,000 people tried this at once?”—We push your app to its limits so your users don’t have to.

Basically, we break it so your customers can’t.

And with QA testing services this rigorous, glitches, crashes, and embarrassing bug reports become relics of your past.

Tools? Oh, We Have Tools. Fancy Ones.

If you thought automated software testing just meant hitting “record” and walking away, GKV would like a word.

We use frameworks like Selenium, TestComplete, and other futuristic-sounding things that make testing faster, more accurate, and far less painful. The goal? Let machines do the grunt work while our human testers focus on the big picture.

So yes, robots are involved. But it’s still all heart under the hood.

our QA Team? Not Just Qualified—Certified Sorcerers

Okay, maybe not actual sorcerers. But the GKV QA team does have a magical ability to sniff out issues most devs wouldn’t even dream of.

We’ve tested software for industries ranging from healthcare to e-commerce, fintech to logistics, and we know what it means to get things right the first time.

We understand regulatory hoops. We speak fluent “developer.” And we know how to translate “this isn’t working” into “here’s exactly how to fix it.”

Client-Centric Isn’t Just a Buzzword

Lots of companies say We’re client-focused. GKV actually shows it.

Before diving into a single test case, we get to know your goals, your tech stack, your pain points, and (yes) your deadlines. We tailor our entire QA strategy to your needs, whether you’re launching a mobile app or scaling a complex enterprise platform.

With GKV, you’re not just hiring a software testing company—you’re getting a partner who’s invested in your success.

Continuous Improvement Is in Our DNA

Technology evolves fast. QA practices? Even faster. What worked six months ago might be laughably outdated today.

GKV doesn’t just keep up—We stay ahead. Our team actively tracks trends in QA automation, DevOps integration, shift-left testing, and all the fancy stuff we pretend to understand.

Translation: We’re always getting better, so you don’t have to worry about falling behind.

People Are Talking (And the Talk Is Good)

You know what’s better than us telling you GKV is amazing?

Real clients saying things like:

“We used to get bug reports weekly. Since switching to GKV, our QA cycles are clean, fast, and drama-free.”

Or:

“We didn’t just test our app—We understood it. That’s rare.”

When you’re shopping for the best software testing service provider, that kind of word-of-mouth is priceless. And yeah, GKV earns it.

One Size Doesn’t Fit All—and We Know That

Different industries have different demands. GKV’s been around long enough to know that what works for a banking app definitely doesn’t work for a mobile game.

So whether you’re in healthcare needing HIPAA-compliant systems tested, or launching an e-commerce site just in time for Black Friday, we’ve got QA strategies built for your world.

This is tailored testing, not templated nonsense.

We Take Security Seriously (Because You Should Too)

In a time where apps leak passwords faster than you can say “data breach,” security isn’t optional—it’s non-negotiable.

GKV’s got a whole playbook for security testing. We’ll find holes in your defenses, plug them fast, and make sure your product complies with global standards like GDPR and HIPAA.

Your users won’t know how secure your software is. But we will notice that nothing ever goes wrong. And that’s the point.

No Strings, Just Smart Models

Need a dedicated QA team? Great. Want a one-time automated testing sweep before launch? No problem.

GKV offers flexible engagement models that match your project’s size, timeline, and budget. You only pay for what you need, and you always know exactly what you’re getting.

No hidden costs. No vendor lock-in. Just quality testing when and how you want it.

So… Why Is GKV the Best Software Testing Service Provider?

Because we do the hard stuff better than anyone else, we’ve mastered the science of quality and wrapped it in a human-first approach. Our team genuinely cares, our methods are solid, and our results speak for themselves.

And in a world full of broken features, late bug reports, and “Oops, we missed that,” GKV’s QA team is the calm, capable force keeping your product flawless.

TL;DR — Here’s What You Get with GKV:

Bulletproof software testing services

A team that speaks tech and human

Access to cutting-edge tools for automated software testing

Tailored QA for your industry

Real support, real flexibility, real results

Whether you’re a startup gearing up for launch or an enterprise keeping millions of users happy, GKV Software Solutions is the QA partner you wish you’d hired sooner.

So go ahead. Break things. We’ve got your back.

Ready to ditch flaky bugs and flaky testers?

Visit gkvsoft.com and discover why more companies choose GKV as their go-to QA testing partner.

[hikeqa]

The Importance of Web and Mobile App Testing: Why You Need Quality Assurance Services

In today’s rapidly evolving tech landscape, the quality of your software or mobile app can make or break your business. Whether you're launching a new website, a mobile app, or an e-commerce platform, it's crucial to ensure that your product functions perfectly across various devices and platforms. This is where professional web testing services and mobile app QA testing come into play. Software testing service provider companies are essential in providing the expertise and tools needed to identify issues and enhance the user experience.

What Are Web and Mobile App Testing Services?

Web testing services and mobile app user testing are quality assurance processes aimed at evaluating the performance, functionality, and usability of websites and mobile applications. These services are designed to identify bugs, glitches, and other issues that could affect user experience. They ensure that software works efficiently across different platforms, browsers, and devices, helping to provide a seamless experience to end users.

Web testing focuses on the functionality, compatibility, and security of websites, while mobile app QA testing ensures that mobile applications are optimized for performance, usability, and overall quality. By investing in these services, companies can prevent costly mistakes, improve customer satisfaction, and boost their reputation in the market.

The Role of Software Testing Service Provider Companies

Software testing service provider companies are organizations that specialize in quality assurance. They offer end-to-end testing solutions for web and mobile applications, helping businesses detect and resolve issues before releasing their products to the market.

These companies employ a variety of testing methodologies, including manual testing, automation testing, functional testing, security testing, and performance testing. By leveraging these techniques, software testing service providers can help businesses deliver high-quality software that meets user expectations and adheres to industry standards.

With the increasing reliance on web-based services and mobile applications, the demand for these services has grown exponentially. Mobile app QA testing has become especially critical, given the complexity and variety of devices and operating systems that need to be tested.

Key Benefits of Mobile App QA Testing

Mobile app QA testing ensures that your app delivers a smooth, glitch-free experience on mobile devices. There are several reasons why mobile app QA testing is vital:

Enhanced User Experience: Mobile apps must perform seamlessly on various devices, operating systems, and screen sizes. QA testing ensures that apps are intuitive, responsive, and user-friendly.

Performance Optimization: Testing helps identify any performance issues, such as slow loading times, app crashes, or memory leaks, which could detract from the user experience.

Cross-Platform Compatibility: Mobile apps need to work well on both Android and iOS platforms, with different versions of the OS. QA testing helps ensure compatibility across all major mobile platforms.

Security: Mobile apps are vulnerable to cyber threats. QA testing includes security assessments to safeguard users' data and protect against potential breaches.

Bug-Free Release: Rigorous mobile app testing helps detect and fix bugs before they reach users, ensuring a smooth app launch.

The Importance of Website Testing Companies

Website testing companies focus on the functionality, security, and usability of websites. With the majority of businesses now relying on their online presence for growth, website testing is crucial for:

Compatibility: Websites need to be accessible on various browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.) and devices (desktops, tablets, smartphones). Testing ensures cross-browser and cross-device compatibility.

Performance: Slow-loading websites can frustrate users and lead to high bounce rates. Website testing helps identify performance bottlenecks and optimize load times.

User Experience: A website’s design and functionality must be intuitive and responsive. User testing can provide insights into how easy it is to navigate the site and make purchases or interact with content.

SEO: Testing ensures that websites are optimized for search engines, making them easier to find and improving their ranking on search engines.

Security: Website testing also includes evaluating potential security vulnerabilities to prevent attacks and protect user data.

Why Choose Professional Testing Services?

Hiring professional web and mobile app testing services offers several advantages over in-house testing:

Expertise: Software testing service provider companies employ experienced QA professionals who are well-versed in the latest testing tools and techniques.

Cost-Effectiveness: Outsourcing testing services can be more cost-effective than hiring an in-house team, especially for startups and small businesses.

Focus on Core Activities: By outsourcing testing, companies can focus on their core business activities, leaving the testing responsibilities to experts.

Comprehensive Testing: Professional testing services provide a wide range of testing services, ensuring that all aspects of your software or mobile app are thoroughly evaluated.

Faster Time-to-Market: With efficient testing processes in place, businesses can identify and resolve issues quickly, allowing them to release their product faster.

Conclusion

Web testing services and mobile app QA testing are integral to delivering a top-tier digital product. Software testing service provider companies offer the expertise and resources needed to identify potential issues early, ensuring that your website or mobile app is free from bugs and optimized for a seamless user experience. Whether you're building a new website or launching a mobile app, investing in quality assurance services is an essential step toward success. The right testing ensures that your users have the best experience possible, and it sets your business up for long-term success.

[muwangadesigner]

Efficient Web Application Management with Modular Designs

When designing with modularity in web application development the sole main focus is enhancing efficiency, scalability, and maintainability . This actually possible by breaking down an application into independent, reusable modules. In contrast to a monolithic approach, where all components are tightly coupled, modular architectural design structures the application into separate, self-contained units. In such case, you can modularize the account verification, product management, and payment processing.

This separation allows web developers to work on individual modules without disrupting the entire system, making updates, debugging, and feature additions more manageable. Just like by following Laravel’s modular principles using Service Providers, Repositories, and Packages, teams can develop cleaner, more structured codebases that are easier to scale and maintain.

Support Parallel Development and Flexibility

Modular architecture enables software development teams to build, test, and deploy individual features independently. If one module requires changes or optimizations, it can be modified without affecting the rest of the application, reducing downtime and improving development speed. So, the modular architecture is particularly beneficial for large-scale applications like an office furniture online system, where different teams may handle inventory, customer management, and order processing as separate modules. Try implementing modularization with Laravel, you'll achieve a robust, high-performing, and future-proof web application that efficiently adapts to growing demands.

[altdigitaltechnologies]

Testing

Delivering exceptional software requires a keen eye for quality. At Alt Digital Technologies, we don't just develop, we engineer trust through our comprehensive testing solutions. We focus on delivering top-notch quality assurance, the cornerstone of any successful software product. Our proficiency in automated testing, ensures your software’s seamless performance, saving valuable time and resources.

We also value the importance of manual testing in software testing. Our adept testers are thorough in their approach, ensuring no potential issue goes unnoticed. Equipped with a range of automated software testing tools, we offer a balanced testing solution that combines the speed of automation with the meticulousness of manual testing. Choose Alt Digital Technologies for a flawless software experience.

[apisolutionsn2nsystems]

APIs at N2N Systems – Mobile Recharge API, Hotel & Flight Booking API, Bulk Payout API & Money Transfer API

When it comes to an API, N2N Systems is one of the best platform where you can get the best API services with an ease. Our team is capable to offer our clients the best version of any API whether it is mobile recharge API, hotel and flight booking API, money transfer API or even bulk payout API. N2N Systems is outstanding at offering these services to their clients. API stands for Application Programming Interface and its aim is to provide a wide range of services or functionalities in a single or unified interface. These kinds of API are specifically designed to simplify the development by simply offering a great comprehensive set of features via single integration point.

Mobile Recharge API

When it comes to mobile recharge API, our team is capable to integrate mobile phone recharge and top-up services into our applications, systems and websites as well. Our team at N2N Systems offers these APIs that helps users to easily recharge their prepaid mobile balances and also pay their postpaid mobile bills directly from within the application or websites. Our API services have some great features that attract several customers

[ite-noida3]

Advanced Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) services have transformed the way metals and welds are inspected and evaluated for quality assurance. These services have revolutionized the processes, guaranteeing the safety and structural integrity of vital components without inflicting any harm or damage.

[kanikaqa]

Consistency Across Platforms: A Deep Dive into Cross-Browser Testing Techniques

Explore the importance of cross-browser testing in web development and ensure a seamless user experience across various browsers. Learn strategies for consistency in different web environments, ensuring your website performs flawlessly for all users. Dive into tips, tools, and best practices to conquer the challenges of cross-browser compatibility and deliver a superior web experience.

[webatlas]

Being a top Quality Assurance Software Testing Service provider company, Webatlas offers top-notch software testing and QA services for creative and high-quality product development solutions. We boast a team of professional QA engineers who are passionate about perfection. Their expertise transits diverse industries, allowing us to offer tailored QA solutions for applications ranging from e-commerce platforms to healthcare systems and everything in between. Let's make your product grow in the digital market. Contact us today to embark on your journey to flawless software.

[nasa]

Athletes Go for the Gold with NASA Spinoffs

NASA technology tends to find its way into the sporting world more often than you’d expect. Fitness is important to the space program because astronauts must undergo the extreme g-forces of getting into space and endure the long-term effects of weightlessness on the human body. The agency’s engineering expertise also means that items like shoes and swimsuits can be improved with NASA know-how.

As the 2024 Olympics are in full swing in Paris, here are some of the many NASA-derived technologies that have helped competitive athletes train for the games and made sure they’re properly equipped to win.

The LZR Racer reduces skin friction drag by covering more skin than traditional swimsuits. Multiple pieces of the water-resistant and extremely lightweight LZR Pulse fabric connect at ultrasonically welded seams and incorporate extremely low-profile zippers to keep viscous drag to a minimum.

Swimsuits That Don’t Drag

When the swimsuit manufacturer Speedo wanted its LZR Racer suit to have as little drag as possible, the company turned to the experts at Langley Research Center to test its materials and design. The end result was that the new suit reduced drag by 24 percent compared to the prior generation of Speedo racing suit and broke 13 world records in 2008. While the original LZR Racer is no longer used in competition due to the advantage it gave wearers, its legacy lives on in derivatives still produced to this day.

Trilion Quality Systems worked with NASA’s Glenn Research Center to adapt existing stereo photogrammetry software to work with high-speed cameras. Now the company sells the package widely, and it is used to analyze stress and strain in everything from knee implants to running shoes and more.

High-Speed Cameras for High-Speed Shoes

After space shuttle Columbia, investigators needed to see how materials reacted during recreation tests with high-speed cameras, which involved working with industry to create a system that could analyze footage filmed at 30,000 frames per second. Engineers at Adidas used this system to analyze the behavior of Olympic marathoners' feet as they hit the ground and adjusted the design of the company’s high-performance footwear based on these observations.

Martial artist Barry French holds an Impax Body Shield while former European middle-weight kickboxing champion Daryl Tyler delivers an explosive jump side kick; the force of the impact is registered precisely and shown on the display panel of the electronic box French is wearing on his belt.

One-Thousandth-of-an-Inch Punch

In the 1980s, Olympic martial artists needed a way to measure the impact of their strikes to improve training for competition. Impulse Technology reached out to Glenn Research Center to create the Impax sensor, an ultra-thin film sensor which creates a small amount of voltage when struck. The more force applied, the more voltage it generates, enabling a computerized display to show how powerful a punch or kick was.

Astronaut Sunita Williams poses while using the Interim Resistive Exercise Device on the ISS. The cylinders at the base of each side house the SpiraFlex FlexPacks that inventor Paul Francis honed under NASA contracts. They would go on to power the Bowflex Revolution and other commercial exercise equipment.

Weight Training Without the Weight

Astronauts spending long periods of time in space needed a way to maintain muscle mass without the effect of gravity, but lifting free weights doesn’t work when you’re practically weightless. An exercise machine that uses elastic resistance to provide the same benefits as weightlifting went to the space station in the year 2000. That resistance technology was commercialized into the Bowflex Revolution home exercise equipment shortly afterwards.

Want to learn more about technologies made for space and used on Earth? Check out NASA Spinoff to find products and services that wouldn’t exist without space exploration.   

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space!

[what-even-is-thiss]

Free or Cheap German Learning Resources for all your Hochdeutsch Needs

I will update this list as I learn of any more useful ones. If you want general language learning resources check out this other post. This list is German specific. Find lists for other specific languages here.

For the purposes of this list "free" means something that is either totally free or has a useful free tier. "Cheap" is a subscription under $10USD a month, a software license or lifetime membership purchase under $100USD, or a book under $30USD. If you want to suggest something to add to this list, include things in this price range that are of good quality and not AI generated.

WEBSITES

DW - A public broadcasting service from Germany that also has a German learning section. They have videos, tv series, and lessons from beginner to advanced. The website is free to use with an account.

Gothe Institut - An organization affiliated with the German government that administers language level tests and promotes German culture abroad. They have a lot of free exercises and test questions. If you're willing to pay they may also have classes available in your region.

thegermanproject.com - A free website with explanations of beginner German concepts and stories to read for people at the beginner level.

germancorrector.com - A free website that will correct your spelling and grammar. You can also set the dialect to Switzerland or Austria.

Your Daily German - A blog in English by a native German speaker named Emanuel who makes posts about grammar, vocabulary, tips, and suggestions for reading.

YOUTUBE CHANNELS

Comprehensible Germani - A comprehensible input channel with German lessons in German using visual aids. Has content from beginner through upper intermediate.

Learn German - A channel that explains certain concepts and provides listening practice. The channel uses a mix of German and English.

Chill German - A channel that makes vlogs in slow German. They have videos from beginner to lower advanced levels.

Natürlich German - A comprehensible input channel that talks about different aspects of German culture and other topics as well. Has videos for complete beginner to lower advanced. This channel hasn't updated in a while but there's a large archive to watch through.

Easy German - A channel that has a combination of videos about basic German phrases for beginners and videos with interviews on the street in German speaking regions. The channel has dual language German/English subtitles on screen. The hosts of this channel also have a podcast for intermediate to advanced learners.

Expertly German - A channel about learning German with discussion of grammar, vocab, and business German. The channel is entirely in German.

Deutsch Mit Lari - A channel with a mix of German Lessons and vlogs in slow German. Content ranges from beginner to intermediate. All content and explanations are in German.

Learn German With Anja - A channel with a mix of lessons and videos on culture and living in Germany. Videos are in a mix of both English and German and often have dual language subtitles on screen.

READING PRACTICE

German graded readers by Olly Richards Short Stories in German, Intermediate Short Stories in German, Conversations in Simple German, Western Philosophy in Simple German, World War 2 in Simple German. Books tend to range from $4-$20 depending if you buy the digital or print versions. The books can also generally be found easily at used book stores or used on Amazon for cheaper.

Dino Lernt Deutsch - A series of short stories for beginners about a man named Dino lost in various German speaking countries. The full series new in print costs about $25 but it can be bought used or as a digital edition. Each individual story can also be bought separately

Nachrichtenleight - A website with news articles in simple German. The website is entirely in German.

AlumniPortal - Website with articles about business, academics, and other related topics organized by difficulty level. Has articles from upper beginner to upper intermediate. The website is entirely in German.

Grimm Stories - A website with an archive of the original Grimm's fairy tales. Language may be a bit archaic. The website is available in multiple languages.

PODCASTS

Slow German Podcast - Advertises itself as being for beginner to lower intermediate. The host talks about everyday topics such as seasonal weather and describing your apartment.

Easy German Podcast - The hosts from the Easy German Youtube channel talk about different topics, news, and answer questions from listeners in clear and understandable German.

News in Slow German - It is a podcast with news in slow German, including international news and culture news. Only a small section of the program is available for free.

Top-Thema Mit Vokalbeln - A podcast from DW for lower intermediate learners that discusses news topics in simple German and provides vocabulary lists related to the episode topic.

German Stories - A podcast for beginners in a mix of English and German that gives lessons through dialogues and short stories.

Speaking of Berlin - A podcast by Babbel of Berliners telling personal stories in slow German.

SELF STUDY TEXTBOOKS AND DICTIONARIES

Complete German All-in-One from McGraw Hill - a textbook that also doubles as a workbook. It’s more expensive at about $30. It’s difficult to find intact used copies of this book because it’s also a workbook and people tend to write all over it and tear it up. However the sentence builder and grammar sections are sold separately for much cheaper if you just want one or the other.

German Made Easy - Individual books in this series tend to be about $10-$20. From what I’ve read it’s just fine but it’s cheap and has all the beginner concepts you need and used copies are fairly easy to find online.

Easy German Step By Step - This is McGraw Hill’s budget option at $12-$16 new. Though as this one isn’t a workbook, it’s easier to find used copies. It focuses hard on only the most frequently used vocabulary and grammar concepts to get someone started as quickly as possible. It’s also available in audiobook form.

German Grammar Complete - This book is a full comprehensive guide to all levels of grammar from absolute beginner to college level. However it’s on the more expensive side at $30 and the workbook is sold separately.

DK German to English illustrated dictionary - This dictionary is sorted by topic and includes pictures and English translations. This is a new edition and is slightly harder to find used as I’m writing this. The base price is about $20 but there are older editions of this dictionary that might be easier to find used.

Merriam-Webster’s German to English Dictionary - The OG. The legend. The menace. The classic bilingual dictionary. Simple. Many words. Decent explainations. Only $8 new. Easy to find used older editions.

SERIES FOR LEARNERS AND KIDS TV

Hallo Aus Berlin - A series infamous among German students everywhere. Made in the early 2000s for use in classrooms, it has ten episodes of kids talking about certain topics like numbers and going out to a restaurant. It also has a number of songs. It’s cringey but in a fun way in my opinion.

Löwenzahn - a kids tv series aimed at very young audiences that’s been on for several decades. Every episode discusses one topic like bridges or factories so you’ll hear certain words repeated a lot. Theres only been a couple of different hosts so the presentation style remains consistent and unlike some other shows for kindergarteners it’s not obnoxiously loud and can be enjoyable for adults.

Sesamstraße - Sesame Street in German and localized for the German market with different themes and characters. In their YouTube channel you can find clips from as far back as the 1970s.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Conspiratorialism as a material phenomenon

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

I think it behooves us to be a little skeptical of stories about AI driving people to believe wrong things and commit ugly actions. Not that I like the AI slop that is filling up our social media, but when we look at the ways that AI is harming us, slop is pretty low on the list.

The real AI harms come from the actual things that AI companies sell AI to do. There's the AI gun-detector gadgets that the credulous Mayor Eric Adams put in NYC subways, which led to 2,749 invasive searches and turned up zero guns:

https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nycs-subway-weapons-detector-pilot-program-ends/

Any time AI is used to predict crime – predictive policing, bail determinations, Child Protective Services red flags – they magnify the biases already present in these systems, and, even worse, they give this bias the veneer of scientific neutrality. This process is called "empiricism-washing," and you know you're experiencing it when you hear some variation on "it's just math, math can't be racist":

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/23/cryptocidal-maniacs/#phrenology

When AI is used to replace customer service representatives, it systematically defrauds customers, while providing an "accountability sink" that allows the company to disclaim responsibility for the thefts:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs

When AI is used to perform high-velocity "decision support" that is supposed to inform a "human in the loop," it quickly overwhelms its human overseer, who takes on the role of "moral crumple zone," pressing the "OK" button as fast as they can. This is bad enough when the sacrificial victim is a human overseeing, say, proctoring software that accuses remote students of cheating on their tests:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/16/unauthorized-paper/#cheating-anticheat

But it's potentially lethal when the AI is a transcription engine that doctors have to use to feed notes to a data-hungry electronic health record system that is optimized to commit health insurance fraud by seeking out pretenses to "upcode" a patient's treatment. Those AIs are prone to inventing things the doctor never said, inserting them into the record that the doctor is supposed to review, but remember, the only reason the AI is there at all is that the doctor is being asked to do so much paperwork that they don't have time to treat their patients:

https://apnews.com/article/ai-artificial-intelligence-health-business-90020cdf5fa16c79ca2e5b6c4c9bbb14

My point is that "worrying about AI" is a zero-sum game. When we train our fire on the stuff that isn't important to the AI stock swindlers' business-plans (like creating AI slop), we should remember that the AI companies could halt all of that activity and not lose a dime in revenue. By contrast, when we focus on AI applications that do the most direct harm – policing, health, security, customer service – we also focus on the AI applications that make the most money and drive the most investment.

AI hasn't attracted hundreds of billions in investment capital because investors love AI slop. All the money pouring into the system – from investors, from customers, from easily gulled big-city mayors – is chasing things that AI is objectively very bad at and those things also cause much more harm than AI slop. If you want to be a good AI critic, you should devote the majority of your focus to these applications. Sure, they're not as visually arresting, but discrediting them is financially arresting, and that's what really matters.

All that said: AI slop is real, there is a lot of it, and just because it doesn't warrant priority over the stuff AI companies actually sell, it still has cultural significance and is worth considering.

AI slop has turned Facebook into an anaerobic lagoon of botshit, just the laziest, grossest engagement bait, much of it the product of rise-and-grind spammers who avidly consume get rich quick "courses" and then churn out a torrent of "shrimp Jesus" and fake chainsaw sculptures:

https://www.404media.co/email/1cdf7620-2e2f-4450-9cd9-e041f4f0c27f/

For poor engagement farmers in the global south chasing the fractional pennies that Facebook shells out for successful clickbait, the actual content of the slop is beside the point. These spammers aren't necessarily tuned into the psyche of the wealthy-world Facebook users who represent Meta's top monetization subjects. They're just trying everything and doubling down on anything that moves the needle, A/B splitting their way into weird, hyper-optimized, grotesque crap:

https://www.404media.co/facebook-is-being-overrun-with-stolen-ai-generated-images-that-people-think-are-real/

In other words, Facebook's AI spammers are laying out a banquet of arbitrary possibilities, like the letters on a Ouija board, and the Facebook users' clicks and engagement are a collective ideomotor response, moving the algorithm's planchette to the options that tug hardest at our collective delights (or, more often, disgusts).

So, rather than thinking of AI spammers as creating the ideological and aesthetic trends that drive millions of confused Facebook users into condemning, praising, and arguing about surreal botshit, it's more true to say that spammers are discovering these trends within their subjects' collective yearnings and terrors, and then refining them by exploring endlessly ramified variations in search of unsuspected niches.

(If you know anything about AI, this may remind you of something: a Generative Adversarial Network, in which one bot creates variations on a theme, and another bot ranks how closely the variations approach some ideal. In this case, the spammers are the generators and the Facebook users they evince reactions from are the discriminators)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generative_adversarial_network

I got to thinking about this today while reading User Mag, Taylor Lorenz's superb newsletter, and her reporting on a new AI slop trend, "My neighbor’s ridiculous reason for egging my car":

https://www.usermag.co/p/my-neighbors-ridiculous-reason-for

The "egging my car" slop consists of endless variations on a story in which the poster (generally a figure of sympathy, canonically a single mother of newborn twins) complains that her awful neighbor threw dozens of eggs at her car to punish her for parking in a way that blocked his elaborate Hallowe'en display. The text is accompanied by an AI-generated image showing a modest family car that has been absolutely plastered with broken eggs, dozens upon dozens of them.

According to Lorenz, variations on this slop are topping very large Facebook discussion forums totalling millions of users, like "Movie Character…,USA Story, Volleyball Women, Top Trends, Love Style, and God Bless." These posts link to SEO sites laden with programmatic advertising.

The funnel goes:

i. Create outrage and hence broad reach;

ii, A small percentage of those who see the post will click through to the SEO site;

iii. A small fraction of those users will click a low-quality ad;

iv. The ad will pay homeopathic sub-pennies to the spammer.

The revenue per user on this kind of scam is next to nothing, so it only works if it can get very broad reach, which is why the spam is so designed for engagement maximization. The more discussion a post generates, the more users Facebook recommends it to.

These are very effective engagement bait. Almost all AI slop gets some free engagement in the form of arguments between users who don't know they're commenting an AI scam and people hectoring them for falling for the scam. This is like the free square in the middle of a bingo card.

Beyond that, there's multivalent outrage: some users are furious about food wastage; others about the poor, victimized "mother" (some users are furious about both). Not only do users get to voice their fury at both of these imaginary sins, they can also argue with one another about whether, say, food wastage even matters when compared to the petty-minded aggression of the "perpetrator." These discussions also offer lots of opportunity for violent fantasies about the bad guy getting a comeuppance, offers to travel to the imaginary AI-generated suburb to dole out a beating, etc. All in all, the spammers behind this tedious fiction have really figured out how to rope in all kinds of users' attention.

Of course, the spammers don't get much from this. There isn't such a thing as an "attention economy." You can't use attention as a unit of account, a medium of exchange or a store of value. Attention – like everything else that you can't build an economy upon, such as cryptocurrency – must be converted to money before it has economic significance. Hence that tooth-achingly trite high-tech neologism, "monetization."

The monetization of attention is very poor, but AI is heavily subsidized or even free (for now), so the largest venture capital and private equity funds in the world are spending billions in public pension money and rich peoples' savings into CO2 plumes, GPUs, and botshit so that a bunch of hustle-culture weirdos in the Pacific Rim can make a few dollars by tricking people into clicking through engagement bait slop – twice.

The slop isn't the point of this, but the slop does have the useful function of making the collective ideomotor response visible and thus providing a peek into our hopes and fears. What does the "egging my car" slop say about the things that we're thinking about?

Lorenz cites Jamie Cohen, a media scholar at CUNY Queens, who points out that subtext of this slop is "fear and distrust in people about their neighbors." Cohen predicts that "the next trend, is going to be stranger and more violent.”

This feels right to me. The corollary of mistrusting your neighbors, of course, is trusting only yourself and your family. Or, as Margaret Thatcher liked to say, "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families."

We are living in the tail end of a 40 year experiment in structuring our world as though "there is no such thing as society." We've gutted our welfare net, shut down or privatized public services, all but abolished solidaristic institutions like unions.

This isn't mere aesthetics: an atomized society is far more hospitable to extreme wealth inequality than one in which we are all in it together. When your power comes from being a "wise consumer" who "votes with your wallet," then all you can do about the climate emergency is buy a different kind of car – you can't build the public transit system that will make cars obsolete.

When you "vote with your wallet" all you can do about animal cruelty and habitat loss is eat less meat. When you "vote with your wallet" all you can do about high drug prices is "shop around for a bargain." When you vote with your wallet, all you can do when your bank forecloses on your home is "choose your next lender more carefully."

Most importantly, when you vote with your wallet, you cast a ballot in an election that the people with the thickest wallets always win. No wonder those people have spent so long teaching us that we can't trust our neighbors, that there is no such thing as society, that we can't have nice things. That there is no alternative.

The commercial surveillance industry really wants you to believe that they're good at convincing people of things, because that's a good way to sell advertising. But claims of mind-control are pretty goddamned improbable �� everyone who ever claimed to have managed the trick was lying, from Rasputin to MK-ULTRA:

https://pluralistic.net/HowToDestroySurveillanceCapitalism

Rather than seeing these platforms as convincing people of things, we should understand them as discovering and reinforcing the ideology that people have been driven to by material conditions. Platforms like Facebook show us to one another, let us form groups that can imperfectly fill in for the solidarity we're desperate for after 40 years of "no such thing as society."

The most interesting thing about "egging my car" slop is that it reveals that so many of us are convinced of two contradictory things: first, that everyone else is a monster who will turn on you for the pettiest of reasons; and second, that we're all the kind of people who would stick up for the victims of those monsters.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/29/hobbesian-slop/#cui-bono

Image: Cryteria (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HAL9000.svg

CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

[theoutcastrogue]

"The majority of high-tech patent lawsuits are brought by patent trolls—companies that exist not to provide products or services, but primarily have a business using patents to threaten others’ work. Some politicians are proposing to make that bad situation worse. ...

The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act, S. 2140, (PERA), sponsored by Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Chris Coons (D-DE) would be a huge gift to patent trolls, a few tech firms that aggressively license patents, and patent lawyers. For everyone else, it will be a huge loss. That’s why we’re opposing it, and asking our supporters to speak out as well. 

Patent trolling is still a huge, multi-billion dollar problem that’s especially painful for small businesses and everyday internet users. But, in the last decade, we’ve made modest progress placing limits on patent trolling. The Supreme Court’s 2014 decision in Alice v. CLS Bank barred patents that were nothing more than abstract ideas with computer jargon added in. Using the Alice test, federal courts have kicked out a rogue’s gallery of hundreds of the worst patents. 

Under Alice’s clear rules, courts threw out ridiculous patents on “matchmaking”, online picture menus, scavenger hunts, and online photo contests. The nation’s top patent court, the Federal Circuit, actually approved a patent on watching an ad online twice before the Alice rules finally made it clear that patents like that cannot be allowed. The patents on “bingo on a computer?” Gone under Alice. Patents on loyalty programs (on a computer)? Gone. Patents on upselling (with a computer)? All gone. ...

PERA’s attempt to roll back progress goes beyond computer technology. For almost 30 years, some biotech and pharmaceutical companies actually applied for, and were granted, patents on naturally occuring human genes. As a consequence, companies were able to monopolize diagnostic tests that relied on naturally occurring genes in order to help predict diseases such as breast cancer, making such testing far more expensive. The ACLU teamed up with doctors to confront this horrific practice, and sued. That lawsuit led to a historic victory in 2013 when the Supreme Court disallowed patents on human genes found in nature. 

If PERA passes, it will explicitly overturn that ruling, allowing human genes to be patented once again. ...

“To See Your Own Blood, Your Own Genes”

From the 1980s until the 2013 Myriad decision, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted patents on human genomic sequences. If researchers “isolated” the gene—a necessary part of analysis—they would then get a patent that described isolating, or purified, as a human process, and insist they weren’t getting a patent on the natural world itself.

But this concept of patenting an “isolated” gene was simply a word game, and a distinction without a difference. With the genetic patent in hand, the patent-holder could demand royalty payments from any kind of test or treatment involving that gene. And that’s exactly what Myriad Genetic did when they patented the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene sequences, which are important indicators for the prevalence of breast or ovarian cancer. 

Myriad’s patents significantly increased the cost of those tests to U.S. patients. The company even sent some doctors cease and desist letters, saying the doctors could not perform simple tests on their own patients—even looking at the gene sequences without Myriad’s permission would constitute patent infringement. 

This behavior caused pathologists, scientists, and patients to band together with ACLU lawyers and challenge Myriad’s patents. They litigated all the way to the Supreme Court, and won. “A naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated,” the Supreme Court stated in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics. 

A practice like granting and enforcing patents on human genes should truly be left in the dustbin of history. It’s shocking that pro-patent lobbyists have convinced these Senators to introduce legislation seeking to reinstate such patents. Last month, the President of the College of American Pathologists published an op-ed reminding lawmakers and the public about the danger of patenting the human genome, calling gene patents “dangerous to the public welfare.”  

As Lisbeth Ceriani, a breast cancer survivor and a plaintiff in the Myriad case said, “It’s a basic human right to see your own blood, your own genes.” "

[mariacallous]

On Saturday, an Associated Press investigation revealed that OpenAI's Whisper transcription tool creates fabricated text in medical and business settings despite warnings against such use. The AP interviewed more than 12 software engineers, developers, and researchers who found the model regularly invents text that speakers never said, a phenomenon often called a “confabulation” or “hallucination” in the AI field.

Upon its release in 2022, OpenAI claimed that Whisper approached “human level robustness” in audio transcription accuracy. However, a University of Michigan researcher told the AP that Whisper created false text in 80 percent of public meeting transcripts examined. Another developer, unnamed in the AP report, claimed to have found invented content in almost all of his 26,000 test transcriptions.

The fabrications pose particular risks in health care settings. Despite OpenAI’s warnings against using Whisper for “high-risk domains,” over 30,000 medical workers now use Whisper-based tools to transcribe patient visits, according to the AP report. The Mankato Clinic in Minnesota and Children’s Hospital Los Angeles are among 40 health systems using a Whisper-powered AI copilot service from medical tech company Nabla that is fine-tuned on medical terminology.

Nabla acknowledges that Whisper can confabulate, but it also reportedly erases original audio recordings “for data safety reasons.” This could cause additional issues, since doctors cannot verify accuracy against the source material. And deaf patients may be highly impacted by mistaken transcripts since they would have no way to know if medical transcript audio is accurate or not.

The potential problems with Whisper extend beyond health care. Researchers from Cornell University and the University of Virginia studied thousands of audio samples and found Whisper adding nonexistent violent content and racial commentary to neutral speech. They found that 1 percent of samples included “entire hallucinated phrases or sentences which did not exist in any form in the underlying audio” and that 38 percent of those included “explicit harms such as perpetuating violence, making up inaccurate associations, or implying false authority.”

In one case from the study cited by AP, when a speaker described “two other girls and one lady,” Whisper added fictional text specifying that they “were Black.” In another, the audio said, “He, the boy, was going to, I’m not sure exactly, take the umbrella.” Whisper transcribed it to, “He took a big piece of a cross, a teeny, small piece … I’m sure he didn’t have a terror knife so he killed a number of people.”

An OpenAI spokesperson told the AP that the company appreciates the researchers’ findings and that it actively studies how to reduce fabrications and incorporates feedback in updates to the model.

Why Whisper Confabulates

The key to Whisper’s unsuitability in high-risk domains comes from its propensity to sometimes confabulate, or plausibly make up, inaccurate outputs. The AP report says, "Researchers aren’t certain why Whisper and similar tools hallucinate," but that isn't true. We know exactly why Transformer-based AI models like Whisper behave this way.

Whisper is based on technology that is designed to predict the next most likely token (chunk of data) that should appear after a sequence of tokens provided by a user. In the case of ChatGPT, the input tokens come in the form of a text prompt. In the case of Whisper, the input is tokenized audio data.

The transcription output from Whisper is a prediction of what is most likely, not what is most accurate. Accuracy in Transformer-based outputs is typically proportional to the presence of relevant accurate data in the training dataset, but it is never guaranteed. If there is ever a case where there isn't enough contextual information in its neural network for Whisper to make an accurate prediction about how to transcribe a particular segment of audio, the model will fall back on what it “knows” about the relationships between sounds and words it has learned from its training data.

According to OpenAI in 2022, Whisper learned those statistical relationships from “680,000 hours of multilingual and multitask supervised data collected from the web.” But we now know a little more about the source. Given Whisper's well-known tendency to produce certain outputs like "thank you for watching," "like and subscribe," or "drop a comment in the section below" when provided silent or garbled inputs, it's likely that OpenAI trained Whisper on thousands of hours of captioned audio scraped from YouTube videos. (The researchers needed audio paired with existing captions to train the model.)

There's also a phenomenon called “overfitting” in AI models where information (in this case, text found in audio transcriptions) encountered more frequently in the training data is more likely to be reproduced in an output. In cases where Whisper encounters poor-quality audio in medical notes, the AI model will produce what its neural network predicts is the most likely output, even if it is incorrect. And the most likely output for any given YouTube video, since so many people say it, is “thanks for watching.”

In other cases, Whisper seems to draw on the context of the conversation to fill in what should come next, which can lead to problems because its training data could include racist commentary or inaccurate medical information. For example, if many examples of training data featured speakers saying the phrase “crimes by Black criminals,” when Whisper encounters a “crimes by [garbled audio] criminals” audio sample, it will be more likely to fill in the transcription with “Black."

In the original Whisper model card, OpenAI researchers wrote about this very phenomenon: "Because the models are trained in a weakly supervised manner using large-scale noisy data, the predictions may include texts that are not actually spoken in the audio input (i.e. hallucination). We hypothesize that this happens because, given their general knowledge of language, the models combine trying to predict the next word in audio with trying to transcribe the audio itself."

So in that sense, Whisper "knows" something about the content of what is being said and keeps track of the context of the conversation, which can lead to issues like the one where Whisper identified two women as being Black even though that information was not contained in the original audio. Theoretically, this erroneous scenario could be reduced by using a second AI model trained to pick out areas of confusing audio where the Whisper model is likely to confabulate and flag the transcript in that location, so a human could manually check those instances for accuracy later.

Clearly, OpenAI's advice not to use Whisper in high-risk domains, such as critical medical records, was a good one. But health care companies are constantly driven by a need to decrease costs by using seemingly "good enough" AI tools—as we've seen with Epic Systems using GPT-4 for medical records and UnitedHealth using a flawed AI model for insurance decisions. It's entirely possible that people are already suffering negative outcomes due to AI mistakes, and fixing them will likely involve some sort of regulation and certification of AI tools used in the medical field.

[adafruit]

🎄💾🗓️ Day 11: Retrocomputing Advent Calendar - The SEL 840A🎄💾🗓️

Systems Engineering Laboratories (SEL) introduced the SEL 840A in 1965. This is a deep cut folks, buckle in. It was designed as a high-performance, 24-bit general-purpose digital computer, particularly well-suited for scientific and industrial real-time applications.

Notable for using silicon monolithic integrated circuits and a modular architecture. Supported advanced computation with features like concurrent floating-point arithmetic via an optional Extended Arithmetic Unit (EAU), which allowed independent arithmetic processing in single or double precision. With a core memory cycle time of 1.75 microseconds and a capacity of up to 32,768 directly addressable words, the SEL 840A had impressive computational speed and versatility for its time.

Its instruction set covered arithmetic operations, branching, and program control. The computer had fairly robust I/O capabilities, supporting up to 128 input/output units and optional block transfer control for high-speed data movement. SEL 840A had real-time applications, such as data acquisition, industrial automation, and control systems, with features like multi-level priority interrupts and a real-time clock with millisecond resolution.

Software support included a FORTRAN IV compiler, mnemonic assembler, and a library of scientific subroutines, making it accessible for scientific and engineering use. The operator’s console provided immediate access to registers, control functions, and user interaction! Designed to be maintained, its modular design had serviceability you do often not see today, with swing-out circuit pages and accessible test points.

And here's a personal… personal computer history from Adafruit team member, Dan…

== The first computer I used was an SEL-840A, PDF:

I learned Fortran on it in eight grade, in 1970. It was at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where my parents worked, and was used to take data from cyclotron experiments and perform calculations. I later patched the Fortran compiler on it to take single-quoted strings, like 'HELLO', in Fortran FORMAT statements, instead of having to use Hollerith counts, like 5HHELLO.

In 1971-1972, in high school, I used a PDP-10 (model KA10) timesharing system, run by BOCES LIRICS on Long Island, NY, while we were there for one year on an exchange.

This is the front panel of the actual computer I used. I worked at the computer center in the summer. I know the fellow in the picture: he was an older high school student at the time.

The first "personal" computers I used were Xerox Alto, Xerox Dorado, Xerox Dandelion (Xerox Star 8010), Apple Lisa, and Apple Mac, and an original IBM PC. Later I used DEC VAXstations.

Dan kinda wins the first computer contest if there was one… Have first computer memories? Post’em up in the comments, or post yours on socialz’ and tag them #firstcomputer #retrocomputing – See you back here tomorrow!

[cyberstudious]

An Introduction to Cybersecurity

I created this post for the Studyblr Masterpost Jam, check out the tag for more cool masterposts from folks in the studyblr community!

What is cybersecurity?

Cybersecurity is all about securing technology and processes - making sure that the software, hardware, and networks that run the world do exactly what they need to do and can't be abused by bad actors.

The CIA triad is a concept used to explain the three goals of cybersecurity. The pieces are:

Confidentiality: ensuring that information is kept secret, so it can only be viewed by the people who are allowed to do so. This involves encrypting data, requiring authentication before viewing data, and more.

Integrity: ensuring that information is trustworthy and cannot be tampered with. For example, this involves making sure that no one changes the contents of the file you're trying to download or intercepts your text messages.

Availability: ensuring that the services you need are there when you need them. Blocking every single person from accessing a piece of valuable information would be secure, but completely unusable, so we have to think about availability. This can also mean blocking DDoS attacks or fixing flaws in software that cause crashes or service issues.

What are some specializations within cybersecurity? What do cybersecurity professionals do?

incident response

digital forensics (often combined with incident response in the acronym DFIR)

reverse engineering

cryptography

governance/compliance/risk management

penetration testing/ethical hacking

vulnerability research/bug bounty

threat intelligence

cloud security

industrial/IoT security, often called Operational Technology (OT)

security engineering/writing code for cybersecurity tools (this is what I do!)

and more!

Where do cybersecurity professionals work?

I view the industry in three big chunks: vendors, everyday companies (for lack of a better term), and government. It's more complicated than that, but it helps.

Vendors make and sell security tools or services to other companies. Some examples are Crowdstrike, Cisco, Microsoft, Palo Alto, EY, etc. Vendors can be giant multinational corporations or small startups. Security tools can include software and hardware, while services can include consulting, technical support, or incident response or digital forensics services. Some companies are Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs), which means that they serve as the security team for many other (often small) businesses.

Everyday companies include everyone from giant companies like Coca-Cola to the mom and pop shop down the street. Every company is a tech company now, and someone has to be in charge of securing things. Some businesses will have their own internal security teams that respond to incidents. Many companies buy tools provided by vendors like the ones above, and someone has to manage them. Small companies with small tech departments might dump all cybersecurity responsibilities on the IT team (or outsource things to a MSSP), or larger ones may have a dedicated security staff.

Government cybersecurity work can involve a lot of things, from securing the local water supply to working for the big three letter agencies. In the U.S. at least, there are also a lot of government contractors, who are their own individual companies but the vast majority of what they do is for the government. MITRE is one example, and the federal research labs and some university-affiliated labs are an extension of this. Government work and military contractor work are where geopolitics and ethics come into play most clearly, so just… be mindful.

What do academics in cybersecurity research?

A wide variety of things! You can get a good idea by browsing the papers from the ACM's Computer and Communications Security Conference. Some of the big research areas that I'm aware of are:

cryptography & post-quantum cryptography

machine learning model security & alignment

formal proofs of a program & programming language security

security & privacy

security of network protocols

vulnerability research & developing new attack vectors

Cybersecurity seems niche at first, but it actually covers a huge range of topics all across technology and policy. It's vital to running the world today, and I'm obviously biased but I think it's a fascinating topic to learn about. I'll be posting a new cybersecurity masterpost each day this week as a part of the #StudyblrMasterpostJam, so keep an eye out for tomorrow's post! In the meantime, check out the tag and see what other folks are posting about :D