Amazonia, May 27, 2019
May 27, 2019
DarkCyber’s review of the Amazon news in the last seven days reveals an uptick in the critical tone in some of the open source commentary about the company. In addition to watching what Amazon says, DarkCyber will note what those writing about the company highlight. Note that the Amazonia for Monday, June 3, 2019, will be an abbreviated run down. Most of teh DarkCyber team will be at the TechnoSecurity conference.
Senator Questions Amazon Privacy
CNet reported that Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware and member of the judiciary committee, has asked Amazon for information about the privacy methods for Amazon’s Echo. As information about alleged data retention and use of recorded conversations swirls through open source channels, Amazon may find itself subject to “Facebook think.” Is Amazon a data analysis company in addition to an online bookstore? Amazon has been able to dodge some of the scrutiny directed at certain social media companies. The Bezos bulldozer could be mired in investigations and subject to fines in the US and elsewhere if these “questions” morph into hearings, investigations, and other legal mechanisms.
You may want to download US 20190156818, a patent which allows Alexa to record before a customer says the “Alexa” word. Privacy?
AWS Share Prices Dip, Prices for AWS Seem to Go Down Too
There is probably no correlation between a dip in Amazon’s share price and the price changes explained in “Announcing the New Pricing Plan for AWS Config Rules.” The blog post said:
Effective August 1st, 2019, AWS Config rules will switch to a new pay-per-use pricing model, lowering the bill for almost all existing AWS Config rules customers. AWS Config helps you assess and maintain compliance over your AWS resource configurations.
The pay per use approach appears to be a benefit in the form of a cost reduction. DarkCyber wants to point out that AWS pricing can be complicated. What appears to be a deal may turn out that for a certain class of customers, the new pricing may add to some costs.
Business2Community has published tips for reducing AWS costs.
Amazon Pushes Forward with Facial Recognition Technology
Criticism of facial recognition continues in the US. TechCrunch reported that Amazon shareholders have voted down two proposals to terminate its sale of Rekognition to government customers.
TechCrunch said:
The resolutions failed despite an effort by the ACLU to back the measures, which the civil liberties group accused the tech giant of being “non-responsive” to privacy concerns.
Unless management actions can curtail employee and shareholder grousing about the direction of Amazon’s policeware initiatives, Amazon could find itself at risk from push back from those upon whom the company depends.
Business Insider provides some information about the Amazon complaints related to the sales of services and products to what is called “big oil.”
Amazon’s management actions may curtail the growth of the company despite the lax regulatory environment in which the firm thrives.
The Kindle Support Chinese
Engadget reports that the Amazon book reading and “baby tablet” Kindle devices now su9pport “traditional Chinese books.” We learned:
Amazon has launched a portal in the Kindle store with 20,000 Traditional Chinese titles you can download, including translations of popular books like George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series. You can now also self-publish eBooks written in the characters through Kindle Direct Publishing.
The service is supported worldwide.
Amazon Satellites
If you need tips to use Amazon satellites, you may not be the informed customers the online bookstore seeks. Nevertheless, information appears in the 247 Wall Street write up “Why Amazon Is Now Giving AWS Users Access to Its Satellites.” DarkCyber thought the idea was revenue and getting customers to pay part of Amazon’s increasing infrastructure and technical debt costs. The write up states:
sing AWS Ground Station, customers can save up to 80% of their ground station costs by paying for antenna access time on demand, and they can rely on AWS Ground Station’s growing global footprint of ground stations to downlink data when and where they need it.
An Amazon official is quoted as saying:
The goal of AWS Ground Station is to make space communications ubiquitous and to make ground stations simple and easy to use, so that more organizations can derive insights from satellite data to help improve life on Earth and embark on deeper exploration and discovery in space.
At this time DarkCyber understands that two ground stations are now active. DarkCyber sticks with the cost and revenue interpretation of Amazon satellites.
Amazon AWS Is Ready for Bigger Data
Geekwire reports that an Amazon AWS executive revealed that the online bookstore is ready for bigger data. The write up quotes the Amazon professional as saying:
“The explosion of data is going to be beyond what we’ve ever seen before…cloud customers really need new and powerful tools to unlock the potential of that data.”
Not many details, but it is good to know that Amazon can handle the JEDI contract if the firms wins that deal.
Partners and Resellers
More remarkable vendor names as the roster of AWS specialists continues to swell.
- Advertity says that it “has achieved Amazon Web Services competency for digital customer experience. Source: Yahoo
- Agilisium says that it is now okayed to sell Amazon’s QuickSight Service. (QuickSight is Amazon speak for analytics.) Source: Yahoo
- BAE Systems, operator of NetReveal (Detica) has been deemed “competent” for creating applications for US government clouds. This is important because BAE is one of the go-to providers of intelware in the UK, US, and elsewhere. Source: Marketwatch
- CapGemini, a consulting firm, is actively selling engagements to move SAP installations to the AWS cloud. Source: Yahoo
- Informatica wants to apply smart software to the task of moving large amounts of data to the AWS cloud. The line up of Information services is available at this AWS Marketplace location. Informatica has a similar capability with the Google Cloud. Betting on more than one horse? Yes.
- modelizeIT is now an Amazon Advanced Tier Technology Partner. Source: Marketsinsider
- Northwest Vista College has become the first Amazon Web Services academy in South Central Texas. The idea is to train future Amazon savvy coders. Source: Yahoo
Stephen E Arnold, May 27, 2019
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
