Proprietary: Twitter, Facebook, Clown Computing, and Microsoft

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Nov 08, 2022

• After Twitter, Meta Succumbs to Mass Layoffs

• Musk Fires Half of Twitter’s Workforce; Rights Orgs Urge Boycott of “Superspreader of Misinformation”

  Alarm is growing over how the world’s richest person, Elon Musk, is changing Twitter after he spent $44 billion to buy the influential social media platform. Musk fired nearly half of Twitter’s workforce in a mass layoff Friday that gutted teams dedicated to human rights, artificial intelligence ethics and combating election misinformation, just days before Tuesday’s midterm election. This comes after he met with over half a dozen civil rights groups amid concerns he will let misinformation and hate speech go unchecked. We speak with leaders from two of those groups: Nora Benavidez of Free Press and Free Press Action Fund, and Rashad Robinson of Color of Change. “Self-regulated companies are unregulated companies,” says Robinson, who along with Benavidez says Musk has exacerbated already toxic conditions at Twitter and failed to see the “real and porous relationship between the online world and this offline real world.” Both groups are urging advertisers to boycott Twitter unless Musk takes dramatic actions to safeguard rights on the platform.

• The world was promised 'cloud magic'. So much for that fairy tale

  Last week, AWS and Microsoft admitted that their customers have realized their cloud costs are out of control. Some of Microsoft's customers may even be ready to walk because the software giant admitted that helping them to control costs will enhance long-term loyalty. AWS blamed a slowdown in growth on customers wanting to get out of commitment to cloudy resources.

  Each cloud's admission was made in the context of a quarterly earnings announcement. That makes the confessions all the more important because they represent disclosures to investors that customers have changed behavior in ways likely to have material impact on financial performance.

• Microsoft hints at low-cost Windows 11 PCs powered by advertising and subscriptions

  According to the job listing, Microsoft wants to build “low-cost PCs powered through advertising and subscriptions”. This seems to indicate that consumers will be able to buy low-cost PCs, but they will see more ads within the operating system. In addition to subscriptions, this could also be a new revenue stream for the tech giant.

• Microsoft working on affordable Windows 11 PCs dominated by ads and subscriptions

• Microsoft is now pushing ads and promos in Windows 11 Start menu, but you can disable them - Neowin

  If you have been following Microsoft news for a while on Neowin or elsewhere, you are probably familiar with Microsoft's (bad) habit of pushing ads and promos of its various features on Windows. While Microsoft is well within its rights to promote its other products inside one of its own products, it can be an annoying and a pestering experience for users.

  So far, this year, the company has been found testing such ads and promos in File Explorer (later disabled) and Microsoft Store on Windows 11. And now, it looks such a thing could be coming to the Windows 11 Start menu as well.

• What Happens to Infra Engineers?

  If companies continue to outsource all their infrastructure work to the cloud providers, does infrastructure engineering as a skill set become much rarer?