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BlackBerry and Amazon team up to make connected cars more secure
The more connected cars get, the more we'll need to depend on high-quality security -- especially when dealing with the cloud. BlackBerry, which is more into cars than smartphones these days, is addressing that issue with a new connected vehicle software platform based on its QNX operating system. By tapping Internet of Things tech from Amazon Web Services, it'll let car manufactures build AI apps and access vehicle sensor data for connected, electric and autonomous cars.
752,000 US birth certificate applications were exposed online
According to a report from TechCrunch, an online company that allows people in the US to obtain a copy of their birth certificate has exposed more than 752,000 applications. The case of negligence was discovered by Fidus Information Security, a company that conducts online penetration testing, and verified by TechCrunch. The two found that the company is storing the applications on an Amazon Web Services (AWS) cache that's not protected by a password. By simply entering the "easy-to-guess" address of the cache in a browser, a malicious visitor could access the documents held within. TechCrunch didn't disclose the name of the company to protect the privacy of those who used its service.
The FTC has reportedly opened a probe into Amazon's cloud business
The US Federal Trade Commission is expanding the scope of its Amazon probe to include its cloud business, according to Bloomberg. In addition to looking into the company's e-commerce business, investigators have reportedly started asking the software companies Amazon works with about Web Services' practices to figure out it's been harming competition or violating any antitrust laws.
Amazon created a musical keyboard to help developers learn about AI
Amazon has just announced AWS DeepComposer, what the company claims is the world's first machine-learning enabled musical keyboard. In practice, the actual device is a lot simpler than Amazon's grand statement might make it seem.
Amazon AI generates medical records from patient-doctor conversations
Amazon believes its latest Web Services tool will help doctors spend more time with their patients. The tool, called Amazon Transcribe Medical, allows doctors to easily transcribe patient conversations and add those interactions to someone's medical records with the help of deep learning software.
Amazon sues to challenge Microsoft's $10 billion JEDI contract win
Amazon is acting on its promise to challenge the Pentagon's decision to award Microsoft a key $10 billion cloud computing contract. The internet giant filed a federal lawsuit on November 22nd to contest the Defense Department's choice for the coveted Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) contract. Amazon didn't explain the reasoning behind the suit, although it previously claimed that the decision process included "unmistakable bias" and suggested there was "political influence." In other words, President Trump's animosity toward Amazon allegedly pushed the Pentagon to choose Microsoft instead of the 'rightful' winner.
Amazon joins Facebook's fight against deepfakes
Facebook will have some extra help in its quest to fight deepfakes. Amazon Web Services is joining the Deepfake Detection Challenge as both a technical partner and as a member of the committee overseeing the challenge. It'll offer machine learning experts for "technical support and guidance," and will offer $1 million in AWS credits to teams that need cloud services to complete their detection work.
Amazon is hosting a two-day music festival in Las Vegas
Amazon has been aggressively pushing into the music business. It's already promoted its Music streaming service by holding a concert for Prime Day and appealing to audiophiles by offering lossless streaming with its HD plan. So when you hear the company is hosting a music festival, you might expect that service to be the host. But no, the new Intersect festival is being put on by cloud computing subsidiary Amazon Web Services.
Amazon's Textract AI can read millions of pages in a few hours
Amazon has launched a new offering called Textract for its Web Services customers, and it's like optical character recognition on steroids. It more than just extracts text from documents like its name implies -- Amazon says it can actually identify different document formats and their contents so it can process them properly. The product was designed to be able to recognize if it's taking text from tables and forms from documents, including scanned receipts, tax paperwork or inventories. It then generates structured data that doesn't need human input.
Amazon wants you to dump Microsoft's corporate email platform
Sorry to remind you of one of the more banal parts of working life, but it's time for a story about corporate email services. It's a market that's traditionally been dominated by Microsoft, although Google is managing make some in-roads with its enterprise apps platform. Now, however, Amazon is hoping to coax some disgruntled Exchange veterans away with its new WorkMail service.
Canonical's AWSOME API bridges OpenStack and Amazon clouds, Ubuntu has its head in both
New features and services that improve Canonical's latest version of Ubuntu seem to keep rolling in. The latest addition being the announcement of its AWSOME proxy service. No, that's not us getting over excited about it, that stands for Any Web Service Over Me, and it includes APIs that smooth the transition to OpenStack for those currently using Amazon's cloud services. Although not open source, Amazon's Web Service has such a large market share, that Canonical clearly wants to make integrating with it as smooth as possible. The AWSOME proxy will only provide basic functionality for the AWS side of things, with users still encouraged to adopt the OpenStack infrastructure for deeper capabilities. Still, if you're currently working with Bezos' platform, and this was the last barrier to hopping aboard the Precise Pangolin ship, you're in luck.
Amazon CloudSearch brings A9 to devs and businesses
Amazon certainly isn't the first to offer hosted search services for third parties, but its model might make it the simplest option. Businesses or devs looking to create custom search indexes need only to upload what they want to make searchable and Amazon takes care of the rest -- including deciding how much hardware to provision based on index size and traffic. Using the company's A9 search engine, CloudSearch can quickly whip up complex query tools, including support for Boolean functions. For more details check out the PR after the break.
Amazon stores 1,700 human genomes in the cloud
Not content with speeding up web browsing and hosting federal data, Amazon Web Services are now helping in the fight against disease. Bezos' crew is donating a chunk of free cloud storage to the 1000 Genomes project, which aims to make it easier for scientists to search for genetic variations linked to diseases. These gene-hunters can also use Amazon's Elastic Cloud Compute service to analyze data and discover patterns, although those functions won't come gratis. The DNA sequences of 1,700 mostly anonymous Homo sapiens from around the world have already been logged, but the project has to upload another 1,000 samples before it meets statistical requirements. If it ever needs fresh volunteers, perhaps a free USB gene sequencer and a Prime subscription might do the trick?
HP readying competitor for Amazon's cloud computing, plans to launch soon
We're still waiting to see where HP goes with webOS, but according to the New York Times it will officially launch a cloud computing service that competes with Amazon Web Services in the next couple of months. HP Senior VP and General Manager Zorawar Singh is quoted saying the currently in beta service projects as an alternative to what Amazon has built with a focus on personalized sales and service and additional tools for third party developers, as well as a system of small data centers around the world. Throw in analytics based on technology it's obtained by purchasing Vertica and Autonomy, and maybe Meg Whitman's ship has something here, but we'll wait until the next Netflix is running its operations from this cloud before declaring it on the same level.
Amazon Silk browser spins a faster mobile web, courtesy of cloud servers (video)
Part of Amazon's new Kindle Fire pitch is its promise of Amazon Silk -- a "split browser" exclusive to the tablet that gets the heavy lifting done on its EC2 cloud servers and promises faster access as a result. Dubbed Silk to represent an "invisible, yet incredibly strong connection", it takes advantage of Amazon's existing speedy connections, and that so many sites are already hosted on its servers to speed up web access. Another feature is its ability to learn from previous web surfers and use their data to determine how to render a page, and which sites to precache on the device before you even select the next link. While mobile browsers like Skyfire and Opera have offered speed boosting proxies before, Amazon thinks its AWS prowess and the addition of "dynamic decisions" about what to render locally or in the cloud takes it to another level. Read our live blog of the event for more details, or check out the video explanation and press release after the break.
Amazon Web Services' GovCloud puts federal data behind remote lock and key
Uncle Sam's been making his way into the cloud, spurred on in part by the inherent billion dollar cost efficiencies, and Amazon's looking to help with the move. The Seattle-based company recently announced the launch of its new AWS GovCloud, a federal government-only region that offers a remote server solution for organizations bound by high-level data constraints. The service makes use of FISMA, FIPS 140-2 compliant end points, SAS-70, ISO 27001, and PCI DSS Level 1 security controls, providing a secure host environment that adheres to stringent "regulatory and compliance requirements," and restricts physical access to the US-only. NASA's JPL and the US Recovery and Accountability Transparency Board are just two of the 100-plus government agencies already employing AWS' remote servers, with more destined to join Washington's velvet-roped cloud. Jump past the break for Amazon's official PR spiel.
Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud on-demand computing service
Amazon continues to push the boundaries of web services and people's tolerance for clever branding with its recently launched "Elastic Compute Cloud", offering easily scalable computing on demand to developers. The service works in conjunction with Amazon's Simple Storage Service (otherwise known as S3), giving developers a virtual computing environment within which they can do what they please. Each virtual server instance they get gives 'em the equivalent of a 1.7Ghz Xeon CPU, with 1.75GB of RAM, 160GB of disk space, and 250Mb/s of network bandwidth, of which they can of course get as many as they like (or can afford), with prices starting at just $0.10 per instance-hour consumed and $0.20 per GB of data transferred outside of Amazon. Sure seems cheap compared to what it'd cost to get up and running on your own, although it'll obviously still add up pretty quickly if you're working on large scale projects. [Via GigaOM]
