Category: Supplier Report

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Supplier Report: 10/26/2018

Amazon’s stock took a hit this week due to analysts’ lowered expectations about Q4 spending despite record profits. Will that retail downturn leak into corporate spending?

Oracle is having a moment thanks to their annual “Oracle World” conference. The company announced the acquisition of an AI company and maintained their tradition of s**t talking about their competitors in the press.

Acquisitions

  • Oracle acquires DataFox, a developer of ‘predictive intelligence as a service’ across millions of company records

    Oracle today announced that it has made another acquisition, this time to enhance both the kind of data that it can provide to its business customers, and its artificial intelligence capabilities: it is buying DataFox, a startup that has amassed a huge company database — currently covering 2.8 million public and private businesses, adding 1.2 million each year — and uses AI to analyse that to make larger business predictions.

    Terms of the deal do not appear to have been disclosed but we are trying to find out. DataFox — which launched in 2014 as a contender in the TC Battlefield at Disrupt — had raised just under $19 million and was last valued at $33 million back in January 2017, according to PitchBook. Investors in the company included Slack, GV, Howard Linzon, and strategic investor Goldman Sachs among others.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/22/oracle-acquires-datafox-a-developer-of-predictive-intelligence-as-a-service-and-a-trove-of-company-information/

  • Facebook on Hunt for Big Cybersecurity Acquisition

    In its current acquisition efforts, the company is most likely to look at software that it could wrap into its own systems, including things like analytics or tools to flag unauthorized access, people familiar with its thinking said. Companies in these categories include Demisto, JASK and Swimlane, each of which are privately held and would likely cost somewhere in the hundreds of millions of dollars. It could also look for technology that could help users keep their accounts more secure or add privacy features, the people said. Some companies in this category include ZeroFOX and SafeGuard Cyber, both of which help assess accounts for risk of attack or prevent attacks. ZeroFOX has raised more than $80 million to date and SafeGuard Cyber $14.9 million.

    https://www.theinformation.com/articles/facebook-on-hunt-for-big-cybersecurity-acquisition

Artificial Intelligence

  • China’s Baidu challenges Google with A.I. that translates languages in real-time

    Baidu is China’s largest search engine and for that reason has often been compared to Google. Its latest product comes over a year after Google unveiled the Pixel Buds, a set of wireless headphones that it claims can do live translation.

    Huang said Baidu is looking to integrate the AI interpreter into its Wi-Fi translator, a product it unveiled earlier this year which is both a portable internet hub and translator. The company will also use this technology to translate speeches at its annual Baidu World Conference on November 1 in Beijing, China.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/24/baidu-challenges-google-with-ai-that-translates-languages-in-real-time.html

Cloud

  • Oracle’s Larry Ellison keeps poking AWS because he has no choice

    This was about showmanship. It was about chest beating and it’s about going after the market leader because frankly, the man has little choice. By now, it’s well documented that Oracle was late to the cloud. Larry Ellison was never a fan and he made it clear over the years, but today as the world shifts to a cloud model, his company has had to move with it.

    To make matters worse, Oracle’s late start puts it well behind market leader AWS. Hence, Ellison shouting from the rooftops how much better his company’s solutions are and how insecure the competitors are. Synergy Research, which follows the cloud market closely, has pegged Amazon’s cloud market share at around 35 percent. It has Oracle in the single digits in the most recent data from last summer (and the market hasn’t shifted dramatically since it came out with this data).

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/24/oracles-larry-ellison-keeps-poking-aws-because-he-has-no-choice/

  • Microsoft crushes quarterly earnings as cloud revenues rise

    Azure revenue grew 93 percent during the company’s fiscal third quarter and 89 percent during its fourth quarter ended in June. Microsoft does not break out specific revenue dollar figures for Azure.

    Microsoft’s commercial cloud business — which combines Azure with subscription cloud-software services Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 — also grew at a slightly slower rate than during the previous quarter, but still increased 47 percent to $8.5 billion.

    https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/microsoft-crushes-quarterly-earnings-as-cloud-revenues-rise/

Security

  • Yahoo to pay $50M, other costs for massive security breach

    Yahoo has agreed to pay $50 million in damages and provide two years of free credit-monitoring services to 200 million people whose email addresses and other personal information were stolen as part of the biggest security breach in history.

    The restitution hinges on federal court approval of a settlement filed late Monday in a 2-year-old lawsuit seeking to hold Yahoo accountable for digital burglaries that occurred in 2013 and 2014, but weren’t disclosed until 2016.

    https://www.apnews.com/2af6d21f80aa4e9483fa32e26f03417c

  • Japan and China Are Getting Along Better, but Not When It Comes to Tech

    Yet Japanese government and business leaders express views in line with Vice President Mike Pence’s recent depiction of China as a nation that seeks technological dominance “by any means necessary” including “forced technology transfer [and] intellectual property theft.”

    China is “making unacceptable demands and seeking to exclude foreign businesses,” said a top Japanese official.

    One response, the official said, would be to block Chinese tech companies from global markets.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/tech-rivalry-shadows-japan-china-summit-1540306548?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

Software/SaaS

  • Linus Torvalds is Back With Linux

    Almost exactly a month after Torvalds’ self-imposed exile, he is back at the helm of the project he started nearly three decades ago. In a note sent to the Linux Kernel mailing list on Monday, Greg Kroah-Hartman, a lead Linux developer, said that he is “handing the kernel tree back” to Torvalds.

    “These past few months has [sic] been a tough one for our community, as it is our community that is fighting from within itself, with prodding from others outside of it,” Kroah-Hartman wrote. “So here is my plea to everyone out there. Let’s take a day or two off, rest, relax with friends by sharing a meal, recharge, and then get back to work.”

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/3km9qb/linus-torvalds-is-back-with-linux

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Investigating Implausible Bloomberg Supermicro Stories

    In this article, we have shown why the technical details of the Bloomberg alleged hack are inaccurate and/or implausible. These technical details were offered to Bloomberg through anonymous sources, so we have no way of doing further fact-checking. We showed why, even if a chip can be produced and placed it would not work as Bloomberg reports. CEOs such as Tim Cook of Apple and Charles Liang of Supermicro and all of the named companies have said that the reporting was untrue or inaccurate. The three security experts named in the two Bloomberg pieces have expressed reservations about what and how Bloomberg has presented the story.

    Bloomberg is standing by their piece, citing 17 sources and over 100 interviews. It seems 9 sources between Apple and Supermicro have contradicting evidence offered by CEOs with a duty to make truthful statements about their companies. There are 2 cited security experts who have reservations, as does the lynchpin expert in the follow-up piece but we do not know if they are included in the tally.

    https://www.servethehome.com/investigating-implausible-bloomberg-supermicro-stories/

Other

  • SoftBank Chief Is Said to Have Canceled Appearance at Saudi Conference

    Word of Mr. Son’s decision not to attend came on Tuesday, the first day of the conference. A representative for SoftBank, the Japanese internet, energy and financial conglomerate, did not immediately respond to a request for comment

    However, Saleh Romeih, an executive with Softbank’s Vision Fund, the biggest technology fund on record, spoke on a panel at the conference on Tuesday, a spokesman for the fund said. The Saudi government is providing $45 billion of the Vision Fund’s nearly $100 billion.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/23/business/saudi-investment-softbank.html

  • Amazon shares fall as record profits are offset by conservative holiday forecasts

    Amazon is still raking in the cash, but its slower than expected customer growth in its web services offerings and a weaker than expected sales outlook for the holiday season shook investor confidence and caused the stock to slide around 5 percent in after-hours trading.

    Profits for the company continued to soar, reaching $2.9 billion, or $5.75 per share, up from $2.5 billion in the second quarter, and handily beating analysts’ estimates of $3.14 per share. Those earnings were offset by slower revenue growth at $56.6 billion versus the $57.1 billion analysts had expected.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/25/amazon-shares-fall-as-record-profits-are-offset-by-conservative-holiday-forecasts/

  • Silicon Valley’s dirty secret: Using a shadow workforce of contract employees to drive profits

    It’s not only in Silicon Valley. The trend is on the rise as public companies look for ways to trim HR costs or hire in-demand skills in a tight labor market. The U.S. jobless rate dropped to 3.7 percent in September, the lowest since 1969, down from 3.9 percent in August, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

    Some 57.3 million Americans, or 36 percent of the workforce, are now freelancing, according to a 2017 report by Upwork. In San Mateo and Santa Clara counties alone, there are an estimated 39,000 workers who are contracted to tech companies, according to one estimate by University of California Santa Cruz researchers.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/22/silicon-valley-using-contract-employees-to-drive-profits.html

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Supplier Report: 10/19/2018

The Pentagon’s “Project Jedi” continues to make headlines this week as Microsoft employees published a letter asking the company to not bid on the work.

Jeff Bezos was interviewed the week and pondered why technology companies would decline an opportunity to work with the military as the “United States has a right to be defended”.

IBM was down 6% this week as cloud and analytics sales were flat. They did score a $240M AI contract with Lenovo, so it isn’t all bad?

Acquisitions

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM Snags $240 Million AI Deal

    Lenovo is now looking to make its commercial PC business more efficient, and it’s turning to IBM’s artificial intelligence technology for help. IBM announced a multiyear deal with Lenovo on Thursday that aims to use AI to reduce customer service and field service costs. The $240 million pact, covering North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, is a win for IBM’s technology support services business.

    https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/10/18/ibm-snags-240-million-ai-deal.aspx

Cloud

  • Jeff Bezos Says Tech Companies Should Work With the Pentagon

    The Amazon founder seemed baffled by the wave of employee dissent that has torn through tech companies over the ethical implications of government contracts. Last week, for example, Google said it would not bid for a Pentagon cloud computing contract called Joint Enterprise Defense Initiative, or JEDI. Google earlier said it would not renew its contract on Project Maven.

    “It doesn’t make any sense to me,” Bezos said of tech companies pulling back from government work. “One of the jobs of the senior leadership team is to make the right decision, even when it’s unpopular.”

    https://www.wired.com/story/amazons-jeff-bezos-says-tech-companies-should-work-with-the-pentagon/

  • Microsoft workers urge company to pass on JEDI

    “Many Microsoft employees don’t believe that what we build should be used for waging war,” the group said in an open letter published Oct. 12 on Medium. The post came as the company itself signaled in a blog post that it was likely to bid on the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure contract, a 10-year, single-source deal designed to provide cloud and advanced computing capabilities to the warfighter in the field.

    The Microsoft employee group is also seeking a set of “AI principles” modeled on the tenets of artificial intelligence put out by Google under pressure from its employees. Google has committed to not developing weaponized AI, as well as AI applications that conduct surveillance outside of “internationally accepted norms” and whose purpose “contravenes widely accepted principles of international law and human rights.”

    https://fcw.com/articles/2018/10/15/jedi-microsoft-dont-bid.aspx

Security

  • Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla come together to end TLS 1.0

    The impact of removing the old protocols shouldn’t be too substantial. All four companies cite usage figures for the old versions; Firefox sees the most TLS 1.0 and 1.1 usage (1.4 percent of all secure connections) while the other three vendors claim a figure below 1.0 percent. The current recommendation is that sites switch to TLS 1.2 (which happens to be the minimum required for HTTP 2.0) and offer only a limited, modern set of encryption algorithms and authentication schemes. TLS 1.3 was recently finalized, but it currently has little widespread adoption.

    https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/10/browser-vendors-unite-to-end-support-for-20-year-old-tls-1-0/

  • Apple ‘Deeply Apologetic’ Over Account Hacks in China

    The Cupertino, Calif.-based company didn’t specify how many users were hit or how much money was stolen, nor did it offer details about how the hackers acquired the users’ Apple IDs and passwords. To help prevent unauthorized access to their accounts, Apple said, people should enable two-factor authentication.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-deeply-apologetic-over-account-hacks-in-china-1539690961?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

Software/SaaS

  • Why IBM’s Brief Growth Streak Just Stalled

    There had been some faint lights at the end of the tunnel here over the past couple of quarters, when they’ve been able to grow their quarterly revenues. That flipped this quarter. Their strategic imperatives, which is really their cloud business, their data analytics business, saw some stumbling blocks. Their growth slowed there. They saw a drop in new signings in that business. That stung a little bit. It’s been a very tough go for IBM. Their best business this quarter, and really a lot this year, is their legacy mainframe business. That will tend to tail off next year.

    https://www.fool.com/investing/2018/10/19/why-ibms-brief-growth-streak-just-stalled.aspx

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Inside the heart of an IBM Cloud Data Center

    Uh… Cool?
  • Dell says its gaming business is worth $3 billion

    According to Frank Azor (who helms the Alienware, Gaming, and XPS divisions at Dell), that number puts Dell’s gaming business at three times the size of its competitors, though Azor apparently didn’t specify which competitors he was referring to. Also unknown is how that number breaks down between the flagship Alienware line and Dell’s more recent, cheaper G Series gaming hardware. It’d be interesting to see how the company’s newer and more budget-friendly options contribute to the overall total.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/18/17994618/dell-gaming-worth-3-billion-alienware

Other

  • Google’s CEO Defends Potential Return to China

    In his most extensive public remarks on the topic, Sundar Pichai said entering China in some ways aligns with the company’s mission to provide information to the world’s population, since one-fifth of those people reside in China. Even complying with China’s censors, he said, Google would be able to deliver search results to more than 99% of queries and in some cases deliver more helpful results than users currently get from local search engines.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-ceo-defends-potential-return-to-china-1539661027

  • Google could finally face serious competition for Android

    Until now, Google has locked phone and tablet makers into its ecosystem. If they wanted to include Google’s apps and services at all, they effectively had to include those apps and services on every consumer Android device that they made (with the exception of inside China, where Google doesn’t operate). That’s meant, for instance, that Samsung likely couldn’t release a variant of the Galaxy S9 that only includes the Galaxy Apps store and the Samsung browser and doesn’t include Chrome, Google Play, or Google search.

    Google said it is incorrect to say the original terms banned Android partners from making any phones or tablets without its apps. The terms only prevented them from selling non-certified versions of Android, the company says; devices that were “compatible” with its apps could still be shipped, even if its apps weren’t included. But it’s unclear whether there are any certified consumer Android devices that do not include Google’s apps.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/18/17989052/google-android-fork-competition-europe-antitrust-commission-lawsuit

  • Netflix criticizes EU over ‘content quota’

    The EU, writes Netflix CEO Reed Hastings in the report, is “currently rewriting its audio visual rules” that will demand streaming services like Netflix “devote a minimum of 30 percent of their catalog to European works.” Netflix’s report acknowledged that catering to a specific audience encouraged more regional original programming for international audiences, but suggested that enforcing quotas on a streaming service could have unwanted negative effects.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/16/17986086/netflix-third-earnings-report-european-union-content-quote-international

Photo by Tobias Cornille on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 10/12/2018

The Source: Boo Hoo Project Jedi

The Pentagon’s $10B JEDI project has had cloud providers up in arms for months. They claim the RFP favors Amazon over everyone else due to scale and the government’s refusal to break up the hosting solution to multiple providers.

Google has dropped out of the bidding process stating the project doesn’t align to their values (or perhaps they realized they wouldn’t win and this is PR spin).

IBM is filing formal complaints days before the final proposal is due while Oracle has been filing complaints for months.

Meanwhile, Apple bought a few companies that allow them to further lock down their supply chain and control the technology that powers their devices.

Acquisitions

  • Apple inks $600M deal to license IP, acquire assets and talent from Dialog to expand chipmaking in Europe

    Apple is paying $300 million in cash to buy a portion of Dialog Semiconductor, a chipmaker based out of Europe that it has been working with since the first iPhone. On top of the $300 million portion of the deal, Apple is also committing a further $300 million to make purchases from the remaining part of Dialog’s business, making it a $600 million deal in total.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/10/apple-is-paying-300m-in-cash-to-buy-a-part-of-dialog-semiconductor-and-expand-its-chipmaking-in-europe/

  • Apple confirms it has acquired Spektral, a Danish computer vision startup, for augmented reality technology

    Apple has purchased Spektral, a computer vision company based out of Denmark that has worked on segmentation technology, a more efficient way to “cut out” figures from their backgrounds in digital images and videos, reportedly for over $30 million.

    This type of technology can be used, for example, to make quicker and more accurate/realistic cut-out images in augmented reality environments, but also for more standard applications like school photos. That was actually the first market the startup targeted, in 2015, although it appeared to shift strategy after that to build up IP and make deeper inroads into video. You can see a demo of how its technology works at the bottom of this post.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/11/apple-has-acquired-spektral-a-danish-computer-vision-startup-for-augmented-reality-technology/

  • SoftBank is considering taking a majority stake in WeWork

    SoftBank may soon own up to 50 percent of WeWork, a well-funded provider of co-working spaces headquartered in New York, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal.

    SoftBank is reportedly weighing an investment between $15 billion and $20 billion, which would come from its $92 billion Vision Fund, a super-sized venture fund led by Japanese entrepreneur and investor Masayoshi Son.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/09/softbank-is-considering-taking-a-majority-stake-in-wework/

  • LinkedIn acquires employee engagement platform Glint

    Terms of the deal are not being disclosed. For some context, Glint had raised nearly $80 million — including these rounds for $27 million and and $20 million in the last two years — was valued at around $220 million in its last round according to PitchBook. Investors included Bessemer Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Shasta Ventures and Meritech Capital Partners.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/08/linkedin-acquires-employee-engagement-and-retention-platform-glint/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Amazon Pulled the Plug on an AI Recruitment Tool That Was Biased Against Women

    Reuters reported on Wednesday that five people close to the project told the outlet that in 2014 a team began building computer programs to automate and expedite the search for talent. Such systems use algorithms that “learn” which job candidates to look for after processing a large amount of historical data. By 2015, the team realized the AI wasn’t weighing candidates in a gender-neutral way.

    “Everyone wanted this holy grail,” one of Reuters’ sources, all of whom requested to be anonymous, said in the report. “They literally wanted it to be an engine where I’m going to give you 100 resumes, it will spit out the top five, and we’ll hire those.”

    According to those engineers, the AI reduced job candidates to a star-review system, like it was reviewing a product on Amazon’s retail site. The computer models were trained on resumes submitted over a 10-year period, most of which came from men. It learned that a successful resume was a man’s resume.

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/evwkk4/amazon-ai-recruitment-hiring-tool-gender-bias

Cloud

  • Google Drops Out of Pentagon’s $10 Billion Cloud Competition

    Google’s announcement on Monday came just months after the company decided not to renew its contract with a Pentagon artificial intelligence program, after extensive protests from employees of the internet giant about working with the military. The company then released a set of principles designed to evaluate what kind of artificial intelligence projects it would pursue.

    “We are not bidding on the JEDI contract because first, we couldn’t be assured that it would align with our AI Principles,” a Google spokesman said in a statement. “And second, we determined that there were portions of the contract that were out of scope with our current government certifications.”

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-08/google-drops-out-of-pentagon-s-10-billion-cloud-competition

  • IBM protests $10B JEDI solicitation

    It is no secret that DOD has steadfastly refused to budge from its strategy of awarding the contract to a single cloud service provider. This has been despite objections from many in industry and pressure from Congress to move toward a multiple award strategy.

    IBM has been commenting and reviewing revisions to the final solicitation but now that the due date is upon us, the next logical step was to file its own protest.

    IBM’s protest filing is not publicly available but Sam Gordy, IBM’s general manager for federal, laid out his argument in a blog posting as well as in an interview with Washington Technology.

    https://washingtontechnology.com/blogs/editors-notebook/2018/10/ibm-jedi-protest.aspx

Security

  • The breach that killed Google+ wasn’t a breach at all

    The vulnerability itself seems to have been relatively small in scope. The heart of the problem was a specific developer API that could be used to see non-public information. But crucially, there’s no evidence that it actually was used to see private data, and given the thin user base, it’s not clear how much non-public data there really was to see. The API was theoretically accessible to anyone who asked, but only 432 people actually applied for access (again, it’s Google+), so it’s plausible that none of them ever thought of using it this way.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/9/17957312/google-plus-vulnerability-privacy-breach-law

Software/SaaS

  • Microsoft Just Did Something Big With 60,000 Patents

    The technology giant said Wednesday it would contribute more than 60,000 of its patents to the Open Invention Network. This is noteworthy because the group’s member companies cross-license their patents to each other to prevent future lawsuits in which companies may allege that another firm’s technology infringes on their own patents.

    http://fortune.com/2018/10/10/microsoft-patents-open-source/

Other

  • Google Appeals $5 Billion EU Fine in Android Case

    Google’s appeal is the latest volley in a series of actions that European regulators and legislators are directing at big tech companies—many led by EU antitrust commissioner Margrethe Vestager, who has emerged as one of the most avid global regulators for big tech firms. Google is already appealing her 2017 decision that fined Google €2.43 billion for allegedly abusing the power of its search engine to favor its own service to show product ads on behalf of online retailers.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-appeals-5-billion-eu-fine-in-android-case-1539109713

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 10/5/2018

California is making headlines for their stance on consumer information protection. They are introducing their own net neutrality laws, they are forcing hardware makers to develop better default passwords, and they are forcing bots to reveal themselves (can’t pass themselves off as humans).

Apple and Amazon are stating they were NOT hacked by China. but Bloomberg thinks differently.

And finally… Elon Musk needs to get off of Twitter with the quickness.

Acquisitions

  • Software Firms Cloudera, Hortonworks to Merge

    The firms expect to generate about $720 million in combined annual revenue and achieve more than $125 million in annual cost savings as a result of the merger.

    Under terms of the deal, Cloudera stockholders will own about 60% of the combined company and Hortonworks stockholders the remaining 40%, the companies said Wednesday.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/software-firms-cloudera-hortonworks-to-merge-1538603060

  • Google acquires AI customer service startup Onward

    Onward’s enterprise chatbot platform leveraged natural language processing to extract meaning from customers’ messages. Drawing on signals like location, login status, and historical activity, it could personalize and contextualize its responses to questions.

    Onward’s visual bot builder, which let clients tailor answers with decision trees, afforded even greater customization. Thanks to integrations with Zendesk, Help Scout, Salesforce, Hubspot, Shopify, Spree, and Solidus, its bots could autonomously track conversations, add leads, and keep tabs on shipments and orders.

    https://venturebeat.com/2018/10/02/google-acquires-onward-an-ai-customer-service-startup/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Can’t spot the bot? In California, automated accounts have to reveal themselves

    a new law that bans automated accounts, more commonly known as bots, from pretending to be real people in pursuit of selling products or influencing elections. Automated accounts can still interact with Californians, according to the law, but they will need to disclose that they are bots.

    The law comes as concerns about social media manipulation remain elevated. With just more than a month to go before the 2018 U.S. midterm elections, social media companies have pledged to crack down on foreign interference.

    https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/can-t-spot-bot-california-automated-accounts-have-reveal-themselves-n915556

Cloud

  • There’s a crack at the heart of Facebook’s advertising business

    As the Post illustrates, Facebook remains a critical tool for niche advertisers looking to reach their far-flung audiences. For big brand advertisers, though, Facebook can be a less certain proposition. That was my takeaway from Tim Peterson’s story in Digiday today about ad buyers’ apathy toward so-called premium programming on Watch, Facebook’s nascent video platform.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/4/17934770/facebook-lgbt-ads-watch-policies

Security

  • Apple and Amazon explicitly deny claims that servers were compromised by Chinese chips

    Both Apple and Amazon are vehemently denying claims that their servers were compromised by Chinese spies following an explosive report from Bloomberg on Thursday. The report claims that spies were able to infiltrate some of the country’s biggest tech companies by inserting microchips the size of “a grain of rice” into Chinese-manufactured servers, part of the tech giants’ infrastructure. The report alleges that the companies discovered the chips on their own and notified US authorities, but both Apple and Amazon are refuting that any of the claims cited in the story are actually founded in reality.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/4/17936968/apple-amazon-deny-servers-chinese-spy-chips

  • California Is Making It Illegal for Devices to Have Shitty Default Passwords

    “The lack of basic security features on internet connected devices undermines the privacy and security of California’s consumers, and allows hackers to turn everyday consumer electronics against us,” state senator Hannah-Beth Jackson, who authored the bill, said in a press release. “This bill ensures that technology serves the people of California, and that security is not an afterthought but rather a key component of the design process.”

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mbd5m4/california-is-making-it-illegal-for-devices-to-have-shitty-default-passwords

Other

  • Amazon eliminates monthly bonuses and stock grants after minimum wage increase

    Several Amazon warehouse employees have criticized the move, stating they would actually be losing thousands in incentive pay. Currently, warehouse workers get two shares of Amazon stock when they’re hired ($1,952.76 per share as of writing), and an additional stock option each year. After the changes take effect, the RSU program will be phased out for stocks that vest in 2020 and 2021, and it will be replaced with a direct stock purchase plan by the end of next year.

    An Amazon warehouse worker told The Verge via email that the news was devastating to fulfillment employees, many of whom depend on their RSU and VCP (variable compensation pay, a performance-based monthly bonus program) incentives on top of their hourly wages. VCP incentives, which are dependent on good attendance and hitting productivity targets, could get Amazon workers an 8 percent monthly bonus, and a 16 percent bonus during the peak November and December seasons.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/3/17934194/amazon-minimum-wage-raise-stock-options-bonus-warehouse

  • Elon Musk Tweet Mocks the Securities and Exchange Commission

    “Before the sun sets today, the SEC and his lawyers will be on the phone,” said Stephen Crimmins, a former SEC litigator now at Murphy & McGonigle PC. “It definitely jeopardizes the settlement.”

    For the settlement to move forward, the SEC could demand additional constraints on Mr. Musk’s activities, Mr. Crimmins added, since the primary concern of the SEC’s case was about how he had acted as a CEO and how he would behave going forward.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-tweet-appears-to-mock-the-securities-and-exchange-commission-1538685320?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

Photo by Claude Piché on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 9/28/2018

Facebook was hacked (again), exposing 50 million users to potential data breaches. Instagram and WhatsApp accounts could also be affected.

As Intel experiences chip shortages, their plan is to focus on getting the high end chips at the door.

Ohh… Elon Musk is getting sued.

Acquisitions

  • Slack buys Astro and shuts down its email app

    It may seem curious for Slack, the giant chat app with the goal of killing email, to buy an email app — but the pairing makes a good deal of sense. Astro’s focus was on business users, and it built out some smart integrations inside of Slack. With the two teams combined, Slack can use Astro’s experience to build a native solution for dealing with emails right inside the chat app.

    There is some bad news, though: Slack is shutting down Astro’s email app. The app will stop functioning on October 10th. That’s unfortunate, given that good third-party email clients have become increasingly hard to come by, and Astro had some features that really made it stand out.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/9/24/17897658/slack-astro-acquisition-email-app-shut-down-integration

  • With Sirius behind it, can Pandora now stage a comeback?

    Sirius XM is all about selling subscriptions to listen to Howard Stern and stations based on genres like 70s, 80s and 90s, and for those who want on-demand music, “now Sirius can cross sell a Spotify clone,” he says. “It’s a winning combination.”

    Pandora’s biggest issue has been its double-edged sword. It is under contract to the record labels in paying higher copyright fees than on-demand outlets, and thus, the more listeners it gets, the more money it has to pay out. Pachter says Pandora has lost over $100 million in 2017 and 2016 due to sky high royalty rates.

    https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2018/09/25/sirius-xm-pandora-comeback/1416707002/

  • DXC Boosts Cloud-First Approach With System Partners Buyout

    System Partners, a provider of customer-centric services like advisory, strategy designing, tailored managed services and the like, boasts more than 100 Salesforce certified consultants in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra.

    Management at DXC Technology believes that the buyout is a strategic move to support and cater to existing customers more efficiently, and strengthen its position in the cloud market

    https://www.nasdaq.com/article/dxc-boosts-cloud-first-approach-with-system-partners-buyout-cm1029023

Artificial Intelligence

Cloud

  • Rising Cloud Bills May Get a Breather

    It is a big food chain that’s gotten much bigger quickly. Total capital spending by the four aforementioned companies has jumped by an average of 45% on a year-over-year basis for the past six quarters. The four spent a total of $34.7 billion in the first six months of this year—up 59% from the same period last year. But analysts for Morgan Stanley expect that pace to decelerate to growth of 45% for the second half and warned in a note this week that it could slow further to “low double digits” next year.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/rising-cloud-bills-may-get-a-breather-1538128800

  • Microsoft, IBM sign up to cheaper cloud alliance

    GeekWire is reporting that Cloudflare has brought in Microsoft, IBM, Digital Ocean, Automattic and Backblaze under a single banner called the Bandwidth Alliance.

    Scheduled to be announced today, during Cloudflare’s eighth birthday party, the group’s goal is to make sure Cloudflare’s customers using their services pay either significantly cheaper prices, or pay nothing at all, for the traffic that passes through locations where their networks are connected to Cloudflare’s services.

    https://www.itproportal.com/news/microsoft-google-sign-up-to-cheaper-cloud-alliance/

Security

  • France records big jump in privacy complaints since GDPR

    France’s CNIL agency said today that it’s received 3,767 complaints since May 25, when GDPR came into force, up from 2,294 complaints over the same period last year — which it notes was already a record year.

    CNIL says this represents a 64% increase in complaints, which it suggests shows that EU citizens have “seized the GDPR strongly” — attributing public engagement on the issue to media attention on the new regulation and on data protection stories such as the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data misuse scandal.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/25/france-records-big-jump-in-privacy-complaints-since-gdpr/

  • Facebook Is Breached by Hackers, Putting 50 Million Users’ Data at Risk

    Three software flaws in Facebook’s systems allowed hackers to break into user accounts, including those of the top executives Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg, according to two people familiar with the investigation but not allowed to discuss it publicly. Once in, the attackers could have gained access to apps like Spotify, Instagram and hundreds of others that give users a way to log into their systems through Facebook.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/28/technology/facebook-hack-data-breach.html

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Intel acknowledges supply issues, will prioritize premium chips

    In the short term, Intel plans to prioritize the premium market, including Xeon and Core processors, so it “can serve the high-performance segments of the market.” Beyond that, the company plans to invest $15 billion in capital expenditures this year, including $1 billion going toward the manufacture of 14nm silicon in the U.S., Ireland and Israel.

    These issues have left the broader PC industry in a rough spot. On the face of it, a shortage due to increased demand seems like a good problem to have, but ultimately a lack of processors could create a major issue if the market continues to grow, perhaps ultimately reversing some of that success.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/09/28/intel-acknowledges-supply-issues-will-prioritize-premium-chips/

  • Verizon hits 1.45Gbps 4G LTE speeds in New York

    The milestone saw it aggregate six channels of spectrum (both licensed and shared — a first in the US). According to Verizon VP of Technology Planning and Development, Bill Stone, the company is laying a “foundation” for its “evolution into 5G.”

    The trial involved aggregating four carriers of licence-assisted access (LTE-LAA) spectrum with licensed PCS and AWS spectrum, according to ZDNet. It also relied on 256 quadrature amplitude moderation (256 QAM) and 4×4 multiple-input multiple-output (4×4 MIMO) technologies — the latter antenna tech is available in 1,100 locations nationwide. Meanwhile, it’s facing fierce 5G competition from rivals AT&T, T-Mobile and Sprint.

    https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/28/verizon-peak-4g-lte-speed-new-york/

Other

  • SEC charges Tesla CEO Elon Musk with fraud

    The SEC complaint alleges that Musk issued “false and misleading” statements and failed to properly notify regulators of material company events. The SEC held a press conference Thursday evening regarding the complaint.

    Among other remedies, the SEC is seeking to bar Musk from serving as an officer or director of a publicly traded company if found guilty.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/27/tesla-falls-4percent-on-report-elon-musk-sued-by-sec.html

Photo by Claudio Schwarz on Unsplash