Tag: Amazon

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Supplier Report: 5/15/2020


Photo by Frida Bredesen on Unsplash

Another sign that a recovery is starting… companies are starting to buy other companies again. Microsoft and Zoom are on the move. Intel announced an acquisition last week. But Covid-19 is also being used to rethink and get out of existing deals (see SoftBank).

Meanwhile, Amazon can’t get over their loss to Microsoft for the Pentagon’s JEDI contract… and they are going after each other on their own personal blogs (this is high school level drama).

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Buyers’ Remorse Is Catching in the Coronavirus Era

    Several multibillion-dollar deals have already been scuttled. SoftBank Group Corp. has pulled out of a $3 billion promise to buy stock from employees of WeWork, while Mirae Asset Global Investments Co. canceled the $5.8 billion purchase of 15 U.S. luxury hotels from Anbang Insurance Group Co. WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann and Dajia Insurance Group (which took over Anbang’s assets after it was seized by the Chinese government) both contend that the buyers have used legally faulty pretexts to justify their actions, and they are suing.

    Using the fine print to renege on a deal isn’t pretty, but it’s understandable in an environment where virus-related lockdowns have ravaged economies across the world. Forecasts and valuation estimates predating the pandemic have been rendered all but meaningless.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-05-05/m-a-deals-founder-as-coronavirus-fuels-buyer-s-remorse

  • Microsoft to Buy Israeli Cybersecurity Startup CyberX

    The U.S. software giant Microsoft is expected to announce in the next few days that it has signed a deal to acquire the Israeli industrial cybersecurity startup CyberX for what sources say will be $165 million.

    TheMarker revealed before the coronavirus crisis that the two sides were in negotiations. They are now in the midst of getting signatures on the deal from all of CyberX’s shareholders.

    CyberX has developed an internet of things cybersecurity platform for factories and industrial control systems, using machine learning to analyze real-time activities and identifying anomalies. The IoT segment is different in many respects from cybersecurity for computers and servers, where Microsoft is active.

    https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/.premium-microsoft-to-buy-israeli-cybersecurity-startup-cyberx-1.8823367

  • Zoom buys Keybase — its first acquisition — as part of 90-day plan to fix security flaws

    The acquisition of the 25-person start-up is the latest move in a 90-day plan that Zoom announced on April 1 to fix its security flaws. Zoom CEO Eric Yuan told CNBC the company needed a solution for users who are demanding the highest level of privacy and certainty that uninvited participants have no access to their conversations.

    When Keybase is implemented, the Zoom user who schedules a meeting will be able to choose end-to-end encryption. That setting will prevent anyone from calling in by phone, which is one way people can access meetings, and will disable cloud-based recording of the chat. Yuan said it’s critical that users know that the encryption key is not on Zoom’s servers, so the company has no access to the contents of the call.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/07/zoom-buys-keybase-in-first-deal-as-part-of-plan-to-fix-security.html

Cloud

  • IBM CEO Lays Out New Initiatives in Cloud, AI

    Mr. Krishna said the company believes the marketplace adoption of hybrid cloud technology is only about 20% complete, and that the adoption of AI is about 4% complete.

    The pandemic will “dramatically accelerate” the adoption of hybrid-cloud and AI, Mr. Krishna said, as companies turn to cloud services to help their employees work and serve customers remotely, as well as to AI to automate certain types of work.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-ceo-lays-out-new-initiatives-in-cloud-ai-11588651261

  • Bid high, lose, try again. Amazon continues to push for a JEDI re-do

    We received notice on Tuesday that Amazon has filed yet another protest – this time, out of view of the public and directly with the DoD – about their losing bid for the JEDI cloud contract. Amazon’s complaint is confidential, so we don’t know what it says. However, if their latest complaint mirrors the arguments Amazon made in court , it’s likely yet another attempt to force a re-do because they bid high and lost the first time.

    The only thing that’s certain about Amazon’s new complaint is that it will force American warfighters to wait even longer for the 21st-century technology they need – perpetuating Amazon’s record of putting its own interests ahead of theirs.

    This latest roadblock is disappointing but not surprising. As my colleague Jon Palmer made clear in a recent blog, Amazon wants a do-over on JEDI . As Jon wrote, “Amazon would have you believe that it lost the award because of bias at the highest levels of government. But Amazon, alone, is responsible for the pricing it offered. As the government explained in its brief: ‘AWS and Microsoft each had a fair chance to build pricing for the entire procurement, based on their overall business pricing.’ Amazon did build its pricing for the entire procurement, and it wasn’t good enough to win.”

    https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2020/05/07/amazon-jedi-re-do-dod/
    Amazon and Microsoft are trash talking each other over a DoD contract

    Drew Herdener, Amazon’s Vice President of Worldwide Communications responded in a blog post of his own today. It starts out level-headed: “Since we filed our protest, we’ve been clear in our intent: we don’t think the JEDI award was adjudicated fairly, we think political interference blatantly impacted the award decision, and we’re committed to ensuring the evaluation receives a fair, objective, and impartial review.”

    But then, things take a hard left turn. Herdener called Microsoft’s blog posts “self-righteous and pontificating,” and went on to state, “Nobody knowledgeable and objective believes they have the better offering. And, this has been further underscored by their spotty operational performance during the COVID-19 crisis (and in 2020 YTD).” Herdener even attacked the DoD: “This could have been easily avoided if [the DoD] had chosen to be responsive in any of the multiple requests we’ve made in the last two weeks.”

    https://www.engadget.com/amazon-microsoft-jedi-fight-154208730.html

Other

  • WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann accuses SoftBank of abusing its power in new lawsuit

    The lawsuit, filed in Delaware Court of Chancery, included a motion to consolidate his case with a lawsuit filed last month by a Special Committee of WeWork’s board. Both lawsuits focus on SoftBank Group and its Vision Fund’s decision to back out of a deal to buy shares of the co-working company.

    SoftBank Group pulled its $3 billion tender offer for WeWork shares April 1, citing COVID-19’s impact on the business but also closing conditions not being met. Specifically, it pointed to outstanding regulatory investigations, a growing body of litigation against the company and the failure to restructure a joint venture in China as reasons to torpedo the agreement.

    “SoftBank will vigorously defend itself against these meritless claims,” Rob Townsend, senior vice president and chief officer at SoftBank, said in a statement. “Under the terms of our agreement, which Adam Neumann signed, SoftBank had no obligation to complete the tender offer in which Mr. Neumann – the biggest beneficiary – sought to sell nearly $1 billion in stock.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/04/wework-co-founder-adam-neumann-accuses-softbank-of-abusing-its-power-in-new-lawsuit/

  • Uber lays off 14 percent of its workforce in COVID-19-related cost-cutting

    Uber will lay off 3,700 full-time employees, or around 14 percent of its global workforce, the company said in filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. In addition, Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi will forgo his salary for the rest of the year as the company continues to struggle in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

    The layoffs are expected to hit the company’s customer support and recruiting divisions. Uber says it will incur approximately $20 million in severance and other termination-related expenses. Last week, The Information reported that Uber’s top executives were considering laying off as many as 20 percent of the company’s workforce.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/6/21249131/uber-layoffs-coronavirus-pandemic-cost-cutting-ceo-salary

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Supplier Report: 5/8/2020


Photo by Martino Pietropoli on Unsplash

The shadow of COVID19 continues to loom.

Amazon is warning stockholders that they plan to spend $4B in operational expenses protecting employees and combating the strain. Pandemic darling Zoom announced a new cloud contract with Oracle (which makes sense since Microsoft, Google, and Amazon have their own competing video conference platforms).

SoftBank’s financial woes continue and they cannot rely on a strong economy for a rebound. Their investments in WeWork continue to sour due to isolation orders globally and I don’t see things getting better for WeWork or SoftBank anytime soon… but relaxed Japanese banking systems could help.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Intel to buy smart urban transit startup Moovit for $1B to boost its autonomous car division

    Sources tell TechCrunch that the startup — which had previously been backed by Intel Capital in a strategic investment — will become part of Intel’s Israeli automotive hub, which is anchored by Mobileye, the autonomous driving company that Intel acquired for $15.3 billion in 2017.

    It’s not clear yet what Moovit would be doing in that hub, but as a rule, ingesting and actioning reliable, real-time traffic data and intelligent routing — the crux of what Moovit does — are some of the most challenging aspects of getting autonomous vehicle services up and running.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/03/intel-to-buy-smart-urban-transit-startup-moovit-for-1b-to-boost-its-autonomous-car-division/

  • SoftBank to write down WeWork by $6.6 billion, compounding portfolio misery

    The tech conglomerate has poured more than $13.5 billion into WeWork, one of a string of troubled bets by CEO Masayoshi Son that have laid waste to SoftBank’s full-year earnings.

    The group maintained its forecast of a record annual operating loss of 1.35 trillion yen announced earlier this month.

    The darkening future for WeWork with customers in lockdown comes as deep-seated problems from SoftBank’s cash-fuelled push for rapid expansion are being compounded by the coronavirus outbeak.

    SoftBank shares pared gains to close up 0.5% compared to a 2.1% rise in the benchmark index .N255. The group has launched a record 2.5 trillion yen buyback to support its share price. CEO Son uses his SoftBank shares as collateral for loans.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-softbank-group-results/softbank-sees-84-billion-net-loss-on-wework-writedown-idUSKBN22C011

Cloud

  • Oracle wins cloud computing deal with Zoom as video calls surge

    The deal is a big win for Oracle, which wants to catch up with rivals such as Amazon.com (AMZN.O) and Microsoft (MSFT.O) that have greater market share, and is selling a new generation of cloud technology after its first generation efforts failed to gain traction.

    Zoom and Oracle did not disclose the size of the deal, but said traffic for “millions” of meeting participants is being handled by Oracle’s cloud service and about 7 million gigabytes of Zoom data per day is flowing through Oracle servers.

    “It’s exciting to be able to come on to a platform and scale very rapidly,” Zoom’s Chief Technology Officer Brendan Ittelson told Reuters in an interview.

    Zoom’s service ran on a mixture of its own data center gear and cloud computing services from Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure, but it began working with Oracle about six weeks ago.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-oracle-zoom-video-commn/oracle-wins-cloud-computing-deal-with-zoom-as-video-calls-surge-idUSKCN22A1R9
    And now we understand why Larry was saying nice things about Zoom. He was working the deal. It is sad that everybody was expecting news like this because it is so out of character for Ellison to compliment other technology companies not in his pocket.

  • Microsoft signs Coca-Cola to 5-year cloud technology and business software deal

    The companies describe the agreement as a strategic partnership. Microsoft says Coca-Cola’s call center managers will use artificial intelligence in Dynamics 365, for example, to determine which issues are most important for customers such as retailers and vendors in Coke’s supply chain.

    In addition to using Microsoft Teams for smaller meetings and collaboration as many of its employees work from home, the company is using Microsoft 365 Live Events for large-scale video presentations, such as employee town halls.

    The Redmond, Wash.-based tech giant reports quarterly earnings on Wednesday afternoon, providing the first official glimpse of its financial performance since the global COVID-19 pandemic began. Analysts expect Microsoft to post revenue of $33.9 billion for the quarter, up from $30.6 billion a year ago, and earnings of 1.28 per share, up from 1.14 per share a year ago.

    https://www.geekwire.com/2020/microsoft-signs-coca-cola-co-5-year-deal-cloud-tech-business-software-deal/

Software/SaaS

  • Celonis pushes beyond process mining into automated workflow tooling

    “We put all of this together — the intelligence, the action, the automation and we solve business goals for certain departments,” Rinke said.

    For starters, that involves supply chain and finance, but there are plans for building even more applications this year and beyond. The way it works for starters, is it connects to the company’s transactions systems, whether that’s SAP or Oracle or something similar. This is where the Banyas acquisition really comes into play,

    “You can basically put these applications on top of your transaction systems and tell them which business goals you have — like I want to preserve cash or I want to pay on time — and then we analyze the enterprise’s entire processes towards these business goals, and then drive everything, automate things towards these business goals intelligently,” he said.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/28/celonis-moves-beyond-process-discovery-into-automated-workflow-tooling/

  • Can API vendors solve healthcare’s data woes?

    While hospitals, urgent care facilities and health systems have stored patient records electronically for years thanks to laws passed under the Clinton administration, those records were difficult for patients themselves to access. The way the system has been historically structured has made it nearly impossible for an individual to access their entire medical history.

    It’s a huge impediment to ensuring that patients receive the best care they possibly can, and until now it’s been a boulder that companies have long tried to roll uphill, only to have it roll over them.

    Now, new regulations are requiring that the developers of electronic health records can’t obstruct interoperability and access by applications. Those new rules may unlock a wave of new digital services.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/28/can-api-vendors-solve-healthcares-data-woes/

Other

  • Zoom admits it doesn’t have 300 million users, corrects misleading claims

    The misleading blog was edited on April 24th, a day after the numbers made headlines worldwide. After The Verge reached out for comment from Zoom, the company added a note to the blog post admitting the error yesterday, and provided the following statement:

    “We are humbled and proud to help over 300 million daily meeting participants stay connected during this pandemic. In a blog post on April 22, we unintentionally referred to these participants as “users” and “people.” When we realized this error, we adjusted the wording to “participants.” This was a genuine oversight on our part.”

    Zoom’s growth has been impressive, but the company has not actually provided a daily active user count. Zoom usage has soared from 10 million daily meeting participants back in December to 300 million this month. Rivals like Microsoft Teams and Google Meet appear to be closing the gap, though. Microsoft said yesterday it now has 75 million daily active users of Teams, a jump from 70 percent in a month. Microsoft also recorded 200 million meeting participants in a single day this month.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/30/21242421/zoom-300-million-users-incorrect-meeting-participants-statement

  • Amazon says it’ll spend $4 billion or more dealing with COVID-19

    One of the more interesting bits from Bezos’ statement was that Amazon has a team of current employees that are working to build “incremental testing capacity.” So far, the team has built a lab to pilot tests for its frontline employees, and it pledges to share any progress the team makes to the greater effort against COVID-19.

    Amazon’s Q1 2020 performance fell in line with its guidance from late last year, with $4 billion in operating income. Its net sales were at $75.5 billion, which outpaced the growth that it expected last quarter. AWS, its cloud computing services, saw a huge increase year over year, bringing in $10.2 billion this quarter, which is up from $7.7 billion in the same quarter in 2019.

    Against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, these numbers reveal that Amazon — at least so far — is rolling with the punches and keeping up with the unprecedented demand seen for orders around the globe.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/30/21243112/amazon-q1-2020-earnings-covid-19-coronavirus-jeff-bezos

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Supplier Report: 5/1/2020


Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash

The trend for this post is leaders leaving.  AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson is stepping down, John Legere resigns from the T-Mobile board (completely cutting ties), and SAP dropped the co-CEO model a few months after starting it.

Companies are pivoting for the times ahead and certain leaders have other options or just don’t want to deal with the headaches of day-to-day operations (see Disney’s Bob Iger).

Meanwhile, IT news is shifting back to normal… more talk about cloud and AI and less about Zoom and security concerns.

Artificial Intelligence/Robotics

  • Pope Joins Forces with IBM, Microsoft to Develop Artificial Intelligence (AI)

    Pope Francis threw his support behind the development of AI during a speech that was read on his behalf at a conference that was attended by Microsoft president Brad Smith and IBM Executive Vice President John Kelly. At that time, the pope was sick and was unable to deliver the speech himself.

    The joint document specifically referenced the potential abuse that can occur with facial recognition technology.

    “New forms of regulation must be encouraged to promote transparency and compliance with ethical principles, especially for advanced technologies that have a higher risk of impacting human rights, such as facial recognition,” the document stated.

    https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/149005/pope-joins-forces-with-ibm-microsoft-to-develop-artificial-intelligence-ai/

Cloud

  • Google’s Thomas Kurian on COVID-19, customers in crisis and the big cloud fight

    This is a little dark, but it seems like it’s going to be a good shopping opportunity. There’s going to be a lot of companies that don’t come through this, or don’t come through this at the same level that they were at six months ago.

    Over the last year, if you look at what we’ve said repeatedly, yes, we need a very clear, crisp product strategy. I think the feedback we’ve received from customers, from partners has shown that we have now clarified our product strategy. So if we were to do acquisitions, they know how it complements our footprint.

    We’ve also scaled our go-to-market organization significantly, with credit to Rob Enslin and his team. They’ve done a great job and to be honest with you, a lot of examples of customers I gave you [above] were illustrative of the reach that we now have through our customer service and sales organization to help customers through this.

    We continue to work with partners to bring them business. One of the things that we’ve always felt is that the best partnerships are tested during a difficult period, and we remain committed to bringing as much business as we can to the partner community.

    As I said, we’re not ruling in or out any acquisition discussion. We don’t need acquisitions to grow; you’ve seen our growth rates. Nor are we saying we won’t do anything, because it would not make sense to make such a public statement.

    https://www.protocol.com/interview-with-google-cloud-ceo-thomas-kurian

  • IBM First-Quarter Sales Decline as New CEO Aims to Revive Growth

    International Business Machines Corp. IBM 0.24% posted lower first-quarter sales, withdrew annual earnings guidance because of uncertainty caused by the coronavirus pandemic and took a large restructuring charge, highlighting the challenges new Chief Executive Arvind Krishna faces in trying to revive Big Blue’s fortunes.

    IBM on Monday said it was withdrawing full-year earnings guidance that included generating at least $13.35 in adjusted earnings per share, citing the Covid-19 crisis. The company said it would reassess the situation at the end of the current quarter.

    “It was a tough decision to withdraw guidance,” Mr. Krishna told analysts. “But these are unprecedented times, and this quarter is not the time to declare we have clarity—that does not benefit us, and it does not benefit you as investors and analysts.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-first-quarter-sales-decline-as-new-ceo-aims-to-revive-growth-11587415010

  • Amazon Is Running Out of Ways to Stop Microsoft’s JEDI Deal

    Between the fourth quarters of 2018 and 2019, AWS’s share of the global cloud platform market dipped from 33.4% to 32.4%, according to Canalys, while Azure’s market share jumped from 14.9% to 17.6%.

    Azure is growing faster for three main reasons: It’s tightly tethered to Microsoft’s other services, it’s increasingly popular with retailers that have been burned by Amazon, and it’s cheaper for Windows Server and SQL Server users, who are granted prices for “bundled” licenses instead of stand-alone services.

    AWS generates most of Amazon’s operating profits and supports the growth of its lower-margin marketplaces. If Azure keeps pulling customers away from AWS, Amazon’s profit growth could decelerate — which would leave it less room to expand its e-commerce ecosystem with loss-leading strategies.

    AWS generated $35 billion in revenue, or 12% of Amazon’s top line, in 2019. Assuming the JEDI contract pays out $1 billion annually over the next 10 years, it would only lift its AWS revenue by less than 3%.

    https://www.fool.com/investing/2020/04/22/amazon-running-out-ways-stop-microsoft-jedi-deal.aspx

Software/SaaS

  • Fishtown Analytics raises $12.9M Series A for its open-source analytics engineering tool

    “I wrote this blog post in early 2016, essentially saying that analysts needed to work in a fundamentally different way,” Fishtown founder and CEO Tristan Handy told me, when I asked him about how the product came to be. “They needed to work in a way that much more closely mirrored the way the software engineers work and software engineers have been figuring this shit out for years and data analysts are still like sending each other Microsoft Excel docs over email.”

    The dbt open-source project forms the basis of this. It allows anyone who can write SQL queries to transform data and then load it into their preferred analytics tools. As such, it sits in-between data warehouses and the tools that load data into them on one end, and specialized analytics tools on the other.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/22/fishtown-analytics-raises-12-9m-series-a-for-its-open-source-analytics-engineering-tool/

  • Another pandemic woe: Zoom fatigue

    We’re using it for everything now. It would be one thing if we only used Zoom for team meetings and one-on-ones at work. But Zoom is now the go-to tool for informal social gatherings and virtual happy hours, family events and religious services, not to mention kids’ online classes, doctors’ appointments and perhaps a therapy session to process it all.

    Videoconferencing imposes cognitive and psychological frictions and aggravates social anxieties. As experts in human-computer interaction point out, using Zoom means putting on a show for others without being able to rely on the cues we primates depend on in physical encounters.

    https://www.axios.com/zoom-fatigue-coronavirus-teleconferencing-f5c0ce17-483f-4c71-9a7d-f023d7e7a45b.html

Other

  • SAP Drops Co-CEO Structure to Simplify Leadership During Pandemic

    SAP said Co-CEO Jennifer Morgan, 48 years old, would leave the company on April 30.

    “More than ever, the current environment requires companies to take swift, determined action which is best supported by a very clear leadership structure,” SAP said in a written statement. “Therefore, the decision to transfer from Co-CEO to sole CEO model was taken earlier than planned to ensure strong, unambiguous steering in times of an unprecedented crisis.”

    Christian Klein, 39, would stay on as sole CEO, SAP said late Monday in New York.

    Ms. Morgan, who is American, joined SAP in 2004 and ran the company’s cloud-computing business before being elevated last year to co-CEO. Mr. Klein, who is German and joined SAP in 1999 as a student, served as chief operating officer before his co-CEO appointment.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/sap-drops-co-ceo-structure-to-simplify-leadership-during-pandemic-11587425462

  • John Legere abruptly resigns from T-Mobile board of directors ‘to pursue other options’

    “Mr. Legere noted that he was not resigning because of any disagreement with management or the board on any matter,” T-Mobile said in its note, which also contained a quote from Legere addressed to the company and its employees:

    In his notice to the company, Mr. Legere stated “It has been a privilege and honor to have led T-Mobile as CEO for the past seven and a half years and served on the Board of Directors. And although I will be leaving the Board just a few weeks earlier than planned, be assured that I remain T-Mobile’s #1 fan!”

    Whatever Legere has planned next, apparently it couldn’t wait another month and change.

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/4/24/21235226/john-legere-resigns-tmobile-board-directors

  • AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson to step down, COO Stankey to take over

    AT&T announced Friday that CEO Randall Stephenson will retire and will be succeeded by President and COO John Stankey on July 1, months earlier than expected.

    Stephenson, 60, said in February he would remain CEO for the rest of the year, though he refused to project beyond that date. He will remain executive chairman of the board until January. AT&T shares were largely unchanged following the announcement.

    Stankey, who was being groomed as Stephenson’s successor over the last couple years, recently dropped his position as CEO of AT&T’s WarnerMedia, which will soon be led by Hulu co-founder Jason Kilar.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/24/att-ceo-randall-stephenson-to-step-down.html

Posted on

Supplier Report: 4/24/2020


Photo by Gabriel Benois on Unsplash

This truly must be the end of days because Larry Ellison complimented a company that wasn’t Oracle. Ellison gave conferencing tool Zoom (which has had major security issues since their rise to fame) a shout out in a recent news article stating the technology was transformational…

Speaking of security issues, several governments around the world are using technology to track the covid virus and the people infected. Some watch groups are concerned about eroding rights in a time of crisis.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Airbnb Gets $1 Billion Loan, Bringing Coronavirus Funding to $2 Billion

    The San Francisco-based company didn’t disclose Tuesday the terms of the loan or the names of the investors. According to a person familiar with the matter, the loan is five years, and the interest rate will be 7.5%, plus a benchmark rate known as the London interbank offered rate, or Libor.

    Airbnb had planned to start trading publicly this year. Instead, it faced escalating losses as travel ground to a halt, forcing it to raise money privately at a lower valuation than the $31 billion price tag of its last fundraising round in 2017, people close to the company have said.

    Last week, Airbnb said it was raising $1 billion from private-equity firms Silver Lake and Sixth Street Partners. That investment came with a steep price tag: an interest rate of 10%, plus Libor, according to people familiar with the deal.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/airbnb-gets-1-billion-loan-bringing-coronavirus-funding-to-2-billion-11586929819

Security/Privacy

  • How Coronavirus Is Eroding Privacy

    Authorities in Asia, where the virus first emerged, have led the way. Many governments didn’t seek permission from individuals before tracking their cellphones to identify suspected coronavirus patients. South Korea, China and Taiwan, after initial outbreaks, chalked up early successes in flattening infection curves to their use of tracking programs.

    In Europe and the U.S., where privacy laws and expectations are more stringent, governments and companies are taking different approaches. European nations monitor citizen movement by tapping telecommunications data that they say conceals individuals’ identities.

    American officials are drawing cellphone location data from mobile advertising firms to track the presence of crowds—but not individuals. Apple Inc. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google recently announced plans to launch a voluntary app that health officials can use to reverse-engineer sickened patients’ recent whereabouts—provided they agree to provide such information.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-paves-way-for-new-age-of-digital-surveillance-11586963028

Software/SaaS

  • Oracle’s Larry Ellison calls Zoom an ‘essential service’ as coronavirus forces remote work

    Oracle founder and chairman Larry Ellison gave Zoom high praise this week, calling it an “essential service” for his business and others around the world.

    Ellison said in the video posted Monday he believes Zoom will continue to be an important to businesses once workers return to the office.

    “We’re looking forward to the economy being reopened, we’re looking forward to going back to work, but the way we work will never again be the same,” Ellison said. “We will now meet not just face-to-face, we’ll meet sometimes face-to-face and sometimes digitally via Zoom.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/15/oracles-larry-ellison-calls-zoom-an-essential-service.html
    Larry Ellison actually said something nice about another tech company… wow. He must be an investor.

Other

  • Amazon fires two employees who condemned treatment of warehouse workers

    The user experience designers Emily Cunningham and Maren Costa said on Tuesday they had been fired after internally circulating a petition about health risks for Amazon warehouse workers during the Covid-19 crisis. Costa had worked at the company for more than 15 years and Cunningham had been an employee for more than five.

    “I don’t regret standing up with my co-workers,” Costa said in a statement. “This is about human lives, and the future of humanity. In this crisis, we must stand up for what we believe in, have hope, and demand from our corporations and employers a basic decency that’s been lacking in this crisis.”

    An Amazon spokeswoman confirmed the two employees were fired for “repeatedly violating internal policies”, which prohibit employees from commenting publicly on its business without corporate justification and approval from executives.

    “We support every employee’s right to criticize their employer’s working conditions, but that does not come with blanket immunity against any and all internal policies,” the spokeswoman said.

    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/apr/14/amazon-workers-fired-coronavirus-emily-cunningham-maren-costa

  • IBM age discrimination lawsuit suddenly ends, suggests Big Blue was willing to pay to avoid discovery process

    The judge overseeing Jonathan Langley’s age discrimination lawsuit against IBM has dismissed the case, which was scheduled to go to trial later this year.

    The court order [PDF] closing the case, signed on Wednesday by Judge David Ezra in the Texan Western District Court, cites a stipulation of dismissal by Langley and IBM. That suggests the two parties have agreed to settle confidentially out of court.

    The Register asked IBM to confirm that the case has been settled. We’ve not heard back. Langley’s attorneys could not be reached for comment.

    In 2018, Langley sued IBM, claiming age discrimination. He was laid off at the age of 60 after 24 years at the biz. The lawsuit was filed several months after a report from ProPublica and Mother Jones claimed that IBM had embarked on a company-wide campaign to dismiss older workers, a project said to be called Operation Baccarat.

    https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/15/ibm_age_discrimination_lawsuit/

Posted on

News You Can Use: 4/15/2020


Photo by Max van den Oetelaar on Unsplash

  • Thousands of techies in locked-down India are braving coronavirus daily to keep the world running

    “Many different areas in ODCs are blocked off with separate access cards…Even if the client wants to be considerate, it’s not possible because you may be violating a regulatory applicable policy,” said Benoy CS, vice-president of the digital transformation practice at research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan. “Some ODCs won’t even allow mobile phones or anybody with a camera. These physical security measures cannot be implemented at home.”

    Firms like Wipro, India’s third-largest IT company, are seeking waivers, but it is risky, Benoy added.

    In any case, configuring corporate virtual private networks (VPN)—programming that creates a safe, encrypted connection over the public internet—to give access to multiple devices from different locations and building traceability has been a challenge for the industry. IT body Nasscom is working with the government for favourable policies on this front.

    https://qz.com/india/1834746/some-tcs-infosys-wipro-staff-go-to-work-amid-coronavirus/

  • How a stockpile of 39 million masks was exposed as fake

    Brady said federal investigators had reason to suspect the arrangement. The 39 million masks were advertised as N95 masks from 3M, the largest U.S.-based manufacturer. But 3M told federal investigators it manufactured only 20 million such masks last year, making that large of a stockpile unlikely unless the product was counterfeit.

    “We believe we disrupted fraud,” Brady said. “We are seeing [personal protective equipment] fraud in every variation, but mostly in respect to N95 masks. We have an anxious public, and resources are strained.”

    https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-11/coronavirus-seiu-masks-fraud-fbi

  • 10 joy-inducing aesthetics you should know

    This is a little hippie-dippie but maybe you will get something out of it…
  • Will We Forgive Amazon When This Is Over?

    When parrying claims that it’s a monopolist, Amazon often cites the statistic that e-commerce is only 16% of all retail. With stores closed and delivery the only safe option for many vulnerable people, it’s clear that proportion will spike in the coming months. Reports from employees and analysts indicate volumes in Amazon’s warehouses are on par with seasonal surges around the holidays. Market-research firm CommerceIQ reported sales of toilet paper are up 186%, while cough and cold medicine sales are up 862%.

    While demand for those products remains high, Amazon shoppers are unable to get many of the essential products the company says it’s prioritizing now. My search for toilet paper on Amazon yielded a jumbo 700-foot roll of commercial toilet paper in the first slot. In the second? A baffling block of text in lieu of a product image, stating that customers ordering this product after April 6 won’t receive it, so they shouldn’t bother. And everything considered nonessential takes more time than the two days Amazon conditioned us to expect.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-we-forgive-amazon-when-this-is-over-11586577604

  • Microsoft to give parents 12 weeks of paid leave to help deal with extended school closures

    Microsoft is offering a new benefit to employees dealing with extended school closures.

    Parents who work for the company can get three months of paid parental leave. It doesn’t have to be taken as a single chunk.

    Workers can take it a week, or event a few days, at a time.

    An estimated 1.6 billion students around the globe are home right now because their schools have closed due to the coronavirus outbreak.

    Many states, like Washington, where Microsoft is headquartered, have already said schools will not open again until the next academic year.

    https://www.8newsnow.com/coronavirus/microsoft-to-give-parents-12-weeks-of-paid-leave-to-help-deal-with-extended-school-closures/