Category Archives: Uncategorized
Massive layoffs at Microsoft
Opinion incoming! We all knew it was coming, but the numbers were bigger than anyone had anticipated. 18,000 Microsoft employees will be laid off over the course of the next year. It’s a terrible circumstance, and one Microsoft isn’t completely familiar with. In fact, it was only in 2009 that the company made it’s first ever large-scale layoffs. Just like then, these are global with most of the cuts expected to come from the newly-acquired Nokia. Factory workers, especially in Finland but also in San Diego, Hungary and Beijing will be the largest casualties, but in a company-wide email CEO Satya Nadella emphasized that even management positions were on the chopping block as well. I’ll post the email, which was posted on Microsoft’s web site, below, and then offer some thoughts of my own.
From: Satya Nadella
To: All Employees
Date: July 17, 2014 at 5:00 a.m. PT
Subject: Starting to Evolve Our Organization and CultureLast week in my email to you I synthesized our strategic direction as a productivity and platform company. Having a clear focus is the start of the journey, not the end. The more difficult steps are creating the organization and culture to bring our ambitions to life. Today I’ll share more on how we’re moving forward. On July 22, during our public earnings call, I’ll share further specifics on where we are focusing our innovation investments.
The first step to building the right organization for our ambitions is to realign our workforce. With this in mind, we will begin to reduce the size of our overall workforce by up to 18,000 jobs in the next year. Of that total, our work toward synergies and strategic alignment on Nokia Devices and Services is expected to account for about 12,500 jobs, comprising both professional and factory workers. We are moving now to start reducing the first 13,000 positions, and the vast majority of employees whose jobs will be eliminated will be notified over the next six months. It’s important to note that while we are eliminating roles in some areas, we are adding roles in certain other strategic areas. My promise to you is that we will go through this process in the most thoughtful and transparent way possible. We will offer severance to all employees impacted by these changes, as well as job transition help in many locations, and everyone can expect to be treated with the respect they deserve for their contributions to this company.
Later today your Senior Leadership Team member will share more on what to expect in your organization. Our workforce reductions are mainly driven by two outcomes: work simplification as well as Nokia Devices and Services integration synergies and strategic alignment.
First, we will simplify the way we work to drive greater accountability, become more agile and move faster. As part of modernizing our engineering processes the expectations we have from each of our disciplines will change. In addition, we plan to have fewer layers of management, both top down and sideways, to accelerate the flow of information and decision making. This includes flattening organizations and increasing the span of control of people managers. In addition, our business processes and support models will be more lean and efficient with greater trust between teams. The overall result of these changes will be more productive, impactful teams across Microsoft. These changes will affect both the Microsoft workforce and our vendor staff. Each organization is starting at different points and moving at different paces.
Second, we are working to integrate the Nokia Devices and Services teams into Microsoft. We will realize the synergies to which we committed when we announced the acquisition last September. The first-party phone portfolio will align to Microsoft’s strategic direction. To win in the higher price tiers, we will focus on breakthrough innovation that expresses and enlivens Microsoft’s digital work and digital life experiences. In addition, we plan to shift select Nokia X product designs to become Lumia products running Windows. This builds on our success in the affordable smartphone space and aligns with our focus on Windows Universal Apps.
Making these decisions to change are difficult, but necessary. I want to invite you to my monthly Q&A event tomorrow. I hope you can join, and I hope you will ask any question that’s on your mind. Thank you for your support as we start to take steps forward in evolving our organization and culture.
Satya
Here are my thoughts: Firstly, this is to be expected after any merger. The fact is, this kind of thing introduces a lot of redundancy and that has to be dealt with. When there’s a merger, where the two merged companies overlap there will be a duplication of duties and that results in wasted money and a sluggish company. Other units are also being axed, such as the Xbox Studios which never had a chance to produce anything of note.
On the other hand, we are talking eighteen thousand layoffs. These are real people, people with families and kids and responsibilities, and in Oulu Finland where Nokia is the largest employer (I believe), the impact will be devastating.
And that leads to my biggest issue of all: The tone of the email. It is incredibly cold and managerial with no compassion for the human toll. He uses the word ‘Synergy’ three separate times, along with other management-speak terms such as ‘synthesize,’ ‘strategic alignment,’ and ‘people managers.’ You can read a much more thorough of the analysis at Ars Technica; they broke it down quite nicely. And sadly.
You know what screws (not the term I wanted to use, mind you) up every company it touches? Managers. bean counters. MBAs. When a once-great company has its heart and soul sucked out, and people ask “What happened to this company?” it’s always because managers came in and focused on numbers. That has to be done to some extent, I get that, but the focus on the bottom line becomes so deterministic that the creativity and the humanity are forced aside. And this email reads like it was written straight out of ‘Management 101.’ Bad management is bad, I’m not denying that. But management as it’s often taught in school is much, much worse. Cuts need to happen, I understand that, but the tone and language of his email rubs me the wrongest way possible.
I hope this turns out to be the right thing, and again I emphasize that I understand why he is doing what he is doing. It’s just the way he expresses it that I don’t like.
The press release regarding the cuts can be found here, and Stephen Elop’s (head of Nokia) email to employees, which may actually be worse than Nadella’s, can be read here.
You, YES YOU, can still comment on net neutrality
Remember the post I made about Net Neutrality, the one with John Oliver ripping on the whole idea of mergers and the loss of Internet freedom? Well guess what? Proving that the Internet works exactly as intended when left to the whims of the unwashed masses, his plea to leave comments about maintaining Net Neutrality crashed the FCCs servers! Democracy works!
Last night in class the comment was made that the time for comments had been extended until Friday because of the overwhelming response, and just today I saw on Cnet that not only had Netflix filed a comment of its own regarding Net Neutrality and interconnection (connecting directly to the major network carriers) and how did it ultimately explain its situation? that’s right, it just told regulators to watch the John Oliver video. It’s so important I’ve included it again below.
But don’t just watch the video! You – YES YOU – can leave a comment of your own of the FCC’s website that is still seeking comments. Say something, this is a very big deal. If Net Neutrality falls through, it will be the end of the Internet as we know it; higher prices for worse service, being nickel-and-dimed for everything you want to do (for example additional charges to use Facebook or Twitter), only having access to the services your cable company wants you to have access to, slower speeds, it will be a disaster. I mean really, since when did gigantic mergers ever result in better service? Will Time-Warner ever learn?
You can leave your comments for the FCC on this and a number of related issues here. Do it!
The Animated Fountain
A couple of you asked about the animated fountain video that was shown very briefly in class. It was originally posted by Allwyn in the comments of the post about animated GIFs, but since it received such a reaction I thought I would repost it in all its glory here.
It took some time, but I was able to learn that it is called the Space Printer fountain as the water is actually falling about a foot-and-a-half in front of the wall behind it as you can somewhat see in the header image. It is illuminated from the top, and is essentially functioning like a printer; in other words, images are stored on a PC and the fountain emits drops of water to recreate those images in a manner similar to how an ink-jet printer puts drops of ink onto paper. The fountain was built by Koei, who has developed other artistically-minded fountains as well.
And now for some student-submitted links
I thought I would use this post to highlight a couple of links that were brought to my attention by you guys, one a serious security issue and one a serious debate between Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.
Keyloggers Installed in Hotel Business Centers
In a comment on the post about the massive data theft that’s been ongoing, Nikolaus linked to the Krebs on Security website, which has a post about data thieves installing keylogger software on machines in hotel business centers. Those will record everything a user types, including usernames, passwords, and account numbers and email it to the thieves. It’s considered so serious that the none other than the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security’s National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center issued a communication that was not made available to the public and indicated that their investigation discovered the malware on machines in hotels in the Dallas area. The communication, lifted from Krebs’ website, is below. Oh the irony.
Epic Rap Battles of History
Allwyn sent a link to a video from what I learned is a series titled “Epic Rap Battles of History.” The specific one he sent was Albert Einstein vs. Stephen Hawking. I watched that one (which I have to say Stephen Hawking won), but I noticed on the list of related videos they had Steve Jobs vs. Bill Gates – there was no way I would miss that. Even though the lyrics aren’t always factually accurate and HAL 9000 makes an appearance for some reason, I loved it, and you will too. I have embedded it below, but for this one I can’t tell who won. I’ll leave it up to you to decide.
A site for drone Photography.
Not too long ago I made posts about taking a drone tour of the world and a drone filming fireworks from the firework’s point of view, so a site for drone photographs and video makes perfect sense. And it’s called just what you’d expect: Dronestagram.
The photos are very impressive: The image you see above of the eagle in flight – taken in Indonesia – is the first place winner in a recent contest they had for best picture taken with a drone. But many of the posted pictures are quite remarkable. It’s an interesting perspective that we don’t always get to see, a midpoint between pictures taken from planes or satellites and pictures on the ground or rooftops. I think it would be quite nice if this became a new style and method of photography, and for all the bad press drones get this is a positive side of the technology. I’ve included a few images below to give an idea, but there are many, many spectacular photos on the site.
Chatfield State Park, Denver, Colorado
Corpus Christie, Texas
Verniette, France
Quiltoa Lake, Ecuador
Roxborough, Colorado
Nozzano, Lucca. Tuscany, Italy
Massive information theft unveiled
Over on Tom’s Guide is a post revealing that a massive, and I do mean massive theft of information has been taking place for many years and by the same attack.
The attack, dubbed NightHunter by the security firm that discovered it, has been using an unusual form of hostile software to carry out the theft. Using keyloggers (which record keypresses and relay them to a third party, something we’ll talk about in class) embedded in phishing emails (fraudulent emails asking for account information, something we’ll also talk about in class), they were able to steal information – including login information – from sites like Skype, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, LinkedIn, Google, and bank sites to name only a few.
As far as I can tell this is a new revelation, and the attempt to figure out who is behind it is still going on. In the meantime, be careful. Keyloggers are the most difficult type of malware to identify if your machine has been infected.
You’d better watch this video right now.
This post will dovetail with the one below, so you might want to read them together.
Are you familiar with Net Neutrality? If not, you should be. It’s one of the single most important technical challenges we are facing as a country, and as a global community. The Internet is under regulatory attack on two separate fronts, and no one seems to care. As crazy as we go over soccer or the Kardashians or legalizing pot, the future of the Internet just doesn’t get a lot of public attention.
But it should. Because we may be on the brink of losing the Internet as we know it.
The first issue is the handover of ICANN, the organization that controls the creation and control of web addresses, from the control of the United States. Honestly, it’s not really under the control of the United States, as other governments have a say in issues that come up, but it’s headquartered in California and it’s generally considered that we’re the final authority. It wouldn’t normally bother me that a global entity such as ICANN ends up under global control, except the countries that really fought to have it released include Russia, China, and North Korea, some of the most oppressive countries on earth when it comes to the flow of information and the right of people to voice opinions. They couched it in terms of concern over security in light of the Snowden leaks, as have other countries, however I’m of the firm belief they so desperately want this to happen so they can more heavily regulate what appears online, especially dissent.
But the much, much more immediate threat is the end of Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality essentially means all Internet traffic is treated equally, and no one’s data is more important than anyone else’s.
However, with appointment of former cable-company lobbyist Tom Wheeler as head of the FCC, the bizarre decision by the Supreme Court to end legal requirements to maintain Net Neutrality, and the impending merger of two of the largest cable providers in the country, Net Neutrality has a fight of Biblical proportions in front of it.
If it ends, that means some services will be forced to pay for better service for their customers. For example Netflix would pay Comcast to not slow down their service, but that would mean a higher cost that Netflix would have to pass on to you. Or, if a cable company has an investment in one service, they could stifle the speed of a competitor that you are using making it unusable. We have already seen the issue crop up. The Internet will never be the same; you will be charged more for inferior services, and be at the mercy of the providers.
This might not be far off.
However, after typing all this, rather than typing another 1000 words I am just going to let John Oliver explain it. He does an outstanding job. shows charts and graphs that really illustrate the problem, and you’ll have a good chuckle along the way. Don’t miss it, it’s a very, very important issue that can end up impacting all of us.
Data speed record broken with existing copper wire
One of the big problems we are having these days is that our Internet speeds simply aren’t fast enough. If the extent of your Internet usage is reading webpages and checking email then it likely is, but anything beyond that and you’ve probably said to yourself ‘this connection is slow.’ Slow connections can manifest in many ways including blurry video, slow file downloads, long page-load times, and others. Not only that, even if you have a fast connection, many, many other aspects can affect your speeds. Speed of the transmitter, conditions on the network, type of conduit, and so on.
Cable companies offer tiered packages, but do you really get faster speeds? You might, but as any cable company will have written in their agreement with you, those advertised speeds are not guaranteed.
Coupled with the fact that the U.S. lags woefully behind many other countries for high-speed Internet access and the much-vilified potential merger of not just the two largest cable companies in the country but the two most hated as well – Time-Warner and Comcast – the future doesn’t look good. (Below graphic from gottabemobile.com)
That was the U.S.’s ranking in 2013 for average Internet speed.
But there are some bright spots. Google has been laying down superfast fiber in some cities, and some regional ISPs are doing the same even while those cities try desperately, and I mean desperately, to stop it. Even CenturyLink offers high-speed fiber in some areas of North Las Vegas. Traditional cable companies are scared.
The big problem with fiber is it requires a whole rebuilding of the network infrastructure, ripping up roads, yards, and utilities, putting new hardware in place: The cost for Google alone could rise into the billions, with the cost of a country-wide revamp costing much, much more. And even with fiber, the wire that actually goes into your house, known as the last mile, is still copper although similar advancements have been made there as well.
Copper wire. Faster than we all thought.
But there may be hope for us all yet, and perhaps a hidden respite for the beleaguered cable companies. Researchers at Bell Labs managed to create record-breaking speeds of 10 Gigabits per second across plain old copper wire (press release from Alcatel-Lucent at this link). That’s crushingly fast, especially since most of us deal with speed in the Megabits per second, and even fiber provides around 1 Gigabit per second. In other words, it’s one thousand times faster than what most of us deal with right now.
If a technology like this could be deployed, it could be a huge boon. Existing infrastructure could be used, costs could be kept down, availability of fast broadband could be accessible to almost everyone, streets wouldn’t need to be ripped up, and the U.S. could hopefully not be in the embarrassing position of having such poor broadband access. On the other hand, this was a lab experiment, and the L:R ratio (lab-to-reality ratio, a term I just made up) can be years for this kind of thing. Still, it’s a promising development.
If Google was a guy
Ok, here’s the deal: Since it’s the weekend, I’m going to post a video sent to me by one of your classmates, but I won’t single him out. Let’s just call him…Kevin. Kevin C. Anyway, he sent me an entertaining video with questionable content, a badly misworded title, and a relevancy to my earlier post about browsers.
Titled “If Google Were A Guy,” and offering no description, it shows what the experience would be like if instead of a search engine Google were actually a person, and people were asking him the same questions they type. This is also my problem with the title: It sounds like the video wants to parody the stereotypical womanizing beer-guzzling fairly dumb dudebro. You know, type in “Hawaii” and Google would say “DUDE! I was totally surfin’ there last year! Tons of babes, totally awesome place dude, you should totally go!” Then put up a picture of this guy.
But it’s not that. It’s just saying what if instead of typing searches into a search engine, you had to verbalize those searches to a real person sitting in front of you. “If Google were a real person” would have been better.
Anyway, I digress. The video is below but BE WARNED: It contains some mild NSFW content (if you’re unfamiliar with the acronym, please click here for a rundown), and a little profanity. Don’t watch it in the company of, well, anyone really. Here it is!
Using the Bing homepage to test a new method for creating animated gifs
If you’re unfamiliar with GIMP, a little background: It’s an open-source, and free, photo-editing and image-manipulation tool with capabilities similar to Photoshop, although not necessarily with the same usability. It’s not impossible to use, but there’s a steep learning curve. That’s an image of the GIMP environment below:
Anyway, I learned there was a plugin for GIMP called the Gimp Animation Package that allows for the creation of animated GIFs from a video, so I thought I’d give it a try. An animated gif is a file that is actually animated; made up of multiple images that run one after the other, like a flipbook animation. GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format, and it used to be used mainly for images like clipart and small photos because it can only display 256 colors and compresses photos like crazy to maintain a small file size. CompuServe introduced the format in the late 80s when sending large image files over phone lines was not practical. Recently, however, there have been HD GIFS and even a huge debate on how the acronym is actually pronounced. There are whole pages dedicated to the pronunciation debate, with the developer of the GIF himself saying it’s pronounced ‘jiff.’ He’s wrong, of course.
I brought up the Bing homepage animation from Friday, loaded up screen-recording software called Action! that I’m testing, and recorded one animation loop off the webpage. Then I loaded the video into GIMP, converted it to a series of individual frames, and exported those separate frames as a single GIF image. It wasn’t easy; I used this site to step me through the process, and even their instructions didn’t match up perfectly with what I had on my screen.
But I’m impressed with the result, that’s it below – my first animated gif ever. It’s a huge file; 800 pixels wide and 11 megabytes, but I kept it big for the purposes of the test, and so I could see it. It’s unlikely to run very smoothly in your browser, however.
The result of my animation experimentation
All of the software I used to create it is available as a free download and I have provided links in the post where appropriate. If you would like to experiment and see what you can do then I would encourage that. If you create something you’re proud of, send it to me! I’ll make a post showing off your creations.
