Borjes was a surrealist who could see societal trends despite his blindness.
Microsoft Displays Its Amazon AWS Neutralizer
November 5, 2019
I read about Microsoft’s victory over the evil neighbor Amazon. What was Microsoft’s trump card, its AWS neutralizer, its technology innovation?
The answer may have appeared in “Microsoft Unveils Azure Arc, Aiming to Fend Off Google and Amazon with New Hybrid Cloud Tech.” Here’s the once closely-held diagram.
Like most AWS-hostile diagrams, it includes three features which customers like the Pentagon and other entities desire:
- The ability to integrate multiple clouds, on premises computers, and edge computers into one homogeneous system. (Latency? Don’t bring that up, please.)
- The Azure stack in one’s own computer center where it can be managed by an Azure-certified staff with the assistance of Azure-certified Microsoft partners. (Headcount implications. Don’t bring that up, please.)
- An Azure administrative system which provides a bird’s-eye view of the client’s Azure-centric system. (Permissions and access controls. Don’t bring that up, please.)
Microsoft has rolled out a comprehensive vision. The challenge is that Amazon and Google have similar visions.
Microsoft may want to check out Amazon’s security and access control technology. But that’s a minor point for a company which struggles to update Windows 10 without disabling user’s computers.
Great diagram though. Someone once observed, “The map is not the territory.” And then there is the increasingly relevant Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges who wrote:
Nothing is built on stone; All is built on sand, but we must build as if the sand were stone.
Stephen E Arnold, November 4, 2019
Procurement Bias Alleged in Amazon Microsoft Procurement Competition
October 28, 2019
DarkCyber noted “Trump Ordered Mattis to “Screw Amazon” Out of Pentagon Contract, Book Alleges.” If the allegation is accurate, the Federal procurement process is not above influence. If the allegations are not accurate, firing people who get quoted may be a bad idea. Maybe both statements are accurate?
The write up reports second or third hand:
Trump called Mattis in the summer of 2018 and directed him to “screw Amazon” out of a chance to bid on a $10 billion cloud networking contract.
Interesting.
The shift to the cloud is an important step for the Department of Defense. An error might have a few minor downsides: Loss of life, intelligence failures, increased and unbudgeted triage expenses, and increased friction in data-centric processes.
The upside is that the Department of Defense has made a decision.
Several questions arise and may be worth considering:
First, will there be review processes? The allegation about instructions from the White House are, if true, reasonably clear.
Second, will Microsoft be able to deliver the cloud solutions the Department of Defense requires? There are a few—how shall I phrase it—impediments to effective use of information technology which must be addressed. These are a bit more challenging than shipping software updates which create problems for users.
Third, can Microsoft navigate around Amazon’s patent fences? Some of the functionality which seems to be important to the DoD are within an Amazon patent fence. If Microsoft crawls under one of these fences, Amazon may sue. The litigation and any penalties might chew into Microsoft’s profit from the hard-won deal. (Are there examples? Yes, and I address these in my chapter for a forthcoming book, but the information is not for a free blog post on a chill Sunday morning, gentle reader. Alas!)
Net net: DarkCyber has a premonition that the MSFT JEDI assertions may make Holding the Line: Inside Trump’s Pentagon with Secretary Mattis a best seller.
Intriguing. Mad Dog becomes a celebrity author.
Stephen E Arnold, October 28, 2019
Amazon Loses JEDI: Now What?
October 26, 2019
Friday (October 25, 2019) Amazon and the Bezos bulldozer drove into a granite erratic. The Department of Defense awarded the multi-year, multi-billion dollar contract for cloud services to Microsoft. “Microsoft Snags Hotly Contested $10 Billion Defense Contract, Beating Out Amazon” reported the collision between PowerPoint’s owner and the killing machine which has devastated retail.
CNBC reports:
If the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure deal, known by the acronym JEDI, ends up being worth $10 billion, it would likely be a bigger deal to Microsoft than it would have been to Amazon. Microsoft does not disclose Azure revenue in dollar figures but it’s widely believed to have a smaller share of the market than Amazon, which received $9 billion in revenue from AWS in the third quarter.
The write up pointed out:
While Trump didn’t cite Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos by name at the time, the billionaire executive has been a constant source of frustration for the president. Bezos owns The Washington Post, which Trump regularly criticizes for its coverage of his administration. Trump also has gone after Amazon repeatedly on other fronts, such as claiming it does not pay its fair share of taxes and rips off the U.S. Post Office.
There are other twists and turns to the JEDI story, but I will leave it to you, gentle reader, to determine if the Oracle anti-Amazon campaign played a role.
There are some questions which I discussed with my DarkCyber team when we heard the news as a rather uneventful week in the technology world wound down. Let’s look at four of these and the “answers” my team floated as possibilities.
Question 1: Will this defeat alter Amazon’s strategy for policeware and intelware business?
Answer 1: No. Since 2007, Amazon has been grinding forward in the manner of the Bezos bulldozer with its flywheel spinning and its electricity sparking. As big as $10 billion is, Amazon has invested significant time and resources in policeware and intelware inventions like DeepLens, software like SageMaker, and infrastructure designed to deliver information that many US government agencies will want and for which many of the more than 60 badge-and-gun entities in the US government will pay. The existing sales team may be juggled as former Microsoft government sales professional Teresa Carlson wrestles with the question, “What next?” Failure turns on a bright spotlight. The DoD is just one, albeit deep pocket entity, of many US government agencies needing cloud services. And there is always next year which begins October 1, 2020.
Question 2: Has Amazon tuned its cloud services and functions to the needs of the Department of Defense?
Answer 2: No. Amazon offers services which meet the needs of numerous government agencies at the federal as well as local jurisdictional levels. In fact, there is one US government agency deals with more money than the DoD that is a potential ATM for Amazon. The Bezos bulldozer drivers may be uniquely positioned to deliver cloud services and investigative tools with the potential payout to Amazon larger than the JEDI deal.
Amazon AWS Revenue
October 25, 2019
Amazon’s third quarter 2019 results revealed that net sales went up. The number of interest in Harrod’s Creek is AWS. The company’s data report:
- AWS revenue hit $9 billion, up from $6.7 billion in the third quarter of 2018
- Amazon rolled out a fully managed service for business forecasting
- The Quantum Ledger Database is now available as a fully managed service
- AWS cut prices of storage for several classes of service.
Net net: Plenty of cash but Microsoft’s cloud service may be nibbling at some service areas in which Amazon had minimal competition for a number of years.
Stephen E Arnold, October 25, 2019
Amazon: Specialist in Complexity
October 22, 2019
The word “complexification” is tailor made for Amazon. A couple of examples might be helpful, right?
- Third party sellers provide expired food. Something’s wrong it seems. Complexification of the vendor vetting, product vetting, and warehouse vetting processes might be a reason. (I am setting aside “profit at all costs” because who wants to rain on the Amazon bulldozer.
- AWS services. Really, who can name the different types of Amazon databases. There’s an Oracle killer, an unstructured data killer, there’s an Amazon blockchain solution that’s just perfect for Dubai. Can’t keep ‘em straight? Take a cheap course in how to speak Amazon, you dynamo, you.
- Return authorizations. Use Opera? Well, the labels don’t print correctly. Call a human? It is helpful to speak two or three languages other than English. English as she is spoken at Amazon is — well, let’s think about it this way — may not be what talking heads on CNBC speak.
But the most interesting complexity problem concerns Twitch. Twitch may be a problem for YouTube and — get this, gentle reader — Facebook.
The hitch in the git along was summarized this way by Verge’s interview with Emmett Shear, the big Twitcher. Here’s the passage I noted:
The changes are coming, Shear said, because the company didn’t think it was doing well enough when it talked to streamers about moderating their channels. There were streamers with teams that had everything working, but there were also streamers who felt overwhelmed and like they couldn’t figure out how to use all of Twitch’s moderation tools. “It popped as a problem,” Shear said. “We decided we had to do better. And I think it’s a big step in the right direction.” Twitch’s moderation philosophy, in general, comprises two parts: enforcement works on the level of the individual and on the level of the platform.
Okay, complexity, two tier moderation, and a lack of “transparency.” Transparency is an interesting word because it suggests making stuff clear. A lack of transparency means stuff is not clear.
Complexity?
Yes.
In my recent lecture at the TechnoSecurity & Digital Forensics Conference I offered a few examples of Twitch’s challenges:
- Streaming gambling with links to donate money to the gamblers and tips for getting an advantage
- SweetSaltyPeach’s soft excitement morphing into RachelKay’s really dull doing nothing but providing a momentary glimpse of the old formula for success
- A first run movie available via a stream.
Net net: Amazon’s fatal flaw may be its burgeoning complexity. Not even Bezos billions can make some things simple, clear, and easy to understand.
If Twitchers can’t figure out what to do, what will lesser mortals in government agencies achieve? Let’s watch Dubai for clues.
Stephen E Arnold, October 21, 2019
Oracle Not Performant: The Gloves Are Off
October 16, 2019
I read “Migration Complete – Amazon’s Consumer Business Just Turned off its Final Oracle Database.” The world’s largest online bookstore is free from the Oracle handcuffs. No more proprietary databases. It took Amazon decades to reach this point.
According to the write up, Oracle is not “performant.” I think that means “not as good as Amazon’s data management technology.” In other words, loser or more accurately “Fair game.”
Oracle does databases, and it also is in the data licensing business. Amazon may have designs on that sector as well, but with a distinct Amazon flavor: Amazon will focus on stream data and have its own proprietary data goodies to license and use in its proprietary data management systems.
Amazon data management solutions in their various forms. Question: Where does Amazon’s blockchain data management fit in this semi-helpful, mostly opaque diagram? Answer: DynamoDB.
The write up states:
Over the years we realized that we were spending too much time managing and scaling thousands of legacy Oracle databases. Instead of focusing on high-value differentiated work, our database administrators (DBAs) spent a lot of time simply keeping the lights on while transaction rates climbed and the overall amount of stored data mounted. This included time spent dealing with complex & inefficient hardware provisioning, license management, and many other issues that are now best handled by modern, managed database services.
One might infer that this litany of woes are not part of the Amazon data management services. DarkCyber thinks the passage is more than a catalog of Oracle problems; it is the list of Amazon benefits generated with a bit of quick editing; for example, “keeping the lights on” is an Oracle problem. Amazon delivers “lights on operation”.
When will the Amazon Oracle challenger début. Look to the United Arab Emirates and maybe suburban Virginia.
Performant. What a word.
Stephen E Arnold, October 16, 2019
Amazon: Elasticsearch Bounced and Squished
October 14, 2019
DarkCyber noted “AWS Elasticsearch: A Fundamentally-Flawed Offering.” The write up criticizes Amazon’s implementation of Elasticsearch. Amazon hired some folks from Lucidworks a few years ago. But under the covers, Lucene thrums along within Amazon and a large number of other search-and-retrieval companies, including those which present themselves as policeware. There are many reasons: [a] good enough, [b] no one company fixes the bugs, [c] good enough, [d] comparatively cheap, [e] good enough. Oh, one other point: Not under the control of one company like those good, old fashioned solutions like STAIRS III, Fulcrum (remember that?), or Delphes (the francophone folks).
This particular write up is unlikely to earn a gold star from Amazon’s internal team. The Spun.io essay states:
I’m currently working on a large logging project that was initially implemented using AWS Elasticsearch. Having worked with large-scale mainline Elasticsearch clusters for several years, I’m absolutely stunned at how poor Amazon’s implementation is and I can’t fathom why they’re unable to fix or at least improve it.
I think the tip off is the phrase “how poor Amazon’s implementation is…”
The section Amazon Elasticsearch Operation provides some color to make vivid the author’s viewpoint; for example:
On Amazon, if a single node in your Elasticsearch cluster runs out of space, the entire cluster stops ingesting data, full stop. Amazon’s solution to this is to have users go through a nightmare process of periodically changing the shard counts in their index templates and then reindexing their existing data into new indices, deleting the previous indices, and then reindexing the data again to the previous index name if necessary. This should be wholly unnecessary, is computationally expensive, and requires that a raw copy of the ingested data be stored along with the parsed record because the raw copy will need to be parsed again to be reindexed. Of course, this also doubles the storage required for “normal” operation on AWS. [Emphasis in the original essay.]
The wrap up for the essay is clear from this passage:
I cannot fathom how Amazon decided to ship something so broken, and how they haven’t been able to improve the situation after over two years.
DarkCyber’s team formulated several observations. Let’s look at these in the form of questions and trust that some young sprites will answer them:
- Will Amazon make its version of Elasticsearch proprietary?
- Are these changes designed to “pull” developers deeper into the AWS platform, making departure more difficult or impossible for some implementations?
- Are the components the author of the essay finds objectionable designed to generate more revenue for Amazon?
Stephen E Arnold, October 14, 2019
Amazon Twitch: Some Thinking and Work to Do
October 10, 2019
I assume that this Verge story is accurate: “An Anti-Semitic Shooting in Germany Was Live-Streamed on Twitch.” Twitch allegedly said:
We are shocked and saddened by the tragedy.
Okay, but it is time for:
- Time delays in Twitch streams
- More aggressive content takedowns for soft porn, transmission of commercial television shows, and interesting online gambling sessions, among others
- Elimination of a banned user under one name (SweetSaltyPeach) now streaming as RachelKay.
The Verge reports:
Today’s attack echoed the March mass shooting of Muslims in Christchurch, New Zealand — which was streamed on Facebook Live. In today’s roughly 35-minute video, a man is seen shooting two people and attempting unsuccessfully to break into the synagogue. He also gives a brief speech into the camera, railing against Jews and denying that the Holocaust happened. Two people have been confirmed dead in today’s attack, and German law enforcement has raised the possibility that multiple attackers were involved. Only one perpetrator appears in this video.
Were young kids and young adults watching murder in real time? The Verge dances around the point:
It’s unclear how many people watched the initial stream or how many copies may have been archived at Twitch — which is owned by Amazon — or on other sites. Extremism researcher Megan Squire reported that the video was also spread through the encrypted platform Telegram, with clips being viewed by around 15,600 accounts. The Christchurch shooting was viewed live by only a few people, but reuploaded roughly 1.5 million times after the attack — so dealing with the aftermath will be a real concern. Complicating this is the fact that video of the attack — from people besides the perpetrator — is newsworthy footage. But as all social networks continue to fight hate content, live videos of shootings are a uniquely sensitive issue for live-streaming platforms.
Amazon wants to be a player in the policeware market. Amazon Twitch streaming crime is one thing. I might even believe it if the driver of the Bezos bulldozer opined, “Well, that’s a lot of video to screen.”
I think streaming murder just may be more important because what advertiser wants a pre-roll before a series of killings?
Does a live stream encourage illegal activity?
DarkCyber opines that the answer is, “Yes.”
The good old days are dead just like those who were killed on the Twitch stream.
Responsibility, not arrogance may be useful.
Stephen E Arnold, October 10, 2019
Cloudera Bids to Be the Next Gen Anti Financial Crime Platform
October 10, 2019
DarkCyber read “Moving Towards the Next Gen Financial Crimes Platform.” The essay, which is two parts information and three parts marketing collateral, presents a diagram of the Cloudera anti financial crime platform. The phrase “financial crime platform” could be interpreted as the airfield for dispatching a range of malware attacks, a position in which some cloud vendors find themselves either wittingly or unwittingly. In this DarkCyber article, I will refer to the Cloudera vision as an anti financial crimes platform, hopefully to make clear that the cloud vendor is not a bad actor.
In DarkCyber’s view, there are three main points about Cloudera’s enterprise focused solution. Silos of information are a problem, and Cloudera will sweep across organizational data silos, at least that’s the idea. Here are points DarkCyber noted:
- The focus is on the enterprise, not on a wider scope; for example, a bank, not a number of FBI field offices, each of which operates more or less autonomously
- Smart software (artificial intelligence, machine learning, et al) are used at the edge to provide necessary signals about activity warranting further analysis by more numerical recipes
- The solution can accommodate innovations either from Cloudera or from partners.
Cloudera includes a diagram of what the solution’s broad outlines are. Here’s the illustration from the Cloudera article:
Working from right to left, data are ingested by Cloudera. The content goes into an enterprise data store. A suite of financial crime “applications” operate on the data in the Enterprise Data Store and its modules. At the right hand of the diagram analytical tools (maybe like Tibco SpotFire?), business intelligence systems, and Cloudera’s Data Science Workbench allow authorized users to interact with the system.
Cloudera’s article includes this statement:
With CDP as the foundation, intelligence gaps are mitigated by a holistic enterprise view of all customer and financial crime-related data (holistic KYC), systems, models and processes. You will also be able to tighten the loop between detecting and responding to new fraud patterns. CDP also supports open-source advances to ensure that your teams are able to experiment with and adopt the latest technologies and methods, which helps to mitigate technology and vendor lock-in. The diagram below illustrates the Cloudera Data Platform and its various components for enterprise management. [Emphasis in the original source]
Several observations are warranted:
- Vendor lock is an organic consequence of putting one’s egg in one cloud-centric basket. Although it is possible to envision a system which accepts enhancements, the write and the diagram do not include a provision for this type of extension. DarkCyber posits that restrictions will apply.
- The diagram has “financial crime applications” without providing much “color” or detail about these policeware components. One key question is, “Will these policeware applications run “on Cloudera” or on some other system; for example, IBM cloud which delivers Analyst Notebook functions?”
- The write up does not provide information about restrictions on data; for example, streaming data from telephone intercept systems.
- Information about functional components, application programming interfaces, and programmatic methods for the platform are not provided. DarkCyber understands the need for economy in writing, but a table or a list of suggested links would be helpful.
Why is Cloudera making this play?
DarkCyber hypothesizes that Cloudera realizes Amazon’s “as is” capabilities pose a substantial threat. Cloudera wants to stake out some territory before the Bezos bulldozer rolls through the policeware market.
Stephen E Arnold, October 9, 2019
Amazon Policeware: Getting Visible in Spite of Amazon
October 9, 2019
An enterprising reporter included some information from my Amazon research. You can find these open source factoids in “Meet America’s Newest Military Giant: Amazon.” Like good recipients of Jeffrey Epstein love, the publication will enjoin you to pay to read the recycled version of my research. Hey, that’s capitalism in action.
The write up does veer from “military giant” into policeware, a term I coined to make clear that there are platforms, applications, and tools purpose-built to support law enforcement, analysts, and investigators.
© Stephen E Arnold, 2016
You may want to read the article and take a look at the information I have published in this blog and on YouTube and Vimeo. The search systems struggle to highlight this content, but that’s the way life is in the world of ad-supported search. (Tip: To locate the information, use the search box on this Web site or you can explore these short videos at these links:
October 30, 2018 https://vimeo.com/297839909
November 6, 2018 https://vimeo.com/298831585
November 13, 2018 https://vimeo.com/300178710
November 20, 2018 https://vimeo.com/301440474.)
Another peek at Amazon’s activities is provided in a side mirror attached to a speeding Chevrolet Volt. “Ring’s Police Partnerships Must End, Say More Than 30 Civil Rights Groups” is an “open letter.” That document, according to CNet, “urges local lawmakers to cancel all existing police deals with Amazon’s video doorbell company.”
Good luck with that.
The CNet write up adds:
Ring has more than 500 police partnerships across the US, and a coalition of civil rights groups are calling for local governments to cancel them all. On Tuesday, tech-focused nonprofit Fight For the Future published an open letter to elected officials raising concerns about Ring’s police partnerships and its impacts on privacy and surveillance. The letter is signed by more than 30 civil rights groups, including the Center for Human Rights and Privacy, Color of Change and the Constitutional Alliance. Along with asking mayors and city councils to cancel existing Ring partnerships, the letter also asks for surveillance oversight ordinances to prevent police departments from making these deals in the future, and also requested members of Congress to investigate Ring’s practices.
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