Tag: Amazon

Posted on

Supplier Report: 7/19/2019


Photo by Runde Imaging on Unsplash

Remember when Foxconn was supposed to bring 13,000 jobs to Wisconsin? The number is down to 1,500 according to the current Governor. Meanwhile Amazon thinks they are going to have a talent shortage in the future and is committed to re-training 1,000 workers in more advanced technical skills.

Oracle has lost their legal challenge to the Pentagon over their treatment in the never-ending JEDI cloud contract. With this ruling, Oracle is officially done and everyone can move on with our lives.

Finally – Facebook got fined $5B for all the security flaws and election issues it caused over the last few years (Facebook made $55B last year).

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Cisco to Buy Acacia Communications for About $2.6 Billion

    Acacia, a Maynard, Mass.-based maker of optical interconnect technologies like modules and semiconductors, derived roughly 14% of its $339.9 million in revenue last year from Cisco. Acacia was formed in 2009 and went public in May 2016.

    Cisco said Acacia’s technology will enable users of its hardware to drive more data over high-speed internet networks. Cisco executives said the company is looking to take advantage of a growing trend of customers migrating to pluggable technology from chassis-based systems. Pluggable modules give network operators a more efficient way to increase the data that runs over networks.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/cisco-to-buy-acacia-communications-for-about-2-6-billion-11562675698

  • Google acquires enterprise cloud storage provider Elastifile

    Google today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to purchase Elastifile, a Santa Clara, California-based provider of enterprise cloud file storage solutions, for an undisclosed price. (CTech cited an anonymous source as saying Google is paying around $200 million.) Assuming the acquisition passes regulatory muster, the search giant expects it to be completed later this year, at which point the Elastifile team will join Google Cloud.

    Perhaps uncoincidentally, this news comes on the heels of the launch of Elastifile File Service on Google Cloud Platform, a fully managed version of Elastifile optimized for Google Cloud Platform. Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian wrote in a blog post that Elastifle will be integrated with Google Cloud Filestore in the coming months.

    https://venturebeat.com/2019/07/09/google-acquires-enterprise-cloud-storage-provider-elastifile/

  • IBM closes Red Hat acquisition for $34 billion

    IBM originally announced its intent to acquire the Linux developer in October of last year. The U.S. Department of Justice gave its stamp of approval in May, and the last big potential roadblock was removed when the EU gave its unconditional approval at the end of June.

    IBM says that Red Hat will stay under the watch of CEO Jim Whitehurst, with Whitehurst joining IBM’s senior management and reporting directly to IBM CEO Ginni Rometty.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/09/ibm-closes-red-hat-acquisition-for-34-billion/

Artificial Intelligence

  • AI smokes 5 poker champs at a time in no-limit Hold’em with ‘relentless consistency’

    With six players, the possibilities for hands, bets and possible outcomes are so numerous that it is effectively impossible to account for all of them, especially in a minute or less. It’d be like trying to exhaustively document every grain of sand on a beach between waves.

    Yet over 10,000 hands played with champions, Pluribus managed to win money at a steady rate, exposing no weaknesses or habits that its opponents could take advantage of. What’s the secret? Consistent randomness.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/07/11/ai-smokes-5-poker-champs-at-a-time-in-no-limit-holdem-with-ruthless-consistency/

Cloud

  • Oracle loses court challenge to $10 billion cloud contract

    Federal Claims Court Senior Judge Eric Bruggink dismissed the company’s argument that the contract violates federal procurement laws and is unfairly tainted by conflicts of interests.

    Bruggink said that because Oracle didn’t meet the criteria for the bid, it “cannot demonstrate prejudice as a result of other possible errors in the procurement process.”

    The decision is a major blow to Oracle, which risks losing a share of its federal defense business if the Pentagon awards the contract to another cloud company. The ruling also eliminates a headache for the Pentagon, which has been fending off challenges to its winner-take-all strategy in the cloud contract for more than a year.

    https://www.unionleader.com/news/business/oracle-loses-court-challenge-to-billion-cloud-contract/article_95e0b592-3b67-539f-923a-523fa9ced138.html

Security/Privacy

  • Facebook’s $5 billion FTC fine is an embarrassing joke

    That’s actually the real problem here: fines and punishments are only effective when they provide negative consequences for bad behavior. But Facebook has done nothing but behave badly from inception, and it has only ever been slapped on the wrist by authority figures and rewarded by the market. After all, Facebook was already under a previous FTC consent decree for privacy violations imposed in 2011, and that didn’t seem to stop any of the company’s recent scandals from happening. As Kara Swisher has written, you have to add another zero to this fine to make it mean anything.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/12/20692524/facebook-five-billion-ftc-fine-embarrassing-joke

Other

  • Amazon to Retrain a Third of Its U.S. Workforce

    Amazon’s promise to upgrade the skills of its workforce—reported by The Wall Street Journal Thursday—represents one of the biggest corporate retraining initiatives on record, and breaks down to about $7,000 per worker, or about $1,200 a year through 2025. By comparison, large employers with 10,000 workers or more that were surveyed by the Association for Talent Development reported spending an average of $500 per worker on training in 2017.

    Amazon said it would retrain 100,000 workers in total by expanding existing training programs and rolling out new ones meant to help its employees move into more-advanced jobs inside the company or find new careers outside of it. The training is voluntary and mostly free for employees and won’t obligate participants to remain at Amazon, the Seattle-based company said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-to-retrain-a-third-of-its-u-s-workforce-11562841120

  • Foxconn will only create 1,500 jobs, says Wisconsin governor

    The Foxconn factory in Wisconsin will only create 1,500 jobs when it starts production next May, Gov. Tony Evers told CNBC yesterday. That’s the same number Foxconn has been saying since it shifted plans for the factory a few months ago, and far short of the 13,000 jobs that were promised when President Trump broke ground a year ago. Evers has been negotiating with Foxconn since he replaced former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, and he says he now has “clarity” on Foxconn’s plans.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/10/20689021/foxconn-wisconsin-governor-jobs-tony-evers-manufacturing

  • The Fortune 500 has a new woman CEO: Accenture’s Julie Sweet

    The consulting company said Thursday that Sweet, 51, will take the top job in September. She’s currently the head of Accenture’s North America business, which accounts for almost 50% of the company’s global revenues.

    “Julie is the right person to lead Accenture into the future, given her strong command of our business and proven ability to drive results in our largest market,” David Rowland, the company’s interim CEO and incoming executive chairman, said in a statement.

    Sweet joined Accenture (ACN) in 2010. She served as the company’s general counsel after 10 years as a partner at the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

    https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/12/business/accenture-julie-sweet/index.html

Posted on

Supplier Report: 7/5/2019


Photo by Trent Yarnell on Unsplash

Former Equifax CIO Jun Ying is going to prison for insider trading.  He sold off stock prior to the breach announcement (but he was well aware of) avoiding over $100K in loses… finally someone is getting held accountable.

Google’s peers are petitioning the US Government to hold the company accountable for anti-trust behavior. It is one thing for the government to investigate but I do find it troubling when other companies start pointing the government at one of their competitors. I certainly don’t think they have end user’s best interests at heart.

Finally the EU, who collectively are very sensitive to monopoly behavior, are allowing IBM to move forward with their acquisition of Red Hat.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • EU Gives Unconditional Green Light to IBM’s $34B Purchase of Red Hat

    The Commission said the acquisition would not create any competition problems in relevant markets.

    In its investigation, the commission looked at the impact the transaction would have on the markets for middleware and system infrastructure software. Middleware is software used for making and operating enterprise application software, such as online payment processing. System infrastructure software allows companies to control hardware resources, such as servers, across enterprise application software.

    The commission found that the merged company would continue to face significant competition from other players in all potential markets.

    https://www.law.com/2019/06/27/eu-gives-unconditional-green-light-to-ibms-34b-purchase-of-red-hat-292-48931/?slreturn=20190530072301

Artificial Intelligence

  • Google will now tell you how crowded your bus or train is likely to be

    Google is basing these details on past rides. For months, Google has been asking some people who use Google Maps to provide additional details about the level of crowdedness of their transit trips. After completing their trips, riders were given four options: many empty seats, few empty seats, standing room only, or cramped standing room only.

    Now, the company has collected enough data that it can begin offering predictions to customers who use Google Maps to plan their daily commute. The new feature is available starting today in 200 cities around the globe. (About one-quarter of cities are in the US, according to The Wall Street Journal.)

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/27/18761187/google-maps-transit-crowded-delays-predictions-train-bus-subway

  • Amazon’s Facial Analysis Program Is Building A Dystopic Future For Trans And Nonbinary People

    As Os Keyes, a PhD student at the University of Washington, writes in their 2018 study of the subject:

    If systems are not designed to include trans people, inclusion becomes an active struggle: individuals must actively fight to be included in things as basic as medical systems, legal systems or even bathrooms. This creates space for widespread explicit discrimination, which has (in, for example, the United States) resulted in widespread employment, housing and criminal justice inequalities , increased vulnerability to intimate partner abuse and[35], particularly for trans people of colour, increased vulnerability to potentially fatal state violence.

    https://jezebel.com/amazons-facial-analysis-program-is-building-a-dystopic-1835075450

Cloud

  • The Real Cloud Wars: The $6 Billion Battle Over The Future Of Weather Forecasting

    For decades, private weather forecasting has been a cozy industry, dominated in the U.S. by AccuWeather, The Weather Company (founded as The Weather Channel in 1982 and bought by IBM for $2.3 billion in 2016) and DTN, which focuses on industrial concerns and was purchased by a Swiss holding company for $900 million in 2017.

    But now a perfect storm of macro-trends—ever cheaper processing power, cloud computing, vastly improved AI and a proliferation of low-cost sensors—has opened up the field to a fresh crop of ambitious startups. In aggregate, they have raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors, who think the incumbents look vulnerable to creative new business models.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2019/06/24/the-real-cloud-wars-the-6-billion-battle-over-the-future-of-weather-forecasting/#1dcd097d298f

Security/Privacy

  • U.S. May Outlaw Messaging Encryption Used By WhatsApp, iMessage And Others, Report

    Politico cited several unnamed sources in reporting that “the encryption challenge, which the government calls ‘going dark,’ was the focus of a National Security Council meeting Wednesday morning that included the No. 2 officials from several key agencies.” The discussion focused on the lockdown of messaging apps, billed as “a privacy and security feature,” which “frustrates authorities investigating terrorism, drug trafficking and child pornography.”

    The challenge for governments, the U.S. included, is that the privacy of messaging has become a central theme in the ongoing debate around privacy, data security and information integrity. People around the world are shifting from public social media posting to closed groups, and messaging platforms have been a major driver of that. Even Facebook has put messaging security and privacy at the center of its new strategy.

    https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/06/29/u-s-may-outlaw-uncrackable-end-to-end-encrypted-messaging-report-claims/#2fb8053c6c87

Software/SaaS

  • Oracle Hot Takes: Workday “Not Competitive,” SAP a Time Bomb, Microsoft Valued Partner

    Here’s Hurd’s reply about a competitor that’s growing faster than Oracle in the cloud:

    “I think Workday does – again, my sense of Workday is they do a decent job in upmarket HCM where they can divorce the HCM buyer from the ERP buyer. When the ERP buyer and the HCM buyer are aligned and combined, they’re really in a position with no chance because they don’t have much of a financials product,” Hurd said.

    **

    “What that means is, they have to roll up a big new build to move to this thing Larry called earlier, HANA. It’s a big damn build and so the poor CIO or CFO or whoever this guy is, has to show up to the board, and says to the board of directors, ‘We’ve got a $500-million build to move to HANA.’”

    Hurd continued: “So yeah, I mean, I think it’s an incredibly interesting strategy on their part to put all their customers at play. Do we get calls from customers that we haven’t been called or talked to in 20 years? The answer is yes, and is it because – and remember… that when we sold to customers 15 years ago, they never really talked to SAP after that and vice versa, because you’re expected to stay with these ERP systems forever.

    https://cloudwars.co/oracle-workday-not-competitive-sap-time-bomb/

  • Bill Gates accidentally makes the case to regulate the hell out of platform companies

    The important thing to know is that it’s well-established that the network effect enables the winning platforms to achieve massive scale and preclude competition. It’s a devastating combination that Gates calls “complete doom.” There’s a reason so many tech markets tend toward monopoly or duopoly, like Android and iOS, or Google search, or Facebook, or Uber and Lyft — the network effect makes it basically impossible to build a competitor because you can’t populate the network. And you can’t buy your way out of this problem: Microsoft famously paid app developers to write Windows Phone apps when there weren’t enough users to otherwise draw developer attention, and… it didn’t work.

    Gates might be saying this to describe why Windows Phone didn’t succeed — it didn’t have the app ecosystem to compete with Apple and Android — but what he is describing is the exact reason regulating tech platforms is the subject of so much conversation around the world: you can’t count on competition to keep these companies in line, because it’s virtually impossible to build a competitor. Even Microsoft couldn’t do it!

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/24/18715702/bill-gates-regulate-platforms-network-effect-android-mistake-microsoft

    Don’t buy Bill Gates’ outrageous claim that Microsoft just missed out on dominating the smartphone market

    But his comments this week were a bit self-serving. And I almost choked when he said: “We knew the mobile phone would be very popular so we were doing what was called Windows Mobile. We missed being the dominant mobile operating system by a very tiny amount.”

    And things became laughable when he went on to claim: “We were distracted during our antitrust trial. We didn’t assign the best people to do the work. So it’s the biggest mistake I made in terms of something that was clearly within our skill set. We were clearly the company that should have achieved that – and we didn’t.”

    Utter rubbish.

    https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/opinion-analysis/113849252/dont-buy-bill-gates-outrageous-claim-that-microsoft-just-missed-out-on-dominating-the-smartphone-market

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Apple will reportedly manufacture its $6,000 Mac Pro in China

    According to Wall Street Journal sources, Apple will work with Quanta Computer Inc., out of a factory near Shanghai. That facility is close to other Apple suppliers, which could help the company lower its shipping costs, and manufacturing labor costs in China are still much lower than those in the US. Apple has a long-standing relationship with Quanta, which makes MacBooks and Apple smartwatches at its other facilities.

    The decision to move Mac Pro production to China comes even as trade tensions between the Trump administration and China escalate. The proposed 25 percent tariffs on imports from China would affect all of Apple’s major devices. The company has asked suppliers to study shifting assembly of some products out of China, and Foxconn said it could produce US-bound iPhones outside of China if necessary.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/06/28/apple-manufacture-mac-pro-china/

  • Huawei can buy from US suppliers again — but things will never be the same

    All told, Huawei founder and chief executive Ren Zhengfei said recently that the ban would cost the Chinese tech firm — the world’s third-larger seller of smartphones — some $30 billion in lost revenue of the next two years.

    Now, however, the Trump administration has provided a reprieve, at least based on the President’s comments following a meeting with Chinese premier Xi Jinping at the G20 summit this weekend.

    “US companies can sell their equipment to Huawei. We’re talking about equipment where there’s no great national security problem with it,” the U.S. President said.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/29/huawei-us-supplier-ban-lifted/

Other

  • Former Equifax executive sentenced to prison for insider trading prior to data breach

    The Justice Department announced this week that former Equifax CIO Jun Ying has been sentenced to four months in prison for insider trading. He pled guilty earlier this year for for selling his stock in the company prior to the announcement that it had been hit with a massive data breach in 2017.

    The Security and Exchanges Commission charged Ying with insider trading last year. The Department of Justice says that in August 2017, after learning about the breach, he began researching the impact that a similar breach had on another company’s stock price. Later that morning, he promptly exercised and sold all of his stock options, earning nearly a million dollars from the sale. In doing so, he avoided a loss of $117,000 that he otherwise would have incurred when the company’s stock price dropped after the disclosure. More than 150 million people had their personal information leaked in the incident.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/29/20056655/jun-ying-equifax-breach-jail-time-insider-trading-department-of-justice

  • Google’s Enemies Gear Up to Make Antitrust Case

    The stable of Google critics includes TripAdvisor Inc. and Yelp Inc., which accuse the search giant of unfairly favoring its own content.

    Oracle Corp. , which has a long-pending copyright case against Google, has briefed European antitrust regulators about Google’s use of data to target ads and was part of a successful coalition of plaintiffs against Google’s alleged anticompetitive behavior in its Android operating system for smartphones, which led to a record fine issued by the European Commission last year, of €4.3 billion.

    News Corp , which owns The Wall Street Journal, and other publishers say Google and other tech platforms siphon ad revenue from content creators.

    All these companies say they would welcome further antitrust scrutiny. They and others are expected to seek out Justice Department officials as they prepare a Google probe, according to industry executives and antitrust lawyers.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/googles-enemies-gear-up-to-make-antitrust-case-11561368601

  • Jony Ive leaving Apple after nearly 30 years to start new design firm

    Apple’s chief design officer Jonathan Ive will depart the company later this year, bringing an end to a tenure spent crafting some of technology’s most influential products, including the iPhone. Ive, who has led Apple’s design team since 1996, is leaving “to form an independent design company which will count Apple among its primary clients.” The company is called LoveFrom, and Ive will be joined by famed designer Marc Newson on the new venture. Despite stepping down from his executive position, Ive and Apple both claim he will still work “on a range of projects with Apple.”

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/27/18761736/jony-ive-apple-leave-iphone-chief-design-officer-lovefrom-company-quit
    History Will Not Be Kind to Jony Ive

    Ive’s Apple has been one in which consumers have been endlessly encouraged to buy new stuff and get rid of the old. The loser is the environment, and the winner is Apple’s bottom line. Apple has become famous for its design, and Ive has become famous, too. Let’s hope the next great consumer electronics designer is nothing like him.

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ywyjmw/history-will-not-be-kind-to-jony-ive

Posted on

Supplier Report: 6/21/2019


Photo by Adi Constantin on Unsplash

There is a looming trade war with China that is getting closer to reality as companies are trying to determine if they can survive without the Chinese manufacturing supply chain. It is getting so serious that some companies (like Foxconn) are firing off press releases that they have capacity outside of China to meet their production goals.

And as China prepares to face off against Trump, the country continues to interfere with communication applications and protocols (like Telegram) impeding their own citizens ability to communicate due to fears of protests (and those efforts didn’t really matter).

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Salesforce is buying data visualization company Tableau for $15.7B in all-stock deal

    On the heels of Google buying analytics startup Looker last week for $2.6 billion, Salesforce today announced a huge piece of news in a bid to step up its own work in data visualization and (more generally) tools to help enterprises make sense of the sea of data that they use and amass: Salesforce is buying Tableau for $15.7 billion in an all-stock deal.
    **
    This is a huge jump on Tableau’s last market cap: it was valued at $10.79 billion at close of trading Friday, according to figures on Google Finance. (Also: trading has halted on its stock in light of this news.)

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/10/salesforce-is-buying-data-visualization-company-tableau-for-15-7b-in-all-stock-deal/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Amazon CTO says AI tools like Lex are the next big thing after AWS and it’s not Amazon’s responsibility to make sure Rekognition is used accurately or ethically

    For instance, Rekognition is being used by an anti-sex-trafficking non-profit organisation, Thorn, to scrape classified ad sites and search for matches against a database of missing teenagers.

    But events like Re:Mars demonstrate that Amazon knows it has work to do in gaining the public’s trust in order to go ahead with its ambitions.

    One non-Amazon guest on stage, the AI pioneer Andrew Ng, gave a pretty scathing review of the technology industry’s reputation – and food for thought for his hosts.

    “Even as we lead the world through multiple waves of technological disruption, we’ve not always provided the best leadership. With the rise of the internet, we’ve created tremendous wealth, but we also contributed to wealth inequality. Let’s make sure that this time, with the rise of AI, we take everyone along with us.”

    https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48634676

Cloud

  • Amazon executives slam Oracle and Microsoft as the cloud wars heat up

    Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy derided other providers of traditional on-premises database services at the company’s 10th annual public sector conference in Washington DC on Wednesday. AWS has battled Microsoft, Oracle and others for the Department of Defense cloud services contract, which is worth $10 billion and runs for 10 years.

    “I think that most people are pretty frustrated with the older guard database solutions,” Jassy said. “They’re expensive, proprietary, high lock-in. They’re constantly auditing you, fining you unless you buy more from them. It’s just a model that people are sick of. And it’s why people are moving as quickly as possible to more open engines.”

    https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/12/economy/aws-jedi-contract-amazon/index.html

Security/Privacy

  • CFOs Grapple With How Much Cybersecurity Spending is Enough

    Finding comfort on cybersecurity spending comes down to developing strong relationships with the chief information security officer and other information technology managers, said Steve Priest, the CFO of JetBlue Airways Corp. “You can’t do everything.” he said during an interview. “You have to trust the subject matter experts to do the job that they’re paid to do.”

    Finance can help, though, by encouraging coordination between IT managers and the teams purchasing equipment, and by requiring purchases go through a competitive bidding process to ensure the company is getting the best deal, he said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/cfos-grapple-with-how-much-cybersecurity-spending-is-enough-11560378386

  • Telegram faces DDoS attack in China… again

    The company went on to describe a distributed denial of service attack as when “your servers get GADZILLIONS of garbage requests which stop them from processing legitimate requests. Imagine that an army of lemmings just jumped the queue at McDonald’s in front of you – and each is ordering a whopper,” according to Telegram. “The server is busy telling the whopper lemmings they came to the wrong place – but there are so many of them that the server can’t even see you to try and take your order.”

    This isn’t the first time that someone has tried to take down Telegram at a time when China was experiencing significant unrest. Four years ago, a similar attack struck the company’s service, just as China was initiating a crackdown on human rights lawyers in the country.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/12/telegram-faces-ddos-attack-in-china-again/

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Apple’s U.S. iPhones Can All Be Made Outside of China If Needed

    “Twenty-five percent of our production capacity is outside of China and we can help Apple respond to its needs in the U.S. market,” said Liu, adding that investments are now being made in India for Apple. “We have enough capacity to meet Apple’s demand.”

    Apple has not given Hon Hai instructions to move production out of China, but it is capable of moving lines elsewhere according to customers’ needs, Liu added. The company will respond swiftly and rely on localized manufacturing in response to the trade war, just as it foresaw the need to build a base in the U.S. state of Wisconsin two years ago, he said.

    The U.S. market accounts for one in every four iPhones sold worldwide, “so it represents a huge portion of Foxconn’s manufacturing business inside China,” Strategy Analytics analyst Neil Mawston said.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-11/hon-hai-has-enough-ex-china-capacity-to-make-u-s-bound-products

  • Broadcom to Take $2 Billion Hit From Huawei Ban

    Broadcom’s gloomier guidance could spread across the semiconductor industry as other big players, including Qualcomm Inc. and Intel Corp. , begin to reconsider their outlooks in light of the Huawei ban and a broader anxiety about the geopolitical future, analysts say. Huawei is one of the U.S. chip industry’s most lucrative customers.

    “Everybody probably has to cut just due to Huawei if nothing else,” said Stacy Rasgon, an analyst at Bernstein Research. “Almost everybody has some exposure.”

    Some smaller chip companies have already warned that the Huawei ban will ding their revenue. Qorvo Inc., which makes radio-frequency products, and Lumentum Holdings Inc., which makes optical networking products, both reduced their quarterly revenue guidance last month by about $50 million.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/broadcom-lowers-revenue-outlook-amid-trade-tensions-11560459528

Other

  • IBM to inherit over 13,000 workers from Red Hat

    IBM (IBM) is planning to cut around 1,700 jobs, according to a report from CNBC. The job cut comes as IBM prepares to add Red Hat (RHT) to its corporate family. IBM last year agreed to purchase Red Hat, an open-source software company, for $34 billion. Red Hat had more than 13,000 employees at the end of February this year. IBM itself has more than 340,000 employees worldwide. Therefore, IBM’s headcount is set to swell once the Red Hat deal closes. The deal is expected to close before the end of the year.

    https://marketrealist.com/2019/06/ibm-cutting-jobs-as-red-hat-deal-closing-nears/

Posted on

News You Can Use: 6/19/2019


Photo by Peter Secan on Unsplash

  • Does Amazon Really Pay No Taxes? Here’s the Complicated Answer

    So is Amazon getting a $129 million refund?
    Not necessarily. There are indications Amazon paid little or no federal income taxes for 2018. Its federal net operating loss carryforwards—accumulated losses that offset future taxable income—rose to $627 million at the end of 2018 from $226 million a year earlier, according to securities filings. Its federal tax credit carryforward—accumulated credits that offset future taxes—rose to $1.4 billion from $855 million, largely because of the research-and-development credit.

    Those are signals that Amazon accumulated losses and tax credits faster than it generated income and tax liability. The law lets carryforwards smooth tax payments across business cycles and a company’s lifespan.

    “Because we are in a low-margin industry and invest in innovation and infrastructure, we don’t make as much pretax profit as other tech companies, so our taxes are lower,” Amazon said in a statement.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/does-amazon-really-pay-no-taxes-heres-the-complicated-answer-11560504602

  • Is It a Good Idea to Be Friends With Your Employees? This Entrepreneur Says Yes
  • Determine if a Hot Dog Is a Sandwich With the Cube Rule
    There are legitimate tax conversations around a variety of different sandwich-like foods, and the entire conversation is insane:

    Things start off reasonably enough—a single starch at the base makes a food “toast,” an additional starch on top makes something a sandwich, and a base plus two parallel walls means you’re dealing with a taco (which means a hot dog is a taco). But then you get to the fourth image, and you realize this chart is trying to classify an enchilada as “sushi.” Things get even crazier (and intentionally contradictory) if you go to cuberule.com, where they list nigiri sushi (a piece of raw fish on top of rice) as “toast.” It’s almost as if this rule wasn’t meant to be helpful.

    Verdict: The cube rule is wack in terms of identifying foods, but it’s a hack in that it identifies the utter futility of trying to fit things into neat little boxes (or cubes). Being technically correct isn’t always useful, and pedantry very rarely wins one any friends. Just as you would never suggest going out for enchiladas to satisfy a sushi craving, you probably wouldn’t suggest hot dogs if someone said they were in the mood for a sandwich. It doesn’t matter if a hot dog is a sandwich; a hot dog is good. And that, I think, is all we need to know.

    https://skillet.lifehacker.com/determine-if-a-hot-dog-is-a-sandwich-with-the-cube-rule-1835581739

Posted on

Supplier Report: 6/14/2019


Photo by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash

A week after news broke that Google will likely be under anti-trust investigation, the company announced it plans to acquire data analytics company Looker. I am curious if the Justice Department’s activity will impact this acquisition (Google isn’t doing so well in cloud hosting).

Microsoft and Oracle are teaming up to weaken cloud leader Amazon. Azure will now support some of Oracle’s database products, which should lead to quicker cloud migration for (formerly) on-prem applications.

FedEx is ending their priority shipping relationship with Amazon. Amazon has been building out their own shipping and logistic services for years and FedEx was tired of the customer/competitor dynamic.

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Google to Acquire Data Analytics Firm Looker for $2.6 Billion

    The Alphabet Inc. unit unveiled a deal on Thursday to acquire Looker, a business-intelligence software and big- data analytics platform, for $2.6 billion in cash. The two companies were well acquainted; Alphabet earlier invested in Looker through its venture-capital arm CapitalG.

    The move indicates Google will continue to pour resources into its Google Cloud division as it remains far behind rivals Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp in cloud computing. The area is a priority of Google Chief Executive Sundar Pichai, who replaced the unit’s head, Diane Greene, with ex- Oracle executive Thomas Kurian earlier this year. Analysts have long speculated an acquisition as likely.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-to-acquire-data-analytics-firm-looker-for-2-6-billion-11559829249

  • German Chip Maker Infineon Buys U.S. Rival in $9.4 Billion Deal

    German chip maker Infineon IFNNY 0.18% Technologies AG has agreed to acquire Cypress Semiconductor Corp. CY 0.23% for €8.4 billion ($9.4 billion), the latest in a series of transactions reshaping the industry.

    Infineon shares fell 8.1% to €14.79 on Monday, as analysts questioned whether the company was overpaying for Cypress, especially as global economic fears roil markets. Infineon itself cut its full-year targets in March due to the uncertainty, including a slowdown in the Chinese car market.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/infineon-to-buy-cypress-semiconductor-in-multibillion-dollar-deal-11559540811

  • The Fiat Chrysler-Renault merger is dead over suboptimal ‘political conditions’

    FCA confirmed to TechCrunch that it has withdrawn its offer, largely due to political conditions.

    “FCA remains firmly convinced of the compelling, transformational rationale of a proposal that has been widely appreciated since it was submitted, the structure and terms of which were carefully balanced to deliver substantial benefits to all parties,” according to a company statement provided to TechCrunch. “However, it has become clear that the political conditions in France do not currently exist for such a combination to proceed successfully.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/05/the-fiat-chrysler-renault-merger-is-dead-over-suboptimal-political-conditions/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Germ-detecting AI and virtual farms: How tech will revolutionize food across the globe in the next 5 years

    AI sensors installed in mobile phones and other portable devices will allow the detection of food-borne pathogens wherever they may appear.

    With this sort of tech, we’ll easily be able, for example, to detect the presence of E. coli or Salmonella in food and to prevent outbreaks. According to IBM: “Mobile bacteria sensors could dramatically increase the speed of a pathogen test from days to second.”

    https://www.businessinsider.com/ai-virtual-farms-to-revolutionise-diets-across-the-globe-2019-6

Cloud

  • The Google Outage Highlights the Perils of a Centralized Internet

    Sunday’s issues once again highlighted how fragile the modern internet really is, and how reliant we are on Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure), and Google (Google Cloud), who collectively dominate the $70 billion cloud computing market.

    The outage also again showcased that however carefully engineers may plan, having a centralized point of failure will inevitably cause headaches—especially when you’ve trusted your entire backend computing power or storage to just one company.

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8xzdak/the-google-outage-highlights-the-perils-of-a-centralized-internet

  • Microsoft (MSFT) Ups Ante in Cloud With Oracle Partnership

    Through this partnership, Oracle will support its software which includes Oracle’s Autonomous Database on Microsoft’s Azure services, comprising AI and analytics capabilities. Meanwhile, Microsoft will offer Oracle’s software to its Windows Azure customers. Further, Oracle will make its software available to Microsoft’s cloud computing customers.

    For instance, customers can now run Oracle software and other applications including Oracle E-Business Suite on Azure. Further, Oracle applications are enabled to utilize Azure Active Directory.

    This flexibility is expected to accelerate digital transformation of business database to public cloud platforms significantly. Overall, the partnership is aimed at providing direct and secure network connectivity, and fast data exchange between the two cloud platforms.

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/microsoft-msft-ups-ante-cloud-142502667.html

Security/Privacy

  • U.S. Cities Strain to Fight Hackers

    Municipalities in general are less prepared than companies due to limited resources and difficulty competing for cybersecurity talent, security professionals say. They are also increasingly reliant on technology to deliver city services and some have aging computer systems, according to Standard & Poor’s.

    Ransomware attacks often start when an employee opens a link or an attachment in a phishing email. Hackers can also exploit vulnerabilities in a security system. The ransomware then blocks files the cyberattackers say they will unlock in return for a payment, typically in bitcoin.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-cities-strain-to-fight-hackers-11559899800

  • Microsoft deletes massive face recognition database

    Microsoft has deleted a massive database of 10 million images which was being used to train facial recognition systems, the Financial Times reports. The database was released in 2016 and was built of online images of 100,000 well-known people.

    The database is believed to have been used to train a system operated by police forces and the military.The deletion comes after Microsoft called on US politicians to do a better job of regulating recognition systems.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-48555149
    Microsoft Deleted a Massive Facial Recognition Database, But It’s Not Dead

    “Despite the recent termination of the msceleb.org website, the dataset still exists in several repositories on GitHub, the hard drives of countless researchers, and will likely continue to be used in research projects around the world,” Harvey wrote on Megapixels. A facial recognition challenge this year at Imperial College London plans to use a variant of the MS-Celeb-1M database, and offers download links.

    https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3x4mp/microsoft-deleted-a-facial-recognition-database-but-its-not-dead

  • Google is reportedly arguing that cutting Huawei off from Android threatens US security

    Because Huawei phones are already banned in the US, understanding how Google is making that case that a forked version of Android being sold elsewhere in the world is a serious threat to US national security might seem like a bit of a jump. Although the Financial Times’ sources don’t explicitly lay out Google’s argument, it’s not difficult to imagine how it would go.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/7/18656163/google-huawei-android-security-ban-claims

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Infinidat Announces Data Rescue Program for IBM Storage Customers

    “IBM created the high-end storage market, but aside from its commitment to storage for z/OS mainframes, layoffs at their Tel Aviv development center and their lack of architectural innovation together show an apparent lack of commitment to the open systems storage market,” said Stan Zaffos, Senior Vice President at Infinidat. “The company’s reliance on obsolescent storage architectures and their willingness to lay off developers, most recently its XIV and A9000 developers, has left many IBM storage customers searching for an exit strategy.”
    **
    As part of the program, every IBM customer, globally, with an active support contract for A9000/R, XIV, or other IBM storage solutions, is eligible for no-cost data migration to InfiniBox. The InfiniBox FLX program provides ultra-high performance, simple pay-as-you-go pricing, a 100% availability guarantee, and free total hardware refresh every three years – for life. For customers wishing to purchase the storage, Infinidat also offers a Capacity-on-Demand CapEx model to purchase what you use as you need it. To further mitigate risk, Infinidat will also provide the data migration services to InfiniBox or InfiniBox FLX at no charge for most installations.

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/infinidat-announces-data-rescue-program-120000975.html

Other

  • Google Gets Ready for Legal Fight as U.S. Mulls an Antitrust Probe

    Google’s competitors are pressing antitrust enforcers to look far and wide at the company’s practices. Perhaps the most common complaint against Google around the world in recent years is that it uses its search engine to privilege its own content at the expense of its competitors’.

    For example, it created new design features like the “knowledge graph,” which populates the boxes that appear at the top of search, often answering a query without requiring the user to click through to another website. In March, 62% of Google searches on mobile were “no-click” searches, according to research firm Jumpshot. Google has argued that if consumers don’t find the rearranged content useful, they won’t click on it.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/google-gets-ready-for-legal-fight-as-u-s-weighs-an-antitrust-probe-11559521581
    Google appeals $1.7BN EU AdSense antitrust fine

    The AdSense antitrust decision is the third fine for Google under the Commission’s current antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager — who also issued a $5BN penalty for anti-competitive behaviors attached to Android last summer; following a $2.7BN fine for Google Shopping antitrust violations, in mid 2017.

    Google is appealing both earlier penalties but has also made changes to how it operates Google Shopping and Android in Europe in the meanwhile, to avoid the risk of further punitive penalties.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/05/google-appeals-1-7bn-eu-adsense-antitrust-fine/

  • FedEx Says It’s Ending Express Shipping Service for Amazon

    Friday’s move also reflects how Amazon has gone from simply a sought-after customer to a direct competitor of FedEx. As Amazon has built its own delivery capacity through a fleet of airplanes and same-day couriers, the internet giant has been able to ship more of its products on its own and control its costs. That has put FedEx in an untenable position of essentially competing with Amazon for Amazon’s own business.

    FedEx is betting on other retailers, which are expanding their e-commerce businesses but still need shipping companies to help them fulfill their express orders. FedEx said e-commerce was expected to double to 100 million packages a day in the United States by 2026.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/07/business/fedex-amazon-express-delivery.html

  • IRS Wins Again in Closely Watched Intel Tax Case

    The case involves what is known as share-based compensation and where it should be deducted as a business expense. The IRS wrote a regulation that required companies to deduct more of it abroad as opposed to deducting it in the U.S. Especially before the 2017 federal-tax overhaul that lowered corporate rates, companies had an incentive to claim those deductions against the higher U.S. tax rate—and thus pack more of their profits into low-taxed foreign jurisdictions.

    “We disagree with the Tax Court that the 2003 regulations are arbitrary and capricious,” wrote Chief Judge Sidney Thomas, who was appointed by President Clinton. “While the rulemaking process was less than ideal, the [law] does not require perfection.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/irs-wins-again-in-closely-watched-intel-tax-case-11559928738

  • Not Your Daddy’s Regulation: Tech Giants Face A Complicated Reckoning In Washington

    Amazon is ferociously aggressive in many of its business lines, yet it faces fierce competition in nearly all of them. There’s Amazon.com vs. Walmart, Whole Foods vs. the broader grocery industry, AWS vs. Microsoft Azure, Amazon Echo vs. Google Home.

    With such a diverse set of businesses, Amazon will make it hard for regulators to reign in the “bigness” many are hoping it will tackle. Amazon and its fellow tech giants are nothing like the Bell Telephone Company or Standard Oil, which grew dominant by finding a core advantage and defending it at all costs. They have instead built their empires through continual reinvention, and they are far more nimble than their corporate predecessors. Regulators will therefore have to comb through each business line, consider the market dynamics in each, and toe the line between policing anti-competitive behavior and picking winners and losers.

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/alexkantrowitz/not-your-daddys-regulation-tech-giants-face-a-complicated