Funding Open Source: Saddle Up, Don Quixotes
July 30, 2020
I read “A New Funding Model for Open Source Software.” The main idea is that the current approach to financial “support” of open source software is broken. I agree, particularly if one looks at the problem from the developer or developers in the “community.”
The fix, according to the write up, is “sponsor pools.” Here are the details:
Every month, you donate some amount into a “wallet”. Your funds are then distributed to the projects in your “sponsor pool”. Your sponsor pool is just the set of open-source projects you want to support. Adding new projects to your pool should require one click — as easy as starring the repo on GitHub. That’s it. It’s hardly ingenious, which is why it’s surprising that no major player in OSS has implemented it for facilitating open source donations.
The comments to the post at this link are interesting and raise a number of points, both pro and con.
I noticed that none of the comments pointed out that open source has become the hunting ground for certain large technology companies. Github is owned by Microsoft; Amazon is ferrying open source code into its proprietary AWS walled garden; Google is “contributing to the community” and then using the community as a recruiting supply line. Other techniques are in play as well.
Also, open source is more attractive to large established companies. These firms have the staff and financial resources to make chunks of open source play nicely together. The goal is to eliminate dependence on proprietary solutions, restrictive license agreements, and those necessary maintenance and engineering services deals. Smaller outfits often find Microsoft a convenient way to solve a database problem. Why? It’s available and semi-reliable. Keep in mind that Microsoft bought Github for control and revenue opportunities.
Finally, a number of the comments suggest, “Let Github do it.” Yeah, I really think Microsoft has open source software love as a business motivation. But that’s just my view.
My view is that open source, like other nifty things associated with the “old days” of the Internet may be facing some challenges and not just from Rona.
Stephen E Arnold, July 30, 2020
Oracle and Blockchain
July 28, 2020
Amidst the angst about US big technology companies, Rona, and Intel’s management floundering, Oracle blockchain is easy to overlook. “Oracle Updates Blockchain Platform Cloud Service.” The title alone invokes the image of Amazon’s blockchain platform and its associated moving parts.
The write up focuses on Oracle as if the Amazon and other options do not exist. But the parallels with Amazon’s blockchain services are clearly articulated. The article reports:
Blockchain Platform Cloud Service features stronger access controls for sharing confidential information, greater decentralization capabilities for blockchain consortiums, and stronger audibility when rich history database feature is used in conjunction with Oracle Database Blockchain Tables.
Even more Amazon envy seems to have influenced this “new” feature:
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Availability Domains (and in the regions with a single Availability Domain, three Fault Domains) to provide stronger resilience and recoverability, with the SLA for the Enterprise SKUs of at least 99.95%.
The line up of services strikes me as having been developed after reading Amazon’s blockchain documentation; for example:
- On demand storage
- Spiffed up access controls
- Workflow functions.
There is one difference, however. It appears that Oracle wants to tackle Amazon blockchain at a weak point: Price. Oracle is not likely to be significantly cheaper than AWS blockchain. Oracle wants to make its pricing more or less understandable to a prospect.
Will clarity allow Oracle to compete with Amazon blockchain?
After losing Amazon as a customer and watching the online book store pump out blockchain inventions for several years, Oracle hopes its approach will prevail or at least catch up with the Bezos bulldozer.
Stephen E Arnold, July 28, 2020
Alleged Business Practices of the Rich and Worshipped or Ethics R Us
July 28, 2020
DarkCyber spotted two separate stories which address a common theme. The write ups are “new age” news, so allegations, speculation, and political perspectives infuse the words used in each of these. Nevertheless, both write ups merit noting because two points are useful when a trend line may lurk in the slope between the dots.
The first article is “Google Spying on Users’ Data to Learn How Rival Apps Work: Report.” The article asserts:
Google is reportedly keeping tabs to how its users interact with rival Android apps, selectively monitoring how the users interact with non-Google apps via an internal program to make its own products better.
The article jumps to Google’s unique ability to see lots of data from its privileged position of being involved in each facet of certain markets: Channel, partner, vendor, developer, and customer. The operative word in the title is “spying,” but the issue is ethical and socially responsible behavior. Some science club members want access to the good stuff in the electronics supply door. Hey, cool.
The second write up is about everyone’s favorite online retailer, cloud vendor, and services firm. DarkCyber thinks the logo of Amazon should be the Bezos bulldozer. It landscapes the way it wants. “Amazon Reportedly Invested in Startups and Gained Proprietary Information before Launching Competitors, Often Crushing the Smaller Companies in the Process” is one of those stories whose title is the story. We noted this passage in the write up as additive:
Amazon met with or invested in their companies, only to later build its own products that directly competed with the smaller company.
Let’s assume that these write ups are mostly accurate. The behaviors are untoward because those duped, bilked, fooled, or swindled assumed that those across the table were playing with an unmarked deck and wanted an honest game.
DarkCyber sees the behavior as similar to a “land grab.” As long as there is minimal anti monopoly enforcement and essentially zero consequences in a legal process, the companies identified in these write ups can do what they want. DarkCyber thinks that the behaviors are institutionalizes; that is, even with changes in senior management and regulatory oversight, the organizations will, like a giant autonomous mine truck, just keep rolling forward. When the truck rolls over a worker, collateral damage. That’s how life works in the gee whiz world of high technology.
Stephen E Arnold, July 28, 2020
A Twitch Tale: Modern Life, a Debit Card, and Cluelessness
July 21, 2020
DarkCyber spotted an item in one of our feeds because the word “fraud” appeared in the document. The content object was “Teenager Takes $20,000 of Parents’ Money, Gives It to Twitch Streamers.” The write up explains:
the minor spent years of savings in just 17 days using a debit card. The boy paid for subscriptions, which can go as high as $24.99 per month, bought Bits—virtual goods used to Cheer in chat messages—and made uncapped donations to various streamers. Speaker to Dot Esports, the mother said that $19,870.94 was charged to a debit card between June 14 and 30.
Banks view this type of activity as a type of chargeback fraud. A consumer makes a purchase and then requests a chargeback after receiving the product or service.
One question is, “What about those parents?” Another is, “Should Twitch have a more fine grained system in place to prevent those under a certain age from spending above a threshold?”
The Twitch question could be answered with an algorithm or a simple rule based system. The gain for the Twitchers who received some financial love from a follower is good news… for them. For the parents, bad news. Perhaps the alleged adults should look into the concept of a pre-paid debit card with a hard limit? For now, it is hasta la vista $20K. For the teen? Probably back online and absorbing video streams.
And Amazon Twitch? Just another day of “good enough” safeguards for users, their parents, and talent formerly known as Dr. Disrespect, whose name has a certain je ne sais quoi.
Stephen E Arnold, July 21, 2020
Amazon Product Fulfillment in a Post Brexit World: Red Tape, Higher Costs, and Smaller Markets for Some Sellers
July 20, 2020
You are a merchant. Let’s say you import products from countries in the orbit of Hong Kong, Singapore, and Bangkok. The goods arrive, and you trundle them off to an Amazon Fulfillment Center or AFC, which is part of the Fulfillment by Amazon subsystem. This is called FBA.
Amazon has a big fulfillment operation in the UK. Who doesn’t like those Thursday trips to London, a day of meetings, and then the post Covid thrill of looking at pigeons in Trafalgar Square? Home in time for Monday meetings too.
Nope. The Bezos bulldozer is changing in order to adapt to what looks like Brexit and some UK – EU tensions. (Alternatively the Amazon managers are testing how to go about breaking “stuff” up. A dry run, maybe like the Twitter security probe by alleged script kiddies?)
The Amazon announcement appears in Tamebay in an article called with remarkable sonorousness “Amazon FBA Brexit Bombshell – EFN and Pan-European FBA ends for UK.” Those lucky British Amazon sellers get a smaller market as a bonus: 60 million versus 400 million in round numbers.
I mention the write up because it looks at an Amazon wiggle through a quite narrow lens. Even the Ripper drone takes a broader view of surveilled actions.
This mindset may be useful when assessing the FBA EFN acronym fiesta.
Stephen E Arnold, July 20, 2020
Amazon: We Love the Cheery Smile, But Does It Have a Darker Meaning?
July 13, 2020
Who needs the Dark Web when one has Amazon? The Markup reveals, “Amazon’s Enforcement Failures Leave Open a Back Door to Banned Goods—Some Sold and Shipped by Amazon Itself.” Investigators at The Markup began combing the site for banned goods after a series of deaths and illnesses attributed to one counterfeit pill maker. The fake-Percocet maker, now in prison, revealed he’d bought his pill press right off Amazon. The journalists were dismayed to find nearly 100 dangerous and/or illegal items readily available on the site. All of these products are explicitly banned in Amazon’s third-party seller rules and prohibitions for the U.S. market. Reporters Annie Gilbertson and Jon Keegan write:
“The Markup filled a shopping cart with a bounty of banned items: marijuana bongs, ‘dab kits’ used to inhale cannabis concentrates, ‘crackers’ that can be used to get high on nitrous oxide, and compounds that reviews showed were used as injectable drugs. We found two pill presses and a die used to shape tablets into a Transformers logo, which is among the characters that have been found imprinted on club drugs such as ecstasy. We found listings for prohibited tools for picking locks and jimmying open car doors. And we found AR-15 gun parts and accessories that Amazon specifically bans. Almost three dozen listings for banned items were sold by third parties but available to ship from Amazon’s own warehouses. At least four were listed as ‘Amazon’s Choice.’ The phrase ‘ships from and sold by Amazon.com’ appeared beneath the buy button of five of the banned items we found, which two former employees confirmed means those products are, in fact, sold by Amazon. In addition, one of the sellers we were able to reach also confirmed it sold the items to Amazon.”
Of course, “Amazon’s choices” are often chosen by algorithm, which is part of the problem. The site does have a process for finding and removing banned products, but the human reviewers cannot keep up with the onslaught of third-party uploads. The journalists found several products that evaded detection by being listed as something they are not—like the AR-15 vise block masquerading as a desk accessory, complete with paperclips and pencil erasers in the image. Other items simply avoid telltale keywords, but are plain as day to anyone who views the listing. It is apparent even the algorithm has a clue because it frequently recommends items related to the product at hand. See the article for more examples.
What will Amazon do about this alarming issue? Well, if we take spokesperson Patrick Graham’s responses as a guide, the answer is it will downplay the problem. Seems about right.
Cynthia Murrell, July 13, 2020
Amzon AWS Cost Control Insights
June 29, 2020
Amazon’s AWS is a fascinating business case. On one hand, AWS reduces some of the hurdles to modern solution development. On the other hand, it is easy — even for an experienced Certified AWS expert — to forget what’s running, whether a particular service is unnecessary, or what processes are tucked into the corner of Jeff Bezos’ profit making machine. “Our AWS Bill is ~ 2% of revenue. Here’s How We Did It” provides a run down of the money gobblers and provides some helpful guidance. There are screenshots in the Gulf racing colors of orange and blue. There are explanations. Plus, there are useful insights; for example:
Our application is a Shopify app and during the process of building the application we created a Shopify store. Every Shopify store gets its own personal CDN where you can manually upload anything and it will be served over the Shopify CDN. So we minified and uploaded our JS file to the CDN of our Shopify store and now we serve 20000 Shopify stores using this method at zero cost.
One problem: There are more ways for Mr. Bezos to suck cash from eager and willing customers than helpful explanations of how to keep expenses low.
Stephen E Arnold, June 29, 2020
Amazon: Nosing into Telco Land
June 25, 2020
Amazon wants to expand into Asia, but they are avoiding the Chinese hot market and concentrating on India. India’s Zee News explains, “Amazon In Initial Talks To Buy $2 Billion Stake In Bharti Airtel” and Amazon would then own a 5% stake in the company. It would also augment India’s third largest telecommunication company and give them more power to compete against its rivals.
The five percent stake is not the only option Amazon has considered. They also spoke with Bharti Airtel about deals that included stakes worth between 8-10%. Nothing is definitive yet because the deal is in the preliminary stages:
“The talks between Bharti and Amazon are at an early stage and the deal terms could change, or an agreement may not be reached, said two of the three people, all of whom declined to be identified because the discussions are confidential. If talks to buy a stake fail, the companies could also look at a commercial transaction that could give Bharti`s customers cheap access to Amazon products, one of the people said.”
Nothing else is known about the suspected plans, but Bharti Airtel shares rose based on them. While China remains in hot water because of COVID-19, India has come more into focus for technology development. There has always been interest in India, but the subcontinent remains fairly neutral compared to its northern neighbor.
Whitney Grace, June 24, 2020
Cloud Pricing: Humor and Insight
June 22, 2020
We are putting the finishing touches on my Amazon Policeware lecture for the upcoming cyber crime conference. This particular talk has to be pre recorded. Why? Not sure, but creating a program is more difficult than lecturing from a stack of note cards.
I do include a brief reference to cloud pricing. I think there are some important truths in Amazon AWS pricing with regard to the company’s reinvention and reapplication of IBM’s old-school lock in strategy.
The write up “The Three Fs of Cloud Pricing” presents one facet of the Bezos bulldozer’s approach to policeware vendors and ultimate customers. Based on my DarkCyber team’s research, drgriffin is putting horseshoes on the iron stake.
If you have a “stake” in AWS cloud technology as a partner, ultimate customer, start up AWS user, or any of the other category of players in the Amazon forest, you will find the drgriffin write up information.
Here’s a snippet, but read the original, please:
Allowing people to play with the product for free was good for customers. But it was even better for cloud adoption. The free tier was part of their strategy of selling IT infrastructure directly, without having to go through finance and executives.
Remember that Google sought to circumvent information technology professionals. The attitude was, “You are a problme, and if you were any good, you would work at Google. Since you are NOT at Google, therefore, you are useless.”
Amazon, to cite one example, has taken a different approach; that is, the free tier. Don’t contraband vendors use a similar tactic?
Stephen E Arnold, June 22, 2020
Amazon: Bombay Gin? For Sure
June 21, 2020
The trustworthy outfit with trust principles published “Amazon Signals Entry into alcohol Delivery in India with Nod in Key State.” The title had the words “exclusive” and “document”, but the main point seemed diluted.
Amazon is allegedly going to deliver alcohol in West Bengal.
Why?
Money.
The write up points out that Amazon competitors are delivering liquor.
Interesting item of Amazonia.
Stephen E Arnold, June 21, 2020
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