Justice department charged four Chinese nationals with hacking as Washington accused Beijing of threatening national security
The US has led allies in a sharp condemnation of China for “malicious” cyberattacks, including a hack of Microsoft Exchange email server software that compromised tens of thousands of computers around the world earlier this year.
Related: UK and allies accuse Chinese state-backed group of Microsoft hack
Continue reading...The AI researcher on how natural resources and human labour drive machine learning and the regressive stereotypes that are baked into its algorithms
Kate Crawford studies the social and political implications of artificial intelligence. She is a research professor of communication and science and technology studies at the University of Southern California and a senior principal researcher at Microsoft Research. Her new book, Atlas of AI, looks at what it takes to make AI and what’s at stake as it reshapes our world.
You’ve written a book critical of AI but you work for a company that is among the leaders in its deployment. How do you square that circle?
I work in the research wing of Microsoft, which is a distinct organisation, separate from product development. Unusually, over its 30-year history, it has hired social scientists to look critically at how technologies are being built. Being on the inside, we are often able to see downsides early before systems are widely deployed. My book did not go through any pre-publication review – Microsoft Research does not require that – and my lab leaders support asking hard questions, even if the answers involve a critical assessment of current technological practices.
Company blames ‘human error’ after users in US, Germany, Singapore and France reported no results shown on the crackdown’s anniversary
Microsoft has blamed human error after its search engine, Bing, blocked image and video results for the phrase “tank man” – a reference to the iconic image of a lone protester facing down tanks during the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square – on the 32nd anniversary of the military crackdown.
Users reported that no results were shown for the search query in countries including the US, Germany, Singapore, France and Switzerland, according to Reuters and Vice News.
Continue reading...Microsoft Round Island One is ‘tax resident’ in Bermuda, with no employees except directors
An Irish subsidiary of Microsoft made a profit of $315bn (£222bn) last year but paid no corporation tax, as it is “resident” for tax purposes in Bermuda.
The profit generated by the company, Microsoft Round Island One, is equal to nearly three-quarters of Ireland’s entire gross domestic product (GDP) – even though it has zero employees.
Continue reading...Study claims firms paid $96bn less in tax between 2011 and 2020 than the notional figures cited in their annual reports
The giant US tech firms known as the “Silicon Six” have been accused of inflating their stated tax payments by almost $100bn (£70bn) over the past decade.
As Chancellor Rishi Sunak called on world leaders to back a new tech tax ahead of next week’s G7 summit in the UK, a report by the campaign group Fair Tax Foundation singled out Amazon, Facebook, Google’s owner, Alphabet, Netflix, Apple and Microsoft.
Continue reading...Microsoft says group targeted more than 15o American and foreign organisations using USAid account
The state-backed Russian cyber spies behind the SolarWinds hacking campaign launched a targeted phishing assault on US and foreign government agencies and thinktanks this week using an email marketing account of the US Agency for International Development (USAid), Microsoft has said.
The effort targeted about 3,000 email accounts at more than 150 different organisations, at least a quarter of them involved in international development, humanitarian and human rights work, the Microsoft vice-president Tom Burt wrote in a blog post late on Thursday.
Continue reading...Board members reportedly felt his presence was inappropriate during the investigation into a romantic relationship last year
Board members at Microsoft decided in 2020 it was not appropriate for the tech giant’s co-founder, Bill Gates, to continue sitting on its board as they investigated a romantic relationship with a female employee that was deemed inappropriate, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Microsoft subsequently confirmed the investigation had taken place, and said it had provided support to the female employee concerned.
Continue reading...Lack of prenuptial agreement with Bill Gates could herald $73bn divorce settlement as fears focus on future of couple’s charity
Melinda Gates, a philanthropist and campaigner for female empowerment, could be about to become the world’s second-richest woman, with a fortune estimated at $73bn.
In her divorce petition filed on Monday at King County superior court in Seattle, Washington, Melinda Gates stated that her marriage to multibillionaire Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, one of the richest men on the planet, had “irretrievably broken” and called on the courts to divide up the couple’s combined $146bn (£105bn) fortune
Continue reading...Apple, Google owner Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft raked in money in first quarter
Big tech is on a roll. In every minute of the first three months of 2021, Apple, Google owner Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft sold products and services worth about $2.5m (£1.8m) combined. Profits before tax for the period came in at $88bn – more than $1bn of profit for every working day.
After a year of shifting to online work and leisure across the global economy, financial results published this week by most of US tech’s biggest names were bound to be strong. But even more bullish analysts on Wall Street were surprised by how fast they raked in money in the quarter, auguring even greater profits in the years ahead.
Continue reading...True scope of the breach, which affected 100 companies and several federal agencies, is still unknown
Tech executives revealed that a historic cybersecurity breach that affected about 100 US companies and nine federal agencies was larger and more sophisticated than previously known.
Continue reading...After putting $100m into Covid research, the billionaire is taking on the climate crisis. And first he has some bones to pick with his fellow campaigners...
Bill Gates appears via video conference – Microsoft Teams, not Zoom, obviously – from his office in Seattle, a large space with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Lake Washington. It’s a gloomy day outside and Gates is, somewhat eccentrically, positioned a long way from the camera, behind a large, kidney-shaped desk; his communications manager sits off to one side. If one had to stage, for the purposes of symbolism, a tableau of a man for whom a distance of 3,000 miles between callers still constitutes too intimate a setting, it might be this. “As a way to start,” says Gates’ aide, “would it be helpful for Bill to make a couple of comments about why he wrote his new book?” It is helpful, and I’m not ungrateful, but this is not how interviews typically commence.
There is an urge towards deference, when speaking to Gates, which attends few other people of commensurate fame. Celebrity is one thing, but wealth – true, former-richest-man-in-the-world wealth – is something else entirely; one has a sense of being granted an audience with the Great Man, a fact made more surreal by his famously muted persona. The 65-year-old has the lofty, mildly longsuffering air of a man accustomed to being the smartest guy in the room, leavened by wry amusement and interrupted, on the evidence of past interviews, by the occasional peevish outburst – most memorably in 2014, when Jeremy Paxman questioned him about Microsoft’s alleged tax avoidance. (“I think that’s about as incorrect a characterisation of anything I’ve ever heard,” he said, practically squirming in his seat with annoyance.)
Continue reading...Firm stood against Facebook and Google over plan to make tech giants pay news organisations
Microsoft is calling for the US and the EU to follow Australia in introducing rules that require technology companies to share revenue with news organisations and support journalism.
The company, which stood against Facebook and Google in supporting the proposal, argues that it is necessary to impose such a levy to create a level playing field between large tech firms and independent media organisations.
Continue reading...The Covid crisis has turbo-charged profits and share prices. But are the big six now too powerful for regulators to ignore?
The coronavirus pandemic has wrought economic disruption on a global scale, but one sector has marched on throughout the chaos: big tech.
Further evidence of the industry’s relentless progress has come in recent weeks with the news that Apple and Amazon both raked in sales of $100bn (£72bn) over the past three months – 25% more than Tesco brings in over a full year.
Continue reading...Schools have embraced apps and remote classes in the past year. Some see benefits in virtual learning but others fear the impact on disadvantaged children and privatisation by stealth
History is likely to record that Britain’s teachers were better prepared for Covid-19 than government ministers. With cases rising in Europe, 14 schools in England had already closed their gates by the end of February 2020. When senior staff at Barham primary school began drawing up contingency plans on 26 February, they realised they needed to up their use of digital technology.
They decided to upload work daily to ClassDojo, a popular app they were already using to communicate with parents. The problem was some parents, many of whom do not speak English as a first language, didn’t have the app. When, three weeks later, it was announced that UK schools would close to most pupils with just two days’ notice, Barham’s staff, especially the Gujarati, Tamil and Hindi speakers, took to the playground, digital devices in hand, to help parents get connected.
Continue reading...Microsoft’s president says NSO Group enables more nation-states to deploy cyber-attacks, including against journalists and activists
Microsoft has called on the incoming Biden administration to weigh in on a high-profile legal case involving WhatsApp and NSO Group, the Israeli spyware firm that the US software company said was helping to proliferate cyber-weapons.
Comparing NSO Group to 21st-century mercenaries, Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, claimed that the rise of private companies that engineer cybersecurity attacks meant that an increasing number of nation-states could now deploy cyber-attacks – including against journalists and human rights activists.
Continue reading...As the Xbox Series X and Series S are released, Microsoft gaming chief Phil Spencer says the next games generation is all about how many players you have, not how many consoles you shift
The launch of the Xbox Series X this week marked the start of a new video game console generation – historically a super-exciting time for players, as better technology unlocks new dimensions for games. But despite the usual competitive crowing about teraflops, frame rates and resolutions, there’s a different dimension to the console wars this time around. The looming Netflix-ification of video games threatens to upend the whole idea of video game consoles. Amazon and Google are both working on game streaming services that let people play cutting-edge games without paying for a box that sits under the TV. And Microsoft has spent the past five years spending billions on game developers to shore up its star service: Xbox Game Pass, a monthly subscription that lets you play hundreds of games for a monthly fee.
It’s been clear for a while that Microsoft sees the future of gaming in subscriptions, streaming and services. Phil Spencer, the head of Xbox since 2014, is known to players as the guy who shows up on stage at press conferences in video-game T-shirts. Under his leadership, Microsoft has massively broadened its stable of game developers, started selling Xbox games on PC, and engineered its own streaming service to let people play on any screen, known in prototype as Project xCloud. Subs and streaming have already transformed other creative industries, with varying effects on artists – Spotify has been a disaster for musicians, where Netflix has arguably been good news for TV producers. With Microsoft already clearly committed to this direction of travel, what will its effect be on the games industry?
Continue reading...Reform of international corporate taxation could transform health and education, says report
Big US technology companies are exploiting loopholes in global tax rules to avoid paying as much as $2.8bn (£2.1bn) tax a year in developing countries, according to research by the anti-poverty charity ActionAid International.
Facebook, Google and Microsoft have been accused of failing to pay a fair amount of taxes in poor countries where governments are struggling to provide even basic healthcare or education to their citizens.
Continue reading...Allegation follows new law that lets Hong Kong ask for sensitive data if deemed to threaten national security
Big technology companies may already be complying with secret Chinese requests for user information held in Hong Kong and ought to “come clean” about the vulnerability of the data they hold there, a senior US state department official has said.
The allegation of possible secret cooperation between major companies and Hong Kong authorities follows the implementation of a sweeping and controversial new national security law that allows Hong Kong authorities to demand sensitive user data from companies if it is deemed to threaten national security.
Continue reading...Microsoft says a recent update has affected the processing of authentication requests, making cloud-based services inaccessible
Microsoft has said it is investigating an outage that brought down Microsoft’s cloud-based office services including the meetings software, Teams, worldwide.
Microsoft reported issues with authentication for its cloud services at around 9.25pm UTC, meaning people were having issues logging into the online services Teams, Outlook and Office.
Continue reading...Oracle reported to be ‘technology partner’ after Donald Trump set a 15 September deadline for US businesses to stop dealing with Bytedance
Bytedance will not sell TikTok’s US operations to Microsoft, the US tech-giant said in a statement, with reports it has instead picked a consortium led by Oracle as a “technology partner”.
ByteDance has been in talks to sell TikTok’s US business since Donald Trump threatened last month to ban the service if it was not sold. The president’s executive order in August gave Americans until 15 September to stop doing business with the video platform’s Chinese parent company ByteDance, or it would be shut down in the US. It effectively set a deadline for a potential pressured sale of part of the tech company to an American bidder.
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