Amazon: So Many Great Ideas
April 1, 2025
AWS puts its customers first. Well, those who pay for the premium support plan, anyway. A thread on Reddit complains, "AWS Blocking Troubleshooting Docs Behind Paid Premium Support Plan." Redditor Certain_Dog1960 writes:
"When did AWS decide that troubleshooting docs/articles require you to have a paid premium support plan….like seriously who thought this was a good idea?"
Good question. The comments and the screenshot of Amazon’s message make clear that the company’s idea of how to support customers is different from actual customers’ thoughts. However, Certain_Dog posted an encouraging update:
"The paywall has been taken down!!! :)"
Apparently customer outrage still makes a difference. Occasionally.
Cynthia Murrell, March 31, 2025
Amazon Twitches: Love That Streaming, Dontcha?
March 28, 2025
Having a pervasive online presence is great for business, especially if you’re an influencer and you want endorsements. There’s also a dark side to being in the public eye and that comes in the form of anything from home invasions to death threats. Twitch star Amouranth’s home was burgled and she ended up being assaulted. Three more female Twitch stars were in the danger zone. The BBC reports that, “Twitch Creators ‘Taking Live Stream Death Threats Very Seriously.”
Twitch stars Emiru, China, and Valkyrae received death threats from a follower named Russell. He appeared on their stream from Pacific Park, Santa Monica. He threatened to unalive [sic] Emiru when she refused to share her contact information. The streamers reported the incident to Santa Monica police.
Emiru, China, and Valkyrae have millions of followers online. They went to Santa Monica, rode some rides, and then they were followed by a bad actor. When he asked for Emiru’s contact information, she refused and he made the threat. The streamers were scared, so they screamed and ran into a store.
Some watchers said the streamers staged the incident. Valkyrae responded:
‘Posting on X, she also said what happened demonstrates the ‘harsh reality women live in’ and hit out at online comments that it was staged to drive hits.
‘Seeing accounts accusing my friends and I for faking this and blaming us instead of questioning the man’s behaviour has been embarrassing to see.
‘I’ve learned it doesn’t matter how much I accomplish in this industry or how much I try to gain respect, some men will hate women and blame women no matter the situation.’
Emiru did not appear in the follow-up stream on Monday but posted on X afterwards.
‘I wish I could say this was some kind of one-in-a-million incident, but the truth is, it is not,’ she said. ‘This is what life is like for girls.
‘I hope if anything, people see what happened and realise how much of a reality it is for women and content creators as a whole.’”
It’s horrible that these high profile streamers were accosted, received death threats, and were also accused of staging. It demonstrates what women in the public eye are incredibly vulnerable.
Whitney Grace, March 28, 2025
Wizard Snarks Amazon: Does Amazon Care? Ho Ho No
March 13, 2025
Another post from the dinobaby. Alas, no smart software used for this essay.
I read a wonderful essay from the fellow who created a number of high-value solutions. Remember the Oxford English Dictionary SGML project or the Open Text Index? The person involved deeply in both of these projects is Tim Bray. He wrote a pretty good essay called “Bye, Prime.” On the surface it is a chatty explanation of why a former Amazon officer dropped the “Prime” membership. Thinking about the comments in the write up, Dr. Bray’s article underscores some deeper issues.
In my opinion, the significant points include:
First, 21st century capitalism lacks “ethics stuff.” The decisions benefit the stakeholders.
Second, in a major metropolitan area, local outlets provide equivalent products at competitive prices. This suggests a bit of price exploitation occurs in giant online retail operations.
Third, American companies are daubed with tar as a result of certain national postures.
Fourth, a crassness is evident in some US online services.
Is the article about Amazon? I would suggest that it is, but the implications are broader. I recommend the write up. I believe attending to the explicit and implicit messages in the essay would be useful.
I think the processes identified by Dr. Bray are unlikely to slow. Going back is difficult, perhaps impossible.
PS. I think fixing up the security of AWS buckets, getting the third party reseller scams cleaned up, and returning basic functionality to the Kindle interface are indications that Amazon has gotten lost in one of its warehouses because smart Alexa is really dumb.
Stephen E Arnold, March 13, 2025
Has Amazon Hit the Same Big Pothole As Apple?
February 27, 2025
This blog post is the work of a real-live dinobaby. No smart software involved.
Apple has experienced some growing pains with its Apple Intelligence. Incorrect news and assorted Siri weirdness indicated that designing a rectangle and laptop requires different skills from delivering a high impact, mass market smart software “solution.”
I know Apple is working overtime to come up with the next big thing. Will it be another me-too product? Probably. I liked the M1 chip, but subsequent generations have not done much to change my work flow or my happiness with my laptops and Mac Minis. I am okay with a cheap smart watch. I am okay with an old iPhone. I am okay with providing those who do work for me with a Mac laptop. Apple, however, is not a big player in smart software. In China, the company is embracing Chinese smart software. Hey, Apple wants to sell iPhones. Do what’s necessary is the basic approach to innovation in my opinion.
Has Amazon hit the same pothole as Apple? Surely the Bezos bulldozer can move forward with its powerful innovation machine. I am not so sure. I remember four years ago a project requiring my team to look at Amazon’s Sagemaker. That was an initiative to provide off-the-shelf technology and data sets to Amazon cloud customers who wanted smart software. Have you perceived Sagemaker as the big dog in AI? I don’t.
I read “Looks Like the Next-0Gen Alexa’s Release Is Hitting Another Speed Bump.” The write up suggests that the expensive kitchen timer and weather update device is not getting much smarter quickly. The article reports:
According to a tip from an unnamed Amazon employee, shared by the Washington Post (via Android Authority), the smarter Alexa update won’t be released until March 31. The holdup was apparently due to the upgraded assistant tripping over itself in testing, struggling to nail accurate answers. So, it seems like Amazon is taking extra time to fine-tune Alexa’s brain before letting it loose.
I am not too surprised. Amazon fiddles with the Kindle and the software for that device does not meet the needs of people who read numerous books. (Don’t you love those Amazon Kindle email addresses and the software that makes it a challenge to figure out which books are on the device, which are for sale, and which are in the Amazon cloud? Wonderful software for someone who does not read, just buys books.) The cloud AI initiative has not come close to the Chinese technological “strike” with the Deepseek system. Now the kitchen timer is delayed just like useful Apple Intelligence.
Let me share my hypotheses about why Amazon and I suppose I can include Apple in this mental human hallucination:
- Neither company has a next big thing. Both companies are in a me-too, me-too loop. That’s a common situation in a firm which gets big, has money, and loses its genius for everything except making as much money as possible. Innovation atrophy is my phrase for this characteristic of some companies.
- Throwing money at a problem does not create sparks of insight. The novel ideas are smothered under the flow of money that must be spent. This is a middle manager’s problem; specifically, effort is directed to spending the money, not coming up with a big idea that solves a problem and delights those people. Do you know what’s different about a new iPhone? Do you know which Amazon products are actually of good quality? I sure don’t. I ordered an AMD Ryzen CPU. Amazon shipped me red panties. My old iPhone asks me to log in every time I look at Telegram’s messages on the device. Really, panties and persistent log ins?
- General strategic drift. I am not sure what business Apple is in? Is it services like selling music? Is it hardware which is mostly indistinguishable from the hardware just replaced? Is Amazon a cloud computing outfit with leaky S3 storage constructs? Is it a seller of Temu-type products? Is it a delivery business unable to keep its delivery partners happy? The purpose of these firms is to acquire money. Period. The original Jobs and Bezos “razzmatazz” is gone.
Will the companies remediate the fundamental innovation issue? Nope. But both will make a lot of money. Beavers do what beavers do. No matter what. But beavers might be able to get Alexa to spin money, games to mostly work, and Twitch to make creators happy, not grumpy.
Stephen E Arnold, February 27, 2025
Acquiring AWS Credentials—Let Us Count the Ways
February 7, 2025
Will bad actors interested in poking around Amazon Web Services find the Wiz’s write up interesting? The answer is that the end of this blog post.
Cloud security firm Wiz shares an informative blog post: "The Many Ways to Obtain Credentials in AWS." It is a write-up that helps everyone: customers, Amazon, developers, cybersecurity workers, and even bad actors. We have not seen a similar write up about Telegram, however. Why publish such a guide to gaining IAM role and other AWS credentials? Why, to help guard against would- be hackers who might use these methods, of course.
Writer Scott Piper describes several services and features one might use to gain access: Certain AWS SDK credential providers; the Default Host Management Configuration; Systems Manager hybrid activation; the Internet of Things credentials provider; IAM Roles Anywhere; Cognito’s API, GetCredentialsForIdentity; and good old Datasync. The post concludes:
"There are many ways that compute services on AWS obtain their credentials and there are many features and services that have special credentials. This can result in a single EC2 having multiple IAM principals accessible from it. In order to detect attackers, we need to know the various ways they might attempt to obtain these credentials. This article has shown how this is not a simple problem and requires defenders to have just as much, if not more, expertise as attackers in credential access."
So true. Especially with handy cheat sheets like this one available online. Based in New York, New York, Wiz was founded in 2020.
Will bad actors find the Wiz’s post interesting? Answer: Yes but probably less interesting than a certain companion of Mr. Bezos’ fashion sense. But not by much.
Cynthia Murrell, February 7, 2025
Amazon Twitch: Losing Social Traction of the Bezos Bulldozer
February 5, 2025
Twitch is an online streaming platform primarily used by gamers to stream their play seasons and interact with their fanbase. There hasn’t been much news about Twitch in recent months and it could be die to declining viewership. Tube Filter dives into the details with “Is Twitch Viewership At Its Lowest Point In Four Years?”
The article explains that Twitch had a total of 1.58 billion watch time hours in December 2024. This was its lowest month in four years according to Stream Charts. Twitch, however, did have a small increase in new streamers joining the platform and the amount of channels live at one time. Stream Charts did mention that December is a slow month due to the holiday season. Twitch is dealing with dire financial straits and made users upset when it used AI to make emotes.
Here are some numbers:
“In both October and November 2024, around 89,000 channels on average would be live on Twitch at any one time. In December, that figure pushed up to 92,392. Twitch also saw a bump in the overall number of active channels from 4,490,725 in November to 4,777,395 in December—a 6% increase. Streams Charts notes that all these streamers broadcasted a more diverse range of content of content than usual. “[I]t’s important to note that other key metrics for both viewer and streamer activity remain strong,” it wrote in a report about December’s viewership. “A positive takeaway from December was the variety of content on offer. Streamers broadcasted in 43,200 different categories, the highest figure of the year, second only to March.”
Twitch is also courting TikTok creators in case the US federal government bans the short video streaming platform. The platform has offerings that streamers want, but it needs to do more to attract more viewers. Changes have caused some viewers to pine for the days of Amouranth in her inflated kiddie pool, the extremely sensitive Kira, and the good old days of iBabyRainbow. Some even miss the live streaming gambling at home events.
Now what Amazon? Longer pre-roll advertisements? More opaque content guidelines? A restriction on fashion shows?
Whitney Grace, February 5, 2025
Amazon: Twitch Is Looking a Bit Lame
January 24, 2025
Are those 30-second ads driving away viewers? Are the bans working to alienate creators and their fans? Is Amazon going to innovate in streaming?
These are questions Amazon needs to answer in a way that is novel and actually works.
Twitch is an online streaming platform primarily used by gamers to stream their play seasons and interact with their fanbase. There hasn’t been much news about Twitch in recent months and it could be die to declining viewership. Tube Filter dives into the details with “Is Twitch Viewership At Its Lowest Point In Four Years?”
The article explains that Twitch had a total of 1.58 billion watch time hours in December 2024. This was its lowest month in four years according to Stream Charts. Twitch, however, did have a small increase in new streamers joining the platform and the amount of channels live at one time. Stream Charts did mention that December is a slow month due to the holiday season. Twitch is dealing with dire financial straits and made users upset when it used AI to make emotes.
Here are some numbers:
“In both October and November 2024, around 89,000 channels on average would be live on Twitch at any one time. In December, that figure pushed up to 92,392. Twitch also saw a bump in the overall number of active channels from 4,490,725 in November to 4,777,395 in December—a 6% increase. [I]t’s important to note that other key metrics for both viewer and streamer activity remain strong,” it wrote in a report about December’s viewership. “A positive takeaway from December was the variety of content on offer. Streamers broadcasted in 43,200 different categories, the highest figure of the year, second only to March.”
Streams Charts notes that all these streamers broadcasted a more diverse range of content of content than usual.
Twitch is also courting TikTok creators in case the US federal government bans the short video streaming platform. The platform has offerings that streamers want, but it needs to do more to attract more viewers.
Whitney Grace, January 24, 2025
AWS and AI: Aw, Of Course
January 21, 2025
Mat Garman Interview Reveals AWS Perspective on AI
It should be no surprise that AWS is going all in on Artificial Intelligence. Will Amazon become an AI winner? Sure, if it keeps those managing the company’s third-party reseller program away from AWS. Nilay Patel, The Verge‘s Editor-in Chief, interviewed AWS head Matt Garmon. He explains “Why CEO Matt Garman Is Willing to Bet AWS on AI.” Patel writes:
“Matt has a really interesting perspective for that kind of conversation since he’s been at AWS for 20 years — he started at Amazon as an intern and was AWS’s original product manager. He’s now the third CEO in just five years, and I really wanted to understand his broad view of both AWS and where it sits inside an industry that he had a pivotal role in creating. … Matt’s perspective on AI as a technology and a business is refreshingly distinct from his peers, including those more incentivized to hype up the capabilities of AI models and chatbots. I really pushed Matt about Sam Altman’s claim that we’re close to AGI and on the precipice of machines that can do tasks any human could do. I also wanted to know when any of this is going to start returning — or even justifying — the tens of billions of dollars of investments going into it. His answers on both subjects were pretty candid, and it’s clear Matt and Amazon are far more focused on how AI technology turns into real products and services that customers want to use and less about what Matt calls ‘puffery in the press.'”
What a noble stance within a sea of AI hype. The interview touches on topics like AWS’ domination of streaming delivery, its partnerships with telco companies, and problems of scale as it continues to balloon. Garmon also compares the shift to AI to the shift from typewriters to computers. See the write-up for more of their conversation.
Cynthia Murrell, January 21, 2025
Amazon Embodies Modern Management: Efficient, Effective, Encouraging
January 16, 2025
A dinobaby-crafted post. I confess. I used smart software to create the heart wrenching scene of a farmer facing a tough 2025.
I don’t know if this write up is spot on, but I loved it. Navigate to “Amazon Worker – Struck and Shot in New Orleans Terror Attack – Initially Denied Time Off.” If the link is dead, complain to MSFT, please. (Perhaps the headline tells the tale?) The article pointed out:
Alexis Scott-Windham was celebrating the New Year with friends on Bourbon Street when a pickup truck mounted the sidewalk and rammed a crowd shortly after 3 am local time. She was treated in hospital after the back of her right foot was run over by the vehicle, and she was also shot in the foot. The bullet remains in her limb while doctors work out the best course of action to remove it while she recovers at home. The regional Times-Picayune newspaper interviewed Scott-Windham, who revealed she had been denied medical leave by the Amazon warehouse where she works for a medical checkup in two weeks’ time. The mother feared if she was absent from work for that appointment, she would lose her job.
Several observations are warranted:
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Struck means that the vehicle hit her. That would probably test the situational awareness of a Delta Force operator walking with pals to the Green Beans.
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Shot. Now when a person is shot, there is the wound itself. However, the shock and subsequent pain are to some annoying. I knew a person who flinched each time a sharp sound interrupted a conversation. That individual, who received a military award for bravery, told me, “Just a reflex.” Sure. Reflex. Hard wired decades after the incident in the Vietnam “conflict.”
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Fear of being fired for injuries incurred in a terrorist incident. That’s a nifty way to motivate employees to do their best and trust an organization.
Herewith, the dinobaby award for outstanding management goes to the real or virtual individual who informed the person injured in the terrorist attack the Outstanding Management insignia. Wear it proudly. When terminating people, the insignia is known to blink in Morse code, “Amazon is wonderful.”
Stephen E Arnold, January 16, 2025
Amazon Offers to Fight Crime, Not on Its Platform But in the District of Columbia No Less
December 10, 2024
This blog is created by a dinobaby and his helpers who are neither AI nor dinobabies. If there is fancy art, please, assume that smart software contributed. Dinobabies can barely think let alone draw.
Amazon has been busy explaining how its smart software will make Alexa Live Again! Meanwhile some legal eagles have been dropping documents on the digital bookstore and its happy, happy employees and contractors. This news reached me via the for-sale outfit CNBC, a talking heads program on “real” TV. “Amazon Sued by DC Attorney General for Allegedly Excluding Neighborhoods from Prime Delivery” reports what may be obvious to anyone who has worked in the District of Columbia or gone for a late night walk alone on a hot summer evening in some interesting parts of the District. Oh, the slogan for the DC entity is “Taxation without Representation.”
Senior professionals for a high-technology company reach consensus. The giant firm will help law enforcement address certain issues. Thanks, MidJourney. Good enough.
The CNBC story says:
Washington, D.C.’s attorney general sued Amazon on Wednesday [yep, CNBC, that was December 4, 2024], accusing the company of covertly depriving residents in certain ZIP codes in the nation’s capital from access to Prime’s high-speed delivery. The lawsuit from AG Brian Schwalb alleges that, since 2022, Amazon has “secretly excluded” two “historically underserved” D.C. ZIP codes from its expedited delivery service while charging Prime members living there the full subscription price. Amazon’s Prime membership program costs $139 a year and includes perks like two-day shipping and access to streaming content.
The idea is that a DC resident pays $139 a year to get “Prime” treatment only to get the shaft; that is, no delivery for you, pilgrim.
Amazon took time out from its Alexa Lives Again! activities to issue a statement. According to the “real” news source a really happy Amazon professional allegedly said:
Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel said in a statement it’s “categorically false” that its business practices are “discriminatory or deceptive.” “We want to be able to deliver as fast as we possibly can to every zip code across the country, however, at the same time we must put the safety of delivery drivers first,” Nantel said in a statement. “In the zip codes in question, there have been specific and targeted acts against drivers delivering Amazon packages. We made the deliberate choice to adjust our operations, including delivery routes and times, for the sole reason of protecting the safety of drivers.” Nantel said Amazon has offered to work with the AG’s office on efforts “to reduce crime and improve safety in these areas.”
I like the idea of a high technology outfit trying to reduce crime. I have been the victim of Amazon fraud. I like to mention the women’s underwear shipped to me instead of the $600 Ryzen CPU I ordered. A more recent example was Amazon’s emailing me a picture of a stranger’s door with the message, “Your package has been delivered.” I spent about an hour trying to get a human to address the issue. The response, I think, was we will credit you for the order. When? How? Sorry, I have no idea because the happy Amazon professional based in a third party customer service facility had no clue. I am thinking, “Why doesn’t Amazon do something about the fraud on its own platform?”
I personally have zero confidence that Amazon can address such issues in the District of Columbia. It is known to one resident — my son, who lives in the District — has observed porch pirates following Amazon delivery vans. As soon as the package is left, the porch pirate exits the chase vehicle and takes the package. The fix ranges from designated pick up points in certain vulnerable areas of the District to having a security team follow the porch pirates on their rental scooters, Teslas, and other vehicles. Of course, the alternative is to go to a store like REI in the District of Columbia, shop, and return home. (Oh, sorry, I forgot that Amazon’s business practices have contributed to the demise of brick and mortar retail. Oh, well. It was just a dinobaby thought.)
This will be an interesting legal case to follow. Porch pirates follow Amazon delivery vehicles and prove the value of paying attention.
Stephen E Arnold, December 10, 2024
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