Tag: Elon Musk

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Supplier Report: 6/12/2020


Photo by Allef Vinicius on Unsplash

This has been a sad couple of weeks. Actually, this has been a sad year

Between COVID-19 and the recent protests on police brutality – companies, leaders, and governments have to rethink (everything). It would be weird not to mention what has been happening on this post. The news is rightfully focused on other topics.

And yet… even with all of this… business continues. If one thing is a constant, it is Elon Musk talking trash. The Telsa CEO took umbrage with Amazon over the availability of a book and called for the company to be split apart. I suppose we can at least appreciate the distractions he provides the public.

Donate: Black Lives Matter
Donate: Color of Change

Acquisitions/Investments

  • VMware acquires network security firm Lastline, said to lay off 40% of staff

    Since its launch in 2012, Lastline raised about $52.2 million, according to Crunchbase. Investors include Thomvest Ventures, which led the company’s $28.5 million Series C round in 2017; Redpoint and e.ventures, which led the company’s 2013 funding round; and Barracuda Networks, NTT Finance and Dell Technologies Capital.

    A source tells us that VMware will let go some 40% of Lastline’s employees — about 50 staffers — as part of the acquisition. We asked a Lastline spokesperson for comment prior to publication but did not hear back. A spokesperson for VMware also did not respond to a request for comment

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/04/vmware-lastline-staff-cuts/

  • Accenture Completes Acquisition of Gekko

    Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has completed its acquisition of Gekko, a leading French Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud services company. Terms of the transaction, which was announced on April 20 [link to original news release], were not disclosed.

    Gekko has more than 100 trained cloud professionals, 100 AWS certifications and a deep relationship with AWS.

    The acquisition strengthens Accenture’s leadership position in cloud and artificial intelligence; extends its ongoing relationships with key technology providers, including ecosystem partners such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft; and complements the cloud migration expertise and strategic objectives of the Accenture AWS Business Group (AABG) in France, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

    https://www.oleantimesherald.com/business/accenture-completes-acquisition-of-gekko/article_d1f22e62-6e3e-5d57-8955-7be0220ada24.html

Cloud

  • Who Will Acquire Zoom: Amazon, Oracle, or IBM?

    Larry Ellison and crew have been quiet on the M&A front for quite some time and that’s not normal for Oracle. With Oracle’s massive suite of SaaS apps, it could create some unique tie-ins with Zoom’s rapidly growing set of capabilities, and give Zoom immediate distribution and presence in every corner of the world.

    Plus, Ellison’s able to envision the full potential of the Zoom phenomenon better than just about anyone, and he always likes to be on offense. And at a time when Ellison is looking to sharply differentiate his company from AWS, the addition of Zoom would certainly help the cause.

    https://cloudwars.co/amazon/who-will-acquire-zoom-amazon-oracle-ibm-cloud-wars/

Software/SaaS

  • DocuSign posts strong Q1, enters remote work, digital transformation winner’s circle

    DocuSign’s e-signature and Agreement Cloud are among the first quarter winners as companies aim to go more digital and perform more work remotely.

    The company reported a first quarter net loss of 26 cents a share on revenue of $297 million, up 39% from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings for the quarter were 12 cents a share.

    Wall Street was expecting DocuSign to report first quarter non-GAAP earnings of 10 cents a share on revenue of $281.1 million. CEO Dan Springer said the COVID-19 pandemic spurred enterprises to accelerate digital transformation efforts and driving demand.

    https://www.zdnet.com/article/docusign-posts-strong-q1-enters-remote-work-digital-transformation-winners-circle/

  • Slack is teaming up with Amazon

    Slack added a record 12,000 new paying customers in the three months ending April 30, and more than 90,000 new organizations on paid or free subscription plans, it said in an earnings report Thursday. It also reported $201.7 million in revenue for the quarter, a 50% increase from the same period a year earlier.

    But neither those numbers, nor the Amazon deal, were enough to cheer investors — the company’s stock plunged around 16% in after-hours trading following the results.

    https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/04/tech/slack-amazon-deal-earnings/index.html

Other

  • Elon Musk Calls for Amazon Breakup in Latest Spat With Jeff Bezos

    The criticism from Mr. Musk, chief executive of Tesla Inc., came in response to a tweet by Alex Berenson. The author said that Kindle Direct Publishing, Amazon’s outlet for self-published e-books, had rejected his submission for a book called “Unreported Truths about Covid-19 and Lockdowns.” It questions whether the virus is as deadly as public health experts say.

    “This is insane @JeffBezos,” Mr. Musk initially tweeted, criticizing Amazon’s decision. He has repeatedly questioned the severity of the pandemic and criticized parts of the government response as overzealous. “Time to break up Amazon. Monopolies are wrong!” Mr. Musk added in an intensifying battle between two business titans who both seek to dominate key markets on Earth and in outer space.

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-calls-for-amazon-breakup-in-latest-spat-with-jeff-bezos-11591305297?mod=rss_Technology

  • Google Search a Target of U.S. Antitrust Probes, Rival Says

    U.S. federal and state authorities are asking detailed questions about how to limit Google’s power in the online search market as part of their antitrust investigations into the tech giant, according to rival DuckDuckGo Inc.

    Gabriel Weinberg, chief executive officer of the privacy-focused search engine, said the company has spoken with state regulators, and talked with the U.S. Justice Department as recently as a few weeks ago.

    Justice Department officials and state attorneys general asked the company about requiring Google to give consumers alternatives to its search engine on Android devices and in Google’s Chrome web browser, Weinberg said in an interview.

    “We’ve been talking to all of them about search and all of them have asked us detailed search questions,” he added.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-06-04/google-search-is-a-target-of-u-s-antitrust-probes-rival-says

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Supplier Report: 12/13/2019


Photo by Marten Bjork on Unsplash

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

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

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

Acquisitions/Investments

  • Adobe is buying the Oculus Medium VR sculpting app

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

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

Cloud

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Security/Privacy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Software/SaaS

  • SAP customers are revolting – here’s why

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Infrastructure/Hardware

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Other

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • Bird lays off several Scoot employees

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Supplier Report: 5/17/2019

There is growing public pressure on Facebook to make some kind of change. Former employees and government officials want to break up the company calling it a monopoly, but are Facebook’s services essential?

Seeing this drama unfold, Google is quickly pivoting to privacy-based position. In recent weeks the company is allowing users to limit tracking and delete information Google has stored about usage.  Very smart move… but is it enough?

Meanwhile Oracle just can’t give up on Project Jedi.

Acquisitions

  • Apple buys companies at the same rate you buy groceries

    This weekend, CEO Tim Cook told CNBC that Apple purchases a new company every two to three weeks on average, and has bought between 20 and 25 companies in the last six months alone.

    That’s roughly as often as I bought groceries during some… oh, let’s just call them “fresh vegetable adjacent” periods of my life.

    You know how human beings never fail to be surprised when they get to the cash register and see how much of their paycheck is about to turn into food? I wonder if Apple ever feels that way. I’d guess not, considering how the company’s reportedly sitting on $225.4 billion dollars of cash on hand alone — enough to settle a historic array of lawsuits with Qualcomm 50 times over, if push came to shove.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/6/18531570/apple-company-purchases-startups-tim-cook-buy-rate

  • Marvell to Acquire Aquantia, Eying Automotive Networking Market

    Marvell on Monday announced that it had reached an agreement to buy the networking specialist firm Aquantia for $452 million. The acquisition will allow Marvell to significantly augment their current networking capabilities, with the company intending to use Aquantia’s technology in future PC, enterprise, and especially in-vehicle applications.

    Under the terms of the deal, Marvell will pay Aquantia shareholders $13.25 per share in cash, bringing the total value of the deal to $452 million. The transaction has already been approved by board of directors of both companies, and subject to regulatory approval, is expected to close by the end of calendar year 2019.

    https://www.anandtech.com/show/14300/marvell-to-acquire-aquantia-eying-automotive-networking-market

Artificial Intelligence

  • The Morning After: All the important stuff from Google I/O

    An AI-powered assistant that responds to voice commands faster than you can type or swipe, even offline? That’s what Google promised at I/O, with demos showing off how its next-generation assistant could operate across and through several apps, using voice control almost exclusively to get the information users need when they need it. Plus, it learns what you like and can even make restaurant or menu suggestions based on those preferences. Expect to see these features roll out on Pixel phones first later this year.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/08/the-morning-after-google-io-highlights/

Cloud

  • Oracle Alleges AWS Recruited DoD Officials To Influence JEDI Cloud Award

    After Oracle first raised the issue, the DoD Inspector General, assisted by the FBI’s Public Corruption Squad, reopened a prior investigation and again concluded those potential improprieties didn’t impact the integrity of the process. A previous Government Accountability Office investigation also found no flaw warranting a change in how the military was selecting a cloud vendor.

    But Oracle argued Tuesday the military’s contracting officer was wrong to take Ubhi’s claims at face value during the investigation, noting he actively sought to return to AWS, where he previously worked, during his short stint at DoD, where for a time he worked as a JEDI project manager.

    https://www.crn.com/news/cloud/oracle-alleges-aws-recruited-dod-officials-to-influence-jedi-cloud-award

  • SAP embraces cloud customization – with interesting partners

    SAP is launching SAP Embrace, a new initiative to enable users of the SAP S/4 HANA ERP system to move it to the cloud, with platform, software, services and infrastructure customized to their specific industry needs. Interestingly, SAP is collaborating with cloud competitors Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and Google Cloud. SAP Embrace customers will be able to select one of those three cloud services providers as a hyperscaler, and also leverage SAP’s network of global strategic service partners.

    https://www.chainstoreage.com/technology/sap-embraces-cloud-customization-with-interesting-partners/

Security/Privacy

  • Google Says It Has Found Religion on Privacy

    Google plans to permit users to navigate its maps, watch videos on YouTube and search for information in “incognito mode,” limiting the amount of information shared with the company. It will also allow users to delete web and app activity history automatically after three months or 18 months.

    Google added incognito mode to its Chrome browser a decade ago.

    The company also said it would make it easier for users to find and delete information they have shared with the company, including location data in maps. For its Android operating system, Google said a new update would simplify how to limit the sharing of location data with app providers.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/technology/google-privacy-tools.html

Software/SaaS

  • Symantec CEO Abruptly Resigns Amid Financial Turmoil

    Symantec CEO Greg Clark abruptly resigned yesterday immediately before the embattled security company reported its fourth-quarter 2019 earnings, which included weak enterprise sales and disappointing forecasts for the first quarter and full 2020 fiscal year.

    The company appointed Richard Hill, current Symantec director and former chairman and CEO of Novellus Systems, as interim president and CEO, effective immediately, and said it will begin a search to find a permanent CEO.

    https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/symantec-ceo-abruptly-resigns-amid-financial-turmoil/2019/05/

  • IBM sells $28.6b of bonds to help fund Red Hat buy

    The Red Hat purchase will push the combined company’s borrowings above $US60 billion with debt that’s more than three times a key measure of earnings, said Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Robert Schiffman and Mike Campellone. Though IBM won’t buy back shares in the next two years, it still risks a potential downgrade to the BBB range, the tier of corporate debt that’s just above junk, they wrote.

    IBM took out a $US20 billion bridge loan to fund the Red Hat deal and will use some of its cash pile, the company said in October when the transaction was announced. S&P Global Ratings and Fitch Ratings cut IBM one level to A at the time, the sixth-highest investment-grade rating, while it remains on review for downgrade at Moody’s Investors Service.

    https://www.afr.com/markets/debt-markets/ibm-sells-28-6b-of-bonds-to-help-fund-red-hat-buy-20190509-p51li8

Infrastructure/Hardware

  • Microsoft open-sources its quantum computing development tools

    This move, the company says, is meant to make “quantum computing and algorithm development easier and more transparent for developers.” In addition, it will make it easier for academic institutions to use these tools, and developers, of course, will be able to contribute their own code and ideas.

    Unsurprisingly, the code will live on Microsoft’s GitHub page. Previously, the team had already open-sourced a number of tools and examples, as well as a library of quantum chemistry samples, but this is the first time the team is open-sourcing core parts of the platform.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/06/microsoft-open-sources-its-quantum-computing-development-tools/

  • Apple’s would-be sapphire glass supplier charged with fraud

    Apple loaned $578 million to a company called GT Advanced Technologies, which was supposed to build highly scratch-resistant screen covers from synthetic sapphire crystals. Instead, it produced flawed “boules” of sapphire that couldn’t be cut into displays and went bankrupt months after it started. Now, the SEC has announced that it’s charging the company and its ex-CEO with fraud for allegedly withholding key information from stockholders.

    https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/06/apple-sapphire-glass-supplier-charged-with-fraud/

Other

  • Facebook co-founder, Chris Hughes, calls for Facebook to be broken up

    The tl;dr of Hughes’ argument against Facebook/Zuckerberg being allowed to continue its/his reign of the internet knits together different strands of the techlash zeitgeist, linking Zuckerberg’s absolute influence over Facebook, and therefore over the unprecedented billions of people he can reach and behaviourally reprogram via content-sorting algorithms, to the crushing of innovation and startup competition; the crushing of consumer attention, choice and privacy, all hostage to relentless growth targets and an eyeball-demanding ad business model; the crushing control of speech that Zuckerberg — as Facebook’s absolute monarch — personally commands, with Hughes worrying it’s a power too potent for any one human to wield.

    https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/09/facebook-co-founder-chris-hughes-calls-for-facebook-to-be-broken-up/

    Facebook is not a monopoly, and breaking it up would defy logic and set a bad precedent

    Hughes and others have cited historical precedents such as the government’s breakup of Standard Oil and AT&T as a justification for stricter antitrust regulation against tech giants. But these companies not only had clear monopolies with pricing power that hurt consumers, they also offered products that were vital to the economy.

    Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are only three of many ways people can communicate digitally, and while many people spend hours every week using them, they are replaceable and inessential — and, in fact, getting away from Facebook and Instagram might make people happier. Even Hughes acknowledges, when he finds himself scrolling through Instagram at idle hours, “The choice is mine, but it doesn’t feel like a choice.”

    https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/09/facebook-should-not-be-broken-up-commentary.html

  • Elon Musk is going to trial for calling a cave diver a pedophile on Twitter

    Defamation law doesn’t apply to opinions or derogatory hyperbole, and Judge Wilson concluded that Musk’s case would be stronger if he’d simply tweeted an insult. But Musk “did not call [Unsworth] a ‘pedo guy’ and leave it there,” writes Wilson. “Rather, he made follow-up statements indicating that he believed his statements to be true.” That included the emails to BuzzFeed, where Musk “purported to convey actual facts and even suggested that the BuzzFeed reporter call people in Thailand to confirm his narrative.”

    The decision doesn’t mean Musk is guilty, but it means Unsworth’s case is strong enough to deserve a trial. A pre-trial conference will take place on October 7th. This won’t be the first time Musk has gone to court for some bad tweets. He recently settled a separate lawsuit with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which accused him of making misleading financial statements on Twitter.

    https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/10/18564625/elon-musk-vernon-unsworth-pedo-guy-tweets-defamation-lawsuit-trial-date-set

Photo by Jason Dent 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

Posted on

News You Can Use: 10/3/2018

Social Media is Exhausting

  • You’re Probably Not Even Thinking About One of Social Media’s Biggest Dangers

    When people start sharing information with the public, it can open up doors for the information to be used against them. Details like full name, date of birth, hometown and even school locations and dates of graduation can become dangerous in the wrong hands. Social media platforms typically require your name and your date of birth, but most platforms will give you the option to not make the information shareable.

    Beyond basic information, be careful about what you post. Of course, you should not share your debit/credit card and social security numbers with people online, but images can be dangerous, too. A few examples would be things like posting a picture of your new car and not covering your license plate number or sharing event details that contain your home address.

    https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/320172

  • More tech companies drop college degree requirement

    “In 2017, IBM’s vice president of talent, Joanna Daley told CNBC Make It that about 15 percent of her company’s U.S. hires don’t have a four-year degree. She said that instead of looking exclusively at candidates who went to college, IBM now looks at candidates who have hands-on experience via a coding boot camp or an industry-related vocational class,” according to this CNBC article.

    Now, Apple, Google and EY are joining the ranks of companies that don’t require a degree, according to a list from Glassdoor.com.

    https://www.cio.com/article/3309059/careers-staffing/more-tech-companies-drop-college-degree-requirement.html

  • Career advice from the “Edison of medicine”
  • LinkedIn’s Co-Founder Warns of Perils in Regulating Big Tech

    If Facebook was restricted and slowed down, maybe what we’d all have is [China’s] WeChat. So, instead of having Facebook as our platform, which is a thing we can evolve in, it’s actually in fact a Chinese company that’s doing it. It’s like simply saying, “Oh, we’re a monopoly in the whole world, and we’re gonna slow down our industry as a way of [solving tech problems],” but that is not a very rational policy.

    Tech needs to do a much better job being transparent. But I prefer a pattern where the government says, “We want you to show you’re having the following improving impact on society. If you’re doing that, we don’t need regulation.”

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/linkedins-co-founder-warns-of-perils-in-regulating-big-tech-1537967181?ns=prod/accounts-wsj

  • Elon Musk is sad and disappointed by the SEC’s fraud charges

    Reached for comment, a Tesla spokesperson sent the following statement from Musk:

    “This unjustified action by the SEC leaves me deeply saddened and disappointed. I have always taken action in the best interests of truth, transparency and investors. Integrity is the most important value in my life and the facts will show I never compromised this in any way.”

    Later, Tesla sent a second statement, this one a joint statement from the company and board of directors:

    “Tesla and the board of directors are fully confident in Elon, his integrity, and his leadership of the company, which has resulted in the most successful US auto company in over a century. Our focus remains on the continued ramp of Model 3 production and delivering for our customers, shareholders and employees.”

    https://www.fastcompany.com/90243445/read-the-secs-full-fraud-complaint-against-tesla-ceo-elon-musk

Photo by Aleksandar Cvetanovic on Unsplash