Amazonia for August 12, 2019
August 12, 2019
The crushed shrubs and small trees indicate that the Bezos bulldozer rolled through the digital landscape last week. Let’s look at some of the maneuvers the massive crawlers executed.
Amazon Facial Recognition Accuracy
One of the more important reports which appeared last week was “Which Company Does the Best Job at Image Recognition? Microsoft, Amazon, Google, or IBM?” The story, according to one DarkCyber researcher, seemed to be a public relations play. Keep that in mind because the data in the write up are provided without meeting DarkCyber’s factuality scratch test. A sample size of 500 images is unlikely to represent image type (full profile, side view, close up, distance, etc.), different nationalities, lighting conditions, image resolution, and other variables necessary to have confidence in a facial recognition analysis.
The analysis considered four recognition systems: Amazon Rekognition, Google Vision, IBM Watson, and Microsoft Azure (the current name but that can change at any time).
The loser was IBM Watson. DarkCyber found that amusing. Of the three in the race, the winner was — wait for it — Google Vision. Amazon came in second with 77.7 percent “accuracy.” The Orlando Police Department is unlikely to reverse their decision about the Rekognition system. The department appears to have waved goodbye to Rekognition. Microsoft came in “second.”
Here’s the scorecard for the super scientific analysis:
One minor point: The context of studies is important. Sample size and other aspects of “context” make a difference. But IBM Watson?
Reseller Agreement Scrutiny
The US government put its pedal to the metal regarding the dominant positions of some high flying US companies. One of these is Amazon./ According to the Verge (which presents the best podcast in the galaxy), Amazon’s reseller deal with Apple is in the spotlight. The Verge reported:
The deal was first announced last fall, ostensibly as a way for Apple to sell on Amazon in an official capacity and cut down on counterfeit or misleadingly marketed products. However, it had the effect of kicking off hundreds of legitimate sellers that were offering low-cost and refurbished Apple products that were no longer for sale by the company itself.
DarkCyber believes that Amazon and Apple may find themselves making more trips to Washington, DC, in the coming months. The investigation comes at a delicate time in the JEDI procurement process. Amazon might lose out to Microsoft, which has some experience in the antitrust arena.
Arrogance and thinking a company is bigger than a government might prove to be an issue. “Senator Wyden Wants Answers from Amazon on Capital One Hack” wants to understand Amazon AWS’s role (or lack of it) in the Capital One data breach. DarkCyber wonders how long Amazon can “just provide a utility service”, leaving the licensees to figure out how to configure, manage, and secure what is the very complex Amazon Web Services “platform.” A wrong answer might have an impact on the $10 billion JEDI contract award. Will Amazon’s “feet on the street” be called on to testify? DarkCyber hopes so.
Amazon and Blockchain
Coverage of Amazon’s digital currency initiatives has been sparse. In our lectures about Amazon’s policeware, the idea of deanonymizing transactions does not compute. Amazon sells eBooks and T shirts, right? DarkCyber noted this story: “Amazon Hints at Putting Advertising Data on a New Blockchain.” The write up states:
The online retailer is looking for a senior software engineer to work in its “Advertising FinTech team focused on a blockchain ledger,” the job listing reads.
DarkCyber finds this interesting. Is there a connection among Amazon’s Ethereum efforts, policeware, and a financial blockchain? Of course not. Amazon sells can openers and customer surveillance devices. No connections.
AWS As an Attack Platform
DarkCyber noted “Phishing Attacks Enlist Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure in Ploys.” The write up stated:
Recent phishing campaigns have been spotted boosting their anti-detection efforts by using Amazon Web Services to host their landing pages. It’s a sign of a nascent trend towards using public cloud storage, according to researchers.
The cyber security firm Proofpoint may have been the first company to go public with this information.
DarkCyber finds this interesting and “old news.” More information about bad actors’ possible leveraging of the sprawling AWS platform is presented in our for fee lecture “Amazon’s Policeware Platform.”
If this open source write up is accurate, there may be more information released in the near future by “real news” organizations.
AWS and Azure: Alleged Hosts for Ploys
A “ploy” is a nice way of saying malware, scams, and other interesting cyber applications. “Phishing Attacks Enlist Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure in Ploys” amplifies the Proofpoint message.
Does Amazon Think Some People Are Stupid?
I read “AWS VP: Old Fashioned Resellers Didn’t Truly Understand Cloud.” I am not sure if the person writing this headline paid attention to his or her fourth grade teacher. One of the DarkCyber research team knew a person whose report card conveyed this hand written message to the child’s parents:
Your child did not understand the concept of exploration and Columbus’ discovery of America.
The write up reports that either the AWS executive or the author of the article is a trifle undiplomatic or politically insensitive.
I noted this passage:
“A lot of the old-fashioned resellers didn’t truly understand cloud,” McCann [an Amazon executive] told CRN in a sit-down last week at the Amazon Spheres, on the technology giant’s headquarters campus in Seattle. “Right now…they’re all learning cloud at high speed.” McCann has been overseeing AWS Marketplace, AWS’ digital catalog of software offerings from some 1,400 independent software vendors (ISVs), since late 2014.
The resellers — at least some of the bright ones — are getting on the Bezos bulldozer.
“Stay abreast,” enjoins Dave McCann, VP of AWS Market Place. DarkCyber is not sure it can measure up to the lofty standards of a company engaged in such delightful and engaging suggestions.
Plus, the write up reports that the “channel” wants services on the AWS Marketplace. Plus people want to sell software on AWS. And Amazon’s consulting partner business is performing. Amazon is poised to roll out a consulting and services business too. Will Amazon go after the ethically challenged blue-chip and mid-tier consulting firms? Perhaps there is a GLG play in the wings too.
The write up ends with another, almost parental warning:
Channel partners trying to stay abreast of new cloud computing technologies should be boning up on machine learning, the internet of things, containers and serverless, according to McCann.
Well, get with the program and try harder. Ah, the promise of an Amazon echoing with the growl of the Bezos bulldozer drivers.
Is there a detention hall if someone does not “stay abreast”?
Amazon and Child Labor
There many ways to become rich. One of them is to seek out low cost labor. Has Amazon followed this path? DarkCyber does not know. IBI Times published “Amazon to Investigate Child Labour Claims Against China Supplier.” Yep, China. I thought there were some tensions between the US and China. It will be interesting to see how an investigation moves along within the interesting Chinese judicial system. The write up asserts:
Tech giant Amazon will investigate its Chinese supplier Foxconn after reports suggested that it resorted to child labor by hiring schoolchildren and forced them into night shifts and overtime work to meet production targets. The school children were inducted in production lines that were making Amazon Alexa devices including smart speakers. The teenagers worked at overtime and night shifts to attain production quotas for Amazon’s Echo, Echo Dot, and Kindle products.
If Foxconn hired kids to build Amazon gizmos, will Amazon be responsible? Probably not. Think in terms of security and AWS responsibility for a licensee’s technical ineptitude.
Moving production is an option, but won’t the same issue arise in other countries where “low cost” labor supports the US consumer thirst for disposable and frequently outmoded gadgets.
DarkCyber has a question, which is probably not important. It is: Will an Amazon investigation work in the manner of the Boeing safety review?
Worth monitoring.
Ah, the Baltics
Amazon may be heading to the Baltic states. “Report: Amazon Mulls Baltic State AWS Expansion” states:
Amazon has registered subsidiaries in Latvia and Estonia called Amazon Data Services Latvia and ADS Estonia, respectively, suggesting that it could be planning a dedicated cloud region for the Baltic states. While Amazon Web Services regions are spread across the world, the current closest facility to the Baltic states are AWS data centers in Stockholm, Sweden.
Latvia and Estonia are close to Russia. What if Russian companies operating via fronts sign up to do business with AWS? What if the interesting Estonian Russian community leverages the AWS infrastructure for selling gold and providing other services to a third party?
Like the US government, perhaps some of the government agencies in Russia would find ways to leverage Amazon AWS resources. An office in Tallinn’s old town might make it easier to interact with some of the more entrepreneurial Russians who live in the city.
TechRepublic provides some possibly accurate information in “Russian Phishing Campaign Using AWS to Host Landing Pages Designed to Avoid Detection.”
Amazon Earnings: Good or Bad?
DarkCyber does not provide financial or investment advice. We did note the Investor Place write up “This Earnings Disappointment Is Another Chance to Buy Amazon Stock.” The key word is “disappointment.” The write up states as “real news”:
Despite 20% growth in sales year-over-year, earnings failed to meet consensus. While operating income was within guidance, the company missed consensus earnings per share of $5.54 by $0.32. Despite this short-term stumble, Amazon.com Inc. continues to be a cash-generating machine.
Those money people can find a way to turn lemonade into lemons. But there was a ray of sunshine peaking through the dark, threatening clouds:
The company’s operating cash flow for the trailing twelve months is up 65% from the prior year. Long-term, Amazon has the dry powder to fund their continued domination of e-commerce (and beyond).
And how did the “disappointment” affect the bulldozer’s chief driver? Check out the “Cashing In” item below. That may provide some — as the Wall Street whiz kids say — color.
Cashing In
We noted a couple of news items about Jeff Bezos’ selling some stock. For pocket money or to pay PR firms to scatter sparklies around those yacht stories. According to My Broadband, published in South Africa, Mr. Bezos sold shares in Amazon worth $2 billion. Other reports peg the dollar return as higher, but $2 billion is a comfortable number. DarkCyber has that amount tucked in a small piggy bank in the Bank of Harrod’s Creek.
We Won’t Listen… We Promise
Information about how the Amazon appliances pay attention and perform some background operations is getting more coverage in the “real news” media. The unbiased MSPowerUser reported that Amazon allows a customer with an Amazon listening and watching and talking device to opt out of voice recordings and the ultra trustworthy human review process. The write up states:
Amazon has been the first to act definitely by allowing users to opt-out of the review process.
We like “the first.” Amazon is a leader.
Non Competes Make News
Amazon seems to have a keen desire to prevent people from getting a job once an individual goes to work for another company. DarkCyber read “Amazon Sues Former AWS Exec for Joining Rival Google Division As Cloud Wars Escalate.” The main idea is that if a person works for a rival, that individual will, knowingly or unknowingly, reveal secrets. Maybe for a Snowden type. Maybe not for a person with a functional ethical compass. Wait. What’s that word? Ethical. I know. A word destined for the lumber room.
DarkCyber noted this statement:
Seattle has become the battleground in the cloud wars as Amazon’s longtime home, with Microsoft just across Lake Washington in Redmond. Google Cloud is moving into a massive campus down the street from Amazon and the two rivals are not off to a very neighborly start. That’s because competition for cloud workers is fierce and the two companies are now wading in the same shallow talent pool.
DarkCyber thinks that this will be a messy legal battle. When elephants fight, the employees get trampled in our experience.
In an increasingly specialized and rarified discipline like cloud computing, will it be possible for a person never to work again.
Just like old school and probably some new school Hollywood producers allegedly scream at a wandering star: “You will never work in this town again!”
Okay, SNAP benefits and sleeping rough seem to be the goal.
Amazon and Data Lake Formation
Venture Beat published “Amazon Announces General Availability of AWS Lake Formation.” The write up reports:
Amazon … announced general availability of AWS Lake Formation, a fully managed service that facilitates the building, securing, and management of data lakes.
The idea is to perform a sequence of tasks (workflow) to federate content and metadata. Once federated, many functions become possible. The automation of content federation is important to many organizations; for example, the CIA, DHS, and GHCQ. What other companies offer similar automation and ancillary services? Maybe Oracle? Who provides database technology to DHS? DarkCyber does not really know. Maybe Oracle? Maybe Voyager Analytics? We will have to wait for a “real news” outfit to answer this question for us, won’t we?
The Elastic Fabric Adaptor
With a data lake and a fabric adaptor, the AWS offerings are starting to evoke the language of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the Kubla Khan guy. I read “Scale HPC Workloads with Elastic Fabric Adapter and AWS Parallel Cluster.” This statement was reasonably understandable:
EFA is a network interface for Amazon EC2 instances that enables you to run HPC applications requiring high levels of inter-instance communications (such as computational fluid dynamics, weather modeling, and reservoir simulation) at scale on AWS. It uses an industry-standard operating system bypass technique, with a new custom Scalable Reliable Datagram (SRD) Protocol to enhance the performance of inter-instance communications, which is critical to scaling HPC applications. AWS ParallelCluster takes care of the undifferentiated heavy lifting involved in setting up an HPC cluster with EFA enabled.
The write up provides some step by step instructions for those who did not “bone up” on the wonders of the Byzantine AWS service array. There may be a test on the contents of ~/.parallelcluster/config file.
Amazon Channels IBM Watson Marketing
DarkCyber does not want to make too much of this “me too” approach to sales and marketing. But we noted “Amazon’s AWS Will Help Health Researchers Diagnose Patients and Monitor Disease.” The write up explains:
The company’s Amazon Web Services arm is lending its machine learning technology to the Pittsburgh Health Data Alliance to assist in the development of new technologies around diagnosing patients and monitoring disease.
The write up does mention some of Amazon’s other health initiatives; for example:
Amazon has been increasingly pushing its way into public health, most notably with the formation of Haven, a consortium between itself, JPMorgan, and Berkshire Hathaway to experiment with healthcare systems. Last year, Amazon bought mail-order pharmacy PillPack for $753 million, and this year it made Alexa HIPAA compliant, giving it the ability to transmit patient healthcare data.
What’s not covered is the utility of these data to other Amazon business initiatives. On one hand, that’s typical of “real news.” On the other, the failure to connect the dots with regard to medical fraud is indicative of the lack of understanding some have about the Amazon trajectory.
Partners, Resellers, and Consultants
It may be summertime, but the living is not easy for hard working Amazon centric initiatives. Here’s a selection of announcements in the last week:
CloudHesive is now a premier consulting partner in the Amazon Services Partner Network. Source: Yahoo
GigaSpaces has moved its big data analytics processing platform to Amazon. DarkCyber likes the name: InsightEdge. Source: Yahoo
More on Biases in Smart Software
August 7, 2019
Bias in machine learning strikes again. Citing a study performed by Facebook AI Research, The Verge reports, “AI Is Worse at Identifying Household Items from Lower-Income Countries.” Researchers studied the accuracy of five top object-recognition algorithms, Microsoft Azure, Clarifai, Google Cloud Vision, Amazon Rekognition, and IBM Watson, using this dataset of objects from around the world. Writer James Vincent tells us:
“The researchers found that the object recognition algorithms made around 10 percent more errors when asked to identify items from a household with a $50 monthly income compared to those from a household making more than $3,500. The absolute difference in accuracy was even greater: the algorithms were 15 to 20 percent better at identifying items from the US compared to items from Somalia and Burkina Faso.”
Not surprisingly, researchers point to the usual suspect—the similar backgrounds and financial brackets of most engineers who create algorithms and datasets. Vincent continues:
“In the case of object recognition algorithms, the authors of this study say that there are a few likely causes for the errors: first, the training data used to create the systems is geographically constrained, and second, they fail to recognize cultural differences. Training data for vision algorithms, write the authors, is taken largely from Europe and North America and ‘severely under sample[s] visual scenes in a range of geographical regions with large populations, in particular, in Africa, India, China, and South-East Asia.’ Similarly, most image datasets use English nouns as their starting point and collect data accordingly. This might mean entire categories of items are missing or that the same items simply look different in different countries.”
Why does this matter? For one thing, it means object recognition performs better for certain audiences than others in systems as benign as photo storage services, as serious as security cameras, and as crucial self-driving cars. Not only that, we’re told, the biases found here may be passed into other types of AI that will not receive similar scrutiny down the line. As AI products pick up speed throughout society, developers must pay more attention to the data on which they train their impressionable algorithms.
Cynthia Murrell, August 7, 2019
Factualities for August 7, 2019
August 7, 2019
The summer doldrums have had no suppressing effect on those spreadsheet jockeys, wizards of pop up surveys, and latte charged predictors.
Here’s our fanciest number of the week. It comes from an outfit called The Next Web:
1 billion. The number of people who watch esports. Esports are video games. Does Amazon Twitch, Google YouTube, and Ninja’s new home report verifiable data? Yeah, sure. Source: TNW
There was a close race for craziest. We have recognized a runner up, however, we marveled at this figure:
13. Percentage of apps on the Google Play app store which have more than 1,000 installs. And 13 apps have more than 10 million users. (How many Android phones are there in the world? More than 2 billion, if NewZoo data are “sort of correct.”) Source: ZDNet
Here’s our “normal” rundown of factualities:
(20). The percentage decrease in malware. Source: Computing UK
12. Minutes per hour devoted to TV commercials on the AT&T owned Turner television network. Source: Los Angeles Times
$5. The amount Google paid people for permission to scan their faces. Source: The Verge
33. The percentage of businesses running Windows XP which was rolled out in 2001. Source: Slashdot
50. The percentage of companies which do not know if their security procedures are working. Source: IT Pro Portal
50. The percentage of the cloud market which Amazon has. Source: Marketwatch
50. The percentage of “workers” who was half their time struggling with data. Source: ZDNet
82. Percentage of people who will connect to any free WiFi service available to them. Source: Slashdot
89. Percentage of Germans who think France is a trustworthy partner. Source: Reddit
100,000. Estimated staff IBM terminated. An unknown percentage of these professionals were too old to make IBM hip again. Source: Bloomberg
$8.6 million. Amount Cisco Systems had to pay for selling a security product which was not secure. Source: DarkReading
106 million. Number of people whose personal details were stolen in the Capital One breach of an Amazon AWS system. Source: Washington Post
250 million. Number of email accounts stolen by trickbot. Source: Forbes
1 billion. Number of people who watch esports (online games). Source: Next Web
$4.769 trillion. The net worth of 13,650 Harvard grads. Source: MarketWatch
Stephen E Arnold, August 7, 2019
DarkCyber for August 6, 2019, Now Available
August 6, 2019
DarkCyber for August 6, 2019, is now available at www.arnoldit.com/wordpress and on Vimeo at https://www.vimeo.com/351872293. The program is a production of Stephen E Arnold. It is the only weekly video news shows focusing on the Dark Web, cybercrime, and lesser known Internet services.
DarkCyber (August 6, 2019) explores reports about four high-profile leaks of confidential or secret information. Each “leak” has unique attributes, and some leaks may be nothing more than attempts to generate publicity, cause embarrassment to a firm, or a clever repurposing of publicly available but little known information. Lockheed Martin made available in a blog about automobiles data related to its innovative propulsion system. The fusion approach is better suited to military applications. The audience for the “leak” may be US government officials. The second leak explains that the breach of a Russian contractor providing technical services to the Russian government may be politically-motivated. The information could be part of an effort to criticize Vladimir Putin. The third example is the disclosure of “secret” Palantir Technologies’ documents. This information may create friction for the rumored Palantir INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERING. The final secret is the startling but unverified assertion that the NSO Group, an Israeli cyber security firm, can compromise the security of major cloud providers like Amazon and Apple, among others. The DarkCyber conclusion from this spate of “leak” stories is that the motivations for each leak are different. In short, leaking secrets may be political, personal, or just marketing.
Other stories in this week’s DarkCyber include:
A report about Kazakhstan stepped up surveillance activities. Monitoring of mobile devices in underway in the capital city. DarkCyber reports that the system may be deployed to other Kazakh cities. The approach appears to be influenced by China’s methods; namely, installing malware on mobile devices and manipulating Internet routing.
DarkCyber explains that F Secure offers a free service to individuals who want to know about their personal information. The Data Discovery Portal makes it possible for a person to plug in an email. The system will then display some of the personal information major online services have in their database about that person.
DarkCyber’s final story points out that online drug merchants are using old-school identity verification methods. With postal services intercepting a larger number of drug packages sent via the mail, physical hand offs of the contraband are necessary. The method used relies on the serial number on currency. When the recipient provides the number, the “drug mule” verifies that number on a printed bank note.
DarkCyber videos appears each week through the September 30, 2019. A new series of videos will begin on November 1, 2019. Programs are available on Vimeo.com and YouTube.com.
Kenny Toth, August 6, 2019
Amazonia for August 5, 2019
August 5, 2019
The Bezos bulldozer has a bell. It goes “ring, ring, ring.” For information on what may be last week’s most important Amazon story, navigate to our DarkCyber story “Amazon and Law Enforcement: Irrelevant or Something Else?” Other items the DarkCyber research team noted in the past seven days:
JEDI Award on Hold: Amazon the Reason
The Inquirer clarified the JEDI contract decision. The UK online information service said:
The Pentagon is holding off on awarding its $10bn JEDI contract while the Defense Secretary reviews whether it was rigged in favor of Amazon. The contract, expected to be awarded to either Amazon or Microsoft later this month, has been criticized by bit-part actor Donald Trump, who argued that the process was biased towards Amazon.
The UK publication noted:
However, the contracting process for the project, which attracted bids from IBM, Oracle, Amazon, Google and Microsoft, has been marred by issues. Google announced its withdrawal from the bidding in October after employees called out the company out for violating its now deprecated “Don’t be evil” motto by supplying technology to the military. Microsoft employees also published an open letter urging the company not to bid on the project, arguing that doing so would “enhance lethality”.
Perhaps Amazon’s low profile, yet robust tactics, may roil the waters of the Potomac swamp. Amazon now has to slog through a different type of equatorial micro climate. There are dangerous creatures in the swamps on which the nation’s capital is constructed.
eBay Accuses Amazon Seller Poaching
The Wall Street Journal (August 2, 2019, Page B 4) published “eBay Says Amazon Staff Poached Sellers.” The online bookstore allegedly engages in tactics one of its competitors and soon to be victims acts in an un-eBay way. The newspaper reports:
Lawsuit accuses three from e-commerce rival of breaking racketeer laws with alleged lure.
The prey — sorry, DarkCyber meant to say “competitor” — filed a lawsuit on July 31, 2019, which asserts that the online bookstore broke Federal racketeering laws. The result was “harm.” According to Mr. Murdoch’s “real news” outlet:
The eBay lawsuit accuses the defendants of providing quotas for Amazon representatives to to recruit eBay sellers.
DarkCyber wonders if Amazon’s aggressive tactics are different from Amazon’s normal tactics; that is, baked into the culture of the online bookstore?
Amazon is attracting considerable scrutiny regarding its business practices, including the “not our fault” issue regarding Capital One data and the not so surprising delay thrust upon the Department of Defense by President Trump.
Has some of Mark Zuckerberg’s success in doing what he wishes influenced Amazon’s senior managers. When filtered down to the alleged interactions with eBay sellers, perhaps governance is being practiced, just in a way different from eBay’s expectations.
Amazon Sues Employee for Taking a Job at the Google
GeekWire published “Amazon Sues Former AWS Executive for Joining Rival Google Division As Cloud Wars Escalate.” Ironic? Nope, just a Bezos bulldozer tactic. The write up explains:
The executive in Amazon’s crosshairs is Philip Moyer, a Pennsylvania-based former AWS sales executive whose past experience includes several CEO roles and a long stint as a manager for Microsoft. Moyer was the chief executive for software-as-a-service companies Edgar Online and Cassiopae, according to his LinkedIn. In 2017, Amazon hired Moyer as a sales executive for AWS focusing on the financial services industry. By the time he resigned in 2019, he had 13 direct reports and managed 100 employees, according to the complaint. When Moyer accepted the job with Amazon, he signed a non-competition agreement, a contract in which an employee agrees not to work for a competitor for a period of time to avoid sharing confidential trade secrets.
Who will win? The lawyers for sure.
Amazon Security: Good, Bad, or Meh?
Amazon was at the center of the Capital One data breach. Amazon was quick to point out Amazon was not at fault. Capital One asserted that the security problem occurred in infrastructure. So was Amazon at fault? DarkCyber has lost track of the number of security breaches occurring because an AWS customer failed to implement appropriate security on the customers’ rented AWS service. The customer is responsible.
Apparently some elected officials want to know more. Business Insider (note that you may have to pony up some cash to read the article) published “Republican Lawmakers Want Answers from Jeff Bezos on Amazon Web Services Security Before the $10 Billion Defense Cloud Contract Is Awarded” suggests that Amazon is the winner of the competition.
The write up reports:
lawmakers say that they want to investigate because the government is on the brink of trusting AWS with some of the nation’s most sensitive data.
Another take on the security problem, which was allegedly not Amazon’s fault, appears in Computing. DarkCyber noted this statement:
Further reports suggested that companies named in the leaked Capital one files, including Ford and Italian bank Unaccredited, may also have been breached. However, Amazon said there is no evidence to support these claims. Speaking to Bloomberg, a spokesperson for AWS explained that the company had “reached out to the customers mentioned in online forums by the perpetrator to help them assess their own logs for any evidence of an issue”.
DarkCyber opines that Amazon will repeat its mantra: “It’s the customer’s responsibility. We just provide the platform.”
Sound familiar? Does the mantra echo Facebook and Google explanations?
There is the issue of the cat loving, former Amazon AWS employee, the past history of AWS customer data breaches, and the $10 billion.
Amazon Acquires E8
Amazon acquired the Israeli storage company founded in 2014. The company builds gear relying on flash memory. The idea is to reduce latency. This company assembles hardware. According CNBC, E8 “boasts that the company’s hardware products “provide up to 10 times the performance of other all-flash-arrays, with consistently strong performance and low latency.” DarkCyber estimates that the price tag was in the $100 million range, but that’s unsubstantiated except by the burritos I fed my research team after the group produced this number. Will Amazon move more aggressively into hardware? Looks like it.
Amazon Oracle Feud: What’s Next?
I thought Oracle was out of the JEDI competition. Oracle apparently got the memo and elects to disagree. There’s an interesting run down of the latest action in this escalating battle. On one side is the Bezos bulldozer and on the other is the fading Russian fighter pilot, Larry Ellison. “Pentagon Rebukes Oracle As Debate over a Massive Federal Contract Turns Caustic” provides a helpful run down of the latest rebuke to the database company which calls Sea World Way home. Either Amazon or Microsoft will get a contract which could be worth $10 billion over five years. Oracle wants the deal, and unlike Microsoft and Amazon, Oracle could use the revenue.
The write up states:
Oracle alleged in a lawsuit that the Defense Department’s bidding process has been plagued with potential conflicts of interest and rigged in favor of Amazon’s cloud computing business. Oracle’s attempt to block the award was rejected earlier this month, with the judge in charge of the case explaining his reasoning in a lengthy document unsealed Friday. But in his decision, the judge posed new questions about the Pentagon’s legal argument for awarding one big contract. DoD spokeswoman Elissa Smith noted in a statement that the judge also affirmed that the Pentagon was “reasonably justified” to award a single contract. Despite the “tension” in the judge’s ruling, the department is planning to move ahead and award the contract in August, nearly a year and a half after it was announced.
Like Oracle’s fight with Google over Java, the old school database company won’t go quietly into that good night.
Just Walk Around Money
DarkCyber’s researchers walk around with a few dollars in pocket, backpack, or purse. Jeff Bezos requires more. “Jeff Bezos Sells $2 Billion in Stock after 4% Stake Transfer.” The money appears to be related to Mr. Bezos’ divorce settlement. MacKenzie Bezos is “official Amazon’s second largest individual shareholder,” according to Bloomberg. (You may have to pay to read the fluff around this factoid.)
Amazon Boxes and Boxes Earn Vendors Boxed Ears
We are fascinated with the matruska doll approach to packaging for some our Amazon orders. “Amazon Will Fine Sellers Who Ship Products in Oversized Packaging” explains that change is coming for offenders of Amazon’s “size” rule. (Will Amazon warehouses follow this rule? DarkCyber does not know. Humans under pressure to package do some interesting things we have heard.)
Amazon Smart Software
Amazon wants its software to be smarter or appear to be smarter. The company revealed a new method for making sense of certain humanoid related actions. The technique allegedly combines text-based search and a custom-built knowledge graph. You can get the Amazon explanation at this link.
Amazon Adds to Its Policeware Data Repository
Gizmodo alleges that “Cops Are Giving Amazon’s Ring Your Real Time 911 Caller Data.” DarkCyber finds this interesting. The online information service states:
The California-based company is seeking police departments’ permission to tap into the computer-aided dispatch (CAD) feeds used to automate and improve decisions made by emergency dispatch personnel and cut down on police response times. Ring has requested access to the data streams so it can curate “crime news” posts for its “neighborhood watch” app, Neighbors.
Good neighbors are important. Community building is a plus. Cross correlated with other data in Amazon’s policeware system could yield some interesting insights.
Amazon Market Position
DarkCyber noted this number: 50 percent and more. The number refers to the AWS share of the public cloud infrastructure market. The capitalist tool pegs the dollar value at over $32 billion so Amazon controls $16 billion or more. The write up says the data come from the Gartner Group. Believe the number or not.
Amazon and Big Cars
“Getting Under the Hood of Amazon’s Auto Ambitions” is mostly Amazon cheerleading. The write up explains that Amazon is active in many facets of the automobile industry. The springboard is AWS, robots, policeware, and alliances. The stakes are high. Apple and Android are in autos, but no company has locked down the “Amazon approach” to market monopolization.
The write up states:
A Reuters analysis of more than 5,000 patents granted to Amazon from December 2016 through May 2019 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office indicates at least 210 of those patents cover transportation-related topics from drones to automated ground vehicles. The auto-related patent push outpaced tech rivals Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google, whose sister company Waymo is a self-driving pioneer.
But patents are not the principal thrust. The ace in the hole is Amazon’s designs on becoming the provider of an “industrial cloud.” Procurement, management, back office services, and more are part of the plan.
Amazon and Tiny Cars
TechCrunch, which appears to be covering more Amazon information, published “Why AWS Is Building Tiny AI Race Cars to Teach Machine Learning.” According to the write up:
[The “tiny car” play] was really about how do we put machine learning in the hands of every developer and data scientist.
Before you open the door, be sure to check the price tag: $399.
Amazon Emulates Google
Google kills services. Amazon is following in the footsteps of the online advertising company. If you are a fan of the push to order Dash button, find a new shopping pleasure jolt. According to GeekWire,
Amazon will turn off capabilities for Dash buttons on Aug. 31.
The physical buttons are not as slick as talking to an Amazon home device. Geekwire says:
Amazon still operates the Dash Replenishment program for connected appliances that automatically reorder items when supplies are low. The company also created a virtual version of the Dash Button on its website. In addition, Amazon has built out voice shopping capabilities for Alexa, the digital brain that powers Echo devices.
Amazon Speech Engine Gets a New Speaker
“AWS’ New Text to Speech Engine Sounds Like a Newscaster” explains that Amazon’s speech engine sounds like a — well, hmmmm — a newscaster. DarkCyber has heard some pretty interesting newscasters, but we assume that the newscasters are people like the talking heads on US cable television or the morning shows in the UK. Sorry, BBC, with your changes, we can’t understand some of the newscasters getting air time.
The write up reports:
The new newscaster style is now available in two U.S. voices (Joanna and Matthew) and Amazon is already working with USA Today and Canada’s The Globe and Mail, among a number of other companies, to help them voice their texts.
We are disappointed that the North Korean newscaster who recently retired has not been pressed into duty.
The article includes an audio of the Amazon Polly Newscaster. We love that Polly name. Very Victorian. Proper. No association with a parrot, of course.
Amazon and Images: Some Ethical Insight?
We noted “Man Interviewed at Amazon, Didn’t Get the Job, but They Used His Photo on Their Jobs Site,” not for the grammar errors, but for the interesting privileged approach of the world’s largest online bookstore.
The write up reported in good enough English:
…Jordan Guthmann, a VP at Edelman PR, interviewed for a job at Amazon. While he was on the company campus chatting with folks, someone asked to take his photo and he kindly obliged. Guthmann didn’t get the gig, but apparently he at least looked like the right person for the job: Until a few days ago his photo appeared on Amazon’s Talent Acquisition website.
The good news is that Amazon swapped out the photo. The bad news is that the Amazonian behavior reveals a tiny insight about the ethical compass at Amazon. There is no true north, just whatever direction is expedient maybe?
Going Green
Amazon reminds me of a jungle. Green, in this case, evokes renewable energy, not the life and death struggle in the Amazon landscape. USA Today reports that the world’s largest online bookstore is “launching renewable energy projects in Virginia and Ireland.” Perhaps the Bezos bulldozer is turning over a leaf?
Digital Currency
Amazon supports a number of digital currency inspired activities. One of the newer initiatives is putting $100,000 into a competition designed to “Change the Face of Blockchain.” Solve this problem and collect the money:
Yahoo includes this explanation from a content sparkplug:
“You are going to need people who are really good at hardware design, but also people with algorithmic skills,” he said. “My guess is the winning team will have a combination of that expertise.”
DarkCyber thinks that the point of the competition may be to identify potential hires for those supporting the event. Once again: DarkCyber speculation because the environmental impact of digital currency related activities may become grist for someone’s water mill.
Amazon High Performance Cluster You Have Always Wanted
A rah rah article which begins, “…Building an HPC system can be complex”, is a must read. HPCWire explains that “High performance computing customers love the breadth of services offered by AWS and the flexibility offered by the cloud to address their computational challenges. AWS provides you with the opportunity to innovate quickly and accelerate your workflow thanks to a virtually unlimited capacity.”
Although a trifle one sided, the article provides a teaser for the more complex explanation which is located on the Amazon AWS pages at this link. Easy? Absolutely. How does DarkCyber know? The word “simple is used to index the page.”
Dash Slows and Then Halts
Amazon has many ordering options. One can talk at Alexa. One can use the Amazon eCommerce Web site. But the Dash button is dashed. DarkCyber learned that Dash has crashed. “Amazon is terminating the Dash button on August 31” said:
The Dash button was created to allow consumers to instantly order a product with the push of a button. The ease of use made it perfect for consumables you often need restocked, such as laundry detergent or paper towels, but served little purpose outside of that.
Killing off dud products or products developers don’t want to work on is a Google tactic. Should Amazon be viewed through Google goggles?
Consultant, Partner, Reseller News
Cerner. The health information technology company has partnered with Amazon. According to MedCity News: “The collaboration will boost the business of both companies against the backdrop of tech giants like Amazon, Google and Microsoft vying for healthcare market share in the industry’s shift to cloud-based infrastructure.” For additional color about Amazon healthcare, navigate to “Amazon Web Services Exec Partovi on Where the Biggest AI Opportunities Are in Healthcare.”
KCF Technologies. The tie up with Amazon AWS “a simple-to-use, fully automated, cloud-based backup and recovery solution for Cassandra databases on Amazon Web Services (AWS).” Source: Business Insider
MapleTech. This vendor of property and insurance services has migrated to Amazon AWS. Thus, its customers are now Amazonians. Source: Virtual Strategy
Motion Picture Academy Software Foundation. Amazon has joined. An official of the organization said: “Our membership has almost doubled since we launched the Academy Software Foundation a year ago, and we’re grateful that both studios and software vendors are seeing the value in having a neutral home for collaboration and shared development of open source software.” Source: The Hollywood Reporter
SoftServe. The company has announced an expanded relationship with Amazon Web Services (AWS) extending SoftServe’s offerings for media and entertainment enterprises. Source: Yahoo
VeChain rolls out is VeChain Thor Blockchain solutions. The venue was Amazon’s Beijing “global” summit. Why’s this important? Beijing. Blockchain. Global. Source: Yahoo
WiPro. This consulting company has teamed with Amazon to create a “co innovation center.” Where is the innovation center in case you want to mosey over and introduce yourself?
This state-of-the-art ‘innovation-in-action’ center, located in Wipro’s campus at Kodathi, Bengaluru…
And what’s cooking in the center:
The center will serve as a multi-disciplinary customer showcase hub for specialized teams to ideate, collaborate, develop and deliver futuristic solutions, leveraging AWS Cloud services in the areas of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), analytics, Internet of Things (IoT), blockchain, augmented and virtual reality, among others.
Source: CIOL
Amazon and Apple: Two Anti Trust Investigation Attractors
The Verge reported that “Amazon cut a deal with Apple to bring direct iPhone sales to its platform for the first time. Now, that deal is coming under scrutiny from the Federal Trade Commission.” The main idea is that the deal nuked the market for other Amazon sellers and helped Apple put a dent in folks who were repairing in an un Apple-like way Apple devices.
DarkCyber noted this chunk of the write up:
Still, experts say the Apple-Amazon deal could easily be grounds for an antitrust complaint. According to Sally Hubbard, an antitrust expert and the director of enforcement strategy at the OpenMarkets Institute, the practice of cutting a deal with a brand to shut out third-party sellers who may be peddling counterfeit products or simply just lower-cost versions is called “brand gating.” It’s rampant on Amazon, and it may be illegal, she argues. “You put a gate around the brand and say all the third-party sellers of whatever that brand is get a notice saying you can no longer sell this product on our platform unless you get authorization from the brand,” Hubbard tells The Verge. “But of course the brand is not going to let you sell if you’re under the [minimum advertised price]. Problem is that it’s illegal under antitrust law.”
Fair? You and the legal eagles decide.
Grab Your Popcorn: Re:Inforce 2019 Videos Online
You can get the information presented at one of Amazon’s upscale conferences on your computing device. Just bring popcorn and patience. There’s nothing like low contrast slides and jargon to tell a story. Here’s the link you need.
Amazon Is Number One in IaaS
IaaS means infrastructure as a service. As if Amazon’s revenues and tidal waves of AWS announcements were not enough, now IT Pro Portal makes it official: “Amazon Keeps Top Spot in IaaS Market.” True, the data come from a very objective source, the Gartner Group. Who’s number two? Microsoft. What happens if Microsoft wins JEDI as Amazon fires bullets into its feet? Gartner’s very objective analysts will reveal the truth in a world of fake news.
Amazon Twitch Watches a Star Leave the Ecosystem
I know you are heart broken that Ninja has jumped from Twitch to Mixer. DarkCyber thinks more of these future Clark Gabels will head for greener pastures. Twitch is cracking down and the changes are annoying the talent who make the service thrive. Source: The Verge
Stephen E Arnold, August 5, 2019
Flawed Data In, Bias Out
August 3, 2019
Artificial intelligence is biased. AI algorithms are biased against non-white people as well as females. The reason is that the programmers are usually white males and it is usually an oversight to add data that makes their AI algorithms diverse. Silicon Republic shares a brand new ways that AI is biased, this time against poorer individuals: “Biased AI Reportedly Struggles To Identify Objects From Poorer Households.”
The biggest biased AI culprits are visual recognition algorithms built to identify people and objects. The main cause behind their biases is the lack of diverse data. The article points out how Facebook’s AI research lab discovered how biased data exists in internationally used visual object recognition systems. Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Vision, Amazon Rekognition, Clarifai, and IBM Watson use algorithms that were tasked with identifying common household items from a global dataset. Information in the dataset included:
“The dataset covers 117 categories of different household items and documents the average monthly income of households from various countries across the world, ranging from $27 in Burundi to $10,098 in China. When the algorithms were shown the same product but from different parts of the world, the researchers found that there was a 10pc increase in chance they would fail to identify items from a household earning less than $50 versus one making more than $3,500 a month.”
This raises an interesting view on how the AI are programmed to identify objects. One example is identifying soap on different surfaces. In richer countries, soap was identified when it was in a soap pump dispenser on a tiled counter, but in poorer countries it was bar soap on a dirty surface. The AI was 20% more likely to identify objects in richer countries than poor ones. The difference increases with living rooms with a 40% accuracy difference and it is due to the lack of items in poorer homes. The programmers believe the bias is due to most of the data comes from wealthier countries and lack of information from poorer ones.
Is this another finding from Captain Obvious’ research lab? Is it possible to generate more representative datasets? Obviously not.
Whitney Grace, August 3, 2019
The Platform of the Future Is…
August 2, 2019
What’s the platform of the future? Here are your choices:
[a] Artificial intelligence
[b] Neuro linguistic services
[c] Silicon brain implants connected to the cloud
[d] Indexing
[e] Pay to play content.
Did you pick “d”: Indexing.
If you did, you are on the same wavelength as the rock and roll, up and down advisory and analyst firm IDC.
The pronouncement comes from Stewart Bond, research director at IDC Research Inc. (Note: DarkCyber has written reports for IDC. The firm sold these reports on Amazon without DarkCyber’s permission, and IDC did not pay for the use of the DarkCyber reports. How much were our reports? $3,200 for eight pages of goodness? Want to know more? Drop us an email: darkcyber333 at yandex dot com.)
This revelation appeared in Silicon Angle which presented a summary of an interview with IDC Research’s director. Other gems from the write up were:
Pre-existing silos and multicloud can give companies a lot of disparate spaces to scavenge through. The most sensible place to start may be with the available data about all that data — or metadata.
Yes, indexing, an art practiced for millennia.
We noted this statement:
Companies are realizing that poorly cleansed or inaccurately labeled data are resulting in inaccurate insights. And vendors are rushing to the rescue. The number of vendors offering cataloging solutions has increased about 240% in the last year and a half, according to Bond’s research.
Hmm. What’s the research methodology? Remember that IDC has generated some specious numbers in the past; for example, the amount of time a person in a company spends looking for information. DarkCyber is curious about this 18 month period, the sample, the methodology, and the reliability of the analytic process. A 2.4X increase is robust, particularly for indexing and the accompanying tasks embraced in the sweeping generalization.
And we put an exclamation mark next to this passage:
Multicloud has flung data all over the place. Effective software must have spider legs that can reach out and quickly gather intelligence about it. Data cataloging may do this with machine learning, human annotation, Google-like search features, etc. “I think that’s going to be the data platform of the future,” Bond stated. Informatica Corp. currently leads in this market, according to Bond.
Okay, flinging data all over the place. Colorful. We also noted that Informatica Corp. is the leader in “this market.” Exactly what market are we thinking about. Google, search, cloud—what, which?
Keep in mind that Informatica has been around since 1993, and it has grown to about $1 billion a year in revenue. Impressive when compared to the local tire store, but a bit behind the curve when it comes to data. Amazon in the last quarter generated about $8 billion. Annualized Amazon is about 32X bigger than Informatica. Who will win in the cloud cataloging game? Informatica? Sure it will.
But why the love for Informatica? One possibility is that Informatica is a client or prospect of IDC. That’s an idea worth considering.
And where did this “indexing” pronouncement appear? In Silicon Angle. Here’s the explanation which appeared with the IDC research director’s startling insight:
SiliconANGLE Media Inc.’s business model is based on the intrinsic value of the content, not advertising. Unlike many online publications, we don’t have a paywall or run banner advertising, because we want to keep our journalism open, without influence or the need to chase traffic.The journalism, reporting and commentary on SiliconANGLE — along with live, unscripted video from our Silicon Valley studio and globe-trotting video teams at theCUBE — take a lot of hard work, time and money. Keeping the quality high requires the support of sponsors who are aligned with our vision of ad-free journalism content. If you like the reporting, video interviews and other ad-free content here, please take a moment to check out a sample of the video content supported by our sponsors, tweet your support, and keep coming back to SiliconANGLE.
DarkCyber interprets this information as a way to make “sponsored” content less front and center.
“Indexing” is a sure fire way to generate buzz for a consulting company and maybe, just maybe, some revenue from sponsored video for Silicon Angle.
The video is here.
Stephen E Arnold, August 2, 2019
Endgame Now Runs On Elastic
August 1, 2019
The Marvel Cinematic Universe “ended” a few weeks ago with Avengers: Endgame, so all and any news with the keyword “endgame” were overshadowed by Disney’s superhero franchise. It goes without saying that Elasticsearch’s acquisition of digital security company Endgame went unnoticed, but you can read about here at Computer Weekly: “Robust For Your Pleasure: Elastic Acquires Endgame.”
Elastic is a popular, open source text and analytics engine and its parent company also invented the Elastic Stack data analysis and visualization toolset. Purchasing Endgame was a practical decision for Elasticsearch, because moving into security technology is the next logical step for a company that specializes in data search, analytics, and visualization. Endgame specializes in endpoint prevention, detection, and response. Elastic wants its Stack Exchange to be more secure, particularly Security Information and Even Management (SIEM).
Elastic founder and CEO Shay Banon, Endgame CEO Nate Flick, and Endgame CTO Jamie Butler are excited about their team up. While it might not be as epic as a Guardians of the Galaxy and Avengers mashup, Elastic and Endgame are committing to transparency, user enablement, and openness as well as gaining more customers.
Elastic and Endgame offer their customers some of the best technology for data analytics, management, and security:
“As the creators of the Elastic Stack (Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, and Logstash), Elastic builds self-managed and SaaS offerings that claim to make data usable in real time at scale for use cases like application search, site search, enterprise search, logging, APM, metrics, security and business analytics. Endgame makes endpoint protection using machine learning technology that is supposedly capable of stopping everything from ransomware, to phishing and targeted attacks. The company says its USP lies in its hybrid architecture that offers both cloud administration and data localization that meets industry, regulatory and global compliance requirements.”
Together Elastic and Endgame will combine their powers for their customers’ benefit that could possibly deliver technology to rival even Shield or something Tony Stark could invent.
Whitney Grace, July 1, 2019
Capital One, Amazon, Cats, and the Common Infrastructure Play
July 31, 2019
I read “Hacking Suspect Acted Oddly Online.” (Note: the online story is paywalled by Rupert Murdoch. You may be able to get a peek at the dead tree version of this story in the Wall Street Journal for July 31, 2019.) Yep, Internet cat angle, self incrimination, and public content dissemination. That’s a plot hook which may make a great Lifetime or Netflix program. Amazon is likely to pass on funding the film version of this now familiar story.
Here’s the plot:
There’s the distraught financial institution, in this case, the lovable Capital One. This is the outfit known for “what’s in your pocket”? Good question. The financial outfit teamed up with Amazon in 2015, and according to the “real news” outfit:
In 2015, Capital One Chief Information Officer Rob Alexander said, “The financial services industry attracts some of the worst cyber criminals. So we worked closely with the Amazon team to develop a security model, which we believe enables us to operate more securely in the public cloud than we can even in our own data centers.”
That sounds darned good, but data affecting about 100 million people was breached. That number has not been verified to my satisfaction, and DarkCyber awaits additional data. But 100 million is a good enough number for the story.
Next we have a protagonist with some employment history at Amazon. Remember that this is the cloud service which was in the chain of data compromise. But — and this is important — Amazon was not at fault. The security problem was a is configured bit of “infrastructure.” Plus, the infrastructure which was the point of weakness is “common to both cloud and on premises data center environments.”
The story ends with a suspect. If the program becomes a mini series, we will follow the protagonist with empathy for cats through a trial, and perhaps a variation on the story weaving of “Orange Is the New Black.”
What’s missing from the analysis in the “real news” outlets? Here in Harrod’s Creek, Kentucky, we think of Amazon as an outfit with nifty white Mercedes Benz vans and fast moving van drivers.
But a couple of the pundits lounging in the convenience story / tavern floated some ideas:
- Why is Amazon not providing a system to address misconfiguration? It seems that 100 million people are now aware of this dropped ball.
- Why is an Amazon person, presumably with Amazon expertise, behaving in a manner that appears problematic? If the person was hired, what’s the flaw in the Amazon hiring process? If the person was terminated for a germane reason, why was the person not given appropriate “support” to make the transition from Amazonian to a person with unusual online activities? How does Amazon prevent information from being used by a former employee? What can be improved? Are there other former Amazon employees who are able to behave in an allegedly problematic way?
- Why is the problem “common” to use Capital One’s alleged word quoted in the WSJ story? There are dozens upon dozens of firms which are marketing themselves as cyber safeguard providers. Are these services used by Amazon, or is Amazon relying on home grown solutions. There are indeed Amazon’s own security tools. But are these findable, usable, reliable, and efficacious? Security may be lost in the thicket of proliferating Amazon products, services, and features. In effect, is it possible that Amazon is not doing enough to prevent such security lapses associated closely with its cloud solutions.
Stepping back, let’s think about this incident in a cinematic way:
- A giant company offering services which are so complex that problems are likely to result from component interactions, blundering customers, and former employees with a behavior quirk.
- A financial services firm confident of its technical competence. (Note that this financial firm with a previous compliance allegation which seemed to pivot on money laundering and ended with a $100 million fine. See “Compliance Weaknesses Cost Capital One $100M”, October 23, 2018. You will have to pay to view this allegedly accurate write up.
- A protagonist who seemed to send up distress flags via online communication channels.
What’s the big story?
Maybe there’s a “heart of darkness” with regard to security within the Amazon jungle.
To which jungle was Joseph Conrad, author of the “Heart of Darkness” referring?
“Nowhere did we stop long enough to get a particularized impression, but the general sense of vague and oppressive wonder grew upon me. It was like a weary pilgrimage amongst hints for nightmares.”
Psychological, digital, or financial? With the JEDI contract award fast approaching, will the procurement officials interpret the Capital One breach as a glimpse of the future. Maybe Oracle is correct in its view of Amazon?
Stephen E Arnold, July 31, 2019
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
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