Amazonia for August 26, 2019
August 26, 2019
Amazon has been criticized in the last seven days. If anything, the scrutiny of the firm has increased. Examples include reactions to good news tweets from happy warehouse workers to stronger hints that government investigations are gathering steam. Other developments DarkCyber noted are:
Amazon AWS Crashes
DarkCyber spotted a report from FXStreet with the disconcerting headline: “The Amazon Web Services Crash Is Causing Havoc with Crypto Exchanges (Could Explain BitMex).” The write up presents this information:
AWS has crashed according to reports on twitter causing havoc at crypto currency exchanges.
Coindesk has chimed in, reporting that KuCoin is having problems.
If true, one might pose this question:
How reliable is Amazon AWS?
DarkCyber hypothesizes that the answer will be, “Good enough.” But is good enough good enough? DarkCyber is feeling Gnostic today.)
More Publishers Grousing, Squawking, and Releasing Legal Eagles
Reuters reported that top US publishers are suing Amazon Audible. The reason? Copyright infringement. The real news outfit reported:
Audible was sued by some of the top U.S. publishers for copyright infringement on Friday, aiming to block a planned rollout of a feature called ‘Audible Captions’ that shows the text on screen as a book is narrated.
The idea is that Amazon needs to obtain permission to display text on a screen. (Will some produce a motion picture channeling “Snakes on a Plane” with the title “Text on a Screen? The FBI agent could be played by Maya Mavgee maybe?)
Amazon Gives Up Control of It Site and Other Horrors
“Amazon Has Ceded Control of Its Site. The Result: Thousands of Banned, Unsafe or Mislabeled Products” has a serious allegation about the online bookstore. The pay walled story includes a nifty illustration. Here’s a snippet of the image:
Presumably the stuffed animals might harm you. The clock? Maybe it will chop off a child’s fingers. The flashlight? It could explode and remove your entire hand! The sticker? Oh, the sticker?
How many Amazon products are banned? Ars Technica says, “4,100” and references the Wall Street Journal.
The consequences are too horrible to contemplate. Amazon has to clean up its product offerings?
What would this product do to you?
The answer DarkCyber knows not.
PS. For a similar “Amazon is bad” write up. Check out the New York Times’ disclosure that the George Orwell you buy on Amazon may be a fake, rewritten, or some other dastardly bastardization of 1984 in 2019. Source: New York Times, complete with pay wall, begging for email address, etc. from a somewhat needy Gray Lady.
Amazon: Hard Sell at the Pentagon
ProPublica may be doing a type of journalism not practiced at the Washington Post. The nonprofit news out published “How Amazon and Silicon Valley Seduced the Pentagon.” The subtitle is a click magnet:
Tech moguls like Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt have gotten unprecedented access to the Pentagon. And one whistle blower who raised flags has paid the price.
When printed out, the article required 13 pages. Please navigate to the source document or one of the recycled versions of the story.
Several observations are warranted:
- Blowing the whistle on big wheels does not seem to be a career enhancing action. Just sayin’.
- The emphasis on Amazon is okay, but the real subject of the write up is the GOOG. But once Google fired the Department of Defense, changing the title was probably easier than beefing up the Amazon content.
- The Google may have been in a prime position to nab significant billions from the DoD. But quitting Project Maven, opening the door for Anduril Industries, and igniting a certain Silicon Valley big wheel to toss around suggestions of treason was significant.
There is juicy Amazon fruit in the write up. But the Google is front and center in this interesting company.
Will Amazon “win” the JEDI contract? DarkCyber is not sure. We hope it works better than the first delivered F 35 aircraft when JEDI leaves the launch pad. (No, we did not consult an “oracle” for this information.)
Amazon Enhances Australia
ZDNet published “What Amazon Web Services Security Certification Is Doing for Government.” The main idea is that the government of Australia is “now getting its hands on new technology.” DarkCyber learned:
When Amazon Web Services (AWS) achieved protected-level certification earlier this year, which meant it could provide storage for highly sensitive government workloads out of its AWS Asia Pacific region in Sydney, the company’s head of solution architecture Simon Elisha said it helped “unlock innovation” for the public sector.
Will similar benefits accrue to the US if Amazon wins the JEDI competition?
Also related to Australia: ZDNet reports that Amazon now offers a job placement service for Australian veterans. Good for Australian veterans, yes. The initiative appears to be part of Amazon’s effort to teach programmers how to make Amazon the world’s operating environment and know about Amazon’s hundreds of products, services, and functions.
Amazon: Big Revenue, Tiny Profits
The write up “Amazon’s Tiny Profits Explained.” We had a habit of napping in Econ 101 and just studying for the tests in Finance class. Amazon uses a range of techniques to keep profits down. There’s even a hockey stick and earthworm chart to show how the numbers have flower for a decade. Mr. Bezos worked on Wall Street, which may be something to keep in mind.
DarkCyber thinks it understands the profit method. The write up does not tackle a question DarkCyber finds more interesting; that is,
Why does Amazon pay low or no taxes?
The write up has an answer: Investment. We noted:
Amazon’s internal investments also keep its tax bill down, saving the company money. While we don’t know exactly what Amazon pays in taxes, various estimates suggest its rate is low thanks in part to its huge investments in its business. What we do know is that its taxes have provided plenty of fodder for presidential candidates like Joe Biden, who’s mentioned it on his campaign and on Twitter, and Elizabeth Warren, who included the company as an example in her new corporate tax proposal. President Donald Trump has also harangued the company for not paying enough in taxes. Amazon has responded that it’s simply paying what the government says it owes.
How skilled are Amazon’s finance and tax professionals? Skilled enough to keep Mr. Bezos happy.
Oh, Oh, Alexa: Dumber than Google?
We noted this write up by a relative of Debbie Downer called “The Results Are In: Alexa Is Legitimately Dumber than Siri and Google Assistant.” First off, DarkCyber would just say “Alexa is dumber than Siri and Google Assistant.” The legitimately and the results don’t add much. Alexa is dumb could be considered suitable as a headline as well.
The main point of the write up? Alexa is dumb.
We noted this statement:
The venture capital firm recently asked Amazon Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Google Assistant the same 800 questions. Google Assistant was the most successful of the bunch and was able to answer 93% of the questions correctly. In comparison, Siri was only able to get 83% of the questions right, and Alexa got 80%. Samsung’s Bixby and Microsoft’s Cortana, both lesser-used voice assistants, didn’t even make the cut.
I am not sure is I have much confidence in venture capital funded or completed research. The scores appear to fall within the range of competent smart software systems. Keep in mind that accuracy rates with 10 to 20 percent “wrong” answers is likely to make decisions generated by these wondrous numerical recipes wrong— a lot. If one of those questions pertains to the antidote required to save your child, are you going to rely on smart software or a trained physician?
Dumb, by the way, is relative. Identifying rotten tomatoes is different from identifying bad actors. But the name of the game today is “good enough.” That’s what these smart systems deliver. And you know what? That’s good enough, which is something Debbie Downer intuits.
A Vote of Not Much Confidence
The assumption that Amazon is the solution to a range of problems may be correct for some people. “Companies Should Disclose Amazon Web Services as Material Risk” reminds people that “Amazon’s hack prone cloud computing platform” is an issue. The negative paint daub is a reaction to the former AWS professional who breached security at Capital One and possibly more than 24 other companies. DarkCyber noted this statement in the report:
regardless of any potential SEC actions, shareholders should be demanding answers about AWS usage from companies already in their portfolio and those in which they are considering investing.
Amazon Forecast Available
Amazon has made its machine learning technology to the public. Amazon Forecast is a managed service which outputs forecasts. With the technology one can predict demand for products and services. The system also makes it possible to predict infrastructure requirements, energy demand, and similar variables; for example, allocation of police resources. Amazon Forecast produces private, custom models that can help developers make predictions that are up to 50% more accurate than traditional methods.Amazon Forecast automatically sets up a data pipeline, ingests data, trains a model, provides accuracy metrics, and performs forecasts. Amazon asserts that developers do not have to have any expertise in machine learning to use the service. More information is available at https://aws.amazon.com/forecast/. DarkCyber anticipates that as this product matures, its functions will be a direct competitive threat to Palantir Technologies, Recorded Future, and similar policeware and intelware vendors.
Amazon to Increase Staff in Portland
BizJournals reported that Amazon will add up to 400 new jobs in Portland, Oregon. This “real news” item is protected by a pay wall. But a free version with more information is available from MarketWatch at this link. Amazon has been a good corporate citizen. We learned:
The company has created more than 3,500 full-time jobs in Oregon since 2010 and invested over $9 billion in the state, including customer fulfillment facilities, cloud infrastructure, and compensation to its employees.
Amazon India
We reported that Amazon has been chugging toward India. The Amazon facility is, according to Reuters, “its biggest global campus.” Amazon India is growing fast and needs to expand in Hyderabad. How big?
The new campus in India, spread over 9.5 acres and costing “hundreds of millions of dollars”, will house over 15,000 employees, the company said. Amazon has 62,000 employees in India, roughly a third of whom are based in Hyderabad.
Portland’s 400 staff additions sends an interesting signal.
Move Over US Medical Database/Taxonomy Experts. AWS Is Now the Sheriff of This Here Domain
The individuals who build controlled vocabularies have embraced the term “metadata”. Goodbye, indexing. Jargon is better. Some of the people who build controlled term lists are into certain fields. Medical terminology is an example which keeps “Taxonomy in a Day” types at bay.
Who should create approved medical terminology? How about the National Institutes of Health?
Wrong.
The correct answer appears in “The ADHA Is Simplifying Its Clinical Terminology Database with AWS.” The ZDNet write up reports like a good “real news” outfit:
the ADHA has developed NCTS 2.0 to be more simplified by taking a serverless approach to the system to take advantage of the AWS shared responsibility model.
DarkCyber thinks that this is important, a harbinger, and an approach coming to America.
Defining terms frames reality. When reality is the AWS SageMaker system, there will be some downstream adjustments that individuals, indexers, and commercial health and database publishers will find interesting.
Change or die in the Amazon forest.
Amazon Bahrain Is Open and Training People
Get trained up or get left at the station. AWS is holding cloud training for Bahrain businesses. Why? you ask.
Trade Arabia states:
the new region adds to the already existing investment of infrastructure from Amazon in the Middle East with the already operational Amazon CloudFront edge locations in the cities Dubai, and Fujairah, in the United Arab Emirates.
Amazon AWS Inspires Third Party Hardware
We found “Renesas Electronics Enhanced RX65N WiFi Connectivity Cloud Kit Simplifies Secure IoT Endpoint Device Connections to Amazon Web Services” long winded. The main point is that Renesas built a card which includes on board support for Amazon FreeRTOS. Connection to AWS is, thus, easy. What else is on the device? Here’s a short list: Dual bank flash for over-the-air (OTA) firmware updates and Trusted Secure IP (TSIP). The cost? Just $50.
Amazon Supported Ignite: Farm to Consumer Start Up
All the Farms is a Web site that finds farms. The idea is that a person can locate fresh produce near one’s home. According to the Register Guard:
The US Ignite Startup Accelerator Program, partnered with Amazon Web Services, this year accepted 19 startups from across the country. Each was deemed a business-ready startup with a product that could help create “smart cities.”
Like Google, Amazon wants to spot high potential start ups. If some of those outfits need cloud technology, it is possible that the Bezos bulldozer could hook a needy outfit up to the megawatt outfit’s data center. Any connection to Whole Foods? The write up does not speculate.
Amazon and Blockchain
Amazon has announced that its Managed Blockchain is going to get cloud support through Amazon’s CloudFormation. The idea is that scaling will be easier. Source: FXStreet
Gaps in AWS Security? Your Problem
According to Forbes, the capitalist tool, yes. “The Truth About Privileged Access Security On AWS and Other Public Clouds” reveals that basic security services are provided but:
the free version often doesn’t go far enough to support PAM at the enterprise level. To AWS’s credit, they continue to invest in IAM features while fine-tuning how Config Rules in their IAM can create alerts using AWS Lambda. AWS’s native IAM can also integrate at the API level to HR systems and corporate directories, and suspend users who violate access privileges.
The write up points out:
- AWS can’t protect you
- Use the security model provided
- Use the AWS identity infrastructure
- You can go cross cloud with security.
How? It’s simple. Just assemble the parts shown in the figure below:
Remember how IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft would lock customers in? Amazon uses the same methods.
Partners/Resellers/Consultants
Amazon continues to gather third parties for a Bezos bulldozer ride. Examples are:
Academy Software Foundation. This outfit has snagged AWS as a premier member. Wait. Amazon has joined the movie industry outfit. Source: Newkerala
Druva. The data protection start up enables intelligent data storage on AWS. Source: Silicon Angle
Rockset. The company has released areal time SQL for Amazon’s DynamoDB. Source: MarketWatch
SoftServe. The consulting firm has expanded its relationship with Amazon. Source: Yahoo
Stackery. The serverless workflow software is now available on AWS. Apps can be managed from development to production. Source: Digital Journal
Wespac. The Little Ripper drone is now an Amazon partner.
Customers can now tap into near real time video streaming via the cloud. Anduril Industries, are you nervous? Source: Aero News Net
Stephen E Arnold, August 22, 2019
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