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Microsoft

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 ∙ 86 LIKES
Iris
•
May 23
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
•
May 23
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.
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 ∙ 149 LIKES
lxz
•
3d
Hello blogger, what software are these animations made with? I'm looking forward to your answer, thank you.
Mark Neumann
•
6d
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
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 ∙ 16 LIKES
Rene Lagler
•
7d
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
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
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 ∙ 981 LIKES
A.P. Murphy
•
8d
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
•
8d
"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.
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 ∙ 61 LIKES
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 ∙ 35 LIKES
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 ∙ 16 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 ∙ 693 LIKES
Mark Marshall
•
May 23
Thanks for this work! Exposing the totalitarians is vital to defeating them.
Spiderbaby
•
May 23
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.
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 ∙ 19 LIKES
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?
Detection Engineering Weekly
May 30

Det. Eng. Weekly #71 - AI next-gen cloud-based detection data ocean

Branding so good not even Kevin Mandia could leave my company
Welcome to Issue #71 of Detection Engineering Weekly! I had an amazing time at SLEUTHCON last week! It was a privilege to be around so many like-minded threat intel and research professionals. I’ll make sure to link some talks once the recordings go up on YouTube, but if you have a chance to go, please do!
Zack 'techy' Allen ∙ 4 LIKES
The Kākā by Bernard Hickey
May 23

How much climate reality can the global financial system take without collapsing?

Cathrine Dyer & Bernard Hickey chat about the week's big climate news, including businesses' failure to meet voluntary emissions cutting goals, AI becoming an energy hog, & increasingly bumpy flights
TL;DR: Here’s the top six news items of note in climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, and a discussio…
Bernard Hickey and Cathrine Dyer ∙ 55 LIKES
Sophie McInnes
•
May 23
The pleasure with which Bernard describes the enforcement of accounting standards as "deliciousss!" 😁🧮
Tony Pomfret
•
May 23
“Google AI search!” As Bernard said, Google are stealing information from all over the world and putting journalists out of work. So when we have only AI to generate our ‘news’, just how distorted will it become?
Regarding the massive increase in electric demand for AI, as it’s the global companies using it and controlling our economies, who is going to challenge them to stop using so much?
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 ∙ 3343 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 ∙ 42 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.
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 ∙ 84 LIKES
Leanne Potts
•
May 23
Automate the CEOs.
Please print that on a t-shirt and sell it here. Another great piece.
Diana van Eyk
•
May 23
You make very important points here, Hamilton.
Trust can never be generated by AI, and trust, I believe, is the new gold.
A Short Distance Ahead
May 26

One Man's Spam

Where I Explain Why I'm in Your Inbox and Why Now
Hello. If you’re reading this email, then suffice it to say, we’ve met at some point in-real-life. And at the time of our IRL encounter, you seemed to express at least a small amount of interest in my writing, and/or the ideas I was writing about. For that, let me start by saying, thank you. It mattered.
David Williams ∙ 5 LIKES
Joe Ballou
•
4d
This is a cool and ambitious project! As a former global history teacher now in tech, I'd love to see this project take a decidedly global perspective.
Jon
•
4d
Yes!! Sign me up.
Maybe Barry-O can talk to Khatchig-Bot at some point?!
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 ∙ 32 LIKES
Luke Walker
•
1d
Just one catch with comparing NVIDIA to Rolls Royce of chips then pointing out not everyone has to buy a Rolls Royce.. unlike CPUs, there's not a whole lot of competition with GPUs or NPU/TPUs yet. Someone else is going to have to open that market up, and then AI developers or pulling a Dropbox becomes viable.
Intel's too far off with ARC to give it a go.. AMD could have production capability but need more polish. There's GraphCore, Cerebras Systems but they're still small. Watching that space certainly will give a better indication as to future supply & demand to feed the OpenAI & Anthropics of the world.
Francesca Krihely
•
May 21
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.
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 ∙ 139 LIKES
Susan Trefethen
•
6d
Citizen lack of awareness, understanding and interest is a real problem. We do not do our homework.
YZ
•
6d
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?
Dr. Tenpenny's Eye on the Evidence
May 25

Weather Modification is Real

A 1996 Report About Taking Over Our Weather By 2025
Originally posted on The Tenpenny Files, by Fed Up Texas Chick Nearly 60 years ago, in May 1962, then US Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) gave the commencement address at his alma mater, Southwest Texas State University, now known as Texas State University. In the speech, LBJ talked about his international travels and professed that the United…
188 LIKES
Dr K
•
7d
I have been talking about this to some of my patients who still don’t believe that.
I had several pilots that I brought it to.
Thank you for all this material.
Will try to spread it to the people.
I think in Ohio, we should ask to introduce the bill The same as in Tennessee to stop this!
Rascal Nick Of
•
7d
We see chemtrails from our house in north Idaho all the time. Very distinct from actual contrails, which are short and dissipate quickly. The chemtrails appear in patterns, billow out, and linger for usually an hour or more until they just seem like a widespread haze. Sickening
Growth Memo
May 27

The traffic impact of AI Overviews

An analysis of 1,675 keywords shows AIOs could reduce organic clicks
A warm welcome to 115 new Growth Memo readers who joined us since last week! Join the ranks of Amazon, Microsoft, Google and 12,500 other Growth Memo readers:
Kevin Indig ∙ 18 LIKES
Barry Adams
•
5d
Great analysis dude. And perfectly timed as I’m presenting on this on Wednesday - I’ll definitely be citing you!
Salvador Lorca
•
4d
I wrote about this article of yours, which I liked:

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