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Daily Archives: October 10, 2013

BusinessWeek – How Amazon Became the Everything Store

The Secrets of Bezos: How Amazon Became the Everything Store – by Brad Stone

“Amazon.com rivals Wal-Mart as a store, Apple as a device maker, and IBM as a data services provider. It will rake in about $75 billion this year. For his book, Bloomberg Businessweek’s Brad Stone spoke to hundreds of current and former friends of founder Jeff Bezos. In the process, he discovered the poignant story of how Amazon became the Everything Store.

Within Amazon.com there’s a certain type of e-mail that elicits waves of panic. It usually originates with an annoyed customer who complains to the company’s founder and chief executive officer. Jeff Bezos has a public e-mail address, [email protected]. Not only does he read many customer complaints, he forwards them to the relevant Amazon employees, with a one-character addition: a question mark…It’s easy to forget that until recently, people thought of Amazon primarily as an online bookseller. Today, as it nears its 20th anniversary, it’s the Everything Store, a company with around $75 billion in annual revenue, a $140 billion market value, and few if any discernible limits to its growth. In the past few months alone, it launched a marketplace in India, opened a website to sell high-end art, introduced another Kindle reading device and three tablet computers, made plans to announce a set-top box for televisions, and funded the pilot episodes of more than a dozen TV shows. Amazon’s marketplace hosts the storefronts of countless smaller retailers; Amazon Web Services handles the computer infrastructure of thousands of technology companies, universities, and government agencies.”

Credit Risk in the Shared National Credit Portfolio Unchanged

News release – Federal Reserve Board: “The credit quality of large loan commitments owned by U.S. banking organizations, foreign banking organizations (FBOs), and nonbanks was relatively unchanged in 2013 from the prior year, federal banking agencies said Thursday.  The volume of criticized assets remained elevated at $302 billion, or 10 percent of total commitments, which… Continue Reading

Repression and criminalization of protest around the world

“Take back the streets” Repression and criminalization of protest around the world, October 2013 “The nine organizations (which cooperate as the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations (INCLO)) that have contributed to this publication work to defend basic democratic rights and freedoms in nine countries spread over four continents. Across the regions where our organizations… Continue Reading

Pew – Online Video 2013

Online Video 2013 by Kristen Purcell – October 10, 2013 “Over the past four years, the percent of American adult internet users who upload or post videos online has doubled from 14% in 2009 to 31% today. That includes 18% of adult internet users who post videos they have created or recorded themselves—many of whom… Continue Reading

FBI Files Reveal New Info on Clandestine Phone Surveillance Unit

Ryan Gallagher, via Slate’s Future Tense blog: “As part of an ongoing Freedom of Information Act suit launched by civil liberties group the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the FBI is turning over information on its use of cellphone surveillance technology variously known as “Stingrays,” “Cell Site Simulators,” “IMSI Catchers,” or “Digital Analyzers.” These devices function… Continue Reading

World Bank – The State of the Poor

The State of the Poor: Where Are The Poor, Where Is Extreme Poverty Harder to End, and What Is the Current Profile of the World’s Poor?  – Pedro Olinto, Kathleen Beegle, Carlos Sobrado, and Hiroki Uematsu, October 2013 “Although the world witnessed an unprecedented pace of poverty reduction over the last decades, reducing the number… Continue Reading

Banks Use Analytics to Detect Suspect Employee Behavior

Penny Crosman, BankThink/American Banker: “Ten large U.S. and European banks are using natural language processing technology from Digital Reasoning — one of Bank Technology News’ ‘Top Ten Tech Companies to Watch for 2012′ — to uncover such revealing documents before lawyers and examiners do. The company launched six Proactive Compliance analytics products six months ago.… Continue Reading

Congressional-Executive Commission on China – 2013 Annual Report

Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) Annual – Report October 2013 News release: “The bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China today released its 2013 Annual Report on human rights and rule of law developments in China, which it is required to do by October 10 of each year.  “Amid talk of a new round of economic reforms under President… Continue Reading

Breach Detection Systems: Test Methodology v2.0

Breach Detection Systems: Test Methodology v2.0 “Conventional endpoint AV solutions provide inadequate exploit protection, and traditional network security solutions are trivial to evade when it comes to client-side exploits, the favorite attack vector of threat actors perpetrating targeted persistent attacks (TPA) or APT. To regain the upper hand against current attacks, enterprises must in turn… Continue Reading

Report – The Obama Administration and the Press

The Obama Administration and the Press – Leak investigations and surveillance in post-9/11 America, October 10, 2013 “U.S. President Barack Obama came into office pledging open government, but he has fallen short of his promise. Journalists and transparency advocates say the White House curbs routine disclosure of information and deploys its own media to evade scrutiny… Continue Reading