Tag: Amazon

Posted on

Supplier Report: 1/31/2020


Photo by Aziz Acharki on Unsplash

Google is once again in the news for negative reasons. The company quietly rolled out changes to their search results that could mislead users to click on ads. After a media backlash, the search giant reversed course.

The drama between Xerox and HP continues as Xerox refuses to take no for an answer. HP is blaming Carl Icahn for the aggressive (and seemingly never-ending) acquisition attempts.

Finally, India has taken umbrage with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos due to Washington Post coverage of the Indian Government and for Amazon’s investment strategies in the country.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Xerox wants to replace HP board that rejected takeover bid

    Xerox and HP have been playing a highly public game of tit for tat in recent months. Xerox wants very much to combine with HP, and offered $34 billion, an offer HP summarily rejected at the end of last year. Xerox threatened to take it to shareholders.

    HP was none too pleased with this latest move by Xerox. “We believe these nominations are a self-serving tactic by Xerox to advance its proposal, that significantly undervalues HP and creates meaningful risk to the detriment of HP shareholders,” HP fired back in a statement today emailed to TechCrunch.

    It went on to blame Xerox shareholder Carl Icahn for the continued pressure. “We believe that Xerox’s proposal and nominations are being driven by Carl Icahn, and his large ownership position in Xerox means that his interests are not aligned with those of other HP shareholders. Due to Mr. Icahn’s ownership position, he would disproportionately benefit from an acquisition of HP by Xerox at a price that undervalues HP,” the company stated.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/23/xerox-wants-to-replace-hp-board-that-rejected-takeover-bid/

  • Hedge Funds Are Oddly Silent in Toshiba Buyout Drama

    Here’s a quick recap: As part of its Toshiba Next Plan, the company said in November that it planned to buy out shareholders in three subsidiaries for $1.8 billion, one of them being chip-equipment maker NuFlare Technology Inc. Tokyo-based Hoya Corp. put in a higher, unsolicited bid for NuFlare, seeking a minimum 66.7% stake. Toshiba Machine Co., which partly owns NuFlare, brushed off the hostile approach and went with the lower bid.

    On Tuesday, a fund backed by activist investor Yoshiaki Murakami launched a tender offer for a 44% stake in Toshiba Machine, in an apparent effort to disrupt the consolidation. Toshiba Machine shares had surged as much as 19% Friday after the company said Murakami planned a bid. They fell Tuesday after the offer — a 12% premium to Thursday’s closing price — was lower than some investors expected.

    Yet shareholders at each of the companies — including the hedge funds that own Toshiba Corp. stock — seem to be the losers and no one is saying anything about it.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-01-21/hedge-funds-are-oddly-silent-in-toshiba-buyout-drama

Artificial Intelligence/Robotics

  • Google CEO Sundar Pichai calls for ‘sensible regulation’ of AI

    Of course, this call for “balance” leaves some questions about how tight of regulation Pichai is talking about. He doesn’t specifically rebuff the White House’s recent calls for a light touch. Nor does he suggest the EU’s more comprehensive proposals go too far.

    Instead he makes clear that having the international community come to an agreement on regulatory issues is key. Then seems to suggest that Alphabet’s own internal handling of AI could serve as a guideline. He claims that the rules and systems put in place by the company help it avoid bias, and prioritize the safety and privacy of people. Though, it is debatable how successful Alphabet has been on those fronts. He also says the company will not deploy AI “to support mass surveillance or violate human rights.” And while Google does not sell facial recognition software that could easily be abused (unlike some of its competitors), there is serious concern that Google and its ilk pose a broad threat to human rights.

    https://www.engadget.com/2020/01/20/google-ceo-sundar-pichai-ai-regulation-editorial/

Cloud

  • Epic Systems, a major medical records vendor, is warning customers it will stop working with Google Cloud

    Privately held Epic is one of the largest electronic medical record companies in the U.S. It sells its products, which include a digital equivalent of the traditional doctor’s paper medical chart as well as billing tools, into the largest hospital systems in the U.S. Epic installations are major undertakings, and can end up costing billions of dollars overall. Once installed, they become a core part of a hospital’s information systems and are seldom dislodged.

    Epic’s decision is a blow to Google’s efforts to find new customer segments for its cloud products, as the company lags well behind Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure in market share for cloud computing. The company is hoping to catch up by landing big-name customers such as Mayo Clinic, and by stressing its artificial intelligence and machine-learning capabilities.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/17/epic-systems-warns-customers-it-will-stop-supporting-google-cloud.html

Security/Privacy

  • Hospitals Give Tech Giants Access to Detailed Medical Records

    The scope of data sharing in these and other recently reported agreements reveals a powerful new role that hospitals play—as brokers to technology companies racing into the $3 trillion health-care sector. Rapid digitization of health records and privacy laws enabling companies to swap patient data have positioned hospitals as a primary arbiter of how such sensitive data is shared.

    “Hospitals are massive containers of patient data,” said Lisa Bari, a consultant and former lead for health information technology for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Innovation Center.

    Hospitals can share patient data as long as they follow federal privacy laws, which contain limited consumer protections, she said. “The data belongs to whoever has it.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/hospitals-give-tech-giants-access-to-detailed-medical-records-11579516200

Software/SaaS

  • SAP’s new CEOs on the threat from Oracle: ‘We are winning market share’

    The German tech giant was the subject of criticism from some customers over a decision to end support for software running on third-party databases like Oracle. Late last year, Oracle’s technology chief Larry Ellison fired criticism of his own at the firm, claiming SAP’s customer base was “up for grabs.”

    In Oracle’s second-quarter earnings call, Ellison said one of SAP’s biggest customers would go live on Oracle’s enterprise resource planning platform (ERP) in 2020. ERP is a piece of software used by firms to manage their business and automate back office functions.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/24/sap-co-ceos-on-the-threat-from-oracle-we-are-winning-market-share.html

  • Many SAP customers ‘in a bind’ says DSAG 2020 investment report but there are reasons to be cheerful

    When it comes to SAP Cloud solutions in general, 14 percent of respondents plan “large and medium-sized” investments in SuccessFactors, 13 percent in SAP Analytics Cloud, and 11 percent in C/4HANA. Ariba, Integrated Business Planning, and Concur remain in the single digits. Only SAP Analytics Cloud shows an upward trend. After the number of companies willing to make “large and medium-sized” investments rose six percent to nine percent last year, this year it has again increased four percent to 13 percent. “SAP user companies continue to invest in SAP’s cloud solutions, to expand and grow their processes outside the core. This needs to be able to happen as a standardized, uniform process, without modifications. It’s our role as DSAG, in discussion with SAP, to ensure that out-of-the-box integration and harmonized data models continue. This will then facilitate the deployment of a rapid growth product like SAP Analytics Cloud,” explains Marco Lenck.

    https://diginomica.com/many-sap-customers-bind-says-dsag-2020-investment-report-there-are-reasons-be-cheerful

  • How much longer will we trust Google’s search results?

    The new layout for search result is ugly at first glance — but then Google was always ugly until relatively recently. I very quickly learned to unconsciously take in the information from the top favicon and URL-esque info without it really distracting me.

    …Which is basically the problem. Google’s using that same design language to identify its ads instead of much more obvious, visually distinct methods. It’s consistent, I guess, but it also feels deceptive.

    Recode’s Peter Kafka recently interviewed Buzzfeed CEO Jonah Peretti, and Peretti said something really insightful: what if Google’s ads really aren’t that good? What if Google is just taking credit for clicks on ads just because people would have been searching for that stuff anyway? I’ve been thinking about it all day: what if Google ads actually aren’t that effective and the only reason they make so much is billions of people use Google?

    https://www.theverge.com/tech/2020/1/24/21079696/google-serp-design-change-altavisa-ads-trust
    Google’s latest user-hostile design change makes ads and search results look identical

    Now a user of Google’s search engine has — essentially — only a favicon between them and an unintended ad click. Squint or you’ll click it.

    This visual trickery may be fractionally less confusing in a small screen mobile environment — where Google debuted the change last year. But on a desktop screen these favicons are truly minuscule. And where to click to get actual information starts to feel like a total lottery.

    A lottery that’s being stacked in Google’s favor because confused users are likely to end up clicking more ad links than they otherwise would, meaning it cashes in at the expense of web users’ time and energy.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/23/squint-and-youll-click-it/

    Update: Google backtracks on search results design

    Google on Friday responded to criticism that recent changes to its search results have blurred the lines between ads and regular results, saying it will be experimenting with different designs.

    As a part of a mid-January redesign to desktop search results, the company made paid links look more like unpaid results. The word “Ad” in bold text appears next to the advertisements, which typically are listed first and are therefore more likely to be clicked on and generate ad revenue for Google.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2020/01/24/google-will-iterate-the-design-that-made-it-harder-to-tell-ads-from-search-results.html

Other

  • ‘Amazon Empire’ Documentary Shows How Jeff Bezos Took Over Everything

    Politicians, regulators, and commentators are not as clear-eyed about what to do with Amazon. Some want to break it up, others say that antitrust action won’t work, and others still talk of nationalizing the company. Or even worse, incorporating the company into a socialist system (gasp) by taking a close look at how Amazon’s central planning might help us design non-market solutions to problems that Amazon claims to solve today (i.e. matching people to their individual tastes at the highest possible quality for the lowest possible cost).

    Amazon is rapidly metastasizing into an invisible infrastructure that mediates our economy, politics, social relations, and culture. It is important we have a clear understanding of that and reject its rosy PR about simply wanting to provide goods to customers cheaply (and profitably).

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/7kzbxg/amazon-empire-documentary-shows-how-jeff-bezos-took-over-everything

  • India Targets Jeff Bezos Over Amazon and Washington Post

    On the same day, Mr. Modi’s commerce minister, Piyush Goyal, dismissed Mr. Bezos’ announcement of a fresh $1 billion investment to help small businesses in the country. “It is not as if they are doing a favor to India,” Mr. Goyal told reporters. He then referred to the antitrust investigation of Amazon and its chief rival that Indian regulators opened the day before Mr. Bezos arrived.

    Although both men later tempered their remarks, the double-barreled assault on The Post and Amazon is reminiscent of President Trump, who has repeatedly attacked Mr. Bezos, The Post’s coverage of his administration, and Amazon — often all in the same tweet.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/20/technology/india-amazon-bezos-washington-post.html

  • IBM Sales Expected to Dip Despite Red Hat Purchase: What to Watch

    IBM is expected to report adjusted earnings per share of $4.69 for the quarter ended Dec. 31, down from $4.87 for the same period last year, according to analysts surveyed by FactSet. Adjusted net income should be around $4.19 billion, down from $4.42 billion in the year-prior quarter, the analysts expect.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-sales-expected-to-dip-despite-red-hat-purchase-what-to-watch-11579602600

  • Trend: Layoffs hit Q&A startup Quora

    “[W]e need to reduce our burn rate to a sustainable level from which we can focus on pursuing the mission and growing the business over the long term. We do not want to be dependent on outside capital, so self-reliance and careful management of our resources are crucial to our future,” D’Angelo wrote.

    Over the past several weeks, layoffs have been hitting startups, including several in SoftBank’s portfolio as well as Mozilla and, just today, genetic testing startup 23andMe.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/23/layoffs-hit-qa-startup-quora/

Posted on

Supplier Report: 1/17/2020


Photo by inbal marilli on Unsplash

Privacy will continue to be a major issue for technology companies in 2020.  We are a few weeks into the new year and Amazon already suffered a breach, but at least they weren’t hacked… employees just gave the data away.

Facebook got their collective teeth kicked in last year, but Mark Zuckerberg’s tone during his “2030 statement” makes me think has hasn’t learned from the experience and he thinks perhaps this will all blow over. Meanwhile there is a sentiment of “techlash” growing with students at college campuses.

Finally… the rumors of Google buying SalesForce continue.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • On CRM: This Is What Google Should Consider Before Buying Salesforce

    It’s no secret that Google’s cloud division – which is trailing far behind its rivals Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) – is looking to make a big acquisition in order to play catch-up ball. Now a new report from Business Insider claims that the company may be considering a purchase of Salesforce.com to fulfill this ambition.

    Also:

    Does Google understand that, like the fans of a baseball team that come to watch great players, swallowing up Salesforce and prioritizing cloud over CRM would – over time – ultimately sabotage the very reason that attracted them? How long would it take for Google to start watering down Salesforce’s brand and neglecting CRM as it brings other, unrelated applications and its own search and advertising tools to the cloud platform it acquires? If this happens Benioff, an iconic entrepreneur and philanthropist, would likely not stick around very long under a Google regime. Neither would the passionate community that he built which underscores the success of Salesforce’s cloud platform.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/quickerbettertech/2020/01/09/on-crm-this-is-what-google-should-consider-before-buying-salesforce/#29aa04b4ff7f

Artificial Intelligence/Robotics

  • The “Robot Tax” Debate Heats Up

    Bill Gates has called for a robot tax, and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio detailed a plan for one in his short-lived presidential campaign. If the future means far fewer workers and far more machines, tax revenue could drop and the daily rhythms of steady employment could become erratic.

    A robot tax could serve multiple purposes, slowing job-destroying automation while raising revenue to supplement shrinking taxes paid by human workers. It could take a few different forms. Lawmakers could limit or slow down deductions for businesses that replace humans with robots, or they could hit businesses with levies equivalent to the payroll taxes paid by employers and employees.

    For the moment, massive job losses from automation and artificial intelligence are a largely theoretical worry. But tax economists and lawyers are thinking through the economic circumstances in which robot taxes might make sense and the tricky legal decisions and definitions needed to implement them.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-robot-tax-debate-heats-up-11578495608

  • Medical Robotics Company Names Former Google Cloud COO As CEO

    Bryant joins Neural Analytics after six months as Google Cloud’s chief operating officer, where she focused on scaling its Cloud platform against fierce competition from Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. She worked at chip giant Intel for over thirty years, departing the company as a president of the company’s data center group.

    Neural Analytics has developed a robotically assisted ultrasound system for the assessment of brain health, which is designed to measure and display information about brain blood flow, under the guidance of a healthcare professional.

    In an email, Bryant said she had received three offers to serve as the CEO of companies in different industries, but was ultimately intrigued by the promise of Neural Analytics’ technology.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/johanmoreno/2020/01/10/medical-robotics-company-names-former-google-cloud-coo-as-ceo/#6126a20a50cf

    That headline should be less about her time at Google and more about her time at Intel

Security/Privacy

  • Amazon fires employees for leaking customer email addresses and phone numbers

    The email to customers sent Friday afternoon, seen by TechCrunch, said an employee was “terminated” for sharing the data, and that the company is supporting law enforcement in their prosecution.

    Amazon confirmed the incident in an email to TechCrunch. A spokesperson said a number of employees were fired. But little else is known about the employees, when the information was shared and with whom, and how many customers are affected.

    “No other information related to your account was shared. This is not a result of anything you have done, and there is no need for you to take any action,” the email read to customers.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/10/amazon-employees-email-address/

Software/SaaS

  • If you thought Zuckerberg would ever rein in rightwing demagogues, think again

    Three of the five areas of focus are simply to continue working on Facebook’s major business aims (private messaging, e-commerce, and VR/AR); the personal challenge version of deciding that, screw the diet-book industrial complex, you’re beautiful just as you are. A fourth, entitled “New forms of governance” is to continue working on the “supreme court” of Facebook content moderation, another project already long in the works.

    The fifth, which Zuckerberg entitled “generational change”, appears to encapsulate his desire to see more millennials take positions of power in institutions over the next decade. Considering that many millennials will be approaching their mid-40s by 2030, this is the equivalent of resolving to experience the passage of time.

    So no, if you thought that Zuckerberg was going to spend the next decade grappling with the question of what Donald Trump, Narendra Modi and Rodrigo Duterte have in common, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Please join me instead in imagining Zuck in his bathroom, crooning to himself in the mirror: “You’re beautiful, you’re beautiful, you’re beautiful, it’s true.”

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/10/2020-fixing-facebook-zuckerberg-election

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • For Memory-Chip Makers, the Worst Appears to Be Over

    The latest positive sign came from Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s largest memory-chip maker, which this week issued financial guidance that topped analysts’ estimates. That followed a declaration from rival producer Micron Technology Co. in December that its business was passing through a ”cyclical bottom.”

    A big accelerant is the rollout of 5G mobile networks. The global deployment of the next-generation technology should re-energize smartphone sales and juice corporate investments in artificial intelligence, computing and data storage—all areas requiring significant memory capacity.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/for-memory-chip-makers-the-worst-appears-to-be-over-11578487758

  • HP Wins $439 Million As Judge Triples Jury Price-Fix Award

    HP Inc. was awarded $439 million in damages against Quanta Storage Inc. and its U.S. subsidiary after a federal judge tripled a jury’s 2019 award for damages caused by a widespread scheme to inflate the price of optical disk drives.

    In October, a Houston jury ordered Quanta to pay HP $176 million in damages. U.S. District Judge David Hittner said Friday that Quanta hadn’t shown any reason why the jury’s findings should be set aside. He tripled the damages award, as authorized under antitrust law, to $528 million before deducting the $89 million in settlements paid by the other companies HP accused of participating in the price-fixing scheme.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-01-03/hp-wins-438-million-after-judge-triples-jury-price-fixing-award

Other

  • With immigration under fire, visa uncertainty and wait times for foreign-born advertising employees

    I was job hunting and talked to a bunch of really great creative shops. One that I really wanted to work at told me the visa is a really big hurdle for them because I’m mid-level and that they weren’t sure if it was worth it to sponsor someone who isn’t super senior. There’s no right time to bring up the visa. We typically don’t bring it up until after the interview and when there’s a follow up. There’s a sense that you’ll wow them so much in the interview that they’ll want to hire you even if you have the visa. Most people wait.

    Also:

    I’ve talked to multiple people and recruiters are telling me that it’s harder to get approval now. Timelines are getting extended, it’s taking longer and there’s more scrutiny. [Overall, the immigration and visa approval process] completely messes with how agencies are today with project-work. No one is anticipating work needs eight months in advance so it’s hard to get those timelines to mesh with each other. Visas just don’t jibe well with flexible work models or project-work.

    https://outline.com/4NxuWE

  • Lime is laying off about 100 people and ceasing operations in 12 markets

    “Financial independence is our goal for 2020, and we are confident that Lime will be the first next-generation mobility company to reach profitability,” Lime CEO Brad Bao said in a statement to TechCrunch. “We are immensely grateful for our team members, riders, Juicers and cities who supported us, and we hope to reintroduce Lime back into these communities when the time is right.”

    That means Lime is shutting down in Atlanta, Phoenix, San Diego, San Antonio, Linz, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Lima, Puerto Vallarta, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/09/lime-is-laying-off-about-100-people-and-ceasing-operations-in-12-markets/

Posted on

Supplier Report: 1/10/2020


Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

Hitting goals is critical for a business, especially in the tech world. We are seeing companies trade their culture in order to hit business targets (see Google and Amazon). The media is coming down hard on Google for these shifts, but as we have seen with WeWork, the time of the unicorn darlings is over and the stock market is demanding profits once again.

SoftBank and Masayoshi Son are another root cause for this tonal shift. At the moment, many of SoftBank’s investments are performing poorly (again see WeWork and Uber). Son’s investment strategies enabled many of the wayward valuations over the last few years and a market course-correction was in order.

If a good idea doesn’t make a profit (somehow), it isn’t going to survive. Capitalism is cruel and wonderful beast.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Here’s a Masayoshi Son Shopping List for 2020

    The numbers are so bad, you have to laugh. Uber: down 37% since IPO. WeWork: valuation cut by 80%. Wag: sold back to founders at a loss. But Son will bounce back. He has to, because he has another Vision Fund to raise and run. Instead of being cowed into humility, it’s more likely he’ll double down and make even more fantastical bets with other people’s money. To help him out, I did a multivariate analysis(1) based on past SoftBank deals to come up with a list of investments he ought to consider.

    Also:

    Saudi AramcoTo be frank, Saudi Arabia’s state oil company isn’t really the kind of thing SoftBank should be putting money into because oil is just not futuristic enough. Data is said to be the new oil anyway. But then, taking Saudi money is something many believe Son shouldn’t be doing at all in light of the murder of writer Jamal Khashoggi. Son has pledged not to abandon the Saudis — after all, they gave $45 billion to the Vision Fund — and so that commitment may as well include throwing support behind Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his nation’s largest asset. Riyadh ended up settling for a $1.7 trillion market cap at IPO, after previously assuring everyone that it was worth at least $2 trillion. While it hit that figure within days of listing, the shortfall at IPO is equivalent to three Vision Funds. After WeWork’s $40 billion drop in value, Masa will feel right at home.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/energy/heres-a-masayoshi-son-shopping-list-for-2020/2019/12/30/af519386-2b69-11ea-bffe-020c88b3f120_story.html

  • IBM Bet Everything on an Acquisition in 2019. Now It Needs to Grow Again.

    The Red Hat deal is just one in a decadeslong series of IBM moves to keep up with shifting technology trends. Keep in mind that IBM over the years built and later unloaded large businesses in desktop computers, laptops, printers, microprocessors, chip manufacturing, and typewriters. (Didn’t you once own an IBM Selectric?) The latest move will help IBM stay relevant in a world in which cloud-based services have come to dominate the information technology landscape.

    While IBM over the last decade has made a lot of noise about Watson, the company’s cloud-based artificial intelligence software platform, the company has been slow to establish a leadership position in the public cloud, falling behind the market leaders: Amazon.com’s (AMZN) Amazon Web Services, Microsoft’s (MSFT) Azure, and Alphabet’s (GOOGL) Google Cloud Platform.

    https://www.barrons.com/articles/ibm-bet-everything-on-red-hat-in-2019-51577479288

Artificial Intelligence

  • Google AI Beats Doctors at Breast Cancer Detection—Sometimes

    The model is the latest step in Google’s push into health care. The Alphabet Inc. GOOG 0.07% company has developed similar systems to detect lung cancer, eye disease and kidney injury.

    Google and Alphabet have come under scrutiny for privacy concerns related to the use of patient data. A deal with Ascension, the second-largest health system in the U.S., allows Google to use AI to mine personal, identifiable health information from millions of patients to improve processes and care.

    The health data used in the breast-cancer project doesn’t include identifiable information, Google Health officials said, and the data was stripped of personal indicators before given to Google.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-ai-beats-doctors-at-breast-cancer-detectionsometimes-11577901600

  • Illinois says you should know if AI is grading your online job interviews

    It’s not just that we don’t know how these systems work. Artificial intelligence can also introduce bias and inaccuracy to the job application process, and because these algorithms largely operate in a black box, it’s not really possible to hold a company that uses a problematic or unfair tool accountable.

    A new Illinois law — one of the first of its kind in the US — is supposed to provide job candidates a bit more insight into how these unregulated tools actually operate. But it’s unlikely the legislation will change much for applicants. That’s because it only applies to a limited type of AI, and it doesn’t ask much of the companies deploying it.

    Also:

    “It’s hard to feel that that consent is going to be super meaningful if the alternative is that you get no shot at the job at all,” said Rieke. He added that there’s no guarantee that the consent and explanation the law requires will be useful; for instance, the explanation could be so broad and high-level that it’s not helpful.

    https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/1/1/21043000/artificial-intelligence-job-applications-illinios-video-interivew-act

Cloud

  • Amazon Has Long Ruled the Cloud. Now It Must Fend Off Rivals.

    Amazon’s success in the cloud, more recently, has suffered setbacks beyond the lost Pentagon deal. Last year, one of its biggest banking customers, Capital One Financial Corp. , had more than 100 million customer records stolen that were stored on Amazon’s cloud. And more big corporations are turning to other cloud vendors. Some are worried the online retail giant could become a competitor, according to people familiar with the matter. Many large multinationals have longstanding relationships with Microsoft or Oracle, but not with Amazon.

    “What we’re seeing now is there’s another wave of late-adopter customers coming to market. These are customers that have never used cloud before, so they’re investigating,” said Raj Bala, research director at Gartner. “A fair number of these customers will certainly end up at [Microsoft’s] Azure, because they meet that profile: they run a lot of Windows, they tend to want to play it safe, and the decision makers in that camp tend to favor Azure to a large extent.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-has-long-ruled-the-cloud-now-it-must-fend-off-rivals-11578114008

Security/Privacy

  • What California’s New Privacy Law Means for You

    Not everybody will have to comply with the law. The CCPA only applies to companies that earn more than $25 million in gross annual revenue, collect personal data on more than 50,000 users, or make more than 50 percent of their revenue selling user data.

    It’s also worth highlighting that while the bill technically took effect on January 1, California’s Attorney General has stated enforcement isn’t likely to begin until sometime this summer, giving lawmakers some additional time to work out some early kinks, clarify murky language, or water down existing requirements upon lobbyist request. Already we’re seeing that some companies aren’t complying with the law.

    Groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation say they spent the better part of 2019 trying to keep lobbyists from numerous industries from weakening the bill, since empowered, informed consumers will inevitably opt out of data sales, costing companies billions.

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/z3bvyx/what-californias-ccpa-new-privacy-law-means-for-you

Other

  • Former Google human rights chief says he was ‘sidelined’ over censored Chinese search engine

    As Google pushed for deals in authoritarian Saudi Arabia and launched the Google Center for Artificial Intelligence in Beijing, LaJeunesse says, he pushed for a company-wide human rights program that would bring new oversight to product launches. But Google rebuffed the idea, and eventually brought in a colleague to oversee policy issues related to Dragonfly.

    “Just when Google needed to double down on a commitment to human rights,” LaJeunesse writes in the blog post, “it decided to instead chase bigger profits and an even higher stock price.”

    The issues extended to the broader culture within the company as well, according to LaJeunesse. He says, at one point, during an all-hands meeting, his boss at the company suggested Asian employees “don’t like to ask questions.”

    https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/2/21046522/google-china-dragonfly-ross-lajeunesse-human-rights-chief-censorship

    Google has little choice to be evil or not in today’s fractured internet

    Google used to have a lot of agency, which is unfortunately declining very, very rapidly.

    I’ve talked about the fracturing of the internet into different spheres of influence for quite literally years. Countries like China in particular, but also Russia, Iran and others, are seizing more and more exacting control of the internet’s plumbing and applications, subsuming the original internet’s spirit of openness and freedom and placing this communications medium under their iron fists.

    As this fracturing has occurred, companies like Google, or Shutterstock, or even the NBA, have increasingly faced what I’ve called an “authoritarian straddle” — they can either work with these countries and follow the local rules, or they can just get out, with serious ramifications for their home markets.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/01/02/google-has-little-choice-to-be-evil-or-not-in-todays-fractured-internet/

  • Amazon threatens to fire critics who are outspoken on its environmental policies

    Amazon’s external communications policy “is not new and we believe is similar to other large companies,” company spokeswoman Jaci Anderson said in a statement. In response to whether Amazon was trying to stifle workers, Anderson said employees are “encouraged to work within their teams,” including by “suggesting improvements to how we operate through those internal channels.”

    Tech workers have recently become more outspoken about concerns over their employers’ policies. During a Sept. 20 protest, thousands of Amazon employees walked out and criticized the company’s climate policies and practices. In November 2018, thousands of Google employees walked off the job to protest of the company’s handling of sexual harassment claims. Workers at Google, Amazon and Microsoft have spoken out in criticism of facial-recognition technology from their companies, fearing misuse by law enforcement and other government agencies.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/01/02/amazon-threatens-fire-outspoken-employee-critics-its-environmental-policies/
    Additional Comments:
    This isn’t a union situation, but it feels similar to when Regan broke the unions in the 80’s. The air traffic controllers thought they couldn’t be replaced… and then Regan replaced them. Those people were barred from air traffic control jobs for years until Clinton granted amnesty.
    https://www.npr.org/2019/12/13/788002965/episode-958-when-reagan-broke-the-unions

Posted on

Supplier Report: 12/27/2019


Photo by Abbie Bernet on Unsplash

One holiday down, one more to go.

Security was a big theme this week. Philadelphia-favorite Wawa discovered a security breach in their payment systems going back to last March. The breach was plugged on December 12th (better check your credit card statements).

Meanwhile Facebook has agreed (under duress) to stop using the phone number you give for Two Factor Authentication to mine for data and suggest friends.

And finally… Foxconn continues to be a disaster in Wisconsin. They still haven’t committed to what type of factory they are building and Wisconsin (rightfully) is starting to push back on their tax rebate commitments. Why has it taken this long?

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Google buys game developer Typhoon Studios

    Google has been pretty vocal about its internal development efforts, including Stadia Studios led by former EA exec Jade Raymond. In an interview with Gamesindustry.biz, the exec detailed that Google was hoping to build out multiple first-party studios to release content on the platform.

    “We have a plan that includes building out a few different first-party studios, and also building up the publishing org to ship exclusive content created by indie devs and other external partners,” Raymond told the publication.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/19/google-buys-game-developer-typhoon-studios/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Finland is making its online AI crash course free to the world

    There are already quite a few sites for people looking to learn the basics of AI, but Finland’s offering seems worth your time if you’re interested in such a thing. It’s nicely designed, offers short tests at the end of each section, and covers a range of topics from the philosophical implications of AI to technical subjects like Bayesian probability. It’s supposed to take about six weeks to finish, with each section taking between five and 10 hours.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/18/21027840/online-course-basics-of-ai-finland-free-elements

    Link to the course:
    https://www.elementsofai.com/

Security/Privacy

  • Wawa hit with massive data breach, potentially affecting more than 850 locations, CEO says

    In a letter to customers Friday, chief executive Chris Gheysens said the company discovered malware capable of exposing card numbers, expiration dates and cardholder names at “potentially all Wawa in-store payment terminals and fuel dispensers” since March 4. Debit card PINs, credit card security codes and driver’s license information for verifying age-restricted purchases were not affected, he said.

    Gheysens said the convenience store chain is unaware of any unauthorized card use as a result of the breach, which was contained Dec. 12, two days after it was discovered. Wawa declined to tell The Washington Post how many customers or transactions were affected.

    “I want to reassure anyone impacted they will not be responsible for fraudulent charges related to this incident,” Gheysens said in a news release. “To all our friends and neighbors, I apologize deeply for this incident.”

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/12/20/wawa-hit-with-massive-data-breach-potentially-affecting-all-locations-ceo-says/

  • Facebook will stop using 2FA tool to harvest phone numbers for friend suggestions

    Facebook says it will soon stop its practice of using phone numbers provided to the company as part of its two-factor authentication (2FA) security tool to power a friend suggestion feature, Reuters reported on Thursday. According to the report, Facebook was using phone numbers users gave it specifically to protect their accounts from unauthorized access to try and encourage them to add members of their address book to their friends list.

    The company says the change is part of its broader privacy overhaul in response to a $5 billion Federal Trade Commission settlement reached in July over Facebook’s privacy practices. As part of that settlement, Facebook was barred from using phone numbers gathered from 2FA requests for advertising. Today’s change is an extension of that. Although not explicitly demanded by the FTC, Facebook’s use of phone numbers has come under scrutiny by the company’s internal privacy review team, led by chief privacy officer Michel Protti.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/19/21030068/facebook-friend-suggestions-2fa-security-phone-number-privacy-violation-ftc

  • U.S. Navy bans TikTok from government-issued mobile devices

    A bulletin issued by the Navy on Tuesday showed up on a Facebook page serving military members, saying users of government issued mobile devices who had TikTok and did not remove the app would be blocked from the Navy Marine Corps Intranet.

    The Navy would not describe in detail what dangers the app presents, but Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Uriah Orland said in a statement the order was part of an effort to “address existing and emerging threats”.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-tiktok-navy-idUSKBN1YO2HU

Software/SaaS

  • Facebook is building an operating system so it can ditch Android

    Facebook doesn’t want its hardware like Oculus or its augmented reality glasses to be at the mercy of Google because they rely on its Android operating system. That’s why Facebook has tasked Mark Lucovsky, a co-author of Microsoft’s Windows NT, with building the social network an operating system from scratch, according to The Information’s Alex Heath. To be clear, Facebook’s smartphone apps will remain available on Android.

    “We really want to make sure the next generation has space for us,” says Facebook’s VP of Hardware, Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth. “We don’t think we can trust the marketplace or competitors to ensure that’s the case. And so we’re gonna do it ourselves.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/19/facebook-operating-system/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • IBM aims to replace lithium batteries with batteries made from seawater

    Traditional lithium-ion batteries need heavy metals such as cobalt, manganese, and nickel to be produced. These materials pose a sizeable risk to the environment as they need to be mined. Not only is the sourcing of these materials a danger to the environment, but they also pose risk to the workers mining them. Heavy metals such as these are also limited and with the rise of battery-powered devices, it may be soon that these materials eventually run out.

    It was due to all of these circumstances that IBM Research scientists looked for other alternatives to Lithium-ion batteries. They were soon able to create a battery that runs on three new completely different materials that can be extracted from seawater. As such, sourcing of these materials are less invasive and pose a much smaller risk to the destruction of the environment.

    This new battery uses a “cobalt and nickel-free cathode material, as well as a safe liquid electrolyte with a high flash point”. The combination of these two materials was found to reduce the battery’s flammability which is a present issue for lithium-ion batteries. It was also found to charge much faster than regular lithium-ion batteries with the ability to charge up to 80% in a mere 5 minutes. These two new benefits from IBM’s batteries could prove to be very significant in the creation of low cost, fast-charging, less flammable batteries for electric vehicles.

    https://geekspin.co/ibm-aims-to-replace-lithium-batteries-with-batteries-made-from-seawater/

Other

  • The Bezos ‘relentless’ strategy at Amazon has been on full display this week

    Amazon has been steadily building out its own delivery network as it seeks to wean itself off of third parties like FedEx, UPS or the U.S. Postal Service. Bloomberg reported Tuesday that Dave Clark, the Amazon executive in charge of logistics, decided to cut out FedEx Ground because it wasn’t performing up to Amazon’s standards. And even though the block on FedEx Ground is temporary during the holiday rush, the decision was made at the height of the shopping season.

    And it doesn’t hurt that Amazon was able to stick it to its future shipping and logistics competitor, showing FedEx it can swing the stock whenever it wants.

    You see? Relentless.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/17/jeff-bezos-relentless-strategy-at-amazon-on-full-display.html

  • Foxconn Plays Tax-Credit Poker With Wisconsin in Troubled Deal

    It doesn’t matter why Foxconn changed its mind. Neither does the disagreement over whether 10.5G is a requirement for the tax credits that helped lure the company to the state. The point is that Wisconsin officials clearly believed a 10.5G plant was coming, and Foxconn did nothing to set them straight.

    What’s important now is both sides’ willingness to patch things up. The documents reproduced by The Verge show that Wisconsin is trying as hard as possible to make it work by offering to let the Taiwanese company rewrite the contract. Foxconn has steadfastly refused, arguing that its new plans hew to the original deal. Some marriage counselling is sorely needed.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/foxconn-plays-tax-credit-poker-with-wisconsin-in-troubled-deal/2019/12/18/eaf516fe-2166-11ea-b034-de7dc2b5199b_story.html

Posted on

Supplier Report: 12/13/2019


Photo by Marten Bjork on Unsplash

Google’s founders are leaving the company at a time when employees are actively protesting leadership decisions and the US Government is building a monopoly case. Google/Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai is going to be very busy.

Google is not the only IT firm with labor issues… The Labor Department’s case against Oracle for underpaying women and minorities is underway and Oracle isn’t looking very woke (is that still a thing?).

Finally… It seems that the e-Scooter fad is slowing down. Bird, one of the more popular companies is laying off staff after an acquisition and a knock-off company named Unicorn is closing their doors before they ever even ramped up (I hope this is a sign of things to come).

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Adobe is buying the Oculus Medium VR sculpting app

    Why is Oculus selling Medium? It could be Facebook scaling back its non-gaming VR efforts. But Medium is also slightly redundant for Oculus. The company also launched a professional-oriented art app called Quill, which was relaunched as Quill 2.0 in August with expanded animation capabilities. And where Quill is a 3D painting app in the style of Tilt Brush (which is owned by Google), Medium works a lot more like a traditional 3D modeling program, so it fits better with Adobe’s existing offerings. As for its impact on VR in general, it depends on where Adobe takes the product in 2020 — and how deeply it integrates Medium into its larger creative suite.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/6/20999185/adobe-facebook-oculus-medium-vr-sculpting-app

Cloud

  • Google Co-Founders Page, Brin Give Up Management Roles

    Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin stepped down from active management of the internet giant’s parent, surrendering immediate control to a low-key company veteran who must navigate global regulatory threats as well as employee discontent.

    Page and Brin, who had been chief executive and president, respectively, of Google parent Alphabet Inc., said Tuesday they would hand control immediately to Sundar Pichai, Google’s existing CEO. They remain on Alphabet’s board and will still together control a majority of voting power over company decisions under Alphabet’s dual-class share structure.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/sundar-pichai-to-replace-larry-page-as-ceo-of-alphabet-11575409229

    Why Alphabet’s days could be numbered under its new CEO

    Shielding Google from those “other bets” such as driverless cars no longer seems so urgent. Alphabet and other tech titans — particularly those effectively controlled by their founders — have a relatively long leash from investors to invest in both the projects that generate earnings now and on whatever comes next. Amazon, for example, spent $14 billion to buy a niche grocery store chain, and it’s investing in far-flung businesses such as health care and entertainment.

    Amazon has always received a longer leash to tinker than most other companies, but I think Google’s cash firepower also lets it experiment without creating an artificial structure to shield Google from its less mature corporate cousins. There may be a reason that Alphabet never became a blueprint for other technology companies that wanted to keep up with the times.

    https://www.theverge.com/interface/2019/12/5/20995520/alphabet-obsolete-sundar-pichai-ceo-page-brin

Security/Privacy

  • How Ring Went From ‘Shark Tank’ Reject to America’s Scariest Surveillance Company

    Although there’s no credible evidence that Ring actually deters or reduces crime, claiming that its products achieve these things is essential to its marketing model. These claims have helped Ring cultivate a surveillance network around the country with the help of dozens of taxpayer-funded camera discount programs and more than 600 police partnerships.

    When police partner with Ring, they are required to promote its products, and to allow Ring to approve everything they say about the company. In exchange, they get access to Ring’s Law Enforcement Neighborhood Portal, an interactive map that allows police to request camera footage directly from residents without obtaining a warrant.

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmjp53/how-ring-went-from-shark-tank-reject-to-americas-scariest-surveillance-company
    A World With a Billion Cameras Watching You Is Just Around the Corner

    The report, from industry researcher IHS Markit, to be released Thursday, said the number of cameras used for surveillance would climb above 1 billion by the end of 2021. That would represent an almost 30% increase from the 770 million cameras today. China would continue to account for a little over half the total.

    Fast-growing, populous nations such as India, Brazil and Indonesia would also help drive growth in the sector, the report said. The number of surveillance cameras in the U.S. would grow to 85 million by 2021, from 70 million last year, as American schools, malls and offices seek to tighten security on their premises, IHS analyst Oliver Philippou said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-billion-surveillance-cameras-forecast-to-be-watching-within-two-years-11575565402

Software/SaaS

  • SAP customers are revolting – here’s why

    The problem for both customers and SAP can be summed up in the words of a retiring executive with close on 30 years SAP experience. He said that his greatest disappointment is that SAP has not really delivered what it promised in terms of end to end integrated business processes and that the addition of many new acquired technologies only makes the ability to create a seamlessly integrated landscape nigh on impossible. The R/3 days when integration was a reality are long gone. It should therefore be no surprise that even showcase customers like Jazz describe a business technology landscape that includes SAP, Workday and Salesforce.

    Equally worrying for me was the degree of frustration across the SAP ecosystem at what one partner described as ‘appalling communication’ around what SAP is doing to help customers get across the S/4 line. Hillary Blinds, an early Suite for HANA customer for example shrugged at the prospect of moving to S/4, despite its commitment to SAP across departments other vendors could own.

    https://diginomica.com/sap-customers-are-revolting-heres-why

  • Oracle allegedly underpaid women and minorities by $400 million. Now the details are set to come out in court.

    The first witness, former employee Kirsten Hanson Garcia, who worked for Oracle for more than 16 years, most recently in human resources as senior director of talent development, testified that during a meeting in the mid-2000s with top executives, the head of human resources said, “Well, if you hire a woman, she will work harder for less money.”

    Palantir, a data-mining company, settled the claims in 2017, while the department’s investigation into Google has been mired in a dispute over access to compensation data. That makes the Oracle hearing a rare airing of testimony from the employees who allegedly faced discrimination, as well as compensation data at a major tech company. Oracle and Google are also facing private pay, promotion, or hiring discrimination lawsuits filed by current and former employees.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/12/05/oracle-allegedly-underpaid-women-minorities-by-million-now-details-are-set-come-out-court/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Bernie Sanders’ Broadband Plan Is Comcast’s Worst Nightmare

    The plan would restore the FCC’s authority and net neutrality rules stripped away by the Ajit Pai FCC, subjecting ISPs to far greater oversight. It also proposes banning ISPs from imposing arbitrary and unnecessary usage caps and overage fees, which critics have long said are little more than punitive price hikes on captive customers.

    But Sanders’ plan also spends a lot of time advocating for community broadband. First by proposing $150 billion in new funding to aid the growing roster of towns and cities that have begun building their own networks after years of industry neglect. Secondly by eliminating the 19 protectionist state laws big ISP lobbyists have used to try and crush those efforts.

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/evjjmn/bernie-sanders-broadband-plan-is-comcasts-worst-nightmare
    Love the idea Bernie – but where is the $150B coming from? How does this idea become reality?

  • Ericsson to pay over $1 billion to resolve U.S. corruption probes

    The bribery took place over many years in countries including China, Vietnam and Djibouti, the department said. The total charges include a criminal penalty of more than $520 million, plus $540 million to be paid to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in a related matter.

    The company admitted it had conspired with others to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) from at least 2000 to 2016 by engaging in a scheme to pay bribes and to falsify books and records and by failing to implement reasonable internal accounting controls, the Justice Department said in a statement.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-ericsson/ericsson-to-pay-over-1-billion-to-resolve-u-s-corruption-probes-idUSKBN1YA2HU

Other

  • Elon Musk Cleared by Jury in Defamation Case Over ‘Pedo’ Tweet

    The legal battle stems from Mr. Musk’s involvement in a high-profile effort to rescue a youth soccer team trapped in a flooded cave in Thailand last year. British cave explorer Vernon Unsworth, who helped in the early days of the operation, criticized Mr. Musk’s effort to use a mini-sub to save the boys as a public-relations stunt. The device was never used, and Mr. Unsworth told CNN that Mr. Musk could “stick his submarine where it hurts.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-cleared-by-jury-in-defamation-case-over-pedo-tweet-11575678498

  • Amazon Leases New Manhattan Office Space, Less Than a Year After HQ2 Pullout

    The giant online retailer said it has signed a new lease for 335,000 square feet on Manhattan’s west side in the new Hudson Yards neighborhood, where it will have more than 1,500 employees. The new lease represents Amazon’s largest expansion in New York since the company stunned the city by abandoning plans to locate its second headquarters in the Queens neighborhood of Long Island City.

    The deal comes the same day The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook is in talks to lease 700,000 square feet in a neighborhood nearby. Combined with Facebook’s other recent deals in the city, such a move would catapult the social-media company into the top ranks of the city’s largest corporate tenants, alongside JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp. , which have had a major presence in New York for many years.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-leases-new-manhattan-office-space-less-than-a-year-after-hq2-pullout-11575671243

  • Bird lays off several Scoot employees

    Bird has laid off less than two dozen employees, The San Francisco Chronicle first reported. The layoffs affect employees Bird brought on board as part of its ~$25 million acquisition of Scoot earlier this year.

    Those affected were salaried employees and/or people with technical backgrounds, according to Bird.

    “The integration of Bird and Scoot does not impact or change our previous or future commitments to San Francisco or to providing its residents and visitors access to the highest quality and most reliable shared micromobility vehicles and services,” a Bird spokesperson told TechCrunch. “We are planning to relocate a number of Scoot team members to our Santa Monica headquarters while also maintaining an office in San Francisco for our operations and maintenance teams as well as a number of regionally specific roles.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/06/bird-lays-off-several-scoot-employees/

    I was hoping this stupid scooter fad was dying down, but this is just corporate restructuring. Oh wait…
    Unicorn, e-scooter startup from co-creator of Tile, shuts down with no money for refunds

    Unicorn, the electric scooter startup from the co-creator of gadget tracker Tile, is shutting down operations after blowing all its cash on Facebook and Google ads but only receiving 350 orders for its glossy white e-scooters, it claims. In an email to customers, the company says it lacks the resources to deliver any of its $699 two-wheelers, and won’t be issuing refunds “as we are completely out of funding.”

    In a remorseful email, Unicorn CEO Nick Evans said the company had “totally failed as a business” and has also “spread the cost of this failure to you, the early customers that believed in us.”

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/7/21000094/unicorn-electric-scooter-shut-down-refund-tile