A computer scientist learns Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Yes, I know I'm going backwards. I ignored this long boring looking chapter as long as I could. It seems to be more of the same stuff as elsewhere related to security. I'll start by highlighting things I don't know about. Service Health Dashboard S ervice Health Dashboard - this is where you here about nasty things from AWS. This has an exhaustive list of regions and services and any issues impacting them. Nice. There's also a phd, a personal health dashboard (how to get an instant PhD) I guess this just tells you about regions/services that you having running? Mines empty at present. Oh, it's listed under premium services.  It would nice it they told you that when you tried using it? Time-Based One-Time Password (TOTP) Standard Sure, I've heard of this before, it's used for two-factor authentication/multi-factor authentication (MFA). But how does it work? Here's a good overview of OTP and the 2 main approaches for generating them , ...

This chapter appears to be designed for accountants perhaps (or other people that "count" things and tick boxes)? It introduces the Shared Responsibility Model , this is where AWS is responsible for Security "of" the Cloud, and the Customer is responsible for security "in" the cloud. The picture: This sort of makes sense at some level, until I noticed that The customer is responsible for the components from the guest operation systems upward: updates, security patches, etc. Now for some reason I thought one of the advertised advantages of AWS was the customer didn't have to worry about O/S updates and patches? Which is correct? If you are just using AWS EC2 images provided by amazon I'm not even sure how you could update and patch them as you don't own the license for the O/S. The windows guide says: Keeping Your AMIs Up-to-Date AWS provides updated, fully-patched Windows AMIs within five business days of Microsoft's pa...

The last Machine Learning Algorithm I worked on at UNSW for my PhD research was this one in the last 1980s: Brebner, P ., "Weka: An Algorithm for Learning Complex Concepts from Few Examples", School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of New South Wales, DCS report, 1989. Coincidentally Weka is also a well known repository of ML algorithms from my original university but from after this date (Waikato, NZ).  I guess there aren't than many interesting NZ birds to choose names from! This was the last of a series of algorithms I developed for learning first-order concepts from relational data in an autonomous robot learning domain (with temporal logic).  It also appears that I ran out of names of computers from Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy which I had been using up until then:  Gargantubrain - An heuristic algorithm for learning non-recursive Horn Clauses from Positive and Negative Examples;   Deep Thought: An Algorithm for Learning Cau...

The Master (Dr Who's arch enemy, The Dominus?) Domain An area of territory owned or controlled by a particular ruler or government. ‘the French domains of the Plantagenets’ Origin Late Middle English (denoting heritable or landed property): from French domaine, alteration (by association with Latin dominus ‘lord’) of Old French demeine ‘belonging to a lord’ (see demesne). (OED) I rather like the idea of being a Dominus! (Lord) But I was probably born in the wrong century.  Actually maybe being an "Emperor" is better (ruler of all the Lords?) I was recently asked about my experience in different "domains" which naturally got me wondering what a domain is, what domains I have experienced, and what is domain independent vs. dependent knowledge? Wikipedia says: Knowledge which may be applicable across a number of  domains  is called  domain - independent  knowledge, for example logics and mathematics. Operations on  domain ...

Photos: Models (with Fish!) And a model (lego) of a fish: One of the more interesting historical models I've seen is this water model of the economy in the London Science Museum (a must visit London land mark, need to go back lots of times to see everything!)   Turns out it was invented by a Kiwi.  Most things are. Here's the plumping diagram of a similar machine: For the last 10 years I've been involved with R&D and commercialisation of a model-based tool for predictive performance engineering/modelling.  First and foremost this is model based. The model is key to how the tool works,  how data is consumed to build and parameterise the model, how the performance of large scale software systems is abstracted (what's in, what's out), how things can be understood, changed and visualised.  Also important for complexity vs accuracy tradeoffs etc. So I've been wondering what place "Models" have in modern ML/DA and what they "lo...

Finally got around to chapter 6 (again), IAM (sam? What sort of animal was that?!) Also a bit heavily overloaded on the theological overtones??? (Intentionally?) see John 8:58 (Bible): 58 Jesus answered,  “I tell you the truth, before Abraham was even born, I A M ! k ”   59 At that point they picked up stones to throw at him. But Jesus was hidden from them and left the Temple. [A pretty obvious claim to Deity - i.e. God of the Old Testament] Makes more sense 2 time around (maybe). Who uses IAM? When and why? AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) is a web service that helps you securely control access to AWS resources for your users. You use IAM to control who can use your AWS resources ( authentication ) and what resources they can use and in what ways ( authorization ). The 1st thing to note is that this for AWS resources ONLY. I.e. not O/S or Application access.  Doesn't this add an extra level of complexity to managing the security of your system in ...