Tag Archives: Azure

June 16, 2025 · 17:52

A Shakespeare saying

That is on the table and it started 3 days when I wrote ‘The changing of games’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2025/06/13/the-changing-of-games/) Here I showed the setting that Microsoft opened itself to and Denmark is not the only one. There is a larger setting that America is no longer the go-to guy for European business. It is not a setting President Trump was looking for, but then he never anticipated that Microsoft would back a solution (builder.ai) with at the core a stated 700 engineers. Trust me, it matters (trusting me is always up in the air). You see, Europe and other places are now suddenly reminded how Microsoft got to the top and innovation is not the first ‘setting’ that comes to mind. Netscape and the Wordperfect corporation comes to mind in the first instance. You see, I never got to the top of anything. In part because I never heralded the limelight, in part because the people who got there feared me. I don’t back down (ever) from the setting of supporting solutions for good instead of what was politically convenient. And I am not alone., thousands of tech support and customer care people are n my side and they can now dish up the past and hit certain players where it hurts. 

So now we get to TechRadar and its slightly taste adjusted setting. The story (at https://www.techradar.com/pro/denmark-wants-to-replace-windows-and-office-with-linux-and-libreoffice-as-it-seeks-to-embrace-digital-sovereignty) gives us ‘Denmark wants to replace Windows and Office with Linux and LibreOffice as it seeks to embrace digital sovereignty’ a mere 18 hours ago. It has the byline “Denmark bets big on open source revolution and control”. You see, I don’t think it is a big bet. Since the end of the 90’s when times and budgets were good, the IT setting (not merely Microsoft) was to instigate an IT armistice race and those times are gone. So whist certain players went to the ‘safety’ on IT armistice, the governments merely accepted the setting that this is how it was supposed to be, never realising they had other chances. And as I personally see it Microsoft turned that tap off towards others and redirected it to themselves. This is basically how multi-trillion companies are made. Yet the underlying setting is that there was always a larger field and Microsoft was not it. Or better stated Microsoft was not alone here, they merely tempered the setting for themselves, as this setting was never anticipated. A President that shallowed expenses and a larger premise to self. So whilst Denmark was being treated that America wants Greenland as allegedly houses a wealth of minerals, Denmark decided to look what could be done and so they did and in the process woke up Dutch politicians as well. So here we are seeing “Denmark is embarking on an ambitious effort to reduce its reliance on proprietary software from foreign tech giants by transitioning its government systems away from Microsoft offerings Windows and Office 365. The Danish Ministry of Digitalization reportedly plans a phased migration to Linux operating systems and LibreOffice for office productivity.” And as I personally see it, TechRadar is adding the ‘ambitious part’ for non-sentimental reasons. This setting was thwarted by Microsoft in the late 90’s and now they are less likely to succeed as the political field has changed. As I remember open Office is still a direction that is open. As Microsoft closes sluices they couldn’t close them all and now these sluices are the key to lose dependency to Microsoft. And here we see “The core objective, according to Minister Caroline Stage, is strategic: to safeguard Denmark’s digital infrastructure from the uncertainties of geopolitical tensions and the risk of disrupted access to US-based services.” Which is massively bad news for Microsoft because this is the one instance where they never had to protect their home guard before and here those tech support and customer care people will side with Denmark. The people Microsoft cut loose and away as it they didn’t see eye to eye to the larger need of Microsoft, those people will laugh out loud to the lacking needs of Microsoft minded people. In retrospect I saw this coming, but not in this form and not to the degree it will be hitting US-shored businesses. As such we get a few more settings, they all sound bad for Microsoft and it will enhance the needs of IBM and Oracle as they seek European sides to their business. And as we read in, we see the third player to this event. It is shown with “Denmark’s initiative is not without precedent. More than a decade ago, Germany, most notably the city of Munich, attempted to replace Microsoft products with Linux and LibreOffice.” And in that same setting, I remember that a France location had a similar idea, which is likely to have connections to Monaco and Luxembourg. As such Europe goes from 1 to 5 players and the impact on America will not be without consequences. And where TechRadar gives us, without sources “The Danish government, however, appears to be proceeding with greater caution. The rollout will be gradual, and the ministry has stated that it will temporarily revert to Microsoft tools if serious disruptions arise.” This part actually reads like a ‘divert or lose’ situation and Microsoft needs to take heed as this comes with a larger setting. You see, there is an upside for the Netherlands and out reflects back to the Wordperfect Corporation. America made Wordperfect a solution from Utah and it reflected that it was to be put down, but the Dutch had reasons for this solution. It was the first serious solution that perfectly converted syntax’s into Dutch and they had reasons to be proud as the ‘older’ reason is set to the proverbial English setting of 40,000 words and 800 exceptions to the Dutch setting of 800 words and 40,000 exceptions. You see, that was the larger conundrum and that small company in Utah figured the solutions out and that is the larger setting. Getting from Dutch to German, French and English is a breeze (as the depression goes) and after all these years. Did Microsoft protect that IP by paying for these fees year after year? I doubt it, Microsoft is at best a greedy user and it had cut off these fees after at least a decade setting them short by a decade at the very least and that is where these techies come in. They still have the bad feelings of getting cut short with the little retirement fees they were handed and they will massively support any anti-Microsoft feelings they see. So, when your birds come home to roost, they really will have a party.

I feel that TechRadar was ‘spicing’ it up with “Compatibility with Microsoft Office documents and user adaptation to a new interface may pose significant challenges.” I doubt it will be very hard. Open Office had things brewing in 2012 when they were the number one challenge and these files have not been upgraded much. The larger setting is in newer files that has solutions in place that old ones didn’t, but as far as I can tell aside from Excel files, most files can be ‘altered’ to another solution. Consider that Google Docs, Apple Pages and a few others have little to no problems to read word files. Google Sheets and Apple Numbers can for the most read Excel files and I will give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt that Excel is way advanced to those two solutions, but with the gathered intel from them and OpenOffice there are little snags to be expected. When you see that and the joke that PowerPoint has basically become that most of this setting is close to academic. There is a chance that SAP will have to ‘shed’ its neutrality by claiming it is important for its SAP Dashboard to stay with Excel as it is ‘important’ (I merely think that XCelcius was the go to solution with Excel ad that is basically what SAP Dashboard is) and they will shed that when they see the damage they will do to themselves. As I personally see it Google Sheets could step in there. So as Microsoft will be losing 50% of their solutions, the larger demise will start. 

Whilst Wiki is not really a dependable source as it has no real academic value, it does serve its purpose and (at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WordPerfect) we get to see “In November 2004, Novell filed an antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft for alleged anti-competitive behavior (such as tying Word to sales of Windows and withdrawal of support for APIs) that Novell claims led to loss of WordPerfect market share.That lawsuit, after several delays, was dismissed in July 2012. Novell filed an appeal from the judgment in November 2012, but the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit affirmed. Novell sought review in the US Supreme Court, but in 2014 that court declined to hear the case, ending the legal action almost a decade after it had begun.” It isn’t what it states, it shows that the Novell vs Microsoft antitrust lawsuit gives Denmark the blanket it needs. I remember the massive setting the WP6 for Windows had and Microsoft used that to push its own solution (Word) and when we see this, we see that Microsoft has a government wheelbarrow (if that expression is still used) and as such Denmark has another handle to shed Microsoft (as have the other four). As I see it, in a decade the laws were meant to protect America solutions, and now we get the Canadian setting of Alludo. A Canadian firm no less and as Wordperfect is still under in France, another side opens up. And it doesn’t look good for Microsoft as the niches they created unite as one bubble against Microsoft and America. There is every chance that we will get to see new innovation but no longer in the hands of Microsoft and whilst this happens Microsoft loses market share after market share.

And as Windows support ends, the people considering shift will merely increase. As such after this I wonder if there is any case left for Azure. It makes you feel blue (and not in a good way) leaving larger gaps for players like Oracle and AWS to step in. Yes they are American, but they at least have had the good of any corporation in view of the needs of their solutions and that is where Denmark might make choices as long as these two have European clouds in mind. As fast as as I see it, they do and as Europe shift, the Arabian peninsula does to.

As this happens in my lifetime gives me a tear of joy. They say pride cometh before the fall and as I see it Microsoft will have a long way to fall down (the boom of impact might be the first boom that is globally felt and heard) as such there is a lot to be seen and soon as Satya Nadella gives ‘us’ the need for ‘friendly cooperation’ will be the first setting that is laughed away by some, but when the company is seen as ‘in danger’ it will be the first massive hit to any American operation and that will set a larger scene (what that scene is, I have no idea. As I see it, this has never happened before) and as Microsoft goes, Apple will shortly follow. It quite literally will be left without option.

So have a great day and if you are in Abu Dhabi, enjoy the Chicken Shawarma as it is lunch time there now. Have a fun day

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June 13, 2025 · 03:51

The changing of games

There is the thought that games are changing and the first question becomes ‘What games?’ And that would be a correct way of thinking. Whether you decide to kill the bullies and their connections, whether you stand up for yourself or if you become a lot less visible. The latter part is my preferred way, what doesn’t see you, will not hurt you. But in the 80’s I learned the hard way that always on the defense tends to be pointless, as such I would be inclined to scurry over to the kill side. It has the benefit that the the magicians of this world get plenty scared when the bunny bites them. They aren’t used to the sight of their own blood. They tend to cry and wonder why they can’t be bullies anymore. You see, at some point people have had enough. Some like me tend to weigh the consequences of being bullied or to eradicate them and live the fallout. At some point accepting the fact to be bullied no longer weighs high enough and when the Sydney Metropolitan police departments tend to do nothing, even as they have Brodies Law at hand, they prefer not to act. It only works so far. 

This story is important to the real deal, it is a story that ZDNet gives us (at https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-denmark-is-dumping-microsoft-office-and-windows-for-libreoffice-and-linux/) where we see that Denmark is now apparently ‘Why Denmark is dumping Microsoft Office and Windows for LibreOffice and Linux’ and in that setting I wonder if Danish voices might also float towards WPS Office (by Kingsoft), you see, ZDNet gives us “Denmark wants to claim “digital sovereignty.” In the States, you probably haven’t heard that phrase, but in the European Union, digital sovereignty is a big deal and getting bigger.” I see that this is one avenue I never considered. Oh, I’ve heard the term. Yet the larger setting is not what I have heard, but what is behind it. Denmark is likely furious by some bully that wants of annex Greenland (an island West of Denmark a mere 2.166 million km²) and they are decently angry and this was the first setting. After being fed up with the Trump stage, they decided to take Microsoft out of the equation. At that point a lot of settings that ‘drip’ into American data settings and in this the first stone is cast. You see, President Trump might seem to think that business will adjust towards American standards, but that is a little delusional. You see, Microsoft is seen as a 3.56 trillion company, but behind that is a towering amount of debts as well. The totality of debts is according to some A$93.09 Billion. This might not seem as much, but what ‘victories’ have Microsoft made? What spin actually represents revenue? Microsoft is all about revenue and net profit, yet the larger setting becomes “In Q3 2025, Xbox gaming revenue decreased by 7% year-on-year, but content and service sales increased by 8%.” So Microsoft sets a plus to diminish the minus, yet the larger station is that they lose a lot more than they gain, for what is the depending value of the 8% rise? It is not the same as based amount of the 7% drop. Microsoft is losing against Sony 3:1 and now that the Nintendo Switch 2 is out, these losses will merely increase overall. Whatever Microsoft has as a tablet doesn’t even dent the setting Apple has and as some see, their Azure state seemingly doesn’t hold a candle to the system some book dealer has (yes, it is AWS). Then we get the setting that their ‘edge’ yes, their browser only has a 5% market share against Google having 67%, Apple follows with 17%. Now how many failures can such a company hold? And now consider Huawei entering the field with HarmonyOS. Taking market share from both Android and iOS. That was the setting before today and now Denmark is seemingly the first to drop Microsoft for other paths in IT. So how long until Denmark convinces one of the other EU nations to follow suit? What losses will Microsoft endure before they sink some of their badly conceived projects? I don’t know, I am merely asking. 

As such Microsoft is speeding to get a lot of the HarmonyOS population, but as Kingsoft grows Microsoft diminishes and the that population never had much love for Microsoft and America to begin with. And we see part of this with “EU leaders are seeking to reduce Europe’s dependence on foreign technology providers, primarily those from the United States, and to assert greater control over its digital infrastructure, data, and technological future.” And another part is that they’re concerned about who controls European data, who sets the rules, and who can potentially cut off access to essential services in times of geopolitical tension. And the tariff war doesn’t help. That setting instigated by President Trump is likely to ht Microsoft faster than they realise and what happens when these debts will rise as revenue decreases.

The next part is alleged settings and I have seen no evidence of this from other sources “President Donald Trump issued ICC sanctions. This order allegedly prompted Microsoft to lock the ICC’s Chief Prosecutor, Karim Khan, out of his email accounts, according to reports. This came after Microsoft chairman and general counsel, Brad Smith, had promised that the company would stand behind its EU customers against political pressure. Recently, however, Smith stated that Microsoft had not been “in any way [involved in] the cessation of services to the ICC,” according to Politico. When pressed, Microsoft failed to further explain how the email disconnection occurred.” That might (or not) be a complete answer. I have to add that the entire builder.ai fiasco is on the hands of Microsoft. They backed this and they never saw the 700 engineers programming what on existent AI was supposed to do. So where are these 700 systems, their OS and their Azure licenses? Wouldn’t that be firmly on the eyes of Satya Nadella? And as such, how was this worth a billion dollars? If Microsoft was entirely unaware they could be seen as incompetent (or at lease some people on the VP and higher list). If they did know there is a larger failing at Microsoft going on and as Denmark is allegedly dropping Microsoft, it is the start of a lot more bad news. But they can rely on spin to keep the eyes of others somewhere else.

And we see that (allegedly) see that in part with “Whether or not Microsoft cut services to an organization in response to Trump’s order, the fear that it could do so in the future remains. Before the Danish government announced its move, Denmark’s largest cities, Copenhagen and Aarhus, had already announced plans to phase out Microsoft software and cloud services.” So why allegedly? The setting is fear, not data and whilst we see the results we might see the wrong facts leading to this. As I personally see it “plans to phase out Microsoft software and cloud services” might be du to the fact that AWS is as I see it vastly superior (vastly might be overstating it) and fear could weasel in at any point, almost anywhere. Yet the likely accusation that Microsoft is the ‘bitch’ of President Trump or any American administration will be much harder to counter. It could set the tides against Microsoft in Denmark (for starters), Canada and McDonald islands (both users). So there is space to maneuver, yet Microsoft doesn’t do that and we are left with the accusation. And the larger setting that “In particular, the Danes are worried about Trump’s policies and that US political decisions could put public IT services at risk.” Is a decent fear to have in these days, as such Microsoft will be left holding the political bag. And Denmark is not alone here “Bart Groothuis, a Dutch member of the European Parliament, recently said, the EU “should go for a European cloud” since “Europe has a ‘problem’ with American cloud.”” I am not sure how this ‘computes’ in a downside for Microsoft, but the spin masters will have their hands full because that increases the Danish setting by 100% and there is no way telling what else is at risk and who else is to follow suit.

I saw a different variation of the ‘downfall’ of Microsoft, for the most their lack of actual innovation, their dependency on marketing spin (or whatever Microsoft calls it) and their failure to deliver in several fields. And their enemies are at the gates. After Microsoft failed the mobile markets (it is near zero) and as Huawei is gaining massive levels and Microsoft is losing market share after market share and Denmark clearly showed that they see Microsoft not as a partner but as a threat. As such I have to wonder, in what field will Microsoft fail next?

Have a great day.

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May 24, 2025 · 00:09

A swing and a miss

It is no secret that I hold the ‘possessors’ of AI at a distance. AI doesn’t exist (not yet at least) and now I got ‘informed’ through Twitter (still refusing to call it X) the following:

So after ‘Microsoft-backed Builder.ai collapsed after finding potentially bogus sales’ we get that the company is entering insolvency proceedings. Yet a mere three days ago TechCrunch gave us “Once worth over $1B, Microsoft-backed Builder.ai is running out of money”, so as such with a giggle on my mind I give you “Can’t have been a very good AI, can it?” So from +$1,000,000,000 to zilch (aka insolvency), how long did that take and where did the money go? So consider this, TechCrunch also gives us “The Microsoft-backed unicorn, which has raised more than $450 million in funding, rose to prominence for its AI-based platform that aimed to simplify the process of building apps and websites. According to the spokesperson, Builder.ai, also known as Engineer.ai Corporation, is appointing an administrator to “manage the company’s affairs.”” Now, I am going on a limb here. Consider that a billion will enable 1,000 programmers to work a year for a million dollars each. So where did the money go? I know that this doesn’t make sense (the 1000 programmers) but to consider that they might accept a deal for $200,000 each, there would be 5 years of designing and programming. Does that make sense? The website Builder.AI (my assumption that this is where they went gives us merely one line “For customer enquiries, please contact customers@builder.ai. For capacity partner enquiries, please contact capacitynetwork@builder.ai.” This is not good as I see it. The Register (at https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/21/builderai_insolvency/) gives us “The collapse of Builder.ai has cast fresh light on AI coding practices, despite the software company blaming its fall from grace on poor historical decision-making. Backed by Microsoft, Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, and a host of venture capitalists, Britain-based Builder.ai rose rapidly to near-unicorn status as the startup’s valuation approached $1 billion (£740 million). The London company’s business model was to leverage AI tools to allow customers to design and create applications, although the Builder.ai team actually built the apps.”

As such the headline of the Register is pretty much spot on “Builder.ai coded itself into a corner – now it’s bankrupt” You see coding yourself into a corner is not AI, it is people. People code and when you code yourself into a corner the gig is quite literally up. And I can go on all day as there is not AI. There is deeper Machine Language and there are LLM (Large Language Model) and the combination can be awesome and it is part of an actual AI, but it is not AI. As such as Microsoft is believing its own spin (yet again) we can confuse that there is now a setting that Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, and a host of venture capitalists have pretty much lost their faith in Microsoft and that will have repercussions. It is basically that simple. The first part of resolving this is to acknowledge that there is no AI, there is a clear setting that the power of DML and LLM should not be dismissed as it is really powerful but it is not AI. 

As I personally see it, the LLM is setting a stage that the chess computers had in the late 80’s and early 90’s. They basically had every chess game ever played in their memory and that is how the chess computer could foresee what was possible thrown against it. And until 2002 when Chessmaster 9000 was released by Ubisoft, that was what it was and for that time it was awesome. I would never have been able to get as far as I did in chess without that program and I am speculatively seeing that unfold. A setting holding a billion parameters? So I ,might be wrong on this part, but that is what I see and we need to realise that the entire AI setting is spin from greedy salespeople that cannot explain what they are selling (thank god I am not a salesperson). I am technical support and I am customer care and what we see as ‘the hand of a clever person’ is not that, not even close. 

So as we are also given “Blue-chip investors poured in cash to the tune of more than $500 million. However, all was not well at the startup. The company was previously known as Engineer.ai, and attracted criticism after The Wall Street Journal revealed in 2019 that the startup used human engineers rather than AI for most of its coding work”, as such (again speculation) a simple trick to replay a mere 1800 days later. And this is what a lot are (plenty of them in a more clever way) but the show is now on Microsoft. They cracked this, so when they come with a “we were lured” or “it is more complex and the concept was looking really good” we should ask them a few hard questions. So whilst we are given “While the failure of startups, even one as high profile as Builder.ai, is not uncommon, the company’s reliance on AI tools to speed coding might give some users pause for thought.” And when we consider “might give some users pause for thought” is a rather nasty setting as I was there already years ago. So where the others? As such we should grill Satya Nadella on “Last month, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella boasted that 30 percent of the code in some of the tech giant’s repositories was written by AI. As such, an observer cannot help but suspect some passive aggression is occurring here, where a developer has been told that the agent must be used, and so they are going to jolly well do it. After all, Nadella is not one to shy from layoffs.” As such I wonder when the stake holders for Microsoft will consider that the ‘USE BY’ date of Satya Nadella was only good until December 2024. But that is me merely speculating. So I wonder when the media and actual clever people in media are considering that this is a game thatch only be postponed and not won. So will the others run when the going gets tough, or will they hide behind “but everyone agrees on this” as such the individual bond will triumph and there is a lot of work out there. The need to explain to people (read: customers) is that there is a lot of good to be found in the DML and LLM combination. It remains a niche market and it will fill the markets when people cannot afford AI, because that setting will be expensive (when it is ready). These computers will be the things that IBM can afford, as can the larger players like an airline, Ford, LVMH (Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy) and a few others. But the first 10 years it will remain out of the hands of some, unless they time share (pay per processor second) with anyone who has the option to afford one. That computer will need to work 80%+ of the time to be affordable. 

As such we will see a total amount of spin in the coming months, because Microsoft backed the wrong end of that equation and now the fires are coming to their feet. Less then. Less than an hour ago we were given ‘Microsoft Unveils AI Features for Windows 11 Tools’. I have no idea how they can fit this in, but I reckon that the media will avoid asking the questions that matter. As such we will have to wait the unfolding of the people behind builder.ai. I wonder if anyone will ask the specification off what happened to said billion dollars? Can we get a clear list please and where did the hardware end? Or was a mere server rack leased from Microsoft? This is just me having fun at present. 

So have a great day and I will sleep like a baby knowing that Microsoft swung and missed the ball by a fair bit. I reckon that this is…. Let’s see there was the Tablet, which they lost against Apple and now Huawei as well. There was the Gaming station, which was totally inferior against Sony. there was Azure (OK, it didn’t fail but a book vendor called Amazon has a much better product, there was the Browser, which is nowhere near as good as Google. And there are a few others, but they slipped my mind. So this is at least number 5, 6 if you count Huawei as a player as well. Not really that good for a company that is valued at 3.34 trillion. So how many failures will we witness until that is gone too? 

Have fun out there today.

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January 30, 2025 · 13:51

Overdrive, or drive over

That is the setting. We can try to set the premise of DeepSeek (a waste of my time), we can set the premise of Microsoft AI (a waste of everyones time) and yes the 14 billion will have an effect and we can speculate on the 500 billion that StarGate is going to cost and what exactly will be the enabling part. Did anyone consider the ROI of that idea? That prospect will need to make at least 15 billion annual to make it worth. Throwing big printed cash at it will be as useless as the quantitive easing that Mario Draghi promised about a decade ago. Yup, it won’t go anywhere. 

But that led me to a setting many seem to ignore, so lets have the list:

Microsoft 365 Copilot: A monthly subscription that costs $30 per person. Copilot Free is available with the Microsoft 365 Business Basic plan. Copilot Pro is a monthly subscription that offers more advanced features. 
So at present, how many people are on this plan? It seems that Microsoft isn’t to talkative on ‘how successful’ it actually is. We get spread numbers and these numbers doesn’t seem to validate the billions invested.

Azure Machine Learning: A pay-as-you-go service with pricing based on the number of vCPUs. 
Azure AI Search: A service with pricing based on the number of text records or images processed. 

Here I have more issues. You see, we are given “Azure AI. Azure AI provides users with powerful tools that can be used to create innovative solutions using machine learning, natural language processing (NLP), computer vision, and more” How can any machine learning create innovative solutions? If it is machine learning someone else has it already, making it reengineering at best, optionally an innovative patent. I always (perhaps incorrectly) see pay-as-you-go as a dodgy solution. You either commit, or you don’t. 

Computer Vision API: A service with pricing based on the number of transactions processed. 
So, a service based on transaction processing, on that case if the IT department doesn’t throttle its usage there is every chance that an intern could blow up cost as it is happening.

Azure AI Content Safety: A service with pricing based on the number of text records or images processed. 
Azure AI Content Understanding: A service with pricing based on the number of hours of content processed. 

All this is set to a counter (like ConfirmIT) and that is the only company that had a good handle on it, a setting with decades. Now, there is a chance that I forgot a few solutions and that is OK. I am not heading an aspirational setting of academic instance.

You see everyone is on the bandwagon and I am too tired (or too old) to care. The media can’t be bothered unless digital currency is flowing their way. Yet in all this when did you see a clear description of AI solutions in use by Amazon, IBM or Oracle? You see, the DeepSeek issues of the last few days stirred a few minds. They are now also seeking Return on Investment (ROI) and that image is not clear, at least the media seemingly can’t be bothered and the influencers now shouting their wisdom on LinkedIn are also at times tedious and for the most a waste of everyones time. So why Microsoft? I don’t really care about it, but they (and their sickofans) are shouting how good their solutions are, but we see no clear numbers. And at present clear numbers is what the most of the population want. 

Am I wrong?
I doubt it, the signs are there and when we see a small message on the left, the right clearly muffle that sound out. You see Shelly Palmer in IEEE Spectrum writes “As for the 100,000 jobs the project is supposed to create? Some construction jobs will be created as the data centers are built, but many more (millions more) will be created as the data centers come online. We’ve never had a compute cloud like this—there’s literally no way to calculate the economic impact of this amount of AI compute. It will be massive.” I actually don’t know about that. The idea that “there’s literally no way to calculate the economic impact of this amount of AI compute” is as I see it bogus. For 500 billion ($500,000,000,000) I expect more. But at present it comes across like a huge NSA data collection hub. Come to think of it, We could (optionally) get some data from the NSA, Google or IBM. They have experience with really big data centers. So what are those costs? What is the return on investment? And there is the setting of the value of collected data and that will not even have value until lots of data is collected, so lets say by 2030 and all those billions need to show investment value and at present the big-tech market lost over 1 trillion dollars a few days ago. So where is the ROI of all this?

Then we get “There are many tech skeptics, and it has become fashionable to denigrate and vilify big tech. To me, the Stargate Project is the first step in securing the future of the U.S. economy as well as our digital and cyber security. Every business will benefit from the power and promise of AI, and—like it or not, believe it or not—warfare will be dominated by AI. Today, the U.S. has a clear lead. The Stargate Project will help ensure it stays that way.” My issue is that there are always skeptics, I am one to some extent and the words “the power and promise of AI” fills me with dread. It is the included word “promise” and warfare isn’t dominated by AI, the setting pf properly programmed deer machine learning is. It is not AI and it is unlikely to show until somewhere in early 2040 at best (as I personally see it) but the 500 billion is coming out of ‘our’ pockets now. Yes, I know what they say that corporations will push the bill. Yet when this goes pear shaped. They will al put in in a bad bank account and relinquish the debt as a write off, so you, in the end still pay the bill in some way.

Then there is the sentence “Today, the U.S. has a clear lead” do they? DeepSeek is Chinese and their setting blew the rest away, you want to find out what a two-nil for China looks like? You are about to see that in very unrespectful terms. And as everyone is on that so called AI horse no one is investigating it, the media least of all.

In the meantime I will reengineer games. There is at least some revenue in that. And as I saw the reengineering options for ‘Infamous: Second Son’ The Sony firms could get some more coins from an 11 year old game on the PS4. And now there is an option to get it upgraded to PS5. Consider the gaming population. Whomever played in to PS4 (early days PS4) would like the setting on PS5, I tried that original game on PS5 and it plays well. A few minor glitches but that is what happens. The storyline could be upgraded and with linearity removed the game would get a much tougher stance. Then add the ‘cleaning’ of Seattle and we get a more complete game. With the setting to an optional change to Smoke-TV-Neon sequence the game alters a fair bit, and in this the game could also encase the stealth option in the game. Take with that the option to go back to the beginning to free the people from concrete affliction the good and the bad will also alter to some degree and it isn’t merely the good and the bad setting, the larger stage of animosity could reverberate through the game. And I am now looking to a few more games. A setting that I believe is great for Sony in the immediate future. 

Can’t stop a creative mind puzzling on how to make something better, a trick that isn’t possible with Deeper Machine Learning and LLM’s. Have a great Thursday.

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January 20, 2025 · 03:54

And there was more

You see three days ago (merely two days and change) I wrote ‘A story in two parts’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2025/01/17/a-story-in-two-parts/) where I laird bare a few of the ‘shortcomings’ of Microsoft. However there was more. I had initially chosen the title ‘The color is blue’ yet I decided that the premise is not about Azure, there is more to it all. You see Fierce Network gives us ‘Google Cloud could overtake Microsoft’s No. 2 cloud position this year’, which sounds nice. However there are a few issues with that. We will all love ““Google Cloud is already nearly equal to Microsoft Azure in revenues, and has a higher revenue growth rate than Microsoft Azure,” Gold wrote in a research note. “By the end of the next four years of revenue growth, we project Google Cloud’s revenues will be 55% greater than Azure at current growth rates.”” The research note gives the proper “Based on the Average of Past Two Years Revenue Growth Rate

Assuming Same Growth Rate Going Forward” so that is good, but it does not despair from “By the end of the next 4 years of revenue growth, we project Google Cloud’s revenues will be 55% greater than Azure at current growth rates.” Yet this setting does not account that someone at Microsoft ‘suddenly’ takes an innovative step towards (who knows), the second setting is that the technology premise stays where it is. Huawei with their HarmonyOS is another factor, the Chinese factor. In this I predict that they might use Microsoft down the line and might step away from Google (speculative). We have little insight in what places like the UAE does and they have a large investment in their approach to AI and in this Microsoft has the inner track there. So I love the premise, but I have thoughts of consideration on how the future unfolds. There is a chance that AWS will clear house, but there are reservations on that front too. 

Still, Azure has issues. You see the Register (at https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/13/azure_m365_outage/) gives us ‘Azure, Microsoft 365 MFA outage locks out users across regions’ with the added “Microsoft’s multi-factor authentication (MFA) for Azure and Microsoft 365 (M365) was offline for four hours during Monday’s busy start for European subscribers.” I understand that it comes with “It’s fixed, mostly, after Europeans had a manic Monday” now I wonder why we see the use of ‘mostly’ there are perhaps a few gaps in the solution and that happens, but how many of these events will Microsoft cater to until a user like Coca Cola gets a tap on the shoulder to start looking for alternatives? Do you think that a man like James Quincey keeps his sense of humor when his bottom line is under fire? And that is only the beginning.

Still Microsoft has its own ‘defense’ knee jerk operation, we are informed of that by Techi where we see (at https://www.techi.com/microsoft-files-suit-against-hundreds-abuse-azure-openai-services/) with the headline ‘Microsoft Files Suit Against Hundreds for Abuse of Azure OpenAI Services’, so not only is their OpenAI ‘flawed’, it is open to abuse (apparently). We are given “API Key Theft and Hacking-as-a-Service”where we see “As per Microsoft, the defendants systematically and through their deceitful acts stole API keys, the fundamental means of authentication to its AI services. The hacked accounts were allegedly pivotal in creating an act of “hacking-as-a-service” One main ingredient for that operation would be De3u, a software that enabled one to convert images synthesized by OpenAI’s DALL-E without the necessity of writing an actual code.” I kinda covered that on September 8th 2024 in ‘Poised to give critique’ (at https://lawlordtobe.com/2024/09/08/poised-to-deliver-critique/). Michael Bargury gave us a small example of how bad things can get.  Here the operational setting is given through “A former security architect demonstrates 15 different ways to break Copilot: “Microsoft is trying, but if we are honest here, we don’t know how to build secure AI applications”” and here is the premise now consider what (under Torts) customers will do, for example Coca Cola. Do you think they go after the so called hacker with not enough money to afford his/her own place or Microsoft with access to several bank vaults? Take the fortune 500 clients with claims of transgressions, do you really think there will be even a penny left in those Microsoft vaults when their legal teams are done with them? It might not be fair on Microsoft, but the setting of the use of the term AI opens up a whole new can of worms.

Then the Business Times (at https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/companies-markets/microsoft-openai-partnership-raises-antitrust-concerns-ftc-says) gives us ‘Microsoft-OpenAI partnership raises antitrust concerns, FTC says’ in this I might actually be a bit on the side of Microsoft. They give us “MICROSOFT’S US$13 billion investment in OpenAI raises concerns that the tech giant could extend its dominance in cloud computing into the nascent artificial intelligence (AI) market, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) said in a report released on Friday (Jan 17).” My issue here is that there is a setting we had in the past and in countries they created their version of the FTC. It was a power for good then, but there is now the setting that LLM’s and Deeper Machine Learning has grown to a scope that the FTC cannot really fathom. This IT solution goes beyond what they know or understand and all the tech companies face this. So either they grow their ‘programming with barricades’ side of it all, giving tech companies the flaws that the law imbued in whatever country it is based. And that for global companies will set a larger flawed premise. It is like parties are limited to what others have. As such all criminals will come to us with BB-guns, because that is what the police have. Does that sound realistic? I don’t think so. But this also falls straight into the premise that Fierce Networks gave us. It works out fine for Google, until Google gets barricaded I reckon. So this is a setting that the tech firms are set to whatever the wannabe’s can do, that is a direct strangling of commerce and innovation and it sets whomever develop the trigital computer system and if you think that these systems are fast now? The next level system develops with a trinary operating system running on that hardware will astound the world. As I see it should diminish the IBM Deep Blue to a simple calculator. The difference will be THAT much, so who will innovate that when the FTC strangles innovation?

And finally we get the CIO (at https://www.cio.com/article/3802745/microsoft-commits-to-ai-integration-but-delivers-no-particulars-to-differentiate-from-rivals.html) who gives us ‘Microsoft commits to AI integration, but delivers no particulars to differentiate from rivals’ and as I see it, it was already lagging too much against AWS, and now apparently Google is coming up fast and under these settings we get this headline? And the part that matters is given with “Analysts, however, agreed that the statement reflected no meaningful changes to Microsoft’s AI strategy. The bluntest assessment came from Ryan Brunet, a principal research director at the Info-Tech Research Group: “This is classic Microsoft. It’s very much the same old garbage.”” It reminded my towards an old premise from the late 80’s when the PC was exciting and new ‘Garbage in, Garbage out’ in the age when everyone considered themselves a Market Research executive and these wannabe’s had not even mastered the basic needs of data quality. It was a Gender versus Shoe size and they thought that the solution was add the Lambda test (I think it was Lambda). And I get it, Satya Nadella talks his own street side, the problem is that there are too many unknowns at present and he hopes to get all the others onboard before they have thoroughly selected their options and in light of the selected abuses, that setting is not a given, especially as Google seemingly doesn’t have these flaws (as far as I know neither does IBM or whatever AWS wields). 

A setting that was more and could set a lot of people in the liable column of choices. And some of this has been known for at least a quarter. When you add this with part one, you see why I predicted the downfall of Microsoft three years ago. And as I see it Microsoft walked to dotted line in a near perfect manner, too bad they never read the byline ‘this way to the crevice you will not avoid when getting too close’.

It is as some say ‘the way the cookie crumbles’. Darn still 4 hours until breakfast. Time to find a new story. Have a great Monday and if you cannot get into Azure today, feel free to investigate alternatives.

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January 16, 2025 · 04:28

Giggling is the better medicine

This morning (around 03:00) I felt the need to check my mobile (a compact version of the invention by James Alexander Bell) or something of the sort. Inaccurate? Perhaps, but everything comes from somewhere. And as we all look towards roots, I looked at the screen and suddenly stopped. You see, I saw a Microsoft header with layoffs pass by. This is nothing to worry about, or new. They are all laying off people, all the big ones, so that is not cause for concern. Microsoft employs 224000 people, so they might cast a few more away. But I had not actually seen the details of the news, as such my trusty Chrome looked at the news of Microsoft and there a few things came up. And the count is important (for later)

  1. We see all kinds of advertisements with the Surface Pro being reduced $300 in one direction, $400 in another. There are all kinds of ‘offers’ but why would you want to discount THAT much? 
  2. Layoffs. We see ‘Microsoft lays off employees in security, experiences and devices, sales, and gaming’ (source; Business insider), ‘Microsoft staff face second round of layoffs as firm continues cost-cutting measures’ (source: ITPro) several sources claim that the layoffs will be small, but no numbers are given. Now this makes sense in light of the ‘redundancies’ at Google, Amazon, Meta (say Facebook) and a few others. Another source gave us “Microsoft plans to pause hiring in part of its U.S. consulting business and said last week that it would lay off less than 1% of its workforce”, still that could be up to 2200 people, when you are one of them percentages really don’t make a difference. 
  3. The information gives us ‘Microsoft’s Gaming Business Falls Short, Despite Activision’, This is fun. You see in 2023 Activision Blizzard had a market cap of A$120.08 Billion. Microsoft only paid 75 billion for the company and in early days I stated that a gaming company is only as valuable as the last game, and in 2022 Activision Blizzard’s annual revenue amounted to 7.53 billion U.S. dollars, as such Microsoft needs this to go on for 10 years just to break even. I warned for that and now we got ‘Microsoft’s Gaming Business Falls Short’, the Information (at https://www.theinformation.com/articles/microsofts-gaming-business-falls-short-despite-activision) gives us also “In the year to June, Microsoft’s gaming business revenue grew 5.8%, well below the 11% target set for the purpose of calculating part of Nadella’s compensation, according to securities filings. (That growth excludes revenue of Activision since its acquisition but includes Game Pass)”, it amounts to the fact that ‘gaming’ revenue is 50% short. Not good news I say. And when others come with complex stories that it has a few more sides. I say revenue is revenue and it is 50% short, that is the part others look at. And Newsweek gives us ‘Activision Hasn’t Helped Microsoft Grow Xbox Game Pass, Says Report’ (at https://www.newsweek.com/entertainment/activision-hasnt-helped-microsoft-grow-xbox-game-pass-says-report-2015392) where we also see “Microsoft was hoping that acquiring Activision would lure other game developers to rent its Azure servers, which hasn’t happened” not surprising. Developers like numbers and with a 3:1 margin Sony is a much more appealing choice for the first stage of any development. And the bad news doesn’t end there, we see at TechRadar (at  https://www.techradar.com/computing/gaming-pcs/theres-one-handheld-gaming-pc-that-went-under-the-radar-at-ces-2025-and-its-got-a-secret-weapon-to-beat-the-competition#) that Tencent now released the Tencent Sunday Dragon 3D One at CES 2025, a setting that was (kinda) clear over a year ago and my IP was set to that device and if successful (here’s hoping) it will cost Microsoft a lot more, well at least they bought Activision at $10 per $1 (OK, not entirely accurate, but I’ll go with that feeling). 

So three points, all relate to revenue. Lack of two, lack of innovation in one (spin stories aren’t innovative) and whilst we are ‘given’ ‘Xbox Game Pass expected to make $5.5 billion in 2025’ expected isn’t something that is achieved and there might be more bad news on the horizon, which will set the spin engines to overdrive. To compare, Nintendo reported in September 2024 a Revenue of 276.66B, can you see why I giggle? Microsoft ‘sickofans’ are elated on the optionally coming revenue of Microsoft Game Pass that is merely 2% of Nintendo’s revenue. And that is next year whilst Nintendo is already slaying the revenue dragon. The revenues of Microsoft are likely to lack visibility for some time to come. Some of the reviews of the 2024 Surface Pro aren’t anywhere near stellar (and it needs to be) as such my predictions for the downfall of Microsoft are still achievable. I reckon that when the first AI milestones start failing the domino’s will take a tumble making Microsoft cut more and more meat of their bones. All this whist more and more people see through the presented spin (as I tend to call it) You see, with the promise of tomorrow you better deliver tomorrow and certain parties bought into that and as such when delivery stays short of achieving. The dice get cast in a very different direction. For me it’s easy. I merely have to wait for the predictions too fall short and Microsoft is lacking in more and more fields and as such as Tencent makes larger gains the stage doesn’t just change, it crumbles. I wonder where Amazon is, because with their Luna they had options. I initially designed for that track (merely because Google dropped their stadia) and should Amazon get on top of the Unreal Engine 5, the stage is seeded with Amazon opportunities. A setting Microsoft totally ignored (also they were not invited to my IP clambake). As such I reckon that there will be a hiatus until Microsoft announces more lay offs. And I have seen that before. They will ‘call’ it streamlining and what I see is an empty egg. The shell of the egg looks smooth, but you cannot eat it. In 2023 we got ‘Microsoft outage worsened by staff shortage’, so before you cut your less than 1%, was your staff shortage secured? And when that happens, where are the other shortages? Where one source gave us ‘Microsoft has published a preliminary report into an incident on 30 August that finds insufficient data centre staffing levels contributed to an outage’ and another gave us ‘Microsoft had three staff at Australian data centre campus’, a data centre with 3 staff members? I reckon Microsoft has a few more problems (I reckon planning being one of them). 

So have a great day and consider where you are now and where you optionally could be.

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January 4, 2025 · 15:51

A changed setting

That is where I found myself a few days ago. The realisation that things weren’t what they were supposed to be. Now, it is not really new. Settings change, but for the most it is up to the makers to herald a certain stage of doing business. This is a strange telling, because I believe in the Robocop setting that Kurtwood Smith handed to us “Good business is where you find it” and for the most I believe this is true. The stage was handed to us by Satya Nadella when on December 26th 2024 he gave us “the era of SaaS as we know it is coming to an end, giving way to integrated platforms where AI becomes the central driver. This transformation is poised to disrupt traditional tools and workflows, paving the way for a new generation of applications.” Not only do I not believe him at present. He is paving the way for people to set doubt in a place and push them all towards Azura (i’ll get to this later). Still, this is a weird statement from Microsoft when we got on July 22nd 2024 ‘Microsoft joins forces with Austrade to help its Australian SaaS partners go global’ (at https://news.microsoft.com/en-au/features/microsoft-joins-forces-with-austrade-to-help-its-australian-saas-partners-go-global/), seems like a strange setting. And with the statement “Microsoft has today announced a new program in collaboration with the Australian Trade and Investment Commission (Austrade) to help local partners that offer software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions accelerate their international growth” It almost sounds like the Asian joke “Two Wongs don’t make a Write” (or something like that). 

You see, as I personally see it, Microsoft is in trouble. It hatched its eggs too widely and too many of them are not paying off. There is only so many losses you can book and not take a massive hit. And as long as people are ‘dependent’ on Microsoft Nadella can sing whatever he wants. And that is where the shoe becomes a tight fit (and not in a good way). There is a cluster of people reposting and optionally with their ‘own’ insights as why it is such a stellar move. But there are issues.  You see, the first is that SaaS is a good solution for a lot of people, but as the Indian indie developers are gaining in that field Microsoft needs to haul exceedingly into another field where it is just them and their ‘agents’. And Microsoft will get a percentage for EVERY deployment we face.

The second setting is that SaaS goes together with IaaS and PaaS, but with the Microsoft setup all PaaS becomes Azure. It was the Microsoft solution to get from the statement “It is very possible to link single service of IaaS, PaaS and SaaS on 3 different cloud providers.” We got this answer three years ago and that never worked for Microsoft. You see, Microsoft wants it all. They failed too many times (in several fields). The need it all to survive and if enough are connected Microsoft (as I see it) prevents collapse. As I see it the AWS (Amazon) and the Oracle’s Platform as a service are vastly superior to Microsoft. As such Microsoft is dwindled down to size and they do not like it. I also think that Googles PaaS service is better than. Microsoft, but that is a more personal view then evidence driven. As such Microsoft needs to change speed and I reckon that the impending death proclamation of Software as a Service was Microsoft’s way to go and that is what Satya Nadella went with. The issue in this is an additional stage. In the 5 days of Christmas it is all that LinkedIn went with. I was torpedoed with these ‘news casts’ and opinionated settings from hundreds of sources (not only on LinkedIn) and these millennial sales screw ups all wanted a piece of that pie. They want it all whilst the getting was good and it is Christmas, wasn’t it? 

It is at this point when I wonder what Huawei has in store with their cloud solutions. It is the media appeasement of Microsoft that I wonder what the ‘enemy’ will bring us and that is where the setting stalls. The attack on our senses is almost infinite and some are deciding where we are able to (or allowed) to look. And we are all in the setting that we want to know where we can go and places like LinkedIn will not give us the full news making them propaganda channels for people like Microsoft. So when will we get the real deal of how to avoid Microsoft? I wonder what Oracle and/or AWS will bring to the table, them and Google would make a good replacement for Microsoft. But will we see that given to us, or is the influencer scene of Microsoft drowning it all out?

I cannot say for sure because the others are seemingly staying silent. Have a great day you all.

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September 25, 2024 · 21:13

Good News

Well, it is good news of a sort. The Guardian reported yesterday (at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/23/violent-crime-murder-rate-fbi-2023) that ‘FBI confirms US murders declined in 2023, contrary to Republican claims’, it is here we get “Murder dropped by more than 11% in largest single-year decline in decades while rape and other crimes also fell”, as plenty of us consider the one nation that is mostly in decline (due to the Karen’s) it is nice that we see an article like this. We also get “Meanwhile, the broader category of violent crime nationwide decreased about 3%, said the data, which is audited and confirms earlier reporting from unaudited statistics”, as well as “the FBI said rape decreased by an estimated 9.4%, property crime dropped 2.4% and burglary fell by an estimated 7.6%”. Some say that it is nothing to write home about. The larger setting is that in a country as overloaded with 343,477,335 people both good and less so. These drops are nothing to be sneered at. I say hurrah to the police and FBI department on a national scale. I am still of the mind that criminals tend to find other ‘activities’ to fuel their need for greed and violence. What it is is anyone’s guess. In certain fields I tend to be a gloomy source of skepticism. And it is here that Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), said: “Data drives policy, and without having a complete understanding of the problem, we cannot effectively address this significant surge in hate violence” OK, I will agree with that. Data tends to be the driving instigator in understanding certain crimes. It is also a little weird that hate violence would be the driving power against sexual assaults and burglaries. One does not optionally fuel the other side and as such I feel uncertain what to think. That is the other side of data. The lack of numbers does not fuel the understanding into another side. It is not that we can state with any kind of ‘comprehension’ that (2022) 16 sexual assaults + 84 burglaries = 14 sexual assaults + 58 burglaries + 28 hate crimes (2023) it just presumptuously does not work that way. But in the end crime went down to some extent and for that we can say ‘hurray ye police departments’ and ‘hurray ye FBI’. We then get ““Our administration has improved and expanded background checks, announced the single largest investment in youth mental health in history, and been an unprecedented resource to states, cities, and local communities,” said Kamala Harris” I am less convinced here. I am not debating the soul and spirit of the thought, there is a larger stage to consider. I wrote a few years ago that the ATF is staggeringly underfunded and for the longest time there was no head at the organisation. There was a lack of IT funds and all kinds of settings that sets the ATF with decades of lack of innovations at their disposal. In addition, last year the WBUR (in 2023) gave its audience ‘Does the man enforcing the country’s gun laws have the tools to do the job?’ I had raised that amendment issue a few years earlier. They gave us “ATF protects the public from crimes involving firearms, explosives, arson, and the diversion of alcohol and tobacco products. Regulates lawful commerce in firearms and explosives, and provides worldwide support to law enforcement, public safety, and industry partners.” All whilst the gun lobby does everything to make things harder for the ATF. And all whilst all the Tech biggies (Amazon with AWS, Microsoft with Azure and Google with Gemini) have lacked in assisting the ATF in ways that work. I am not placing blame in any of those three, but the lack of innovation in IT power in the ATF is staggering. And in that setting the FBI and the local police forces need to do their work. Weird is it not? Then in 2020 we see ‘Rethinking ATF’s Budget To Prioritise Effective Gun Violence Prevention’ apart from the fact that the ATF was without a permanent director for seven years the wondering setting by Kamala Harris with “Our administration has improved and expanded background checks” but I have issues with the statement. I will fully agree with the statement that it was true, but consider a car in 2022 when it was going at a speed of 23 mph, the fact that it now does 43 mph makes the statement true, but when we consider that the fact that the ATF is to be seen as The Tiger Brigades (1974) where the officers relied on something not dissimilar of the Ford model T, the improvements would be impressive all whilst the criminals out there relied on their Lamborghini Countach LP400 (179 mph), you do see that the police has absolutely no way of winning. When we realise this a lot more could be done, but political players relying on the gun lobby donations are o so willing to throw a clog in the wheels (the origin of the expression saboteur) and the larger issue is not that America needs to stop crime. It is important that they are gaining access to the tools that allows them to do their job.

So I am not attacking the good news we were given, but the fact that the truth is that certain organisations were supposed to do their job with one hand on their back. The lacking funds for infrastructure does not help I reckon. 

All reasons for applauding the local police departments and the FBI for getting some of the work done. So to all involved: “Well Done!”

I am now pondering a thought I had yesterday and a larger premise. Not sure yet what to do, but it is a consideration to behold. And now, with my eyes on the Scotia bank on Yonge street (Toronto) I will sign off and enjoy a glass of ice tea.

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August 11, 2024 · 19:40

Setting of the day

On a good day
The Khaleej Times Jost informed me on how a good day comes to pass. Here (at https://www.khaleejtimes.com/uae/meet-the-uae-police-officer-who-uncovered-183-money-laundering-cases-in-15-years) we are introduced to Major Saad Ahmed Al Marzooqi. 

The headline ‘Meet the UAE police officer who uncovered 183 money laundering cases in 15 years’. We are also given “He was recently appointed as the first Emirati member of the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) International Cooperation Review Team” and we can be mesmerised, or brag about his abilities, but the numbers imply that he slightly uncovered more than one case a month. There are plenty of police forces all over the world where half of these numbers would imply a stellar career. As we gawk over “exposed 183 money laundering cases that are related to drugs and financial embezzlement. He had also created a database of incidents, which contributed to an increase in convictions from a monthly average of 3 to 14” we need to realise that the increase of 3 to 14 implies that this one person achieved more than any average police station in Europe. 

This is the kind of man the world needs and that will be explained in the next article, because the universe relies on balance and the imbalance we are about to see takes the cake and changes an optional day to night.

On a bad day
Yes like any hero that needs a antagonist to make things interesting, we have Microsoft in two mentions. Now this isn’t directly involving anyone at Microsoft, but the follies are a setting that makes things a lot worse.

First we get Wired (at https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-copilot-phishing-data-extraction/) who gives us ‘Microsoft’s AI Can Be Turned Into an Automated Phishing Machine’ we get to see “Attacks on Microsoft’s Copilot AI allow for answers to be manipulated, data extracted, and security protections bypassed, new research shows” which is not good, but anything positive can me mauled into a criminal jester for organised crime. The additional “Microsoft raced to put generative AI at the heart of its systems. Ask a question about an upcoming meeting and the company’s Copilot AI system can pull answers from your emails, Teams chats, and files—a potential productivity boon. But these exact processes can also be abused by hackers.

Today at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, researcher Michael Bargury is demonstrating five proof-of-concept ways that Copilot, which runs on its Microsoft 365 apps, such as Word, can be manipulated by malicious attackers, including using it to provide false references to files, exfiltrate some private data, and dodge Microsoft’s security protections.” Now, I haven’t seen this, but Wired has a solid enough level of credibility to not ignore this. And that isn’t all. Bargury gives the world “the ability to turn the AI into an automatic spear-phishing machine. Dubbed LOLCopilot, the red-teaming code Bargury created can—crucially, once a hacker has access to someone’s work email” as I speculatively see it a mediocrity solution to turn the Internet of Things into a machine serving organised crime, optionally the NSA too, well done Microsoft. As I see it, the workload of Major Al Marzooqi would increase fivefold when this hits the open world, actually it already has if I understood the words from Michael Bargury correctly. In this, we optionally an even bigger problem, or at least a lot of corporations will.

You see there is a second message, in this case from Cyber Security News (at https://cybersecuritynews.com/microsoft-entra-id-vulnerability/). They give us ‘Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) Vulnerability Let Attackers Gain Global Admin Access’ with the subtext “Security researchers have uncovered vulnerabilities in Microsoft’s Entra ID (formerly Azure Active Directory) dubbed “UnOAuthorized” which could allow unauthorised actions beyond expected controls” Now take these two parts together and the phishing expedition could hit every R&D system on the planet using Azure. I am certain that Microsoft will have some patch coming soon, but in the meantime the bulk of R&D (under Azure) will be vulnerable and approachable by many hacker and especially organised crime, because selling secrets to competitors tends to be a lucrative setting and most corporations aren’t that finicky in acquiring something that raises (and assures) the bonuses of the members of their boardroom. OK, this is speculative on my side, but wonder what some will do to get the upper hand in business, especially if there is a bonus raise involved. 

I wish I had a solution, but my personal feeling is that Microsoft has too many holes, loops and a whole rage of other issues and switching to either AWS, IBM cloud or Google Cloud tends to be an essential first step coming to my mind. Now, if there are sceptics who think that I am anti-Microsoft here, they are probably right. Therefor the Links to the two articles were added letting you look at the stories yourself. In the meantime I remember a story in April and it should be my ‘duty’ to inform SAMI that ‘BAE Systems and Microsoft join forces to equip defence programmes with innovative cloud technology’ had a nice article and with the two articles mentioned, SAMI could lay its hands on a truckload of BAE IP. Not sure how far they will get, but free IP is the way to go I say. So when you realise that a large corporation like British Aerospace with all the civilian and military hardware can be accessed, what chances do you think that Novo Nordisk (Denmark), LVMH (France), ASML (Netherlands), SAP (Germany), Hermez (France), L’Oreal (France) have? I do not know if any uses Azure, but it is a good moment for them to select one of the other companies. They could after the event sue Microsoft for damages, but Delta Airlines is already suing CrowdStrike and I am not sure how that will go. In the end it is my personal opinion that this could potentially bite Microsoft hard and it is one of the reasons I do not let them near my IP.

As I personally see it, the companies racing the be the first to launch their (fake) AI will now have a much larger impact. There were already fake data issues, but now the phishing options that are mentioned and when that gets linked to what Cyber Security News calls “UnOAuthorized” the entire IT game changes dramatically and I have no idea how that will play out. 

As my Sunday is almost over and Vancouver only just started there’s a chance we postulate that the next 72 hours will be an interesting one. Have a lovely day (when you are not on Azure).

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July 31, 2024 · 16:40

It was never rocket science

Yup, that is the gist of it. And it seems that people are starting to wake up. You see the biggest issue I have had with any mention of AI, is that it doesn’t (yet) exist. People can shout AI on every corner, but soon the realisation comes in that they were wrong all the time will hurt them, it will hurt them badly. And this is merely a sideline to the issue. The issue is Microsoft and lets get through some articles.

1. Microsoft says cyber-attack triggered latest outage
The first one is (at https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c903e793w74o) where we see “It comes less than two weeks after a major global outage left around 8.5 million computers using Microsoft systems inaccessible, impacting healthcare and travel, after a flawed software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike. While the initial trigger event was a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack… initial investigations suggest that an error in the implementation of our defences amplified the impact of the attack rather than mitigating it,” said an update on the website of the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform.” The easiest way of explaining this is to compare Azure to a ball. A foot ball has (usually) 12 regular pentagons and 20 regular hexagons. They are stitched together. Now under normal conditions this is fine. However software is not any given shape, implying that a lot more stitches are required. Now consider that Microsoft 365 is used by over a million corporations. Now consider that a lot of them do not use the same configuration. This implies that we have thousand of differently stitched balls and the stitches is where it can go wrong. This is where we see the proverbial “the implementation of our defences amplified the impact of the attack rather than mitigating it” Microsoft has been so driven by using it all, that they merely advance the risk. And it doesn’t end here. CrowdStrike is another example. We see the news and the fake one person claiming responsibility for it. Yet the reality is that there is a lot more wrong than anyone is considering. These two events pretty much prove that Microsoft has policy and procedure flaws. It is easy to blame Microsoft, but the reality is that we see spin and the trust in Microsoft is pretty much gone. People say “Microsoft’s cloud revenue was 39.3% higher”, yes this is the case, and considering that Amazon was originally a ‘bookshop’, so they went against the larger techies like IBM and Microsoft and they got 31% of the global market share. Not bad for a bookshop. And the equation gets worse for Microsoft, these two events could cost them up to 10% market share. In which direction these 10% go is another matter. AWS is not alone here. 

I was serious about not letting Microsoft near my IP. I had hoped that Amazon would take it (they have the Amazon Luna) but it seems that Andy Jesse is not hungry for an additional 5 billion annually (in the first stage). 

And as Microsoft adds more and more to their arsenal these problems will become more frequent and inflicts damage on more of their customers. Do I have evidence? No, but it wasn’t hard and my example might give you the consideration to ponder where you could/should go next. 

2. Microsoft Earnings: Stock Tanks As AI Business Growth Worse Than Expected
In the second story we see (at https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2024/07/30/microsoft-earnings-stock-tanks-as-ai-business-growth-worse-than-expected/) that Forbes is giving us “shares of Microsoft cratered about 7% following the earnings announcement, already nursing a more than 8% decline over the last three weeks” with the added “Microsoft’s crucial AI businesses was worse than expected, as its 29% growth in its Azure cloud computing unit fell short of projections of 31%, and sales in its AI-heavy intelligent cloud division was $28.5 billion, below estimates of $28.7 billion” As stated by me (as well as plenty of others) there is no AI. You see AI would give the program thinking skills, they do not have any. They kind of speculate and they have lots of scenario to give you the conditional feeling that they are talking “in your street” but that is not the case. For this simple illustration we get Wired (at https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-ai-copilot-chatbot-election-conspiracy/) giving us ‘Microsoft’s AI Chatbot Replies to Election Questions With Conspiracies, Fake Scandals, and Lies’, so how does this work? You see the program (LLM) looks at what ‘we’ search for, yet in this the setting is smudged by conspiracy theorists, troll farms and influencers. The first two push the models out of synch. Wired gives us “Research shared exclusively with WIRED shows that Copilot, Microsoft’s AI chatbot, often responds to questions about elections with lies and conspiracy theories.” Now consider that this is pushed onto all the other systems. Then we are treated to “Microsoft’s AI chatbot is responding with out-of-date or incorrect information”, so not only is the data wrong, it is out of date, as I see it what they call ‘training data’ is as I see it incorrect, out of data and unverified. How AI is that? A actual real AI is set on a Quantum computer (IBM has that, although in its infancy) a more robust version of shallow circuits (not sure if we are there yet) and is driven not by binary systems but framed on an Ypsilon particle system, which was proven by a Dutch physicist around 2020 (I forgot the name). This particle has another option. We currently have NULL, Zero and One. The Ypsilon particle has NULL, Zero, One and BOTH. A setting that changes everything.

But the implementation into servers is to be expected around 2037 (a speculation by me) then we get to the thinking programs and an actual AI. So when we see AI, we need to see that is a program that can course through data and give you the most likely outcome. I will admit that for a lot of people it will fit, but not for all and there we get the problem. You see Microsoft will blame all sources and all kind of people, but in the end it will be up to the programmer to show their algorithm is correct and as I am telling you now that it comes down to unverified data. How does that come over to you? 

When you consider that Wired also gave us “it listed numerous GOP candidates who have already pulled out of the race.” The issue of how out of date data is becomes clear. We see all these clever options that others give us, but when some LLM (labeled AI) is un-updated and unreliable, how secure remains your position when you base decision making streams on the wrong data? And that is merely a sales track. 

The last teaspoon is given to us by The Guardian. The Guardian (at https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/mar/06/microsoft-ai-explicit-image-safety) gave us on March 7th 2024:

3. Microsoft ignored safety problems with AI image generator, engineer complains
So when you consider the previous parts (especially CrowdStrike) “Shane Jones said he warned management about the lack of safeguards several times, but it didn’t result in any action” Microsoft will state that this is another issue. But I spoke about wrong data, out of date data and unverified data. And now we see that the lack of safeguards and inaction would make things worse and a lot faster than you think. You see as long as there is no real AI, all data needs to be verified and that does not seem to be the case in too many setting. I spoke about policy issues and procedural issues. Well here we get the gist “it didn’t result in any action” and we keep on seeing issues with Microsoft. So how many times will you face this? And that is before people realise that their IP are on Azure servers. So how many procedural flaws will your research we driven into until it is all on a Russian or Chinese or North Korean enabled server (most likely by Russia or China, which is a speculation by me).

As such, it was never rocket science, look at any corporation and in their divisions there will always be one person who thinks of number one (himself) and in that setting how safe are you? 

There is a reason that I do not want Microsoft near my IP. I can only hope that someone waked up and give me a nice retirement present ($30M post taxation would be nice).

Enjoy the day.

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