Spreetail is an established marketplace E-Commerce business that is now building its own first-party marketplace for the first time. The Spreetail.com tech stack is brand new and offers many greenfield engineering opportunities.
We are hiring multiple engineering positions. If you are interested in a referral please let me know prior to applying.
The comments seem pretty back and forth on wether AirPods are good or not. I just got some anyhow, for my wife. She uses her iphone, her apple watch, and an iPad. She isn't very techy, doesn't care about the sound quality or anything, but she does use a lot of apple devices. She also likes to talk to her family in the mornings on the phone while getting ready for the day (curling her hair etc.). To me it seems like headphones that allow her to be ultra mobile and also swap between the devices that she uses make sense. It fits her use cases well
This is the use case of most people, just let me hear the sound and get out of my way.
The HN crowd, especially the more focused and tech-savvy people, find issues with the sound quality, ambient noise pickup, and sync issues. All valid issues and the reason I don't care for wireless earbuds in general.
I will stick to my over-ear headset, but I definitely see how airpods are revolutionary and convenient for non-tech users that just want something cordless and simple that works most of the time.
I like this idea, and good luck! Just wanted to give some input on this as I currently work on an ML project at Amazon. The more context possible from the user to define the space at the very beginning will increase accuracy exponentially (at the risk of a too much effort required for user onboarding). Finding that balance is important. Additionally, the user feedback is very important as well. incorporating a way to say yes a shipment came at the wrong time, or no it didn't will also improve model development. However both experiences should be lightweight and seamless - good luck!
It could be IoT. One of the biggest challenges of IoT is connectivity. It's pretty hard to build reliable IoT implementations with 99% uptime on top of WiFi or BLE (and even harder when relying on broadband cellular networks).
There are many critical systems that in order to take advantage of connected technologies require dedicated or special protocols that can provide speed, reliability, high security, low latency, low power consumption, low data rates.
Most unlicensed radio gear chooses between the 2.4GHz and 5GHz ISM bands. 2.4GHz offers longer range and better penetration of walls, but a lower available bandwidth (fewer/slower channels). 5GHz offers better bandwidth but lower range and less penetration. Perhaps 3.5GHz provides a happy middle ground for Amazon? Not to mention there is much less interference on that band because they don't have to put up with everyone's wifi, bluetooth, microwave ovens, etc etc.
Generally you use whatever spectrum you can get rather than having the luxury to strike beard and decide which spectrum you would prefer.
When available for non-military use, 3.5GHz will be attractive because it will be empty of encumbant users. Therefore far more usable than 2.4 and 5GHz, provided the cost is reasonable. Also likely much cheaper than the other available P2MP bands (principally allocated to LTE in the US).
I watched the all hands today. I just want to comment on the journalism here. For one, whoever this employee is that email buzz feed news is taken as representative to general feelings for all of Amazon employees which is ridiculous. Also the article makes this assertion "Though the company-wide Q&A was not meant to only address concerns about Amazon’s facial recognition deals with law enforcement, it was a major topic on employees’ minds.", which it has no data to back up. One question at the tail end of a 90 minute all hand does not make it a major topic.
I think you make a solid point here. I do think Amazon and its employees should be debating their concerns on this topic. But if the only question/talk of Rekognition vis-a-vis law enforcement during the all-hands is that one question quoted by the article, then that doesn't justify a news story just on that one question at the meeting. That's not to say BuzzFeed isn't justified in continuing to report on the controversy and debate, just that this recent moment at the all-hands isn't news in itself.
Before the big Google walkout this week, there was at least one HN discussion about it a few days prior, with some commenters questioning the purpose/courage of a walkout if the employees aren't willing to quit. Well, even if Google employees didn't put money where their mouths were, participating in the walkout at the very least is a public statement. And when 20,000 [0] employees make that statement, there is no debate at all if a reporter describes the Google controversy as one that has sparked significant company-wide strife.
Even reputations are hotly debated in this climate. I think a good habit is to read from as many sources as possible, including controversial ones, and making a private determination as to how to weight reporting.
There are enough sources supporting any worldview that there's a real risk that you'll just end up supporting whichever one you started with. I have no idea how you can do better though.
There's no shortage of people who share that same "belief", but would end up writing down a different and conflicting list of people than you, with no loss of accuracy
I agree it’s not a new phenomena and never said that it was. I’d argue that our news was historically fair-minded up until the recent mass-scale polarization.
So you are here to tell us that employees don't actually care as much as reported about the ethics implications of their work, and that leadership didn't actually meaningfully address the topic.
... is that meant to be a comment in defence of the company?
This is a disingenuous statement. Given the common understanding that "software is eating the world," your suggestion is about as earnest as "you are perfectly welcome to find another planet."
I've seen several comments regarding whether or not Apple, Amazon etc. would deny the hacking if its true and if that is fraud or not. I work at Amazon now and previously was in the Navy, holding a TS/SCI. My firm belief is if such a hack happened, it would not be disclosed to anyone without a clearance, and the organizations that are denying it have no knowledge that it occurred. Furthermore if there truly was a compromise by a foreign nation it would be classified as a national security threat and subsequently classified and kept from public knowledge. Anyone who disclosed the truth would be at risk of loosing their clearance, job, and could end up getting the snowden treatment.
> the organizations that are denying it have no knowledge that it occurred
Are you saying that Steve Schmidt, the AWS chief infosec officer didn't know about the hack? Or that his article [0] was published to purposely hide it?
If only one person in Amazon knew about it, it would be Schmidt. And if Schmidt knew, I don't think he'd write an article so strongly claiming Amazon doesn't know anything about it. The only thing in my mind that lends credence to Schmidt covering it up purposely is that $10B contract the Pentagon is putting out- perhaps they've told him to play ball as part of getting the contract. But even then it seems a stretch.
CISO is not the most likely point of crossover, the most likely point is the general counsel's office. Companies don't talk to the Feds without a lawyer, and they also don't issue high profile statements without a lawyer. And unlike the CISO, conversations with your lawyer are privileged.
Whoever directly oversees it and acts as the stakeholder for GovCloud should be, sure, but there's no reason for the person above the direct overseer to be cleared. Otherwise by that logic Bezos should be cleared as well.
The Bloomberg article specifically claimed that Apple themselves discovered the chip in a random spot check. If an Apple employee discovered it, it would have been communicated all the way up to the executive level prior to notifying anyone outside the company (such as the FBI), which means you can't just chalk this up to a handful of lower-level Apple employees being covered by a gag order and the executives not knowing.
It also claimed Apple removed 7000 SuperMicro servers in a few weeks. That seems especially unlikely to happen without at least some explanations to upper management. Sure, they could lie to management about why but either way management can’t then claim no servers were removed without lying themselves.
unless the NSA or another intelligence agency has an insider that could catch that before it made it up high enough to cause trouble. conceivably, someone below the insider could leak to Bloomberg realizing that they have limited options.
That seems like a lot of work. What would be the point of that?
If Amazon is being spied on by foreign intelligence, wouldn't the NSA want Amazon to know about it? Particularly since government data is hosted on Amazon's servers.
Because now the NSA has a strategic foothold. If they acknowledge the hack, then the adversary will move on to something else. If they don't acknowledge it, they can secretly mitigate it, by feeding false data, for example, and waste the adversary's time.
> Furthermore if there truly was a compromise by a foreign nation it would be classified as a national security threat and subsequently classified and kept from public knowledge.
This is exactly what I think. Anyone confirming such a case publicly could cause a huge international confrontation between two largest economies in the world. It's not about tech or business – it's about national security and international politics.
I can see where the Navy/Military/Government could compartmentalize a hack like this. How could a company like Apple or Amazon keep this under wraps? How could they keep the knowledge of such a hack within the TS/SCI employees?
The cleared department is handled the same way as in the military in terms of security. Amazon has SCIF's etc. So unless a disgruntled employee steps forward who doesn't care about there life, I imagine its easily contained (and symptoms of an employee being disgruntled are highly monitored when they hold a clearance)
I’m thinking about the non cleared data center folk, the sys admins and developers who use the servers for their applications.
How do a bunch of Supermicro servers vanish wintout anyone noticing? I’d expect quite a few people would be involved that do not have any clearances. Apple is known for their secrecy but a few other companies named are not.
At the scale their datacenter are, they must be replacing a full rack of servers every single day, just to follow a standard 3 years depreciation policy.
Servers practically vanish every single day. Add a few more supermicro and it's not even noticeable. Business as usual.
I knew a dozen people working on Amazon Go for like 4 years before it launched. Not one person leaked, even internally, what the hell they were building. Just that it was awesome and I should come join their team.
Somehow, Amazon is really good at keeping secrets.
They might actually know for much longer: if your spying devices suddenly stop communicating to you, that's likely you've been discovered.
If that story is true (and I personnaly think it has a high probability to be), what would a gov or a large org do? Investigate, confirm they have been compromised but then.... leave the hw in place and data flowing back to the alien mothership? Unlikely.
I don't necessarily agree with the below, but one could argue that classification is necessary to prevent mass panic/prevent attempted vigilante justice/protect the government's image/buy the government time to investigate/respond appropriately.
Things get voted on and positions change so I have no idea what you're referring to with "the below," but it's much simpler than trying to protect "the government's image."
If you're attempting to hack me or steal data from me and I know you're trying (specifically as would be the case with this chip if the story holds up) then I'm in a much better position to try to figure out how, or provide misinformation, or try to turn someone in the chain of custody if anything needs to be physically handled. Or at the very least, if it's an espionage or military situation, it makes it easier to know who to kill.
All of that goes out the window if you immediately disclose every threat. Whoever is attacking you will simply use the means you haven't discovered yet and stop using the ones you have.
Ignorance is not a defense, especially for a director of security. Lying about knowing how the organization you lead operates is a bad as directly lying about how your organization operates.
Another workaround instaed of having the music app or adding a single song as many people have mentioned is opening whatever app you perfer to play music and hitting the play button prior to plugging it into your car system. Then, as the iPhone is plugged in and your car recognizes it, it will see an audio file on the car - the one that is currently playing. It will continue to play that song.
While my car is in the shop getting unsmashed I've had the pleasure of four different cars and four different sound systems in as many weeks. That's how I know the workaround won't get it done on a Peugeot 308. "Spotify's playing? Nah, let's hear that song you like whose name starts with '('. Spotify's grabbed the audio output again, almost as if you opened it again and pressed play? I can help... And you wanted it on single-track repeat, right?"
Never thought I'd be happy to see Carplay again with its 3-ring circus of UI tomfoolery, but there it is.
Hi Sam, I am a recent transplant from FL to seattle to work for a tech company - it was a big move but I feel like it was worth it. Currently I work in more of a technical position but eventually I want to move to more of a leadership position as I see myself interested in driving business and solving logistical and business type issues. My questions in, what can you recommend for someone who wants to transition from a technical background to that sort of area? Thanks!
Speaking of... I saw this on the Chromebook page "Chromebooks start at just $249 with a $30 management fee per device."
Does Apple or other vendors charge a similar "management fee" to this? Unless I'm missing something, the fees will surpass the per-unit pricing before the first year.
It appears you are correct, but it seems it was a change from early pricing models:
"It's a big change from the pricing model Google offered with Chrome OS in the past: The first generation of Chromebooks came with monthly fees for business and school accounts -- $28 a month per device for businesses and $20 a month for schools. With the new plan, organizations pay only the single flat fee for the lifetime of each device. "
Another item to take note of is Google's EOL policy for Chromebooks[1]. Assuming the institution depreciates it's assets on a 5-year period, this compares well with, say, a Windows PC/laptop - at the end of the period, the device would have minimal value (as it would no longer get updates). Add in the management fee, and you might favorably offset the cost of having your own WSUS and administrator.
in windows world you pay for the servers, exchange, cals for both and on top whatever price for office we haven't even got to hardware yet Chromebooks are cheap.
Spreetail is an established marketplace E-Commerce business that is now building its own first-party marketplace for the first time. The Spreetail.com tech stack is brand new and offers many greenfield engineering opportunities.
We are hiring multiple engineering positions. If you are interested in a referral please let me know prior to applying.