Tag: Apple

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Supplier Report: 10/19/2018

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

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

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

Acquisitions

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM Snags $240 Million AI Deal

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

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

Cloud

  • Jeff Bezos Says Tech Companies Should Work With the Pentagon

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

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

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

  • Microsoft workers urge company to pass on JEDI

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

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

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

Security

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

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

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

  • Apple ‘Deeply Apologetic’ Over Account Hacks in China

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

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

Software/SaaS

  • Why IBM’s Brief Growth Streak Just Stalled

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

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

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Inside the heart of an IBM Cloud Data Center

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

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

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

Other

  • Google’s CEO Defends Potential Return to China

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

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

  • Google could finally face serious competition for Android

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

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

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

  • Netflix criticizes EU over ‘content quota’

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

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

Photo by Tobias Cornille on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 10/12/2018

The Source: Boo Hoo Project Jedi

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

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

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

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

Acquisitions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • SoftBank is considering taking a majority stake in WeWork

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

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

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

  • LinkedIn acquires employee engagement platform Glint

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

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

Artificial Intelligence

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

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

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

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

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

Cloud

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

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

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

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

  • IBM protests $10B JEDI solicitation

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

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

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

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

Security

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

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

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

Software/SaaS

  • Microsoft Just Did Something Big With 60,000 Patents

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

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

Other

  • Google Appeals $5 Billion EU Fine in Android Case

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

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

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 10/5/2018

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

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

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

Acquisitions

  • Software Firms Cloudera, Hortonworks to Merge

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

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

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

  • Google acquires AI customer service startup Onward

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

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

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

Artificial Intelligence

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

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

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

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

Cloud

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

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

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

Security

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other

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

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

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

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

  • Elon Musk Tweet Mocks the Securities and Exchange Commission

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

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

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

Photo by Claude Piché on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 8/17/2018

The Source: All about the chip: joey lombardi

CPUs are the main story this week. As companies like AMD develop better processors and better manufacturing methods, former CPU champ Intel is finding ways to divest. The company purchased another AI company to add to their Movidius unit.  Can Intel fend off AMD and companies like Foxconn (who are supporting China’s agenda of creating their own processors)?

Cisco’s strategy to focus on software seems to be paying off as the company saw growth of 6% over last year.

Acquisitions

  • Intel buys deep-learning startup Vertex.AI to join its Movidius unit

    Vertex says that Intel will continue to develop PlaidML as an open source project (see its Github page here), where it will continue to support a variety of hardware under an Apache 2.0 license with an Intel nGraph backend. “We are excited to advance flexible deep learning for edge computing as part of Intel,” the company said.

    Intel, once a pace-setter and leader in the computing industry on the strength of its processors, has lost some momentum amid a new wave of companies building processors for mobile and other next-generation devices.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/16/intel-buys-deep-learning-startup-vertex-ai-to-join-its-movidius-unit/

  • Amazon in Running to Acquire Landmark Movie Chain

    Pushing into movie theaters would follow Amazon’s expansion into myriad other forms of media, including a film and TV studio and music service. With Landmark, it gets a chain focused on independent and foreign films that was founded in 1974. The company has more than 50 theaters, including high-profile locations in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, with about 250 screens in 27 markets.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-16/amazon-is-said-to-be-in-running-to-acquire-landmark-movie-chain

Artificial Intelligence

  • IBM pushes back on negative Watson Health stories

    In response to the claims, Kelly noted a number of positives for the company, including a Mayo Clinic poster presentation showing improved enrollment in breast cancer trials following implementation of Watson for Clinical Trial Matching and training from Memorial Sloan Kettering on 13 different cancers, which he says represents 80% of the global cancer incidence and prevalence.

    Kelly also noted an extended contract with the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, research showing that its Watson for Genomics found new actionable mutations in 32% of patients and high rates of concordance in breast cancer at Manipal Hospital’s multidisciplinary tumor board.

    https://www.massdevice.com/ibm-pushes-back-on-negative-watson-health-stories/

Cloud

  • Google defends controversial China project in meeting with employees

    “Our stated mission is to organize the world’s information,” Pichai added. “China is one-fifth of the world’s population. I think if we were to do our mission well, I think we have to think seriously about how we do more in China. I genuinely do believe we have a positive impact when we engage around the world and I don’t see any reason why that would be different in China.”

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/16/17707324/google-china-search-engine-censorship-response-meeting

Security

  • Teen Allegedly Hacked Into Apple’s Network, Got Caught With ‘Hacky Hack Hack’ Folder

    It’s unclear whether the data he accessed was particularly sensitive. Apple caught the teen and alerted the FBI, which in turn worked with the Australian Federal Police (AFP) to track down the hacker. Authorities seized two laptops, a phone, and a hard drive. They found a folder on one of his computers titled “Hacky Hack Hack,” according to reports.

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mb44nn/autralian-teen-hacked-apple-network

  • FBI Is Reportedly Warning Banks That Hackers Are Planning to Make A Global Run on ATMs

    “The FBI has obtained unspecified reporting indicating cyber criminals are planning to conduct a global Automated Teller Machine (ATM) cash-out scheme in the coming days, likely associated with an unknown card issuer breach and commonly referred to as an ‘unlimited operation,’” the FBI letter to banks reads.

    Unlimited operations use malware to gain access to the card information of bank customers and access to the banks’ networks.

    “The cyber criminals typically create fraudulent copies of legitimate cards by sending stolen card data to co-conspirators who imprint the data on reusable magnetic strip cards, such as gift cards purchased at retail stores,” the FBI letter said. “At a pre-determined time, the co-conspirators withdraw accounts funds from ATMs using these cards.”

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ywke7w/fbi-is-reportedly-warning-banks-that-hackers-are-planning-to-make-a-global-run-on-atms

Software/SaaS

  • Cisco Extends Growth Streak on Strong Software Sales

    Cisco’s streak—the company generated $12.84 billion in total revenue in its fiscal fourth quarter, up 6% from a year earlier—comes after two years of declines during which it faced increasing pressure from competitors while it relied heavily on slower-growth hardware sales.

    And the company expects the run to continue, providing guidance that calls for revenue growth of between 5% and 7% in the current quarter.

    Cisco has seen its financial fortunes improve, as it focused on software sales, particularly in the security arena. Revenue in its security segment revenue jumped 12% to $627 million.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/cisco-extends-growth-streak-on-strong-software-sales-1534377123

Datacenter/Hardware

  • AMD Set to Crack Intel’s Lock on Data Centers

    There is an opening for AMD because Intel has struggled to transition to a new chip-manufacturing process. One of the companies that makes AMD’s chips, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing , or TSMC, has moved ahead of Intel and is producing the latest version of AMD’s Epyc server processor, which is expected to start shipping in volume next year. Intel doesn’t intend to launch a server chip based on its newest production process until sometime in 2020.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/amd-set-to-crack-intels-lock-on-data-centers-1534439566

  • Foxconn Posts Unexpected Drop in Profit

    Taiwan-based Foxconn said Monday that its net profit for the quarter ended June 30 was 17.5 billion New Taiwan dollars ($566.7 million). That compared with the NT$20.2 billion average estimate of analysts polled by S&P Capital IQ. Its net profit in the year-earlier quarter was NT$17.9 billion.

    Foxconn, known formally as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co. 2317 0.12% , is the world’s largest contract electronics maker, and is best known for assembling Apple’s iPhones. Last year, Foxconn relied on Apple for about 54% of its revenue, according to Arthur Liao, an analyst at Fubon Research.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/foxconn-posts-unexpected-drop-in-profit-1534163275

  • Foxconn Pursues Chip Ambitions With Plans for China Plant

    Foxconn said it is developing plans within the partnership, which includes “other stakeholders” in the city. “We will be prepared to announce these plans when they have been finalized in the coming months,” the Taiwan-based company said.

    The initiative comes at a time when China is spending billions of dollars to nurture its own semiconductor industry and reduce its reliance on foreign technology, an effort that has grown more urgent as its attempts to acquire U.S. chip companies have met opposition from the U.S. over national-security concerns.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/foxconn-to-build-semiconductor-plant-in-chinas-pearl-river-delta-1534498173?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

Photo by Brian Kostiuk on Unsplash

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Supplier Report: 8/10/2018

Big mergers seems to be getting push back. The AT&T acquisition of Time-Warner is still under scrutiny (as is the Judge that approved it) and the Sinclair acquisition of Tribune was officially shut down. Elon Musk also might be over running a publicly traded company and is thinking about taking Telsa private.

In other news, IBM is still struggling with Watson and bots might pick your veggies in the near future.

Acquisitions

  • AT&T Not Out of the Legal Woods Yet

    In the original case, the government argued that AT&T would be able to dictate higher carriage fees to competing distributors by threatening to withhold its cable networks from rival pay-TV providers, leading to higher prices for consumers. Judge Leon concluded that the facts didn’t uphold that. Antitrust experts say the government is likely to argue that the judge defined the market too loosely, allowing AT&T’s argument that its competition includes tech firms like Netflix , Facebook and Amazon.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/at-t-not-out-of-the-legal-woods-yet-1533549600
    DOJ’s Behind-the-Scenes Struggles With Judge in AT&T Case

    Jeffrey Jacobovitz, an antitrust lawyer with Arnall Golden Gregory LLP who isn’t connected with the case, said judges have their own styles for administering trials, though sidebar conferences generally happen more in jury trials, so jurors won’t be influenced. There was no jury in the AT&T trial.

    “It’s unusual for a judge to have voluminous sidebars when it’s the judge resolving the ultimate issues,” Mr. Jacobovitz said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/dojs-behind-the-scenes-struggles-with-judge-in-at-t-case-1533682305

  • Sinclair’s Bid to Monopolize Local TV News Is Officially Dead

    Said behavior included what critics say were “sham” divestment deals, where Sinclair attempted to offload some stations to companies it still controlled in a bid to pretend the deal would fall within media ownership limits. Currently, the law states no one broadcaster can reach more than 38% of households (Sinclair would have reached 72% had the deal been approved).

    Sinclair’s efforts were so brazen, they forced even the historically mega-industry-friendly FCC chief Ajit Pai to shovel the deal off to an administrative law judge, a move traditionally seen as a death knell for such megadeals.

    https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/8xbk5p/sinclairs-bid-to-monopolize-local-tv-news-is-officially-dead

  • Elon Musk is seriously considering taking Tesla private

    “The reason for doing this is all about creating the environment for Tesla to operate best,” Musk began. Being a public company means being subjected to wild swings in stock prices (it even spiked earlier today after his tweet talking about taking the company private), and such volatility can be a “major distraction” for both Tesla’s workforce and shareholders. It’s the latter Musk seems to want to mute by going private, as he lamented the pressure that putting out quarterly reports (which are mandated by law for public companies) puts on the company to make decisions that will look better in the short term but not serve Tesla best in the long run. He also noted that going private would avoid stock shorting attempts to harm the company.

    https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/07/elon-musk-admits-want-take-tesla-private/

Artificial Intelligence

  • Employees at Google, Amazon and Microsoft Have Threatened to Walk Off the Job Over the Use of AI

    There is certainly a lot to worry about. Widespread use of facial-recognition technology by law enforcement can spell the end of speech, association and privacy rights (just think about the ability to identify, catalog and store thousands of facial images from a boisterous political rally). As O’Neill reminds us in her book, the algorithms employed in large chain store hiring processes and credit worthiness decision are opaque and lack self-correction mechanisms. They give off an air of objectivity and authority while encoding the prejudices of the people who programmed them. Weapons systems combining face recognition and social-media access can pick off opponents more efficiently than the most ruthless assassin. The images of swarm-drone warfare in Slaughterbots are the stuff of nightmares.

    https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/employees-google-amazon-and-microsoft-have-threatened-walk-job-over-use-ai-27962

  • Your vegetables are going to be picked by robots sooner than you think

    Root AI is focused on the 2.3 million square feet of indoor farms that currently exist in the world and is hoping to expand as the number of farms cultivating crops indoors increases. Some estimates from analysis firms like Agrilyst put the planned expansions in indoor farming at around 22 million square feet (much of that in the U.S.).

    While that only amounts to roughly 505 acres of land — a fraction of the 900 million acres of farmland that’s currently cultivated in the U.S. — those indoor farms offer huge yield advantages over traditional farms with a much lower footprint in terms of resources used. The average yield per acre in indoor farms for vine crops like tomatoes, and leafy greens, is over ten times higher than outdoor farms.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/08/your-vegetables-are-going-to-be-picked-by-robots-sooner-than-you-think/

  • IBM Has a Watson Dilemma

    Recommending personal medical treatment is a taller order. The software needs to be trained with data on what has worked in the past, including details on patients’ medical histories and treatment outcomes. That information is often recorded in different formats and owned by different companies, and isn’t always complete or consistent.

    Moreover, human doctors still have a lot to learn about the science of disease, including cancer.

    Oncology won’t be “a great space for making [AI] products” until there’s better data about patients, spanning genetic, environmental, lifestyle and health information, said Bob Kocher, a medical doctor and partner at venture-capital firm Venrock in Palo Alto, Calif. In the near term, most of the benefits from AI in the health-care field will come in administrative tasks such as billing, he added.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/ibm-bet-billions-that-watson-could-improve-cancer-treatment-it-hasnt-worked-1533961147

Cloud

  • AWS error exposed GoDaddy business secrets

    The information involved in the security breach appeared to describe GoDaddy’s architecture, as well as “high-level configuration information for tens of thousands of systems and pricing options for running those systems in Amazon AWS, including the discounts offered under different scenarios,” according to UpGuard.

    Configuration files for hostnames, operating systems, workloads, AWS regions, memory, CPU specifications, and more were included in the exposed cache, which described at least 24,000 systems.

    “Essentially, this data mapped a very large scale AWS cloud infrastructure deployment, with 41 different columns on individual systems, as well as summarized and modeled data on totals, averages, and other calculated fields,” the cybersecurity firm said.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/aws-error-exposed-godaddy-server-secrets/

  • DXC Technology and AWS join forces for new integration practice

    DXC Technology and Amazon Web Services (AWS) are joining forces to build a new integrated practice focused on delivering IT migration, application transformation and industry-specific cloud services.

    The multibillion-dollar DXC – AWS Integrated Practice is part of a multi-year, global agreement that also encompasses joint development, marketing, sales, and delivery of AWS solutions. Specifically, these services include managed security and compliance services for AWS; dedicated VMware Cloud on AWS migration solutions and analytics and application services on AWS.

    https://sg.channelasia.tech/article/644922/dxc-technology-aws-join-forces-new-integration-practice/?fp=2&fpid=1

Security

  • iPhone supplier TSMC shut down factories after virus attack

    TSMC is the largest semiconductor manufacturer in the world, and supplies components for companies like ADM, Apple, Nvidia, and Qualcomm. The company told Bloomberg that the virus infected a “number of its fabrication tools,” but that the “degree of infection varies” from factory to factory. Several have resumed their operations, but others won’t come back online until tomorrow. The company indicated that its factories weren’t infected by a hacker.

    https://www.theverge.com/2018/8/4/17651448/iphone-supplier-taiwan-semiconductor-manufacturing-co-tsmc-virus-shut-down

Software/SaaS

  • Oracle introduces autonomous transaction processing database – pounds on AWS

    We’re the easiest database in the world to use. There’s nothing to learn, there’s nothing to do. It’s much much less labor involved so it’s much, much lower in cost. It’s truly elastic because you only pay for the infrastructure that you use. So when the application is not running then Oracle deactivates servers – it’s called a serverless system. And if you’re at a busy time then it will automatically add servers while the system is is still running.

    https://diginomica.com/2018/08/07/oracle-introduces-autonomous-transaction-processing-database-pounds-on-aws/

  • SAP Ariba Named a Leader in Gartner 2018 Magic Quadrant for Strategic

    SAP Ariba today announced it has been positioned in the Leaders quadrant of the Gartner 2018 Magic Quadrant for Strategic Sourcing Application Suites. (Gartner, Inc. Magic Quadrant for Strategic Sourcing Application Suites, Magnus Bergfors, Patrick M. Connaughton, et al., August 1, 2018). In May, SAP Ariba was also recognized in the Gartner 2018 Magic Quadrant for Procure-to-Pay Suites alongside SAP Fieldglass.

    https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20180806005442/en/SAP-Ariba-Named-Leader-Gartner-2018-Magic

  • Salesforce Promotes Keith Block to Co-CEO

    Mr. Block, a former Oracle Corp. executive who joined Salesforce in 2013 as vice chairman and president, now will report directly to Salesforce’s board of directors. Mr. Benioff, who will go from being sole CEO to co-CEO, will continue leading the company’s “vision and innovation in areas including technology, marketing, stakeholder engagement and culture,” while Mr. Block will run the company’s “growth strategy, execution and operations,” Salesforce said.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/salesforce-promotes-keith-block-to-co-ceo-1533704207

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Samsung is still trying to make DeX happen

    The idea of a pocketable laptop-like machine has its merits, and in theory, DeX is promising. It’s the combination of a small accessory for the Galaxy S8, Note 8 and S9 with a software mode (like on the Tab S4) that provides a faux desktop system. To minimize the number of loose accessories you have to carry around, Samsung introduced HDMI compatibility on the Note 9, so you can plug it into any supported display with an HDMI to USB-C converter and use the DeX software to immediately get to work. You can leave the converter cable on your desk or attached to the screen, so all you need to bring is your phone. Neat.

    https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/10/samsung-dex-success-outside-mainstream/
    I am all about this type of technology. It needs to happen and corporations should get behind it.

Other

  • The greedy ways Apple got to $1 trillion

    We still turn to Apple because it makes the best core products. But the edges of the customer experience have frayed like the wires of a Lightning cable. The key to Apple’s fortune is obviously selling high margin iPhones, not these ways it nickels and dimes us. But the company has an opportunity to raise its standards after this milestone, and win back the faith that could push it to a $2 trillion market cap.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/04/the-greedy-ways-apple-got-to-1-trillion/

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash