Amazonia for March 25, 2019
March 25, 2019
The Bezos bulldozer has encountered a landscape with tropical weathered granite. The diesel engine is under some stress.
Amazon Brands: Not Like Costco’s
Bloomberg reported that Amazon is not batting 1.000 with its house brands. “Most Amazon Brands Are Duds, Not Disrupters, Study Finds” asserts:
Turns out most Amazon-branded goods are flops that don’t threaten other businesses at all, according to Marketplace Pulse. In a study, the New York e-commerce research firm examined 23,000 products and found that shoppers aren’t more inclined to buy Amazon brands even when the company elevates them in search results.
Unlike the “your motherboard is compromised”, this write up has a source, Marketplace Pulse. Not much information about the methodology, but that’s par for the “real news” putting course.
Why the NYC Queens’ Disintegrated
I noted this write up in the Daily Mail, a remarkable source of information:
Mayor Bill De Blasio Implies That Jeff Bezos’ High-Profile Affair with News Anchor Lauren Sanchez Was the Reason Amazon Pulled Out of Its New York Headquarters Deal
The write up states:
De Blasio hinted that the Amazon CEO’s affair with news anchor Lauren Sanchez that erupted in the public eye ruined Amazon’s plans to create a sprawling headquarters. ‘I think we can all say that unusual things were happening within the Amazon family at that time. And that was said politely. There was clearly some unusual factors happening,’ de Blasio said with a smirk on MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Friday.
I found the phrase “pulled out” and the use of the word “smirk” interesting. There was a source: another news organization’s interview.
Preparing for the Amazon Revolution
Biz Journals reported that Amazon is continuing its effort create Amazon savvy technologists. According to “Amazon Web Services Joins Capital CoLAB, an Effort to Prepare Young Workers for Tech Jobs”:
Capital CoLAB members help train students for STEM-related fields through programs and internships…The program strives to equip students with skills for areas such as data analytics, visualization and cybersecurity.
No mention appeared about getting the skills needed to work in an Amazon warehouse or driver an Amazon Sprinter delivery van. No tech skills needed I assume.
uDroppy Picks Up AWS Speed
A uDroppy executive explains how to use an AWS API call to eliminate the cost of a traditional file upload. The trick is to remember that Amazon’s S3 is a storage service, not a content delivery network. The write up explains:
The client sends the file via a PUT HTTP request to S3, and if all requirements are satisfied the file is correctly uploaded. The benefit of this approach is that our server has to handle just a simple API call where there’s no file data. The upload itself is processed by the client, leaving our server free and ready to process the next request very quickly. As you can imagine this method is very scalable, and at the same time not very expensive.
Trick or feature? The write up does not express an opinion.
Sisense: A Cyber Intel and Analytics Vendor Joins the Amazon Bandwagon
Amazon has a number of cyber intelligence and analytics companies as clients. According to “Sisense Accelerates Cloud Analytics with Amazon Web Services”:
the release of its new Elastic Data Hub, a unique offering in the BI space that allows organizations to easily connect and mashup live, real-time data with cached in-memory data on the same dashboard. This breakthrough offering leverages Sisense powerful, live data connector with Amazon Redshift from Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), a fast and powerful, fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse service in the cloud.
Is Amazon becoming the “roundhouse” for the cyber intelligence high speed trains?
Amazon: Squeezing Elastic
If you want a run down of Amazon’s squeezing of the Elastic open source Elasticsearch system, navigate to “With its Elasticsearch Distribution, Amazon Web Services Sends More Shockwaves Through Open-Source Software.” For many cyber intelligence companies, Elasticsearch is useful because it provides utility search and can accommodate add ins, add ons, proprietary modules, and the other enhancements. The article states:
Elastic CEO Shay Banon did not take kindly to AWS’s move, suggesting in his own blog post last week that AWS first approached Elastic wanting “preferential treatment” compared to other customers before Elastic said no and AWS released its version. “We have a commitment that we will treat a single developer contributing to our products the same as others,” he wrote.
More excitement to follow as Amazon implements its version of IBM’s approach to software lock in.
Pinterest Spend at AWS
GeekWire reported that Pinterest cut a deal with Amazon Web Services that requires it to spend $750 million by 2023.
AWS Embraces Nvidia Server Chips
Marketwatch reported that Nvidia’s latest server chips have now been adopted by AWS. Google and Alibaba also use the company’s silicon. Marketwatch stated:
The Santa Clara, Calif.,-based chip maker said its T4 Tensor Core graphics processing units, or GPUs, would be deployed to Amazon Web Services through Elastic Compute Cloud G4 in the coming weeks. While other public cloud services have been chipping away at market share over the past few years, Amazon’s AWS still ranks as a global market-share leader in public cloud services.
Stephen E Arnold, March 25, 2019
RedMonk and Its Assessment of IBM as an Open Source Leader
March 24, 2019
I read “The RedMonk Programming Language Rankings: January 2019.” The analysis was interesting and contained one remarkable assertion and one probably understandable omission. The guts of the report boiled down, in my opinion, to a reminder to job hunters. If you want to increase your chances of getting hired, know:
1 JavaScript
2 Java
3 Python
4 PHP
5 C#
But the surprising statement in the write up was this one:
IBM remains at the forefront of open source innovation.
Now the omission. If IBM is in the forefront, where is Amazon? The company has made an effort to support most of the widely used open source software. Plus, the company appears to be taking tactical steps to close or capture open source.
From my vantage point, Amazon is taking a more “innovative” approach to open source. Granted Amazon’s “approach” may be a milestone in the company’s enhanced walled garden approach to core software systems. IBM’s approach seems little more than Big Blue’s attempt to give back and convince the open source community that it is not the IBM of its mainframe heritage.
Stephen E Arnold, March 24, 2019
Amazon and Video Advertising
March 22, 2019
DarkCyber monitors Amazon for policeware, not advertising. But the article “Amazon to Launch Mobile Ads, in a Threat to Google and Facebook” adds a bit of color to the otherwise drab Bezos bulldozer. Google and Facebook sell ads, but each is facing pushback from governments and users. Both firms may be dulling the edge of their targeting scalpels in order to appease antagonistic factions.
What does Amazon do? If the information in the Bloomberg (we don’t need sources for some articles about fiddled hardware) write up is accurate, Amazon:
has hit on a new way to grab a chunk of the $129 billion digital advertising market now dominated by Google and Facebook Inc.: sell video spots on the e-commerce giant’s smartphone shopping app.
Yep, video ads. The ground zero for demographics with short attention spans and a desire to squint at tiny screens.
The write up asserts:
For years, Amazon refrained from selling advertising space on its site for fear of disrupting the shopping experience. Instead it used price, product descriptions and consumer reviews to determine which products were most prominent on the page. The site is increasingly a pay-to-play platform, with the top of the page dedicated to the highest bidder, a shift that has helped boost Amazon’s profits.
How will the search and social media giants respond?
If recent actions are any indication, not in an effective manner. The Bezos bulldozer chugs forward in a measured, now predictable manner.
Stephen E Arnold, March 22, 2019
Amazonia for March 18, 2019
March 18, 2019
The Bezos bulldozer has run into some soil filled with largish granite boulders. Check out these developments.
Amazon and Elasticsearch
Elasticsearch, the open source search system, is a popular way for many companies to make content searchable. With add ons, one can perform many useful functions. Elastic, the company founded by Shay Banon, provides for fee services to the search and retrieval technology. The Elasticsearch open source community does open sourcey things.
Amazon is open sourcey, although with a twist. The firm wants to provide a ready-to-go version of Elasticsearch as a widget callable from the numerous AWS services. How does Amazon achieve that goal? One solution is to move farther away from the Elastic version of Elasticsearch. Early signs of this special approach have been document by Code 972. Datanami published an interesting view of the AWS Elasticsearch activity in “War Unfolding for Control of Elasticsearch.”
That write up states:
AWS is seizing upon Elastic’s actions in creating this three-tiered system – not to mention the merger of X-Pack into Elastic Stack proper with the version 6.3 release of the Elastic Stack last summer – in justifying the creation of Open Distro for Elasticsearch.
Amazon does not want to fork Elastic or Elasticsearch.
Datanami states:
Banon accused AWS copying code and co-opting the Elasticsearch product for its own use.
Will legal eagle fly? Will Elastic’s investors and customers complain? Will Amazon alter its course?
No answers at the moment.
DarkCyber hypothesizes that if Amazon comes calling, one should listen. If Amazon asks for something, one should find a way to cooperate. A failure to orbit Amazon can have consequences, fork or not. See the culture item below.
Amazon’s Culture
Amazon is, from DarkCyber’s point of view, a big, friendly Teddy bear of a company. Some insights into the culture of the company are revealed in “AWS CEO Andy Jassy Drills Down On Cloud Adoption And Amazon’s Culture.” Here are a couple of highlights:
- No PowerPoints allowed
- Move quickly (for example, pull out of New York, we assume)
- Speed build
- Employees build their destiny using AWS.
Sound exciting. You can apply at this link.
Virginia: Pushback and Maybe Incentive Pullback?
The Big Apple was sour. Now “Amazon’s second headquarters Faces New Blocks in Virginia Funding Vote.” Pity Crystal City stakeholders. Feel some remorse for the condo speculators. According to the real news outfit Reuters:
local [Virginia] officials vote on Saturday on a proposed financial package worth an estimated $51 million.
The JEDI deal seems to be stalled. Either the wheels of bureaucracy are in neutral, or the various legal challenges are fouling the smart automatic braking system for the billion dollar deal. The slower the processes move, the more time anti-Amazon forces have to refine their tactics.
Gogo to AWS
Gogo’s in flight service is now collaborating with Amazon. According to the ever reliable Verizon Oath Yahoo:
Gogo is set to shift its entire infrastructure to AWS is order to improvise cost structure and achieve better work efficiency by utilizing AWS storage, database, analytics and serverless services. Meanwhile, the company has already shifted its commercial and business aviation division.
Amazon landed these customers in the last year:
Amgen
Ellie Mae
Guardian Life Insurance
Korean Air
Mobileye
National Australia Bank
Pac-12
Santander’s Openbank
As one person told me, “Microsoft can sell better than Amazon.” Synergy Research Group figured out that Amazon had 34 percent of the cloud business.
Where did Amazon Yahoo Oath get this information? Zack’s.
Training Courses
Amazon offers more than 350 training courses for those interested in the Bezos bulldozer’s technology. You can find these at amzn.to/2Y3wX1V . IIT Kharagpur has added AWS courses to its curricula.
Connect with Startups
Amazon has had a mechanism for monitoring startups for years. Now anyone can tap into this flow of potential financial opportunities. “Amazon [is] testing a new program that connects outside investors with startups that use AWS.” The service is called Pro Rata.
The write up points out:
Amazon uses other programs such as the Alexa Fund and Amazon Catalyst to invest in startups.
New Partners/Providers
DarkCyber spotted these partners in the AWS news last week:
Duo World. Info here.
Manthan. Info here.
Symbee. Info here.
Wipro. Info here.
Amazon wants to provide more visibility to its partners and integrators. The company has launched AWS Digital CX Competency. (CX means customer experience.)
Volkswagen Fears Amazon?
Not sure if “fear” is the right word. But DarkCyber found this article suggestive: “In Picking Microsoft’s Cloud, Volkswagen Shows That Even Carmakers Have Some Fear of Amazon.” Could part of the reason stem from Amazon’s buying Mercedes’ vans?
Amazon Smart City Program
IBM does the Watson thing at MIT, but Amazon is putting is Smart City center at Arizona State University. You can get the details in “ASU, Amazon Web Services open Smart City Cloud Innovation Center.” What’s a “smart city”? Google’s angle is to get a piece of the tax money. What’s Amazon’s? The write up states:
…The new center is part of a long-term collaboration between ASU and AWS to improve digital experiences for smart-city designers, expand technology alternatives while minimizing costs, spur economic and workforce development and facilitate sharing public-sector solutions within the region.
Stephen E Arnold, March 18, 2019
Amazonia, March 11, 2019
March 11, 2019
Chug chug chug goes the Bezos bulldozer.
Pop Ups Go Flat
Amazon said that it will shutter 87 of its pop up stores. Source: CNBC
All Hail, Annapurna
Amazon’s AWS success is a result of an acquisition. Forbes makes the complex simple. “How an Acquisition Made by Amazon in 2016 Became the Company’s Secret Sauce.” The “sauce” is Infrastructure as a Service or IaaS. The idea is managing hardware via meta-software. The idea is to knit together diverse entities and customer chips so one can manage services more efficiently.
Going to War for JEDI
The JEDI deal has been chugging along for … too long. Amazon, according to Bloomberg, is becoming more aggressive in an old fashioned way. “Amazon Is Flooding DC with Money and Muscle: the Influence Game” reports that
Federal records show that Amazon.com Inc. lobbied more government entities than any other tech company in 2018 and sought to exert its influence over more issues than any of its tech peers except Alphabet Inc.’s Google. Last year, Amazon spent $14.2 million on lobbying, a record for the company, up from its previous high mark of $12.8 million in 2017. The $77 million that the nine tech companies in the charts below spent in 2018 to lobby Washington looks minuscule next to the $280 million spent by pharmaceutical and health-care products companies. Tech has, however, pulled ahead of the $64 million that commercial banks spent—and Amazon in particular has a cachet that allows it to punch above its weight at times. Of the nine, only the $21 million Google spent on lobbying beat Amazon’s total. Since 2012, Amazon has ramped up spending by more than 460 percent—much faster than its rivals.
Surfacing Amazon Partners Is a Little Easier
Amazon appears to be baby steps to make its partner network more visible. For some reasons, Amazon partners were not too eager to talk about their activities with the online bookstore. “Amazon Debuts AWS Digital CS Competency” includes a partial list of partners; for example, this list, edited for clarity:
Content Management: Acquia, Brightspot, Censhare, Cloudinary, Contentful, Crownpeak, Pagely, Solodev, WP Engine
Marketing Automation: Braze, HubSpot, Localytics, MoEngage, SendGrid, Sigstr, Vidyard
Digital Commerce: Magento, Skava
Customer 360: Adverity, Amplitude, Chartio, Content Square, InsideView, Looker, Manthan, Segment, Tealium, Tickr, Upshot.AI
Consulting Partners: Bulletproof, CloudHesive, G-AsiaPacific, Infosys, Megazone, Metal Toad, Mobiquity, Silver Lining, Vector IT Group.
Complete? No.
AWS Fees: Lyft Version
We noted this fact in CNBC’s headline: “Lyft Plans to Spend $300 Million on Amazon Web Services through 2021.” What’s this buy? The report included this quote from an Amazon professional:
Lyft “is leveraging the breadth and depth of AWS’s services, including database, serverless, machine learning, and analytics, to automate and enhance on-demand, multimodal transportation for riders and drive innovation in its autonomous vehicles business.”
DarkCyber understands that Uber also uses AWS.
AWS Fees: Controlling Costs
AWS makes cloud services easy. That is the viewpoint of some. However, there are nooks and crannies in which services hide or cower. Some of these are overlooked but continue to generate billing. “How to Reduce the Cost of Your Amazon EC2 Service” explains that one has to manage Amazon. The write up explains that significant charges can be accrued from EBS volumes, Elastic IP Addresses, and Snapshots. Who’s on top of these stealthy costs? A Microsoft MVP.
Comparing Cloud Services
Consultants charge big bucks for comparisons with some facts about cloud services. “Comparing Serverless Architecture Providers: AWS, Azure, Google, IBM, and Other FaaS Vendors” offers some information on an ad supported Web site featuring an ad for Microsoft Azure. The comparison is more of a two or three sentence statement of what each vendor asserts. There is a pricing comparison of FaaS offerings, but these may not fit most use cases.
Helpful? Somewhat. Readable? Nope.
N2WS does offer some cost optimization tools. More information appears in “N2WS Expands Cost Optimization for Amazon Web Services with Amazon EC2 Resource Scheduling.”
Penetration Testing Amazon Gets Easier
Is Amazon confident, or is Amazon quietly hoping its security gaps will be discovered and reported more quickly? We learned in “Amazon Web Services Will No Longer Require Security Pros Running Penetration Tests on Their Cloud-Based Apps to Get Permission First.” As cloud services like Amazon and Azure gather more customers, their systems are likely to become increasingly attractive targets.
Amazon Emits Pollution
Not a surprise. CNBC reported “Jeff Bezos Is Finally Ending Secrecy over Amazon’s Role in Carbon Emissions.” DarkCyber noted this statement from the article:
Amazon recently announced its Shipment Zero goal under which the company aims to have 50 percent of all deliveries reach net zero carbon emissions by 2030.
Amazon has been less forthcoming than some other big shippers, according to the write up.
Ignored News? Bezos Considered Buying AMI
DarkCyber is not sure if this is accurate, but capturing the headline and the link seems appropriate. The story “Jeff Bezos Considered Buying the National Enquirer’s Parent Company After Photo Leak” appeared in Town and Country Magazine. Interesting.
Stephen E Arnold, March 11, 2019
Amazon Policeware Links
March 5, 2019
DarkCyber received a request for the four short Amazon policeware videos we created in late 2018. Here are the 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.
Kenny Toth, March 5, 2019
Amazonia for February 25, 2019
February 25, 2019
Several yellow flags flapped in the wind last week. In two conversations with conference organizers focused on the law enforcement and intelligence markets, I learned there was little interest in Amazon’s policeware services. I found this interesting but understandable. Amazon’s “footprint” is much larger in the eCommerce mindspace and recent news has been dominated by Amazon’s response to some New Yorkers’ protests over tax breaks for a cash rich, profitable company. Another factor is the ongoing background buzz about the suddenly personal life of Amazon’s founder. Nevertheless, DarkCyber Annex believes that Amazon is likely to be a disruptive force in what we call policeware and intelware. A few highlights from last week’s Amazon team:
Do Not Fear Amazon
“We’re from Amazon. We’re here to help you.” Jeff Bezos appears to be spending some cycle time promulgating these messages to employees. CNBC reported that “Jeff Bezos told employees that fear of Amazon is overblown.” According the CNBC:
Fears of Amazon taking over the world have reached a fever pitch in recent years. In the fourth quarter of 2017, Amazon was the most mentioned company on earnings calls of S&P 500 companies. But some of Amazon’s primary competitors are finding ways to survive and even thrive against one of the most valuable companies in the world.
Evidence is the positive financial performance of Wal-Mart and the number of misfires Amazon video has delivered. Also, Microsoft is catching up with Amazon cloud services. Rest easy.
Amazon Expands Its Threat Detection
There are many specialist companies — many of which will be acquired or just go out of business. Amazon is aware of this market. One possible reason is that many threat detection firms use Amazon’s infrastructure to provide their for fee services. It seems logical that Amazon would compete in this sector. InfoQ reported that Amazon had added three new threat detection services to its cyber security offerings. Amazon brands this initiative as GuardDuty. Infoq explains the service this way:
Amazon GuardDuty is a threat detection service available on AWS that continuously monitors for malicious or unauthorized behavior to help customers protect their AWS accounts and workloads. When a threat is detected, the service will send a detailed security alert to the GuardDuty console and AWS CloudWatch Events – thus making alerts actionable and easy to integrate into existing event management and workflow systems.
Amazon’s spin is that its existing customers can use these services. However, scope creep is likely to occur. Amazon may compete with some of its customers as it expands its revenue streams in this lucrative market.
Graphus Becomes AWS Partner
It’s difficult to keep track of the companies racing to become AWS partners. We noted that Virtual Strategy reported that Graphus is on the Bezos team. Graphus is a cyber security firm.
Ethereum Service Enhancement
Many individuals in government are not aware that Amazon is a player in the burgeoning digital currency game. Amazon is a player and an increasingly important one. Ethereum World News reported that Amazon supports deployment of VeChain Thor (VET) DApps with almost one click simplicity. What does this digital currency jargon mean? One one hand, an Amazon customer can deploy his or her own blockchain application without having to do bare metal coding. In terms of law enforcement, the expanding Ethereum services signal that data flowing into the through the Amazon system may well be of significance when it comes to identifying certain interesting behaviors. This development complements a managed blockchain service and a quantum ledger database.
Amazon Subsidies
A surprising subsidy from Smartronix reduces the cost of AWS cloud migrations has been reported by Globe Newswire. The idea is to reduce the cost of AWS migration for Virtual Machines (VM) running on VMware. For projects with a minimum of 500 VMs, the migration will be free (completely funded), with partial subsidies offered for smaller projects. In short, this is a play to get big installations. The idea is that organizations will be able to use the same tools and management capabilities they are using today, including VMware provisioning, storage, and lifecycle policies.
Amazon Snow Globe for Elastic Cloud Services
It is now possible to run an application within Amazon. The innovation is described in “Setting Up PrivateLink for Amazon ECS and Amazon ECR.” The idea is that “all the network traffic within the AWS network. When you create AWS PrivateLink endpoints for ECR and ECS, these service endpoints appear as elastic network interfaces with a private IP address in your VPC.” The idea is a variation on the catchphrase “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas. The Amazon edit becomes “What happens in AWS stays within AWS.”
Amazon Funds Computer Science Programs
Free training? Sounds like a promising offer. PC Magazine reports that Amazon will fund computing courses for under privileged teens. The online news service said:
More than 1,000 high schools across the US through its Future Engineer program [will receive funding]. Of those schools, more than 700 are classified as Title 1, meaning a high percentage of their students come from low-income families.
But anyone can become an Amazonia for Just head to Geek Deals and pay $35 for the AWS Certified Architect Developer Bundle 2019, now discounted by over 90 percent.
Amazonia, February 18, 2019
February 18, 2019
Amazon’s Bezos bulldozer may have driven out of Queens last week. The high profile HQ2 could be on the move. How’s Newark look? Mr. Bezos may be in chess mode, sacrificing one location in order to pull off another Bezos bulldozer maneuver. Other Amazonia which caught our attention is summarized below:
A Mid Life Crisis Moment?
The Telegraph reported that Amazon’s expansion in Saudi Arabia may be lost in the desert. Allegedly there is a “feud” between Mr. Bezos and Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Details are few, but when money is at stake, minor differences can be smoothed by Bezos bulldozers properly equipped. The dust up between Mr. Bezos and Mr. Pecker may have some part to play in this alleged issue related to data centers in the Kingdom. Note: You may have to pay to view the “real” news story.
How Big Is AWS?
Amazon expansion into Saudi Arabia in doubt after feud between Jeff Bezos and Crown Prince
Data about the size of Amazon’s cloud business can be fuzzy. Business Insider, however, has the inside skivvy. AWS is bigger than its next four competitors combined. The number seems to be about $26 billion give or take a few billion. Quartz expresses the size in this way:
Amazon Web Services Brought in More Money Than McDonald’s in 2018.
The source does not covert the revenue to Big Macs, a favorite yardstick of some financial wonks.
Slam Dunk: Team Microsoft’s Defense Fizzles
We noted that Steve Ballmer and his Los Angeles Clippers basketball team pulled off a slam dunk. The Clippers smashed home a deal with Amazon for cloud services with Amazon. News of the deal surfaced on February 15, 2019. Ballmer’s Second Spectrum will use AWS to collect and analyze data. Perhaps Azure’s analytics will allow Team Microsoft to determine what went wrong. More details appear in GeekWire. But keep in mind that Microsoft’s Dynamics Suite is available in the Amazon Web Services Marketplace, according to Customer Think. Mr. Ballmer can dribble over and shoot around with a familiar suite of tools.
Eero: Scary?
Amazon’s acquisition of mesh WiFi devices continues to ripple across the home marketplace.
ZDNet stated:
The initial response to this has been mixed, some industry commentators have even called this acquisition “scary”, fearing that the Seattle-based internet retailer and public cloud provider will use Eero’s devices as a way of hoovering more and more information from its customers, with the intention of selling them more of its products.
The threat is that Amazon will leverage its other assets like its advanced machine learning capabilities and create a unified threat management solution at a very competitive price.
UTM from Amazon might blunt some competitors’ sales success and give AWS another advantage in its policeware capabilities.
Scary? Not for everyone. Just some.
About Those Leaky AWS Buckets
The world’s leading online bookstore has released some tips for AWS customers who want to secure their data. Navigate to “Serving Private Content with Signed URLs and Signed Cookies.” The trick is to use CloudFront urls, not Amazon urls. Hmmm.
Amazon Changing Colors?
The Bezos Bugle (aka the Washington Post) reported that Greenpeace thinks Amazon is “wavering on its commitment to renewable energy.” Here’s the nugget:
The [Greenpeace] report also contends that technology companies, particularly Amazon Web Services, which has rapidly expanded its Northern Virginia presence. need to do more to promote renewable energy sources. Amazon committed to moving to 100 percent renewable energy to run its data centers, but the report contends the company appears to be wavering from its pledge.
Amazon ECR and ECS Gain PrivateLink Support
Not familiar with Amazon acronym mania? ECR is the Electronic Container Registry. ECS is Elastic Customer Service. The PrivateLink is a networking technology “aimed to facilitate access to AWS services in a highly scalable and available way.” The poetic phrase comes from an news report in Infoq. These are administrative tools which, in theory, make AWS much more developer friendly. The source article includes a diagram of the bits and pieces one needs to make use of these Amazon offerings.
More Bare Metal Instances
Amazon introduced five new Amazon EC2 bare metal instances. Storage Review summaries the instances in a helpful table. Each delivers 14 gigabits per second.
New AWS Partner
Amazon does not make it easy to locate its Advanced Technology Partners. Wandisco announced that it is now an ATP partner in the APN or Amazon Web Services Partner Network of APN. Wandisco said:
The Advanced Technology Partner designation is the highest tier for Technology Partners that provide software and internet solutions in the AWS Partner Network. WANdisco achieved its status through a rigorous qualification process, based on referenceable customers on the AWS Platform and strict technical guidelines.
What’s Wandisco offer? The company “can enable organizations to seamlessly move large volumes of data with consistent and continuous availability.” More information is at this Yahoo link. Note that Yahoo links can go dead without warning.
Striim Builds for RedShift
Another Amazon partner is Striim. The company announced that it offerings streaming data pipelines to Amazon Redshift. The idea is that the service can help AWS customers migrate and move enterprise data in real time from a broad range of data sources to Amazon Redshift. The service can speed the adoption of a hybrid cloud architecture running on AWS. More information is available from Yahoo Finance. Note that Yahoo links can go dead without warning.
Become an Amazon AWS Expert
Geek.com reports that you can become a certified Amazon Web services architect for $35.
Ethical Hacking on AWS
The service introduction is not for everyone, but it is an important addition. According to Softpedia News:
If you want to run BackBox Linux in the cloud, on your AWS account, you should know that the ethical hacking operating system is now available on the Amazon Web Services cloud platform as an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) virtual appliance that you can install with a few mouse clicks.
This is another useful component in Amazon’s policeware offerings. How robust are these policeware capabilities? Quite robust in the view of DarkCyber.
Amazon Invests in Rivian
Rivian is an electric vehicle start up. Jalopnik reported that Amazon pumped some amount (maybe $700 million) into the company. Jalopnik said:
And it’s hard to say what Amazon would want with electric cars, if you think of Amazon solely as a supply chain and retail enterprise that exists to crush the spirits and bathroom breaks of its workers.
Amazon supports TuSimple, a self driving truck company. The relationship began in 2018.
Google and Amazon: War of Words Escalating?
We noted that former Oracle executive Thomas Kurian sees Amazon AWS as a threat to the online advertising company. The fix may be hiring more Oracle style sales professionals. Fortune does not explain that “Oracle style” sales can be quite interesting, particularly if one is a customer with insecurities. Fortune included this statement in their report about Mr. Kurian’s plans:
An audience member commented to Kurian that for two years, Google has said it is concentrating on building a formidable sales-and-support staff, but that people “haven’t seen signs of change in the market structure.” Kurian responded by saying that Google has increased its spending on sales and support staff by a factor of four over the last three years, although he didn’t cite a specific number. He said that growing a sales force so quickly would be a challenge for any company, but that when he talks to customers, “they feel we have gone a long way.”
The subtext, in DarkCyber’s opinion, is that AWS is a bit of a problem for the online advertising giant. Mr. Kurian wants to respond to customers, an approach which Google has largely found unnecessary for about a quarter century.
Austin: More Amazon and More Traffic
Ah, Austin. The city has street people, traffic congestion, and soon more Amazonians. According to local TV news outlet KVUE:
Amazon said the 25,000 jobs they expected to create in New York will now go to tech hubs and corporate offices across the country, including in Austin.
Note: Local news outlets often take down their stories.
AWS Outposts Coming Later in 2019
SDX Central Confirms AWS Outposts
SDX Center reports that Amazon’s on premises hardware, known as AWS Outposts, will be available later in 2019. The idea is a single on ramp for cloud services. Cisco may team up with Amazon for certain peripherals.
Mildly Humorous Items
- American Media may pay Amazon to host its online services and data. Source: Geekwire
- IBM software now runs on Amazon’s cloud. Source: Geekwire
- Choice Hotels uses both Google and Amazon. Source: Yahoo Finance
Stephen E Arnold, February 18, 2019
Amazonia for February 11, 2019
February 11, 2019
Amazon has been bulldozing away and pushing some jungle undergrowth into the parking lot of major media outlets. Let’s take a quick look at what’s shaking at the electronic bookstore on steroids:
In a New York We May Be Gone
I learned in “Facing Opposition, Amazon Reconsiders NY Headquarters Site, Two Officials Say.” The source? The Washington Post or what some of the DarkCyber researchers call the “Bezos Bugle.” The push back has ranged from allegations of subsidizing a successful company to suggestions that taxpayer money could directly benefit shareholders of Amazon. I learned:
In the past two weeks, the state Senate nominated an outspoken Amazon critic to a state board where he could potentially veto the deal, and City Council members for the second time aggressively challenged company executives at a hearing where activists booed and unfurled anti-Amazon banners. K ey officials, including freshman U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), whose district borders the proposed Amazon site, have railed against the project.
Worth monitoring because if the JEDI deal goes to Microsoft, would Amazon bail out of Virginia?
Indiscreet Pictures and Allegations of Blackmail
Amazon once was a relatively low profile outfit. Then the rocket ships, the Bezos divorce, the JEDI dust up, and now a spat. One headline captures the publicity moment: “Jeff Bezos Says Enquirer Threatened to Publish Revealing Pics.” I don’t want to unzip this allegation. You can expose yourself to the “facts” by running queries on objective search systems like Bing, Google, and Yandex. Alternatively one can turn to the Daily Mail and its full frontal report on this allegedly accurate news story.
Movie Madness
I don’t know anything about the Hollywood movie game. I noted “Woody Allen Sues Amazon for $68 Million for Refusing to Release His Films.” In the context of allegations of blackmail, this adds another facet to the diamond reputation of the humble online bookstore. According to the write up:
Allen blames the studio’s unwillingness to release his films on “a 25-year old, baseless allegation against Mr. Allen” — specifically, Allen’s adopted stepdaughter, Dylan Farrow, telling the world that he sexually assaulted her when she was a child. The suit claims that Farrow’s comments shouldn’t affect the Amazon deal, since the “allegation was already well known to Amazon (and the public) before Amazon entered into four separate deals with Mr. Allen—and, in any event it does not provide a basis for Amazon to terminate the contract.”
Amazon is taking a moral stand it seems. Interesting in the context of the blackmail allegations. Another PR coup?
Accounting Methods or Fraud?
The Los Angeles Times reported that some Amazon delivery drivers’ tips were not paid to the drivers as an add on to their pay. The tips were calculated as part of their regular wage. “Where Does a tip to an Amazon Driver Go? In Some Cases, Toward the Driver’s Base Pay” reported:
Amazon guarantees third-party drivers for its Flex program a minimum of $18 to $25 per hour, but the entirety of that payment doesn’t always come from the company. If Amazon’s contribution doesn’t reach the guaranteed wage, the e-commerce giant makes up the difference with tips from customers, according to documentation shared by five drivers.
Is this an accounting method related in some way to Enron’s special purpose entities? But in the context of blackmail and a legal battle with Woody Allen, I am not sure how to interpret the LA Times’ report if it is accurate.
Amazon and Facial Recognition
Amazon has thrown some support behind the idea that facial recognition systems may require a bit of regulation. I learned about this interest in “Amazon Weighs In on Potential Legislative Framework for Facial Recognition.” The idea is that responsible use of facial recognition technology may be a good idea. The write up stated:
…Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology published a study that found Rekognition, Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) object detection API, failed to reliably determine the sex of female and darker-skinned faces in specific scenarios.
Image recognition systems do vary in accuracy. The fancy lingo is outside the scope of this week’s write up. Examples of errors are interesting, particularly when systems confuse humans with animals or identify a person as a malefactor when that individual is an individual of sterling character. Eighty percent accuracy is a pretty good score in my experience. Stated another way, a system making 20 mistakes per 100 outputs is often close enough for horseshoes. A misidentified individual may have another point of view.
Alexa Gets a New Skill
The Digital Reader reported that you can now have Alexa play a choose your own adventure audiobook. Amazon wants to make sure it has a grip on the emerging trend of “interactive fiction.” Perfect for the mobile phone, zip zip zip reader.
Baby Activity API
The engineers at Amazon have chopped another trail through the digital jungle. Programmable Web reported that Amazon’s new baby activity skill API let parents track infant data hands free. Parents should be able to track their baby’s data. Are third parties tracking the infant as well? The write up states:
The new API includes several pre-built interfaces for tracking specific data points, including Weight, Sleep, DiaperChange, and InfantFeeding. Amazon plans to continue adding to these interfaces in hopes of streamlining integration.
If a third party were to have access to these data, combining the baby data with other timeline data might yield some useful items of information at some point in the future. Behavioral cues, purchases, social interactions, and videos watched could provide useful insights to an analyst.
More Live Streaming and a Possible Checkmate for QVC
“Amazon Live Is the Retailer’s Latest Effort to Take on QVC with Live Streamed Video” states:
Amazon is taking on QVC with the launch of Amazon Live, which features live-streamed video shows from Amazon talent as well as those from brands that broadcast their own live streams through a new app, Amazon Live Creator.
Will the Twitch model work for remarkable products like super exclusive Tanzanite? QVC may try to compete. DarkCyber believes that effort would tax the shopping channel in several ways. Some cloud pros might suggest putting QVC offering on a cloud service. Will AWS make the short list?
Amazon Space
Atlantic reported that the electronic bookstore “has 288M sq. ft. of warehouses, offices, retail stores, and data centers.”
Quite an Amazon-scale week.
Stephen E Arnold, February 11, 2019
Amazonia for January 28, 2019
January 28, 2019
Amazon and Open Source
We learned from GeekWire that Amazon Web Services continues open-source push with code behind SageMaker Neo. The write up told us:
Amazon Web Services has decided to release the code behind one of its key machine-learning services as an open-source project, as it continues to push back against critics who find its relationship with open-source software out of balance.
Amazon wants to make friends with the open source world.
The write up pointed out:
The release is also another sign that AWS increasing involvement with the open-source community, after years of criticism over its tendency to use open-source projects as the foundation for revenue-generating services without contributing much back to the community. Neo-AI joins Firecracker, which was also unveiled at re:Invent 2018, as another fundamental technology advance that the cloud leader has decided to release as an open-source project.
Amazon has some interesting use cases for open source. Some of these reminded DarkCyber Annex of Microsoft’s efforts years ago but blended with a little of the IBM lock in methodology.
Amazon Backup: Good Bye Cohesity and Veeam?
Amazon has rolled out its official back up service. “AWS Backup, a fully-managed, centralized backup service that makes it faster and simpler for customers to back up their data across AWS services and on-premises, helping customers more easily meet their business and regulatory backup compliance requirements.” Source: About Amazon
Amazon Helps Lots of Small Businesses. Yep, Lots.
According to Neowin, Amazon has helped 50,000 small businesses. The dollar volume of the help was pegged at $500,000. Plus, an additional “200,000 SMBs managed to generate $100,000” in revenue.
Alexa Team Number 10,0000
What are 10,000 people doing with Alexa. We assume that the Alexa in the auto device is high on the list. Business Insider listed some other important projects in the Bezos jungle:
- Machine learning
- Making Alexa “more knowledgeable”
- Giving Alexa a personality.
Another area of activity is improving the question and answer capability of Alexa.
Amazon Facial Recognition Performance
The New York Times revealed that Amazon’s facial recognition may have some accuracy challenges. For example, Amazon’s Rekognition mistakes women as men 19% of the time, and darker-skinned women as men 31% of the time, more than similar services from IBM and Microsoft.
Amazon and Zigbee. Zigbee?
Amazon is ubiquitous. At least that is what Quartz has concluded. Good catch. Zigbee, which does not occupy too much of my time, is now joined the Board of Directors of the Zigbee Alliance, reports The Verge. The write up states:
Amazon now has a say in the development of a commonly used smart home standard, giving the company more power as it continues to push smart speakers, cameras, doorbells, and all other kinds of gadgets into its customers’ homes.
Another path cut through the jungle by the Bezos bulldozer is being blazed.
Amazon Drivers Unhappy?
We spotted a news item from the CBS affiliate in Dallas, Texas. The write up states:
More than a dozen of Amazon packages were found on the side of the road in Arlington Sunday, addressed to homes not far from where they were left.
A single unhappy driver, perhaps. A signal that pesky humans can foil the well oiled Amazon machine? Amazon delivery robots may be the answer. But humans are still needed for Amazon’s house cleaning service which is becoming more widely available in the US. Humans are still required for this, however.
Stephen E Arnold, January 28, 2019
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