Welcome to the Techmeme Ride Home from Monday, November 27, 2023, I'm Brian McCalla. Today, a thin client from AWS, more bad news for gaming as ByteDance pulls back from its gaming ambitions in a major way. Governments have more new joint guidelines for AI development, and Amazon now delivers more packages than either FedEx or UPS. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech.
AWS re-invent is happening some time today, and ahead of that, AWS announced the Amazon WorkSpaces thin client, a $195 compact computer adapted from the Fire TV cube to let workers access cloud-based virtual desktops, quoting SiliconANGLE. A virtual desktop is a workstation hosted in a data center rather than the user's office. Workers use such machines in much the same way as a standard personal computer, except they log into the machines remotely over the network.
At many enterprises, employees access their virtual desktops from a thin client, a low-cost computer specifically optimized for accessing cloud-based services. The newly debuted WorkSpaces thin client is AWS's entry into the thin client market. It's a compact rectangular device that workers can use to log into virtual desktops hosted on the cloud giants, Amazon WorkSpaces service. Amazon WorkSpaces web, a version of the offering that enables users to
access virtual desktops from a browser, is supported as well. The third cloud service with which AWS's new thin client integrates is Amazon AppStream. It targets similar use cases as WorkSpaces, but diverges in the feature department. Companies can use AppStream to host virtual desktops, which typically contain multiple applications as well as to make individual business applications available to employees from the cloud. The WorkSpaces thin client is based on AWS parent amazon.com's
FireTVCube, a streaming device originally designed for the consumer market. It went attached to a TV. The device enables users to stream content from services such as Prime Video and Netflix. It can optionally double as a smart home management system. Under the hood, the FireTVCube features an 8-core processor with a top speed of 2.2 gigahertz. The chip is supported by two gigabytes of memory and a 16-gigabyte storage drive.
USB and HDMI ports enable users to connect the device to home entertainment gear. The WorkSpaces thin client features identical hardware specifications as the FireTVCube, but an entirely different software stack. According to AWS, the device ships with an operating system, firmware, and programs specifically developed for virtual desktop use cases.
The onboard software is configured not to store files from a worker's virtual desktop locally, which means there's no risk of data theft if a WorkSpaces thin client is misplaced. The cloud giant has also repurposed the FireTVCube's onboard USB and HDMI ports. Instead of connecting the device to a TV, WorkSpaces thin client users can use those ports to attach a mouse and a keyboard that enables workers to use the device like a regular desktop.
Organizations can manage their employees' WorkSpaces thin clients using the AWS Management Console. According to the cloud giant, the console provides controls for regulating which user may access what application and how. A complimentary monitoring tool enables administrators to track which devices are actively used, as well as check if they're running the latest available software or require patching. This is strategically interesting.
Salesforce apparently plans to sell most of its big apps on AWS's marketplace. According Bloomberg, Salesforce customers will be able to pay using credits on AWS Marketplace, Salesforce Executive Vice President Patrick Stokes said in an interview. The agreement will also make it easier for customers to integrate AWS data into Salesforce
products and use generative AI tools more effectively, he said. Listing on AWS Marketplace further sales forces goal of generating more sales that don't require the help of sales representatives to cut down on labor costs. We need to be doing more of that. Brian Millam, the company's chief operating officer said in a September interview when asked about his plans to reduce expenses. Stokes said Salesforce is looking at more channel sales opportunities and could explore similar
partnerships with other major cloud platforms like Microsoft or Alphabet's Google. Amazon, which takes a cut of revenue made through the marketplace, has for years nudged its cloud customers to list their products on the platform. We had a lot of support from AWS to really go make this happen, Stokes said, noting that Salesforce uses AWS for the majority of its own cloud computing
needs. There are incentives for those who use the AWS marketplace, a company that signs a multi-year agreement with AWS, for example, may qualify for discounts on AWS products if they commit to spending a minimum amount of money. The company's purchases on AWS Marketplace would count toward that minimum spend. And this is an interesting pullback strategically, but it's also interesting on that macro
level of games are really having a rough moment. Bite dance reportedly plans to restructure its entire gaming business. Sources say bite dance will wind down its newverse gaming brand and retreat from mainstream video games as a part of that. Bite dance plans to cut around a thousand jobs and discontinue all but a few games that have yet to launch. Backing away from its aggressive investments
in gaming, it's made since 2016. quoting Nique Asia. Bite dance thanks the gaming division lacks focus and has limited prospects for monetization of titles, preferring to focus instead on its core business of short video platform TikTok, Chinese sister app Doyan, and e-commerce the person said. The TikTok operator has invested aggressively in gaming since 2016 to challenge compatriot tense and holdings the world's biggest game company by revenue between 2019 and 2022.
Bite dance invested in more than 19 gaming companies with around 30 billion yuan or 4.2 billion dollars at current rates Chinese state media reports. But amid a disappointing performance, Bite dance started making substantial cuts in its gaming operations in the second half of 2021. Last year numerous jobs were cut at newverse, the brand Bite dance created in 2019 to push into global gaming. The company also disbanded one of its main game studios due to its disappointing
performance last year. Bite dance this month laid off 23% of the workforce or about 300 employees in virtual reality arm Pico as it struggles with sales at home and abroad. The shift away from video games comes as China's gaming sector struggles to recover amid the global economic downturn. rival Tencent has managed to maintain growth due to its strong portfolio while scaling back investment in gaming. Bite dance has followed other big Chinese tech companies in increasing
exploration of generative AI compared with rivals. Bite dance has been slow in releasing its own large language models, the technology that underpins generative AI technology like OpenAI's chat GPT. But the company's AI division called Flow has intensified development of applications to embed in Bite dance products. Bite dance quietly launched AI bot Dao Bao in August and added an AI assistant to its office tool Faisu this month joining the competition for workplace chatbots alongside
Tencent and Alibaba group holding. And quoting from Reuters. Bite dance is 2019 creation of Newverse was widely seen as a major push into global gaming and a strategic element of its competition with domestic rival Tencent the world's biggest gaming company. But Newverse's performance has been patchy. Its best known game is Marvel Snap, an online cart game that amassed a cult following but was not a commercial hit. At first glance it might seem like just a simple
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It's fancy vodka, just fancy marketing. Why are Christmas trees so darn expensive? Tune in to Planet Money every week for entertaining stories and insights about how money shapes our world. Stories that can't be found anywhere else. Listen now to Planet Money from NPR wherever you get your podcasts. The US, the UK, and more than a dozen other countries have released new joint guidelines for AI system development, including creating systems that are quote, secure by design,
quoting Reuters. The agreement is non-binding and carries mostly general recommendations such as monitoring AI systems for abuse, protecting data from tampering and vetting software suppliers. Still the director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, Gen Easterly, said it was important that so many countries put their names to the idea that AI systems
needed to put safety first. 18 countries, including the United States, Britain, Germany, Italy, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Poland, Australia, Chile, Israel, Nigeria, and Singapore have signed the new agreement. It focuses on addressing the security aspects of AI with recommendations emphasizing the need for security testing before releasing AI models to prevent them from being exploited by hackers. However, it does not address broader issues such as ethical AI use or data
collection practices. AI's increasing impact on industry and society has raised concerns, including its potential to disrupt democracy, facilitate fraud, and lead to job loss. Europe is ahead of the United States in AI regulation with lawmakers in various European countries working on AI rules. France, Germany, and Italy have also reached an agreement on regulating AI advocating for, quote, mandatory self-regulation through codes of conduct for foundational AI models.
In the United States, the Biden administration has pushed for AI regulation to mitigate risks to consumers, workers, and minority groups, while also bolstering national security through an executive order. However, progress on AI regulation in the polarized US Congress has been limited. The new international agreement represents another effort among nations to address AI related challenges, particularly in terms of security, but leaves more complex AI governance issues for
future consideration. According to the journal, Instagram has been serving salacious reels, including risque videos next to big brand ads to test accounts that follow only young gymnast cheerleaders and influencers. Quote, the journal sought to determine what Instagram's Reels algorithm would recommend to test accounts set up to follow only young gymnast
cheerleaders and other teen and preteen influencers active on the platform. Instagram's system served jarring doses of salacious content to those test accounts, including risk-afe footage of children, as well as overtly sexual adult videos and ads for some of the biggest US brands.
The journal set up the test accounts after observing that the thousands of followers of such young people's accounts often include large numbers of adult men and that many of the accounts who followed those children also had demonstrated interest in sex content related to both children and adults. The journal also tested what the algorithm would recommend after its accounts followed some of those users as well, which produce more disturbing content interspersed with ads.
In a stream of videos recommended by Instagram and ad for the dating app Bumble appeared between a video of someone stroking the face of a life-size latex doll and a video of a young girl with a digitally obscured face lifting up her shirt to expose her midriff. In another, a pizza hut commercial followed a video of a man lying on a bed with his arm around what the caption said was a 10-year-old girl. Meta said the journal's test produced a manufactured experience that doesn't represent
what billions of users see. The company declined to comment on why the algorithms compiled streams of separate videos showing children, sex and advertisements, but a spokesperson said that in October, it introduced new brand safety tools that give advertisers greater control over where their ads appear and that Instagram either removes or reduces the prominence of 4 million
videos suspected of violating its standards each month. The journal reported in June that algorithms run by Meta, which owns both Facebook and Instagram, connect large communities of users interested in pedophilic content. The Meta spokesman said a task force set up after the journal's article has expanded its automated systems for detecting users who behave suspiciously, taking down tens of thousands of such accounts each month. The company also is participating in a new industry
coalition to share signs of potential child exploitation. Companies whose ads appeared beside inappropriate content in the journal's tests include Disney, Walmart, online dating company Match Group, HIMS, which sells erectile dysfunction drugs, and the Wall Street Journal itself. Most brand name retailers require that they're advertising not run next to sexual or explicit content.
Finally, today also from the journal Amazon Data and also Info From Sources suggests that Amazon shipped 5.2 billion packages in the US in 2022, more than UPS, which is notable after it passed FedEx in terms of packages shipped back in 2020. Amazon delivered 4.8 billion items ahead of Thanksgiving. Quote, the Seattle e-commerce giant delivered more packages to US Homes in 2022 than UPS after eclipsing FedEx in 2020. And it is on track to widen the gap this year
according to internal Amazon data and people familiar with the matter. The US Postal Service is still the biggest parcel service by volume. It handles hundreds of millions of packages for all three companies. A decade ago, Amazon was a major customer for UPS and FedEx, and some executives from the incumbents and analysts mocked the notion that it could someday supplant them. Amazon's outsized growth combined with strategy shifts at FedEx and UPS have changed the balance.
Before Thanksgiving this year, Amazon had already delivered more than 4.8 billion packages in the US and its internal projections predict that it will deliver around 5.9 billion by the end of the year according to documents viewed by the journal. Last year, Amazon shipped 5.2 billion packages. As Amazon's share of deliveries has increased, FedEx and UPS have said in recent years they weren't in a race for volume and were instead focused on delivering more profitable parcels. FedEx
parted ways with Amazon in 2019, Amazon accounts for about 11% of UPS's revenue. Overall, parcel volume has dipped this year as consumers cut back on spending on goods and diverted their expenditure to services travel and entertainment. Amazon's rise to the top carrier was once viewed as farcical by logistics CEOs. In 2016, FedEx's then CEO Fred Smith dismissed the notion of Amazon
becoming a threat to the logistics giant as fantastical. In all likelihood, the primary delivers of e-commerce shipments for the foreseeable future will be UPS, the US Postal Service, and FedEx Smith said at the time. At the time of Smith's comments, Amazon was in a distant third place behind UPS and FedEx, but the company in the subsequent years made up ground, building out one of the largest logistics networks in the world.
Who knew that the Thanksgiving week would be like the biggest tech news week of the year? Not only is Sam Altman officially back at OpenAI if you hadn't heard, but CZ also stepped down as CEO of Binance while he and Binance also pled guilty to federal charges of violating sanctions and anti-money laundering laws as part of a $4.3 billion settlement. Crazy. Crazy that all of that fell last week when news usually never happens. I may or may not try to do a summary for this weekend
of the whole Altman saga we'll see. Talk to you tomorrow.