Amazonia for September 9, 2019

September 9, 2019

At the airport. Waiting. Here are a few nuggets the Bezos bulldozer left in its wake last week.

Arrests at Amazon

Forward reported that “hundreds of protesters organized by the Jewish group Never Again Action” were making their voices heard. The scene was Boston. Allegedly 12 activist were arrested after entering the Amazon facility and refusing to leave. DarkCyber thinks that protesting ICE is likely to get one put on ICE in the local lock up. The key point in the write up:

Amazon does not provide services directly to ICE, but does provide cloud hosting services to ICE’s subcontractors, according to the tech website The Verge. Amazon Web Services also hosts Department of Homeland Security databases that allow officials from numerous agencies to track immigrants.

Amazon Wants in Your Auto

Google landed General Motors. Amazon wants to go along on your rides. “Alexa, Roll Down the Windows!” Inside Amazon’s Quest to Get in Your Car” explains:

Amazon has been working hard on Alexa Auto for the past two years. Now it hopes to convince automakers to embed the platform into their new cars.

A revised auto SDK is forthcoming. We learned:

Amazon is set to announce the second version of the Alexa Auto SDK. This update will allow Alexa to do more things when the car’s internet connection is interrupted, by switching to to a mobile phone (connected to the car via Bluetooth or USB) for the connection needed to call, message, or stream music from services such as Amazon Music and Pandora. The new SDK also enables a couple of new offline car-control features, including the ability to turn on defrost and in-cabin lighting. However, Alexa Auto SDK still does not support the ability to control the ignition, door locks, or headlights using voice commands, whether the car has an internet connection or not.

DarkCyber assumes that the Bezos bulldozer is already equipped with these capabilities.

Amazon Personnel Management Gets the Evil Eye

We spotted “The Human Cost of Amazon’s Fast, Free Shipping” in the New York Times and then on the MSN.com Web site. The write up appears to be a research summary with the original work done by Pro Publica. In short, Microsoft was keen to get this tabloid-esque exposé in front of Azure tinted eyeballs. Our take: Amazon is a bad personnel management outfit. Boo.

The main point is simple:

In its relentless push for e-commerce dominance, Amazon has built a huge logistics operation in recent years to get more goods to customers’ homes in less and less time. As it moves to reduce its reliance on legacy carriers like United Parcel Service, the retailer has created a network of contractors across the country that allows the company to expand and shrink the delivery force as needed, while avoiding the costs of taking on permanent employees.

Efficiency is okay. Efficiency which harms employees is not okay. But the human factor is likely to be shaped. Amazon wants robots. A capital investment is a two-fer: Lower taxes, no overworked humanoids burdening the online bookstore with benefits, health care, and on the job incidents.

Harsh Words for AWS

DarkCyber does not know if these assertions in this Reddit post are accurate. However, one may want to apprise oneself of these issues. Check out this Reddit post.

Summer Sale

If you use AWS EFS infrequent access, you get a deal. Silicon Angle reported that Amazon has cut prices AWS EFS Infrequent Access. How much of a price chop? For some customers, a $1.00 charge could become $0.08. Storage is just $0.08 per gigabyte. Also, Lifecycle Management service for EFS have been trimmed as well. Why? DarkCyber is hypothesizing but grousing about the “hidden” costs of AWS seem to be cropping up in online discussion groups. Plus, there’s some bad publicity about AWS reliability. Team Azure keeps pecking at AWS. Will more price cuts follow? Tough to predict the future.

Partners, Resellers, Integrators

Accenture. The accounting/consulting/billing machine has team with Amazon to offer managed blockchain services for “small scale producers into the value chain.” No we don’t know what this means. Source: Forbes

Baffle. This cyber security firm is now an “AWS Database Ready Technology Partner.” Source: Help Net Security

Esono. This consultant provides a VMware cloud on AWS. The function is “the new manager of cloud environment. Source: CIO Review

ICL. This global specialty minerals and specialty chemicals company will use AWS to deliver its digital services to agricultural professionals. ICL is based in Israel. Source: MarketWatch

Mobvista. The company is now part of the Amazon partner network. Source: Yahoo

NRGene. This AI and genomic outfit is not an Amazon advanced technology partner. Source: Digital Journal

Privo. This AWS consulting firm is now a premier consulting partner. Source: Marketwatch

Pureport. This multi cloud networking provider said that its Multi cloud Fabric platform now supports AWS Transit Gateway over AWS Direct Connect. Source: Capacity Media

Verimatrix. The Paris-based service provider has announced “interoperability between the Verimatrix Multi-DRM solution and the Secure Packager Encoder Key Exchange (SPEKE) API developed by Amazon Web Services (AWS)”. Bloomberg

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