What is this dystopia coming to when one of the world’s largest tech companies can’t find a way to sufficiently monetize a nearly endless stream of personal data coming from its army of high-tech privacy-invading robots? To the surprise of almost nobody, Amazon is rolling out a paid tier to their Alexa service in an attempt to backfill the $25 billion hole the smart devices helped dig over the last few years. The business model was supposed to be simple: insinuate an always-on listening device into customers’ lives to make it as easy as possible for them to instantly gratify their need for the widgets and whatsits that Amazon is uniquely poised to deliver, collecting as much metadata along the way as possible; multiple revenue streams — what could go wrong? Apparently a lot, because the only thing people didn’t do with Alexa was order stuff. Now Amazon is reportedly seeking an additional $10 a month for the improved AI version of Alexa, which will be on top of the ever-expanding Amazon Prime membership fee, currently at an eye-watering $139 per year. Whether customers bite or not remains to be seen, but we think there might be a glut of Echo devices on the second-hand market in the near future. We hate to say we told you so, but — ah, who are we kidding? We love to say we told you so.
Having Google offer to write you a check for $23 billion is pretty much the dream of every startup slogging it out in the tech trenches. Such princely offers are few and far between, but even rarer is the startup that says, “Nah, we’re good.” But that’s effectively what cloud security concern Wiz just did, rebuffing a buyout offer from Google that would roughly double the company’s current valuation, in favor of taking the company public. That’s a gutsy move, and given Google’s seeming propensity to buy technology only to sit on it or kill it off, probably a smart one.
Speaking of gutsy, one thing we never considered as a potential bottleneck to grid decarbonization is a lack of qualified wind turbine technicians. Or rather, finding people willing and able to climb hundreds of meters straight up to install, maintain, and repair the monstrous machines. It’s not exactly for everyone, but those who are willing to give it a go need proper training, and it turns out that at least one US community college has a wind turbine technician training program. Not only that, the college has a 90-meter-tall wind turbine that students can train on. It’s not a bad deal, either; a training program that costs around $10,000 dollars could help land a job paying up to $90,000 a year.
First, there was “DoS,” then we had “DDoS.” Now there’s “DDDoS” — a dog-distributed denial-of-service attack. It’s officially called NEO by the US Department of Homeland Security, which developed the system to provide law enforcement officers with protection against IoT hazards. The robot, which is built on a Boston Dynamics Spot chassis, provides a mobile observation and intelligence-gathering platform that can infiltrate an area without risking a meat-based officer. In addition to providing eyes and ears on the (hopefully) bad guys, NEO is also equipped with antennas and powerful transmitters that can swamp signals in the WiFi and cellular bands, rendering nearby nefarious wireless devices useless. We’ve heard wireless jammers are quite illegal to own or operate, so we assume there is some exception for law enforcement to use them. Or maybe it’s a “rules for thee and not for me” situation.
And finally, let your geek flag fly — on your car, at least. This collection of geeky custom license plates from MIT grads and faculty is pretty good, and shows some real creativity — especially “DSKDRV,” the plate on Samuel Klein’s floppy-festooned 1998 Honda Civic. There are some clever ideas here, and we especially like the “MITGRAD” Idaho plate, for reasons. But check out Omar Abudayyeh’s “CRISPR” plate; who knew biology could score you a ride like that?
I saw DDDoS and then saw dog, and thought DDoS through computers on dogs? My prediction was accurate enough, albeit they are robot dogs
Last time I checked, the FFC very specifically does not have an exemption to law enforcement for the use of RF jammers.
Hi T.T.,
You are correct (with regard to the FCC) for state and local law enforcement.
The Department of Homeland Security is a Federal agency, and as such is under the regulations established by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).
I haven’t done a deep dive into either DHS or NTIA regulations regarding this particular subject, but suspect the proper authorizations are in place.
No axe to grind here, just adding a bit of additional background information should you wish to look further.
Regards!
Rick
I recall a VMUNIX plate at Berkeley. The parking sticker to have on campus was the NL (no el) one. There may have been a guy with BSDUNIX too.
I’ve seen HE10 WLD in the UK, and Acorn used to own R15 COS
Just a pedantic question:
Is it really a Distributed Denial of Service if only one robot is doing the DoS?
I may have to cancel Amazon Prime. Moe and more the next day/two day delivery ends up being +1/+2 and even +3. They don’t credit you when it happens either, just say “tough luck.” Prime video isn’t that great either with the ads, although Netflix is pulling the same stuff now that they have gotten rid of the ad free Standard tier. If I had to pay for Netflix I would probably have cancelled it already.
Wasn’t the idea of creating their own that they could ditch the big content licensing?
As it happen I have done both, given up on Prime and stopped using the Alexa device. That thing suddenly and for no reason one day stopped being able to play my favorite radio station here, WQXR, and the Google one does do that. And I found no luxuries in being able to get my Amazon things delivered fast, as most of my books that I bought new were coming from B&N unless Amazon could get them cheaper, and the Marketplace gang rarely sold their books via the same methods as the new ones.
Over the last few years many public stations are giving up the old school url of a stream that has been replaced by a web page with a little button to press to hear the stream. Supposedly it (alexa) can be programed to the newer interface or maybe not. The old way comes in on your phone with the screen off, the web page version of the stream… argh. Even public stations want you to use their app.
I am disappointed that whoever owns that CRISPR license plate decided to put it on a car that UGLY.
While I have no intention of buying a Beemer, it could have been worse to put it on a rusty Ford.
$50K to $90K a year to climb up and repair windmills?
A few years ago I talked with a cell tower tech, and he told me they made $125K/year.
Maybe that explains why there is a shortage of windmill techs, they aren’t being paid enough to risk life and limb.
As someone who was playing a LOT of The Division 2 in the third quarter of 2019, and has been playing a LOT of Generation Zero as of late, I find the DDDoS write-up particularly disturbing.