President Trump’s fight with Amazon continues to be the dominant technology story this week. Pundits on both sides are weighing in on the government’s options to go after Amazon. As Trump’s team devise a potential battle plan, the Department of Defense could give Jeff Bezos billions of dollars of new business (much to Oracle’s frustration).
Apple is making headlines this week for poaching Google’s head of AI to bolster their lagging division. The company also announced they will produce their own CPUs starting in 2020 causing Intel stock to drop 9%.
Facebook’s data security problems continue as Mark Zuckerberg is scheduled to testify in front of Congress on April 11th.
Acquisitions
- The Curious Case of the Belkin Buy
“I can’t put my finger on why, but this acquisition seems weird to me,” writes John Gruber, describing Foxconn’s decision to buy Belkin for $866 million. It is not that weird, especially when you take into account the competitive landscape.
TL: DR version: Foxconn needs to boost margins. Belkin has a great brand but faces an increasingly competitive landscape. It is weirdly about Taiwan vs. China.
https://om.co/2018/03/28/the-curious-case-of-the-belkin-buy/
Artificial Intelligence
- Retailers Race Against Amazon to Automate Stores
Companies are testing robots that help keep shelves stocked, as well as apps that let shoppers ring up items with a smartphone. High-tech systems like the one used by Amazon Go completely automate the checkout process. China, which has its own ambitious e-commerce companies, is emerging as an especially fertile place for these retail experiments.
If they succeed, these new technologies could add further uncertainty to the retail work force, which is already in flux because of the growth of online shopping. An analysis last year by the World Economic Forum said 30 to 50 percent of the world’s retail jobs could be at risk once technologies like automated checkout were fully embraced.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/technology/retailer-stores-automation-amazon.html
- Emmanuel Macron Talks to WIRED About France’s AI Strategy
The key driver should not only be technological progress, but human progress. This is a huge issue. I do believe that Europe is a place where we are able to assert collective preferences and articulate them with universal values. I mean, Europe is the place where the DNA of democracy was shaped, and therefore I think Europe has to get to grips with what could become a big challenge for democracies.
And
We had some innovations that I saw several times in medicine to predict, via better analysis, the diseases you may have in the future and prevent them or better treat you. A few years ago, I went to CES. I was very impressed by some of these companies. I had with me some French companies, but I discovered US, Israeli and other companies operating in the same field. Innovation that artificial intelligence brings into healthcare systems can totally change things: with new ways to treat people, to prevent various diseases, and a way—not to replace the doctors—but to reduce the potential risk.
https://www.wired.com/story/emmanuel-macron-talks-to-wired-about-frances-ai-strategy/
- AI Beats Human Lawyers At Their Own Game (Thanks JD!)
LawGeex pitted 20 experienced attorneys against a three-year-old algorithm trained to evaluate contracts. Spoiler alert: the computer won.
Lawyers and the AI, for instance, were penalized for missing an exemption relevant to the contract, or mistakenly identifying an exemption where it was irrelevant.
In the end, LawGeex’s neural network achieved an average 94 percent accuracy rate, compared to the lawyers’ average of 85 percent. And while it took humans anywhere from 51 minutes to more than 2.5 hours to complete all five NDAs, the AI engine finished in 26 seconds.
https://www.geek.com/tech/ai-beats-human-lawyers-at-their-own-game-1732154/
- Our Robot Overlords Might Be Delayed
Then there’s the question of reliability. Despite computer scientists’ best efforts, algorithms are prone to make spectacular errors — such as mistaking a law-abiding person for a criminal. Worse, it’s often impossible to understand what went wrong: With billions of parameters involved, even an algorithm’s creators often do not know how and why it works. The reliability of an aircraft engine can be predicted, because it’s made of many parts for which we can mostly guarantee performance. Not so with algorithms. This limits their use in situations — such as making financial trades or medical diagnoses — where errors can be disastrous and it’s important to understand the process by which decisions are made.
In other words, there’s nothing very deep about deep learning.
- Apple Hires Artificial-Intelligence Executive From Rival Google
Apple, which is famously secretive, has lagged its peers in publishing research in the field, and that has made it difficult for the company to recruit professors and Ph.D. students from university computer-science programs, say academics and students.
The company’s flagship AI product, Siri, also has fallen behind competitors such as Amazon.com ’s Alexa and Google Voice in the number of tasks it can perform and accuracy. The HomePod, a smart speaker released in February, put a spotlight on some of those shortcomings, according to reviewers.
Mr. Giannandrea, known to colleagues as “JG,” was well-regarded at Google where he was considered a skilled manager adept at leading the engineering team, a person familiar with his work said. He joined the company in 2010 and led efforts to incorporate AI into Google products such as Photos and its Inbox app. He was tapped in 2016 to run its search engine.
Cloud
- Oracle’s CEO Might Have Given Trump Another Reason to Slam Amazon
Oracle chief executive Safra Catz criticized the bidding process for a huge Pentagon cloud computing contract in a private dinner with President Donald Trump on Tuesday, complaining that it seemed designed for Amazon to win, according to people familiar with the matter.
Trump heard her out and said he wants the contract competition to be fair, but made no indication he’d interfere in the bidding, the people said. Oracle (ORCL, +1.38%), where Catz shares the CEO title with Mark Hurd, is competing with Amazon (AMZN, +3.09%) for the contract, a point she didn’t emphasize to Trump, the people said.
http://fortune.com/2018/04/05/safra-catz-donald-trump-oracle-amazon/
I predicted Safra was going to get more involved on SourceCast 113 - As Trump Bashes Amazon, the Government Increasingly Relies on It
The company doesn’t release specifics, but GBH Insights, a research firm, predicts that Amazon’s government business will grow to $2.8 billion in 2018 and $4.6 billion in 2019, up from less than $300 million in 2015. Other company analysts say those projections are optimistic, but not implausible.
An even bigger prize looms: Amazon is seeking a 10-year contract with the Department of Defense that could be worth $10 billion.
Security
- Facebook Says Cambridge Analytica Harvested Data of Up to 87 Million Users
Andy Stone, a spokesman for Facebook in Washington, said the 87 million figure was an estimate of the total number of users whose data could have been acquired by Cambridge Analytica. He said that the estimate was calculated by adding up all the friends of the people who had logged into the Facebook app from which Cambridge Analytica collected profile data.
“We wanted to put out the maximum number of people who could have been affected,” Mr. Zuckerberg told reporters.
It remains unclear exactly how many users had their personal information accessed by Cambridge Analytica. The firm said Wednesday that it had licensed data for no more than 30 million users of the social network.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/technology/mark-zuckerberg-testify-congress.html
- Saks, Lord & Taylor Hit With Data Breach
So far, 125,000 cards that had been used at Saks or Lord & Taylor have been released for sale by the hackers, according to Gemini Advisory. Some were cards that were used by card owners as recently as last month in one of the affected stores, according to Dmitry Chorine, Gemini Advisory’s chief technology officer.
The group behind the hack is known as JokerStash Syndicate or Fin 7. It appears to have penetrated the retailers’ point of sale systems, Mr. Chorine said.
After previous breaches the JokerStash group has released credit-card data in smaller batches, to avoid flooding the market for illegally obtained payment credentials, Mr. Chorine said.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/saks-lord-taylor-hit-with-data-breach-1522598460?mg=prod/accounts-wsj
Software/SaaS
- Tech Thinks It Has a Fix for the Problems It Created: Blockchain
Most of the biggest internet companies make their money from collecting personal information and using it to sell targeted advertisements. This kind of massive data collection makes them vulnerable to hackers and outsiders who want to leverage the data — as was evident when Cambridge Analytica improperly gained access to 50 million Facebook profiles. And start-ups are using the blockchain in an attempt to pry control of all that data out of their hands.
Blockstack has built a way to record the basic details about your identity on a blockchain database and then use that identity to set up accounts with other online projects that are built on top of it.
The animating force behind the project is that users — rather than Blockstack or any other company — would end up in control of all the data they generate with any online service.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/01/technology/blockchain-uses.html
- Mozilla’s radical open-source move helped rewrite rules of tech
When Mozilla was born, open-source software was a counterculture oddity that flew in the face of a software industry used to selling proprietary products. But today, it powers just about every tech company out there — Google, Facebook and yes, even that old open-source nemesis, Microsoft. Mozilla wasn’t the first open-source project, but it fanned the flames of a way of thinking that brought us ubiquitous social networks, mobile operating systems and thousands of apps.
“It was a Hail Mary pass,” said Chris DiBona, director of open source at Google. “But somebody caught the ball and ran with it.”
Now it’s the norm. Google releases five or six open-source projects every single day — more than 12,000 in total so far. It’s common enough that Google automated the process so no humans are needed to review the decision. It’s hard to overstate how profound a change that is for people who program for a living.
https://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-open-source-firefox-move-helped-rewrite-tech-rules-anniversary/
- Oracle v. Google Proves Again Why Fair Use Is So Troublesome
This decision understandably has far-reaching ramifications for those in the software development field. Copying even a relatively small amount of code is now unlikely to be considered “too small” to be considered an infringement. Furthermore, the re-contextualization of code from one device format to another (such as desktop to mobile) is now less likely to be considered transformative use of that code and, as a result, ultimately less likely to be found to be a fair use.
Even outside the tech space, this decision serves as yet another example of the unpredictability of fair-use determinations and further evidence of why the doctrine of fair use is “the most troublesome in the whole law of copyright.” As courts at both the trial and appellate levels increasingly decide the issue of fair use as a matter of law – and significant questions of whether and when the issue can even be tried to a jury – it is becoming increasingly difficult to take comfort that one’s use of another’s copyrighted work will be considered “fair.”
https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/oracle-v-google-proves-again-why-fair-52496/
Datacenter/Hardware
- Apple Plans to Use Its Own Chips in Macs From 2020, Replacing Intel
Apple Inc. is planning to use its own chips in Mac computers beginning as early as 2020, replacing processors from Intel Corp., according to people familiar with the plans.
The initiative, code named Kalamata, is still in the early developmental stages, but comes as part of a larger strategy to make all of Apple’s devices — including Macs, iPhones, and iPads — work more similarly and seamlessly together, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. The project, which executives have approved, will likely result in a multi-step transition.
Other
- Will Amazon be your next bank and health insurance?
Yet whenever claims of monopolistic practices are levered against it, Amazon quickly points out that e-commerce represents less than 10% of brick-and-mortar sales. Furthermore, it claims that Walmart sales alone – over $500 billion in 2017 – are almost three times bigger than Amazon’s. Add to this the fact that prices are kept low at Amazon and you can dismiss any charge of Amazon abusing its dominant position.
These arguments miss the main point raised by Khan in her “Amazon Paradox” note: Amazon should not be persecuted for antitrust based on consumer welfare criteria or overall retail market share dominance. Rather, more modern antitrust laws should focus on the methods online platforms the size of Amazon can use to inhibit competition. These methods include predatory pricing based on real-time analysis of marketplace competitors and vertical integration of logistics. Thanks to Amazon’s highly complementary business models, it has created a physical and online infrastructure empire that is quickly becoming the only competitive way to satisfy the growing need of instant gratification by online shoppers. Lured by the lock-in mechanisms built into the “Prime” subscription services (which offers free next-day delivery and video streaming to subscribers), consumers cannot help but be ecstatic with this online shopping paradise. One quickly understands why Amazon Prime now captures 46% of online shoppers in the US and why the barriers to entry are becoming increasingly insurmountable to upstarts in this field.
https://www.econotimes.com/Will-Amazon-be-your-next-bank-and-health-insurance-1232163
- Why a Trump-Led Antitrust Case Against Amazon Is a Long Shot
If Mr. Trump did decide to pursue any new regulations, he would either have to push a law through a Republican Congress that is unlikely to be receptive to more regulation or involve the Justice Department and other regulators to bring a case before the courts, Mr. Melamed said.
“It’s a huge amount of work, with a very dubious pay off,” he adds.
A White House spokeswoman on Thursday said “the president has expressed his concerns with Amazon. We have no actions at this time.”
- Justice Department asks Supreme Court to moot Microsoft email case, citing new law
On March 23, Congress passed, and President Trump signed, the Cloud Act. The law states that a “provider of electronic communication service” shall comply with a court order for data “regardless of whether such communication, record or other information is located within or outside of the United States.”
Microsoft supported the legislation, which also provides a way to facilitate — through bilateral agreements — foreign law enforcement agencies’ access to data held inside the United States.
The Justice Department on Friday obtained a new search warrant requiring Microsoft to turn over the emails. “Microsoft no longer has any basis for suggesting that such a warrant is impermissibly extraterritorial,” Solicitor General Noel J. Francisco wrote in a motion to the Supreme Court. “There is thus no longer any live dispute between the parties, and the case is now moot.”
- Tesla is now worth less than Ford
Tesla’s stock price is falling and in doing so, has retreated on milestones it set last year. As of publication, the company’s value is less than Ford’s for the first time in a year. At current levels, Tesla’s market cap is $42.063 billion while Ford is trading at $43.588. It was a year ago tomorrow that Tesla overtook Ford’s market cap.
https://techcrunch.com/2018/04/02/tesla-is-now-worth-less-than-ford/
- Samsung surpasses IBM with most patents filed in US
Samsung Electronics has overtaken IBM as the holder of the most US patents as of the beginning of 2018, according to new data. The South Korean tech firm owned 75,596 US patents, outdoing the second best IBM by nearly 1.6 times.
“Even though IBM continually out-files other companies, its assets are also ageing; in addition, it is known for abandoning a number of its patents relatively early in their lifetimes.” “As (IBM’s) assets grow older, it will have to innovate more (or acquire more patent assets) to keep pace,” the report added.
Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash