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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 designs faster ARM-based chips for its cloud servers
Amazon's cloud hosting business, Amazon Web Services, will soon be getting new server hardware -- an updated processor specifically designed for data centers, as reported by Reuters.
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.
DoD's $10 billion 'Jedi' cloud contract goes to Microsoft over Amazon
After a couple years of competition, the US Department of Defense has awarded a lucrative contract for cloud computing services to Microsoft. It beat out Amazon, the only other remaining competitor after others were weeded out or, in the case of Google, dropped out citing "AI principles." Dubbed the Jedi Cloud contract, it could be worth $10 billion over the next ten years as the agency replaces legacy systems. In a statement, DoD Chief information Office Dana Deasy said "The National Defense Strategy dictates that we must improve the speed and effectiveness with which we develop and deploy modernized technical capabilities to our women and men in uniform. The DOD Digital Modernization Strategy was created to support this imperative. This award is an important step in execution of the Digital Modernization Strategy."
Political committee left 6.2 million email addresses exposed for 9 years
It's all too common for organizations to leave sensitive data exposed on their servers, but the latest incident might leave some scratching their heads. UpGuard discovered that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee left about 6.2 million email addresses exposed in a badly configured Amazon S3 cloud storage bucket since 2010 -- yes, nine years ago. The data file was apparently meant to exclude people from the DSCC's marketing emails during Hillary Clinton's Senate tenure. Most of them were clearly personal addresses, although there were thousands of .gov and .mil addresses as well.
Amazon plans new solar and wind farms in Ireland and Virginia
Months after Amazon shareholders turned down a plea by employees to do more about climate change, the company announced two new renewable energy projects. Today, Amazon shared plans for a wind farm in Ireland and a solar farm in Pittsylvania County, Virginia. When completed sometime in 2020, these projects are expected to generate a combined 168,000 MWh of clean energy annually, helping Amazon reach its goal to power 100 percent of its operations with renewable power.
This week in tech history: Amazon's 25th birthday
At Engadget, we spend every day looking at how technology will shape the future. But it's also important to look back at how far we've come. That's what This Week in Tech History does. Join us every weekend for a recap of historical tech news, anniversaries and advances from the recent and not-so-recent past. This week, Amazon turns 25. Few companies have done more to shape the modern internet (and, some might argue, modern capitalism) than Amazon. CEO Jeff Bezos incorporated the company 25 years ago today, and it was another year before Amazon launched as an online bookstore. It was still longer before it became the internet Goliath it is now -- but the list of things that Amazon has significantly changed 25 years in is dizzying.
Samsung leak exposed source code, passwords and employee data
Samsung was reportedly leaking sensitive source code, credentials and secret keys for several internal projects. According to TechCrunch, independent security researcher Mossab Hussein discovered dozens of exposed files in a GitLab used by Samsung engineers and hosted on a company-owned domain. The projects were reportedly set to "public" and not protected with a password.
Third-party errors left over 540 million Facebook records exposed
Facebook is embroiled in another privacy scandal, although this time it's not of the company's direct making. UpGuard researchers have discovered over 540 million Facebook interaction records left exposed by third parties using Amazon's cloud services. Nearly all of them come from Mexican media company Cultura Colectiva, which recorded account names, comments, Facebook IDs and likes, among other details. Another exposure comes from At the Pool, a long-defunct app that left 22,000 passwords unprotected in addition to other sensitive details.
Amazon will provide computer science classes for NYC high schools
The local response to Amazon's plan to put its next headquarters in New York City has been lukewarm at best. Now the company is doing some community outreach: it announced today a plan to fund computer science courses for more than 130 schools in NYC area high schools. The initiative will bring introductory and advanced placement courses to school in all five of the city's boroughs, including 30 schools in Queens, where the company is setting up shop for its new headquarters.
Amazon Web Services begins using more efficient ARM-based server chips
Amazon's cloud business, Amazon Web Services (AWS), is launching ARM-based servers for its EC2 cloud computing service, the company announced on Monday at its re:Invent conference in Las Vegas.
Amazon opens up its internal machine learning training to everyone
Amazon announced today that it's making the machine learning courses it uses to train its engineers available to everybody for free. The coursework is tailored to four major groups -- developers, data scientists, data platform engineers and business professionals -- and it offers both foundational level lessons as well as more advanced instruction. "Each course starts with the fundamentals, and builds on those through real-world examples and labs, allowing developers to explore machine learning through some fun problems we have had to solve at Amazon," Amazon said in the announcement. "Coursework helps consolidate best practices, and demonstrates how to get started on a range of AWS machine learning services, including Amazon SageMaker, AWS DeepLens, Amazon Rekognition, Amazon Lex, Amazon Polly and Amazon Comprehend."
Amazon fixes security flaws allowing smart home hijacks
Some smart home device owners may have dodged a bullet. Amazon recently patched 13 security flaws in an operating system for the Internet of Things, FreeRTOS, as well as Amazon Web Services connection modules. The holes let intruders crash devices, leak the contents of their memory and remotely run code, effectively giving attackers full control. The flaws might have been far-reaching if they'd gone unfixed -- both FreeRTOS and its safety-oriented counterpart SafeRTOS are used in a wide range of devices inside and outside the home, including cars, aircraft and medical gear.
Plex is shutting down its personal cloud streaming service
Media streaming service Plex is shutting down its cloud service at the end of November. The company is making the move because of technical issues and cost concerns. Once support ends, you'll have to stream media from your own server, computer or Network Attached Storage to your connected devices instead of your favored cloud storage service.
Amazon pushes Signal creators to change their anti-censorship tool
For years, Open Whisper Systems has used clever tricks to circumvent censorship of its Signal messaging app on the part of countries trying to silence political dissent. Those methods are getting it into hot water, however. Amazon has warned OWS that Signal's anti-censorship system violates AWS terms of service not only hiding the true origins of its traffic, but by using a domain it doesn't have the rights to use -- namely, Amazon's own Souq.com. The chat service doesn't have permission to use Souq's internet domain "for any purpose," Amazon said.
Amazon simplifies gaming competitions and prizes with 'GameOn'
Much as it has with every other retail sector, Amazon has steadily expanded its gaming presence, especially since it purchased Twitch in 2014. Now, it's unveiled a service that will allow it to break into another gaming arena. Built on Amazon's massive AWS cloud infrastructure, GameOn will let developers integrate competitions natively into PC, mobile and console games. Furthermore, it'll allow companies to offer in-game and even real-world prizes that are fulfilled by (wait for it) Amazon.
Intruders 'borrowed' Tesla's public cloud for cryptocurrency mining (updated)
Tesla isn't immune to the plague of cryptocurrency mining hijacks, it seems. Security researchers at RedLock have reported that intruders gained access to Tesla's Kubernetes console (where it deploys and manages containerized apps) without needing a password, exposing the EV brand's login credentials for Amazon Web Services. From there, the attackers both abused Tesla's cloud resources for cryptojacking and accessed private data held in Amazon's S3 service. The culprits were creative, too.
Amazon's AI camera helps developers harness image recognition
Far from the stuff of science fiction, artificial intelligence is becoming just another tool for developers to build the next big thing. It's built in to Photoshop to help you knock out backgrounds, Google is using AI to figure out if you have a person peeping on your phone and Microsoft uses the technology to teach you Chinese. As Amazon's Jeff Barr says, "I think it is safe to say, with the number of practical applications for machine learning, including computer vision and deep learning, that we've turned the corner" towards practical applications for AI. To that end, Amazon has announced AWS DeepLens, a new video camera that runs deep learning models right on the device.
Amazon's latest toolkit helps you quickly create VR apps
Amazon probably isn't the first company you think of when it comes to augmented or virtual reality (with a few exceptions), but it's determined to change your mind. The internet giant has unveiled a developer service, Sumerian, that promises to simplify creating AR and VR apps -- and general 3D apps, for that matter. You can drag-and-drop objects to quickly create 3D scenes, produce animated AI-driven characters (powered by AWS cloud services, naturally) and script interactions between the user and other objects.
The first 4K livestream from space starts at 1:30PM ET
Astronaut Peggy Whitson has already broken plenty of new ground in her current role as a commander aboard the International Space Station, but she's about to break some more. As promised, Whitson will star in the first-ever 4K livestream from space today (April 26th) at 1:30PM Eastern. Her part will mainly involve a chat with Amazon Web Services exec Sam Blackman (AWS is hosting the event), but the panel as a whole should be worth viewing: it's a chat with NASA and tech industry luminaries about the effects that imaging and cloud technology are having on both science and movie-making.
