News You Can Use: 4/04/2018

  • Tesla’s Elon Musk Tells Trump China Trade Rules ‘Make Things Very Difficult’

    Mr. Musk noted on Twitter how American-made cars imported into China face higher duties than Chinese vehicles coming to the U.S. and how foreign auto makers in China face restrictions on ownership of factories. To avoid 25% tariffs, foreign auto makers build cars in China through joint ventures with local manufacturers—something that requires a sharing of profit and potentially technology. It is an approach Mr. Musk has been trying to avoid.

    “The current rules make things very difficult,” Mr. Musk wrote on Twitter. “It’s like competing in an Olympic race wearing lead shoes.”

    On Thursday, while announcing his order to charge tariffs on steel and aluminum, Mr. Trump read off Mr. Musk’s tweet regarding the higher Chinese tariffs on American vehicles. “That’s from Elon,” the president said. “But everybody knows it, they’ve known it for years. They never did anything about it. It’s got to change.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/teslas-elon-musk-tells-trump-china-trade-rules-make-things-very-difficult-1520548598

  • Is China Destined to Dominate Tech?

    Because China’s privacy laws aren’t strictly enforced, tech companies can monitor their users intensively, offering them an advantage in everything from optimizing ads to assessing credit risk. As one executive put it, these companies “know where you’ve traveled, what movies you saw, what restaurants you ate at.” This intense surveillance may be a growing liability, however. A significant consumer backlash is building in China, driven partly by ubiquitous fraud and identity theft. And Chinese tech companies are running into stiff resistance when trying to expand into more privacy-conscious markets overseas.

    This raises a final concern. Chinese tech firms are largely confined to China, where they’re protected from competition. This gives them a dominant market position and other advantages. But a platform that censors searches for Winnie the Pooh simply isn’t going to be competitive overseas. Google and Facebook Inc., with much more international experience, have proven adept at understanding a global audience and picking up on diverse socio-cultural norms. Extracting ever more data from local users won’t help Chinese companies compete at that level.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-05/is-china-destined-to-dominate-tech

  • How to Stage a Successful Protest
  • Almost 80% of Chinese concerned about AI threat to privacy, 32% already feel a threat to their work

    AI will have an impact on every industry, said 77.8% respondents. 91.2% think AI has an effect on their work, made up of 50.4% saying they have already felt the impact of AI in their own work and another 40.8% believing that AI technologies will have an impact on their livelihoods.

    When asked whether they thought AI to be a threat to their livelihoods, 31.7% said they already felt its threat, 50.6% said they believed it would be a threat but were yet to feel it and 17.7% responded with “no, people are the most important”.

    https://technode.com/2018/03/02/almost-80-chinese-concerned-ai-threat-privacy-32-already-feel-threat-work/

  • The Amazing History of Panasonic, Which Was Founded 100 Years Ago by a 23-Year-Old

    Matsushita was ahead of his time as far as his management approach. When the company was 2 years old and had 28 employees, he formed what he called the “Hoichi Kai,” which translates to “one-step society.” It brought employees together to play sports and participate in other recreational activities.

    Another unconventional leadership tactic Matsushita spearheaded was transparency. In the early 1920s, worker retention was a major problem in Japan, first due to competition among firms, then because of economic downturn. Matsushita’s philosophy was one of trust, and he decided to share trade secrets even with new employees to build trust at all levels of the organization. By the end of 1922, the company had 50 employees and a new factory.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/310027
    This post was becoming a downer, it needed something uplifting.

Photo: Dominik Gehl

Supplier Report: 3/23/3018

Oracle and MicroFocus had a very rough week at the stock market.  MicroFocus dropped over 50% in value due to complications integrating HP software assets. Oracle investors are reacting to a lack of progress in cloud sales.

SAP settled a $600M software dispute with Anheuser-Busch, terms were not disclosed, but I am sure all parties need a drink after those discussions.

As China gains more traction in artificial intelligence, the US is attempting to curb any domestic growth in consumer goods or tech acquisitions.  Is this a sound strategy or is this the start of a potential trade war?

Acquisitions

  • Sources: Google is buying Lytro for about $40M

    Multiple sources tell us that Google is acquiring Lytro, the imaging startup that began as a ground-breaking camera company for consumers before pivoting to use its depth-data, light-field technology in VR.

    One source described the deal as an “asset sale” with Lytro going for no more than $40 million. Another source said the price was even lower: $25 million. A third source tells us that not all employees are coming over with the company’s technology: some have already received severance and parted ways with the company, and others have simply left. Assets would presumably also include Lytro’s 59 patents related to light-field and other digital imaging technology.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/20/sources-google-is-buying-lytro-for-about-40m/

  • Salesforce is buying MuleSoft at enterprise value of $6.5 billion

    But of course Salesforce gets more than tech with this purchase, which it can integrate into its growing family of products. It also gets major customers like Coca-Cola, VMware, GE, Accenture, Airbus, AT&T and Cisco. While Salesforce may have a presence already in some of these companies already, Mulesoft gives them entree into areas they might not have had and gives them the ability to expand that presence.

    What’s more, the company has big revenue goals. Having reached $10 billion in revenue faster than any software company ever has, a point that Chairman and co-founder Marc Benioff has been happy to make, they have actually set their sites on $60 billion by 2034. That’s a long way away, of course, but having a company like MuleSoft in the fold, which made almost $300 million in revenue in fiscal 201, will certainly help.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/20/salesforce-is-buying-mulesoft-at-enterprise-value-of-6-5-billion/

  • Google’s Cloud Boss Is Eyeing a ‘Major Acquisition’ to Get Ahead

    For 2018, Greene and her deputies mentioned a focus on winning customers in health care, energy and financial services. Greene said Google will keep working to sign cloud deals with the government, too. The company recently got its FedRAMP certification, a key clearance needed to provide cloud services to the U.S. government.

    Over the past two years, Alphabet has scaled back several costly initiatives, including projects in fiber broadband and drones. But the company has plowed money into Greene’s division. (Greene, an Alphabet director, said she recuses herself from board votes on cloud acquisitions.) That investment is indicative of the support that Alphabet CEO and Google co-founder Larry Page has for the business, Greene noted.

    “The entire board, including Larry, is pretty thrilled with what’s going on in cloud,” she said. “How could they not be? It’s phenomenal what the team has achieved.”

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-16/google-s-cloud-boss-eyeing-major-acquisition-to-get-ahead

  • Qualcomm’s Jacobs to Leave Board as He Explores Acquisition

    Qualcomm Inc. said director Paul Jacobs, son of the chipmaker’s founder and a former chief executive officer, will leave the board after he decided to explore an acquisition of the company.

    “The board reached that decision following his notification to the board that he has decided to explore the possibility of making a proposal to acquire Qualcomm,” the company said in a statement on Friday.

    Jacobs, 55, was stripped of his executive chairman title last week as the company sought to fend off a $117 billion hostile takeover bid from Broadcom Ltd. The board largely agreed with Jacobs that Broadcom’s bid was too low. However, early counts in a board vote tied to the Broadcom bid showed many Qualcomm shareholders had voted to replace Qualcomm directors, including Jacobs and Chief Executive Officer Steve Mollenkopf. U.S. President Donald Trump blocked the deal earlier this week.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-16/qualcomm-s-jacobs-to-leave-board-as-he-explores-possible-buyout

Artificial Intelligence

  • Look out, Alexa and Google Assistant — Watson Assistant is coming for you

    One of the key differentiating factors between Watson and all other smart assistants is its status as a white label product. That means that there’s no specific way in which to use Watson Assistant — there is no set wake word, nor a dedicated smart speaker in which the assistant will live. Rather, companies will be able to leverage Watson however they see best, making it easier to add actions and commands. And perhaps most importantly, every individual application of Watson Assistant will keep its data to itself, which means that large companies can’t, as The Verge notes, “pool information on users’ activities across multiple domains.”

    As IBM’s vice president of Watson Internet of Things, Bret Greenstein, explained to The Verge, “If you start running the entire world through Alexa, it’s an enormous amount of data and control to give to one company.” But Watson Assistant hopes to avoid that situation.

    https://www.digitaltrends.com/home/watson-ibm-assistant/

  • FedEx Follows Amazon Into the Robotic Future

    Yes, the robots replaced a few jobs right away. And in time, they will replace about 25 jobs in a facility that employs about 1,300 people. But the hub creates about 100 new jobs every year — and a robot work force still seems like the distant future.

    “Everyone will have a job,” said Galen Steele, the senior manager who oversees the depot. “It just might be in a different place.”

    As people have become more comfortable buying online, big and bulky goods like car tires, canoes and boxes as big as a coffin have accounted for an increasing percentage of the packages flowing through FedEx’s distribution centers, said Ted Dengel, who oversees operations technology for the FedEx Ground network, which includes 35 shipping hubs across the United States and Canada, including the facility in North Carolina.

    These ungainly items can’t fit on a conveyor belt. That’s where the robots, which cost several thousand dollars and are made by a Massachusetts company called Vecna, come in.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/18/technology/fedex-robots.html

  • China wants to shape the global future of artificial intelligence (Thanks JD)

    “[The Chinese government] sees standardization not only as a way to provide competitiveness for their companies, but also as a way to go from being a follower to setting the pace,” says Jeffrey Ding, a student at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute who studies China’s nascent AI industry, and who translated the report. The government’s plan cites the way US standards bodies have influenced the development of the internet, expressing a desire to avoid having the same thing happen with AI.

    China’s booming AI industry and massive government investment in the technology have raised fears in the US and elsewhere that the nation will overtake international rivals in a fundamentally important technology. In truth, it may be possible for both the US and the Chinese economies to benefit from AI. But there may be more rivalry when it comes to influencing the spread of the technology worldwide.

    https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610546/china-wants-to-shape-the-global-future-of-artificial-intelligence/

Cloud

  • Oracle stock heads for worst day in nearly 5 years, analysts run for shelter after cloud bursts

    In Oracle’s earnings conference call, CEO Safra Catz told analysts that the firm expects to report adjusted earnings of $0.92 to $0.95 per share and revenue growth of 1% to 3% for the fourth quarter. Heading into the report data, our Zacks Consensus Estimates were calling for earnings of $0.90 per share and revenue growth of 2.6%.

    But the real concern for investors is Oracle’s slowing cloud growth. Management guided for total cloud revenues to improve between 19% and 23% in Q4, which is sluggish compared to the 32% growth it saw this quarter-and even worse considering the 51% and 44% rates it witnessed in Q1 and Q2.

    https://www.nasdaq.com/article/is-oracle-orcl-worth-buying-on-the-post-earnings-dip-cm937297

Security

  • Best Buy to Stop Selling Huawei Phones

    U.S. intelligence leaders have recently recommended against Americans using phones from Huawei or Chinese rival ZTE Corp. The most recent to do so was Paul Nakasone, the nominee to head both the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command, who said at a Senate hearing last week that he wouldn’t want his friends or family using such devices.

    In addition to selling smartphones, Huawei is the world’s top maker of the equipment that goes into cellular towers and related infrastructure. The U.S. government’s broad concern is that the Chinese government could order Huawei to exploit knowledge of how its electronics are designed to spy or launch cyberattacks. Huawei says it is employee-owned and that no government has ever asked it to spy on or sabotage another country.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/best-buy-to-stop-selling-huawei-phones-1521725835

Software/SaaS

  • DocuSign has filed confidentially for IPO

    Like Dropbox, which is finally going public this week, San Francisco-based DocuSign has been an anticipated IPO for several years now. It’s raised over $500 million since it was founded in 2003 and has been valued at $3 billion. Kleiner Perkins, Bain Capital, Intel Capital, GV (Google Ventures) and Dell are among the many well-known names which have invested in DocuSign.

    But like many “unicorns” these days, the company took its time, spending 15 years as a private company. The DocuSign team decided that 2018 is the year for its debut and is targeting an IPO in either the second or third quarter.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/20/docusign-has-filed-confidentially-for-ipo/

  • Coca-Cola and US government use blockchain to curb forced labor

    Coca-Cola, the US State Department and a trio of crypto organizations (Bitfury Group, Blockchain Trust Accelerator and Emercoin) have launched a pilot project that will use blockchain to enforce worker rights. The initiative would use blockchain’s distributed ledger technology to create a secure, decentralized registry for workers and their contracts. They’d not only have the sort of identification that isn’t always guaranteed, but a trail of evidence in case employers abuse their power or don’t honor their end of a bargain.

    https://www.engadget.com/2018/03/18/coca-cola-and-us-government-use-blockchain-to-curb-forced-labor/

  • Microsoft’s Edge Browser Could Soon Be Harder to Ignore in Windows 10

    But if you keep scrolling, near the bottom of the patch notes for build 17623, there’s a bullet point that says Insiders on the Skip Ahead ring “will begin testing a change where links clicked on within the Windows Mail app will open in Microsoft Edge.” Please say it ain’t so. This means that regardless of what your default browser is set to in Windows 10, any hyperlink you click in the Mail app would open in Edge, whether you like it or not.

    Microsoft justifies this by saying Edge “provides the best, most secure and consistent experience on Windows 10 and across your devices” and that “With built-in features for reading, note-taking, Cortana integration, and easy access to services such as SharePoint and OneDrive, Microsoft Edge enables you to be more productive, organized and creative without sacrificing your battery life or security.”

    https://gizmodo.com/microsoft-s-edge-browser-could-soon-be-harder-to-ignore-1823843562

  • LinkedIn’s $27 Billion Challenge: Get People to Use It More

    Just 18% of LinkedIn members used the service daily in April 2016, according to Pew Research’s most recent look at the service’s usage in November 2016, a month before Microsoft MSFT 0.45% closed the deal. That’s down from 21% a year earlier.

    What’s more, more than half of members, 51%, used LinkedIn every few weeks or less often, Pew found. By comparison, 76% of Facebook Inc. members used the service at least daily, Pew found.

    At the time of the deal, Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella said one goal was to weave together the tools people use to get their jobs done and professional networks that connect workers.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/linkedins-27-billion-challenge-get-people-to-use-it-more-1521201600

  • Oracle claims database 10 times cheaper than AWS, analyst says cloud on ‘continual slide’

    Speaking on an earnings call, transcribed by Seeking Alpha, Hurd talked up Oracle’s new autonomous database.

    “The amazing thing about the autonomous database is that it is the only database on the planet that requires no human labor to administer,” he said.

    “Oracle has a faster database than Amazon, it’s no big surprise there, but the interesting thing [is that] Amazon charges by the minute and we charge by the minute; our prices are essentially the same or close enough.

    “If we run 10 times faster, we are one-tenth the cost of Amazon’s database. We’ve been through all the public benchmarks – you can go and look at them – we’re one-tenth the cost.”

    https://www.channelnomics.com/channelnomics-us/news/3028817/oracle-claims-database-is-ten-times-cheaper-than-aws

  • Hewlett Packard Spin-Off Falters, as Shares Drop 55% in London

    It hasn’t worked out as planned. Micro Focus shares plunged 46% Monday after it said technical problems related to combining the computer systems of Micro Focus and HPE would lead to lower-than-expected sales.

    Micro Focus also said its chief executive, Chris Hsu, resigned after a 6½-month tenure. Previously HPE’s chief operating officer, Mr. Hsu was appointed CEO in January 2017 and officially took the position when the merger was completed this past September.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/hewlett-packard-spin-off-falters-as-shares-drop-55-in-london-1521471054

Other

  • Facebook Suspends Data Firm That Helped Trump Campaign

    Facebook said late Friday that it been given information that Cambridge Analytica, along with two individuals who don’t work there, improperly kept Facebook user data for years despite telling the social network that it had destroyed those records. Facebook didn’t say how Cambridge Analytica used that data or if it gave the data to the Trump campaign.

    Facebook, which didn’t elaborate on the source of its information, said it is suspending Cambridge Analytica, its parent Strategic Communication Laboratories and the two individuals from buying ads or administering clients’ pages while it investigates the reports.

    The move once again spotlights Facebook’s role during the 2016 presidential election and its shortcomings in policing manipulation and misuse of its platform.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-suspends-cambridge-analytica-for-failing-to-delete-user-data-1521260051

  • SAP settles licensing dispute with AB InBev

    Questioned about the settlement, an SAP spokesman added just one adjective: “There is nothing more to say than ‘There was a dispute and it was resolved amicably,’” he said via email.

    That the companies were able to conclude the dispute so amicably and quietly comes down to the framework SAP used to enforce its licensing agreement: the Commercial Arbitration Rules of the American Arbitration Association.

    Commercial arbitration proceedings are usually conducted in private, and unlike in U.S. courts, filings and rulings are not matters of public record.

    When a licensing dispute goes to court, it’s generally a lot harder to keep quiet, as another alcoholic beverage maker, Diageo, found when SAP sued it for accessing data stored in its SAP system without the appropriate licenses. In February 2017 a U.K. court ruled that Diageo needed named-user licenses for customers and employees to access the SAP system, even when they did so indirectly through a Salesforce.com app. The court didn’t immediately rule on how much Diageo had to pay, but SAP was asking for £54,503,578 (around $76 million).

    https://www.cio.com/article/3263717/enterprise-resource-planning/sap-settles-licensing-dispute-with-ab-inbev.html

  • Cutting “old heads” at IBM

    The company reacted with a strategy that, in the words of one confidential planning document, would “correct seniority mix.” It slashed IBM’s U.S. workforce by as much as three-quarters from its 1980s peak, replacing a substantial share with younger, less-experienced and lower-paid workers and sending many positions overseas. ProPublica estimates that in the past five years alone, IBM has eliminated more than 20,000 American employees ages 40 and over, about 60 percent of its estimated total U.S. job cuts during those years.

    In making these cuts, IBM has flouted or outflanked U.S. laws and regulations intended to protect later-career workers from age discrimination, according to a ProPublica review of internal company documents, legal filings and public records, as well as information provided via interviews and questionnaires filled out by more than 1,000 former IBM employees.

    https://features.propublica.org/ibm/ibm-age-discrimination-american-workers/

  • Trump strikes back at Chinese tech practices with new tariffs

    Trump directed his administration to take action that will likely result in tariffs on a proposed list of 1,300 products as punishment for Beijing’s intellectual property practices, senior White House officials said ahead of the announcement.

    The officials said the list of targeted products will largely focus on technology China is accused of forcefully taking from U.S. companies. The value of that list represents the harm that U.S. companies have suffered from China’s practices, they said.

    “What you’ll see is that many of these areas are those where China has sought to acquire advantage through the unfair acquisition or forced technology transfer from U.S. companies with an aim toward establishing its own competitive advantage,” said Everett Eissenstat, deputy director of the White House National Economic Council, during a call with reporters.

    https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/22/trump-chinese-tech-practices-tariffs-428551

Photo by Guzmán Barquín on Unsplash

News You Can Use: 3/14/2018

  • China using big data to detain people before crime is committed

    Chinese police theorists have identified specific “extremist behaviours, which include if you store a large amount of food in your home, if your child suddenly quits school and so on,” she said. Train a computer to look for such conduct, and “then you have a big data program modelled upon pretty racist ideas about peaceful behaviours that are part of a Uyghur identity,” she said.

    The report “adds some pieces to the puzzle” over what is happening in Xinjiang, where it became clear over the last year “that tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs were disappearing without having done anything illegal,” said Rian Thum, a historian at Loyola University in New Orleans who has travelled extensively in Xinjiang.

    https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/china-using-big-data-to-detain-people-in-re-education-before-crime-committed-report/article38126551/
    The dark side of “big data” and “AI” need to be reported on and discussed.

  • This One Aspect of Your Office Design Is Wasting a Lot of Time and Money

    Meetings are expensive — the rent of the office space combined with the wages of each attendee — but a lot of that investment is wasted. A UCLA and University of Minnesota study finds that executives spend up to half of their working hours in meetings and that as much as 50 percent of that time is unproductive. With 17 million business meetings in the United States every day, there are a lot of frustrated workers: 88 percent of people are annoyed by technology problems in meeting rooms, and 20 percent of meetings run late due to those issues, wasting 2.83 working days a year for the average employee.

    Also:

    Making meeting rooms more interactive and easier to navigate is part of a movement to upgrade our office spaces to better reflect how we work today. Real estate executives acknowledge updating is needed with 86 percent saying they are remaking or adapting offices and another 51 percent are planning to reinvent shared workspaces this year, according to the CBRE’s 2017 Americas Occupier Survey. Employing technology to more efficiently use meeting space is a vital part of those efforts and can make a big impact on a company’s bottom line.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/309625

  • Can DIY Solar Panels Solve Puerto Rico’s Power Crisis?
  • Everyone on LinkedIn is a “passionate, experienced, motivated” leader

    While it’s awesome that we’re all so “experienced,” “passionate,” and “creative,” these labels won’t help any of us stand out. Slinging around the same generic language as everybody else is among the worst strategies for getting ahead.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40538110/everyone-on-linkedin-is-a-passionate-experienced-motivated-leader
    4 Signs You’re Trying Too Hard On LinkedIn

    The number one sign Marco Montinari, a recruitment consultant at Mason Frank International, sees repeatedly is LinkedIn users trying to be philosophers or motivational speakers. “It usually involves reflecting on their own successes while also advising people to stay humble,” Montinari says. While there’s nothing inherently bad about trying to deconstruct common professional issues or trying to uplift people through motivational words, unless you actually are, you know, a philosopher, what you think is deep or uplifting often comes across as simply trite or self-congratulatory. As Montinari points out: “A lesson in self-awareness is often needed for people who spend time telling others how to live their lives.”

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40523265/4-signs-youre-trying-too-hard-on-linkedin

  • Science Says Money Does Buy Happiness If You Spend it the Right Way

    The reason that money demonstratively increases happiness levels up until a point is that it takes a certain salary to feel financially secure.

    Having enough money means no anxiety when shopping at the grocery store, going out to eat or paying your rent. This type of security is overlooked when you are used to it.

    Remembering and being appreciative of the fact that you are free to purchase things, though, will make you happier even after it has settled in as normal amount of your finances. Fundamentally, having enough money to buy these basic necessities will no-doubt increase your happiness levels.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/309814

Photo: Brooke Winters

Supplier Report: 3/9/2018

Amazon had an outage this week taking down popular sites like Slack and Atlassian. This outage happened as AWS is in talks with the Pentagon on another cloud contract (in which they are the front-runners).  As AWS gets bigger, should companies look at other options so they don’t go down with the Titanic?

Apple found their supply chain had more human rights violations that originally reported via an internal audit conducted by an independent 3rd party.  The company is in the process of rolling out a formal process to manage these types of ongoing violations.

IBM has over 400 active blockchain projects with customers at the moment. As IBM shifts to newer business models and services, some of their older customers like the Canadian government, are having major implementation issues on traditional services.

Acquisitions

  • WeWork acquires SEO and marketing company Conductor

    There’s a lot that make WeWork and Conductor a natural fit. Seth and his team built Conductor to provide the insights, education, and resources their customers need to succeed — in other words, Conductor helps their customers do what they love, and do it better. Conductor has made it easier for us to reach potential WeWork members who are looking for workspace. It’s also helped us get the word out about the services and amenities that we offer to companies of all sizes.

    https://beta.techcrunch.com/2018/03/06/wework-acquires-conductor/

  • WTF is CFIUS?

    The U.S. is a technology leader, and it has a robust set of economic warfare tools to protect its competitive advantages. One of those tools is CFIUS, or the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. You might have heard it in the news recently because of its potential impact on Broadcom’s mega offer to buy Qualcomm, or because Congress is considering strengthening its provisions to potentially regulate startup investments from foreign firms.

    CFIUS is becoming a lot more important these days due to a single country: China. There are few economic stories more fundamental than the continued rise of China as a world superpower. From humble experiments with capitalism in the early 1980s to the behemoth it is today, China’s economic growth has been nothing short of extraordinary. Underpinning that growth has been a deep appetite for technology and scientific research, first learned through overseas universities, and now through indigenous development.

    As China’s wealth has grown, so has its desire to own the most distinguished technology companies in the world, and that’s where CFIUS comes in. The United States’s latest National Security Strategy labels China a “strategic competitor.” As tensions flare, CFIUS will be at the heart of the battle for who will ultimately own the technology industry.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/04/wtf-is-cfius/?ncid=rss

  • Google is selling off Zagat

    Seven years after picking up Zagat for $151 million, Google is selling off the perennial restaurant recommendation service. The New York Times is reporting this morning that the technology giant is selling off the company to The Infatuation, a review site founded nine years back by former music execs.

    The company had been rumored to be courting a buyer since early this year. As Reuters noted at the time, Zagat has increasingly become less of a focus for Google, as the company began growing its database of restaurant recommendations organically. Zagat, meanwhile, has lost much of the shine it had when Google purchased it nearly a decade ago.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/05/google-is-selling-off-zagat/?ncid=rss

Cloud

  • AWS outage: Datacentre power cut knocks ‘hundreds’ of internet services offline

    The cloud services giant confirmed that its US-East-1 region suffered two separate power loss incidents over the course of two hours in one of the site’s network peering facilities, each one lasting about 10 minutes.

    As a result, organisations that rely on that region to host their applications and workloads “may have experienced internet connectivity issues”, said AWS in a statement on its services status page.

    “Our network is designed to be fully redundant with multiple independent peering facilities in every region,” the statement continued. “Some customers experienced elevated latency and packet loss while the network rerouted affected traffic to these unaffected network peering facilities.

    “Some packet loss was also observed as we restored traffic to the affected network peering facility.”

    http://www.computerweekly.com/news/252436193/AWS-outage-Datacentre-power-cut-knocks-out-hundreds-of-internet-services

    And this is why corporate customers should at least think about alternatives to AWS, 67% of all cloud is on AWS. When a hacker or a outage occurs, there are much bigger impacts.

  • Cloud-Based Disaster Recovery: How To Avoid the ‘Gotchas’

    Sync-and-share solutions are a great opportunity to examine one of the key problems of cloud computing: Namely, that expectations rarely match reality. IT practitioners have a pretty good idea of how sync-and-share solutions work. As a result, it rarely occurs to us to sit users down and have the talk with them about the cloud not being magic. Unfortunately, many users encounter cloud-based solutions with erroneous preconceptions, and this “knowledge” leads to errors.

    One common belief is that sync-and-share solutions adequately protect users against ransomware. They don’t. Modern ransomware makes numerous changes to files over time, ultimately running out the number of versions of files kept by the sync-and-share solution. There’s even a little game of cat-and-mouse going on with some of them where the sync-and-share vendor tries to add some level of ransomware detection based on access patterns, and the ransomware evolves new access patterns.

    https://virtualizationreview.com/articles/2018/03/06/cloud-dr-gotchas-to-avoid.aspx

  • Microsoft to offer governments local version of Azure cloud service

    The pairing of Azure Stack, Microsoft’s localized cloud product, and Azure Government, the government-tailored version of Microsoft’s cloud, comes as competition against Amazon.com Inc for major clients in the public sector ramps up.

    The new offering, which will be made available in mid-2018, is designed to appeal to governments and agencies with needs for on-premise servers, such as in a military operation or in an embassy abroad, said Tom Keane, Microsoft Azure’s head of global infrastructure.

    “Quite literally we’ve designed Azure Stack with the scenario of a submarine in mind,” Keane told Reuters.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-azure-government/microsoft-to-offer-governments-local-version-of-azure-cloud-service-idUSKBN1GH28H

  • Amazon, Oracle, Microsoft jockey for Pentagon’s cloud business

    Catz’s meeting with Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, which was confirmed by a department spokesman, came as technology companies are raising concerns that the Pentagon is leaning toward choosing Amazon.com Inc’s cloud division as a single provider for a multi-year contract to modernise its technology infrastructure.

    Having already won two other government cloud contacts, Amazon Web Services is widely perceived as the front-runner for the Defense Department’s cloud award, while companies including Oracle, Microsoft Corp, and International Business Machines Corp fight for a piece of that business.

    Oracle has a vested interest in how the contract is awarded because it has long-term contracts with multiple government agencies that use its flagship database to store information on their own systems. As the agencies look to switch to cloud computing and eye market leader Amazon, these moves threaten Oracle’s traditional revenue sources. Oracle has tried to protect its database business by offering cloud services of its own, but has come late to that market.

    http://gulfnews.com/business/sectors/technology/amazon-oracle-microsoft-jockey-for-pentagon-s-cloud-business-1.2184645

Software/SaaS

  • IBM told investors that it has over 400 blockchain clients — including Walmart, Visa, and Nestlé

    At least 400 IBM customers are now running blockchain-based projects, according to the briefing. Among those customers are 63 that work together with certain themes: 25 companies in global trade, 14 companies in food tracking, and 14 companies in global payments. Some of IBM’s most recognizable blockchain clients include Nestlé, Visa, Walmart, and HSBC.

    While blockchains continue to be widely associated with startups and crypto-millionaires, IBM’s client list shows that large enterprises are truly embracing the technology.

    IBM and Walmart actually launched a joint food safety blockchain project globally last year, which enables the grocery chain to figure out where specific produce originated in a matter of seconds.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/ibm-blockchain-enterprise-customers-walmart-visa-nestl-2018-3

Datacenter/Hardware

  • Amazon will stop selling Nest smart home devices, escalating its war with Google

    The stakes are huge. Both Amazon and Google are building out a new voice-powered operating system that can control everything in your life — from your lights to your garage door to the music and video you stream. Amazon’s acquisition of Ring will give it a nice boost on the hardware side as it continues to build out Alexa’s AI. Ring was already one of Nest’s biggest competitors. Now it has the nearly-limitless funding needed from Amazon to go after its Google-backed rival.

    The rivalry between Amazon and Google extends beyond the smart home, though.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-wont-sell-nest-products-from-google-2018-3

  • Google’s new Bristlecone processor brings it one step closer to quantum supremacy

    Today, Google said that it believes that Bristlecone, its latest quantum processor, will put it on a path to reach quantum supremacy in the future. The purpose of Bristlecone, Google says, it to provide its researchers with a testbed “for research into system error rates and scalability of our qubit technology, as well as applications in quantum simulation, optimization, and machine learning.”

    One of the major issues that all quantum computers have to contend with is error rates. Quantum computers typically run at extremely low temperatures (we’re talking millikelvins here) and are shielded from the environment because today’s quantum bits are still highly unstable and any noise can lead to errors.

    Because of this, the qubits in modern quantum processors (the quantum computing versions of traditional bits) aren’t really single qubits but often a combination of numerous bits to help account for potential errors. Another limited factor right now is that most of these systems can only preserve their state for under 100 microseconds.

    https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/05/googles-new-bristlecone-processor-brings-it-one-step-closer-to-quantum-supremacy/?ncid=rss

Other

  • Apple finds more serious supplier problems as its audits expand

    Apple said in the report that the proportion of “low performers,” or suppliers scoring less than 59 points on its 100-point scale, fell to 1 percent in 2017 from 3 percent in 2016 and 14 percent in 2014. “High performers” with scores of more than 90 rose to a record high of 59 percent from 47 percent the year before.

    Apple found 44 “core violations” of its labor rules in 2017, double the previous year. Those included three instances of employees forced to pay excessive fees for a job, a practice Apple banned in 2015.

    In one case, over 700 foreign contract workers recruited from the Philippines were charged a total of $1 million to work for a supplier. Apple said it forced the supplier to repay the money.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-suppliers/apple-finds-more-serious-supplier-problems-as-its-audits-expand-idUSKCN1GK04G

  • Why Amazon Is Immune To Almost Any Boycott

    Amazon, however, is in a different position–one that’s great for Jeff Bezos and annoying for activists. “For all its problems,” says King, “[Amazon] has a pretty robust reputation.” He goes on, “a boycott against Amazon doesn’t really change in people’s minds what kind of company Amazon is.” Which is to say, Bezos’s behemoth website has remained a relative constant for all these years, strategically staying out of the public eye while amassing hundreds of millions of loyal users. People know what the company is, what it has been doing, and the services its offers.

    What’s more, the boycotts levied against the retail giant aren’t about some deep-seated collusion with the forces of evil, but rather passive business dealings. The activist organization Sleeping Giants, for instance, has been lobbying for Amazon to stop advertising on Breitbart. Though the group has had success with other campaigns–it got over a thousand advertisers to pull advertising from both Breitbart and the Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor–Amazon has yet to change its ways. Though it may ruffle some people’s feathers that the company advertises on a far-right website or allows a gun rights organization to distribute its TV content, that doesn’t reveal an internal clash of values. Amazon is just doing business–the same business it’s been doing for years. And since people are very unlikely to stop using Amazon, the company probably sees no reason to acquiesce.

    https://www.fastcompany.com/40538592/how-amazon-is-immune-to-almost-any-boycott

  • Canada’s IBM Payroll Plans Go Bust — Costing $1 Billion

    “They should have known better,” Daviau told the publication, adding that IBM holds some of the blame because it also went forward with the payroll system’s launch.

    “IBM got into a contract with the government that was very beneficial to IBM, which meant that the contract — despite non-delivery — could continue to be extended and IBM could continue to come back to the pot for money,” she said.

    In a statement, IBM said it is “fulfilling its obligations on the Phoenix contract, and the software is functioning as intended.” It added that it “continues to work in partnership with the government’s efforts to resolve the project’s issues and remains committed to the project’s overall success.”

    https://www.pymnts.com/news/b2b-payments/2018/ibm-canada-payroll/

  • More ‘boomerang’ employees return to Microsoft as corporate culture shifts

    Microsoft has always had “boomerang” employees, as have other tech companies in the highly competitive industry. During the few years before Nadella stepped into the role, about 12 percent of the company’s new hires in the U.S. each year had previous job stints at the company. But that number ticked up to 16 percent, or 621 boomerangs, between July 2014 and July 2015, starting a few months after Nadella took over as CEO.

    For the recent Microsoft boomerangs, returning to Redmond feels like stepping into a company that has changed — albeit one where that still occurs slowly.

    https://www.seattletimes.com/business/microsoft/more-boomerang-employees-return-to-microsoft-as-corporate-culture-shifts/

  • Marriott Employee Roy Jones Hit ‘Like.’ Then China Got Mad

    Craig Smith, head of Asia-Pacific for Marriott, said in a separate statement, “We made a few mistakes in China earlier this year that suggested some associates did not understand or take seriously enough the sovereignty and territorial integrity of China. Those incidents were mistakes and in no way representative of our views as a company.”

    “Not only can’t you speak freely inside of China, but you can’t even speak freely outside of China—and that’s really bad,” said Xiao Qiang, a Chinese internet expert at the University of California at Berkeley.

    Marriott was within its legal rights to fire Mr. Jones, legal experts say. But some say the severity of the penalty—termination, rather than a reprimand or suspension—highlights the increasingly unforgiving environment for those who offend Chinese sensibilities.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/marriott-employee-roy-jones-hit-like-then-china-got-mad-1520094910

Photo: Kirstyn Paynter