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AWS offers $20 bribe to derps who buy old IoT condom-o-matic dunce dobbers

Internet of Things: Make ordering johnnies great again

Amazon Web Services is so desperate to shift its AWS Internet of Things Buttons that it is offering free AWS credits, tech support and even design services to anyone who buys them – and has relaunched its "enterprise program" to boot.

The AWS IoT Button is supposed to be a one-donk order system for items such as pizza and condoms – no, really.

Businesses are supposed to program the buttons to order stuff – which AWS highlights in a touchingly forlorn blog post – such as food, medical supplies, or to function as call-for-help buttons in care homes.

AWS also suggests, apparently straight-faced, that the buttons could "interface with Smart Home systems to turn devices on and off such as turning off outside lights".

Exactly why you'd route your light switches through the cloud instead of using an inexpensive copper wire is completely beyond your correspondent. Hey ho.

Poker-faced AWS has now re-wheeled out its button "enterprise program" in the vague hope that someone might take them up on it, along with a "second generation" button which features a slightly better battery than the first. The bribes incentives are only claimable if you splash out on the original buttons.

"Businesses would design and build their IoT solution with the button devices and creation of device companion applications. The AWS IoT Button Enterprise Program provides businesses some complimentary assistance directly from AWS to ensure a successful deployment," burbles the blog post.

In brief, the button is a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi device with baked-in WPA2-PSK. Once pressed by the user, the button talks to the AWS IoT cloud. There it can invoke an AWS IoT rule tied to AWS Lambda, Amazon's cloud compute offering, to do something of your choice. There's even a mobile app for programming it.

The buttons are white label devices and AWS will even do the branding for you, as well as sorting out certificate and key creation on your behalf. ®

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