Tag: Equifax

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Supplier Report: 9/14/2018

The Source: Lobe will set you free

Microsoft acquired Lobe, a company to help advance their AI strategy and make it accessible to the masses.  Making AI easier is critical as there are reports that companies need to start investing in AI now to just keep up with competition in the next 5-10 years.

Companies also need to invest in software developers as CNBC reports that developers are more valuable to corporations than money…

Acquisitions

  • Microsoft acquires Lobe, a drag-and-drop AI tool

    Microsoft today announced that is has acquired Lobe, a startup that lets you build machine learning models with the help of a simple drag-and-drop interface. Microsoft plans to use Lobe, which only launched into beta earlier this year, to build upon its own efforts to make building AI models easier, though, for the time being, Lobe will operate as before.

    “As part of Microsoft, Lobe will be able to leverage world-class AI research, global infrastructure, and decades of experience building developer tools,” the team writes. “We plan to continue developing Lobe as a standalone service, supporting open source standards and multiple platforms.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/13/microsoft-acquires-lobe-a-drag-and-drop-ai-tool/

  • Intel acquires NetSpeed Systems to boost its system-on-a-chip business

    The company has acquired NetSpeed Systems, a startup that makes system-on-chip (SoC) design tools and interconnect fabric intellectual property (IP). The company will be joining Intel’s Silicon Engineering Group, and its co-founder and CEO, Sundari Mitra, herself an Intel vet, will be coming on as a VP at Intel where she will continue to lead her team.

    Terms of the deal are not being disclosed, but for some context, during NetSpeed’s last fundraise in 2016 (a $10 million Series C) it had a post-money valuation of $60 million, according to data from PitchBook.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/10/intel-acquires-netspeed-systems-to-beef-up-its-system-on-a-chip-business/

Artificial Intelligence

  • The devilishly quiet age of AI

    The era’s winners will be those who are not fooled by the absence of visible change from AI over the next 5-7 years. By the time the fruits of AI investment become clear — after 2025 — it will be extremely difficult to compete with the leading players, says Jacques Bughin and Jeongmin Seong, two co-authors of the report.

    AI adoption will add $13 trillion a year to global production, the report said, and an average of 1.2% to global GDP growth per year.

    https://www.axios.com/quiet-artificial-intelligence-revolution-3ade583f-ca2d-4b10-bdf9-d9c75fb8418f.html

  • Google Cloud’s new AI chief is on a task force for AI military uses and believes we could monitor ‘pretty much the whole world’ with drones

    Google’s decision to hire Moore was greeted with displeasure by at least one former Googler who objected to Project Maven.

    “It’s worrisome to note after the widespread internal dissent against Maven that Google would hire Andrew Moore,” said one former Google employee. “Googlers want less alignment with the military-industrial complex, not more. This hire is like a punch in the face to the over 4,000 Googlers who signed the Cancel Maven letter.”

    A Google spokesman declined to comment.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/google-cloud-new-ai-chief-history-military-security-task-force-2018-9

Cloud

  • Oracle’s Kurian Is Said to Be at Odds With Ellison on Cloud

    The growing strife between Kurian, president of product development, and Executive Chairman Ellison culminated in Kurian’s announcement on Sept. 5 that he’s taking a break, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing a private matter. Kurian wants Oracle to make more of its software available to run on public clouds from chief rivals Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. as a way to diversify from its own struggling infrastructure, a view opposed by Ellison, one of the people said.

    https://www.datacenterknowledge.com/oracle/oracles-kurian-said-be-odds-ellison-cloud

Security

  • A year later, Equifax lost your data but faced little fallout

    “There was a failure of the company, but also of lawmakers,” said Mark Warner, a Democratic senator, in a call with TechCrunch. Warner, who serves Virginia, was one of the first lawmakers to file new legislation after the breach. Alongside his Democratic colleague, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the two senators said their bill, if passed, would hold credit agencies accountable for data breaches.

    “The message sent to the market is ‘if you can endure some media blowback, you can get through this without serious long-term ramifications’, and that’s totally unacceptable,” he said.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/08/equifax-one-year-later-unscathed/

Software/SaaS

  • Software developers are now more valuable to companies than money: Survey

    And yet, despite being many corporations’ most precious resource, developer talents are all too often squandered. Collectively, companies today lose upward of $300 billion a year paying down “technical debt,” as developers pour time into maintaining legacy systems or dealing with the ramifications of bad software.

    This is especially worrisome, given the outsized impact developers have on companies’ chances of success. Software developers don’t have a monopoly on good ideas, but their skill set makes them a uniquely deep source of innovation, productivity and new economic connections. When deployed correctly, developers can be economic multipliers — coefficients that dramatically ratchet up the output of the teams and companies of which they’re a part.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/06/companies-worry-more-about-access-to-software-developers-than-capital.html

  • What you need to know ahead of the EU copyright vote

    European lawmakers want to extend digital copyright to also cover the ledes of news stories which aggregators such as Google News typically ingest and display — because, again, the likes of Alphabet is profiting off of bits of others’ professional work without paying them to do so. And, on the flip side, media firms have seen their profits hammered by the Internet serving up free content.

    The reforms would seek to compensate publishers for their investment in journalism by letting them charge for use of these text snippets — instead of only being ‘paid’ in traffic (i.e. by becoming yet more eyeball fodder in Alphabet’s aggregators).

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/08/what-you-need-to-know-ahead-of-the-eu-copyright-vote/

  • Burger King selects SAP solutions to support growth

    The chain will use Cloud-based procurement applications and a business network from SAP Ariba and SAP S/4HANA from SAP to expand its presence and increase revenue.These solutions will assist the restaurant chain to create a digital process to fuel savings, efficiencies and business growth.

    Leveraging both solutions, the company will gain insights from the data stored in its supply chains and use them to grow further.

    https://www.verdictfoodservice.com/news/burger-king-sap-solutions-growth/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Apple raised the price of its best phone by $330, and no one cares

    Two years ago, a brand-new flagship Apple smartphone started at $650. Now, the a compromised version of Apple’s vision will set you back $750. Even though the Xr will likely be more than enough iPhone for most customers, the iPhone X proved that there are loads of people out there willing to pay $999 and up for a truly premium device.

    And this year, those with lots of money have even more opportunity to spend: the iPhone Xs Max starts at $1,099 and goes up to an insane $1,449 with 512GB of storage. In 2016, the top-of-the-line iPhone 7 Plus with 256GB of storage cost $929. Not only has Apple raised the cost of a flagship device, it expanded the pricing window for its highest-end phones by more than $500.

    https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/13/apple-iphone-xs-xr-price-increases/

Other

  • Trump renews call for Apple to make its products in the US

    But while moving its manufacturing operations to the US would allow it to skip the tariffs, Apple’s products likely wouldn’t be any cheaper. China is an attractive to tech manufacturing because its workforce is cheaper and the plants that produce individual components are in close proximity to one another. Moving that manufacturing infrastructure would be costly. On Twitter, Trade lawyer Scott Lincicome pointed out that an iPhone would be more expensive to manufacture here in the US, citing a Marketplace report from 2014 that suggested that the component cost of an iPhone in China was around $190 per phone. In the US, that price jumps up to around $600, pushing the device — at the time — to a predicted price of $2000, far more than what would be seen under the tariffs.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/8/17835158/trump-twitter-apple-manufacturing-tariffs

  • Tough Days for China’s Tech Giants

    For Tencent, which makes over 90% of its revenue in China, more government scrutiny has become a reality. Beijing has been holding up approvals for new games and sales of in-game items like virtual weapons—Tencent makes around half its annual revenue from the latter. The freeze caused the company’s first year-over-year profit decline since the last quarter in 2005.

    This doesn’t seem like a hiccup. Beijing last week said it will continue limiting videogame releases and set restrictions on young people’s playing time, while state media has been repeatedly lambasting game companies for creating social problems. Nasdaq-listed Baidu, too, has been reprimanded for hosting content that threatens China’s “social order.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/tough-days-for-chinas-tech-giants-1536312601?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Tim Armstrong to depart as CEO of Verizon’s Oath

    Verizon’s head of media and advertising Tim Armstrong will leave at the end of the year, the company announced Wednesday. CNBC reported Armstrong was in talks to leave as of Sept. 7.

    Armstrong came to Verizon in 2015 as part of the acquisition of AOL, where he was CEO. The company later bought Yahoo and combined the two divisions into a digital advertising unit called Oath but those efforts have yet to produce significant growth. Verizon has decided to integrate Oath more fully with the rest of the company’s operations, according to a recent Wall Street Journal report, despite recent discussions about spinning off Oath into a separate business.

    Oath president and COO K. Guru Gowrappan will “assume all management responsibilities” as chief executive effective Oct. 1, the company said in a release.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/12/tim-armstrong-out-at-verizons-oath.html

Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 5/11/2018

Google’s I/O conference took place this week and they introduced groundbreaking AI assistant technology… but not everyone is in love with the idea of not knowing when they are talking to a robot.

Equifax (finally) released the full impact of their 2017 security breach.  147 million American’s social security numbers were breached.  Why did it take so long to get the whole picture?  Speaking of security, hackers found a way to bypass two factor authentication.

And…Microsoft might buy Netflix (I have serious doubts about the accuracy of this rumor).

Acquisitions

  • Google to acquire cloud migration startup Velostrata

    Velostrata helps companies migrate from on-premises datacenters to the cloud, a common requirement today as companies try to shift more workloads to the cloud. It’s not always a simple matter though to transfer those legacy applications, and that’s where Velostrata could help Google Cloud customers.

    As I wrote in 2014 about their debut, the startup figured out a way to decouple storage and compute and that had wide usage and appeal. “The company has a sophisticated hybrid cloud solution that decouples storage from compute resources, leaving the storage in place on-premises while running a virtual machine in the cloud,” I wrote at the time.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/09/google-to-acquire-cloud-migration-startup-velostrata/

  • Microsoft Will Acquire Netflix Within the Next 2 Years: Top Analyst

    “Netflix, while a pioneer as a streaming service, doesn’t have a business model that is sustainable,” said Bibb. “For every one in two movies, one makes a significant loss while one makes a significant gain…No one has cracked the code to fix this, although Netflix doesn’t have to deal with the ticket sales.”

    He believes that the Microsoft-Netflix merger could be announced in 18-24 months, but added that there will be “a few bumps in the road before anything happens.”

    https://www.thestreet.com/technology/microsoft-acquire-netflix-says-analyst-14583140

Artificial Intelligence

  • Intelligent Machines Will Teach Us—Not Replace Us

    That is the real promise of this new generation of AI: creating new knowledge, not just good results. Instead of processing human instructions at incredible speed, they create their own guidelines from scratch and discover patterns invisible to us. Instead of analyzing millions of human games to find the best way to play, they can generate their own data and find rules that apply to the real world. These machines will be able to go beyond “what” and tell us “why.”

    Whenever there’s a brilliant advance in robotics or machine intelligence, people send it to me on social media with messages proclaiming, “We’re all doomed!” But the notion that these machines could become human-hunting Terminators is absurd. Intelligence and autonomy of movement don’t equal free will and killer instinct.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/intelligent-machines-will-teach-usnot-replace-us-1525704147?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Google Duplex: A.I. Assistant Calls Local Businesses To Make Appointments

    https://ai.googleblog.com/2018/05/duplex-ai-system-for-natural-conversation.html
    Duplex shows Google failing at ethical and creative AI design

    At one point the bot’s ‘mm-hmm’ response even drew appreciative laughs from a techie audience that clearly felt in on the ‘joke’.

    But while the home crowd cheered enthusiastically at how capable Google had seemingly made its prototype robot caller — with Pichai going on to sketch a grand vision of the AI saving people and businesses time — the episode is worryingly suggestive of a company that views ethics as an after-the-fact consideration.

    One it does not allow to trouble the trajectory of its engineering ingenuity. A consideration which only seems to get a look in years into the AI dev process, at the cusp of a real-world rollout — which Pichai said would be coming shortly.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/10/duplex-shows-google-failing-at-ethical-and-creative-ai-design/

  • Trump Administration Vows to Maintain U.S. Edge in AI Technology

    At a White House conference on artificial intelligence, Trump technology adviser Michael Kratsios pledged that the administration would make a priority of advancing artificial-intelligence research, through greater research funding and other steps.

    “America has been the global leader in AI, and the Trump administration will ensure our great nation remains the global leader in AI,” said Mr. Kratsios, deputy assistant to the president for technology policy, according to prepared text of a keynote speech.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-administration-vows-to-maintain-u-s-edge-in-ai-technology-1525972043?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Amazon Reportedly Building Healthcare Team for Alexa So You Can Ask If That Cut Looks Infected

    The company’s primary hurdle in that task will be making the voice assistant compliant with the privacy requirements of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). The law sets some pretty stringent requirements for handling sensitive health-related data, and Alexa currently does not meet those standards. The company’s cloud platform Amazon Web Services (AWS) does support HIPAA compliance and the new health and wellness team reportedly has a HIPAA expert on board, so Alexa may soon be able to properly handle your medical data—assuming you’re willing to trust the voice assistant with that information.

    Amazon’s increased interest in the healthcare industry comes as the company is reportedly bowing out of the pharmaceutical business. CNBC reported last month that Amazon was shelving a plan to sell drugs directly to hospitals through its Amazon Business platform, and experts have suggested the barrier to entry in the filed may prove too high even for the tech giant.

    https://gizmodo.com/amazon-reportedly-building-healthcare-team-for-alexa-so-1825938924

Cloud

  • Microsoft needs to prove it’s not another IBM

    Microsoft can’t afford to become the next IBM and lose any relevance it still holds with consumers, but if it’s not careful, that might be inevitable. Even tomorrow’s Windows-focused keynote is all about Microsoft 365, the company’s subscription service for businesses that combines Windows 10 and Office 365. Microsoft has an opportunity at Build this week to show developers that it’s not just another IBM and that it’s not going to turn into a company that lacks the mindshare and technological influence it possessed in its heyday.

    Build is a chance to show off the good bits of the new Microsoft and where exactly the company will be heading in the next five years. Vague promises of AI and quantum computing won’t be enough without a good demonstration of its software prowess in action. Microsoft has the opportunity to show the world this week what it really stands for and why people should still care.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/7/17325540/microsoft-build-conference-2018-preview

Security

  • Equifax filing reveals hack was somehow even worse than previous estimates

    Today’s information was filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of the company’s disclosures regarding the hack. It provided first a handy table listing what was stolen as raw strings of data from Equifax’s inadequately protected databases:

    Full name: 146.6M
    Date of Birth: 146.6M
    Social Security number: 145.5M
    Full address: 99M
    Gender: 27.3M
    Phone number: 20.3M
    Driver’s license number (incl. 2.4M partials): 17.6M
    Email address: 1.8M
    Credit card numbers (with expiration dates): 209,000
    Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN/Tax ID): 97,500
    Driver’s license state: 27,000

    Previous estimates of driver’s license numbers leaked were around 10.9 million, and total affected put at 143 million. Sure, the difference between 143 million and 146.6 million is relatively small, but it’s still 3.6 million people.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/08/equifax-filing-reveals-hack-was-somehow-even-worse-than-previous-estimates/

  • Hacker Kevin Mitnick shows how to bypass 2FA

    Chief Hacking Officer Kevin Mitnick showed the hack in a public video. By convincing a victim to visit a typo-squatting domain liked “LunkedIn.com” and capturing the login, password, and authentication code, the hacker can pass the credentials to the actual site and capture the session cookie. Once this is done the hacker can login indefinitely. This essentially uses the one time 2FA code as a way to spoof a login and grab data.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/05/10/hacker-kevin-mitnick-shows-how-to-bypass-2fa/

  • Flash Drives Are Contraband at IBM Now

    In a seemingly unenforceable move, IBM has banned its employees “from using removable memory devices such as USB sticks, SD cards and flash drives.” The company’s global chief information security officer Shamla Naidoo said that “the possible financial and reputational damage from misplaced, lost or misused removable portable storage devices must be minimised.”

    http://goingconcern.com/flash-drives-banned-ibm-inchan/
    Lots of headlines about this, but it isn’t like IBM is the first company to do this.

Software/SaaS

  • SAP Ariba tightens supplier risk monitoring with new vetting process

    “When it comes to some indirect spend, the role of procurement is changing from negotiating deals to creating a dynamic marketplace within a compliant environment where users can get what they need,” said Robert Ward, procurement process and performance manager, NSG Group. “And with SAP Ariba Spot Buy, we can do this.”

    GRMS evaluates and continuously monitors suppliers against more than 1500 global governmental watch lists and enforcement and sanctions sources. The service also offers the risk assessment modules in regulatory compliance, financial stability, insurance management, reputational protection, health and safety, social responsibility, cyber security and document management.

    http://www.insidesap.com.au/sap-ariba-tightens-supplier-risk-monitoring-new-vetting-process/

  • Oracle’s autonomous database could leave DBAs unemployed

    The autonomous self-patching, self-healing database, the first version of which is 18c, is a part of a long-term play to help draw the company’s customers into Oracle’s piece of the cloud – which is increasingly packing itself with cloud-based applications and services.

    Hurd said it could take almost a year to get on-premise databases patched, whereas patching was instant with the autonomous version. “If everyone had the autonomous database, that would change to instantaneous,” he said.

    So where does that leave Oracle DBAs around the world? Possibly in the unemployment queue, at least according to Hurd. “There are hundreds of thousands of DBAs managing Oracle databases. If all of that moved to the autonomous database, the number would change to zero,” Hurd said at an Oracle media event in Redwood Shores, California.

    https://www.computerweekly.com/news/252440766/Oracles-autonomous-database-could-leave-DBAs-unemployed

Other

  • One of net neutrality’s biggest enemies ‘retires’ from AT&T amid Michael Cohen scandal

    AT&T has decided to join the growing coalition of people who regret paying President Trump’s lawyer. In a message to AT&T employees today, first obtained by CNN, AT&T President Randall Stephenson said “our company has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons these last few days and our reputation has been damaged. There is no other way to say it — AT&T hiring Michael Cohen as a political consultant was a big mistake.” Regardless, Stephenson insists that “everything we did was done according to the law and entirely legitimate.”

    But while Stephenson says he takes “full responsibility” for the mistake, it actually seems like AT&T’s top lobbyist Bob Quinn is taking the hit. Stephenson also announced in his message that Quinn “will be retiring,” and that the company’s lobbying shop will now be reporting to AT&T General Counsel David McAtee.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/11/17344040/at-t-michael-cohen-lawyer-lobbyist-bob-quinn

  • Apple is no longer building its $1 billion data center in Ireland

    Apple has announced it will no longer build a $1 billion (€850 million) data center in Ireland after planning delays lasting over three years, reports Reuters. Since 2015, Apple has wanted to build the data center in Athenry to be close to green energy sources, but the plans have been met with stalls in the approval process. The company had yet to even beginconstruction on the center. Apple was also set to face an appeal in Dublin’s Supreme Court on Thursday over initial approval of the planned first phase of building.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/10/17338734/apple-data-center-ireland-scrapped-athenry

Photo by Patrik Göthe on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 3/16/2018

Broadcom’s bid for Qualcomm has been shut down by the government citing fears over national security.

Amazon is hiring more developers for Alexa than Google is hiring for everything.  As Team Bezos builds out more cloud services, there are rumors this week that Amazon is focusing on corporate training services.

IBM thinks Lotus Notes can make a comeback… is it wishful thinking or is there a real strategy?

Acquisitions

  • Apple to Acquire Digital-Magazine-Subscription Service Texture

    Apple Inc. said it will acquire Next Issue Media LLC and its digital-magazine-subscription service Texture, a product developed by top magazine companies that bundles together some 200 subscriptions into one monthly service.

    The acquisition comes as Apple looks to beef up its services business, which includes music streaming and mobile payments.

    Apple has set a goal of increasing total revenue from services to more than $40 billion by 2020. The company generated nearly $30 billion in services revenue in its fiscal year ended in September.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-to-acquire-magazine-subscription-service-texture-1520875158

  • Why Intel Is So Wary of a Broadcom-Qualcomm Merger

    Since late last year, Intel has been exploring a bid for Broadcom to forestall that company’s $117 billion offer for Qualcomm in what would be the biggest-ever tech deal, people familiar with the matter told The Wall Street Journal in an article published Friday. Intel’s interest in derailing that deal reflects its worry that a combined Broadcom-Qualcomm, which would create the third-largest chip company by revenue after Intel and Samsung Electronics Co., would endanger its competitive position, the people said.

    A merged Broadcom and Qualcomm would combine market-leading smartphone chips with a strong presence in data centers, two areas Intel has targeted for growth. And Qualcomm’s own proposed purchase of Dutch automotive chip specialist NXP Semiconductors NV would turbocharge such a merger in the automotive market, where Intel has placed one of its biggest bets.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-intel-is-so-wary-of-a-broadcom-qualcomm-merger-1520800808
    Broadcom’s Bid for Qualcomm May Be Headed for Rejection, U.S. Panel Warns

    A government panel reviewing Broadcom’s $117 billion bid for Qualcomm has warned that it may refer the potential deal to President Trump for rejection, further dimming the prospects for what would be the biggest-ever technology takeover in history.

    In a letter to the two companies on Sunday, the panel, the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, said that it believed the offer by Broadcom posed national security concerns. Broadcom is currently headquartered in Singapore, but is in the process of relocating its legal base to the United States to allay those issues.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/12/business/dealbook/cfius-broadcom-qualcomm-merger.html
    Rejection of Qualcomm-Broadcom Deal Followed Monthslong Strategy

    Qualcomm’s Jan. 29 filing to CFIUS helped trigger a chain of events that culminated in President Donald Trump’s decision Monday to block the deal. Broadcom on Wednesday said it had withdrawn its offer for Qualcomm, though it is proceeding with plans to change its domicile to the U.S. from Singapore.

    Qualcomm’s appeal tapped into gathering concern among some congressional Republicans and the Trump administration about U.S. national security and competitiveness with China, especially in advanced technologies—sentiment that already was fueling an effort to expand the power of CFIUS. The company also got help from sympathetic senators and representatives who pressed the administration.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/rejection-of-qualcomm-broadcom-deal-followed-monthslong-strategy-1520986563

Artificial Intelligence

  • Amazon Is Hiring More Developers For Alexa Than Google Is Hiring For Everything

    Amazon is hiring 1,147 people for its Alexa business unit alone, says Citi Research in a new report. That’s more than Google is hiring for product and technical roles across the entire Alphabet conglomerate, including YouTube, Waymo, Google Fiber, and — of course — the main money maker in the Alphabet empire: the original Google.

    “Key takeaways from the job openings at Alphabet include that the company’s pace of hiring relative to its current headcount (3%) is among the lowest in our coverage,” said Citi analysts Mark May and Caleb Siegel.

    That could bode well for Google’s margins, Citi says.

    It also could mean that innovation is slowing.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2018/03/13/amazon-is-hiring-more-developers-for-alexa-than-google-is-hiring-for-everything/#657b51e31985

Cloud

  • Amazon’s cloud is looking at building a corporate training service

    The move suggests Amazon Web Services sees ready-to-use services, rather than raw computing and storage resources for roll-your-own application development, as vehicles for maintaining the rapid growth of its cloud and keeping its lead ahead of the likes of Google and Microsoft. With learning-management software, individuals can go through collections of content such as videos to gain skills, and managers can track progress.

    Amazon already has online training programs for partners to train their employees on how to use AWS offerings. This would be a broader general-purpose service that companies could use to manage all kinds of corporate training and learning programs.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/15/amazon-aws-exploring-learning-management-space.html

Security

  • Microsoft expands software and microcode fixes for Meltdown and Spectre

    Included as part of today’s Patch Tuesday rollout, Microsoft has expanded protections for the Meltdown vulnerability to x86 editions of Windows 7 and 8.1. That’s in addition to emergency fixes Microsoft first rolled out just after the exploits were disclosed. The company notes that it will continue to work on providing updates for additional supported versions of Windows.

    In addition to expanding its software fixes, Microsoft says that it has also removed the antivirus compatibility check for security updates on Windows 10.

    https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft-expands-software-and-microcode-fixes-meltdown-and-spectre

Software/SaaS

  • IBM thinks Notes and Domino can rise again

    Since announcing that HCL would take over development of IBM’s collaborationware, the two companies have conducted a long listening tour that saw them stage 22 meatspace meetings and four online forums. The results of that consultation, which reached 2,000 people, plus lab work already conducted by IBM and HCL, were recently presented to the faithful.

    The top line message imparted to users was that IBM and HCL think Notes can rise again: the companies have given themselves the “big hairy audacious goal” of having Notes seen as “… the application platform that business users tap to solve their collaboration intensive business problems – anyone, anywhere.”

    Execs from the companies said the first step towards that goal will be version 10 of the platform, which will land sometime in 2018. Attendees at a webcast were told version 11 has already been planned.

    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/13/ibm_hcl_notes_domino_10_roadmap/

  • Amazon Chime to be charged per-use

    A blog post penned by Amazon Web Services (AWS) chief evangelist Jeff Barr explains that following the initial 30-day free trial where users have access to all Amazon Chime features, users can still chat with each other and attend meetings at no cost. However, in order to use the scheduling and hosting features once the trial is over, users must be connected to an AWS account.

    On days where users host meetings, they will be charged $3 per-day, capped at $15 per month, starting from April 1, 2018.

    “Based on historical usage patterns, this will result in an overall price reduction for virtually all Amazon Chime customers,” the blog reads.

    http://www.zdnet.com/article/amazon-chime-to-be-charged-on-a-per-use-basis/
    Slack Needs to Worry About Microsoft Teams

    In a blog post on Monday, Microsoft provided an update on Teams to mark its one-year anniversary. Teams is now in use at 200,000 organizations in 181 markets, with big-name users including A.P. Moller-Maersk, Macy’s, and General Motors. That’s up from 125,000 organizations in September.

    One reason Teams has taken off so quickly is that it’s included with various Office 365 plans. Office 365 Business Premium, which costs $12.50 per user per month, includes Teams along with the full Office suite and other services such as OneDrive, Exchange, and Skype for Business. Office 365 Business Essentials, which leaves out the Office suite, is priced at just $5 per user per month. Microsoft’s three Office 365 enterprise plans, which start at $8 per user per month, also include Teams.

    Slack offers a free plan, with two other plans priced at $6.67 and $12.50 per month. For any business that already uses Microsoft Office 365, using Teams over Slack is a no-brainer, even with Slack being a more mature product. For businesses using alternative productivity software, like Google’s G Suite, Office 365 with Teams and Slack are both priced in the same ballpark.

    https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/03/13/slack-needs-to-worry-about-microsoft-teams.aspx

Other

  • Some hard truths about Twitter’s health crisis

    Because Twitter’s content problems really boil down to Twitter failing to enforce the community standards it already has. Which in turn is a failure of leadership, as I have previously argued.

    A good current example is that it has an ads policy that bans “misleading and deceptive” ads. Yet it continues to accept advertising money from unregulated entities pushing dubiously obscure crypto exchanges and flogging wildly risky token sales.

    Twitter really doesn’t need to wait for a new metric to understand that the right thing to do here is to take crypto/ICO ads off its platform right now.

    https://beta.techcrunch.com/2018/03/10/some-hard-truths-about-twitters-health-crisis/?ncid=rss

  • Former Equifax executive charged with insider trading ahead of massive data breach

    According to the SEC, Jun Ying, the CIO of an Equifax business unit and next in line to be the global CIO, received confidential information about the company’s breach before the news was public. Ying allegedly exercised his stock options and sold his shares, making close to $1 million and avoiding a $117,000 loss when the stock price tanked post-announcement.

    The SEC said the US Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia is also filing criminal charges against Ying.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/14/17119538/equifax-insider-trading-data-breach-charges

  • Why media companies are shifting their attention from Facebook to YouTube

    While Facebook Watch hasn’t taken off as a revenue source for publishers and the social network has deprioritized publisher content, YouTube offers something of a safe harbor for publishers that want to get into the video business. For example, publishers can direct-sell into their video on YouTube, said Kai Hsing, svp of marketing and operations at Bustle, which recently rekindled its interest in YouTube. YouTube was the most lucrative platform for publishers after Facebook, according to a Digital Content Next report.

    Publishers also recognize that people are going to YouTube specifically to watch videos. That’s a reason parenting publication Fatherly recently resurrected its YouTube channel. In January, Fatherly hired Adam Banicki, a former video producer at Vice, as its first vp of video. In February, it began uploading videos to its YouTube channel for the first time since June 2017.

    https://digiday.com/media/media-companies-shifting-attention-facebook-youtube/

Photo: Michael Baldovinos

Posted on

Supplier Report: 3/2/2018

Facebook and Twitter are fighting for the hearts and minds of social media users.  As Facebook struggles with “fake news” and changes their algorithms (hurting some legitimate sites in the process), Twitter is using this moment to embrace the press… but will anything improve?

Amazon has purchased another home camera company.  It was announced they purchased Ring (a video doorbell maker) after purchasing Blink in December.  Amazon really wants to find away to make customers comfortable with letting them into their homes…

On the Amazon topic, they are in a race with Apple to become the first company to be worth a trillion dollars…

Acquisitions

  • Amazon Acquires Ring, Maker of Video Doorbells

    Amazon.com Inc. acquired Ring, maker of video doorbells, in a deal valued at more than $1 billion, a person familiar with the transaction said, giving the online giant a bigger foothold in the burgeoning internet business of home security.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-acquires-ring-maker-of-video-doorbells-1519768639

  • Nokia acquires Unium, a mesh WiFi startup that works with Google Fiber, as part of big home WiFi push

    While Nokia’s former handset business forges ahead with its new device strategy under licensee HMD, Nokia itself has taken one more step to build out its business with carriers in a new wave of services. To coincide with MWC in Barcelona and a bigger step into the WiFi business, the company today announced that it has acquired Unium, a startup out of Seattle that builds technology for mesh WiFi for home networking services.

    Unium’s tech is used to address one of the biggest pain-points in home WiFi today: it helps fill in dead spots in home WiFi arrangements, where you may not get signal or interference from other networks, and the accompanying security issues that might come alongside those.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/25/nokia-acquires-unium-a-mesh-wifi-startup-that-works-with-google-fiber-as-part-of-big-home-wifi-push/?ncid=rss

Artificial Intelligence

  • The Future of Policing Is Being Hashed Out in Secret (thanks JD)

    It should go without saying that experimenting with predictive AI in real-world law enforcement demands public oversight and awareness. The debate that is now beginning should have been had before the technology was used to build indictments, not afterward. Nevertheless, it would also be a mistake if the only outrage is over the failure to make public disclosures. The more important conversation must address the deeper issues this case raises.

    Law enforcement — and criminal justice more broadly — must be evaluated on two separate criteria: pragmatic effectiveness and legal justice. On the first criterion, it’s important to note that there isn’t yet any clear evidence that the Palantir-New Orleans partnership works. Palantir would like to take credit for a New Orleans crime dip, but the data and the timing don’t necessarily support that. For now, the efficacy of machine-based crime prediction and protection must be treated as unproven at best.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-02-28/artificial-intelligence-in-policing-advice-for-new-orleans-and-palantir

  • Amazon vs. Google vs. Microsoft: Big tech firms gird for AI talent battle

    As Quartz points points out, top AI talent is scarce “and companies are willing to pay millions to obtain new talent.” A case-in-point, Google paid more than $500 million in 2014 for UK-based AI startup DeepMind. And we’ll see millions more paid for AI startups, scientists and engineers as the talent war heats up.

    Separately, Microsoft’s Cortana has a new boss. Javier Soltero, who formerly worked on Office will now be in charge of Cortana. He’ll report to Harry Shum, who’s the head of AI for the company.

    https://martechtoday.com/amazon-vs-google-vs-microsoft-big-tech-firms-gird-ai-talent-battle-211894
    They went with “gird” in the headline, I wonder if AI wrote it.

Cloud

  • The Best Thing for Dropbox Was Breaking Up With the Cloud

    Those paragraphs in the public offering document (page 67) summarize the difficult and nerdy work to shift a vast volume of Dropbox users’ digital files from Amazon’s computer networks to Dropbox’s own and to close dormant accounts to free up storage capacity. This yearslong shift to wean Dropbox off Amazon Web Services wasn’t glamorous work, but it improved Dropbox’s finances substantially. Without exaggeration, the shift away from cloud computing is one of the biggest reasons Dropbox is able to go public now.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/articles/2018-03-01/dropbox-s-best-move-was-breaking-up-with-amazon-s-cloud

  • Nasty, new security threats are scaring .govs to the cloud

    “I believe that the leadership within the government is ready for this change,” Wood said. AWS’ Commercial Cloud Services, or C2S, and Secret Commercial Cloud Service, or SC2S, are the “secret” and “top secret” clouds, respectively, Wood explained. The intelligence community — including its military components — have been working together to assess the security features of these clouds. The group of 38 assessors clearly see the benefits and are gaining confidence that the data is protected and are now closer to reciprocity than ever before.

    A common vernacular for cybersecurity pros has hurt attempts to build expertise and strong security standards and systems in the past. The signing of the president’s executive order on cybersecurity is now mandating the adoption of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework.

    https://siliconangle.com/blog/2018/02/23/nasty-new-security-threats-scaring-govs-cloud-awspublicsector/

  • Apple may no longer be using Microsoft’s Azure

    The updated Apple security guide now lists Amazon’s S3 and the Google Cloud Platform as where some encrypted “chunks” of files are stored. Apple’s iCloud stores users’ contacts, calendars, photos and documents, among other types of information. iCloud also is used by some third-party apps to store and sync documents and key values for app data, Apple’s security guide notes.

    CRN reported in March 2016 that Google signed on Apple as a customer for the Google Cloud platform, citing “multiple sources with knowledge of the matter.” At that time, CRN also reported that Apple had “significantly reduced its reliance on Amazon Web Services,” though had not abandoned AWS entirely.

    http://www.zdnet.com/article/apple-may-no-longer-be-using-microsofts-azure/
    Interesting timing to reduce reliance on AWS as both companies race to be the first one trillion dollar company.

Security

  • Equifax finds another 2.4 million people affected by its data breach

    “This is not about newly discovered stolen data,” Paulino do Rego Barros, Jr., Equifax’s Interim CEO, said in a statement. “It’s about sifting through the previously identified stolen data, analyzing other information in our databases that was not taken by the attackers and making connections that enabled us to identify additional individuals.” Equifax said that because the attackers appeared to be focused on obtaining social security numbers, that’s what their investigation centered on during its initial phases. These additional 2.4 million individuals didn’t have their social security numbers stolen and were therefore not spotted earlier in the investigation.

    https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/01/equifax-2-4-million-more-people-affected-data-breach/

  • Apple to Start Putting Sensitive Encryption Keys in China

    The keys are complex strings of random characters that can unlock the photos, notes and messages that users store in iCloud. Until now, Apple has stored the codes only in the U.S. for all global users, the company said, in keeping with its emphasis on customer privacy and security.

    While Apple says it will ensure that the keys are protected in China, some privacy experts and former Apple security employees worry that moving the keys to China makes them more vulnerable to seizure by a government with a record of censorship and political suppression.

    “Once the keys are there, they can’t necessarily pull out and take those keys because the server could be seized by the Chinese government,” said Matthew Green, a professor of cryptography at Johns Hopkins University. Ultimately, he says, “It means that Apple can’t say no.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-to-start-putting-sensitive-encryption-keys-in-china-1519497574

  • GitHub survives massive DDoS attack relatively unscathed

    GitHub, a web-based code distribution and version control service, survived a massive denial of service attack on Wednesday. According to a report at Wired, a staggering 1.35 terabits per second (Tbps) of traffic hit the site at once. Within 10 minutes the company called for help from a DDoS mitigation service similar to Google’s Project Shield, Akamai’s Prolexic, which took over to filter and weed out malicious traffic packets. The attack, says Wired, ended after eight minutes. This may have been the largest DDoS attack ever; Wired notes the attack on domain name server Dyn in late 2016 reached 1.2 Tbps of traffic.

    https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/01/github-survives-massive-ddos-attack-relatively-unscathed/

Software/SaaS

  • LittleThings blames its shutdown on Facebook algorithm change

    Then Facebook made another big change to its algorithm, one that was supposed to prioritize content from friends and family over news publishers. Speiser said this cut LittleThings’ influencer and organic traffic (which was its most valuable traffic) by 75 percent.

    “No previous algorithm update ever came close to this level of decimation,” he wrote. “The position it put us in was beyond dire. The businesses looking to acquire LittleThings got spooked and promptly exited the sale process, leaving us in jeopardy of our bank debt convenants and ultimately bringing an expedited end to our incredible story.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/02/28/littlethings-shutdown/?ncid=rss
    This is what happens when you base a business model completely on a platform you don’t own or control.

  • While Facebook spars with critics, Twitter goes for humility on social media

    Twitter’s smaller size relative to Facebook also may help it repair its image because it’s not as dominant as Facebook. The media and marketing community is also eager for platform allies to counter Facebook and Google’s enormity, and Twitter has given the impression it wants to get out ahead of the trolls, bots and other abuses of its service. But as with Facebook, Twitter is vulnerable for having let the abuse problem continue as long as it has, and the PR goodwill will only last so long. It also has a chance to get out ahead of its role being spotlighted in probes of Russia’s meddling in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election in 2016.

    To one publishing executive, Dorsey came off as “sincere, not defensive. But they have to actually do something. Talk is cheap. If they want to become a credible publishing entity, they need to take responsibility. And that means action.”

    https://digiday.com/media/facebook-spars-critics-twitter-goes-humility-social-media/

Other

  • Apple Is Going to Be the First Trillion-Dollar Company

    Apple’s board of directors had most recently authorized a $210 billion share-repurchase program that is expected to be completed by March 2019, according to Apple investor relations. That was before the very corporate friendly 2017 tax reform bill was passed. I would expect that bill will encourage even more share repurchases. We should not be surprised to see a 10 or even 20 percent share count reduction over the next five years.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-01/apple-is-going-to-be-the-first-trillion-dollar-company

  • IBM gives Services staff until 2019 to get agile

    IBM has spent years telling the world that its Notes suite is as fine a collaboration environment as there is to be found anywhere, if only you’d give it a chance and appreciate its charms. But among the changes required to demonstrate agility is cessation of email use in favour of devops darling Slack. Staff are also expected to start using WebEx.

    Come September 30, IBM wants its services staff to have hit level-three agility maturity, and to see “positive trending of agile metrics.” Come December 30, Big Blue wants “continuous improvement leading to client advocacy.”

    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/26/ibm_gives_services_staff_until_2019_to_get_agile/
    IBM report, “Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?”

    “There’s been a feeling historically that the elephants can’t dance, the incumbents will find it hard to respond and that everyone will be Uber-ed or Airbnb-ed out of existence,” Mark Foster, senior vice president of IBM Global Business Services, told Reuters in an interview.

    “But what we are seeing is, actually, there is a limit as to how far that can go.”

    While some sectors had been hugely disrupted by new digital entrants and some intermediaries were pushed out, many of those changes were now being led by existing industry players, he said.

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/02/ibm-report-elephants-dance-180225153412288.html

  • How SoftBank, World’s Biggest Tech Investor, Throws Around Its Cash

    They describe a man who sometimes makes gut-instinct decisions in businesses he knows little about—such as the time he spent about 30 minutes deciding he wanted to invest $200 million in a startup that grows vegetables indoors. Other times, he compiles an elaborate analysis, inundating his directors with hundreds of pages of documents to help explain an investment target.

    To strike quickly, he sometimes commits to investments before getting approval from his fund’s investment committee, some of these people say. And he often spars with his executives and board members over his proposals until they are convinced or acquiesce.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-does-the-worlds-biggest-tech-investor-make-its-bets-unpredictably-1519661008

Photo: Kevin Stoop