Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for bypassing or enforcing constraints regarding actions on network-based services. An account manager can store or maintain an account type of standard or special as account information associated with an account. When a user operating under an account tries to perform an action on a network-based service, the network-based service may retrieve or receive the account type associated with the account from the account manager. If the account type is standard, the network-based service can enforce constraints on the action. Alternatively, if the account type is special, the network-based service can bypass constraints on the action.

Abstract: A global segmenting and analysis service of a provider network may receive documents (e.g., posts, product reviews) from different applications. The service may analyze the documents to identify target entities and sentiment. The service may generate different levels of sentiment data and store data into a segmented database. For example, the service may store within-document level sentiment, document-level sentiment, and multi-document level sentiment for a target entity. The service may also update the entity taxonomy automatically or with only a small number of sample documents. The client may query the service for the segmented sentiment data.

Abstract: A system receives one or more transcripts of communications between entities. The system identifies a requested action in the communications based at least in part on a mapping between the requested action and an application programming interface. The system identifies one or more statements eliciting information, based on parameters to the application programming interface. The system generates a definition of an artificial agent based, at least in part, on the requested action and the one more statements eliciting information.

Abstract: Evaluation data sets may be programmatically generated for code generation models. An evaluation data set is obtained that includes items that correspond to different evaluation tests for a code generation system. The individual items of the evaluation data set maybe converted, including the conversion of a function signature for the items, the test statements for the items and using a code generation system to generate the body of the function.

Abstract: Described are systems, methods, and apparatus that utilize multiple sensors to conserve battery life of a device, limit potential disruption to a user, and reliably detect whether the device is worn by the user. In one example, a first sensor, such as an infrared sensor, may be activated to determine a proximity of the device to an object. If the device is within a proximity of the object, a second sensor, such as a photoplethysmography (PPG) sensor, may be activated to verify that the device is being worn by the user and then to continue collecting data that may be used to determine biometrics for the user.

Abstract: The transcoding of a contribution feed into a plurality of output feeds in various formats can be monitored to ensure that unnecessary data is not transmitted in the contribution feed. Each output feed can be transcoded using respective values for a set of video format parameters. These values can be aggregated and analyzed to determine the lowest values for individual parameters that are being used for the various output feeds. A video encoder for the contribution feed can then dynamically modify the video format parameters used to encode the contribution feed in order to avoid encoding and transmitting data that is not actually used for these output streams, which can conserve resources such as network bandwidth, or enable those resources to be used more advantageously to send data that will actually result in higher quality video presentation in the output formats for current limitations or conditions.

Abstract: Systems and methods are provided to implement a database connection manager that dynamically routes database query statements to database servers storing replicas of the database. In embodiments, the database connection manager may implement a data access interface that mimics the interface of the database servers, so as to appear to clients as just another database server. In embodiments, various health or performance metrics of the servers are monitored, and the routing may be performed based on the metrics to load balance the servers. In embodiments, the routing may distinguish between read and write statements, so that read statements are routed to servers hosting read-only replicas, and write statements are routed to servers hosting writable replicas. These and other disclosed features improve the functioning of the database, to allow, among other things, the database servers to be dynamically load balanced, and the servers' identities to be hidden from clients.

Abstract: A computer system may provide a plurality of load records for presentation in a user interface provided at a first plurality of user devices. The user interface may enable searching for a plurality of loads represented by the plurality of load records. The computer system may also determine, for a load record of the plurality of load records and based at least in part on inputting contextual information into a predictive model, an acceptance prediction indicating a probability that a load record of the plurality of load records will be accepted by a user. The computer system may also provide at least a portion of the plurality of load records for presentation in the user interface provided at a second plurality of user devices associated with a second plurality of users. The portion of the plurality of load records may include the load record including an updated value of an attribute of the load record that is dependent on the acceptance prediction.

Abstract: In one example, an apparatus comprises: a memory array having an array of memory elements arranged in rows and columns, each memory element being configured to store a data element; and a memory access circuit configured to: perform a row write operation to store a first group of data elements at a first row of the array of memory elements; perform a column read operation at a first column of the array of memory elements to obtain a second group of data elements; and perform a column write operation to store a third group of data elements at the first column of the array of memory elements to replace the second group of data elements.

Abstract: An electronic book distribution system includes electronic devices that reset their passcodes after specified authentication failures. The passcodes of an individual electronic device is reset to a value that is generated using a predefined function of a randomly generated support code. The support code is displayed to the user, and the user is instructed to contact a support service in order to obtain the new passcode. The support service independently authenticates the user, calculates the new device passcode using the same predefined function used by the electronic device, and provides the new passcode to the user.

Abstract: A system configured to perform sound source localization (SSL) using reflection detection is provided. A device processes audio data from multiple microphones to determine timing information corresponding to sound sources. For example, the device may determine cross-correlation data for each microphone pair, determine autocorrelation data for each microphone, and then use the autocorrelation data and the cross-correlation data to calculate quality factors. The device may determine the direction of potential sound source(s) by generating Steered Response Power (SRP) data using the cross-correlation data. To perform reflection detection to distinguish between direct sounds and acoustic reflections, the device may generate modified SRP data using the quality factors.

Abstract: Systems and methods are provided for managing provision of network-stored data sets among instances of function code executing in an on-demand manner. Provision of the data sets may be managed such that the data sets are available efficiently and are able to be accessed within function invocations in a manner that is similar or identical to accessing locally-stored data sets. Moreover, the data sets may, when desired, be made available persistently across function invocations.

Abstract: Systems, methods, and computer-readable media are disclosed for shuttle lift systems to facilitate simultaneous movement of multiple shuttles across a multi-level storage structure that stores packages. The shuttle lift system may include the multi-level storage structure and a tower lift system at each end of the multi-level storage structure. One tower lift system may raise shuttles to a level of the multi-level storage structure. The other tower lift system may lower shuttles to a level of the multi-level storage structure and/or to a delivery area. The tower lift system may include cables (e.g., tethers) that are supported by a bottom portion and an upper portion of the tower lift system. Shelves may be attached to the cables on either side of the tower lift system and may receive and move shuttles up/down the tower lift system. The tower lift system may have high shuttle throughput and a reduced footprint.

Abstract: Described are automated systems and methods for employing certificate authority meta-resources to facilitate automatic renewal and/or rotation of certificates and/or certificate authorities in a PKI hierarchy. For example, embodiments of the present disclosure can provide creating a certificate authority meta-resource, which can maintain and monitor certain information to facilitate automatic renewal and rotation of certificates and/or certificate authorities in a PKI hierarchy. The certificate authority meta-resource can also keep track of the active certificate authorities and certificates to ensure that trust is maintained without manual configuration of the PKI hierarchy.

Abstract: An interposer card and a virtualization offloading card are provided for installation in a third-party server to integrate the third-party server into a cloud service provider network. The interposer card includes a baseboard management controller that interfaces with a management console of the cloud service provider network. This allows the third-party server to be converted into a server controlled by the cloud service provider network. Additionally, the baseboard management controller of the interposer card acts as a firewall between the third-party server and a management control network of the cloud service provider network. The interposer card and the virtualization offloading card are installed in a chassis of the third-party server via an expansion slot without requiring modification of the hardware or firmware of the third-party server.

Abstract: Techniques for an optimization service of a service provider network to help optimize the selection, configuration, and utilization, of virtual machine (VM) instance types to support workloads on behalf of users. The optimization service may implement the techniques described herein at various stages in a life cycle of a workload to help optimize the performance of the workload, and reduce underutilization of computing resources. For example, the optimization service may perform techniques to help new users select an optimized VM instance type on which to initially launch their workload. Further, the optimization service may monitor a workload for the life of the workload, and determine new VM instance types, and/or configuration modifications, that optimize the performance of the workload. The optimization service may provide recommendations to users that help improve performance of their workloads, and that also increase the aggregate utilization of computing resources of the service provider network.

Abstract: Domain-specific parameters may be used for tuning speech processing. A pre-trained transformer-based language model may train domain-specific parameters using domain-specific unlabeled text data. This domain-specific parameters can then be appended to candidate texts produced by a speech model on received speech data and input to the transformer-based language model to score the candidate texts. The scores of the candidate texts determined using the pre-trained transformer-based language model can then be used to select a candidate text for further speech processing.

Abstract: Described herein is a system for embedding audio watermarks. To improve performance without a user perceiving the audio watermark, a system embeds audio watermarks in audio data using scaling factors that are calculated based on a spectral masking level for each frame of the audio data. The scaling factors may vary over time and correspond to an amplitude of the audio watermark across a series of watermark frames. The system processes the audio data to determine a spectral mask, which represents an amount of energy perceived in a first frequency range that is caused by energy represented in neighboring frequency ranges. By selecting scaling factor values that keep an amplitude of the audio watermark below the threshold indicated by the spectral mask, the system may embed the audio watermark in the first audio data without the audio watermark being audible to the user.

Abstract: A system for improved natural language understanding (NLU) provides pre-feature input to a named entity recognition (NER) component. Pre-features may include no-textually derived information associated with the circumstances describing a user command (such as time, location, etc.). A domain and/or intent may also be determined prior to NER processing and may be passed to the NER component as an input. The pre-features and/or domain or intent information may assist the NER processing by providing context to a textual input, thereby improving NER processing such as semantic tagging, which in turn may improve overall NLU processing quality.