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Top 25 Microsoft Articles on Substack

Latest Microsoft Articles

After Babel
May 23

How Apple, Google, and Microsoft Can Help Parents Protect Children

The case for device-based age verification
Introduction from Jon Haidt: Ravi Iyer first contacted me in 2007 to ask if he could take a questionnaire I had developed (the Moral Foundations Questionnaire) and put it online. Ravi was a graduate student in social psychology at the University of Southern California at the time, and he quickly became a close research collaborator and friend. He created the website
Ravi Iyer ∙ 83 LIKES
Iris
•
5d
To be honest, I would like to have something like that on my device for ME (adult) as well. So I don’t get bothered by trolls and don’t see content I didn’t ask for pushed in my face regularly :)
Chris McKenna
•
5d
Thank you, Ravi. Device (operating system)-level verification is the least-restrictive means. Apple and Google hold the keys to child protection, they know millions of kids have their devices, and they have failed in their responsibilities. It's tough at the state level due to interstate commerce constraints, but in partnership with NCOSE, we co-authored SB104 in Utah, the country's first device-level bill: https://le.utah.gov/~2024/bills/static/SB0104.html.
Privacat Insights
May 22

Privacy Disasters: Microsoft, Just Because You Can

... Doesn't mean you should. Here's why.
This week, Microsoft graced the world with yet another tech idea that comes straight out of a Black Mirror episode: an always-on, always-recording life-logging tool that takes screenshots of everything you do on your computer. But now with AI to find things!
Carey Lening ∙ 3 LIKES
Rich on Tech
May 25

Microsoft's AI PCs: The Future of Computing or Privacy Nightmare?

Plus, the Airbnb of luggage.
You opened it! Thanks for reading my newsletter. Let's catch up on the latest in tech! This week, I headed to Seattle for two big Microsoft events. One focused on their new computers and another was aimed at developers. I had some time to explore Pike Place Market, and it was excellent. It was a perfect sunny Sunday afternoon. I checked out the fish-throw…
Rich DeMuro ∙ 15 LIKES
Rene Lagler
•
3d
Hey Rich, I Love your work ever since Leo LaPorte Days. I am wondering, ...lately I have been getting all matter of eMails that land in my Junk file on my Macs. Is it worth opening them and clicking 'Unsubscribe" does it help or just encourage them?
I have but the same keep coming over and over.
Cheers, Rene
ByteByteGo Newsletter
May 25

EP113: AWS Services Cheat Sheet

This week’s system design refresher: Do You Know How Mobile Apps Are Released? (Youtube video) AWS Services Cheat Sheet A cheat sheet for API designs Azure Services Cheat Sheet How do computer programs run? SPONSOR US
ByteByteGo ∙ 141 LIKES
Mark Neumann
•
2d
Great diagram, but missing a few key services that show up on my bill
API Gateway
Glacier
Simple Email Service
CloudWatch
CloudTrail

IoT (No longer Used)
WorkSpaces
Etika
•
3d
Good knowledge. Thank you
The Honest Broker
May 24

Let's Just Admit it: The Algorithms Are Broken

I'm begging the tech overlords to let us opt out from their dystopia
Have you tried to get information on a product or service from Google recently? Good luck with that. “Product recommendations broke Google,” declares tech journalist John Herrman, “and ate the Internet in the process.” That sounds like an extreme claim. But it’s painfully true. If you doubt it, just try finding something—anything!—on the dominant search e…
Ted Gioia ∙ 917 LIKES
A.P. Murphy
•
4d
The solution, at least on an individual basis, is never to use Google and its like.
Use DuckDuckGo for safe and secure searches, not Google.
Use VPNs and/or Tor to surf, so your data doesn't get trawled.
At the very least use an Adblock addon for your browser, plus apps to block unwanted scripts.
Never use streaming services for music or video content - use physical media or torrents.
Buy physical books or use an archive source to DL.
I do all these and I never get spammed with nonsense.
Life is so much more serene this way.
It makes me a pretty poor consumer and probably a bad citizen, true, but I get my stuff done without being bugged by spambots, AI slop or unwanted ads.
Jim Frazee
•
4d
"We value your privacy." Who hasn't seen this all over internet? Well, it turns out this Orwellian statement is partly true, because sites ARE making money off your privacy. Once an algorithm gets hold of you, it's the gift that keeps on giving.
Game File
May 13

Nintendo, Microsoft, Square welcome us to the era of fewer big video games

Data shows that Nintendo was ahead of the curve on this one.
Like big-budget video games? Hope you like waiting for them. (And hope there are enough developers left in this industry to make them.) There are abundant signs that we have entered an era that will see fewer major new video games from big game publishers.
Stephen Totilo ∙ 34 LIKES
How They Make Money
May 24

🤖 NVIDIA: Industrial Revolution

AI factories are reshaping the future of computing
Welcome to the Friday edition of How They Make Money. Over 100,000 subscribers turn to us for business and investment insights. In case you missed it: ♾ Meta: The Anti-Apple 💊 Pharma Titans Visualized 📊 Earnings Visuals (4/2024) 💰 Hedge Funds' Top Picks in Q1
App Economy Insights ∙ 57 LIKES
Racket News
May 23

FOIA Library: The University of Washington

The raw correspondence returned in two Freedom of Information requests to one of America's biggest sponsors of "anti-disinformation" work, Kate Starbird's University of Washington
After learning in the Twitter Files that many if not most federal contracts for anti-disinformation work are not public, in some cases not even in Inspector General reports, Racket hooked up with the Substack author UndeadFOIA to find out what we could via Freedom of Information requests. A year and hundreds of requests later, the handful of researcher names we began with proved more ubiquitous than expected.
Matt Taibbi ∙ 675 LIKES
Mark Marshall
•
5d
Thanks for this work! Exposing the totalitarians is vital to defeating them.
Spiderbaby
•
5d
I've just started reading the documents and the emails sound like they're setting up a big family reunion picnic rather than a Constitution circumventing censorship machine.
Welcome to Fascism Martha Stewart style.
Marcus on AI
May 6

Microsoft and OpenAI’s increasingly complicated relationship

An AI Soap Opera in the making?
You might think that Microsoft owns 49% of OpenAI. But as far as I understand it doesn’t. It has a right to about 49% of a for-profit subsidiary of OpenAI’s profits, up until a very complex point that may require litigation to resolve, but the for-profit hasn’t made any profits, and the for-profit is owned by a non-profit. And I’ll be damned if I can ac…
Gary Marcus ∙ 63 LIKES
Gerben Wierda
•
May 6
Is "it's complicated" a civilised way to say 'clusterfuck'? Or might all of thus mean that OpenAI has handed Microsoft the means to fill whatever mini-'moat' OpenAI had? Did OpenAI give away whatever crown jewels they had in that Microsoft deal that got them the compute they needed? Definitely intriguing.
Ko
•
May 6
Relation"shop" haha is that deliberate?
Letters from an American
May 9

May 8, 2024

Today, in Racine, Wisconsin, President Joe Biden announced that Microsoft is investing $3.3 billion dollars to build a new data center that will help operate one of the most powerful artificial intelligence systems in the world. It is expected to create 2,300 union construction jobs and employ 2,000 permanent workers.
Heather Cox Richardson ∙ 3340 LIKES
JustRaven
•
May 9
“We’re the United States of America,” President Biden said today, “And there’s nothing beyond our capacity when we work together.”
As Joyce Vance says, "We're in this together."
Suzette Ciancio
•
May 9
Thank you, Heather!
“Political philosophers studying the rise of authoritarianism note that strongmen rise by appealing to a population that has been dispossessed economically or otherwise. By bringing jobs back to those regions that have lost them over the past several decades and promising “the great comeback story all across…the entire country,” as he did today, Biden is striking at that sense of alienation.”
Let that continue!
Big Technology
May 17

OpenAI Wants To Get Big Fast, And Four More Takeaways From a Wild Week in AI News

Ignore the flirty bot, OpenAI’s big strategic play became clearer this week.
In a season of big AI news, few weeks have felt more significant than this one. OpenAI introduced its new GPT-4o model, Google unveiled a deeper AI vision, and Apple dropped more hints ahead of a massive AI-themed WWDC event. At Big Technology, we also hosted our first public event with Box CEO Aaron Levie, well-timed with the AI news. Our live podcast s…
Alex Kantrowitz ∙ 41 LIKES
Afonso Salcedo (Fonzie)
•
May 18
I’m personally really excited to see where this potential OpenAI/Apple partnership will lead us.
D R
•
May 17
I wouldn’t read too much into Satya Nadella not appearing at the OpenAI event. Sam Altman didn’t appear either so this was positioned as a smaller event than the DevDay one. Also, with Mustafa Suleyman being hired to lead the consumer-focused Microsoft AI unit, I suspect we will see him more at OpenAI stuff. Completely agree it was a big week for GenAI and Microsoft Build is on the 21st so more to come.
Mostly metrics
May 21

Does AI have a gross margin problem?

Can AI overcome the gross margin doubters?
Financial operations are needlessly complex. You have to cobble together a patchwork of tools that aren’t integrated with each other, cost you time, and lead to errors. Mercury simplifies this with banking* and software that powers all your critical
CJ Gustafson ∙ 31 LIKES
Francesca Krihely
•
7d
Great overview CJ. I do think the gross margins will grow over time with optimizations but I think competition amongst these vendors will require them to make big investments outside of R&D to keep up. So as Moore’s law reduces the COGS there might be less differentiation requiring each to put more cash into S & M spend. I don’t know if that will be at the same scale as the R&D costs.
Dartz
•
7d
Looks like we have two competing forces. Moore's law says the cost of computing will go down (# of transistors double, computing power doubles). That can also apply to power usage dropping per MIPS. On the other side we have demand increasing, being users demanding more complex requests and operations, which require more MIPS. The gross profit is where the race is measured.
The other race is how you charge a customer. What business model works and both takes market shared and improves gross profit?
Import AI
May 27

Import AI 374: China's military AI dataset; platonic AI; brainlike convnets

Plus, a poem about meeting aliens (well, AGI)
Welcome to Import AI, a newsletter about AI research. Import AI runs on lattes, ramen, and feedback from readers. If you’d like to support this (and comment on posts!) please subscribe. Berkeley researchers discover a suspiciously military-relevant Chinese dataset:
Jack Clark ∙ 12 LIKES
How Things Work
May 23

Selling Your House For Firewood

Media companies are cutting deals with OpenAI that they will regret.
I am not a business guru. Nor will I ever be a business guru, due to rampant discrimination against socialists in the business world. But if I was a business guru, one my core guiding principles would be “do not plant the seeds for my own industry’s demise.” Sadly, it feels like this principle is being lost in my own industry toda…
Hamilton Nolan ∙ 81 LIKES
Leanne Potts
•
5d
Automate the CEOs.
Please print that on a t-shirt and sell it here. Another great piece.
Diana van Eyk
•
5d
You make very important points here, Hamilton.
Trust can never be generated by AI, and trust, I believe, is the new gold.
Marcus on AI
May 21

AI has become Sauron’s Ring

Another of AI’s bitter lessons
The other big recent news, aside from Sam nonconsensually making a Scarlett Johansson-like character, even after #ScarlettSaidNo, was that Satya unveiled an Orwellian new Microsoft feature called Recall that will (not making this up) take and record locally screenshots of everything you do. (“F^ck that. I don’t want my computer to spy on everything I do…
Gary Marcus ∙ 146 LIKES
Diego Pineda
•
7d
In 2010, the best engineers in the world focused on getting more likes and get kids addicted to social media.
Today, AI engineers are focused on replacing human creativity and setting the foundation for surveillance.
🤮
Eric Platt
•
7d
I like the double entendre of "nonconsensually". :)
Yes, they want "more, more, more"... until they own it all. The old dynamic of the Buddhist "hungry ghost" figure, with the tiny mouth and big belly. It's never enough.
Marcus on AI
May 26

What should we learn from OpenAI’s mistakes and broken promises?

It’s increasingly clear that OpenAI has not been consistently candid. What follows from that?
A year ago, Sam Altman was treated like a head of state; OpenAI could do no wrong. But lately, he and they have made a lot of mistakes, and broken a lot of promises. Here’s just a small sample: OpenAI called itself open, and traded on the notion of being open, but even
Gary Marcus ∙ 132 LIKES
Susan Trefethen
•
2d
Citizen lack of awareness, understanding and interest is a real problem. We do not do our homework.
YZ
•
2d
Don't forget the plentiful of fanboys and sycophants who constantly sing OpenAI and ilks praises, sweeping the points you listed under the rug as small bumps on the road to their "greatness". They've certainly done their parts.
On a light note, just for a laugh, here is my recent interaction with Llama 3 the latest and greatest open source LLM from Meta. As expected I got correct solution for the classic farmer/wolf/goat/cabbage crossing river problem from Llama 3 as the problem must have been within the training set. I then asked a follow-up question "What if I have two wolves in this case?". Here is Llama 3's response:
"A twist! With two wolves, you can't leave them together with the goat, as they might harm it. Here's a solution:
1. Take a goat across the river first and leave it on the other side.
2. Go back to the original side and pick up one of the wolves.
3. Take the wolf across the river and leave it on the other side with the goat.
4. Go back to the original side and pick up the second wolf.
5. Take the second wolf across the river and leave it with the other wolf and the goat.
This way, you've never left the wolves together with the goat, and everyone is safe and sound on the other side!"
So this is the kind of system whose underlying technology will lead us to AGI? UBI? A bright future for humanity?
What a joke?
BIG by Matt Stoller
May 22

Why Does the Biden White House Hate Its Own Agenda?

It's not a mystery why voters don't know what Biden has done. The White House communications team systematically refuses to talk about the Biden agenda to reorient big business.
Welcome to BIG, a newsletter on the politics of monopoly power. If you’d like to sign up to receive issues over email, you can do so here. A few weeks ago, the Federal Trade Commission revealed evidence of oil sector price-fixing, showing that domestic shale corporations had colluded with foreign producers in 2021 and 2022 to withhold oil from the market…
Matt Stoller ∙ 176 LIKES
Connie Dyer
•
6d
This is pretty depressing. I thought they just weren’t very good at getting the word out. Now I see it’s very deliberate. And rather old school. Like pushing the principle that a president (at least the Democratic one)is president for Everyone, serving ALL interests and not taking sides, and appearing to encourage balance and cooperation when interests are obviously opposed and power is clearly one-sided and increasingly predatory.
The Biden folk are apparently uncomfortable saying anything that might be perceived as negative by the voters and contributors in the demographic of big business. With the exception of appearing to support *some * of the interests of other voters that traditionally vote Democratic—like boosting labor unions and forgiving some of what have become clearly predatory student loans and Investing in infrastructure that creates local jobs.
But it seems pretty risky, and stupid to keep avoiding the appearance of taking sides (against global corporations). When their ongoing agenda shows they know just as ordinary people do that these businesses are gradually destroying the planet and the health and wellbeing of their “customers” and that government would be reckless not to try to do something about that. *sigh* Honestly this is scary. And I hope you and others can persuade this administration’s “marketing arm” to change their strategy.
Rob Rains
•
6d
The poor messaging of this administration has been a great source of frustration for this nervous progressive voter.
Public
May 12

Big Tech Hubris And Greed Behind Digital Education Failure

It’s time to go back to paper and pencil
Denise Champney ∙ 405 LIKES
ruralbob
•
May 12
I'm a "recovering" college professor (of speech pathology, coincidentally) who has been happily retired for 10 years. Back in the late 1980s, a student of mine came to me, excitedly, with a new program he had found: a spell checker. I told him, "I don't know about that - it will make you lazy." Although I embraced technology over the course of my career - I'm no Luddite - I saw very little about it that helped students be *better* at thinking or attention.
James Norris
•
May 12
Computers can be great in many ways. They are not good for teaching critical thinking.
Energy Talking Points by Alex Epstein
May 16

Tech giants' self-made AI energy crisis

For years tech giants have been helping climate catastrophists shut down reliable fossil fuel electricity. Now the grid they've helped gut cannot possibly supply their growing AI needs.
For years tech giants have been helping climate catastrophists shut down reliable fossil fuel electricity, falsely claiming they can be replaced by solar/wind. Now the grid they've helped gut can't supply their growing AI needs. For the last decade, tech giants
Alex Epstein ∙ 129 LIKES
BD
•
May 16
These jerks will never come clean with the damage they have done.
TMacro06
•
May 16
Lest us not forget was and still about $$$. Blackrock loves ESG because...if you take to like-for-like portfolios but labeled one "ESG" you can charge up to 50% higher fees just to hold that same money. Sadly, the real goal is more like a watermelon - all "green" on the outside, but "red, Communists red" on the inside. Don't be fooled about the real endgame is for them.
AI Tidbits
May 23

AI Roundup 05/16 -> 05/23/2024

Microsoft's new AI PC, Copilot agents to automate work, Anthropic peek into LLMs' brain, open-source Phi-3 models with 128k context window and vision, and Mistral's new 7B model with function calling
Welcome to the weekly edition of AI Tidbits, where I curate the firehose of AI research papers and tools every week so you won’t have to.
Sahar Mor ∙ 14 LIKES
Riccardo Vocca
•
1d
I don't have a Computer Science background, as I often repeat. But I always read AI Roundup and it strikes me how it manages to fascinate and surprise me every time. Thanks for the links shared, the ones that struck me the most are certainly the ones from this week in the 'Vision' section.
Meng Li
•
5d
Great, there have been a lot of AI product announcements in the past few weeks, which is very exciting!
The VC Corner
May 19

0 To $100 Million In 9 Months 🚀, AI for social good🌍, Governments are the biggest source of VC funds🏛️

Welcome to The VC Corner, your weekly dose of Venture Capital and Startups to keep you up and running! 🚀 Thanks to your support, we’ve reached 26,000 subscribers in the 6 first months of The VC Corner, and we're just getting started 🎉 To celebrate, we're offering the first 100 users who redeem the offer a 20% lifetime discount to become a premium subscr…
Ruben Dominguez Ibar ∙ 17 LIKES
Burak Buyukdemir
•
May 19
great weekend read
TheSequence
May 26

Generative AI Unicorn Capitulation

Adept and Humane are looking for buyers.
Next Week in The Sequence: Edge 399: Our series about autonomous agents continues with an overview of external aid planning. We dive into IBM’s Simplan method for planning in LLMs and review the Langroid framework for autonomous agents. Edge 340: A must read about AlphaFold 3 which expanded capabilities to predict many of the life’s m…
Jesus Rodriguez ∙ 18 LIKES

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