Amazon and Its Dark Edge
September 5, 2019
Later this year, I will make available a free essay about Amazon. Those who want the document will have to provide an email address and some other information. The essay is titled “Dark Edge.”
I am mentioning this because Information Age published “Is the Cloud and AI Becoming Two Sides of the Same Coin?” Despite the wonky subject-verb in the title, I noted a couple of points in the write up which raise issues discussed in “Dark Edge.”
First, the basic idea is that if a company embraces the cloud, smart software comes as part of the deal. That’s a good point, but it does not go far enough. In fact, most of the cloud vendors don’t think beyond generating more revenue than they did the previous quarter and figuring out how to take advantage of the dazed and confused companies trying to “reinvent” themselves. We noted this statement:
perhaps it’s time we realized that the AI and cloud computing industries are not mutually exclusive.
Yes, time. Just past time.
Second, we circled these two statements:
“Cloud adoption is motivating enterprises to undertake more proofs of concept in their firms with AI because it’s easier than ever before to get started,” said David Schatsky, managing director at Deloitte LLP.
According to Schatsky, this path is also becoming more attractive to enterprises as cloud providers continue developing AI offerings to business functions, without big upfront costs.
Easy. Cheap.
Key points.
There are a number of questions which the write up sidesteps; for example:
- What constitutes a win for a cloud platform? More revenue? Market share? More developers?
- What are the downsides for a digital environment which reflects the “winner take all” trajectory of outfits like Facebook, Google, Netflix, etc.?
- How quickly will one the integration of the cloud and smart software become the norm for computing, apps, and enterprise solutions?
Dark Edge will address these. Watch for the essay later this year, which assumes I will have some time to assemble our research when I am tromp around a Neanderthal disco.
Stephen E Arnold, September 5, 2019
Can a Well Worn Compass Help Enterprise Search Thrive?
September 4, 2019
In the early 1990s, Scotland Yard (which never existed although there is a New Scotland Yard) wanted a way to make sense of the data available to investigators in the law enforcement sector.
A start up in Cambridge, England, landed a contract. To cut a multi year story short, i2 Ltd. created Analyst’s Notebook. The product is now more than a quarter century old, and the Analyst’s Notebook is owned by IBM. In the span of five or six years, specialist vendors reacted to the Analyst’s Notebook functionalities. Even though the early versions were clunky, the software performed some functions that may be familiar to anyone who has tried to locate, analyze, and make sense of data within an organization. I am using “organization” in a broad sense, not just UK law enforcement, regulatory enforcement, and intelligence entities.
What were some of the key functions of Analyst’s Notebook, a product which most people in the search game know little about? Let me highly a handful, and then flash forward to what enterprise search vendors are trying to pull off in an environment which is very different from what the i2 experts tackled 25 years ago. Hint: Focus was the key to Analyst’s Notebook’s success and to the me-too products which are widely available to LE and intel professionals. Enterprise search lacks this singular advantage, and, as a result, is likely to flounder as it has for decades.
The Analyst’s Notebook delivered:
- Machine assistance to investigators implemented in software which generally followed established UK police procedures. Forget the AI stuff. The investigator or a team of investigators focused on a case provided most of the brain power.
- Software which could identify entities. An entity is a person, place, thing, phone number, credit card, event, or similar indexable item.
- Once identified, the software — influenced by the Cambridge curriculum in physics — could display a relationship “map” or what today looks like a social graph.
- Visual cues allowed investigators to see that a person who received lots of phone calls from another person were connected. To make the relationship explicit, a heavy dark line connected the two phone callers.
- Ability to print out on a big sheet of paper these relationship maps and other items of interest either identified by an investigator or an item surfaced using maths which could identify entities within a cluster or an anomaly and its date and time.
Over the years, other functions were added. Today’s version offers a range of advanced functions that make it easy to share data, collaborate, acquire and add to the investigative teams’ content store (on premises, hybrid, or in the cloud), automate some functions using IBM technology (no, I won’t use the Watson word), and workflow. Imagery is supported. Drill down makes it easy to see “where the data came from.” An auditor can retrace an investigator’s action in order to verify a process. If you want more about i2, just run a Bing, Google, or Yandex query.
Why am I writing about decades old software?
The reason is that is read an item from my files as my team was updating my comments about Amazon’s policeware for the October TechnoSecurity & Digital Forensics Conference. The item I viewed is titled “Thomson Reuters Partners with Squirro to Combine Artificial Intelligence Technology and Data to Unlock Customer Intelligence.” I had written about Squirro in “Will Cognitive Search (Whatever That Is) Change Because of Squirro?”
I took a look at the current Squirro Web site and learned that the company is the leader in “context intelligence.” That seemed similar to what i2 delivered in the 1990s version of Analyst’s Notebook. The software was designed to fit the context of a specific country’s principal police investigators. No marketing functions, no legal information, no engineering product data — just case related information like telephone records, credit card receipts, officer reports, arrest data, etc.
Squirro, founded in 2012 or 2013 (there are conflicting dates online) states that the software delivers
a personalized, real-time contextual stream from the sea of information directly to your workplace. It’s based on Squirro’s digital fingerprint technology connecting personal interests and workflows while learning and refining as user interactions increase.
I also noted this statement:
Squirro combines all the different tools you need to work with unstructured data and enables you to curate a self-learning 360° context radar natural to use in any enterprise system. ‘So What?’ Achieving this reduces searching time by 90%, significantly cutting costs and allows for better, more effective decision-making. The highly skilled Swiss team of search experts has been working together for over 10 years to create a precise context intelligence solution. Squirro: Your Data in Context.
Well, 2013 to the present is six years, seven if I accept the 2012 date.
The company states that it offers “A.I.-driven actionable Insights,” adding:
Squirro is a leading AI-platform – a self-learning system keeping you in the know and recommending what’s next.
I’m okay with marketing lingo. But to my way of thinking, Squirro is edging toward the i2 Analyst’s Notebook type of functionality. The difference is that Squirro wants to serve the enterprise. Yep, enterprise search with wrappers for smart software, reports, etc.
I don’t want to make a big deal of this similarity, but there is one important point to keep in mind. Delivering an enterprise solution to a commercial outfit means that different sectors of the business will have different needs. The different needs manifest themselves in workflows and data particular to their roles in the organization. Furthermore, most commercial employees are not trained like police and intelligence operatives; that is, employees looking for information have diverse backgrounds and different educational experiences. For better or worse, law enforcement intelligence professionals go to some type of training. In the US, the job is handled by numerous entities, but a touchstone is FLETC. Each country has its equivalent. Therefore, there is a shared base of information, a shared context if you will.
Modern companies are a bit like snowflakes. There’s a difference, however, the snowflakes may no longer work together in person. In fact, interactions are intermediated in numerous ways. This is not a negative, but it is somewhat different from how a team of investigators worked on a case in London in the 1990s.
What is the “search” inside the Squirro information retrieval system? The answer is open source search. The features are implemented via software add ons, wrappers, and micro services plus other 2019 methods.
This is neither good nor bad. Using open source reduces some costs. On the other hand, the resulting system will have a number of moving parts. As complexity grows with new features, some unexpected events will occur. These have to be chased down and fixed.
New features and functions can be snapped in. The trajectory of this modern approach is to create a system which offers many marketing hooks and opportunities to make a sale to an organization looking for a solution to the ever present “information problem.”
My hypothesis is that i2 Analyst’s Notebook succeeded an information access, analysis, and reporting system because it focused on solving a rather specific use case. A modern system such as a search and retrieval solution that tries to solve multiple problems is likely to hit a wall.
The digital wall is the same one that pushed Fast Search & Transfer and many other enterprise search systems to the sidelines or the scrap heap.
Net net: Focus, not jargon, may be valuable, not just for Squirro, but for other enterprise search vendors trying to attain sustainable revenues and a way to keep their sources of funding, their customers, their employees, and their stakeholders happy.
Stephen E Arnold, September 4, 2019
US Machine Learning Vendors Classified As Chinese
September 3, 2019
IDC, an outfit that sold my analyses on Amazon without my permission, has published a remarkable report. (Interpret “remarkable” as you will.) The outfit has published a report that includes 13 vendors in its 2019 China Machine Learning Development Platforms Vendor Assessment. What caught the attention of DarkCyber were these companies included in the list of 13:
- Amazon AWS.
- IBM
The information about this report which popped into our newsfeed states:
As machine learning achieves increasing penetration into the Chinese market and a wider range of application scenarios emerge, IDC is stepping up its research on machine learning development platform vendor assessment.
This is what IDC’s promo told DarkCyber about Amazon AWS:
AWS is a towering presence in the global machine learning market. According to Amazon’s internal research data, about 80% of TensorFlow projects are deployed on AWS. In China, AWS has quickly gained significant market recognition through its automated machine learning platform SageMaker and customers using its cloud services can quickly deploy its machine learning products. AWS’s previously launched machine learning reasoning chip Inferentia has also been used in the construction and promotion of the ONNX (Open Neural Network Exchange) project. While it dedicates substantial resources to strengthening independent R&D, AWS has consistently been able to provide users with flexible machine learning options in an open manner.
We hypothesize that IDC in an effort to boost US sales of its report simply included two American vendors and placed each in the China bucket.
Tensions between the US and China seem to be increasing. Will the IDC report clarify the extent of Amazon’s and IBM’s involvement in the Chinese AI/ML market? Is IDC putting sales before appropriate classification?
Precise analysis. Common sense. Outstanding.
Stephen E Arnold, September 3, 2019
Amazonia for September 2, 2019
September 2, 2019
Just a reminder. The DarkCyber team will alter its publication schedule. International travel and conference presentations chop into our regular features. Amazonia, Factualities, and the DarkCyber videos will return to a regular schedule in late October or early November. In the meantime, enjoy this week’s Amazonia.
The Bezos bulldozer has continued to gring through unspoiled lands. Among the pathways cut, chopped, and blazed are these:
Wall Street Journal: Doubts about Amazon
We learned that the Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal has been trading at 36 times the money the Bezos bulldozer has earned since inception. Flashing yellow lights! Sound sirens! For the negative juice just pay money and read “The Bear Case Against Amazon.”
The front page of the dead tree version of the newspaper published on page B 1, August 30, 2019, an infographic about Amazon’s delivery business. The main point of the graphic struck DarkCyber as gloomy news for FedEx and brown truck brigade UPS.
The method is congruent to what Amazon is doing in its policeware business. The company spaces its moves and then fills in the void. Then one day, Amazon is a monopoly in a business sector.
How does one reconcile the Debbie Downer information in Bear Case with the infographic? One does not have to explain. The WSJ is a definitive source from Mr. Murdoch’s stable of inquisitive minds.
The Chaos of Amazon
DarkCyber read “Even Amazon’s Own Products Are Getting Hijacked by Imposter Sellers.”
This sentence seemed important, although its source is Marketplace Pulse, an information service with which DarkCyber has little knowledge:
“It just highlights yet another case of the chaos that exists on Amazon”
The “it” is hijacked listings. The procedure is to locate a product and then wait until Amazon stops selling that offering. Then a bad actor or a semi bad actor uses the listing to sell unrelated products. Reviews? Positive, of course. The write up explains the procedure this way:
One common tactic is to find a once popular, but now abandoned product and hijack its listing, using the page’s old reviews to make whatever you’re selling appear trustworthy.
There are some mechanics involved; for example, one source in the write up allegedly said:
She [former Amazon professional] says these listings were likely seized by a seller who contacted Amazon’s Seller Support team and asked them to push through a file containing the changes. The team is based mostly overseas, experiences high turnover, and is expected to work quickly, Greer says, and if you find the right person they won’t check what changes the file contains.
Is this a problem? Sure. Fix? Not an easy one. Think of the challenge as a type of YouTube vetting challenge. There’s so much going on, so much churn, one gets chaos. Interesting?
A Wobbling Flywheel?
“The Cost of Next Day Delivery” is interesting. We noted this assertion:
Amazon’s next day delivery system has brought chaos and carnage to America’s streets. But the world’s biggest retailer has a system to escape blame.
That should activate the Amazon management team. A “Have you stopped beating your dog?” question puts the individual who is to respond near high RPM flywheel.
We noted this passage from the allegedly accurate essay:
the company’s [a subcontractor to Amazon] drivers worked under relentless demands to deliver hundreds of packages each shift — for a flat rate of around $160 a day — at the direction of dispatchers who often compel them to skip meals, bathroom breaks, and any other form of rest, discouraging them from going home until the very last box is delivered.
Okay, one example. A fluke? An outlier? An anomaly?
Buzzfeed asserts that Amazon:
in its relentless bid to offer ever-faster delivery at ever-lower costs, it has built a national delivery system from the ground up. In under six years, Amazon has created a sprawling, decentralized network of thousands of vans operating in and around nearly every major metropolitan area in the country, dropping nearly 5 million packages on America’s doorsteps seven days a week.
Amazon responded to this Buzzfeed essay, according to Buzzfeed, in this way:
“The assertions do not provide an accurate representation of Amazon’s commitment to safety and all the measures we take to ensure millions of packages are delivered to customers without incident. Whether it’s state-of-the art telemetrics and advanced safety technology in last-mile vans, driver safety training programs, or continuous improvements within our mapping and routing technology, we have invested tens of millions of dollars in safety mechanisms across our network, and regularly communicate safety best practices to drivers. We are committed to greater investments and management focus to continuously improve our safety performance.”
Buzzfeed, says Buzzfeed, conducted a year long investigation into delivery by Amazon. The conclusion:
Amazon’s pivot to delivery has, all too often, exposed communities across the country to chaos, exploitative working conditions, and, in many cases, peril.
Amazon kills people. Okay. The delivery vehicles are often poorly maintained. Subcontractors may have interesting pedigrees like interactions with law enforcement. Drivers may be attacked by a dog.
Amazon, like other super efficient, edge companies, pressures its suppliers. The method has worked for companies like Toyota. But the difference, it appears, is that Amazon is not unionized. The workflow for some delivery procedures may be based on what DarkCyber calls the “high school science club management method”. This ungainly phrase suggests, “We make stuff up as we go along.” Is it possible that this approach to management is one which allows cost suppression because mid level staff who often create guidelines, procedures, and handbooks of “rules of the road” are not needed. Making up procedures on the fly is expedient.
Buzzfeed focuses on the problems which, it appears, can be addressed with unionization and a mechanism for accountability. Examples in the Buzzfeed write up range from a desire to maximize resources to abuse of power, for example, this statement from the article:
“Amazon, you are so big,” he said. “Why do you want to treat your business partner this way?”
The answer, it seems to DarkCyber, is that efficiency generates “customer satisfaction” and “revenue.” Which is more important? Buzzfeed does not say. The article points out:
“Our [Amazon’s] #1 priority,” it said, “is getting every package to the customer on time.”
Net net: Buzzfeed is likely to step up its analysis of Amazon. Amazon, DarkCyber hypothesizes, will step up its scrutiny of Buzzfeed.
What other business practices will “me too” news organizations research and document? Amazon has been around since 1994. Interesting time lag: A quarter century and now an exposé? DarkCyber will stay tuned.
We Control You: Freedom of Speech Notwithstanding
We learned that Amazon has told some partners what those partners can say and cannot say, what terms to use and what terms not to use. Jargon control? Nope, just the chugging of the Bezos bulldozer as it prepares to cut a path through a market.
“AWS Forbids Partners Even Mentioning Multi-Cloud!” includes this interesting statement:
The hyper scale giant today released a new co-branding guide (pdf), instructing partners in the AWS Partner Network (APN) how to position their marketing material when going to market with AWS.
We noted this assertion:
Among the guidelines, AWS said it won’t approve the use of terms like “multi-cloud,” “cross cloud,” “any cloud,” “every cloud,” “or any other language that implies designing or supporting more than one cloud provider.”
Perhaps installing an Alexa enabled DeepLens device behind each partner’s partner’s clavicle is a more technically elegant solution. Brain implants are not 100 percent effective. Electro shock, however, may be an alternative.
PowerShell Game for Microsofties
Amazon has released a demo of the new and improved AWS Tools for PowerShell. With Microsoft’s winning the multi-billion dollar Department of Defense job for email and the all-important war fighting tool PowerPoint, Amazon has responded.
Now those skilled in PowerShell can make the Amazon AWS platform perform as never before. The write up reports:
The preview provides developers and administrators faster startup time by allowing them to choose which module to install, and includes a mandatory parameters feature and has removed some old and obsolete cmdlets.
The two companies will continue to jockey for pride of place in the US government. What happens if Amazon introduces its own desktop apps or just buys a Zoho-type service?
The Road Ahead
One can see a glimpse of the future if Amazon lands the JEDI contract and expands its business with the US government. “What Amazon Web Services Security Certification is Doing for Government.” The “government” refers to Australia, a member of the FiveEyes group. The write up explains:
“The Australian government is now getting its hands on new technologies to improve citizen experiences.”
The article quoted an Amazon executive:
Government has always had access to servers, storage and database but they haven’t had access to modern call centre technology, machine learning, artificial intelligence, or translation,” Elisha said when he spoke to ZDNet during the AWS Public Sector Summit in Canberra this week.
The write includes an affirmation that security is a number one priority at Amazon. Where did the information originate? From Amazon at its Australian Amazon Web Services Public Sector Summit.
DarkCyber wants to point out that the US Government Computer News published “AWS to Scan for Misconfigurations.” Yeah, this sort of issue allowed a former Amazon AWS professional to access AWS customer sites, data, and services. For details see “Capital One Hacker ‘Breached 30 Organizations And Mined Crypto currency,’ Claims DOJ.” And don’t overlook “Capital One Hacker Hit with Fresh Charges: She Burgled 30 Other AWS Hosted Orgs, Feds Claim.”
Security is obviously a number one priority now that problems are being reported.
A Surprising Alarm from Sultanknish
No, we don’t know anything about Sultanknish. We did note “Amazon Should Not Control the Military Cloud.” The write up asserts:
In the Obama era, Amazon had received a $600 million cloud contract that covers all 17 intelligence agencies. The secret deal was met with protests especially since Amazon’s wasn’t even the lowest bid.
We noted this passage:
The dot com titan began lobbying the Pentagon in 2016. That was the year Amazon’s lobbying expenditures hit a whopping $11 million, up from $1.62 million during the Bush administration. Amazon’s PAC, which the company strongly encourages employees to donate to, accounted for $515,200 in donations to members of Congress.
The write up concludes:
Amazon’s JEDI bid is a threat to national security as long as its CEO is involved with a propaganda outlet for foreign terrorist groups and foreign governments that are waging a war against the United States.
Make your own decision about Sultanknish, please.
Rah Rah for Serverless Multi-Tier Architecture on AWS
Everyone needs this technology, right? Cloud reports that Amazon’s CloudFront content delivery network is available. The value of the write up is enhanced with some nifty block diagrams. Navigate to “Serverless Multi-Tier Architecture on AWS.” The point of the write up is that the traditional approach to computing is no longer the future.
Amazon and Open Source: Tools for AWS
InfoWorld, another fine IDG information service, published “7 Open Source Tools That Make AWS Lambda Better.” First, what’s AWS Lambda? It is serverless stuff. The write up identifies free software which can reduce the chance to “cut your fingers” on the hard edge of Lambda. You will have to register to read the list. Hint: Think about Ruby runtime and AWS SAM CLI, the AWS SDK for Ruby, and the AWS::Record Ruby gem.
Tiny Feet of Clay
“Amazon Sent 20 Order Confirmations to the Wrong People” reminds Amazonia that it is not without small, maybe tiny, flaws. We learned:
Twenty Amazon customers in the US had their order updates sent via email to the wrong person thanks to a “technical issue.”
Yep, a technical issue. Tiny little problem if true.
Note: There was another alleged outage. This time Amazon Prime went down according to Digital Reader.
Amazon Glue
Just a quick reminder. Amazon includes work flow tools. Navigate to the Glue announcement here.
Amazon Indian Food
More activity in that vacation wonderland, India. We learned from “Amazon Brings Its Online Grocery Store Amazon Fresh to India”:
Amazon has brought its online grocery store – Amazon Fresh – to India, which will deliver fresh fruits and vegetables, dairy and meat items and other packaged food items to customers in two hours flat. The move comes at a time when competition in the online food and grocery space is heating up with rival Wal-Mart-backed Flipkart also eyeing a space in the market.
Will Amazon compete with suppliers? Absolutely. The write up points out:
Amazon India Retail, the wholly-owned food retail unit of Amazon in India, will be among one of the sellers on Fresh. While the company did not confirm it, Cloudtail, which is a joint venture between Narayana Murthy’s Catamaran Ventures and Amazon, will also be a seller on Amazon Fresh.
Controlled competition is good competition one may deduce.
Amazon and Indian Smart Software
Amazon and IIT-Kharagpur have inked a deal to deploy an artificial intelligence portal. Portal does have a bit of a 1990s ring to some of the DarkCyber research team. The platform is, of course, AWS. None of the Google, IBM, Microsoft flailing. But, and this is an important but, Amazon may allow IIT Kharagpur to use its own in house developed cloud. Yikes. Do you think there’s a risk to either AWS or IIT-Kharagpur?
The write up in Teleganda Today explains:
Hands-on AI training will be facilitated to all AI learners, practitioners, and researchers in India through workbooks and the cloud. The system will start off using AWS Cloud, and will also be connected in the future with the in-house cloud developed at IIT Kharagpur. “With more than 200 significant machine learning capabilities launched in the last two years, AWS has the broadest and deepest set of machine learning and AI services focused on solving some of the toughest challenges facing developers. We welcome the opportunity to work with IIT Kharagpur on some of those challenges,” Bratin Saha,Vice President AWS Machine Learning & Engines, said.
Is there a list of these 200 capabilities? Not that DarkCyber has been able to locate. In fact, we’re not certain if anyone has such a list. Secrecy, US government contracts, and paranoia are likely factors in what Amazon provides about SageMaker and its stable mates.
A Peak at the Data Marketplace
The write up has a weird title: “Amazon Is Testing A Clean Room Service, Giving Advertisers Access To New Data Sets.” On the surface, Amazon is going to allow advertisers “to measure campaigns or mingle their first-party data with platform user data, without exposing individuals to targeting or analytics.” Yep, advertising.
We learned:
The Amazon clean room still doesn’t include user-level data or anything per impression, like log files. But it allows cohort-level analytics of at least 50 users with specific attributes that have engaged with a campaign.
What’s the use case? We learned:
A brand or an agency could, for instance, see that a campaign is catching fire with men aged 18-35 in cities, or with Amazon shoppers who have made certain purchases in the past. A mobile campaign might be taking off with Android but not iPhone owners. The clean room could also preserve a timeline for campaigns on Amazon. So a paper towel brand for instance could split out first-time Amazon buyers from customers that re-up every month or two.
The article noted:
Clean room tech is relatively new for the ad industry, but the progression from free ad tech feature to an extremely lucrative platform product is very familiar said one exec, citing the DoubleClick ID and Facebook pixels or app log-ins as examples of freebies that tied brands to their platforms long-term.
What other applications might this online data marketplace “clean room” support? Policeware, anyone?
Eero: A Data Hero?
DarkCyber wants to point out that a typical Amazon AWS exclusive data stream could be Eero data. Amazon wants more home network security services in homes and possibly small businesses. It is interesting to ponder what type of data is available to these devices and consider this question: “Will these data — straight or filtered — find their way back to the Amazon data marketplace. You can get more information about this Eero deal in “Now You Can Get Eero Network Protection Tools for Less.”
Ring Roundup
The Ring video doorbell has become a “thing.” Let’s take a quick look at write ups about a product which may have some “flywheel” benefits.
First, “Ring Says It Doesn’t Use Facial Recognition, but It Has a Head of Face Recognition Research.” The main idea is that the video door bell does not feed data into the Rekognition system in the manner of the DeepLens product. The write up asserts:
While Ring devices don’t currently use facial recognition technology, the company’s Ukraine arm appears to be working on it. “We develop semi-automated crime prevention and monitoring systems which are based on, but not limited to, face recognition,” reads Ring Ukraine’s website. BuzzFeed News also found a 2018 presentation from Ring Ukraine’s “head of face recognition research” online and direct references to the technology on its website. Ring’s contradictory statements about its facial recognition efforts is just the latest example of the Amazon-owned company’s lack of transparency regarding its products.
Second, “Ring Gave Police Stats about Users Who Said No to Law Enforcement Requests” asserts:
In emails obtained by Gizmodo, Ring informed a Florida police department about the number of times residents had refused police access to their cameras or ignored their requests altogether.
Third, “Five Concerns about Amazon Ring’s Deals with the Police” asserts:
More than 400 police departments across the country have partnered with Ring, tech giant Amazon’s “smart” doorbell program, to create a troubling new video surveillance system. Ring films and records any interaction or movement happening at the user’s front door, and alerts users’ phones. These partnerships expand the web of government surveillance of public places, degrade the public’s trust in civic institutions, purposely breed paranoia, and deny citizens the transparency necessary to ensure accountability and create regulations.
DarkCyber finds it interesting that Jeff Bezos’ own newspaper has jumped on the story. See “Doorbell Camera Firm Ring Has Partnered with 400 Police Forces, Extending Surveillance Concerns.”
What’s DarkCyber’s view of these assertions? Good question. But a better question is, “What will Amazon do to deal with this latest revelation about the company’s policeware capabilities?” In China, the government operates massive surveillance operations. In the US, perhaps a single commercial enterprise is doing what the US government cannot do itself?
Donation News
DarkCyber noted a report from the real news outfit CNBC: “Amazon Executives Gave Campaign Contributions to the Head of Congressional Antitrust Probe Two Months before July Hearing.” We noted this statement in the write up:
Over a three-week period starting in late May, five senior executives from Amazon made individual contributions to Rep. David Cicilline, the Democrat from Rhode Island who’s leading the House antitrust investigation into major tech companies, public filings show. Cicilline became the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee’s Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee in January, when Democrats regained control of the House. The executives include Amazon’s CEO of worldwide consumer Jeff Wilke, CFO Brian Olsavsky, general counsel David Zapolsky, SVP of worldwide operations Dave Clark, and SVP of North America consumer Doug Herrington. They all contributed the max $2,800 allowed, except for Olsavsky, who donated $1,500.
Coincidence? Probably.
More Blockchain Goodness
“Amazon Web Services Opens Blockchain Building Service Up for Wider Use” reports that Amazon said:
“You can create your [blockchain] network in minutes. You can manage certificates, invite new members, and scale out peer node capacity in order to process transactions more quickly.”
Customers include the Securities and derivatives trading platform Singapore Exchange (SGX), Accenture, non-profit foundation MOBI (Mobility Open Blockchain Initiative) and enterprise asset management company TrackX.
Access is now open for a broader enterprise roll out.
AWS Issue Takes Out B2BX Exchange
This news story has been disappearing from assorted blogs and indexes. The main point is that Amazon AWS experienced an outage during the week of August 19. According to Blocknomi:
A Tokyo-based outage in the Asia Pacific region of Amazon’s popular AWS cloud computing network wreaked havoc on some crypto currency exchanges’ operations on August 23rd. The ensuing chaos let a few traders make off like bandits. Some of the exchanges affected in the episode included Korean exchange KuCoin, Singaporean exchange BitMax, and Binance. As many such companies rely on AWS for web servers and other related infrastructure, these platforms quickly felt the effects of the localized outage.
Reliability? Depends on whom one asks. A speaker at an Amazon conference or someone at B2DX we assume.
Strange Bedfellows: IBM Wearing a Red Hat and AWS Wearing Orange Jammies
We noted that Red Hat (IBM, the cloud giant, remember) and AWS are planning a joint webinar. The topic is how to speed up application development with — you guessed it — Red Hat (IBM, the cloud giant) and Amazon AWS. A very sparse announcement appears on CSO Online. No date but, by golly, you provide your email, and you may get some information. Or, maybe not.
Is Your AWS App / Solution Fast?
DarkCyber noticed that Amazon AWS will run a “Solution Workshop” so an AWS customer can determine the performance of “modern apps.” We think this means that an AWS solution delivers unacceptable, expensive performance. Now Amazon’s partner New Relic — an outfit receiving much love from some US government agencies — will help you figure out what’s going on. The method an “entity-centric” approach across apps, services, hosts, containers, Lambda functions, AWS services, and Kubernetes pods. More information is available from the ever objective outfit Tech Republic.
A Movie Move
The real news outfit CNBC ran a story which we did not spot in our other news feeds. The title? “Disney Sells Its Stake in YES Network to Investor Group That Includes Amazon in $3.47 Billion Deal.”
The deal includes 22 regional sports networks and has rights to the baseball games of the New York Yankees. The deal is what appears to be a strategic tie up between Sinclair and the Bezos bulldozer.
Implications? Nah. Amazon sells online books.
Hasta La Vista Certain Books
The source is not one familiar to DarkCyber. You will have to determine if this write up — “Christian Authors Blast Amazon for Banning Their Books, Selling Pedophilia Titles” — is accurate.
The write up asserts:
Christian authors who once identified as gay or lesbian are highlighting the double standard Amazon is applying by removing their books from the platform while continuing to sell titles that promote pedophilia. Restored Hope Network Executive Director Anne Paulk and pastoral counselor Joe Dallas both saw their books removed from the retail giant. Amazon told some authors that their books, which detail how Jesus transformed their lives and sexual identities, were in “violation of our content guidelines.”
Interesting if true.
Amazon Sued for Subtitles
We noted this news item from the Register, a UK information service: “Audible Hasn’t Even Launched Its AI-Powered Book Subtitles and Publishers Have Already Fired Off a Sueball.” The idea is that Amazon wants to convert audiobooks to text. Seven publishing companies don’t like the idea. The publishers believe that Amazon’s transcription is for Amazon’s benefit. Suspicious lot, those publishers. There is, however, a bright spot. Amazon is opening a brick-and-mortar bookstore in Nashville. DarkCyber assumes that these aggrieved publishers will want their dead tree books sold therein.
Amazon Surfers: Selected Partners, Resellers, Integrators
Despite the summer doldrums, surf is up for some Amazon partners, resellers, and integrators. Here’s a selection from the last seven days:
Cazena. This outfit provides workload migration services. It’s now part of the Amazon partner network. Source: Yahoo
CenturyLink. The software defined data center outfit now offers a VMware-based private cloud service on the Amazon Web Services Inc. (AWS) platform. Source: Virtualization Review
Druva. We’re not sure if Druva has become an AWS partner. The company’s cloud data protection service is now available for AWS. Source: Silicon Angle
Mobvista. The SaaS vendor joined AWS APN (Amazon Web Services Partner Network). Source: Yahoo
Verimatrix. The French security and business intelligence vendor has integrated multi-DRM with Amazon Web Services Elemental Secure Packager Encoder Key Exchange (SPEKE) API. Source: Bloomberg
Stephen E Arnold, September 2, 2019
Productivity and Information Technology: A Myth?
August 30, 2019
The IT department is the go-to department for new technology and innovative ideas. According to the IT Pro Portal article, “Workers Aren’t Convinced IT Departments Are Making Them More Productive” United Kingdom workers believe that their IT departments are not the centers of productivity (the title says it all).
Citrix conducted a poll of 1000 UK based workers and discovered that people are clinging to outdated IT workplace practices. The IT departments are also not updating to implement new technology. Many practices compromise security:
“Almost a third doesn’t share securely hosted files, but instead use email to share documents around, making multiple copies, confusing workers and generally hurting productivity. A quarter saves important documents on their desktop even though they know they should be using the secure cloud.”
Humanoid punching bags — I mean millennials — are blamed for violating company security, according to the poll. They work on unprotected Wi-Fi networks and use unapproved apps for communication, like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.
It seems that Citrix responded to the poll with PR speak about the value of information technology as a sure fire way to improve productivity and employee engagement.
Do employees want to change their behavior?
Some IT workers have become complacent and resist change. But why invest? Perhaps this year’s “Citrix” crop does not satisfy like fresh squeezed information technology?
Whitney Grace, August 30, 2019
Business Intelligence: Enterprise Search, Data Lakes, and the Squeal of a Baby Unicorn
August 29, 2019
A baby unicorn became a semi reality this week. We learned this in “ThoughtSpot Hits $1.95 Billion Valuation With $248 Million Fundraise.”
Forbes, the capitalist tool and home for sponsored content, reported:
ThoughtSpot, the business intelligence startup that offers data analytics searches as simple to use as Google, hit unicorn status on Wednesday with a $248 million funding round led by Lightspeed Ventures. The E Series round raised total funding to $554 million with a valuation of $1.95 billion.
Now watch what happens. Business intelligence becomes enterprise search:
“Though the user experience is inspired by Google, the fundamental search problem we are solving is very different than what Google has to solve,” Singh tells Forbes. “On the surface, all search engines look the same, like search bars, but Google is searching Web documents of unstructured texts.
So what makes ThoughtSpot special?
We’re searching numbers that sit in data lakes and complex cloud databases, we had to build a search engine that understands data lakes.”
And the ultimate venture funder’s Holy Grail:
there’s potential for ThoughtSpot to be the “next Google” for enterprise search.
Net net: The old promises of enterprise search are back. The problems persist. The knowledge that people cannot find answers to questions exists. Closing the “unknowing” gap may be difficult.
With few enterprise search experts thinking about the lessons of Autonomy, Convera, Delphes, Endeca, Entopia, Fast Search & Transfer, STAIRS, and Vivisimo — the past may be poised to rewind and play an old “Mission Impossible”. For free profiles of some of the notable “enterprise search” services, navigate to www.xenky.com/vendor-profiles. Let’s watch reruns until a “new” consultant’s report, a Magic Quadrant, or a Wave flows in.
Stephen E Arnold, August 29, 2019
Elasticsearch and AWS
August 29, 2019
Elasticsearch is expanding its offerings once again. Yahoo Finance reports, “Elastic Launches Elasticsearch Service on AWS in London Region.” With this release, the U.K. joins nine other regions in which Elasticsearch is supported on AWS. The press release informs us:
“The Elasticsearch Service on Elastic Cloud is the only official hosted and managed Elasticsearch and Kibana service, created and supported by Elastic. With the Elasticsearch Service, you can spin up a fully loaded deployment in the AWS London region, activating powerful features such as security, monitoring, APM and machine learning (among others) that are only available from Elastic. Experience refreshingly headache-free, zero-downtime upgrades to the latest versions of our software. For minor version upgrades, it’s just a click of a button and you’ve upgraded to the latest security patches and bug fixes. Zero-downtime upgrades are possible across major versions as well, starting at 6.8+, using rolling upgrades. … The London region, similar to Elastic’s other regions, offers all of the Elasticsearch Service features. Learn more about Elasticsearch Service subscriptions on our website.”
Not surprisingly, the service is available to those in London via the AWS Marketplace. Also, Elasticsearch’s lightweight data shipper Fuctionbeat comes as an AWS Lambda; this means it can receive AWS Services events like Amazon CloudWatch logs, Amazon SQS, and Amazon Kinesis. AWS customers can also leverage their virtual private cloud with a dedicated environment via Elasticsearch Service Private subscription. Finally, Elasticsearch has carefully ensured it complies with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation principles.
Cynthia Murrell, August 29, 2019
The New Lingo of Enterprise Search
August 28, 2019
Enterprise search is back. My Google Alert has been delivering market research reports which tell me that finding information is huge. Plus, there have been some announcements about funding which have surprised me. Examples include:
- Capacity raised $13.2 million. Source: DarkCyber
- LucidWorks snagged an additional $100 million. Source: Globe News Wire
- Squirro pulled in additional funds, but the timing of the Salesforce investment and additional funding of this Zurich based company remains a bit of a mystery. Source: Venture Lab
These are just three examples plucked from my box of note cards about search vendors.
What’s interesting is the lingo, the jargon, and the argot these outfits are using. Frankly the plumbing is usually open source, a fact which the companies bury beneath the blizzard of buzzwords.
Here are some examples:
AI powered
actionable insights
artificial intelligence
cloud
cognitive
connect the dots
data mining
fusion
information mining
machine learning
natural language
pattern detection
platform
self learning
transform
The problem with the vendors collecting investment funds are easy to identify:
- The content processed is text. The unstructured information in videos, podcasts, messaging apps like WhatsApp, images like chemical structures and engineering drawings, etc. are not included.
- Indexing content residing on cloud platforms may work today, but as market dynamics shift, access to that content my be blocked or prohibited by regulations in certain countries
- Federation, on-the-fly so that real time information is available remains a challenge which typically requires script fiddling or new content filters
- Configuration of “smart” systems is not significantly different from the complex, time consuming, and expensive procedures which added friction to some Autonomy, Convera, Fast Search & Transfer, and similar systems’ deployment
- Maintenance is an issue, micro services work well in a low latency environment. Under loads, the magic of sub three second response can disappear
- Search remains an idiosyncratic solution. Many departments require specific features. As a result, enterprise search — regardless of the wrappers around open source information retrieval systems — is a series of customizations.
To sum up, enterprise search has failed to deliver for more than 50 years. Despite the optimism that investors have for “finding the next Google”, enterprise search vendors will find themselves hitting a revenue ceiling just as Autonomy, Fast Search, and similar firms did.
The fix was acquisitions and allegations of financial fancy dancing. If we assume that investors still dream of a 10x or higher return, is it possible that LucidWorks can generate sufficient revenue to pull off an IPO or a sale like Exalead, Vivisimo, and other search vendors were able to complete before the hammer fell?
This is an important question because new enterprise search vendors are popping up like mushrooms. The incumbents like Attivio, Coveo, Mindbreeze, and Sinequa are also trying to smash a ball over the fence.
Net net: Enterprise search appears to be putting on the worn slippers last used by the founders of Fast Search & Transfer. Maybe Microsoft will buy another enterprise search vendor? The problem is that enterprise search is easy to make visible with marketing LED lights. Delivering sustainable revenues is a far greater challenge when Amazon is a competitor and a platform enabler.
What happens when Amazon competes more aggressively, raises its prices, or bundles text search into another of its services?
Answer: Nothing particularly beneficial for the investors in new and improved enterprise search solutions based on Lucene/Solr and dusted with disco glitter.
Stephen E Arnold, August 28, 2019
Amazonia for August 26, 2019
August 26, 2019
Amazon has been criticized in the last seven days. If anything, the scrutiny of the firm has increased. Examples include reactions to good news tweets from happy warehouse workers to stronger hints that government investigations are gathering steam. Other developments DarkCyber noted are:
Amazon AWS Crashes
DarkCyber spotted a report from FXStreet with the disconcerting headline: “The Amazon Web Services Crash Is Causing Havoc with Crypto Exchanges (Could Explain BitMex).” The write up presents this information:
AWS has crashed according to reports on twitter causing havoc at crypto currency exchanges.
Coindesk has chimed in, reporting that KuCoin is having problems.
If true, one might pose this question:
How reliable is Amazon AWS?
DarkCyber hypothesizes that the answer will be, “Good enough.” But is good enough good enough? DarkCyber is feeling Gnostic today.)
More Publishers Grousing, Squawking, and Releasing Legal Eagles
Reuters reported that top US publishers are suing Amazon Audible. The reason? Copyright infringement. The real news outfit reported:
Audible was sued by some of the top U.S. publishers for copyright infringement on Friday, aiming to block a planned rollout of a feature called ‘Audible Captions’ that shows the text on screen as a book is narrated.
The idea is that Amazon needs to obtain permission to display text on a screen. (Will some produce a motion picture channeling “Snakes on a Plane” with the title “Text on a Screen? The FBI agent could be played by Maya Mavgee maybe?)
Amazon Gives Up Control of It Site and Other Horrors
“Amazon Has Ceded Control of Its Site. The Result: Thousands of Banned, Unsafe or Mislabeled Products” has a serious allegation about the online bookstore. The pay walled story includes a nifty illustration. Here’s a snippet of the image:
Presumably the stuffed animals might harm you. The clock? Maybe it will chop off a child’s fingers. The flashlight? It could explode and remove your entire hand! The sticker? Oh, the sticker?
How many Amazon products are banned? Ars Technica says, “4,100” and references the Wall Street Journal.
The consequences are too horrible to contemplate. Amazon has to clean up its product offerings?
What would this product do to you?
The answer DarkCyber knows not.
PS. For a similar “Amazon is bad” write up. Check out the New York Times’ disclosure that the George Orwell you buy on Amazon may be a fake, rewritten, or some other dastardly bastardization of 1984 in 2019. Source: New York Times, complete with pay wall, begging for email address, etc. from a somewhat needy Gray Lady.
Amazon: Hard Sell at the Pentagon
ProPublica may be doing a type of journalism not practiced at the Washington Post. The nonprofit news out published “How Amazon and Silicon Valley Seduced the Pentagon.” The subtitle is a click magnet:
Tech moguls like Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt have gotten unprecedented access to the Pentagon. And one whistle blower who raised flags has paid the price.
When printed out, the article required 13 pages. Please navigate to the source document or one of the recycled versions of the story.
Several observations are warranted:
- Blowing the whistle on big wheels does not seem to be a career enhancing action. Just sayin’.
- The emphasis on Amazon is okay, but the real subject of the write up is the GOOG. But once Google fired the Department of Defense, changing the title was probably easier than beefing up the Amazon content.
- The Google may have been in a prime position to nab significant billions from the DoD. But quitting Project Maven, opening the door for Anduril Industries, and igniting a certain Silicon Valley big wheel to toss around suggestions of treason was significant.
There is juicy Amazon fruit in the write up. But the Google is front and center in this interesting company.
Will Amazon “win” the JEDI contract? DarkCyber is not sure. We hope it works better than the first delivered F 35 aircraft when JEDI leaves the launch pad. (No, we did not consult an “oracle” for this information.)
Amazon Enhances Australia
ZDNet published “What Amazon Web Services Security Certification Is Doing for Government.” The main idea is that the government of Australia is “now getting its hands on new technology.” DarkCyber learned:
When Amazon Web Services (AWS) achieved protected-level certification earlier this year, which meant it could provide storage for highly sensitive government workloads out of its AWS Asia Pacific region in Sydney, the company’s head of solution architecture Simon Elisha said it helped “unlock innovation” for the public sector.
Will similar benefits accrue to the US if Amazon wins the JEDI competition?
Also related to Australia: ZDNet reports that Amazon now offers a job placement service for Australian veterans. Good for Australian veterans, yes. The initiative appears to be part of Amazon’s effort to teach programmers how to make Amazon the world’s operating environment and know about Amazon’s hundreds of products, services, and functions.
Amazon: Big Revenue, Tiny Profits
The write up “Amazon’s Tiny Profits Explained.” We had a habit of napping in Econ 101 and just studying for the tests in Finance class. Amazon uses a range of techniques to keep profits down. There’s even a hockey stick and earthworm chart to show how the numbers have flower for a decade. Mr. Bezos worked on Wall Street, which may be something to keep in mind.
DarkCyber thinks it understands the profit method. The write up does not tackle a question DarkCyber finds more interesting; that is,
Why does Amazon pay low or no taxes?
The write up has an answer: Investment. We noted:
Amazon’s internal investments also keep its tax bill down, saving the company money. While we don’t know exactly what Amazon pays in taxes, various estimates suggest its rate is low thanks in part to its huge investments in its business. What we do know is that its taxes have provided plenty of fodder for presidential candidates like Joe Biden, who’s mentioned it on his campaign and on Twitter, and Elizabeth Warren, who included the company as an example in her new corporate tax proposal. President Donald Trump has also harangued the company for not paying enough in taxes. Amazon has responded that it’s simply paying what the government says it owes.
How skilled are Amazon’s finance and tax professionals? Skilled enough to keep Mr. Bezos happy.
Oh, Oh, Alexa: Dumber than Google?
We noted this write up by a relative of Debbie Downer called “The Results Are In: Alexa Is Legitimately Dumber than Siri and Google Assistant.” First off, DarkCyber would just say “Alexa is dumber than Siri and Google Assistant.” The legitimately and the results don’t add much. Alexa is dumb could be considered suitable as a headline as well.
The main point of the write up? Alexa is dumb.
We noted this statement:
The venture capital firm recently asked Amazon Alexa, Apple’s Siri, and Google Assistant the same 800 questions. Google Assistant was the most successful of the bunch and was able to answer 93% of the questions correctly. In comparison, Siri was only able to get 83% of the questions right, and Alexa got 80%. Samsung’s Bixby and Microsoft’s Cortana, both lesser-used voice assistants, didn’t even make the cut.
I am not sure is I have much confidence in venture capital funded or completed research. The scores appear to fall within the range of competent smart software systems. Keep in mind that accuracy rates with 10 to 20 percent “wrong” answers is likely to make decisions generated by these wondrous numerical recipes wrong— a lot. If one of those questions pertains to the antidote required to save your child, are you going to rely on smart software or a trained physician?
Dumb, by the way, is relative. Identifying rotten tomatoes is different from identifying bad actors. But the name of the game today is “good enough.” That’s what these smart systems deliver. And you know what? That’s good enough, which is something Debbie Downer intuits.
A Vote of Not Much Confidence
The assumption that Amazon is the solution to a range of problems may be correct for some people. “Companies Should Disclose Amazon Web Services as Material Risk” reminds people that “Amazon’s hack prone cloud computing platform” is an issue. The negative paint daub is a reaction to the former AWS professional who breached security at Capital One and possibly more than 24 other companies. DarkCyber noted this statement in the report:
regardless of any potential SEC actions, shareholders should be demanding answers about AWS usage from companies already in their portfolio and those in which they are considering investing.
Amazon Forecast Available
Amazon has made its machine learning technology to the public. Amazon Forecast is a managed service which outputs forecasts. With the technology one can predict demand for products and services. The system also makes it possible to predict infrastructure requirements, energy demand, and similar variables; for example, allocation of police resources. Amazon Forecast produces private, custom models that can help developers make predictions that are up to 50% more accurate than traditional methods.Amazon Forecast automatically sets up a data pipeline, ingests data, trains a model, provides accuracy metrics, and performs forecasts. Amazon asserts that developers do not have to have any expertise in machine learning to use the service. More information is available at https://aws.amazon.com/forecast/. DarkCyber anticipates that as this product matures, its functions will be a direct competitive threat to Palantir Technologies, Recorded Future, and similar policeware and intelware vendors.
Amazon to Increase Staff in Portland
BizJournals reported that Amazon will add up to 400 new jobs in Portland, Oregon. This “real news” item is protected by a pay wall. But a free version with more information is available from MarketWatch at this link. Amazon has been a good corporate citizen. We learned:
The company has created more than 3,500 full-time jobs in Oregon since 2010 and invested over $9 billion in the state, including customer fulfillment facilities, cloud infrastructure, and compensation to its employees.
Amazon India
We reported that Amazon has been chugging toward India. The Amazon facility is, according to Reuters, “its biggest global campus.” Amazon India is growing fast and needs to expand in Hyderabad. How big?
The new campus in India, spread over 9.5 acres and costing “hundreds of millions of dollars”, will house over 15,000 employees, the company said. Amazon has 62,000 employees in India, roughly a third of whom are based in Hyderabad.
Portland’s 400 staff additions sends an interesting signal.
Move Over US Medical Database/Taxonomy Experts. AWS Is Now the Sheriff of This Here Domain
The individuals who build controlled vocabularies have embraced the term “metadata”. Goodbye, indexing. Jargon is better. Some of the people who build controlled term lists are into certain fields. Medical terminology is an example which keeps “Taxonomy in a Day” types at bay.
Who should create approved medical terminology? How about the National Institutes of Health?
Wrong.
The correct answer appears in “The ADHA Is Simplifying Its Clinical Terminology Database with AWS.” The ZDNet write up reports like a good “real news” outfit:
the ADHA has developed NCTS 2.0 to be more simplified by taking a serverless approach to the system to take advantage of the AWS shared responsibility model.
DarkCyber thinks that this is important, a harbinger, and an approach coming to America.
Defining terms frames reality. When reality is the AWS SageMaker system, there will be some downstream adjustments that individuals, indexers, and commercial health and database publishers will find interesting.
Change or die in the Amazon forest.
Amazon Bahrain Is Open and Training People
Get trained up or get left at the station. AWS is holding cloud training for Bahrain businesses. Why? you ask.
Trade Arabia states:
the new region adds to the already existing investment of infrastructure from Amazon in the Middle East with the already operational Amazon CloudFront edge locations in the cities Dubai, and Fujairah, in the United Arab Emirates.
Amazon AWS Inspires Third Party Hardware
We found “Renesas Electronics Enhanced RX65N WiFi Connectivity Cloud Kit Simplifies Secure IoT Endpoint Device Connections to Amazon Web Services” long winded. The main point is that Renesas built a card which includes on board support for Amazon FreeRTOS. Connection to AWS is, thus, easy. What else is on the device? Here’s a short list: Dual bank flash for over-the-air (OTA) firmware updates and Trusted Secure IP (TSIP). The cost? Just $50.
Amazon Supported Ignite: Farm to Consumer Start Up
All the Farms is a Web site that finds farms. The idea is that a person can locate fresh produce near one’s home. According to the Register Guard:
The US Ignite Startup Accelerator Program, partnered with Amazon Web Services, this year accepted 19 startups from across the country. Each was deemed a business-ready startup with a product that could help create “smart cities.”
Like Google, Amazon wants to spot high potential start ups. If some of those outfits need cloud technology, it is possible that the Bezos bulldozer could hook a needy outfit up to the megawatt outfit’s data center. Any connection to Whole Foods? The write up does not speculate.
Amazon and Blockchain
Amazon has announced that its Managed Blockchain is going to get cloud support through Amazon’s CloudFormation. The idea is that scaling will be easier. Source: FXStreet
Gaps in AWS Security? Your Problem
According to Forbes, the capitalist tool, yes. “The Truth About Privileged Access Security On AWS and Other Public Clouds” reveals that basic security services are provided but:
the free version often doesn’t go far enough to support PAM at the enterprise level. To AWS’s credit, they continue to invest in IAM features while fine-tuning how Config Rules in their IAM can create alerts using AWS Lambda. AWS’s native IAM can also integrate at the API level to HR systems and corporate directories, and suspend users who violate access privileges.
The write up points out:
- AWS can’t protect you
- Use the security model provided
- Use the AWS identity infrastructure
- You can go cross cloud with security.
How? It’s simple. Just assemble the parts shown in the figure below:
Remember how IBM, Oracle, and Microsoft would lock customers in? Amazon uses the same methods.
Partners/Resellers/Consultants
Amazon continues to gather third parties for a Bezos bulldozer ride. Examples are:
Academy Software Foundation. This outfit has snagged AWS as a premier member. Wait. Amazon has joined the movie industry outfit. Source: Newkerala
Druva. The data protection start up enables intelligent data storage on AWS. Source: Silicon Angle
Rockset. The company has released areal time SQL for Amazon’s DynamoDB. Source: MarketWatch
SoftServe. The consulting firm has expanded its relationship with Amazon. Source: Yahoo
Stackery. The serverless workflow software is now available on AWS. Apps can be managed from development to production. Source: Digital Journal
Wespac. The Little Ripper drone is now an Amazon partner.
Customers can now tap into near real time video streaming via the cloud. Anduril Industries, are you nervous? Source: Aero News Net
Stephen E Arnold, August 22, 2019
Google and Its Amazing, Proliferating Services
August 22, 2019
It is all about the live streaming, backed by strong DVR capabilities. Digital Trends asks and answers, “What Is YouTube TV? Here’s Everything You Need to Know.” At a pricy $50 a month (minimum), the service is quite the entertainment investment. For some, though, it may be worth it. Writer Josh Levenson insists that the available features, particularly YouTube TV’s version of a cloud-storage DVR, more than make up for its limitations. These shortfalls include fewer channels than competitors, like AT&T TV Now (formerly DirecTV Now) and Sling TV, and support for fewer devices. He tells us:
“Out of all the various features baked into YouTube TV, one stands out from the crowd: Cloud DVR. Granted, that’s a tool that most live TV streaming services offer these days, but Google has hit the nail on the head offering a more natural experience—letting you record as much content as you want, which can be stored for up to nine months at an end, putting an end to the storage limits that most competitors impose. …
We also noted:
“Like most streaming services, YouTube TV also offers its customers the option to watch the content on multiple screens at once. To be specific, you’ll have the option to create up to six sub-accounts for family members, of which three can watch at the same time. There is no option to upgrade to a higher plan, either—so that’s a firm cap at three streams at the same time, but that should be more than enough for most families.”
But will most households have a device on hand that can play YouTube TV? To run the service on a 4K television, one needs a set-top stream-capable box or a dedicated streaming stick. And as with any service but PlayStation Vue, viewing on a Playstation 4 is out, but all Xbox Ones are supported. It can be run through a Chrome or Firefox browser on a PC or from the operating system on Android and Apple devices. YouTube TV is also supported on Android TV, Apple TV, Chromecast, Fire TV, Roku OS, Vizio SmartCast televisions, and post-2016 smart TVs from LG and Samsung.
Yes, most could probably find something on which to watch YouTube TV. Is it worth the monthly cost? How long will Google stick with the service? Who has time for multiple streaming services? What about Twitch.tv? How can a YouTuber message another? What about child suitable options? Perhaps benched AI whiz Mustafa Suleyman is available to contribute to resolving thorny YouTube questions?
Many questions for a company with remarkable management acumen.
Cynthia Murrell, August 22, 2019
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
