18 ms·

Leaked memos Amazon warn 'be vigilant' due to threats to blow up data centers

140 points by randycupertino 6y ago

neilsense 6y ago
Bezos should also be vigilant as Antifa had gallows outside his house the last time he made a bunch of money in one day. So many threats, maybe we can look at them equally?
- jtbayly 6y ago
  I read that it was a guillotine and Amazon employees, but your point still stands.
- yabones 6y ago
  No, because they are not equal threats. A dangerous terror cell, which has already invaded the US Capitol, is now threatening to bomb critical infrastructure. If this was the Taliban you wouldn't be asking this question.
  - milkrocks 6y ago
    Which group caused 3 Billion in damages this past summer? I'll wait
    - yabones 6y ago
      It's not a question of property damage, this is the great foretold National Security Emergency. We've spent twenty years giving up our privacy for this. If you want to bring up costs, it's only fair to call into question the damage to the US reputation internationally. Having this type of security threat on a national scale is terrible for trade and strategic relations. I'm a Canadian, I don't trust my closest neighbour right now. That's an entirely incalculable cost.
    - mrzimmerman 6y ago
      Which group tried to murder members of Congress and fundamentally alter or stop our constitutional process because they were mad they didn’t get they’re way? Who is threatening to have armed rallies to finish the job? Please, tell me why refusing to follow the constitution or ending the country is on par with a Target being burned down. I’ll wait.
      - listless 6y ago
        I'd be careful with us pretending one of these groups is less violent or more dangerous than the other. The right just got done making that same logical mistake. It's a long way to the bottom when you claim the high ground.
        pstuart 6y ago
        Why the false equivalency? BLM's stated goal is to end police oppression of people of color. White Nationalists' stated goal is to "cleanse" the country by force.
        listless 6y ago
        I think _that's_ the false equivalency right there. The right does the exact same thing, only it looks something like this... > "Why the false equivalency? Trump's stated goal is to bring back jobs and protect America. BLM's stated goal is Marxism and the destruction of the western nuclear family."
        pstuart 6y ago
        Rubber and glue FTW, eh?
      - pc86 6y ago
        For one, let's stop with the self-masturbatory "I'll wait" bullshit. It doesn't add to the conversation and it just makes you look like an asshole. Destroying private property and destroying public property are both wrong. Reasonable people can disagree about whether one is worse, and which one.
    - strgcmc 6y ago
      Not the "group" you're thinking of. Groups exist along a spectrum of cohesiveness, and a political party and/or political cult centered around one individual, is several orders of magnitude more cohesive than grassroots social movements with loosely affiliated themes, during whose protests some unaffiliated rioters and looters caused the majority of the damage. In effect, you're comparing incidental property damage to a calculated, targeted, and rallied-for/single-leader-inspired insurrection; it's like comparing storm damage to arsonists. And how do I know it wasn't just random unaffiliated violent individuals causing most of the damage during the insurrection? Because they freaking wore matching hats and chanted Trump slogans...
    - coughupalung 6y ago
      I don't want to defend that. I want to instead ask, what would the damage be if members of Congress were killed? I think the long-term damage would be much, much worse.
  - papaf 6y ago
    If this was the Taliban you wouldn't be asking this question. The Taliban are on Twitter. Reputable source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-afghanistan-taliban/taliban-u-s-engage-in-twitter-spat-amid-rise-in-afghanistan-violence-idUSKBN22E0KR https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-afghanistan-taliban/t... The Taliban account: https://twitter.com/zabehulah_m33 https://twitter.com/zabehulah_m33 Sample translated tweet: Last night, a checkpoint near the center of Kunduz called Houz, which fired mortars at civilians, was destroyed. Two tanks were destroyed, one soldier was killed and three others, including two commanders (Aman and Majid), were captured alive. Also, 2 tanks of the auxiliary enemy were destroyed, 1 soldier was killed and many weapons and ammunitions were recovered from them.
- rtkwe 6y ago
  I don't think the guillotine was meant as a literal threat to his life personally. It was a wage protest lead by a former Amazon employee and IIRC was never violent.
  - newsclues 6y ago
    Just a friendly chop off your head threat!
    - rtkwe 6y ago
      I think there's a line between prop to get attention and a threat which comes down to will you use it given the chance (or can you use it). At the very least they never tried to break into anywhere Bezos actually was...
  - gruez 6y ago
    >I don't think the guillotine was meant as a literal threat to his life personally Isn't the narrative the exact opposite for capitol attack? eg. "these rioters had gallows set up and everything, could you imagine what would have happened if congress wasn't evacuated in time?"
    - nova22033 6y ago
      that would be more plausible if they hadn't beaten a cop to death.
    - coughupalung 6y ago
      I get what you're saying. In my mind, the plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan changes the priors in determining if it was purely symbolic.
      - rtkwe 6y ago
        Yeah, there are at least sub-factions in that group that would actually very much like to put that gallows to actual use and seemingly came prepared to actually take hostages when they got inside.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- helen___keller 6y ago
  I'm not sure what your point is. I'll bet Bezos was plenty concerned about gallows outside his house, but I don't know what that has to do with literally any of this. Is he supposed to send out a memo to employees warning them to be vigilant in case gallows show up outside their houses too, or outside of amazon data centers?
  - ed25519FUUU 6y ago
    Poor guy can’t get a break. They bring out the guillotine in the summer with “eat the rich” signs, then the gallows rolls out in the winter. Tough being one of the worlds richest men. https://www.newsweek.com/amazon-protests-guillotine-jeff-bezos-washington-dc-1528472 https://www.newsweek.com/amazon-protests-guillotine-jeff-bez...
stunt 6y ago
We should hold resourceful politicians with their megaphones accountable for what they advocate instead of silencing people or groups that are following them which will only irritate them.
- fred_is_fred 6y ago
  We should instead do both.
- jtbayly 6y ago
  It will not only irritate them. It will enrage them, add many others to their ranks, and likely lead to much more drama and violence.
  - Jeema101 6y ago
    They're already enraged and they have no desire to engage in civil discourse anyway because they'd rather believe in conspiracy theories. I liken it to having a toxic person in your life who can't admit that their actions are ever wrong - what do you do in a situation like that? At some point, you just have to cut them off.
    - loveistheanswer 6y ago
      You have a fair point, except for the fact that it ignores the elephants in the room which have been incentivizing and profiting off of extremism for years now across the world
    - jtbayly 6y ago
      Some people already are. As I said, this action will greatly increase the number of people who are.
  - cure 6y ago
    But what's the alternative? Should we just let people incite violence to their heart's content, and then be surprised when people actually carry out the violence because they have been brainwashed? How is that better?
salmon 6y ago
Aren't the locations of most of the AWS data centers kept pretty private for reasons exactly like this?
- curryst 6y ago
  Wikileaks leaked them in 2018, so the majority are known, I think. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/wikileaks-publishes-list-aws-data-center-locations-colo-providers/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/wikileaks-publish...
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    For what purpose?
    - jordigh 6y ago
      I can think of one valid purpose: GHG emissions. Amazon, unlike say, Google, does not disclose their carbon emissions. Like at all. It is important to have this information public, for the sake of our planet. Amazon gets an F for disclosure, while Google is getting some A's: https://www.cdp.net/en/responses/658?queries%255Bname%255D%3Damazon&queries[name]=amazon https://www.cdp.net/en/responses/658?queries%255Bname%255D%3... https://www.cdp.net/en/responses?utf8=%E2%9C%93&queries%5Bname%5D=alphabet https://www.cdp.net/en/responses?utf8=%E2%9C%93&queries%5Bna... I assume the reason is that doing a GHG assessment gives a lot of information about the operations of your company, so Amazon would rather be secretive about its operations. Knowing the location of datacentres allows you to deduce what power grid they're attached to. Scope 2 emissions depend a lot on where the electricity is coming from, and they're likely the vast majority of Amazon's emissions due to the size of AWS. Their Scope 3 emissions due to deliveries might also be significant, but it's harder to be secretive about that.
      - consumer451 6y ago
        > I can think of one valid purpose: GHG emissions. I can think of another purpose which is valid to some people: sowing chaos.
stunt 6y ago
> "The company also has implemented new service update restrictions at some data centers this week, reflecting the growing concern for a potential cyber attack or volatility in its service in the coming days." https://outline.com/P3tAMN https://outline.com/P3tAMN Pure speculation, but I wonder if they're also trying to protect themselves against insider threats as well with this move.
- echelon 6y ago
  A deploy freeze is meant to stop production from potentially needing to be rolled back when bugs are introduced at a time engineers are away (holidays) or fighting other fires (earnings calls, DDOS, Prime Day, etc). You don't want engineers breaking things when you've got something else distracting you.
  - stunt 6y ago
    I know that's standard practice. But, none of those are happening right now. So it was a bit surprising.
    - mabbo 6y ago
      Blocked days are done pre-emptively. Consider: many changes aren't instant. They can take hours to complete. What if things start to happen when you're half way through? Simpler to just stop making big changes that aren't 100% required to happen just in case. If it can't wait, approvals from someone senior who agrees it can't wait suffices. (Source and bias note: AMZN for 8 years).
    - rjmunro 6y ago
      Maybe they are also short staffed due to Covid?
- whoknew1122 6y ago
  Insider threats are an issue for every business. But AWS has robust policies in place to avoid this. Even routine code pushes and changes to production infrastructure typically need a second-person review, among other things.
konceptz 6y ago
It must be hard, as an employee, to be asked to consider these types of actions at your job.
- swiley 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure designing with the expectation that people might try to drive a truck/plane into the building is pretty normal for data center design. People have been aware of destructive people for a while.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
    I worked for a defense contractor in the early 1980s. I think it was 1983, just after I started there, that an edict came down to "truck-proof" the building. If I remember, 1983 was when Hammas blew up the US embassy in Beirut with a truck bomb. They put up those "anti-truck" columns in front of the doors.
    - mywittyname 6y ago
      > They put up those "anti-truck" columns in front of the doors. Like a bollard? Or something much more substantive.
      - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
        > bollard? I had to look it up. Like "double-wide" bollards. Made of concrete, in the front, and planters in the back (much bigger).
  - 52-6F-62 6y ago
    No doubt, but it's probably emotionally easier to work with that knowledge and attempt at foresight in the abstract, than how it would feel to receive a letter from your employer saying something akin to "brace yourselves".
    - 6y ago
api 6y ago
We might actually be on the verge of a civil war, but it won't look like the last one. It will look more like "the troubles" in Ireland.
- SifJar 6y ago
  "the troubles" were in Nothern Ireland, not Ireland
  - secondcoming 6y ago
    Most of it was confined to Northern Ireland, but there were several bombings in GB, at least one in Dublin, and one in Germany. Several IRA members were killed while planning an operation in Gibraltar.
  - 082349872349872 6y ago
    Wasn't the question of just how distinct "northern ireland" may or may not be from "ireland" a large component of "the troubles"?
- Gollapalli 6y ago
  The main divide doesn't seem to be between states, but between urban and rural. If you look at a the map by county, I think it gives a decent picture: https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/graphics/2020/11/10/election-maps-2020-america-county-results-more-voters/6226197002/ https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/graphics/2020/11/10/electi... This is one from 2016 and is red-blue binary. It is perhaps the most illustrative: https://blueshift.io/election-2016-county-map.html https://blueshift.io/election-2016-county-map.html This makes peaceful resolution very difficult, as we're dealing with two groups who largely live apart from one another, with different geography, culture, and social mores. I think it's important to emphasize, there are a lot of people who genuinely believe that systemic voting irregularities influenced our last election, to the point of having changed the outcome, and don't view Joe Biden as having been legitimately elected. Furthermore, they believe that the courts, especially the Supreme Court, refused to even hear their case, and that Congress would in no way give their grievances with the process an open debate, before accepting results they viewed as fraudulent. This puts them into a position of desperation. The videos of people being arrested at the airport do not help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxwJ5HXSzuA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxwJ5HXSzuA Given the geography. I expect to see red-hats (Trump people) going into the cities where the blue-hats (centrists) and the black-hats (Antifa/BLM) live, and then retreating into the rural areas, where supportive sheriffs are more likely to run interference against other law-enforcement agencies. To some extent, this is what we already saw at the Capitol Building, as well in places like Kenosha where people like Kyle Rittenhouse came from out-of town (albeit within reasonable driving distance) to the city where violence was occurring. EDIT: better link EDIT 2: The phrase "I've thought a lot about this" suggests that one has thought more of themselves thinking about the issue, than about the issue itself. As such It has been removed.
ttt0 6y ago
I just want to point out, that on the screen cap from the tweet they quoted, the Parler post was from 9 secs ago. Maybe it's legit or maybe not, think of it what you will. https://twitter.com/JohnPaczkowski/status/1348113828324667396 https://twitter.com/JohnPaczkowski/status/134811382832466739...
- mimikatz 6y ago
  Look what I just found on Twitter https://twitter.com/BakedIdiots/status/1348812952313348097 https://twitter.com/BakedIdiots/status/1348812952313348097 "AYO ITS 2021. LETS KILL TRUMP" posted 8:04 PM · Jan 11, 2021·Twitter for Android just minutes ago Another one. https://twitter.com/rowdon_ella/status/1348691401765224451 https://twitter.com/rowdon_ella/status/1348691401765224451 Just search "kill Trump" you only need to scroll a bit before you see threats to murder the president.
  - ttt0 6y ago
    To be entirely honest, the first one is clearly a bot with zero followers. The second one looks more legit I guess.
  - UncleMeat 6y ago
    This community has been talking about the problems with social media for years. Breaking up Facebook or Twitter has been a call for ages. What is going on now? Maybe Twitter should be changed in some dramatic way if they can’t keep these calls for violence off the platform.
    - ttt0 6y ago
      As a disclaimer, I know that this is controversial, but I'm against censorship. I think that it's up to the law enforcement to deal with legitimate threats, and S230 exists for this precise reason. That being said, I can't think of any good solution if you'd like to keep that kind of stuff of your platform. I think it's basically impossible. The only solution that could deal with that amount of posts would be AI. But the problem with AI is that: 1. It's imperfect and generates false positives. There were stories about people being locked out of their Google accounts for no reason, without any possibility to appeal, because their support is also ran by AI. 2. It can get too perfect and thus extremely dangerous in wrong hands. (I think it's already in the wrong hands, but you get the point) What's also not fine in my opinion is pulling down other services for their inability to deal with such content, when Twitter and Facebook themselves can't keep this stuff out.
0x_rs 6y ago
There's quite a bit of news being published lately about concern on the recent and supposedly upcoming unrest, from "assassinations" to "blowing up data centers".. while enhancing security measures and protocols is reasonable, I wonder how much truth is there in that - who would most benefit from overblowing this risk, and for what purpose?
- willis936 6y ago
  The answer is “nobody”. Giving credence to fringe conspiracy theories is actively damaging society and you should consider weighing probabilities of explanations from multiple points of view before committing to one, certainly before typing a comment online.
  - 0x_rs 6y ago
    I don't believe I'm giving credence to any "conspiracies" with that comment, nor was it my intention in the least. May I suggest you stand by your words and consider a skeptic point of view on this alleged threat?
  - loveistheanswer 6y ago
    Don't you remember the last war on terrorism (that is still going on, btw)? Weren't there a bunch of politicians, government agencies, and corporations (i.e. Dick Cheney + Halliburton) who gained billions of dollars and permanently revoked constitutional rights (i.e. Joe Biden who helped author the Patriot Act)? The answer to the question of "who profits from a war on terror"? Is plainly and historically obvious: the military police industrial complex.
    - willis936 6y ago
      If anything recent events demonstrate how much chuff can be cut out of the defense budget. 670 bUSD/yr and a blank check to spy on citizens and they can’t keep a medium sized mob from threatening the legislative head. That doesn’t conjure up a feeling of revoking citizen rights. That conjures up a feeling that the entire defense and intelligence command structure should be revisited, and potentially burned down.
BFatts 6y ago
The far-right panders to extreme fear while the far-left panders to extreme progress. I'd much rather work with the far-left than the far-right.
eplanit 6y ago
I've been thinking that Amazon ought to be protecting distribution centers (likely a little less hardened than data centers), and their distribution and delivery network (much softer targets). Unlike Twitter and Facebook, Amazon has a much larger attack surface.
gadders 6y ago
I can't help thinking this is some post-ban PR campaign by Facebook, Twitter, Amazon etc to justify what they did and gain them some public sympathy.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
  While possible, given recent events it is hardly stretching the imagination to believe this is legitimate is it? Need you be reminded that a group of armed radical right wing extremists forcibly invaded a session of congress with the expressed intent of executing politicians? Honestly, it is difficult to believe that anyone saying further right-wing violence is unlikely is arguing in good faith.
  - gadders 6y ago
    I'm not sure I 100% agree with your categorisation of the Capitol invasion.
    - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
      They are right wing, radical, extremists. They forced their way into the capital building during a session of congress. They chanted "Hang Mike Pence", among other things, and were armed. Please elaborate on which part of my characterization you disagree with.
      - gadders 6y ago
        Well, they were also so outrageous and out of control that there are pictures of them standing behind the velvet ropes as they moved through the building. I've not seen any photos of them being armed either.
        AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
        As regards your second point: I have had a remarkably hard time finding definitive information on that, so for now I'll concede it.
pokstad 6y ago
Project Mayhem
bob1029 6y ago
Now I have to wonder when our customers are going to start asking if we have recently reviewed our business continuity plans.

Bezos should also be vigilant as Antifa had gallows outside his house the last time he made a bunch of money in one day. So many threats, maybe we can look at them equally?

jtbayly 6y ago
I read that it was a guillotine and Amazon employees, but your point still stands.
yabones 6y ago
No, because they are not equal threats. A dangerous terror cell, which has already invaded the US Capitol, is now threatening to bomb critical infrastructure. If this was the Taliban you wouldn't be asking this question.
- milkrocks 6y ago
  Which group caused 3 Billion in damages this past summer? I'll wait
  - yabones 6y ago
    It's not a question of property damage, this is the great foretold National Security Emergency. We've spent twenty years giving up our privacy for this. If you want to bring up costs, it's only fair to call into question the damage to the US reputation internationally. Having this type of security threat on a national scale is terrible for trade and strategic relations. I'm a Canadian, I don't trust my closest neighbour right now. That's an entirely incalculable cost.
  - mrzimmerman 6y ago
    Which group tried to murder members of Congress and fundamentally alter or stop our constitutional process because they were mad they didn’t get they’re way? Who is threatening to have armed rallies to finish the job? Please, tell me why refusing to follow the constitution or ending the country is on par with a Target being burned down. I’ll wait.
    - listless 6y ago
      I'd be careful with us pretending one of these groups is less violent or more dangerous than the other. The right just got done making that same logical mistake. It's a long way to the bottom when you claim the high ground.
      - pstuart 6y ago
        Why the false equivalency? BLM's stated goal is to end police oppression of people of color. White Nationalists' stated goal is to "cleanse" the country by force.
        listless 6y ago
        I think _that's_ the false equivalency right there. The right does the exact same thing, only it looks something like this... > "Why the false equivalency? Trump's stated goal is to bring back jobs and protect America. BLM's stated goal is Marxism and the destruction of the western nuclear family."
        pstuart 6y ago
        Rubber and glue FTW, eh?
    - pc86 6y ago
      For one, let's stop with the self-masturbatory "I'll wait" bullshit. It doesn't add to the conversation and it just makes you look like an asshole. Destroying private property and destroying public property are both wrong. Reasonable people can disagree about whether one is worse, and which one.
  - strgcmc 6y ago
    Not the "group" you're thinking of. Groups exist along a spectrum of cohesiveness, and a political party and/or political cult centered around one individual, is several orders of magnitude more cohesive than grassroots social movements with loosely affiliated themes, during whose protests some unaffiliated rioters and looters caused the majority of the damage. In effect, you're comparing incidental property damage to a calculated, targeted, and rallied-for/single-leader-inspired insurrection; it's like comparing storm damage to arsonists. And how do I know it wasn't just random unaffiliated violent individuals causing most of the damage during the insurrection? Because they freaking wore matching hats and chanted Trump slogans...
  - coughupalung 6y ago
    I don't want to defend that. I want to instead ask, what would the damage be if members of Congress were killed? I think the long-term damage would be much, much worse.
- papaf 6y ago
  If this was the Taliban you wouldn't be asking this question. The Taliban are on Twitter. Reputable source: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-afghanistan-taliban/taliban-u-s-engage-in-twitter-spat-amid-rise-in-afghanistan-violence-idUSKBN22E0KR https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-afghanistan-taliban/t... The Taliban account: https://twitter.com/zabehulah_m33 https://twitter.com/zabehulah_m33 Sample translated tweet: Last night, a checkpoint near the center of Kunduz called Houz, which fired mortars at civilians, was destroyed. Two tanks were destroyed, one soldier was killed and three others, including two commanders (Aman and Majid), were captured alive. Also, 2 tanks of the auxiliary enemy were destroyed, 1 soldier was killed and many weapons and ammunitions were recovered from them.
rtkwe 6y ago
I don't think the guillotine was meant as a literal threat to his life personally. It was a wage protest lead by a former Amazon employee and IIRC was never violent.
- newsclues 6y ago
  Just a friendly chop off your head threat!
  - rtkwe 6y ago
    I think there's a line between prop to get attention and a threat which comes down to will you use it given the chance (or can you use it). At the very least they never tried to break into anywhere Bezos actually was...
- gruez 6y ago
  >I don't think the guillotine was meant as a literal threat to his life personally Isn't the narrative the exact opposite for capitol attack? eg. "these rioters had gallows set up and everything, could you imagine what would have happened if congress wasn't evacuated in time?"
  - nova22033 6y ago
    that would be more plausible if they hadn't beaten a cop to death.
  - coughupalung 6y ago
    I get what you're saying. In my mind, the plot to kidnap the governor of Michigan changes the priors in determining if it was purely symbolic.
    - rtkwe 6y ago
      Yeah, there are at least sub-factions in that group that would actually very much like to put that gallows to actual use and seemingly came prepared to actually take hostages when they got inside.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
helen___keller 6y ago
I'm not sure what your point is. I'll bet Bezos was plenty concerned about gallows outside his house, but I don't know what that has to do with literally any of this. Is he supposed to send out a memo to employees warning them to be vigilant in case gallows show up outside their houses too, or outside of amazon data centers?
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  Poor guy can’t get a break. They bring out the guillotine in the summer with “eat the rich” signs, then the gallows rolls out in the winter. Tough being one of the worlds richest men. https://www.newsweek.com/amazon-protests-guillotine-jeff-bezos-washington-dc-1528472 https://www.newsweek.com/amazon-protests-guillotine-jeff-bez...

stunt 6y ago

We should hold resourceful politicians with their megaphones accountable for what they advocate instead of silencing people or groups that are following them which will only irritate them.

fred_is_fred 6y ago
We should instead do both.
jtbayly 6y ago
It will not only irritate them. It will enrage them, add many others to their ranks, and likely lead to much more drama and violence.
- Jeema101 6y ago
  They're already enraged and they have no desire to engage in civil discourse anyway because they'd rather believe in conspiracy theories. I liken it to having a toxic person in your life who can't admit that their actions are ever wrong - what do you do in a situation like that? At some point, you just have to cut them off.
  - loveistheanswer 6y ago
    You have a fair point, except for the fact that it ignores the elephants in the room which have been incentivizing and profiting off of extremism for years now across the world
  - jtbayly 6y ago
    Some people already are. As I said, this action will greatly increase the number of people who are.
- cure 6y ago
  But what's the alternative? Should we just let people incite violence to their heart's content, and then be surprised when people actually carry out the violence because they have been brainwashed? How is that better?

salmon 6y ago

Aren't the locations of most of the AWS data centers kept pretty private for reasons exactly like this?

curryst 6y ago
Wikileaks leaked them in 2018, so the majority are known, I think. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/wikileaks-publishes-list-aws-data-center-locations-colo-providers/ https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/wikileaks-publish...
- Hamuko 6y ago
  For what purpose?
  - jordigh 6y ago
    I can think of one valid purpose: GHG emissions. Amazon, unlike say, Google, does not disclose their carbon emissions. Like at all. It is important to have this information public, for the sake of our planet. Amazon gets an F for disclosure, while Google is getting some A's: https://www.cdp.net/en/responses/658?queries%255Bname%255D%3Damazon&queries[name]=amazon https://www.cdp.net/en/responses/658?queries%255Bname%255D%3... https://www.cdp.net/en/responses?utf8=%E2%9C%93&queries%5Bname%5D=alphabet https://www.cdp.net/en/responses?utf8=%E2%9C%93&queries%5Bna... I assume the reason is that doing a GHG assessment gives a lot of information about the operations of your company, so Amazon would rather be secretive about its operations. Knowing the location of datacentres allows you to deduce what power grid they're attached to. Scope 2 emissions depend a lot on where the electricity is coming from, and they're likely the vast majority of Amazon's emissions due to the size of AWS. Their Scope 3 emissions due to deliveries might also be significant, but it's harder to be secretive about that.
    - consumer451 6y ago
      > I can think of one valid purpose: GHG emissions. I can think of another purpose which is valid to some people: sowing chaos.

stunt 6y ago

> "The company also has implemented new service update restrictions at some data centers this week, reflecting the growing concern for a potential cyber attack or volatility in its service in the coming days." https://outline.com/P3tAMN https://outline.com/P3tAMN Pure speculation, but I wonder if they're also trying to protect themselves against insider threats as well with this move.

echelon 6y ago
A deploy freeze is meant to stop production from potentially needing to be rolled back when bugs are introduced at a time engineers are away (holidays) or fighting other fires (earnings calls, DDOS, Prime Day, etc). You don't want engineers breaking things when you've got something else distracting you.
- stunt 6y ago
  I know that's standard practice. But, none of those are happening right now. So it was a bit surprising.
  - mabbo 6y ago
    Blocked days are done pre-emptively. Consider: many changes aren't instant. They can take hours to complete. What if things start to happen when you're half way through? Simpler to just stop making big changes that aren't 100% required to happen just in case. If it can't wait, approvals from someone senior who agrees it can't wait suffices. (Source and bias note: AMZN for 8 years).
  - rjmunro 6y ago
    Maybe they are also short staffed due to Covid?
whoknew1122 6y ago
Insider threats are an issue for every business. But AWS has robust policies in place to avoid this. Even routine code pushes and changes to production infrastructure typically need a second-person review, among other things.

konceptz 6y ago

It must be hard, as an employee, to be asked to consider these types of actions at your job.

swiley 6y ago
I'm pretty sure designing with the expectation that people might try to drive a truck/plane into the building is pretty normal for data center design. People have been aware of destructive people for a while.
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
  I worked for a defense contractor in the early 1980s. I think it was 1983, just after I started there, that an edict came down to "truck-proof" the building. If I remember, 1983 was when Hammas blew up the US embassy in Beirut with a truck bomb. They put up those "anti-truck" columns in front of the doors.
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    > They put up those "anti-truck" columns in front of the doors. Like a bollard? Or something much more substantive.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
      > bollard? I had to look it up. Like "double-wide" bollards. Made of concrete, in the front, and planters in the back (much bigger).
- 52-6F-62 6y ago
  No doubt, but it's probably emotionally easier to work with that knowledge and attempt at foresight in the abstract, than how it would feel to receive a letter from your employer saying something akin to "brace yourselves".
  - 6y ago

api 6y ago

We might actually be on the verge of a civil war, but it won't look like the last one. It will look more like "the troubles" in Ireland.

SifJar 6y ago
"the troubles" were in Nothern Ireland, not Ireland
- secondcoming 6y ago
  Most of it was confined to Northern Ireland, but there were several bombings in GB, at least one in Dublin, and one in Germany. Several IRA members were killed while planning an operation in Gibraltar.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Wasn't the question of just how distinct "northern ireland" may or may not be from "ireland" a large component of "the troubles"?
Gollapalli 6y ago
The main divide doesn't seem to be between states, but between urban and rural. If you look at a the map by county, I think it gives a decent picture: https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/graphics/2020/11/10/election-maps-2020-america-county-results-more-voters/6226197002/ https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/graphics/2020/11/10/electi... This is one from 2016 and is red-blue binary. It is perhaps the most illustrative: https://blueshift.io/election-2016-county-map.html https://blueshift.io/election-2016-county-map.html This makes peaceful resolution very difficult, as we're dealing with two groups who largely live apart from one another, with different geography, culture, and social mores. I think it's important to emphasize, there are a lot of people who genuinely believe that systemic voting irregularities influenced our last election, to the point of having changed the outcome, and don't view Joe Biden as having been legitimately elected. Furthermore, they believe that the courts, especially the Supreme Court, refused to even hear their case, and that Congress would in no way give their grievances with the process an open debate, before accepting results they viewed as fraudulent. This puts them into a position of desperation. The videos of people being arrested at the airport do not help: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxwJ5HXSzuA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxwJ5HXSzuA Given the geography. I expect to see red-hats (Trump people) going into the cities where the blue-hats (centrists) and the black-hats (Antifa/BLM) live, and then retreating into the rural areas, where supportive sheriffs are more likely to run interference against other law-enforcement agencies. To some extent, this is what we already saw at the Capitol Building, as well in places like Kenosha where people like Kyle Rittenhouse came from out-of town (albeit within reasonable driving distance) to the city where violence was occurring. EDIT: better link EDIT 2: The phrase "I've thought a lot about this" suggests that one has thought more of themselves thinking about the issue, than about the issue itself. As such It has been removed.

ttt0 6y ago

I just want to point out, that on the screen cap from the tweet they quoted, the Parler post was from 9 secs ago. Maybe it's legit or maybe not, think of it what you will. https://twitter.com/JohnPaczkowski/status/1348113828324667396 https://twitter.com/JohnPaczkowski/status/134811382832466739...

mimikatz 6y ago
Look what I just found on Twitter https://twitter.com/BakedIdiots/status/1348812952313348097 https://twitter.com/BakedIdiots/status/1348812952313348097 "AYO ITS 2021. LETS KILL TRUMP" posted 8:04 PM · Jan 11, 2021·Twitter for Android just minutes ago Another one. https://twitter.com/rowdon_ella/status/1348691401765224451 https://twitter.com/rowdon_ella/status/1348691401765224451 Just search "kill Trump" you only need to scroll a bit before you see threats to murder the president.
- ttt0 6y ago
  To be entirely honest, the first one is clearly a bot with zero followers. The second one looks more legit I guess.
- UncleMeat 6y ago
  This community has been talking about the problems with social media for years. Breaking up Facebook or Twitter has been a call for ages. What is going on now? Maybe Twitter should be changed in some dramatic way if they can’t keep these calls for violence off the platform.
  - ttt0 6y ago
    As a disclaimer, I know that this is controversial, but I'm against censorship. I think that it's up to the law enforcement to deal with legitimate threats, and S230 exists for this precise reason. That being said, I can't think of any good solution if you'd like to keep that kind of stuff of your platform. I think it's basically impossible. The only solution that could deal with that amount of posts would be AI. But the problem with AI is that: 1. It's imperfect and generates false positives. There were stories about people being locked out of their Google accounts for no reason, without any possibility to appeal, because their support is also ran by AI. 2. It can get too perfect and thus extremely dangerous in wrong hands. (I think it's already in the wrong hands, but you get the point) What's also not fine in my opinion is pulling down other services for their inability to deal with such content, when Twitter and Facebook themselves can't keep this stuff out.

0x_rs 6y ago

There's quite a bit of news being published lately about concern on the recent and supposedly upcoming unrest, from "assassinations" to "blowing up data centers".. while enhancing security measures and protocols is reasonable, I wonder how much truth is there in that - who would most benefit from overblowing this risk, and for what purpose?

willis936 6y ago
The answer is “nobody”. Giving credence to fringe conspiracy theories is actively damaging society and you should consider weighing probabilities of explanations from multiple points of view before committing to one, certainly before typing a comment online.
- 0x_rs 6y ago
  I don't believe I'm giving credence to any "conspiracies" with that comment, nor was it my intention in the least. May I suggest you stand by your words and consider a skeptic point of view on this alleged threat?
- loveistheanswer 6y ago
  Don't you remember the last war on terrorism (that is still going on, btw)? Weren't there a bunch of politicians, government agencies, and corporations (i.e. Dick Cheney + Halliburton) who gained billions of dollars and permanently revoked constitutional rights (i.e. Joe Biden who helped author the Patriot Act)? The answer to the question of "who profits from a war on terror"? Is plainly and historically obvious: the military police industrial complex.
  - willis936 6y ago
    If anything recent events demonstrate how much chuff can be cut out of the defense budget. 670 bUSD/yr and a blank check to spy on citizens and they can’t keep a medium sized mob from threatening the legislative head. That doesn’t conjure up a feeling of revoking citizen rights. That conjures up a feeling that the entire defense and intelligence command structure should be revisited, and potentially burned down.

BFatts 6y ago

The far-right panders to extreme fear while the far-left panders to extreme progress. I'd much rather work with the far-left than the far-right.

eplanit 6y ago

I've been thinking that Amazon ought to be protecting distribution centers (likely a little less hardened than data centers), and their distribution and delivery network (much softer targets). Unlike Twitter and Facebook, Amazon has a much larger attack surface.

gadders 6y ago

I can't help thinking this is some post-ban PR campaign by Facebook, Twitter, Amazon etc to justify what they did and gain them some public sympathy.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
While possible, given recent events it is hardly stretching the imagination to believe this is legitimate is it? Need you be reminded that a group of armed radical right wing extremists forcibly invaded a session of congress with the expressed intent of executing politicians? Honestly, it is difficult to believe that anyone saying further right-wing violence is unlikely is arguing in good faith.
- gadders 6y ago
  I'm not sure I 100% agree with your categorisation of the Capitol invasion.
  - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
    They are right wing, radical, extremists. They forced their way into the capital building during a session of congress. They chanted "Hang Mike Pence", among other things, and were armed. Please elaborate on which part of my characterization you disagree with.
    - gadders 6y ago
      Well, they were also so outrageous and out of control that there are pictures of them standing behind the velvet ropes as they moved through the building. I've not seen any photos of them being armed either.
      - AnIdiotOnTheNet 6y ago
        As regards your second point: I have had a remarkably hard time finding definitive information on that, so for now I'll concede it.

pokstad 6y ago

Project Mayhem

bob1029 6y ago

Now I have to wonder when our customers are going to start asking if we have recently reviewed our business continuity plans.