Tag: Apple

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Supplier Report: 3/1/2019

Microsoft employees are pushing back on the company’s newest government contract. The $480m deal is to provide VR headsets to the military and despite the feedback the company does plan to move forward.

Speaking of government contracts, Amazon is still fighting to win the JEDI cloud deal with the DoD after new conflict of interest information coming to light.

Meanwhile, there is more information about how Facebook uses other phone applications to collect data on users, even if you don’t have a Facebook account.

Acquisitions

  • Palo Alto Networks to acquire Demisto for $560M

    The company sees a tool that can help enhance the Palo Alto security portfolio by adding a higher level of automation. “The addition of Demisto’s orchestration and automation technologies will accelerate Palo Alto Networks Application Framework strategy and serve as a critical step forward in the company’s aim to deliver immediate threat prevention and response for security teams,” the company explained in a statement.

    Palo Alto also hopes that Demisto’s automated solutions will help accelerate its AI and machine learning capabilities to bring intelligent automation across the platform. The company brings more than technology, of course. It also brings its 150 customers to Palo Alto, a quarter of which are in the Fortune 500.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/19/palo-alto-networks-to-acquire-demisto-for-560m/

  • Google acquires a small cloud start-up as it looks to catch up to Amazon and Microsoft

    Google is making another play in the cloud space with a new acquisition. The company announced Tuesday it plans to acquire cloud migration company Alooma, which helps other companies move their data from multiple sources into one data warehouse.

    Google did not disclose how much it will pay for Alooma, which is based in Israel and California, but it’s likely a relatively small acquisition. Alooma has raised about $15 million from investors like Lightspeed Venture Partners and Sequioa Capital Israel, according to Crunchbase.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/19/google-plans-to-acquire-cloud-migration-company-alooma.html

Artificial Intelligence

  • OpenAI built a text generator so good, it’s considered too dangerous to release

    OpenAI said its new natural language model, GPT-2, was trained to predict the next word in a sample of 40 gigabytes of internet text. The end result was the system generating text that “adapts to the style and content of the conditioning text,” allowing the user to “generate realistic and coherent continuations about a topic of their choosing.” The model is a vast improvement on the first version by producing longer text with greater coherence.

    But with every good application of the system, such as bots capable of better dialog and better speech recognition, the non-profit found several more, like generating fake news, impersonating people, or automating abusive or spam comments on social media.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/17/openai-text-generator-dangerous/

Cloud

  • Why Alphabet and Microsoft Are Better-Positioned Than You Think

    Each year, Stack Overflow polls over 100,000 professional developers to get a read on their favorite platforms — what they use most, what they love most, what they dread most, and what they want most. Linux was the winner, by far, which is really good news for both Alphabet and Microsoft.

    Why? Let’s start with Linux itself. The world’s most popular open-source operating system is available in a number of varieties commonly known as distributions. Red Hat has a very popular one that IBM is in the process of acquiring. In the cloud, Ubuntu is extremely popular. So are Fedora (a completely free version of Red Hat) and Arch Linux.

    Alphabet is far and away the biggest consumer of open-source software built for Linux and related technologies. Microsoft is the biggest overall contributor of open-source ideas to GitHub, the development community it acquired in August for about $7.5 billion in stock. Both companies are also making it easier to run Linux installations in their clouds (i.e., Azure and Google Cloud, respectively). As developers continue to up their intake of Linux — and last year usage doubled, according to Stack Overflow — they’re more likely to run into open-source offerings from Alphabet and Microsoft.

    https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/02/22/why-alphabet-and-microsoft-are-better-positioned-t.aspx

  • Pentagon Cloud-Computing Contract Sought by Amazon Faces New Hurdle

    The contract was expected to be awarded this spring. Rival Oracle Corp. sued to halt the process until the government thoroughly investigates Oracle’s claims of alleged conflicts, which center on a former government employee who worked at Amazon before and after playing a role in the Pentagon’s procurement process.

    The Defense Department largely dismissed conflict of interest claims earlier, making Tuesday’s motion to seek the stay a potential turning point.

    “DoD can confirm that new information not previously provided to DoD has emerged related to potential conflicts of interest,” Pentagon spokeswoman Elissa Smith said in a statement. “As a result of this new information, DoD is continuing to investigate these potential conflicts.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/pentagon-cloud-computing-contract-sought-by-amazon-faces-new-hurdle-11550601359

Security

  • You Give Apps Sensitive Personal Information. Then They Tell Facebook.

    The social-media giant collects intensely personal information from many popular smartphone apps just seconds after users enter it, even if the user has no connection to Facebook, according to testing done by The Wall Street Journal. The apps often send the data without any prominent or specific disclosure, the testing showed.

    It is already known that many smartphone apps send information to Facebook about when users open them, and sometimes what they do inside. Previously unreported is how at least 11 popular apps, totaling tens of millions of downloads, have also been sharing sensitive data entered by users. The findings alarmed some privacy experts who reviewed the Journal’s testing.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/you-give-apps-sensitive-personal-information-then-they-tell-facebook-11550851636?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • The Hot, Lucrative Market in IT Security Talent

    “What you’ve been seeing for the last year or two is more demand than supply” in cybersecurity, says Ryan Sutton, district president at the Robert Half Technology staffing agency. “As demand stays high and supply more or less stays constant,” upward pressure on wages is likely to increase, he says.

    In addition to pushing up salaries, the competition for talent is forcing companies to snatch up candidates more quickly than they have in the past, Mr. Sutton says.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-hot-lucrative-market-in-it-security-talent-11550763976

Software/SaaS

  • Snapchat is in the middle of an identity crisis

    There are many reasons why Snapchat hasn’t caught up to Facebook or Instagram, Keath said, but the lack of public profiles and embeddable content on the web are the main ones to blame for its growth troubles. Another big issue has been the app’s janky user interface, particularly on Android, which Snapchat has been vowing to fix for a couple of years now.

    Then there’s Snapchat’s dependence on ephemeral posts, though rumors suggest it may soon allow public Stories that don’t disappear. If Snapchat were to come up with a way to make Stories last longer or be permanent on someone’s account, it could help it better compete with Instagram and other social networks.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/22/snapchat-bhad-bhabie-nike-augmented-reality-identity-crisis/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • The Dirty Energy Powering Data Center Alley

    Despite significant new investment in renewable generation by utilities in other data center hot spots such as Iowa, the dramatic expansion of Virginia’s Data Center Alley continues to fuel and increase demand in coal and natural gas. At present, power generation in Virginia is dominated by fossil fuels, with less than 5 percent coming from renewable sources, lagging far behind other regions. Dominion Energy, Virginia’s largest electricity provider and the primary electric utility for Data Center Alley, has strongly resisted any meaningful transition to renewable sources of electricity, currently representing only 4 percent of its generation mix, with plans to increase to only slightly over 10 percent by 2030.

    Dominion’s lack of renewable energy supply and insistence on making significant new investments in fossil fuels will both delay Virginia’s transition to cleaner sources of energy, and make it much more costly to do so. Yet many of the largest data center companies with commitments to 100 percent renewable energy have continued to rapidly expand their presence in Virginia, thus fueling even more demand for dirty electricity, with Amazon Web Services the biggest culprit. Amazon Web Services (AWS) already ranked as one of Dominion Energy’s largest electricity customers when it made its commitment to 100 percent renewable energy in late 2014, and Greenpeace‘s analysis shows AWS has tripled its data center operations in Virginia since that time. Even though AWS did add a sizable amount of renewable energy locally from 2015 to 2016, its dramatic growth in Virginia during this period continued to far exceed the additional electricity supply from its renewable projects.

    https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/reports/click-clean-virginia/

    Amazon aims to make half of its shipments carbon neutral by 2030

    The company is calling this program “Shipment Zero.” Details on this long-term project weren’t yet available, but Amazon says it plans to share its company-wide carbon footprint “along with related goals and programs,” at a later date. That seems to indicate Amazon will offer an update on the progress of its other sustainability goals, as well.

    It’s important for Amazon to be transparent on these plans, as the size of its business means its impact to the environment, energy consumption and, ultimately climate change, is significant.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/18/amazon-aims-to-make-half-of-its-shipments-carbon-neutral-by-2030/

  • Apple’s move to ARM-based Macs creates uncertainty

    The move could give developers a way to reach a bigger market with a single app, although the transition could be bumpy. For Intel, of course, it would mean the loss of a significant customer, albeit probably not a huge hit to its bottom line.

    The key question is not the timeline but just how smoothly Apple is able to make the shift. For developers, it will likely mean an awkward period of time supporting new and classic Macs as well as new and old-style Mac apps.

    https://www.axios.com/apple-macbook-arm-chips-ea93c38a-d40a-4873-8de9-7727999c588c.html

  • Microsoft workers demand it drop $480 million U.S. Army contract

    Microsoft won a contract in November to supply the Army with at least 2,500 prototypes of augmented reality headsets, which digitally display contextual information in front of a user’s eyes. The government has said the devices would be used on the battlefield and in training to improve soldiers “lethality, mobility and situational awareness.”

    In the petition to Microsoft executives, posted on Twitter, the workers said they “did not sign up to develop weapons, and we demand a say in how our work is used.” They called on the company to develop “a public-facing acceptable use policy” for its technology and an external review board to publicly enforce it.

    Microsoft said in a statement that it always appreciates employee feedback. It also referred to an October blog post by its president, Brad Smith, in which he said the company remained committed to assisting the military and would advocate for laws to ensure responsible use of new technologies.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-army/microsoft-workers-demand-it-drop-450-million-u-s-army-contract-idUSKCN1QB2LV

Other

  • Nestlé, McDonald’s, Others Pull Ads From YouTube

    The advertisers’ withdrawals come after video blogger Matt Watson posted a video on YouTube on Sunday that showed inappropriate user comments about videos featuring underage girls, including some that identified precise segments where children appear in compromising positions.

    The video, which had received over 1.7 million views as of Wednesday afternoon, said YouTube’s recommendation algorithm leads users to similar content.

    McDonald’s Corp. , which was among the several brands whose ads ran alongside the objectionable content, also paused spending on YouTube, according to a person familiar with the matter. The company didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/nestle-mcdonalds-others-pull-ads-from-youtube-11550705643

  • Apple is reportedly closing two stores in a Texas district to avoid patent trolls

    As MacRumors notes, the Eastern District of Texas is known for its patent cases (an SMU Dedman School of Law paper backs up that claim), and per US law, patent lawsuits can be filed in places where the defendant “has a regular and established place of business.” By closing its two stores in the district, Apple reportedly hopes to shield itself from those suits.

    The Apple Willow Bend store in Plano and the Apple Stonebriar store in Frisco are both expected to close up shop on April 12th. Apple is planning to open a new store at the Galleria Dallas shopping mall just outside of the Eastern District border to continue to have a retail presence in the area.

    https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2019/2/22/18236424/apple-closing-stores-eastern-district-texas-avoid-patent-trolls

  • Two Former Cognizant Executives Charged in Bribery Probe

    Gordon Coburn, the company’s former president, and Steven Schwartz, its former chief legal officer, authorized a $2 million bribe to at least one government official in India to secure permits necessary for the construction of an office campus there to support roughly 17,000 employees, prosecutors said.

    To conceal Cognizant’s role in the bribery scheme, Messrs. Coburn and Schwartz, and others, agreed to use a construction company to secure the permit, prosecutors said. The construction company would pay the bribe, and Cognizant would later reimburse the firm through disguised cost overruns on the project, located in Chennai, India, prosecutors said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/cognizant-to-pay-25-million-to-settle-bribery-claims-11550252878

  • IBM is the top choice for Gen Z employees in tech: Glassdoor

    Glassdoor economics research analyst Amanda Stansell attributed Gen Zers’ top choice to a number of factors, including a good work-life balance at IBM and IBM employees’ ability to work from home.

    Another factor that may play a role in IBM being the top choice? Lack of controversy.

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ibm-glassdoor-gen-z-193615566.html

    But they are cutting back from work at home options, cutting staff, and are still in transition…

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Supplier Report: 2/22/2019

Amazon has disappointed or energized certain groups of people (depending on who you talk to) by retreating from their NYC expansion plans. Both sides are still pondering if this is a good thing for New York.

Regardless, the company continues to grow through acquisitions and leveraging their market position to gain access to behavioral data.

Meanwhile, IBM finds itself defending Watson (again) by claiming they did not overhype their AI’s capabilities (they did). The company is looking to build off their Red Hat acquisition to help companies address real integration issues and not “just porting applications to the cloud”.

Acquisitions

  • Democrats want to take another look at the T-Mobile-Sprint merger

    In the ten months since T-Mobile first announced its intention to buy up its competitor, the company has cozied up to the Trump administration. The company’s executives spent more than 50 nights at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC. T-Mobile CEO John Legere spent two night in the hotel and paid a rate of $2,246 per night, according to the Washington Post. That activity is likely to be viewed as an attempt to buy favor with the president and will come up during this week’s hearings.

    The hearings this week won’t have a direct influence on the government’s decision on whether to allow the purchase to go forward or not. The Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission get to approve or deny the merger based on their own investigations that will look into antitrust concerns and other potential harms. However, the hearings may turn up new information that would give regulators pause. Legere told investors last week that he believes the merger will be completed by June.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/13/democrats-house-hearings-t-mobile-sprint-merger/

  • Amazon buys Eero: What does it mean for your privacy?

    Deluged in a swarm of angry tweets and social media posts, many have taken to reading tea leaves to try to understand what the acquisition means for ordinary privacy-minded folks like you and me. Not many had much love for Amazon on the privacy front. A lot of people like Eero because it wasn’t attached to one of the big tech giants. Now it’s to be part of Amazon, some are anticipating the worst for their privacy.

    Of the many concerns we’ve seen, the acquisition boils down to a key concern: “Amazon shouldn’t have access to all internet traffic.”

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/12/amazon-eero-privacy/

  • Apple buys voice app startup Pullstring

    Pullstring was founded in 2011 by a group of former Pixar executives, and originally was used to power interactive voice apps for toys (including Hello Barbie in 2015). It later broadened its approach with the introduction of such IoT products as Amazon Echo and Google Assistant.

    https://www.axios.com/apple-voice-app-pullstring-080b45b6-bbb4-466f-b60a-b87c932e2f57.html

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM CEO Ginni Rometty: ‘We Never Overpromised’ on Watson A.I.

    Pretty much the entire world believes IBM overhyped its Watson artificial intelligence technology. Rometty isn’t one of those people. “We never overpromised,” she says, allowing, though, that “the world was mesmerized by this idea” and that the whole tech industry has learned that “you cannot just put AI on top of existing workflows.” Rometty somewhat shockingly re-framed how people should think about Watson, the subject of years of IBM’s marketing efforts. “People ask, ‘What’s the size of the Watson business?’” she says. “People want to call it a business. I call it a capability.”

    http://fortune.com/2019/02/14/ibm-ceo-rometty-ai-watson/

Cloud

  • After limping through chapter one of cloud computing, IBM aims to own chapter two

    Chapter one of the cloud represented about 20 percent of the workload opportunity. It was largely about moving a lot of new and customer-facing applications to the cloud. Chapter two is about the hard stuff. It’s about scaling artificial intelligence and creating hybrid clouds. It’s about bringing the cloud operating model to all those mission-critical apps and enabling customers to manage data, workloads and apps and move them between multiple clouds. This is a trillion-dollar opportunity and IBM intends to be No. 1.

    To claim a leadership position in this next chapter, IBM is spending $34 billion to acquire open-source software leader Red Hat Inc. This is a huge move on the chessboard, underscoring that the IBM Cloud and a decade of trying to commercialize the AI-powered Watson system aren’t enough to win the day. Rather, it sees open source, Kubernetes, containers, microservices and developers as a lynchpin to success in the next chapter of cloud.

    https://siliconangle.com/2019/02/14/limping-chapter-one-cloud-computing-ibm-aims-chapter-two/

  • Oracle Shares End Higher After Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Dumps Stake

    Berkshire Hathaway’s portfolio of around 90 U.S.-listed stocks lost around $38 billion in value over the three months ending in December, the SEC filings noted, as the S&P 500 slumped nearly 15% in a global market sell-off triggered by slowing growth and a then-hawkish U.S. Federal Reserve. Berkshire Hathaway told the SEC in its November filing that it had owned 41.4 million shares in Oracle at the end of the end of the third quarter after it had exited a holding in IBM (IBM – Get Report) earlier in the year.

    Oracle surprised investors with a bullish 2019 outlook late last year when it posted stronger-than-expected second quarter earnings and said growth in its cloud computing business would support sales and improve profit margins.

    The company also said it sees current quarter earnings of between 86 cents and 88 cents a share, topping the 84 cent Street forecasts, and said it expects full year revenue growth of around 3% on a constant currency basis.

    https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/oracle-shares-slide-after-warren-buffet-s-berkshire-hathaway-dumps-stake-14867890

Software/SaaS

  • Barclaycard Integrates B2B Payments Tech To SAP Ariba

    The integration will roll out later this year with the addition of Precisionpay Bank Transfer within the SAP Ariba platform. Corporate buyers can pay their vendors via virtual card, with suppliers receiving payment the same way they receive a bank transfer. Barclaycard noted that its collaboration with SAP Ariba could also link business buyers to supply chain financing, giving companies up to 56 days to pay their invoices while suppliers receive payment more quickly.

    https://www.pymnts.com/news/b2b-payments/2019/barclaycard-sap-ariba/

  • Oracle CEO Mark Hurd throws shade at SAP’s $8 billion Qualtrics acquisition: We don’t buy companies ‘to just buy them’

    “We’re not buying somebody to just buy them. We’re buying companies that fit into our portfolio,” Hurd said onstage at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference on Wednesday, in response to a question from the on-stage interviewer about how Oracle and SAP approach acquisitions.

    In November, SAP announced it would acquire online market research software startup Qualtrics for $8 billion. The news came close to the last possible second, as Qualtrics was about to go public. Hurd’s comments were almost certainly in reference to this very recent mega-deal.

    Also:

    Hurd also said that he disagreed with SAP asking customers to completely transition to its cloud-based S/4HANA platform by 2025. After that, SAP will stop providing support for its very popular Business Suite enterprise software.

    “I think that is just a terrible damn idea,” Hurd said. “Let’s say you go to your board and say, ‘We’re going to move from this thing to this other thing, and it’s going to cost $350 million.’ My guess is, the board will say, ‘What do we get for $350 million?’ Well, we moved from this thing to the HANA thing.”

    https://factsand.news/2019/02/14/tech/oracle-ceo-mark-hurd-throws-shade-at-saps-8-billion-qualtrics-acquisition-we-dont-buy-companies-to-just-buy-them-orcl-sap/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Google will have offices and data centers in 24 states by the end of 2019

    The company is launching a $13 billion expansion in 2019 that will give it a total US footprint of 24 states, including “major expansions” in 14 states. The growth includes its first data center in Nevada, a new office in Georgia, and multi-facility expansions in places like Texas and Virginia. This is on top of known projects like its future New York City campus.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/13/google-expands-us-footprint/

Other

  • Amazon is becoming too pervasive, anti-competitive

    To put this in old-fashioned terms, Amazon owns the mall, rents space to retailers, controls access to customers, collects data on every sale while also operating the largest store in the mall. And if one of the smaller retailers show some success, Amazon will compete with them.

    Yet that is not enough for CEO Jeff Bezos, because 90 percent of retail sales still take place in brick-and-mortar buildings. Amazon has bought grocery giant Whole Foods, launched Amazon Go convenience stores and opened Amazon kiosks in shopping malls. The company is reportedly looking at old Sears stores to add more retail and warehouse space.

    https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/Amazon-is-becoming-too-pervasive-anti-competitive-13588822.php

  • Amazon’s HQ2 New York plans didn’t need to end this way

    While it’s fair on some level that Amazon felt stymied by this political climate, the company still seems petty at the end of all this. As a tech and retail titan that is nearly impossible to avoid in daily life, the company has come to expect a certain level of fealty from the people and organizations it deals with. It’s used to walking into a room and getting what it wants. In this case, dealing with activists, vocal critics and pressure from key lawmakers meant Amazon wasn’t going to have another typically easy time — the line of thinking appears to be that, as helpful as another campus would be, it wouldn’t be worth the trouble. Lots of brilliant people work at Amazon, though; is it possible that no one saw the red tape coming?

    I have a hard time believing that Amazon couldn’t have handled this better. Could it have managed the conversation better? Could it have been more transparent in its dealings? Could it have tried to work more closely, more functionally with the lawmakers involved? Does this whole thing now feel like a huge waste of time? Yes, to all of the above.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/16/amazon-hq2-new-york-waste-of-time/

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Posted on

Supplier Report: 2/15/2019

Location. Location. Location.

Amazon is scrapping their New York City plans due to severe political push-back on the incentives NYC provided and the overall impact to the city.

Meanwhile, the long discussed Foxconn LCD factory that was to be built in Wisconsin, is covered in a cloud confusion. First they were, then they weren’t, and now they are looking to build a smaller facility…maybe?

Acquisitions

  • Report: Intel bids up to $6B to buy Mellanox

    If the deal reaches fruition, the $6 billion price tag would represent a 30% premium over the last closing price of Mellanox on Nasdaq last night, according to a story by Globes.

    The news of Intel’s interest in buying Mellanox came on the heels of Monday’s news that Intel was investing $11 billion to expand its chip plant in Israel. Intel also announced on Monday that it had received a $1 billion government grant for its expansion.

    https://www.fiercetelecom.com/telecom/report-intel-bids-up-to-6b-to-buy-mellanox

Artificial Intelligence

  • Google and Microsoft warn investors that bad AI could harm their brand

    These disclosures are not, on the whole, hugely surprising. The idea of the “risk factors” segment is to keep investors informed, but also mitigate future lawsuits that might accuse management of hiding potential problems. Because of this they tend to be extremely broad in their remit, covering even the most obvious ways a business could go wrong. This might include problems like “someone made a better product than us and now we don’t have any customers,” and “we spent all our money so now don’t have any.”

    But, as Wired’s Tom Simonite points out, it is a little odd that these companies are only noting AI as a potential factor now. After all, both have been developing AI products for years, from Google’s self-driving car initiative, which began in 2009, to Microsoft’s long dalliance with conversational platforms like Cortana. This technology provides ample opportunities for brand damage, and, in some cases, already has. Remember when Microsoft’s Tay chatbot went live on Twitter and started spouting racist nonsense in less than a day? Years later, it’s a still regularly cited as an example of AI gone wrong.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/11/18220050/google-microsoft-ai-brand-damage-investors-10-k-filing

Cloud

  • Google and IBM still trying desperately to move cloud market share needle

    This week, the two companies made some more noise, letting the cloud market know that they are not ceding the market to anyone. For IBM, which is holding its big IBM Think conference this week in San Francisco, it involved opening up Watson to competitor clouds. For a company like IBM, this was a huge move, akin to when Microsoft started building apps for iOS. It was an acknowledgement that working across platforms matters, and that if you want to gain market share, you had better start thinking outside the box.

    While becoming cross-platform compatible isn’t exactly a radical notion in general, it most certainly is for a company like IBM, which if it had its druthers and a bit more market share, would probably have been content to maintain the status quo. But if the majority of your customers are pursuing a multi-cloud strategy, it might be a good idea for you to jump on the bandwagon — and that’s precisely what IBM has done by opening up access to Watson across clouds in this fashion.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/02/12/google-and-ibm-still-trying-desperately-to-move-cloud-market-share-needle/

Security

  • Huawei Corporate Entities Conspired to Steal Trade Secret Technology and Offered Bonus to Workers who Stole Confidential Information from Companies Around the World

    According to the indictment, in 2012 Huawei began a concerted effort to steal information on a T-Mobile phone-testing robot dubbed “Tappy.” In an effort to build their own robot to test phones before they were shipped to T-Mobile and other wireless carriers, Huawei engineers violated confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements with T-Mobile by secretly taking photos of “Tappy,” taking measurements of parts of the robot, and in one instance, stealing a piece of the robot so that the Huawei engineers in China could try to replicate it. After T-Mobile discovered and interrupted these criminal activities, and then threatened to sue, Huawei produced a report falsely claiming that the theft was the work of rogue actors within the company and not a concerted effort by Huawei corporate entities in the United States and China. As emails obtained in the course of the investigation reveal, the conspiracy to steal secrets from T-Mobile was a company-wide effort involving many engineers and employees within the two charged companies.

    As part of its investigation, FBI obtained emails revealing that in July 2013, Huawei offered bonuses to employees based on the value of information they stole from other companies around the world, and provided to Huawei via an encrypted email address.

    https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-telecommunications-device-manufacturer-and-its-us-affiliate-indicted-theft-trade

Software/SaaS

  • SAP job cuts prove harsh realities of enterprise transformation

    SAP announced that it was restructuring in order to save between €750 million and €800 million (between approximately $856 million and $914 million).

    While the company tried to put as positive a spin on the announcement as possible, it could involve up to 4,000 job cuts as SAP shifts into more modern technologies. “We are going to move our people and our focus to the areas where the new economy needs SAP the most: artificial intelligence, deep machine learning, IoT, blockchain and quantum computing,” CEO Bill McDermott told a post-earnings press conference.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/sap-job-cuts-prove-harsh-realities-of-enterprise-transformation/

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Google Fiber is leaving Louisville in humiliating setback

    In Louisville, Google Fiber installation crews had been using a process called “shallow trenching” that involved laying fiber cable two inches beneath the sides of roads in the city and covering them up with sealant. The company seemed optimistic about this plan until some of the cable started becoming exposed over time, requiring a second cover-up with hot asphalt. It seems Access realized it had to go a bit deeper with the cabling; in San Antonio, a similar method is used — but the fiber is laid at least six inches deep into the ground. Google Fiber has at times faced legal challenges from rivals (like AT&T) that don’t want to share utility poles, so shallow trenching is also a way around that hurdle.

    Unfortunately, things have somehow gone so awry in Louisville that Google Fiber claims it would need to rebuild the entire network to get everything to a satisfactory point, and it seems Alphabet just isn’t interested in blowing the cash that would be necessary to do that. So instead, Google Fiber will today alert Lousville customers that their service will end on April 15th.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/7/18215743/google-fiber-leaving-louisville-service-ending

  • Intel names Robert Swan as permanent CEO

    Intel’s stock slid Thursday after the chipmaker named interim CEO Robert Swan to the position permanently, ending a months-long search following the ouster of Brian Krzanich for what it called a “consensual relationship” with an employee.

    Swan, 58, has been interim CEO for seven months and chief financial officer since 2016. He was also elected to the board, the company said. Several media outlets including Bloomberg previously reported Swan didn’t want the job.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/01/31/intel-names-robert-swan-ceo.html

  • Apple will reportedly reveal its news subscription service next month

    Apple might face some stiff opposition in its bid to launch a subscription news service this spring. Wall Street Journal tipsters claim publishers like the New York Times and Washington Post are objecting to terms that would have Apple take “about half” of the revenue from the service, dividing the rest among publishers based on the amount of time people spend reading articles. That’s a considerably higher cut than the 30 percent Apple takes during the first year of a subscription, let alone the 15 percent it takes later on.

    It also wants “at least some” outlets to commit to supplying news for at least a year. Publishers are split on this, according to the sources — some want a longer commitment, while others want a chance to back out sooner.

    The price isn’t set in stone, but it’s tentatively set to cost the same $10 per month that you pay for Apple Music.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/02/12/apple-news-service-publisher-objections/

  • Microsoft begs users to stop using Internet Explorer

    IE is often used by enterprises and organisations that wish to run legacy web apps, as the outdated browser still supports them, but choosing the easy way out now could come back to haunt businesses later.

    Basically, by continuing to use IE as opposed to a more modern web browser, organisations are creating additional costs for themselves later by choosing the easiest, most convenient solution now as opposed to the best long term approach.

    https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/microsoft-begs-users-to-stop-using-internet-explorer

Other

  • No one seems to know what Foxconn is doing in Wisconsin

    On January 30th, Louis Woo, special assistant to Foxconn chief executive Terry Gou, told Reuters that the company was rethinking the whole screen-making idea. “In Wisconsin we’re not building a factory,” Woo said. He explained that Foxconn can’t compete producing televisions in the US. Instead, it would be more profitable to manufacture LCD panels in China and Japan, ship them to Mexico, and import them in the US. On Thursday, the Nikkei Asian Review reported that work on the Wisconsin project had been suspended.

    Later that day, Woo appeared to backtrack vaguely, sending a peculiar email to the Milwaukee TV station WTMJ suggesting that it was hard to know what to call the project. “No matter how we look at it, the campus cannot be simply described as a factory,” Woo wrote. “It is a lot more than that.”

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/1/18206261/foxconn-wisconsin-factory-government-subsidies-investments
    After a ‘personal conversation’ with Trump, Foxconn says it will build a factory in Wisconsin after all

    “After productive discussions between the White House and the company, and after a personal conversation between President Donald J. Trump and Chairman Terry Gou, Foxconn is moving forward with our planned construction of a Gen 6 fab facility,” a statement read. A Gen 6 facility is smaller than the factory Foxconn initially promised in 2017, but larger than the assembly facility Foxconn said it would build yesterday.

    Foxconn has changed its plans multiple times since 2017, when then-Governor Scott Walker wooed the company with a record-breaking $4.5 billion in taxpayer subsidies. At the time, Foxconn promised a state-of-the-art, “Gen 10.5” screen-producing facility, and Walker and Trump touted the deal for bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US. In June of last year, however, the company said it would make a far smaller “Gen 6” facility. This week, the company said it wouldn’t make screens in Wisconsin at all, and would instead do a mix of assembly and “knowledge work.” The sudden change in plans seemed to catch Wisconsin officials off guard, and left locals worried about the future of their communities.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/1/18207102/trump-foxconn-wisconsin-factory-build
    Foxconn is killing a second $9B factory

    Foxconn will postpone most of the production planned in a 61 billion yuan ($9 billion) display panel project in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou for at least six months, according to internal documents obtained by the Nikkei Asian Review. In the U.S., a $10 billion investment in display production in the state of Wisconsin has been suspended and scaled back as a result of negotiations with new Gov. Tony Evers, a Foxconn document obtained by Nikkei shows.

    Foxconn’s decision to delay work on the two factories throws into doubt the promise of fresh investment and employment at a sensitive time for both economies. China’s economic growth has slowed to a 28-year low, while in the U.S., President Donald Trump continues to seek wins on his vow to bring manufacturing jobs back to America.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/31/foxconn-is-killing-a-second-9b-factory/

  • Amazon Is Reconsidering Plan to Put Campus in New York

    The recent change in conversation at Amazon accelerated after Monday’s nomination of New York state Sen. Mike Gianaris, a vocal opponent of the deal, to a state board that would allow him to veto the development plan, people familiar with the matter said. Mr. Gianaris needs to be approved for the post by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

    The governor and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, fellow Democrats who have often clashed, agreed on wooing Amazon to New York with up to $3 billion in state and city tax incentives. On Friday, Mr. Cuomo reiterated his support for the deal for Amazon as he warned that local opponents could derail the project.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amazon-reconsidering-plan-to-put-campus-in-new-york-11549668969?ns=prod/accounts-wsj
    Amazon Pulls Out of Planned New York City Headquarters

    Amazon on Thursday canceled its plans to build an expansive corporate campus in New York City after facing an unexpectedly fierce backlash from some lawmakers and union leaders, who contended that a tech giant did not deserve nearly $3 billion in government incentives.

    Amazon released a statement mentioning they will not open their search to another city at this time:

    We do not intend to re-open the HQ2 search at this time. We will proceed as planned in Northern Virginia and Nashville, and we will continue to hire and grow across our 17 corporate offices and tech hubs in the U.S. and Canada.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/14/nyregion/amazon-hq2-queens.html

Photo by Zoltan Kovacs on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 1/18/2019

IBM had a week of making excuses: First CEO Ginni Rometty had to defend Watson medical after reports from oncologists that the system is incorrectly diagnosing medical issues. Then the company had to defend the lack of growth in blockchain by essentially saying companies need to invest first and hope to see results. Finally, the company is failing to meet their hiring targets in Baton Rouge and are having a job fair – but someone needs to question why the company has a consulting hub in Baton Rouge in the first place.

Acquisitions

  • Amazon Web Services Acquires CloudEndure – Confirmed

    “As an AWS Advanced Technology Partner since 2016, CloudEndure has long joined forces with AWS to help customers future-proof their businesses. This acquisition expands our ability to deliver innovative and flexible migration, backup, and disaster recovery solutions.”

    Israeli media outlets estimate the deal to be worth about $200 to $250 million Dollars.

    https://esellercafe.com/amazon-web-services-acquires-cloudendure-confirmed/

  • Alibaba acquires German big data startup Data Artisans for $103M

    Alibaba has paid €90 million ($103 million) to acquire Data Artisans, a Berlin-based startup that provides distributed systems and large-scale data streaming services for enterprises.

    Data Artisans was founded in 2014 by the team leading the development of Apache Flink, an open source large-scale data processing technology. The startup offers its own dA Platform, with open source Apache Flink and Application Manager, to enterprise customers that include Netflix, ING, Uber and Alibaba itself.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/08/alibaba-data-artisans/

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM CEO: Watson has not failed

    “Watson for Oncology is doing very well — very well,” Ms. Rometty told STAT during a photo opportunity at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas where she delivered a keynote address. STAT has requested interviews with Ms. Rometty and other company executives for months with no success.

    In 2018, STAT reported several controversies involving IBM’s health division, including one of its physician customers calling Watson for Oncology a “piece of sh–,” and numerous employee layoffs. A key complaint about Watson for Oncology, which offers cancer treatment recommendations, is that it’s biased toward American treatment methods. However, IBM said it plans to add regional treatment guidelines to Watson for Oncology, as well as real-world data on patient outcomes, to boost user satisfaction.

    https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/artificial-intelligence/ibm-ceo-watson-has-not-failed.html

  • Microsoft Could Help Kroger Counter Amazon’s Growth

    Kroger recently partnered with Microsoft to test out two data-driven connected stores. The two renovated stores will use a smart retail system powered by Internet of Things (IoT) sensors and digital shelves, which display prices, promotions, and nutritional information on screens in front of products. Kroger introduced the shelves, which are already being used in nearly 100 stores, last year. The test stores will help guide shoppers through the aisles to the products they want to buy.

    All those devices will be tethered to Microsoft’s cloud platform Azure, which is already Kroger’s preferred cloud platform. Microsoft and Kroger will also jointly market a commercial retail as a service (RaaS) product to the grocer’s industry peers.

    https://www.fool.com/investing/2019/01/11/microsoft-could-help-kroger-counter-amazons-growth.aspx
    After Amazon-Whole Foods, Microsoft-Kroger: The Grocery Revolution Is Happening

    “The two outfitted Kroger locations, in Monroe, Ohio and Redmond, Wash., will feature digital shelving displays with real-time price updates and product information, as well as digital advertisements personalized to each shopper,” CNBC published on Monday.

    The news of the Microsoft-Kroger partnership dovetails with a report from RBC Capital Markets indicating that Amazon’s cashierless grocery stores take in 50% more revenue than conventional counterparts. Amazon has said it may open up as many as 3,000 Amazon Go stores by 2021, suggesting the possibility of a $4.5 billion business.

    https://streetfightmag.com/2019/01/09/after-amazon-whole-foods-microsoft-kroger-the-grocery-revolution-is-happening/

Cloud

  • Microsoft wins $1.76 billion defense contract: Pentagon

    Microsoft Corp has been awarded a five-year contract worth $1.76 billion for delivering enterprise services for the Defense Department, Coast Guard and intelligence services, the Pentagon said on Friday.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-defense/microsoft-wins-1-76-billion-defense-contract-pentagon-idUSKCN1P52HB

  • AWS gives open source the middle finger

    AWS argues that while MongoDB is great at what it does, its customers have found it hard to build fast and highly available applications on the open-source platform that can scale to multiple terabytes and hundreds of thousands of reads and writes per second. So what the company did was build its own document database, but made it compatible with the Apache 2.0 open source MongoDB 3.6 API.

    If you’ve been following the politics of open source over the last few months, you’ll understand that the optics of this aren’t great. It’s also no secret that AWS has long been accused of taking the best open-source projects and re-using and re-branding them without always giving back to those communities.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/09/aws-gives-open-source-the-middle-finger/

  • AWS, Coupa Expand IT Spend Visibility For Corporates

    Coupa users can link their accounts to Amazon Web Services to automatically have AWS invoices sent to the Coupa platform. The integration means companies using both Coupa and AWS can more quickly process those invoices, while gaining enhanced visibility into their spend with AWS services.

    The integration deploys Coupa’s InvoiceSmash solution, which accelerates invoice processing and payments for users, aimed at enabling companies to capture early payment discounts from their suppliers.

    https://www.pymnts.com/news/b2b-payments/2019/aws-coupa-it-spend-visibility-management/

Software/SaaS

  • Oracle inks stadium naming rights deal with San Francisco Giants

    The deal appears to be one of the richest of its kind in North American professional sports, which seemingly would trickle through to the Giants’ product on the field. The team already boasted the second-highest payroll in the majors last season at around $203 million.

    Kevin Bartram, principal of Bartram Partnerships, a brand sponsorship consultancy, told Bloomberg the $200 million to $350 million price tag “seems very fair.” He was one of the consultants who brokered the Pacific Telesis-Giants partnership, according to the news outlet.

    https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/01/09/oracle-inks-stadium-naming-rights-deal-with-san-francisco-giants/

    Is this the best use of Oracle’s money at the moment?

  • Why more people aren’t using blockchain, according to IBM

    “We believe that blockchain is a team sport. For a blockchain-based solution to work successfully, it requires multiple entities to come together in a symbiotic relationship and agree on common principles, operating model and governance,” Parzygnat says. “The very nature of blockchain-based solutions require the vision and leadership of a governing body to convene the ecosystem in a common blockchain-based network. Then it requires each enterprise member to acknowledge their core competencies and compete in the market by defending or enhancing them.”

    https://www.finder.com.au/why-more-people-arent-using-blockchain-according-to-ibm

    Translation: “Pay for the roads first, and maybe we will built them”

Other

  • Chinese Huawei Executive Is Charged With Espionage in Poland

    The Chinese national’s detention follows the December arrest of Huawei’s chief financial officer in Canada, at the U.S.’s request, on allegations the company violated U.S. sanctions on Iran. Unlike that case, the Polish charges relate directly to suspicions by Washington and other Western governments that China could use Huawei equipment, or its employees, to help it spy on foreign governments and companies.

    Polish officials said Huawei itself wasn’t charged with any wrongdoing. They didn’t detail the charges or say whether any sensitive information was compromised. Officials also arrested a Polish national on the same charge.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-huawei-executive-is-charged-with-espionage-in-poland-11547201100?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Google Nears Win in Europe Over ‘Right to Be Forgotten’

    At issue in the case is the right, established by the court in 2014, for EU residents to demand that search engines remove links containing personal information—such as a home address—from searches for their names. Under the 2014 ruling, search engines must balance those requests against the public’s right to access a link associated with the searched-for name, taking into account, for instance, whether the person is a public figure.

    Maciej Szpunar, an advocate general for the court, argued in Thursday’s nonbinding opinion that if the EU orders removal of content from websites accessed outside the region, there is a danger that other jurisdictions would use their laws to block information from being accessible within the EU.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/eu-court-adviser-recommends-limited-scope-for-right-to-be-forgotten-11547112114

  • Apple’s trillion-dollar market cap was always a false idol

    It’s worth noting that Apple has hardly been in alone taking a huge hit on its stock price, especially tech stocks, which have been taking a beating since November on Wall Street. Want to talk a trillion dollars, how about the biggest names in tech losing a trillion (that’s with a T, folks) in value in one stretch in November. When Apple halted trading last week to announce lower than expected revenue, the stock dove even further, as it confirmed the worst fears of investors.

    Worse, Chinese consumers have driven iPhone sales just as the Chinese economy has hit a massive speed bump this year. In June, Reuters reported shockingly weak growth. In November, Bloomberg reported that the Chinese economy was slowing down long before the president started a trade war.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/07/apples-trillion-dollar-market-cap-was-always-a-false-idol/

  • IBM now heading to Lafayette to recruit workers for Baton Rouge hub

    The company will conduct a career fair Jan. 19 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at South Louisiana Community College in the Devalcourt Building at 320 Devalcourt St., a news release from Louisiana Economic Development said. IBM is looking to fill 75 available positions in Baton Rouge, the release said.

    IBM fell short on its promise to create 800 jobs in Baton Rouge by 2017 in exchange for state incentives. The company reached an agreement with the state to meet that goal next year and will have to pay a penalty of $10,000 for each job below the threshold of 800.

    https://neworleanscitybusiness.com/blog/2019/01/11/ibm-now-heading-to-lafayette-to-recruit-workers-for-baton-rouge-hub/
    No offense to Louisiana – but it is an odd place to start a work hub. Yes, there are colleges (36 4-year schools), but it isn’t overflowing with students compared to other states, and it doesn’t seem like people want to stay there.
    IBM laying off more than 300 workers in RTP

    The jobs, which were part of an IBM subsidiary called Seterus, will be permanently terminated “no earlier than March 11,” according to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification on Jan. 9.

    The 310 job cuts come a week after IBM agreed to sell Seterus to the mortgage services company the Mr. Cooper Group.

    https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article224283465.html

Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

Posted on

Supplier Report: 1/11/2019

Apple is having a rough week because they (finally) realized that people don’t want to pay $1,400 for a new phone every year (can we make rotten apple jokes now?). The company needs to shift to a services model ASAP – will they build or will they buy?

IBM is selling IP because they need to get cash quickly to cover their acquisition of Red Hat. Their most recent sell off is a mortgage platform called Seterus to a company called Mr. Cooper Group. I am left wondering why IBM had a mortgage group in the first place.

Continuing 2018’s trend of “you data is never going to be safe” – password management app Blur accidentally exposed user data on their AWS platform.

Acquisitions

  • Mr. Cooper buys IBM mortgage platform that brought in $200 million last year

    Coppell-based Mr. Cooper Group Inc. is continuing to expand its mortgage servicing business with Thursday’s purchase of IBM’s Seterus platform.

    Mr. Cooper said the deal bolsters its portfolio by adding servicing rights to $24 billion in mortgages and a subservicing contract for an additional $24 billion in mortgages. Terms of the transaction weren’t immediately disclosed.

    https://www.dallasnews.com/business/real-estate/2019/01/03/mr-cooper-buys-ibm-mortgage-platform-brought-200-million-last-year

  • Google picks up company behind Q&A app

    Google has quietly acquired Superpod, a startup that had built a question-and-answer mobile app, Axios has learned. Google paid less than $60 million to “acqui-hire” the founders and purchase some of Superpod’s assets, according to a source.

    The bigger picture: The search giant hasn’t been shy about its ambitions for Google Assistant, the voice-activated virtual assistant that it debuted in 2016. Superpod, which lets users ask questions and receive answers from experts, could help Google bolster its virtual assistant’s ability to answer users’ questions.

    https://www.axios.com/google-acquires-superpod-qa-app-38d68263-7122-447b-9d81-58fadc404cb9.html

Artificial Intelligence

  • Forbes is building more AI tools for its reporters

    Over the summer, the business publisher, which just had its most profitable year in more than a decade, rolled out a new CMS, called Bertie, which recommends article topics for contributors based on their previous output, headlines based on the sentiment of their pieces and images too. It’s also testing a tool that writes rough versions of articles that contributors can simply polish up, rather than having to write a full story from scratch. The CMS is currently available to Forbes’ editorial staff and senior contributors in North America, and will be rolled out to all of its contributors in North America and Europe in the first quarter of 2019. The AI story-writing tool, which Forbes’s product team is experimenting with, does not have an immediate roll-out date.

    https://digiday.com/media/forbes-built-a-robot-to-pre-write-articles-for-its-contributors/

  • PepsiCo is using robots to deliver snacks to college students

    The autonomous snackbots, built by Y-Combinator startup Robby Technologies, can travel 20 miles on a charge, and are equipped with a camera, headlights and all-wheel drive to handle rough or wet terrain. Once it arrives, you simply release the lid, grab your snacks and close it to complete the sale. The app presumably takes care of the security and dispensing end of things.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/01/04/pepsico-robot-snack-delivery/

Cloud

  • What’s Behind Oracle’s Gen 2 Cloud: Q&A with Oracle VP Kyle York

    Why is Oracle calling the new technology “Gen 2”—what is different from other cloud technology?
    As with most new things, the first rev is not always built for the long-term success. First generation public cloud offerings were not architected to accommodate traditional application architectures. They were architected for net-new cloud native applications. Think websites, mobile apps, or ecommerce storefronts—certainly not financial systems, government workloads, or data-intensive applications. Many enterprise workloads simply cannot run in hypervisor-based environments, as they don’t provide the performance predictability and high availability often required by traditional enterprise applications. They also don’t play nice with the tooling and security infrastructure historically deployed on-premise, in a complex ecosystem cultivated over decades.

    Oracle offers the most flexibility in the public cloud, allowing companies to run traditional and cloud-native workloads on the same platform. This enables our customers to reduce operational overhead and costs and enable connectivity and shared data between these workloads.

    http://www.dbta.com/Editorial/News-Flashes/Whats-Behind-Oracles-Gen-2-Cloud-QandA-with-Oracle-VP-Kyle-York-129198.aspx

Security

  • Marriott Says Hackers Swiped Millions of Passport Numbers

    The incident marked one of the largest data breaches in history, rivaled only by a hack of Yahoo Inc. in 2013 and 2014.

    The company said early Friday in a release that the number of guests involved in the data breach is lower than the original 500 million, but it didn’t specify a number.

    Marriott said a total of about 383 million records was “the upper limit” for the number potentially compromised in the incident. That figure includes passport numbers, email addresses and payment-card data of some guests, the company said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/marriott-says-hackers-swiped-millions-of-passport-numbers-11546605000?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Hackers Dump Data on Merkel, Politicians in Giant German Leak

    It’s unclear at this point whether the data release is linked to the 2015 Bundestag hack, and how significant it is. It includes two email addresses and a fax number the perpetrators link to Merkel, and a letter by SPD lawmakers sent to the chancellor in 2016 that criticizes her handling of the refugee crisis. The data connected to Merkel was not considered sensitive, Fietz said.

    The data, which Germany is trying to remove, also includes what appears to be chat transcripts from Economy Minister Peter Altmaier. More mundane material includes rental-car contracts and letters, some of them several years old. The attack appears to have affected all major German political parties with the exception of the populist Alternative for Germany.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-04/hackers-release-personal-data-of-hundreds-of-german-politicians

  • Blur password manager exposes 2.4M users on misconfigured AWS cloud instance

    While finding no evidence that the document had been accessed, Abine is nonetheless warning users that their accounts may have been compromised. Users are being asked to reset their master passwords for Blur and to set up two-factor authentication as an additional security measure.

    Blur is not the first password manager to have had security issues. LastPass was infamously hacked in 2015 before having to issue an urgent patch in 2017 after it was discovered that plugins related to the product could expose customer passwords.

    LastPass, though, was a different case because it was specifically targeted by hackers. The fact that a company offering password protection software would “accidentally” expose user data on an AWS S3 instance is a different level of incompetence.

    https://siliconangle.com/2019/01/03/blur-password-manager-exposes-2-4m-user-details-misconfigured-aws-instance/

Software/SaaS

  • Apple’s Precarious and Pivotal 2019

    Today, the stock is down nearly 10%. Tens of billions of dollars have been shaved off of Apple’s market cap, literally overnight. The company is now the 4th most valuable corporation in the world. That sounds like a great thing until you remember that until recently, it was the most valuable company in the world — and for much of the past several years, this was the case by far.

    Also:

    And then there’s the real standout part of the paragraph: “consumers adapting to a world with fewer carrier subsidies”. Once again, this translates into English as: we pushed the price of the iPhone too far. And whereas before, such prices were obfuscated by things like carrier contracts, that world is shifting. And Apple hasn’t shifted fast enough or strongly enough to account for this.

    https://500ish.com/apples-precarious-and-pivotal-2019-f4f8cea3993a

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Why the iPhone Is Finally Fading

    You’ve probably heard before that A.I. and voice are the future. That’s still on track to be true, even though it hasn’t happened overnight. (The future rarely does.) It’s coming first in the form of speakers such as Amazon’s Echo and Google’s Home, with Apple’s HomePod and others playing catch-up. While the big tech companies don’t yet report sales figures for these devices, studies show the market expanding rapidly, with nearly a quarter of U.S. households owning one as of last fall, according to Nielsen. Some analysts predict that figure will top 50 percent by 2022.

    Meanwhile, the sector is growing at rates reminiscent of smartphones’ early days. A report by Strategy Analytics estimated that Amazon’s Echo business grew 64 percent from 2017 to 2018, while Google’s Home sales boomed 420 percent. That’s before we even start counting all the other devices that are being sold with Alexa, Google Assistant, or other voice AI services built in, or the many more that are voice-compatible.

    https://slate.com/technology/2019/01/apple-iphone-decline-china-replacement-alexa-siri.html

Other

  • Salesforce’s Marc Benioff unplugged for two weeks, and had a revelation that could change the tech industry

    All that relaxation led Benioff to one big revelation: He’s too busy.

    Weeks at work are filled with dinners, parties, events and business council meetings exclusively for CEOs, meaning that if anyone from Salesforce is to attend, it has to be him. Meanwhile, he’s trying to run a 30,000-person company, build Salesforce towers across the globe, bolster his philanthropy, invest in start-ups, mentor other business leaders and become a louder voice on a number of social and political issues.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2018/12/30/salesforce-marc-benioff-talks-tech-ethics-time-magazine-and-vacation.html

  • The case for why Big Tech is violating antitrust laws

    The nearly 20-year-old case of US v. Microsoft illustrates how today’s tech giants are breaking the law. The court held that Microsoft used its monopoly power in “Intel-compatible desktop PC operating systems” to squash the Netscape browser by requiring computer makers to instead install Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer browser. Rather than competing on the merits, Microsoft used its monopoly power to try to take over the internet browser market. Ironically, if the Department of Justice had not sued Microsoft to stop its anticompetitive behavior, Google might not exist! After taking over the internet browser market, Microsoft could have required computer makers to use its own search engine, too.

    Google, Amazon and Facebook are following the same playbook. The tech giants have “platform privilege” — the incentive and ability to prioritize their own goods and services over those of competitors that depend on their platforms. By doing so, they contend they are improving their products and benefiting customers. An entrepreneur can create a superior product or service and still get crushed because Big Tech is controlling the game and playing it, too.

    https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/02/perspectives/big-tech-facebook-google-amazon-microsoft-antitrust/index.html