The News

AWS went down and took the internet with it. Why does this keep happening?

I’m not sure if anyone noticed this but — I think AWS was down?

For a couple of hours last night, Amazon Web Services US-East-1 region had DNS issues — it’s always DNS — which brought down the whole internet (The Verge). On top of your big names like Snapchat, Reddit, ChatGPT, Fortnite, Amazon’s Alexa, the outage affected Signal (TechRadar), Commonwealth Bank (Down Detector) and crypto platforms like Coinbase (CoinTelegraph) which you’d think might be a bit more resilient to this kind of stuff. Also some people’s “smart” beds overheated (X dot com) and others couldn’t do Wordle (TechRadar).

The Sizzle: This is the part where I say “isn’t it bad that the whole internet, designed to be a decentralised, resilient technology, all depends on like 3-4 companies?” In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve said the same thing before. Experts told the Guardian that it’s pretty obvious problem. The discussion about what to do about it comes up during the annual AWS outage. Even Amazon’s own efforts to mitigate local problems by offering hosting outside of the US didn’t work because some of its critical systems to run those were also down, lol.

I’m interested why there isn’t more planning by individual organisations into how to avoid this. Speaking realistically, most don’t want the headache of hosting their own stuff. The FT ($) points out that so-called “multi-cloud computing” — aka engaging two providers — is possible but adds costs and headaches. Maybe it’s as just simple as the blame game: if everyone has an outage because of AWS, then CTO gets in trouble because everyone is down. But if you go out on your own, find a smaller provider or self-host, and suffer an outage — then suddenly you’re the only story.

Strength (or weakness, I guess) in numbers. And the market reflects that: AMZN was up.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

People using unencrypted satellite communications don’t seem to realise that anyone can listen

Phone calls, text messages, in-air internet, critical infrastructure communications, even sensitive information broadcast by the military are all up for grabs using an off-the-shelf satellite receiver set up, researchers have found (WIRED, $). Researchers at UC San Diego and University Maryland found that there is a crazy amount of data being sent to and from satellites that can be intercepted by anyone with about $1,200 worth of consumer-grade hardware because it’s all unencrypted (research website). This can affect anyone on cell network that has even one tower using satellite communications via a relay attack.

Several organisations contacted by researchers said they were going to start encrypting their traffic. Seems like a good idea!

(Also … anyone just come up with an idea for fun Sizzle summer project 👀)

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Adobe’s ethical AI factory shows one way forward

Adobe is going to start selling custom AI models for businesses based on its own “ethically sourced” corpus of training data (ZDNet). Unlike the vast majority of other AI model makers, Adobe actually owns the rights to its big old library of content and has maintained it so it’s not filled with bullshit, copyright violating material or CSAM. It’s been using this data for its own AI tools and, now, is going to use this material to train models for other companies.

The Sizzle: I don’t usually write about random new products, let alone B2B offerings, but I thought this was interesting for two reasons. Firstly, Adobe has found out that not flagrantly violating intellectual property both reduces your own headaches but also opens up new business opportunities? Who’d’ve thought!

And the second reason is flagging the trend of companies training smaller AI models for businesses rather than just putting a wrapper around generalist models. At SXSW last week, Maincode CEO Dave Lemphers told us this approach is efficient and predictable, given that you’re choosing the basis of the model rather than trying to control all the different possible outcomes with instructions after the fact (Information Age).

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Leftovers

Australia:

Rest of the world:

Discuss these links in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Oh, Also

Just a really good watering hole

Yesterday, I came across this blog post that pointed me to a livestream of a watering hole in the Namib Desert. I don’t have much more to say than that it’s neat and very relaxing to watch. I saw some zebras yesterday.

Discuss in the Sizzle Slack or forum.

Bargains

Electrical & electronics

Computing

Mobile

The End

😎 The Sizzle is written by Cam Wilson and emailed every weekday. It was created by Anthony “decryption” Agius.

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The Sizzle is created on Gadigal land and acknowledges the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, recognising their continuing connection to land, water and community. I pay my respect to them and their cultures and to elders both past and present.