Amazonia for May 13, 2019
May 13, 2019
Amazon had an interesting week. Not many companies have a senior manager who wants humans on the moon. DarkCyber wonders if Amazon’s one day delivery will work for these civilization savers. We found a number of Amazon items interesting in the last week.
Killer Pencils? Yes, and Other School Supplies Too
The attorney general in the great State of Washington and proud possessor of the not so great city of Seattle is going to save lives. “Amazon Must Remove Toxic School Supplies, Kid’s Jewelry from Marketplace Nationwide” revealed that:
at least 15,188 purchases of products with illegal levels of lead and cadmium from Amazon.com.
How did these “deadly” products find their way into Amazon’s inventory? DarkCyber assumes that Amazon assumed that its vendors were not selling products that could harm a child or other buyer. DarkCyber further assumes that the vendors assumed their suppliers were not mixing lead and other interesting compounds into their manufacturing process. Yep, that’s a lot of assumes.
The attorney general wants this to change:
Any future sellers must provide this certification before listing their products for sale. Moreover, if the Attorney General or Washington Department of Ecology advise Amazon of any children’s school supplies or jewelry that exceed safe levels, Amazon must remove the product from its online marketplace within two business days.
Yes, would an MBA describe these pencils and book covers as killer products? DarkCyber is not sure.
Amazon: Another HR Flap
If you are interested in how high-technology companies manage their organizations, you may find “Three Muslim Amazon Workers Allege They Were Unfairly Punished for Raising Workplace Discrimination Concerns.” DarkCyber has no way of knowing if the report is accurate. Read the cited article and decide for yourself.
On a related note, the HR aware may want to note that Amazon advertising has triggered a problem which could spill over into company meetings. CNBC reported in “Amazon Mistakenly Told Some Sellers That It’s Now Blocking Ads with Religious Content” and is now saying, “We did not change anything.” Just a item to file away in case further management issues arise.
Amazon’s Security Gap
DarkCyber learned from Bloomberg, a real news outfit, that Amazon was “hit by extensive fraud with hackers siphoning merchant funds.” Hackers compromised about 100 accounts (a number which strikes DarkCyber as a modest one) as “unidentified hackers were able to siphon funds from merchant accounts over six months last year [2018].” Bloomberg is quite forgiving, offering this comment:
The case highlights how the world’s biggest online retail platform — designed to be automated with minimal human input — can be misused and how difficult it is for Amazon to find perpetrators.
DarkCyber believes that increased risk and vulnerability are baked into the online systems. Remedies are reactive. Amazon is in the policeware business and cannot protect itself from fraud. How will Amazon secure Alexa data? What about the information flowing into Amazon from its more than 60,000 home device support operations?
Alexa, Can You Delete Recordings and Transcripts?
The answer to the question is, “No.” The popular home surveillance and convenience device has more than 80,000 “skills.” Protecting privacy may not be one of the ones which performs reliably. ZDNet reported that Amazon is working on a fix. Here’s the key passage from the write up:
Amid new complaints that parents can’t delete what their children say to Echo Dot Kids Edition, Amazon has admitted it doesn’t really give Alexa users the ability to truly delete what they say to Echo devices.
Privacy? Less important than one day delivery perhaps?
Convenience Stores: An Endangered Species
One consolation is that Amazon, so far, has not figured out how to sell gasoline to consumers. That’s on the radar of some. For now, the one-day delivery push may push the thin-margin outfits over the cliff and into a sea of red ink. “Amazon Prime’s One-Day Shipping Could Devastate Convenience and Drug Stores” explains that speedier shipping may make the local retailer obsolete.
Amazon and Meds
Amazon’s push into health care is not grabbing headlines this week. We did spot a story on CNBC titled “The Inside Story of Why Amazon Bought PillPack in Its Effort to Crack the $500 Billion Prescription Market.” After a weird business school case study introduction, the guts of the write up seems to be:
The value for Amazon is in the promise of plugging the delivery network into the giant e-commerce machine, especially when considering that the average PillPack user in 2018 was worth $5,000 in revenue, through insurance payments and patient co-pays…
With lots of Americans taking medicine, Amazon may see a low margin, growth business which snaps into its other infrastructure and convenience plays. Amazon generic drugs? Amazon “doc in the box” facilities? Amazon health insurance? Many possibilities, and these are not mentioned by CNBC. The personal details about eye glasses are okay, but there may be more to PillPack than pills.
Amazon can at this time reach 72 percent of people living in the lower 48 states at this time. Why go to the pharmacy already struggling to survive when you can go to your front door?
Amazon Is Gunning for the Google
BusinessInsider (registration and/or pay wall in place) snagged an Amazon PowerPoint deck. (DarkCyber understood that the great flywheel did not permit the use of slide decks.) The idea is that the eyeballs on Amazon’s devices and Web pages want and need ads. There’s even the NFL’s Thursday Night Football eyeballs. How remarkable is the presentation? Standard “look how many eyeballs we can deliver.” One interesting factoid is that Amazon sales people like to mention that 80 percent Fire TV owners have a premium Prime account. This means to the tense, sometimes insecure Madison Avenue types one thing — Buyers who purchase stuff. If you are a member of Microsoft LinkedIn, you can download an OTT slide deck at this link.
If you don’t know what OTT means, you can get a handy definition omitted from the BusinessInsider and the Zohar Urian post on LinkedIn. OTT is a reference to streaming media available when one owns a box like Roku or Amazon’s gizmos.
Amazon is able to:
- Provide tracking data
- Provide behavioral data
- Provide contextual data
- Identify “similar to” buyers
- Suggest where to put ads to sell older products
- Deliver slices and dices to make target oriented marketers happy.
The idea is that Amazon can “prove” ads work. Google, well, displaying ads next to children on park swing sets is a bit of an issue for some would be Google advertisers.
The Google has an Amazon problem with two pointy things welded to the front of the Bezos bulldozer. First, Amazon is sucking away product searches from the Google. Double digit product search declines, one disgruntled Web site operator smirked at lunch. This fellow added, “Good for Amazon.” The second problem is that buying an ad on a Google property may place the message for a wholesome product next to questionable content. YouTube does have quite a bit of interesting content, and some advertisers remain wary of the GOOG’s smart software and human editor filtering process.
Amazon: Bring Cash
How about those empty store fronts on Fifth Avenue? There will be more space available as Amazon’s brick-and-mortar push expands. “Amazon Go’s First NY Store Is Also the First to Accept Cash” reports:
what’s new at this [Amazon Go Store] location is actually something Amazon Go was invented to get rid off: a cash register.
The problem is, according to CNet:
While Amazon gained loads of attention for this reinvention of shopping, the nascent trend of cashless stores has already faced blowback from local and state governments. Cashless store operators, which include the salad chain Sweetgreen and restaurant Dig Inn, say going cashless made their checkout lines faster and most of their customers didn’t pay in cash anyways.
The tracking technology is still in place in Go Stores. So bring cash.
Amazon Advertises Itself (Just Like Leo LaPorte’s Twit.tv Network)
Vox reported that “Amazon wants to pay the New York Times and BuzzFeed to Expand So It Can Reach More Shoppers Outside the US.” DarkCyber learned that Amazon sees Amazon as equals for this type of promotion. Vox points out:
Amazon is specifically interested in publishers that have built up significant affiliate link units and would be paying them to build out those groups. That includes BuzzFeed, which has made e-commerce a significant part of its revenue strategy and has hired a team of writers to create shopping-friendly content; the Times, which bought the Wirecutter shopping guide for around $30 million in 2016; and New York Media, which has turned New York Magazine’s “Strategist” shopping section into a meaningful part of its online business mix.
Now how does Google’s quality measures deal with this type of overt, large scale search engine optimization approach to links and traffic? DarkCyber’s view is, “Not very well.” Perhaps the GOOG will have to filter Amazon links because the tactics could be considered those of black hat SEO operators. Filtering links will further erode Google’s product search traffic. Yep, this is an issue and one not addressed in the real news Vox write up.
How Amazon Terminates Old Fashioned AWS Services
Amazon sure seems to be nice. A good example is a blog post called “Amazon S3 Path Deprecation Plan – The Rest of the Story.” Unlike the Google, which just up and kills products and services, Amazon walks slowly toward the “terminate with extreme prejudice button.” Amazon wants to herd its customers toward the new and improved versions of Amazon’s technology; for example, getting rid of paths. How old school! The new approach involves object keys, which Jeff Bezos really likes. You will have the opportunity to experience this new approach yourself — whether you like it or not. That’s a Googley touch.
More Partners and Integrators
It is difficult to keep track of the companies joining the AWS bandwagon. Here are a few of the more interesting ones.
- Arcadia Data is an Advanced Amazon Partner. Source: MarketWatch
- Cherwell Software now delivers integrated cloud management services via Amazon Quick Start. Source: Yahoo
- CloudBees now allows AWS customers to deploy CloudBees on AWS. A CloudBee deployment is a cloud native, continuous delivery (CD) solution that can be hosted on-premise or in the cloud. It provides a shared, centrally managed, self-service experience for development teams. Source: Help Net Security
- CloudKnox is now an AWS Advanced Technology Partner. Source: Digital Journal
- CoreSite offers higher bandwidth for AWS Direct Connect. Source: MarketWatch
- Cypherium teams up with Amazon to offer blockchain as a service. See Businesswire’s story on Yahoo.
- Digital Reality provides AWS Direct Connect services. Source: Yahoo
- Digital Reasoning, once a gung ho IBM affiliate, has shifted gears with “Conduct Surveillance.” This appears to include the search and retrieval function plus lots of middleware. The company provides is solution via Amazon. Google gets some DR love too. Source: Virtual Strategy. (Every time I type “virtual strategy” I think, “Why bother with a real strategy when one can have a virtual strategy.” Source: Virtual Strategy
- eCloudValley is allegedly the world’s only AWS premier consulting partner with certifications for China and the rest of the world. Ah, yes, China, the land of surveillance. Source: Cision
- ExtraHop has joined Amazon’s AWS consulting program. Source: Digital Journal
- Getronics and HeleCloud team up to launch an Amazon Center of Excellence; that is, a consulting operation. Source: Virtual Strategy
- Intent Solutions is a partner and one recognized by Amazon itself. Source: PR.com
- Isaca (a global association helping individuals and enterprises achieve the positive potential of technology) has introduced an AWS Audit Program. Source: Security Info Watch
- The great state of Louisiana has partnered with Amazon for “AWS Educate.” More about an Amazon branded state appears in The Advocate.
- Mission, a managed services and consulting company for Amazon Web Services (AWS), has met the requirements of the AWS Managed Services Provider (MSP) Partner Program. Source: Global News Wire
- Nutanix now runs on AWS Xi clusters. Source: CRN
- SGX, a blockchain outfit, is moving its platform to AWS. Source: Finextra
- SmartShift has partnered with Amazon in order to move SAP to AWS. I know that SAP is an interesting outfit and its software can be particularly exciting to configure. But SmartShift will knock that S/4 Hana stuff out of the park. SAP is embracing the Bezos bulldozer. SAP evolved from a former IBM professionals desire to reinvent IBM. A Bakersfield.com report.
- Tantus Technologies is an AWS Select Consulting Partner. Source: Yahoo
- Ventech Solutions is now an Amazon Advanced Consulting Partner. Source: BusinessInsider. No registration required for a recycled news release unlike the recycled OTT article.
Moving Mainframe Code to AWS
Impossible you say. You are wrong, pilgrim. Navigate to the AWS success story of the week, “Automated Refactoroing of a US Department of Defense Mainframe to AWS.” The main point is that it took place and worked. The actual grunt work was handled not by the online bookstore or the wizards in the DoD’s numerous information technology departments. The outfit which pulled off most of the work was Array. When did this take place? In 2018, but it takes some time for certain examples to surface. You can read more about this migration in the AWS Partner Network Blog here.
Amazon Servers: Where in the World Are They, Jeff Bezos?
The Verge’s story “Mapping Out Amazon’s Invisible Server Empire” provides a link to the map that Amazon won’t provide. Well, the map is a link to a sketchy document available in WikiLeaks. The Wikileaks’ map is at this link. The Verge contributes this remarkable “real news” observation:
most of the AWS footprint consists of overseas hubs in colocation centers run by companies like Equinix or Securus.
Yeah, that’s tough to figure out.
Stephen E Arnold, May 13, 2019
Into R? A List for You
May 12, 2019
Computerworld, which runs some pretty unusual stories, published “Great R Packages for Data Import, Wrangling and Visualization.” “Great” is an interesting word. In the lingo of Computerworld, a real journalist did some searching, talked to some people, and created a list. As it turns out, the effort is useful. Looking at the Computerworld table is quite a bit easier than trying to dig information out of assorted online sources. Plus, people are not too keen on the phone and email thing now.
The listing includes a mixture of different tools, software, and utilities. There are more than 80 listings. I wasn’t sure what to make of XML’s inclusion in the list, but, the source is Computerworld, and I assume that the “real” journalist knows much more than I.
Two observations:
- Earthworm lists without classification or alphabetization are less useful to me than listings which are sorted by tags and alphabetized within categories. Excel does perform this helpful trick.
- Some items in the earthworm list have links and others do not. Consistency, I suppose, is the hobgoblin of some types of intellectual work
- An indication of which item is free or for fee would be useful too.
Despite these shortcomings, you may want to download the list and tuck it into your “Things I love about R” folder.
Stephen E Arnold, May 12, 2019
Google: What Does Relevance Mean?
May 11, 2019
Here’s the question for you: “What’s relevance?” The answer — if I understand the allegedly true information in “Google Creates ‘Dedicated Placement’ in Search results for AMP Stories, Starting with Travel Category” — is what Google decides you may see.
Forget the AMP thing because it is a content tiering play. No AMP, no display in a special section of results. Simple. Easy to understand, right?
Why is this important?
- Most users (searchers) accept what Google delivers, and Google delivers what generates revenue..
- The majority of users want convenience and will not want to spend time “looking for information”. (When one does not exert data energy, what one gets is good enough. Try to explain this information issue, the fish only know water. The world of gaseous oxygen is a tough concept.
- Users do not perceive the scope of the machinations which content producers and advertisers eager for clicks and eyeballs undertake in order to appear in the special AMP listing. Few care or have the knowledge foundation to discern the machinery grinding away.
Google pulls the strings. Relevance is what generates revenues or helps Google meet its objectives.
Who controls relevance for a particular person looking for information?
Does this redefinition of relevance impact me and my DarkCyber researchers? No. The reason is that we know that search results on Google are skewed. We know content disappears from the index. We know that to track down a particular citation or document we have to resort to old fashioned methods. Phone calls, use of niche search tools, and even visits to libraries with information on microfilm are not unusual for us.
The problem is that for a majority of people looking for information online, those skills and the knowledge which lubricates their functioning is either gone or quickly eroding.
Try to find the US Army’s updated guideline for software procurement via Google? Try to locate information about Threatgrid and its connections to other security firms. Try to locate documents germane to the CMS MIC program which back up and sometimes replaces FBI personnel’s investigations of health care fraud. Try to find English language content about Moonwalk, a video service of considerable interest to some people.
For years, I have retained some interesting content because I know that content may not be findable the next time I use the “AMP’ed” up Google or the other aggressively filtering Web indexing systems. Sometimes you can hear my team’s teeth gnashing over the whine of our local storage systems.
I call this the findability crisis. Someone has public information, but others cannot find it. Therefore, that information is effectively unfindable or “gone.” Hasta la vista.” And there’s no, “I’ll be back” for these content objects.
With shallower indexing and deletion of “old” content (which some call either history or evidence), the world of free, ad supported Web search and retrieval is going medieval. To get information, one has to be one of the top one percent of information professionals.
Interesting? Only if one knows what’s happening, gentle reader.
Relevance? Yep, new definition. New world of information. Knowledge is not power. Knowledge is danger maybe?
Stephen E Arnold, May 11, 2019
Consistency in Action: Google About-Face on Pompeo Gala Ad
May 11, 2019
It must be downright confusing to be a Google algorithm, for humans often make little sense. The Daily Wire reports, “Google First Shuts Down Claremont Institute Advertising their Gala for Pompeo, then Apologizes.” The write-up shares part of a piece by the Claremont’s Ryan P. Williams:
“Google, either its algorithm or some individual, had a look at my essay launching our new campaign for a unifying Americanism, ‘Defend America—Defeat Multiculturalism.’ They decided it to be in violation of their policy on ‘race and ethnicity in personalized advertising’ and shut down our advertising efforts to American Mind readers. We weren’t ‘advertising’ anything in the essay, of course, but the relevant section of their policy lists ‘racially or ethnically oriented publications, racially or ethnically oriented universities, racial or ethnic dating’ as examples of violations. Somebody must have determined we were offering ‘racially or ethnically oriented publications’.”
Gee, why would anyone think a title that includes “Defeat Multiculturalism” had anything to do with race or ethnicity? Silly algorithm. We learn someone from Claremont spent two hours on the phone with Google to no avail. Eventually, though, the company did decide the institute could advertise its own event in its own publication after all and issued an apology. Probably wise.
Cynthia Murrell, May 11, 2019
China: Patent Translation System
May 10, 2019
Patents are usually easily findable documents. However, reading a patent once found is a challenge. Up the ante if the patent is in a language the person does not read. “AI Used to Translate Patent Documents” provides some information about a new system available from the Intellectual Property Publishing House. According to the article in China Daily:
The system can translate Chinese into English, Japanese and German and vice versa. Its accuracy in two-way translation between Chinese and Japanese has reached 95 percent, far more than the current industry average, and the rest has topped 90 percent…
The system uses a dictionary, natural language processing algorithms, and a computational model. In short, this is a collection of widely used methods tuned over a decade by the Chinese organization. In that span, Thomson Reuters dropped out of the patent game, and just finding patents, even in the US, can be a daunting task.
Translation has been an even more difficult task for some lawyers, researchers, analysts, and academics.
If the information in the China Daily article is accurate, China may have an intellectual property advantage., The write up offers some details, which sound interesting; for example:
- Translation of a Japanese document: five seconds
- Patent documents record 90 percent of a country’s technology and innovation
- China has “a huge database of global patents”.
And the other 10 percent? Maybe other methods are employed.
Stephen E Arnold, May 10, 2019
Silicon Valley Management Crises Escalate
May 10, 2019
Early in my career I worked at Booz, Allen & Hamilton. There was lots of chatter about management from the MBAs. I listened, and I learned that management was a slippery fish.
Now the engineers, mathematicians, and scientists who are in charge of a couple of successful Silicon Valley firms are dealing with slippery fish, and some of these creatures are poisonous.
Let’s look at two examples.
The first appears in “Google Employees Ask Alphabet CEO to Address Walkout.” The idea is that employees are not happy, and they want to make this clear to colleagues and the real journalists who pay attention to real news. I learned:
The plea for Page’s involvement comes after months of worker protests against the mishandling of sexual harassment incidents, along with retaliation against those who report it, including the demotion and modifications of roles that female employees who reported harassment held.
Google denies retaliation, and some of the world’s smartest people employed by the online advertising firm are unhappy.
Unhappy employees means trouble with a capital T. There may be a Meredith Wilson opportunity here.
The second has been captured in statements from Chris Hughes, one of the “founders” of Facebook. This Facebooker has been on talking head TV, but the article “Facebook Co-Founder Chris Hughes: It’s Time to Break Up Facebook” does a good job of recycling the opinion piece Mr. Hughes crafted for the New York Times. I noted:
Hughes says that Zuckerberg has “unchecked power” and influence “far beyond that of anyone else in the private sector or in government.”
Okay, a founder and “friend” of Facebook is criticizing the company. The fix is painful because breaking up is hard to do.
Okay, two examples.
The Google problem is a revolt from within. The Facebook problem is a revolt of the insiders.
Neither Google nor Facebook is handling the management challenges in a smooth, friction free way.
Maybe it is time to call in the MBAs along with lots of lawyers to help with this Iron Man events? The high school science club is just not working. Sure, the money is still flowing, but like a gurgling Mauna Loa, further events are inevitable. Foosballl and colorful mouse pads won’t do the job. And algorithms? Nope.
Stephen E Arnold, May 10, 2019
Legal Eagles and a Church Steeple
May 10, 2019
The new Notre Dame Spire may be protected by copyright.
Though the spire’s exact design is yet to be determined, the Notre Dame cathedral will certainly be rebuilt. By the time it is, will posting selfies in front of the finished masterpiece be considered a copyright violation? Techdirt describes “Why Your Holiday Photos and Videos of the Restored Notre Dame Cathedral Could Be Blocked by the EU’s Upload Filters.” We’re told that EU copyright law lets countries decide whether to protect the copyrights on architecture, sculpture, and other artworks in public view, or to grant “freedom of panorama.” France chose the freedom, with one key exception—any images used commercially require permission. Reporter Glyn Moody writes:
“This is why pictures of the Eiffel Tower at night taken for commercial purposes require a license: although the copyright of the tower itself has expired, the copyright on the lights that were installed in 1989 has not. And it’s not just about the Eiffel Tower. As the credits at the end of this time-lapse video show (at 2 minutes 10 seconds) other famous Parisian landmarks that require copyright permission to film them include the Louvre’s Pyramid and the Grande Arche in the French capital’s business district. It is not clear whether taking photos or videos of these landmarks and then posting them online counts as commercial use. They may be for personal use, and thus exempt in themselves, but they are generally being posted to commercial Internet services like Facebook, which might require a license. That lack of clarity is just the sort of thing that is likely to cause the EU Copyright Directive’s upload filters to block images of modern buildings in France — including the re-built spire of Notre Dame cathedral, if it is a new design.”
Moody is very critical of the Copyright Directive, the legislation that harmonizes copyright law across the EU, as favoring corporate interests over citizens. He notes that full freedom of panorama across the union has been proposed, but that France resists the idea. Even so, unless and until personal social media posts come to be considered “commercial,” the threat of censored vacation photos remains academic.
Cynthia Murrell, May 10, 2019
Smart Software: Not a US Sandbox
May 9, 2019
In case you were wondering how AI is progressing in other parts of the world, TechRadar tells us, “Report Revealed at Ai Everything Summit in Dubai Shows Middle East On Pace with Global Counterparts.” Writer Naushad K. Cherrayil discusses a survey that was revealed at the recent summit:
“Middle East companies are on pace with their global counterparts when it comes to the adoption of artificial intelligence but have some distinct differences, such as how management views AI and their trust in the technology, industry experts said. According to a survey conducted by Forbes Insights, about 62 percent of the executives believe that AI is emerging rapidly in their industry and executives in the region look to AI as just one part of digital transformation, and slightly more than half see themselves as being only at the start of executing that plan.”
Elaborating on how Middle East companies tend to view AI differently, Cherrayil writes:
“The top three reasons Middle East executives are implementing AI are to improve efficiency, enhance customer acquisition, and improve the customer experience, while globally, companies appear less concerned about using AI with customers and find that the most important business value is improved produce and services innovation.”
Researchers at International Data Corporation expect AI investment in the region to grow between 25% and 30% a year. They note at least a quarter of that comes from the UAE, which aims to dominate the market by 2031. Companies in the Middle East consider AI a key to success, but they apparently have a shortage of appropriate experts. Funding, on the other hand, seems to be less of an issue.
Cynthia Murrell, May 9, 2019
Microsoft: No, Not Cortana
May 9, 2019
Microsoft has a small room filled with its Bob-type products: Windows ME, Windows Vista, the notorious chatbot, but now Cortana can take its place amongst its brethren. Cortana was Microsoft’s answer to Siri and other digital assistants that live in mobile devices and smart speakers. Cortana never gained the same popularity as its competitors. MS Power User reports on the story in the article, “Cortana Retreat Continues As Microsoft Ditch Wunderlist Integratior.”
Services that allow Cortana integration are slowly fading away. Microsoft will no longer support Cortana on Skype, but now Wunderlist will no longer allow users to sync their lists and tasks with Cortana starting April 15. One of the reasons why Microsoft might no longer wish to support Wunderlist is that that company is replacing it with a new alternative:
“In this case, it is not clear if it is due to Cortana or Wunderlist both being sunsetted, but likely its a bit of both. Wunderlist is being replaced by Microsoft To-Do and in a statement Microsoft said: ‘We’re not currently working on new features for Wunderlist as we’re concentrating on our new app, Microsoft To-Do. Once we are confident that we have incorporated the best of Wunderlist into Microsoft To-Do, we will retire Wunderlist.’”
Microsoft is into the cloud just without Cortana. “Wunder” about that? No, I don’t.
Whitney Grace May 9, 2019
How Does One Access an iPhone?
May 9, 2019
If you are interested in accessing a locked iPhone, you may want to add this write up to your reference file. DarkCyber is not sure the three ways to work around the iCloud lock cover the waterfront, but the information is suggestive. See “How Hackers and Scammers Break into iCloud-Locked iPhones.” DarkCyber is not thrilled that this type of information is floating around untethered. Just our viewpoint, of course. Vice’s editorial judgment is interesting.
Stephen E Arnold, May 9, 2019