Enterprise Search: Flexible and Stretchy. Er, No.
January 21, 2021
Enterprise search, the utility service, thrills users and information technology professionals alike. There are quite a few search and retrieval vendors chasing revenue. Frankly I have given up trying to keep track of outfits like Luigi’s Box, Yext (yes, enterprise search!), and quite a few repackagers of Lucene; e.g., IBM, Attivio, Voyager Search, and more. There are some proprietary outfits as well.
Then there is the Compass Search sibling Elastic and its Elasticsearch. Open source search makes a great deal of sense to:
- Companies wanting a no cost or low cost way to provide search and retrieval-type functionality to an application
- Penny pinchers who want “the community” to fix bugs so that cash is freed up to lease fancy cars, receive bonuses, and focus on more important software features which can be offered for a fee and a license handcuff
- Competitors who want to provide a familiar environment to those with cash to spend and wave the magic wand of open source in front of young believers who think proprietary software is a crime against humanity.
The history of Elasticsearch and Amazon reaches back to the era when Lucid Works (né Lucid Imagination) lost some staff to Amazon’s Burlingame, California, office. That was the bell which sounded when the Bezos bulldozer decided A9 was not enough. Sure, A9 works but the folks from the Lucene/Solr outfit would map the route from A9 to a more open, folksy world of open source search.
The open source version of Lucene was the beating heart of Elastic, the now public company.
Then Amazon does what Amazon does: The company shifted the bulldozer into gear and went for open source search developers who could seamlessly (sort of) move into the newly blazed path to AWS. Once inside, the fruits of the thousand plus services, features, and functions were just a click away. Policeware vendors, start ups, and some big outfits followed the Bezos bulldozer. The updated IBM slogan reads, “Nobody gets fired for buying AWS.”
Elastic was upset.
“Amazon: NOT OK – Why We Had to Change Elastic Licensing” picks up this story and explains where Elastic fits into the world crafted by the Bezos bulldozer.
The write up explains:
Our license change is aimed at preventing companies from taking our Elasticsearch and Kibana products and providing them directly as a service without collaborating with us.
Elastic’s essay notes:
We think that Amazon’s behavior is inconsistent with the norms and values that are especially important in the open source ecosystem. Our hope is to take our presence in the market and use it to stand up to this now so others don’t face these same issues in the future.
The essay concludes:
I believe in the core values of the Open Source Community: transparency, collaboration, openness. Building great products to the benefit of users across the world. Amazing things have been built and will continue to be built using Elasticsearch and Kibana. And to be clear, this change most likely has zero effect on you, our users. And no effect on our customers that engage with us either in cloud or on premises.
Several observations:
- Commercial behemoths like Amazon use open source the way my neighbor burns firewood, old carpets, and newspapers. The goal is to optimize available cash.
- Amazon’s move into Elastic’s territory began more than five years ago. Amazon does kill off loser products like health and food delivery but it keeps others in tall cotton when it pays off.
- Those completing [a] Amazon certification, [b] partner indoctrination, or [c] inputs from free or low cost Amazon training arrive ready to do the search thing Amazon’s way.
Net net: Beyond Search understands Elastic’s anguish and actions. Perhaps the license shift and the assumptions about open source are unlikely to stand up to the Bezos bulldozer? Open source Elasticsearch is a bargain. It may be tough to compete with free plus discounts for AWS goodies and other Amazon benefits. Legal or illegal, fair or unfair, open source or closed source — the bulldozer grinds forward.
Stephen E Arnold, January 21, 2021
AWS Offers Multicloud Services Without Fanfare
January 21, 2021
One problem with cloud offerings is when a service does not sold for one operating system, but not another. AWS usually brags about its accomplishments, but Protocol said, “AWS Quietly Enters The Multicloud Era.”
AWS has two new versions of its managed containers and managed Kubernetes services, EKS Anywhere and ECS Anywhere, that can run on both Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud. AWS confirmed that its new software will manage workloads running on other cloud providers. AWS does not like to play with other cloud services, however, its customers do, so they caved.
Google and Microsoft were late to the multicloud game too. When their customers demanded software management on multiple cloud infrastructures, they realized many used AWS. It was also a good way to make their customers happy and possibly more money.
AWS lacks support, though:
“It does not appear that ECS Anywhere and EKS Anywhere offer the same degree of support for multicloud deployments as Azure Arc or Google Anthos, which were designed to be user-friendly multicloud tools. And according to the ECS Anywhere launch blog post, ‘the supportability of ECS Anywhere scenarios at the time of general availability may be artificially limited due to other constraints.’”
That stinks for the moment, but give it awhile and the AWS team will offer more support as demand for service grows.
Whitney Grace, January 21, 2021
With Amazon Reviews, Look Beyond the Stars
January 14, 2021
We have covered Amazon’s persistent problem with fake reviews for products on its platform. Ars Technica discusses a slightly different issue in, “Amazon Still Hasn’t Fixed Its Problem with Bait-and-Switch Reviews.” Writer Timothy B. Lee describes his effort to find a good drone for his kids. A certain selection enjoyed thousands of five-star reviews—great! Many shoppers would stop there, hit “add to cart,” and be on their way. However, Lee actually checked out the text of the best reviews and discovered they were singing the praises of a certain brand of honey. Honey! How one would confuse the rich, golden sweetener with a flying head-bonker is beyond us. Lee writes:
“When I sorted the reviews by date, I saw that the most recent reviewers actually had bought a drone and they were overwhelmingly not giving it five stars. ‘Bought this for my Grandson,’ a customer wrote on December 26. ‘He played with it for 2 hours before it broke and is no longer working.’ He gave the drone one star. But the older reviews were for honey. Apparently, the manufacturer had tricked Amazon into displaying thousands of reviews for an unrelated product below its drone, helping the drone to unfairly rise to the top of Amazon’s search results. The story was similar for the second and third results in my drone search. Both had thousands of reviews with five-star averages. In both cases, many of the five-star reviews were obviously for other products—including a bottle of vodka, a bracelet, and a box of Christmas cards. In both cases, the most recent reviews were almost all negative reviews from customers who had actually bought the drones. One reviewer claimed that a drone had scratched their son’s face.”
Ay, Caramba! This sellers’ scam has been going on for some time now; we’re reminded Buzzfeed covered it over two years ago. We doubt Amazon will ever raise a finger to fix the problem—that would cost money, which they would prefer to avoid. As much as the company blusters about putting the customer first, it is really the bottom line at the top of its agenda.
Cynthia Murrell, January 14, 2021
What Has Amazon Caught? The Google Syndrome?
January 4, 2021
No, Google has not launched a virus infecting Amazon Web Services (although AWS has people capable of designing such a virus). Instead Google has infected AWS with its “shiny object syndrome” says Last Week In AWS in the article: “The Google Disease Afflicting AWS.”
Last Week In AWS refers to Google’s mind state as the “launch new service” mentality, where Google perpetually launches new projects, works on them for the headlines, then abandons them. Apparently it is the only way to advance in Google’s hierarchy. AWS, on the other hand, is starting a “launch new service” mentality when those new services should be features on preexisting projects.
AWS should be helping their customers, instead they are creating new and competing services. This mentality has harmed Google and will not do any favors for AWS. The majority of people agree:
“For a company that believes its team should Be Right a Lot, this is pretty clearly the wrong path—according to customers, analysts, random passersby, and employees with a penchant for honesty. It’s not good for anyone, and I firmly believe that you don’t Earn Trust from your customers by making even the most diligent cloud-watchers feel that the cloud is accelerating away from their ability to understand and contextualize what you’ve built.”
The article wonders why no one has pointed this out to AWS top brass. We do not know if anyone actually has, but common sense states that an employee must have reported the top heavy and poor customer service model. This common sense employee was probably reprimanded or fired for speaking the truth. Remember the child who said the emperor was naked?
Whitney Grace, January 4, 2021
Amazon Top Dog Video: A Minor Omission
January 1, 2021
If you are an Amazon watcher, you will enjoy the production values and some of the examples in the video “How Amazon Became the Top Dog in Artificial Intelligence: Tech Video.” On the plus side, the producer has pumped some bucks into visuals intended to represent the way Amazon’s technology functions. Keep in mind that the program is a video, and not a white board in an Amazon tech center. There is one downside or what I call a “minor omission” in the program. The oversight is probably irrelevant because Amazon itself goes out of its way to choke off the flows of information about one of its more interesting businesses: Policeware. Amazon is the plumbing for some of the most widely used policeware vendors who specialize in aggregating and analyzing information to solve crimes. Plus Amazon has a pride of lion hearted entrepreneurs who are developing next generation policeware for their government customers. Also, Amazon has some “interesting” partners who match up products, services, features, and functions for government projects. Are you watching Dubai’s use of AWS? Ah, well, there’s 2021 to dive into that topic. The policeware angle is not to be found in the video. Oversight? Amazon’s influence? Cutting room floor?
Stephen E Arnold, January 1, 2021
Thumb Typers Know Exactly What to Do: Okay, Not So Much
December 29, 2020
I read “More Info is Available about Which College Majors Pay Off, But Students Aren’t Using It.” This is a surprise? Nope, but it is “real” news. I noted this statement:
“What we find is that they’re not changing their majors,” Troutman [an expert in this subject] said. “They’re following their passions.”
Passions like van life, a digital emulation of riding a camel in the desert waiting for their Lawrence of Arabia to deliver a payoff?
The Bezos publication points out:
But even as this information becomes more readily available, there’s consensus that students generally aren’t consulting it when deciding where to go and what to study.
But what about students who don’t pick a major which “pays off”?
The write up states:
That students don’t know their likely future incomes well before they graduate is particularly surprising given that getting a good job is now the No. 1 reason they say they go to college, according to a nationwide survey of freshmen by an institute at the University of California at Los Angeles — edging out “learn[ing] more about things that interest me” — and that 84 percent said it was very important or essential to them to be financially very well off.
Maybe journalism? Alternatively another Bezos linked entity is hiring for warehouse work or artificial intelligence development.
Stephen E Arnold, December 29, 2020
Zuckasar and Bezoder or Caeberg and Alexos?
December 24, 2020
I spotted this image in Google Images. Miraculously I was able to locate it by querying “Zuckerberg Caesar.” Bingo.
The idea is that the Facebook poobah seems to look like the Big J. As you will recall, some of his friends allegedly unliked the Ruler of the World using real knives, not unfollows.
I read “Jeff Bezos Reportedly Considers Himself the Alexander the Great of Modern Exploitation.” The source of this revelation in tottering Oxford don or donette (no, not a donut, gentle reader). The insight appears in an online information service called Jezebel which recycled an interview from an alleged Amazon whiz person.
I learned:
According to an Amazon cybersecurity engineer who spoke anonymously and quite candidly with Logic Magazine, working at Amazon is much more Philip K. Dick than it is Plutarch, despite Jeff Bezos’s boner for Alexander the Great:
“Jeff Bezos studies other “great men” in history and imagines himself to be a kind of Alexander the Great. There’s even a building on the Amazon campus called Alexandria, which was the name of one of the company’s early projects to get every single book that had ever been published to be listed on Amazon.”
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I see the resemblance. Uncanny. The mosaic reminds me of the thousands of AWS services which contribute to Mr. Bezos’ wealth.
One question: Why are these business leaders embracing the war fighters and dictators of yesteryear?
There are other helpful models; for example:
JP Morgan is a potential role model.
The ancient history thing may not be about money. Perhaps the appeal is for the allure of power and the world domination thing. Interesting. I am looking forward to Messrs. Zuckerberg and Bezos commissioning Bernadette Banner. She can create the Big J armor for the Zuck and come up with a period correct outfit from 370 BC for Mr. Bezos.
Great for live streaming when the monopoly hearings become available. Perfect for Shopify T shirt vendors and TikTok snippets with Wal-Mart adverts.
Stephen E Arnold, December 24, 2020
The Amazon Bracelet: Is It Like Those Shock Collars Thingies?
December 24, 2020
A pair of Washington Post reviewers tell us exactly how they feel about the recent entry into the fitness-tracker market. Greenwich Time shares, “Amazon’s New Health Band Is the Most Invasive Tech We’ve Ever Tested.” Geoffrey A Fowler and Heather Kelly write:
“Amazon has a new health-tracking bracelet with a microphone and an app that tells you everything that’s wrong with you. You haven’t exercised or slept enough, reports Amazon’s $65 Halo Band. Your body has too much fat, the Halo’s app shows in a 3-D rendering of your near-naked body. And even: Your tone of voice is ‘overbearing’ or ‘irritated,’ the Halo determines, after listening through its tiny microphone on your wrist. Hope our tone is clear here: We don’t need this kind of criticism from a computer. The Halo collects the most intimate information we’ve seen from a consumer health gadget – and makes the absolute least use of it. This wearable is much better at helping Amazon gather data than at helping you get healthy and happy.”
Yes, in addition to basics like heart rate, skin temperature, activity, and sleep, this late entry to the market collects information its rivals do not—body photos and voice recordings. Despite that, it offers surprisingly little in the way of personalized advice. Are its users simply paying for the privilege of feeding Amazon’s machine-learning databases? The reviewers also found that, compared to competitors, the device seems less accurate in its measurements. Furthermore, the band has no display—a corresponding phone app is the only way to receive feedback. It also scores one’s progress in an what appears to be an arbitrary 150-point scale that did little to motivate these reviewers.
And what of that tone-of-voice functionality? Apparently having the AI divine one’s mood is supposed to help the user somehow, but the reviewers found it to be mostly a judgmental downer. Not only that but, like many algorithms, it may have a gender bias problem. We’re told:
“The terms diverged when we filtered just for ones with negative connotations. In declining order of frequency, the Halo described Geoffrey’s tone as ‘sad,’ ‘opinionated,’ ‘stern,’ and ‘hesitant.’ Heather, on the other hand, got ‘dismissive,’ ‘stubborn,’ ‘stern’ and ‘condescending.’ She doesn’t dispute she might have sounded like that, especially while talking to her children. But some of the terms, including ‘overbearing’ and ‘opinionated,’ hit Heather differently than they might a male user. The very existence of a tone-policing AI that makes judgment calls in those terms feels sexist. Amazon has created an automated system that essentially says, ‘Hey sweetie, why don’t you smile more?’”
Perhaps Amazon should go back to the drawing board with this one. That is, if it is as interested in serving its customers as in feeding its algorithms.
Cynthia Murrell, December 24, 2020
Seeking Clarity? Amazon AWS Can Provide It
December 17, 2020
AWS increases their AI and machine learnings technology offerings everyday. While AWS is one of the leading providers for AI-powered technology it has yet to overcome AI’s limitations. One of the biggest issues facing AI-powered technology is bias. The best examples of AI bias are facial recognition studies that lack diverse ethnic examples (e.g. black, white, Asian, etc. people).
Amazon developed a solution for bias: Amazon SageMaker Clarify, a tool designed for machine learning developers to gain deeper insight into training data and models to detect bias and explain predictions. Amazon SageMaker Clarify works by:
“SageMaker Clarify is integrated with Amazon SageMaker Data Wrangler, making it easier to identify bias during data preparation. You specify attributes of interest, such as gender or age, and SageMaker Clarify runs a set of algorithms to detect any presence of bias in those attributes. After the algorithm runs, SageMaker Clarify provides a visual report with a description of the sources and measurements of possible bias so that you can identify steps to remediate the bias. For example, in a financial dataset that contains only a few examples of business loans to one age group as compared to others, SageMaker will flag the imbalance so that you can avoid a model that disfavors that age group.”
Eliminating bias detection is a major holdup in AI technology, but SageMaker Clarify is a step in the right direction. Other AI players, including Google, Microsoft, and Apple, are developing their own ways to detect bias.
Whitney Grace, December 17, 2020
Clouds Hide a Basic Truth: Rebuilding Mandatory
December 10, 2020
I read “There Must Be a Better Way to Build on AWS.”
Here’s the passage I noted:
The real cost of going with AWS is its complexity. There is hardly anything more important to an early-stage startup than moving fast, but this is exactly where AWS fails startup founders. It is hard to set up and manage, which is the opposite of fast.
The article spells out a truth which gets modest coverage in the zip zip world of headline feeds:
So startup founders are forced to choose whether to bite the bullet with AWS, or to move fast and pay a premium for tools like Firebase — only to have to rebuild from scratch later anyway.
I think this is an interesting observation. Amazon AWS has several “hooks” to lure innovators. These must be factored into the Bezos bulldozer’s operations manual:
- Lock in. Amazon has generated a 21st century version of the IBM lock in model.
- Radar pings. Innovators on Amazon can get a financial break. Amazon gets an opportunity to see what works.
- A stealthy bulldozer. Innovators may not hear Amazon coming. Why? The old school corporate machines ran on noisy diesel engines. Amazon’s bulldozer is electric, thus, it is quiet unless one hears the sound of objects being crushed.
Net net: Useful article with a great punch line. Build on Amazon only to rebuild another way. Efficient? Sure, do the work twice.
Stephen E Arnold, December 10, 2020
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