Amazonia for June 3, 2019
June 3, 2019
Many companies are shifting down for the summer months. Not Amazon. The online bookstore slowed its flow of announcements about often confusing Amazon Web Services. DarkCyber noted a few interesting announcements in the last week.
Amazon’s Net Nanny
According to Jeff Bezos’ newspaper, Jeff Bezos will have a net nanny. The idea is that the Federal Trade Commission will keep its eye on the Bezos bulldozer’s GPS coordinates. “Amazon Could Face Heightened Antitrust Scrutiny Under a New Agreement Between U.S. Regulators” reported:
The FTC’s plans for Amazon and the Justice Department’s interest in Google are not immediately clear. But the kind of arrangement brokered between the Justice Department and the FTC typically presages more serious antitrust scrutiny, the likes of which many Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill have sought out of fear that tech companies have become too big and powerful.
The lobbyists may have some inputs to provide to assorted government and Beltway professionals. Plus, there’s that JEDI contract. DarkCyber will monitor this interesting, but long-time-coming activity. European regulators have been a bit more spry.
Zero Gravity, Zero Friction: The Payoff from Amazon Advertising
What’s cheaper to deliver now that most of the digital infrastructure is in place? [a] Merchandise or [b] Advertising? The correct answer is [b] Advertising. How does Amazon move in to the ad territory occupied by a soon-to-be-investigated Google? [a] Chop merchants who don’t make Amazon a hefty profit or [b] Buy a company with better ad tech than Amazon currently has? The correct answer is [b] Buy a better ad mousetrap. The tip off is Amazon’s alleged purchase of Sizmek, a hippy dippy spelling of “seismic.” Very hip. According to this report from the surprisingly useful CNBC Web site:
The deal will bring an ad server, which is a tool to actually place advertisements around the web, to Amazon. It will also give Amazon “dynamic creative,” which is an industry term for ads tailored to a consumer’s data. For instance, it could help make ads that are tailored depending on geographical region, stock prices or even the local weather. Sizmek filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in March.
Amazon knows how to chase down a deal. Ah, the GOOG. After years of unfettered excitement, the machinery in Washington lurches forward.
Amazon Telephone & Telegraph
Item is in the Friday, May 31, 2019, DarkCyber at this link.
Amazon’s Clever Little Pre Wake Word
Does Amazon listen to what ifs smart home devices capture? Not sure, but we do know that Amazon wants to have the ability to turn its smart home devices into bugs (listening and surveillance devices). The idea matches seamlessly with the company’s recruiting of a local news editor and some other bits and pieces of the Amazon policeware system. You can read “Pre Wake Word Processing” (US20190156818) at this link. DarkCyber loves the use of the phrase “pre wake” for surveillance.
Amazon’s Smart Software
Amazon has smart software. One chunk is SageMaker. The fact that some of Amazon’s artificial intelligence cannot spot illegally streamed commercial films and TV shows suggests that artificial intelligence is more easily marketed than implemented in an effective way. Nevertheless, Amazon has added Textract, a name which actually makes it possible to associate the service with its moniker. SageMaker and other smart software needs properly structured content to teach the numerical recipes how to be smart. The idea behind Textract is a, according to Analytics India:
service said to be more than just an optical character recognition algorithm, as it can parse data tables, whole pages, forms, scans, PDFs, photos, and more. Moreover, it also identifies fields and tables, so as to contextualize the data and allow for the collection of cleaner datasets with deeper insights.
Google has filed patents for its smart content acquisition system. Just run queries for R. Guha and A. Halevy (now a Xoogler). Why’s this important? Perhaps Amazon is eager to reduce the cost and time required to make smart software smarter and build the type of datasets which the US Navy covets; for example, 350 billion social media and open source content objects. That’s just for two years of data? There are more years of data to acquire, extract, and analyze. Sounds like something that GovCloud might provide its users.
Amazon’s Smart Software
Amazon’s head of Amazon’s marketing talked about artificial intelligence at an Informatica conference. (I know marketing.) We noted this statement in Silicon Angle: “What we’re trying to do is communicate to the world how our customers are being successful using our technology, specifically machine-learning and AI. It’s one of those things where so many companies want to do it, but they say, “Well, what am I supposed to use it for?” If you dumb down what marketing is at AWS, it’s inspiring people about what they can run in the cloud with AWS. What use cases they should consider us for, and then we spend a lot of energy giving them the technical education they need, so they can be successful using our products. At the end of the day, we make money when our customers are successful using our products.” Yep, marketing.
Amazon Twitch
News is becoming to find its way into open sources. The game video streaming service appears to be struggling with governance. Specifically, individuals are using the service to post content which is protected by copyright. Amazon’s smart software and its professionals are working overtime to get the real time streaming under control. For more information, you can contact us at darkcyber333 at yandex dot com or read this Verge story.
Mai Oui, Amazon
According to Data Center Dynamics, Amazon is gearing up to put a data center in Brétigny-Sur-Orge, France. If you are not up to speed on French towns soon to be absorbed into Paris, the data center will be about 15 miles from the Louvre. For the rush hour commuter, this translates to about one hour by automobile. Yes, the traffic is bad.
Amazon: Real Time Communications
Ribbon is a company selling software which performs a number of functions once exclusively the domain of the “old” AT&T. The company announced that its Session Border Controller Software Edition (SWe) is available via the Amazon Marketplace. The AWS Quick Start for Ribbon SBC SWe has been built specifically for AWS. What does SBC do? The company said: “The Ribbon SBC SWe has been optimized for AWS to provide advanced security, while supporting high capacity requirements, for real-time, multimedia Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) traffic. Additionally, Ribbon’s SBC SWe delivers carrier-class redundancy to ensure service continuity; is deployable on multiple cloud environments; provides industry-leading media transcoding using GPUs to scale for high-density transcoding; and is certified for Microsoft Phone System Direct Routing, Skype for Business, Lync 2013 and Lync 2010.” To simplify, think telephone company services via Amazon. Source: PRNewswire
Amazon Financial
Few people think about Amazon in the context of banking. No problem, but DarkCyber believes that Amazon may have designs on some traditional financial services as it expands its crypto currency capabilities. Cryptonewsz reported that Amazon has extended its support for Amazon Aelf Enterprise, which is the alleged “first cross chain blockchain.” The idea is that blockchains are data silos. Aelf and Amazon are changing that. The service is likely to be of interest to companies like Netflix which seeks to ensure user privacy and limit piracy. The service may appeal to vendors of policeware who want a way to make sense of multiple blockchains used by a single bad actor. Are there implications for other Amazon financial services? Good question.
Amazon and Manufacturing
Amazon sells electronic books and it enables traditional manufacturing. The Bezos bulldozer can pull some different loads in its AWS tractor-trailer. Arcweb reports that Amazon has showcased more than two dozen manufacturing services available on AWS. “Amazon Web Services (AWS) Showcases 25 Products & Services for Manufacturing” states: “Is AWS in manufacturing? Yes, they are.” The write up lists the services, so you will have to consult the source for the other 20:
- Amazon Kinesis lets you easily collect, process, and analyze video and data streams in real time
- Amazon Timestream is a fast, scalable, fully managed time series database service for IoT and operational applications that makes it easy to store and analyze trillions of events per day at 1/10th the cost of relational databases.
- Amazon AppStream 2.0 is a fully managed application streaming service. You centrally manage your desktop applications on AppStream 2.0 and securely deliver them to any computer.
- Amazon Athena is an interactive query service that makes it easy to analyze data in Amazon S3 using standard SQL. Athena is serverless, so there is no infrastructure to manage, and you pay only for the queries that you run.
- Amazon QuickSight is a fast, cloud-powered business intelligence service that makes it easy to deliver insights to everyone in your organization.
There’s a useful diagram as well.
Partners and Resellers
DarkCyber wants to point out that Computer Reseller News, now CRN, published a slideshow with each slide providing a thumbnail about products and services from 20 Amazon AWS partners. No, we did not make it through the 20 slides, but we did deduce that there are AWS partners who want media coverage even if it is in the form of a clunky slideshow. See the show at this link.
Interesting tie ups appeared this week:
- Clevertap is now an Amazon digital customer experience provider. Source: Business Insider
- Dash Solutions has achieved AWS healthcare competency status. Source: Business Insider
- Infocyte. This vendor of proactive threat detection and instant incident response announced the availability of Infocyte HUNT Cloud for Amazon Web Services . The company says that it agentless deployment through AWS APIs and artificial intelligence by leveraging AWS CloudTrail, Source: Dark Reading
Need Help Migrating an App to AWS?
Help is available. Navigate to “So You’re Thinking about Moving a Legacy Application to AWS.” The write up explains the process. You may need to do some additional research if the breezy list of things to think about does not help you.
Amazon Policeware Conference
A glimpse of some of Amazon’s policeware capabilities will make their appearance at the Re:Inforce conference. More details about this event are at this Amazon link. There will be partners doing demonstrations. Attendees can play capture the flag Amazon style. Hydration breaks will be available. Some Amazon warehouse workers may be pleased to note.
Stephen E Arnold, June 3, 2019
Alexa: Big Brother and Big Sister
June 2, 2019
The younger generations live their lives online, so it is surprising when one shows concern about privacy. The Guardian’s Comedic journalist Tim Dowling wrote about his son’s total dislike for Amazon’s Alexa in, “Tim Dowling: Two Alexas Have Moved In, And They’re Terrifying.” Smart speakers are Big Brother’s newest tool, because it is always listening.
Dowling was sent two free Alexa’s to review for his column and coerced his son into setting them up in his home. What is even funnier is that they are used Alexas and one of them had googly eyes, so one is “always watching.” The son in question is nineteen years old, but is scared of Alexa. Dowling and his offspring do not like Alexa, because she is listening. At first, it is charming to have questions answered instantaneously, but it quickly turns when they nearly avoid buying an expensive laptop. They do ask Alexa, how many people are spying on them right then, but the speaker did not known the answer. Dowling’s eldest child, however, was quite keen on the speakers and had one tell him the latest football scores (that is soccer for the US).
It got worse for the youngest one when Dowling had to leave him alone in the house with the two Alexas:
“ ‘Walk the dog, feed the cat, don’t say ‘Alexa’, and you’ll be fine,’ I say.
‘Great,’ he says.
Some hours later, I receive an email informing me that I will not be required to write about Alexa after all. A few minutes after that, I receive an apology from the youngest one, telling me he had to unplug both Alexas: they had started talking to each other.”
What do Alexas discuss? They probably ceaselessly ask one another to keep repeating, because they could not quite get what the other is saying. Sure, smart speakers are fun. They are a voice activated Google and radio, but they are always listening. Listening to hear the next command or reporting it to the government.
Whitney Grace, June 2, 2019
AT&T: Amazon Telephone & Telegraph
May 31, 2019
The Bell heads are dazed with the ringing in their ears. The “real” news out Thomson Reuters published “Amazon Interested in Buying Boost from T-Mobile, Sprint.” Amazon’s chief bulldozer driver Jeff Bezos has a sixth sense for creating buzz, generating distraction, and whipping stakeholders into a frenzy of upside.
According to the real news story:
It was not immediately clear why the largest U.S. online retailer would want the wireless network and spectrum.
Yep, that’s the insight in the write up.
How about this factoid or opinionette:
The U.S. Justice Department would need to scrutinize the buyer of a divested asset to ensure it would stay viable and preserve competition.
DarkCyber may be able to do a bit more creating thinking.
The juiciest opportunity to obtain data is? Here are your choices for this one question test:
[a] Amazon wants to extend its data acquisition capabilities beyond the Alexa enabled devices
[b] Amazon believes that in the present regulatory environment, it can construct a 21st century version of the pre-Judge Green AT&T
[c] Amazon wants to kick start its data marketplace with information about “calls”, metadata about those calls, and enrich certain cross dataset analyses
[d] Amazon understands that the regulatory environment is struggling with the old school methods of Facebook and Google and has not a clue about the Amazon construct.
What’s the answer? You will have to sign up for my for fee Amazon lecture about policeware. Write us at darkcyber333 at yandex dot com for details. (Tip: The webinar costs money.)
Stephen E Arnold, May 31, 2019
Amazon Twitch: Streaming Copyright Protected Content? You Betcha!
May 30, 2019
I found the “insight” in “Twitch Is Temporarily Suspending New Creators from Streaming after Troll Attack” amusing. The least popular game on Twitch, an Amazon property, has been outed as a streamer of copyright protected content. Yeah, that’s news.
I would point out at 0733 am US Eastern on May 30, 2019, that Ciklonica, one of Twitch’s more interesting chat performers, is eating and streaming the Big Bang television program dubbed in Russian.
Here’s a snap taken at 0730 am US Eastern on May 20, 2019:
How is Amazon’s SageMaker artificial intelligence system doing when it comes to recognizing streaming content with titling? What about the human reviewers who are working valiantly to manage the game lovers?
Maybe Google’s decision to kill its game streaming service is the equivalent of a mixed martial art corner man throwing in the towel.
I describe some of the more interesting content in my Dark Web 2.0 lecture next week at the TechnoSecurity & Digital Forensics Conference. The scope of copyright protected content theft is remarkable. Amazon Twitch is just a chuckle because regular Amazon does what it can to prevent its customers from stealing the “regular” service’s content.
Maybe the Amazon smart software technology can’t police Twitch? Maybe Amazon is looking the other way so it can assert plausible deniability about SweetSaltyPeach chatting? Maybe Amazon simply lacks the management expertise to deal with Twitch’s “how to cheat your friends at cards” information.
Games. Let them begin at the “real” news outfits and in the Twitch-verse.
Stephen E Arnold, May 30, 2019
Amazon Twitch Shakes Its Digital Fist Which Hits the Bits
May 29, 2019
In my talk on June 4, 2019, I have a couple of comments to make about illegal streaming services. One of my examples of outright copyright violation is Twitch. The DarkCyber team has been tracking popular music streamed during “game related chats” like pole dancing and body stretching exercise sessions. Individuals who play US television shows dubbed in Russian are waving their Fortnite weapons at US television producers. We also have examples of a Russia Today affiliate streaming the more visual incidents associated with yellow jacket protects. There are other examples of how the game streaming system is being manipulated. No Dark Web needed.
Amazon Twitch tries to curtail these activities. Some of them are just futile. There is a streamer from Florida who happily drives and live streams. The “star” often moves the camera around. Distracted driving? No just another example of what gamers can access without doing much more than clicking a link and popping a word or phrase into the Twitch search system.
Now the “real” media has discovered what the young at heart have known for quite a while: Amazon Twitch, like Facebook and YouTube live video, is a bit of a challenge. “Twitch Is Temporarily Suspending New Creators from Streaming after Troll Attack” documents one facet of the “live streaming” problem. From banning BadBunny (a star whom one pays to insult her followers) to SweetSaltyPeach (a star known for wearing interesting clothing and assembling toys), Amazon Twitch needs a rethink. DarkCyber is not sure cursing, soft porn, and stolen content are what some individuals think the service should be delivering. But there’s always the chance that DarkCyber cannot divine the master plan of the Bezos bulldozer.
The write up points out:
Twitch’s statement acknowledged that they “became aware of a number of accounts targeting the Artifact game directory” over the weekend. Twitch’s team also recognized trolls were using the category “to share content that grossly violates our terms of service.” The majority of the accounts that “shared and viewed content were automated.”
Now about Amazon’s Sagemaker system. Is it able to deal with Amazon Twitch? Humans to the bulldozer controls. On the double.
Stephen E Arnold, May 29, 2019
Amazonia, May 27, 2019
May 27, 2019
DarkCyber’s review of the Amazon news in the last seven days reveals an uptick in the critical tone in some of the open source commentary about the company. In addition to watching what Amazon says, DarkCyber will note what those writing about the company highlight. Note that the Amazonia for Monday, June 3, 2019, will be an abbreviated run down. Most of teh DarkCyber team will be at the TechnoSecurity conference.
Senator Questions Amazon Privacy
CNet reported that Senator Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware and member of the judiciary committee, has asked Amazon for information about the privacy methods for Amazon’s Echo. As information about alleged data retention and use of recorded conversations swirls through open source channels, Amazon may find itself subject to “Facebook think.” Is Amazon a data analysis company in addition to an online bookstore? Amazon has been able to dodge some of the scrutiny directed at certain social media companies. The Bezos bulldozer could be mired in investigations and subject to fines in the US and elsewhere if these “questions” morph into hearings, investigations, and other legal mechanisms.
You may want to download US 20190156818, a patent which allows Alexa to record before a customer says the “Alexa” word. Privacy?
AWS Share Prices Dip, Prices for AWS Seem to Go Down Too
There is probably no correlation between a dip in Amazon’s share price and the price changes explained in “Announcing the New Pricing Plan for AWS Config Rules.” The blog post said:
Effective August 1st, 2019, AWS Config rules will switch to a new pay-per-use pricing model, lowering the bill for almost all existing AWS Config rules customers. AWS Config helps you assess and maintain compliance over your AWS resource configurations.
The pay per use approach appears to be a benefit in the form of a cost reduction. DarkCyber wants to point out that AWS pricing can be complicated. What appears to be a deal may turn out that for a certain class of customers, the new pricing may add to some costs.
Business2Community has published tips for reducing AWS costs.
Amazon Pushes Forward with Facial Recognition Technology
Criticism of facial recognition continues in the US. TechCrunch reported that Amazon shareholders have voted down two proposals to terminate its sale of Rekognition to government customers.
TechCrunch said:
The resolutions failed despite an effort by the ACLU to back the measures, which the civil liberties group accused the tech giant of being “non-responsive” to privacy concerns.
Unless management actions can curtail employee and shareholder grousing about the direction of Amazon’s policeware initiatives, Amazon could find itself at risk from push back from those upon whom the company depends.
Business Insider provides some information about the Amazon complaints related to the sales of services and products to what is called “big oil.”
Amazon’s management actions may curtail the growth of the company despite the lax regulatory environment in which the firm thrives.
The Kindle Support Chinese
Engadget reports that the Amazon book reading and “baby tablet” Kindle devices now su9pport “traditional Chinese books.” We learned:
Amazon has launched a portal in the Kindle store with 20,000 Traditional Chinese titles you can download, including translations of popular books like George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Fire and Ice series. You can now also self-publish eBooks written in the characters through Kindle Direct Publishing.
The service is supported worldwide.
Amazon Satellites
If you need tips to use Amazon satellites, you may not be the informed customers the online bookstore seeks. Nevertheless, information appears in the 247 Wall Street write up “Why Amazon Is Now Giving AWS Users Access to Its Satellites.” DarkCyber thought the idea was revenue and getting customers to pay part of Amazon’s increasing infrastructure and technical debt costs. The write up states:
sing AWS Ground Station, customers can save up to 80% of their ground station costs by paying for antenna access time on demand, and they can rely on AWS Ground Station’s growing global footprint of ground stations to downlink data when and where they need it.
An Amazon official is quoted as saying:
The goal of AWS Ground Station is to make space communications ubiquitous and to make ground stations simple and easy to use, so that more organizations can derive insights from satellite data to help improve life on Earth and embark on deeper exploration and discovery in space.
At this time DarkCyber understands that two ground stations are now active. DarkCyber sticks with the cost and revenue interpretation of Amazon satellites.
Amazon AWS Is Ready for Bigger Data
Geekwire reports that an Amazon AWS executive revealed that the online bookstore is ready for bigger data. The write up quotes the Amazon professional as saying:
“The explosion of data is going to be beyond what we’ve ever seen before…cloud customers really need new and powerful tools to unlock the potential of that data.”
Not many details, but it is good to know that Amazon can handle the JEDI contract if the firms wins that deal.
Partners and Resellers
More remarkable vendor names as the roster of AWS specialists continues to swell.
- Advertity says that it “has achieved Amazon Web Services competency for digital customer experience. Source: Yahoo
- Agilisium says that it is now okayed to sell Amazon’s QuickSight Service. (QuickSight is Amazon speak for analytics.) Source: Yahoo
- BAE Systems, operator of NetReveal (Detica) has been deemed “competent” for creating applications for US government clouds. This is important because BAE is one of the go-to providers of intelware in the UK, US, and elsewhere. Source: Marketwatch
- CapGemini, a consulting firm, is actively selling engagements to move SAP installations to the AWS cloud. Source: Yahoo
- Informatica wants to apply smart software to the task of moving large amounts of data to the AWS cloud. The line up of Information services is available at this AWS Marketplace location. Informatica has a similar capability with the Google Cloud. Betting on more than one horse? Yes.
- modelizeIT is now an Amazon Advanced Tier Technology Partner. Source: Marketsinsider
- Northwest Vista College has become the first Amazon Web Services academy in South Central Texas. The idea is to train future Amazon savvy coders. Source: Yahoo
Stephen E Arnold, May 27, 2019
Amazonia for May 20, 2019
May 20, 2019
The Amazon machine is grinding along. We noted these items from the last seven days’ marketing exhaust.
Amazon Covets Covington, Kentucky
Geekwire’s reported that Amazon plans to use the white elephant airport near Cincinnati as a hub for its air freight delivery business. The Prime Air Hub requires an initial investment of $1.5 billion. The hub will accommodate 100 airplanes. Kentucky, like other Amazon suitors, ponied up $45 million in incentives.
DarkCyber believes that FedEx (Memphis) and UPS (Louisville) may face some headwinds as the Amazon Prime operation picks up steam. The Amazon bulldozer cuts new paths, and it is possible that some of these will cross the paths of these two and other air freight competitors. UPS may have less “economies” to squeeze in its operations. FedEx continues to ponder the impact of email on those once lucrative overnight deliveries for fast trackers.
It’s worth noting that Amazon is headed toward another facet of the shipping business if the information in “Amazon Jumps Into Freight Brokerage” is accurate. The article states:
Amazon.com has jumped into the market of the third-party logistics broker, roiling the waters and raising concern that the Seattle-based e-commerce giant could disrupt the freight industry forever and indelibly. Amazon’s new freight-hauling site — located at freight.Amazon.com — has been up and running since August 2018, but it went largely unnoticed by media until early May, when The Wall Street Journal and others reported on Amazon’s entry into the market. Reports noted Amazon was offering “beta service” full truckload hauling in dry vans. The service is available for pickups in Connecticut, Maryland, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania.
Amazon Embraces Semi-Abandoned Malls Too
A report in Inc. Magazine explains
Amazon is now moving into precisely those derelict malls. Why? To use the space for its vast and, some might say heartless, fulfillment centers.
Once people visited malls. Perhaps Amazon trucks with the happy face will deliver products to people.
Amazon-a-Roo
The Inquirer noted that Amazon twice tried to acquire the food delivery outfit Deliveroo. Those flopped. Amazon’s response? Invest. Amazon is part of a $575 million funding round for the company. The company’s funding is more than $1.5 billion. Deliveroo operates in more than 14 countries.
Alexa, Will You Stop Listening to Me?
Forbes reported that Alexa is always listening to one’s conversations. The reason is, “Make life better.” According to the capitalist tool:
The fact that Alexa is always listening to her surrounding is easily explained by the technology that Amazon chose to implement for its smart speakers: The Seattle-based technology giant uses cloud computing to process every spoken word captured by its smart speakers. What it means, in layman’s terms, is that every word you say to Alexa is sent to Amazon’s cloud service to be automatically transcribed before it can respond to your request including basic commands like “play music” or “turn on the light”—nothing is processed on the device itself because it doesn’t have the necessary computing power and the intelligence on-board.
Seems efficient and quite delicate, like a bulldozer. But there is one rust spot on the shiny Alexa D-9. According to ZDNet:
Amazon can’t yet completely delete Alexa voice transcriptions. It is working on a solution to deleting data when users request and is planning a bug fix for its Echo Dot Kids Edition.
The article pointed out:
Amazon’s admission that it retains text transcripts indefinitely followed news of a joint complaint filed with the the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over the Amazon Echo Dot Kids Edition devices. A group of 19 consumer and public health advocates claim children’s data is retained even after parents delete voice recordings. A child can use an Alexa feature called “Remember This”, which keeps anything a child says until parents call Amazon customer service to delete the entire profile.
Amazon Travel: Another Amazon Hotels?
Google has been trying to corner the travel bookings market. Now Amazon wants a piece of the action. Is Amazon confronting the Google head on? No, Amazon is starting in India. “Amazon Launches Flight Bookings in India in a Superapp Strategy” reports that Amazon’s angle is to offer cash back on bookings. DarkCyber noted this passage:
Before 2014, Amazon had offered hotels sporadically at steep discounts with vouchers, but it then tried to provide public rates, and build a more ongoing offering, with the initial iteration focusing on weekend getaways from several major cities. But Amazon abruptly shuttered its hotel business in October 2015, perhaps a year after launching it, when it found the going very tough, and after not getting the results it apparently expected. Amazon was coy about its precise reasons for abandoning the hotel effort as it didn’t provide any substantial information about its exodus.
Amazon flopped in the hotel business. Skift opines:
Given Amazon’s stilted try at building a hotel business from scratch, some would argue that an acquisition of a major travel company, such as Expedia or TripAdvisor, for example, might be the way to go. Amazon had $23 billion in free cash flow for the trailing 12 months at the end of the first quarter, so buying either company would be affordable.
More Robots Are Coming to Amazon Warehouses
Reuters reported that Amazon will replace humanoid workers with robots. The robots pack boxes with customers’ goods more quickly than the humans. Over time robots will be more economical: No breaks for personal needs, no vacations, no coffee breaks, and no thinking about diapers, unionizing, or pay. “Amazon Rolls Out Machines That Pack Orders and Replace Jobs” reports:
The new machines, known as the CartonWrap from Italian firm CMC Srl, pack much faster than humans. They crank out 600 to 700 boxes per hour, or four to five times the rate of a human packer, the sources said. The machines require one person to load customer orders.
The first robots will require two or three humans to support the single robot. But it is faster, and a robot is unlikely to think about a union, a vacation, or the personal necessities a humanoid has.
Is Amazon Eco-Friendly in France?
“Does Amazon France Really Destroy Millions of Products? Yes, But –” asserts:
Amazon destroys a lot of products they can’t sell.
Why?
Taxes. Amazon does not like the idea of taxes DarkCyber assumes. The article makes this clear:
Amazon does destroy products, and one reason they do so is taxes
Logical and efficient.
Buffet and Amazon
Business Insider (the odd duck outfit with a pay wall and no pay wall) reported that Warren Buffet, once the world’s richest man, has about $1 billion in Amazon stock. Buffet’s group “it bought 483,300 shares in the first quarter, worth about $904 million.”
According to Yahoo, Amazon’s AWS boss sold $5.9 million worth of Amazon shares. Does Andy Jassy know something that Mr. Buffet does not?
Amazon Pays Employees to Quit and Deliver Instead
“Minecraft Meets the Real World, Amazon Pays its Employees to Quit, and the Scooter Saga Continues,” despite the wonky title, contains an interesting Amazon factoid:
Amazon is offering its employees an incentive to quit their jobs, if they start their own package delivery companies. This is the latest wrinkle in the company’s Delivery Service Partner program.
Efficient and logical. Let the inefficient workers drive around delivering packages hopefully.
Amazon Away Teams
The Register explained how Amazon coordinates its engineering work. The trick is a “hivemind”. We noted that Amazon
has a system of optimizing internal collaboration by organizing development around a collection independently managed services with a fascinating set of policies for governing it all based on A/B testing, pushed-down decision making, and a carefully curated culture of collaboration that makes use of a novel concept: Away Teams.
The article includes other details which may be of interest to a person eager to emulate one of the methods designed to keep Amazon efficient. There is no information about how an Away Team orders a virtual pizza for the ravenous technologists elsewhere in the hive.
Wanna Code in Cannes?
DarkCyber is not sure Cannes and coding go together as well as money, sun, sand, and Campari. If you know how to make AWS sit and fetch, you may want to journey to the Change for Good Hackathon. Those long khaki pants, gray T shirts, and uncut hair will match up to the average Cannes citizen. More information is available at Cannes Lion.
Partner and Integrator Activity
More companies with which DarkCyber is familiar has jumped on the Amazon bandwagon. Some representative examples:
- Advertity is now certified to Amazon digital customer experience work. No, DarkCyber does not know what that means. It’s probably important once one is trapped in the labyrinth of AWS.
- HyTrust has expanded its CloudControl system to handle AWS. Source: Eweek
- Metova is now an AWS advanced partner. Source: Csion
Stephen E Arnold, May 20, 2019
Alphabet: How Do You Spell Fear?
May 16, 2019
One answer might be “More advertising”. Another possibility is “Amazon advertising.”
This is speculation, of course, but my thoughts were sparked by “New Native Discovery Ad Campaigns from Google Monetize Discover Feed for First Time.” My thinking was nudged forward when I read “Google to Push New Ads on Its Apps to Snare Shoppers.”
It sure looks like the Alphabet Google is amping up its distribution of ads.
Why?
The revenue miss was a bit of a yellow warning signal. The push back on Google’s Mr. Pichai-privacy pivot posing was another. Looming fines in Europe is a factor. Plus the general grousing from employees who feel that as elite, their lives are not filled with joy, purpose, and meaning because the real Google elite want these people to just behave and do what the “team” wants. Rah, rah, F-E-A-R.
Years ago, when I was working on The Google Legacy, I have a conversation with a Googler whom I shall name “David B.” The person revealed that Google’s senior management knew that their game would be exposed. Secrecy was, therefore, of primary importance. I encapsulated this remark in my illustration of Sergey Brin as a magician. Google has been a master of misdirection. Look search is free. Now people understand that search is not free, and it is very, very expensive. Maybe that’s why updates are not comprehensive, why some sites are trying to figure out where their backfiles went in the Google index, and why a search results page is often not relevant to the query. Don’t you love those required terms which are not in a displayed search result hit. That’s precision redefined to burn through ad inventory, is it not?
Looks like the tricks are now better understood. The fear is that the audience may be getting tired of the same old show.
The new circus is coming. It doesn’t feature elephants or the skeletons of a dinosaur. It’s the Bezos brigade, and its mascot is the roaring bulldozer. A giant, loud, powerful machine preparing to rework the failed Cincinnati airport and the way intelligence vendors deliver their services along with other rough edges of business workflow.
Back to ads. I must not overlook Google’s ads. Google wants to do a better job with products. Froogle is coming back, just after a bit or R&R, rehab, and plastic surgery.l
Once people searched Google for products. Now two thirds of the product searches find their way to — wait for it — Amazon. The Bezos bulldozer may make another pass over Google territory.
That raises a philosophical question worthy of church fathers in the 11th century CE.
How many ads can fit on the display of a mobile phone?
One answer may be, “Not enough.
What does advertising spell?
”F-E-A-R.
Stephen E Arnold, May 15, 2019
Amazon Reviews: Factual or Fakey?
May 15, 2019
Here’s a handy set of tips for the online shopper—LifeHacker tells us “How to Spot Fake Reviews on Amazon.” Writer Brendan Hesse grants there are innocent reasons for incorrect reviews at Amazon, like a user accidentally posting their review in the wrong place, or a software snafu inserting the wrong reviews into a product’s description. However, he writes:
“There are, of course, more suspicious motives for unrelated reviews to appear on the wrong products, such as attempting to artificially inflate (or deflate) a product or to dissuade buyers from a competitor. And even if the review is for the correct listing, there’s no shortage of reasons as to why it may be fake or misleading—whether that’s as part of a review-for-pay racket; ‘review bombing’ campaigns to change a product’s rating; ads masquerading as reviews; or those curious positive reviews with a one-star rating because the reviewer wants to send a message about shipping taking too long, or some other aspect of the transaction that doesn’t apply to the product itself. Whatever the case, these are easy to spot and deal with.”
First, he advises, don’t just skim the reviews—fake ones may be over-the-top (positive or negative), or they may spend a lot of words discussing a competing product. Also, many 1-star or five-star reviews with very little text in the description are probably fakes. Other tips include checking for the “verified purchase” badge next to a reviewers name and seeking reviews outside Amazon itself. We wonder—can software pick out the legit reviews for us? Unlikely.
Cynthia Murrell, May 15, 2019
Amazon: A Wild West Approach to Security
May 14, 2019
A story ostensibly about an “unprotected Elasticsearch cluster” and an administrator poses an interesting question which I will raise in a moment. You will want to read or scan “Sensitive Information of Millions of Panama Citizens Leaked.” The main idea is that information about citizens of Panama was leaked. The information appears to be germane to people with medical issues. That’s bad for several reasons:
- People and their medical “histories” are sensitive and like a sizzling hamburger to bad actors interested in blackmail or some other negative action
- Some citizens of Panama are often low profile. These individuals use Panama as a convenient base for one’s identity or one of many identities. There are also quick hops to nearby locations with a someone flexible approach to financial activities.
- The “unsecured” Elasticsearch databases are findable using Shodan. This is a search system of considerable utility to certain organizations and individuals.
The system on which the data resided, if the write up is accurate, was Amazon AWS. Now the big question:
With the automation Amazon AWS offers customers, why aren’t basic security health checks routinely performed by Amazon’s smart software?
Snuffing out unprotected AWS servers / services is going to add to friction for customers and impose additional computational burdens on AWS.
One can point the finger at Elasticsearch administrators, but these people are driving Amazon’s digital vehicle. When a smart car mows down a pedestrian, whom do we scrutinize? The person walking or the goi go outfit which built the smart vehicle?
Does Amazon’s speeding AWS may need some driver safety functions? Air bags save lives, and the driver does not have to pay extra or be aware of these devices. Just a thought: Air bags and seat belts for Amazon AWS customers. Amazon, it seems, wants to help former employees become delivery people. What about the administrators of Elasticsearch? What’s their future?
Stephen E Arnold, May 14, 2019
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