Amazonia for July 29, 2019
July 29, 2019
Summertime, the bulldozing is easy. Money is flowing, and regulators are hopping. There was some Amazon news despite the heat waves and the rumblings of impending monopoly investigations in the US and elsewhere.
JEDI Excitement
President Donald Trump, according to the semi paywalled, “insider” news service delivered a stunning rumor in “President Donald Trump Reportedly Wants to ‘Scuttle’ the $10 Billion Pentagon Cloud Contract That Amazon and Microsoft Are Fighting Over.” Let’s assume this report is spot on, accurate, and wrapped in factualities. Several questions pop up:
- How happy will Oracle be with this decision?
- How unhappy will Amazon be if it receives zero Department of Defense JEDI work?
- How will Microsoft make Azure sort of work? (DarkCyber asks this question because some of Microsoft’s software has been — how shall I phrase it? — problematic?)
More than a week ago, Nextgov reported that “Trump ‘Looking Into’ Pentagon’s JEDI Contract.” There was swamp mist swirling around an assertion that some Republicans wanted the JEDI contract issued. Why? Love of Amazon? Love of Microsoft? Love of DoD procurement processes? Nope. “National security.”
Also, Amazon allegedly snapped up a modest 270,000 square feet of office space in lovely, 21st century Herndon, Virginia. There is no congestion near Sunrise Drive, some told DarkCyber. The company has a modest 400,000 square feet on the Dulles Access Road between Dulles Airport and the once sylvan Reston, Virginia. Source: Biznow
Fox News (an outstanding “real” news outfit published “Lawmakers Urge Trump to Delay $10B Defense Contract over Amazon Conflicts Probe.” The write up states:
The lawmakers who signed Tuesday’s letter are all Republicans and include Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and Wisconsin Rep. Sean Duffy. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio sent a similar letter to national security adviser John Bolton last Thursday, seeking a delay to the awarding of the JEDI contract due to a “lack of competition.”
The article did not include a quote from Amazon’s Washington, DC executive. Non government gray would have been enriched with local color.
Amazon Quarterly Report
Amazon’s quarterly revenue was $63 billion. The number of interest to DarkCyber is that AWS revenue was up 37 percent to $8.4 billion which works out to a $30 billion plus business for a 12 month period. MarketWatch has some additional details. Net net: Amazon will tighten the thumbscrews on merchant partners, vendors, and AWS customers. The Bezos bulldozer needs a new coat of paint, so price hikes will be needed.
DarkCyber wants to point out that the Gartner Group, an outstanding crystal ball outfit, predicts that Amazon can deliver a surprise for customers who don’t keep their eye on:
- Amazon costs and prices
- Amazon’s features
- Amazon’s competitive behavior.
Does Gartner Group advise the Secretary of the Treasury?
Amazon Health Care
Curious as to Dr. Jeff Bezos’ medical acumen? There’s some information tucked into “Amazon Web Services Exec Partovi on Where the Biggest AI Opportunities Are in Healthcare.” In the interview / essay, we spotted this statement:
On the patient side, the value that cloud brings is that you can do predictive modeling. By applying machine learning and predictive modeling to data, it allows you to predict patient health events.
Perfect for health insurance and other services which could benefit from smart software and some cross correlation.
To put this interview in context, Amazon has rolled out a Web services center in Houston. Wasn’t that city interested in IBM Watson before those using the system realized it did not work the way doctors did? Source: Houston Chronicle
Retail on the US Government’s Mind
About that Department of Defense JEDI contract? What happens if the current Administration continues to find fault with Amazon? What about real estate values in Alexandria, Arlington, and other “close to the jungle” locations?
We noted “US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin Says Amazon Has Destroyed Retail.” At the same time, US government professionals are gearing up for inquiries.
The write up stated:
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said he supports the Justice Department’s formal antitrust review of the country’s largest tech companies, particularly Amazon, which he said has ruined retail. In an interview Wednesday with CNBC, Mnuchin said the company has “destroyed the retail industry across the United States” and said there’s “no question they’ve limited competition.”
DarkCyber does not speculate about procurement, but could the JEDI deal go to Microsoft?
Big News: Amazon Offers Sellers a Deal
I worked in New York City sort of for several years. I was from a small town in Illinois, and I had to learn how to speak “New York.” One of the first phrases I learned was, “Such a deal.”
Amazon may be offering “a deal” to its sellers. The Wall Street Journal (paywall, gentle reader) appears to have blown the whistle on a new program for sellers and merchants who use the Amazon ecommerce site to move their products. The idea is simple:
- Independent merchants can get Amazon’s help with marketing
- Amazon can then purchase the merchant’s brand for $10,000
- The merchant gets to find another product to convert into a winner.
- Jump to Line 2
Such a deal.
Amazon’s Accelerator will accelerate all right. A faster path to monopolistic dominance of whatever product sells. I also learned another New York phrase, “Have I got a deal for you.” Sure you do.
A related item is that Amazon’s suspension policy contributes to “partner” stress. See this link.
Amazon Facial Recognition Leaves Disneyesque Orlando
Orlando Police Department has allegedly ended its Amazon Rekognition facial recognition test. The Orlando Weekly reported:
Orlando’s two-phase pilot with Amazon to try out real-time facial recognition software ended Thursday, capping 15 months of technical lags, bandwidth issues and uncertainty over whether the controversial face-scanning technology actually works.
The termination was allegedly due to resources. DarkCyber believes that this statement is accurate, but it may not include a spectrum of issues associated with facial recognition.
We noted the inclusion of this statement as well:
Matt Cagle, a technology and civil liberties attorney at the ACLU, congratulated OPD for “finally figuring out what we long warned – Amazon’s surveillance technology doesn’t work and is a threat to our privacy and civil liberties.” “This failed pilot program demonstrates precisely why surveillance decisions should be made by the public through their elected leaders, and not by corporations secretly lobbying police officials to deploy dangerous systems against the public,” Cagle said.
The report noted:
Orlando is the only city in the country to openly test Amazon’s fledgling real-time facial recognition software. Washington County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon is the only other known client using a variant of the software, where deputies can upload a photo of an unidentified suspect and run it through a database of images for a possible match long after an incident occurred.
Was Orlando a success or failure? It seems the thrill ride may have ended.
Amazon India: Bulking Up
“AWS Can Be a Great Enabler for India to Jump a Tech Gen in AI and ML: Amazon Internet Services’ Rahul Sharma” is a rah rah article about Amazon’s growing interest in India. The write up reports:
AWS wants to lead India into becoming a cloud-first economy. From providing streams of open data and offering easy-to-use AI/ML services to skilling millions of youth, the company is out to service its biggest customer: the Indian citizen.
DarkCyber ignored the social good handwaving and focused on the meat of the push into India: Govtech.
Amazon and Israel
A new data center and a play for Israeli government contracts? Seems logical. Data Center Dynamics reports:
In September, Israel’s Finance Ministry and the Government Procurement Administration said that they planned to issue a tender in 2019-2020 for the supply of services based on a public cloud platform, servicing multiple government organizations
Amazon Chatbots: Still Chattering
ZDNet report that Amazon has rolled out a chatbot which issues system alerts to developers, through Slack and its own Chime app. The write up states:
Under the current AWS Chatbot Beta, notifications can be provided from Amazon Cloud Watch, AWS Health, AWS Budgets, AWS Security Hub, Amazon GuardDuty, and AWS CloudFormation.
Yep, notifications.
AWS Lightsail How To
Want to build a virtual machine in AWS Lightsale. The “real news” outfit TechRepublic has published a how to in “How to Create a Virtual Machine Using Lightsail in AWS.” The write up is a very upbeat presentation of Amazon help page content. We liked this phrase too: “…Just a few mouse clicks.” There’s a free white paper available too. Just click this link. Plus, Lightsail is a deal, just $3.50 per month. DarkCyber believes that each customer’s costs will vary. TechRepublic is quite helpful to Amazon. DarkCyber wonders if there is any “consideration” or “inclusion” assessment associated with this story. Probably not. Just “real news”.
Reeling from Surprise AWS Costs?
Some help may be on the way. According to Silicon Angle, DarkCyber learned that EC2 Resource Optimization Recommendations helps users to optimize the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud resources they use. Allegedly the new service:
[will] find idle or underused instances so customers can adjust their usage patterns to save on costs. Should the tool find an idle instance, which Amazon defines as one that has less than 1% maximum central processing unit utilization, it will recommend that users simply shut it down. And when it finds an underused instance, it will recommend different-sized instances to which customers can switch to fit their usage pattern better and get more bang for their buck.
Yes, You Can Control a Car with Amazon
DarkCyber spotted this video: “Controlling a Car with Artificial Intelligence – AWS Deep Racer.” If you are a fan of serial content acquisition in non text form, here’s the url you need. For Amazon’s explanation of the use of its smart software, navigate to “Developers, Start Your Engines.” Vroom, vroom.
Amazon and Financial Information
We read “Amazon Echo Banking: Get Alexa to Check Your Balance, Make Payments and More.” DarkCyber liked the word “more.” How much more? One can imagine if the online bookstore has access to one’s bank accounts: Checking, savings, home loans, etc. Shove these data into any other personal information Amazon has. What pops out of the Alexa enabled microwave? How about a competitor to Oracle’s data service?
The write up ignores the big picture and states:
Linking your Echo to your account is quick and private. Don’t worry, you’re not sharing your personal banking info with Amazon when you connect it to the Alexa app. Just make sure you feel comfortable with the people who might be within earshot when Alexa responds.
There you go. Secret info from the outfit which records and retains data transmitted via Echo. How useful would such “unretained” data be to an investigator, an outfit doing a credit check, or to an insurance company? Probably above average.
Surfing on Weaveworks?
TechRepublic, an outfit which writes very positively about IBM, has turned its reportorial rapier on Amazon. “The Clearest Sign of AWS’ Open Source Success Wasn’t Built by Amazon” seems negative at first glance. But, no, TechRepublic seems to love Amazon as much as it does IBM. We noted this statement in the write up:
As AWS executive Matt Wilson put it, “As a very early adopter of Free and open source software (going back to migrating from Unix to Linux in 2002!), folks at Amazon have extensive understanding of Open Source, and also how developer communities of all types grow around technology.” With Firecracker, this shows, because Weaveworks, not AWS, built Weave Ignite. That’s how good open source ecosystems grow.
A new jungle to bulldoze.
Pop That Trunk for Deliveries
DarkCyber wonders if law enforcement officers will find this Amazon delivery option helpful?
“Amazon Will Now Deliver to the Trunk of Your Honda” states:
Amazon keeps on expanding its delivery options, perhaps to ensure that you won’t have an excuse not to buy that thing you’ve just carted. In 2018, it launched an in-car delivery service for GM and Volvo owners, which it also eventually offered to Ford and Lincoln vehicles. Now, the e-commerce giant is giving select Honda models access to Key by Amazon In-Car delivery, as well, so you can have your package dropped right inside your car wherever it is you’ve parked.
DarkCyber has heard that certain other models are supported in Europe.
There are some limitations, but the upside seems evident to Engadget’s expert:
While the HondaLink app itself is free, the Remote Services package will set you back $110 per year after a 3-month trial. Key by Amazon doesn’t cost anything on top of that, though, so it’s a nice perk if you’re already paying for the add-on.
Yes, a nice perk. Particularly if an authority watches the delivery person open a trunk long enough for the officer to peer inside.
Amazon Accused for Requiring Officers to “Shill” Rekognition
Vice seems unhappy with Amazon. The company provides a trial system so law enforcement can get some hands on (better yet, eyes on) time with the Rekognition imaging system. Vice points out: “Amazon Requires Police to Shill Surveillance Cameras in Secret Agreement.”
The write up states:
The Lakeland, Florida police department is required to “encourage adoption” of Ring products as part of a secret agreement with the company.
We noted:
Amazon is convincing people to self-surveil through aggressive, fear-based marketing, aided by de facto police endorsements and free Ring camera giveaways. Consumers are opting into surveillance. And police are more than eager to capitalize on this wealth of surveillance data. The result of Ring-police partnerships is a self-perpetuating surveillance network: More people download Neighbors, more people get Ring, surveillance footage proliferates, and police can request whatever they want.
China’s government has implemented this type of approach. In the US, Amazon appears to be providing a similar service to the government. DarkCyber is interested in this approach to generating data for the Bezos bulldozer’s policeware platform.
Now the “secret”. A contract is a document which may have terms and conditions. If Vice obtained such a document; therefore, the document is not secret. Or is it?
Partners / Resellers
- Brightloom uses AWS for its restaurant services business. Starbucks just signed up, not just for the service but for an ownership stake. Source: Forbes
- Equinix has increased the bandwidth of its AWS direct connections. Source: SDxCentral
- Sigma rolls out support for live debugging in its integrated development environment for AWS. Source: Yahoo
- Stackery streamlines AWS server development on local machines. Source: GeekWire
- Uptime has developed a single sign on service for AWS. Source: Yahoo
- Zendesk makes ASW customer support services more actionable. Source: Yahoo
Stephen E Arnold, July 29, 2019
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
