Huawei is in talks to sell parts of its Honor smartphone business in a deal which could fetch up to 25 billion yuan ($3.7 billion), Reuters reported.
Huawei, which faces heavy sanctions in the US, wants to step away from developing its low-cost Honor phones and instead concentrate on high-end Huawei devices, according to people familiar with the matter.
Digital China Group, the main distributor for Honor smartphones, is the frontrunner to land the deal, the people told Reuters.
It is competing with smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi Corp and Chinese electronics company TCL Technology, they said.
Honor's brand, research and development capabilities, and its supply chain management business could be included in the deal according to two of the people.
One of them said that the deal could be an all-cash sale, worth between 15 billion yuan ($2.2 billion) and 25 billion yuan ($3.7 billion).
Huawei was put on the US' Entity List in May 2019. This means that American companies are banned from doing business with Huawei, and can only trade with it if they get special permission from the Trump administration.
Digital China, TCL, and Xiaomi did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Huawei declined to comment.
Cheryl Chambers is the head coach for Mississippi State University's speech and debate team, where she teaches effective communication methods.
Feelings conveyed through facial expressions are often lost behind a mask, but Chambers says eye contact, good posture, and the volume of your voice make a difference in conversations.
While masks might prevent us from communicating in the ways we're used to, we can still converse effectively while wearing face coverings for safety.
You wear your mask, keep six feet between yourself and others and are committed to safety. But the measures that help minimize your risk of COVID-19 can also have an impact on your interactions with others.
As you stroll the aisle of a supermarket, you approach someone who looks familiar. To avoid an awkward exchange, you flash them a friendly smile. It's not until you pass you remember: Your smile was hidden behind a mask. Unloading your groceries at home, you see your neighbor. You excitedly ask her how she is, but when she doesn't respond, you worry your mask has muffled your voice.
As the head coach for Mississippi State University's Speech and Debate Team, my job is to teach effective communication. Without question, masks have disrupted social interactions. But communication has many components. You can adjust and enhance your communication by focusing on some of the other pieces that aren't hidden behind a mask.
You might be surprised how much information is conveyed by the body itself.
For instance, when someone is happy, they stand up straighter and lift their head; when they are sad, they slouch and drop their head; and when they are angry, their whole body tenses up. Learning how people use their bodies to convey emotion may help reduce the uncertainty you feel when communicating with someone in a mask.
Become aware of your own body language, too. When engaged in a conversation, you can appear more attentive by turning your body toward the individual, leaning in, or nodding. To let another person know you want to start speaking, straighten your posture, hold up your index finger or nod more frequently. Finally, be aware that imitating the posture of another person can increase how much they like you and even agree with you.
Try this — say the phrase "I didn't see you there" as if you were scared. Now pretend you are happy. Now confused. Chances are, anyone listening to you could easily identify your emotions without even seeing you. While studies show that masks do not significantly alter your voice, you may feel that your speech gets muffled when wearing a mask.
If you feel the need to speak louder, just be aware that raising your voice can alter the message you are trying to send. Changing the tone of your voice can change the whole conversation, so instead of increasing volume, try improving enunciation.
Putting it all together
While masks may make conversations feel more daunting, you are equipped to communicate, even with part of your face concealed.
Before your next interaction with a friend, think of ways to improve your connection. Pull your hair back so they can see your eyes clearly and find a quiet place to talk. Use your body and voice to convey the emotions you fear your mask might hide. Maybe most importantly, don't expect it to go perfectly. Just like any conversation, mistakes will be made.
When someone can't understand you, try rephrasing your statement, saying it a bit more slowly and enunciating more. If you are struggling to understand someone else, try to ask close-ended questions, like "Do you want to go to the park?" instead of open-ended ones, like "Where do you want to go?"
By all means, continue the proper measures to keep yourself safe, but don't neglect your relationships as a consequence. Social distance doesn't have to mean socially distant.
Statistician Nathan Yau used data from the 2015 US Census Bureau's American Community Survey to determine which jobs had the highest and lowest divorce rates.
Financial stability, overall satisfaction, and workplace atmosphere all can be important factors.
Gaming and casino managers had the highest divorce rates, while actuaries had the lowest.
There are a lot of factors that affect the national divorce rate, causing it to rise or lower in comparison to the average. And when nearly half of US couples argue about money, it's hardly surprising that employment status and salary rank among those factors.
Of course, salary and job stability have a lot to do with one's career path and employer, which is why certain fields seem to have a more favorable association with lasting marriages — and others don't. To that end, statistician Nathan Yau recently took data from the US Census Bureau's American Community Survey from 2015 in order to determine the occupations with the highest and lowest divorce rates.
Career may not be the No. 1 determining factor in whether a person will get a divorce, but financial stability and overall satisfaction with life are important contributors. Workplace atmosphere could also influence whether one goes through a divorce. Yau's research found that gaming and casino managers have the highest divorce rates in America, at 52.9%. Bartenders are close behind, with a 52.7% divorce rate.
Conversely, salaried positions tend to fare better for lasting marriages, with positions in the medical and financial fields ranking among the careers with the lowest divorce rates.
So, what are the final results?
The 10 occupations with the highest divorce rates:
1. Gaming managers: 52.9%
Gaming and casino managers have the highest rate.
Reuters
2. Bartenders: 52.7%
Bartenders are at 52.7%.
Getty Images
3. Flight attendants: 50.5%
Flight attendants are at 50.5%.
Some positive news to end on? Despite the commonly tossed around stat that "half of all marriages end in divorce," according to the Center for Disease Control, the actual US divorce rate is 2.9 for every 1,000 people and has actually been dropping since the 1990s. Hopefully, with the right choice in partners — and, maybe, career paths! — that's a trend that will continue.
This Fairygodboss story was originally published on Business Insider October 10, 2019.
Verizon is making a big expansion of its 5G network: the carrier is now rolling out nationwide support for the new networking standard, which will reach more than 200 million people.
Until now, Verizon’s 5G has been almost exclusively focused on the mmWave band, which offers the fastest speeds but suffers from extremely poor range. That fact has meant that while AT&T and T-Mobile have been able to boast about broad 5G coverage for the entire country, Verizon has been limited to a few street corners of a small number of cities.
Verizon now offers 5G in a lot more places
The reliance on mmWave has also meant that Verizon has had to work with device manufacturers to create bespoke mmWave versions of phones specifically for...
By Zeus Kerravala The merger will create a single cloud communications platform that will span more than 60 countries representing 93% of the global GDP.
Speaking of surprise appearances at the VP debate Wednesday, fracking made a show — Mike Pence repeatedly said that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris want to ban the technology. Harris said they wouldn't.
Fracking is a super common method of extracting oil and natural gas in the US, which involves some engineering magic like sideways drilling.
As I recently learned, pretty much everything that's not made of wood or cotton is made with chemicals derived from oil and gas, known as petrochemicals. Laundry detergent, diapers, antifreeze, hand sanitizer ... these chemicals are everywhere!
And Big Oil wants to keep it that way. Let's start there.
As we've written, clean energy sources like wind and hydro power will eventually dominate the global electricity mix, and EVs are set to replace gas-guzzling cars. That alone doesn't spell the end of big oil companies.
Reality check: Most of the world's largest fossil-fuel producers including Exxon and Shell have invested in a wide range of products to stay relevant including petrochemicals — which have grown into a gigantic industry.
The US market was worth almost $400 billion last year, according to the American Chemistry Council.
By quantity, the vast majority of chemicals out there — the stuff in disinfectants, detergents, everything in The Container Store — are, in fact, petrochemicals.
By 2050, petrochemicals are projected to overtake the transportation sector as the largest driver of growth in oil demand, according to the International Energy Agency.
Also on Monday, Bloomberg News reported that Exxon had plans to ramp up its carbon emissions by 17% by 2025, as its rivals looked to cut their carbon budgets. (Exxon said the story is inaccurate.)
On Thursday, the Church of England Pensions Board, which manages more than $3.6 billion, divested from Exxon, Bloomberg News reported.
What's going on? Exxon is trying to maintain its dividend and reputation as a stable employer even as oil prices fail to gain ground. They were down about 35% this year as of Friday morning.
At the same time, investors are souring on companies that fail to set climate-change targets.
Exxon is considered a laggard among oil companies when it comes to climate policy.
What next? More job cuts are likely as the restructuring carries on. The company is also doubling down on its oil resources in lower-cost regions including Guyana.
Do you have information on Exxon? You can reach me at bjones@businessinsider.com or through Signal/text at +1-646-768-1657.
Vivint Solar workers install rooftop solar panels
Anne Cusack/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Layoffs reach all corners of the energy industry
Two new reports this week detail the toll COVID-19 has taken on energy-industry jobs. It's not great.
Clean energy: Just under half a million clean-energy workers are still out of work from the pandemic, according to BW Research.
The industry added 12,500 jobs back last month, and is recovering at a slower rate than the rest of the economy, the group said.
California, to no surprise, has lost the largest number of positions.
Oil and gas: The fossil fuel industry, including chemicals, laid off 107,000 workers from March through August, according to a new Deloitte analysis.
Bleaker still, as many as 70% of those jobs may not return by the end of 2021 in a business-as-usual scenario, the firm said.
"Such large-scale layoffs, coupled with the heightening cyclicality in employment, are challenging the industry's reputation as a reliable employer," the report said.
Oil prices are all over the place, so nothing's new. On Friday morning, Brent crude was up 6% from last Friday, when it tanked in the wake of Trump's coronavirus diagnosis.
California fires hit a new and unfortunate milestone this week. The August complex fire surpassed 1 million acres and was dubbed a "gigafire," The Guardian reports.
Amazon debuted its all-electric delivery van, built by Rivian, a Tesla rival.
Google’s Meet videoconferencing service is getting breakout rooms, but they’ll only be available to G Suite Enterprise for Education customers at first, according to a Google blog post (via 9to5Google). With the feature, teachers and educators will be able to break their classes into smaller groups for things like projects or focused discussions.
Google will let you make up to 100 breakout rooms in a single call. Once you’ve decided how many breakout rooms you want, Google will randomly group up the people on the call into rooms, but moderators can manually add people to other rooms if they want. Meeting moderators can also hop between rooms to check in on groups.
If breakout rooms are something you might want to try out, but you aren’t...
The next presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was scrapped, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced in a Friday statement.
The organizing group canceled the upcoming debate scheduled for October 15, which was changed from an in-person event to a virtual meeting.
The decision was made after Trump and several other people in the White House tested positive for COVID-19 last week.
The president said he would not participate in a virtual event and asked that it be in person, but the commission denied the request.
The next presidential debate between President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has been scrapped, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced in a Friday statement.
The Commission on Presidential Debates canceled the upcoming debate scheduled for October 15, which was changed from an in-person event to a virtual meeting after Trump and several other people in the White House tested positive for COVID-19 last week.
"It is now apparent there will be no debate on October 15, and the CPD will turn its attention to preparations for the final presidential debate scheduled for October 22," the commission said in a statement.
"Subject to health security considerations, and in accordance with all required testing, masking, social distancing and other protocols, the debate will take place at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee," the statement continued.
Earlier this week, the president said he would not participate in a virtual event and asked that it be in person, but the commission denied the request. The two campaigns have sparred over the format of the upcoming debate since the commission announced the shift to a virtual event on Thursday.
The Trump campaign went on to book several events in the coming weeks, though the president has yet to release a negative COVID-19 test since his diagnosis last week. White House physician Sean Conley issued a statement Thursday evening, saying that Trump would be able to host public events again by this weekend.
The Biden campaign agreed to the virtual format, but after Trump said he would not participate, the campaign booked a town hall with ABC News the same day as the proposed virtual debate, CNN reported.
Another debate, which would have been the third meetup between the candidates, is still set for October 22 in Nashville, The Washington Post reported. According to The Post report, the Trump campaign requested scheduling an additional debate for October 29, which has not been approved by the commission.
At Facebook, employees may work from home permanently, but if they leave the Bay Area for a less expensive city, they'll likely face a pay cut starting in January.
The future of Silicon Valley may bear little resemblance to the thriving hub we knew before the pandemic.
Since the coronavirus pandemic hit the US in March, tech companies based in San Francisco Bay Area have largely shut down their sprawling campuses and asked employees to work from home - in some cases, forever.
Eventually, whether it's in January, next summer, or beyond, those offices will reopen their doors, but office life is unlikely to resemble the before-times for the workers who choose to return.
For some companies, that may mean a rethink to their physical spaces in order to prevent the spread of disease. For others, it may mean changing their real estate plans altogether, opting instead for a new type of office, or none at all. In some cases, it may mean rethinking where employees live and how they're paid.
Here's how tech's biggest companies are planning for the future of work.
Google isn't requiring employees to return to the office until September 2021.
Google's offices in the Chelsea neighborhood of New York City.
Noam Galai/Getty Images
Google initially said that its employees wouldn't be required to come back to the office until next summer, partly to help workers with school-aged children who may not be returning to in-person schooling.
During an all-hands on October 1, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said the company is planning on adding more hub offices, which will give employees more choice in where they live, according to leaked audio obtained by Business Insider's Hugh Langley.
Google is currently piloting a hybrid model of work that would require employees to come into the office three days per week for "collaboration day" and work from home the rest of the time, according to the Times.
Facebook has given employees $2,000 in bonuses to help them set up home offices.
Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, California.
Jeff Chiu/AP
Facebook has said that employees may continue working remotely through June 2021, but many may choose to do so on a permanent basis — they will, however, likely take a pay cut beginning in January if they choose to move to a less expensive region than the Bay Area, according to The New York Times.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in May that he expects 50% of the company's workforce to be entirely remote within the next decade.
Given that employees won't be returning to Facebook's Menlo Park headquarters anytime soon, the company has shifted some of its on-campus employee perks to accommodate working from home. The company said in August that it was giving employees an additional $1,000 stipend for setting up a home office, on top of the $1,000 working-from-home bonus they were given in March.
Facebook is also making plans to help out working parents, including offering 10 weeks of paid leave for employees who unexpectedly need to care for a child or relative.
Additionally, Facebook plans to give all employees high marks on their performance reviews in 2020, which typically results in bonuses, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Apple CEO Tim Cook has said that after the pandemic, the company will not "return to the way we were."
The visitor's center at Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California.
"There are some things that actually work really well virtually," Cook said in an interview at The Atlantic Festival last month, but that working remotely is "not like being together physically."
Cook recently told employees not to expect to return to work until June 2021, according to Bloomberg.
Amazon has said employees can work remotely until next June, but its future plans may be flexible.
Amazon's headquarters in Seattle.
John Moore/Getty Images
Amazon has said it will allow employees to continue working from home until June 2021.
But some employees told Business Insider's Ashley Stewart that the company's future plans may be somewhat flexible: Amazon has asked some employees in Seattle to clean out their desks, while others have been allowed to permanently switch to a virtual employee designation.
In response to pandemic, Amazon has also implemented new employee benefits. The company has begun offering discounts on tutoring, as well as subsidizing backup childcare for up to 10 days a month for full- and part-time Amazon and Whole Foods employees — Amazon says it covers more than 90% of the cost.
But while many tech companies appear to be rethinking the future of physical offices, Amazon has continued its expansion plans — but not at its Seattle headquarters. The company recently announced a $1.4 billion investment to expand its physical offices in six US cities and hire 3,500 new employees who will report into those hubs.
Twitter was already preparing for a "decentralized" workforce, even before the pandemic.
Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
While Twitter employees were told earlier this year that they have the option of working from home on a permanent basis, a decentralized workforce has been a dream of CEO Jack Dorsey's for a few years.
Even before the pandemic hit the Bay Area, some managers at Twitter had started experimenting with working from home and testing virtual meetings, according to a recent report from the Washington Post.
Elsewhere at Twitter, teams working to make video meetings more seamless, like using hand signals for when they have something to say or need to sign off, and inventing new phrases like "ELMO" — short for "Enough! Let's move on" — to help get meetings back on track, according to the Post.
Salesforce is letting employees work from home until August 2021.
The Salesforce Tower in New York City.
Brendan McDermid/Reuters
Earlier this year, Salesforce wrote a 21-page handbook, available to anyone who wants it, about how to safely reopen office spaces. The plan includes rethinking some of the materials inside the office, adding glass dividers, and mandating social distancing, even in elevators.
While Salesforce is reopening some offices in places like Canada, Europe, and Asia, all of its employees may continue working from home until August 2021.
Salesforce has also adopted new benefits for parents during the pandemic. The company announced in August that parents are now eligible for up to six weeks off and that Salesforce will also offer subsidized back-up childcare: employees may get reimbursed up to $100 per day for 5 days every month through January 2021.
Slack employees can work remotely on a permanent basis if they'd like.
Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Slack announced in June that it would allow its employees the option to work remotely forever, and said it plans to hire more workers who will be permanently remote.
Slack also pushed its office reopening date, saying it expects the office will look "quite different" going forward: "fewer amenities such as catered lunches and coffee bars, less focus on in-person meetings with colleagues, and more options for focused solo work."
Microsoft will reportedly allow its 150,000-person workforce to work from home at least part of the time.
Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington.
Stephen Brashear
In what Microsoft is calling a "hybrid workplace," employees will now only have to report to the office for half the workweek, according to an internal memo obtained by The Verge this month. If approved by a manager, some employees will be allowed to work from home permanently and relocate, but if they do, they'll need to give up their work station at Microsoft's office.
However, some employees won't have the option of remote work, The Verge reports. If an employee works in Microsoft's hardware division or in-person training, they'll need to report to the office.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings says the company's offices won't reopen until the majority of people are vaccinated.
Netflix's headquarters in Los Angeles.
Chris Pizzello/AP
In a new interview with The Wall Street Journal last month, Hastings said he hasn't seen any upsides of remote work.
"No. I don't see any positives," Hastings told the Journal. "Not being able to get together in person, particularly internationally, is a pure negative. I've been super impressed at people's sacrifices."
In the future, Hastings expects the corporate world to shift to a four-day workweek where employees report to the office for four days and work remotely on the fifth.
Stripe is cutting pay for employees who relocate, but will also provide one-time bonuses.
Stripe cofounder John Collison.
For Stripe employees based in major cities, the company has started offering a new deal: move out of New York, Seattle, or the Bay Area and take a pay cut — but also receive a $20,000 bonus, according to a Bloomberg report from last month.
Stripe employees may see as much as a 10% cut to their base salary for relocating. The offer will be available to anyone who decides to move before the end of 2020, Bloomberg reports.
Software company VMware has said employees may work remotely forever, but may take a pay cut.
Yichuan Cao/NurPhoto via Getty Images
VMware told its employees earlier this year that they may work remotely on a permanent basis.
But recently, it decided to reduce the salaries of those who have moved to less expensive cities, according to a recent Bloomberg report. An employee who leaves the Bay Area and moves to Denver, for example, will see an 18% reduction in their salary, according to Bloomberg.
Software-maker Atlassian is allowing its 4,900 employees to work from anywhere.
Atlassian cofounders Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar.
Reuters
Atlassian told employees in August that employees may work from anywhere. The Australian company, which has 12 offices globally, told Business Insider its workers will have the option to work either entirely from home, at the office, or a combination of the two.
Samsung said Thursday that its third-quarter profit likely jumped 58% to more than $10 billion, the highest in two years, as US restrictions on China's Huawei boosted the South Korean tech giant's phone and chip sales.
US sanctions against Huawei have dampened demand for its phones outside of China, giving Samsung a leg up, analysts said.
The Chinese firm also hurried to order more chips from Samsung after Washington said it would choke its access to chips from mid-September.
Samsung said its operating profit was likely 12.3 trillion South Korean won ($10.6 billion) for the three months ended September, well above a Refinitiv SmartEstimate of 10.5 trillion won. It would be the strongest result since 17.57 trillion won, in the third quarter of 2018.
Revenue likely rose 6% from the same period a year earlier to 66 trillion won ($57.2 billion), the company said.
Samsung released only limited data in Thursday's regulatory filing, ahead of the release of detailed earnings figures later this month.
"It seems Huawei's impact on Samsung's chip business was bigger than the market expected, and there was a big surprise in the smartphone and home appliance businesses," said CW Chung, head of research at Nomura in Korea.
"Many consumers were reluctant to buy Huawei phones because they thought that Huawei may discontinue phone sales and services because of US restrictions," Tom Kang, an analyst at Counterpoint said, adding that Samsung has boosted sales of mid- and low-end phones.
Samsung's home appliance business also got a lift from the pandemic lockdowns, which spurred consumers to spend more on appliances such as air purifiers.
Samsung's shares have gained about 7% so far this year.
They ended down 0.3% on Thursday in a slightly firmer overall market, with analysts pointing to memory chip prices and the uncertain Q4 outlook for the muted response.
Analysts doubted whether Samsung's fourth-quarter profit could beat the third, as memory chip prices are seen bottoming out and a new Apple iPhone model is expected on the market.
IBM, a company that originally made its name out of its leadership in building myriad enterprise hardware (quite literally: its name is an abbreviation for International Business Machines), is taking one more step away from that legacy and deeper into the world of cloud services. The company today announced that it plans to spin off its managed infrastructure services unit as a separate public company, a $19 billion business in annual revenues, to help it focus more squarely on newer opportunities in hybrid cloud applications and artificial intelligence.
Infrastructure services include a range of managed services based around legacy infrastructure and digital transformation related to it. It includes things like testing and assembly, but also product engineering and lab services, among other things. A spokesperson confirmed to me that the deal will not include the company’s servers business, only infrastructure services.
IBM said it expects to complete the process — a tax-free spin-off for shareholders — by the end of 2021. It has not yet given a name to “NewCo” but it said that out of the gate the spun-off company will have 90,000 employees, 4,600 big enterprise clients in 115 countries, a backlog of $60 billion in business “and more than twice the scale of its nearest competitor” in the area of infrastructure services.
Others that compete against it include the likes of BMC and Microsoft. The remaining IBM business is about three times as big: it currently generates some $59 billion in annual revenues.
At the same time that IBM announced the news, it also gave some updated guidance for Q3, which it plans to report officially later this month. It said it expects revenues of $17.6 billion, with GAAP diluted earnings per share from continuing operations of $1.89, and operating (non-GAAP) earnings per share of $2.58. As a point of comparison, in Q3 2019 it reported revenues of $18 billion. And last quarter IBM reported revenues of $18.1 billion. Tellingly, the division that contains infrastructure services saw declines last quarter.
The market seems to like the news: IBM shares are trading up some 10% ahead of the market opening.
The move is a significant shift for the company and underscores a bigger sea change in how enterprise IT has evolved and looks to continue changing in the future.
IBM is betting that legacy infrastructure and the servicing of it, while continuing to net revenues, will not grow as it has in the past, and as companies continue with their modernization (or “digital transformation,” as consultants like to refer to it today), they will turn increasingly to outsourced infrastructure and using cloud services, both to run their businesses and to build the services that interface with consumers. IBM, meanwhile, is in a race competing against the likes of Microsoft and Google in cloud services, and so doubling down on that part of the business is another way to focus on it for growth.
But IBM, often referred to as “Big Blue”, is also using the announcement as the start of an effort to streamline its business to spur growth (maybe we’ll have to rename it “Medium Blue”).
“IBM is laser-focused on the $1 trillion hybrid cloud opportunity,” said Arvind Krishna, IBM CEO, in a statement. “Client buying needs for application and infrastructure services are diverging, while adoption of our hybrid cloud platform is accelerating. Now is the right time to create two market-leading companies focused on what they do best. IBM will focus on its open hybrid cloud platform and AI capabilities. NewCo will have greater agility to design, run and modernize the infrastructure of the world’s most important organizations. Both companies will be on an improved growth trajectory with greater ability to partner and capture new opportunities – creating value for clients and shareholders.”
Its $34 billion purchase of Red Hat in 2019 is perhaps its most notable investment in recent times in IBM’s own transformation.
“We have positioned IBM for the new era of hybrid cloud,” said Ginni Rometty, IBM Executive Chairman in a statement. “Our multi-year transformation created the foundation for the open hybrid cloud platform, which we then accelerated with the acquisition of Red Hat. At the same time, our managed infrastructure services business has established itself as the industry leader, with unrivaled expertise in complex and mission-critical infrastructure work. As two independent companies, IBM and NewCo will capitalize on their respective strengths. IBM will accelerate clients’ digital transformation journeys, and NewCo will accelerate clients’ infrastructure modernization efforts. This focus will result in greater value, increased innovation, and faster execution for our clients.”
Zoom founder and CEO Eric Yuan, who said he started the company because he “didn’t see a single happy Webex customer,” believes that video is the new voice and is counting on the channel to help Zoom build on its impressive growth spurt.
Slack is holding its Frontiers conference this week — virtually like everyone else in 2020 — and it’s introducing some new features to make it easier to message between partners. At the same time, it’s talking about some experimental features that could appear in the platform at some point (or not).
Let’s start with some features to help communicate with partners outside of your company in a secure way. This is always a tough nut to crack whether it’s collaboration or file sharing or any of the things that trusted partners do when they are working closely together.
To help solve that, the company is creating the notion of trusted partners, and this has a few components. The first is Slack Connect DMs (direct messages), which allows users inside an organization to collaborate with anyone outside their company simply by sending an invite.
“You can now direct message anyone in the Slack ecosystem. That means that anyone that has a Slack license can connect to one another,” Ilan Frank, VP of product at Slack told TechCrunch. While the company is introducing the new capability this week, it won’t be widely available until next year as the company wants to make sure this is used for business purposes only in a secure and non-spammy way.
“We’re going to be focused on, before we make this widely available, a lot of different information privacy and security [components] to make sure that we account for things like spam and phishing attacks and all that. This should not be a LinkedIn or Facebook Messenger where anyone can connect with you. This is [going to focus on] business for business work,” Frank explained.
Slack is introducing a couple of concepts to help ensure that happens. For starters, it’s adding Verified Organizations, which works a bit like verified users on Twitter, to help ensure you are dealing with someone from an organization you trust and work with before you start exchanging information on Slack.
“So if someone connects to you through direct message or through a channel, before you even make that connection, [you can ensure] if they are [from] a verified Slack organization versus someone who has just signed up on the internet, and you have not heard them, don’t have a relationship with them and don’t know who they are,” Frank said.
The last piece is called Managed Connections, which lets Slack admins control which organizations and individuals can connect with people inside your organization on Slack in a streamlined manner, which helps ensure that the other two new features are used in a responsible way.
“Organizations have told us that they want to go even deeper into the granularity of control, and they want to have different policies by external organizations that they’re connected to,” he said. Managed Connections lets admins set policies around different types of relationships with outside organizations.
All of these new tools are being introduced this week, but will be released later this year or early next year.
Among the other things the company working on in is enabling customers to embed video or audio in a Slack channel, extending it beyond a pure text messaging tool. The company was careful to point out that these features are just experiments for now and may or may not end up in the product in the future.
Note: Since we published, Slack contacted us to say that it has since decided to release the audio and video tools before the end of this year.
We've already discussed how the President has been urging Congress to make "complaining about the internet" a key election issue for Republicans. This is why Congress has introduced 17 different bills about Section 230 this year, combined with two separate proposals from the White House itself. But apparently, even that is not enough for our completely clueless President. On Tuesday after facing a bit more mild moderation concerning dangerous lies about COVID that he had posted, he announced that he wanted to "repeal" 230 entirely.
This was in response to both Facebook and Twitter taking action after Trump's accounts falsely claimed that the flu is more deadly than COVID-19 (a truly incredible bit of disinformation coming directly from the President, a man still sick with COVID-19). Facebook removed the post while Twitter put a misinformation warning on it. And this is why Trump is upset and wants to "repeal 230."
To be fair, this is the same thing that his opponent in next month's election has been saying, with his equally ridiculous and foolish calls to "revoke" Section 230. Both of them are wrong. Neither of them seem to understand what Section 230 does or why repealing or revoking it won't help with whatever they think they're doing.
But since the President is the latest to spout this nonsense, it should be pointed out that if he got his wish, it would create the exact opposite of what he thinks will happen. Rather than putting pressure on social media companies to leave his nonsense, lies, propaganda, and disinformation alone, it will make them more likely to pull it down to avoid being taken to court and having to deal with questions of liability.
It's an ironic statement since, without the existence of Section 230, Trump very well might not be able to tweet it. If Congress were to remove social media platforms' liability protection, then companies like Twitter and Facebook would have no choice but to remove users' ability to post content at-will. Instead, moderators would have to vet and approve content to make sure that it wasn't potentially libelous.
This would exacerbate the very problem that many conservatives have with social media—namely, that Twitter (and to a lesser extent, Facebook) sometimes takes aggressive action against provocative right-wing speech, by labeling the content as misleading or removing it outright.
For whatever reason, both Democrats and Republicans seem to think that "Section 230" is Facebook/Google/Twitter. And if they don't like a move made by any of those companies they think the "solution" is to harm 230. This is wrong and shows a fundamental lack of understanding about how 230 works, what it does, and what would happen if it were changed or removed. It is ridiculous that the President calls for this in response to those sites trying to limit the damage caused by the President himself, and it's just as ridiculous that this seems to be one area that the President and his opponent actually agree on: that the open internet should go away.
U.S. Attorney General William Barr is greeted by President Donald Trump at a presentation of Public Safety Medals of Valor to officers in the East Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., May 22, 2019.
REUTERS/Leah Millis
The Department of Justice (DOJ) made a significant change to a longstanding policy against election interference this week, ProPublica reported.
The change would allow prosecutors who suspect election-related offenses to take public investigative steps even if those steps alter the outcome of the election.
In an email Friday, an official in the DOJ's Public Integrity Section specifically highlighted that the exception applies to "misconduct by federal officials or employees administering an aspect of the voting process through the United States Postal Service, the Department of Defense or any other federal department or agency."
The decision to single out USPS employees and military members is noteworthy, given that the president has repeatedly suggested, without evidence, that the two groups could be involved in election fraud.
The DOJ's decision could also put it on a collision course with the FBI and US intelligence community, whose leaders released a video this week countering Trump's claims and reassuring voters of the integrity of the election.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) made a significant change to a longstanding policy against election interference that would allow prosecutors to take steps that may alter the outcome of the election, ProPublica reported Wednesday.
The non-interference policy has been in place for at least the last four decades, according to the report, and it prohibits prosecutors from taking overt steps to address election-related offenses in the run-up to an election to avoid changing the outcome of the race.
But an official in the DOJ's Public Integrity Section sent an email Friday saying that if a US attorney's office suspects postal workers or military employees engaged in election fraud, federal prosecutors can publicly take steps to investigate the matter before polls close, even if they affect the outcome, according to ProPublica.
The exception to the policy applies to cases where "the integrity of any component of the federal government is implicated by election offenses within the scope of the policy including but not limited to misconduct by federal officials or employees administering an aspect of the voting process through the United States Postal Service, the Department of Defense or any other federal department or agency."
President Donald Trump has repeatedly and falsely suggested that sending mail-in ballots through the US Postal Service will lead to widespread voter fraud and delegitimize the result of the election. His administration took steps to financially hobble the USPS while Trump amplified those claims. The president has also falsely suggested that ballots cast by military servicemembers are being illegally tossed out or manipulated.
Wednesday's report comes one day after ProPublica published a separate piece highlighting that the DOJ may have violated its own non-interference policy when it released two statements in September saying it was investigating "potential issues with mail-in ballots" in Pennsylvania's Luzerne county.
Initially, the department announced a "small number of military ballots were discarded" and that investigators had "recovered nine ballots at this time." It added that "all nine ballots were cast for presidential candidate Donald Trump."
A second, revised statement said that "of the nine ballots that were discarded and then recovered, 7 were cast for presidential candidate Donald Trump. Two of the discarded ballots had been resealed inside their appropriate envelopes by Luzerne elections staff prior to recovery by the FBI and the contents of those 2 ballots are unknown."
Attorney General William Barr reportedly told Trump about the investigation, which the president and his allies seized on as evidence that proved his allegations about election fraud. As it turned out, the county and Pennsylvania secretary of state both confirmed that the ballots were discarded by mistake by a temporary contract worker who may have mistook them for mail ballot applications.
Thursday's report could also put the DOJ on a collision course with the FBI and US intelligence community, whose leaders released a video this week reassuring voters of the integrity of the electoral process and countering many of Trump's claims about election rigging.
"Next month, we will exercise one of our most cherished rights and a foundation of our democracy – the right to vote in a free and fair election," FBI director Christopher Wray said in the video. "Some Americans will go to the polls on November 3rd to cast their votes, while others will be voting by mail; in fact, some have already begun to return their ballots."
Chris Krebs, the director of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency, added: "I'm here to tell you that my confidence in the security of your vote has never been higher. That's because of an all-of-nation, unprecedented election security effort over the last several years."
Exciting news from Dell, a new partner in the Microsoft Teams Rooms ecosystem.
Dell is launching Meeting Space Solutions are a complete conference room solution that includes:
Dell OptiPlex Micro desktop PC (Windows 10 IoT Enterprise)
Dell Large Format Touch Monitors
Logitech Rally ConferenceCam and Speakers or MeetUp ConferenceCam and Tap touch controller
It comes preconfigured as either a Microsoft Teams Rooms or Zoom Rooms. They have Microsoft Teams Rooms options for small, medium and large meeting spaces
The Dell Meeting Space Solutions for Microsoft Teams Rooms is available on Oct. 15 worldwide. They come with a 3-year warranty for Dell hardware and a 2-year warranty for Logitech devices.
European lawmakers have written to Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos demanding to know: Does Amazon spy on politicians?
In the letter dated Wednesday, 37 members of the European Parliament (MEPs) wrote expressed concerns about Amazon's efforts to sniff out union activity within its ranks.
"We are concerned about whether European trade unions, as well as local, national, or European elected representatives, are affected by [Amazon's] approach to 'threat monitoring,' which aims to repress collective action and trade union organizing," they wrote.
The roles appeared geared towards union-busting. The listings said applicants would be focused on "labor organizing threats against the company" and gathering material for potential legal action against labor groups protesting the company. After Amazon removed the listings it said in a statement: "the job post was not an accurate description of the role – it was a mistake, and since then, it has been corrected."
The MEPs note in their letter that the job listings detailed French and Spanish language skills, "suggesting that Amazon's monitoring would be exercised in Europe."
"We wonder about your intentions with great concern: does Amazon's monitoring intentionally target trade unionists, Amazon workers, as well as political representatives (including ourselves) who could possibly express criticism of its activities?" they ask.
The Amazon listings included other potential threats to the company such as "hostile political leaders," a term the MEPs picked up on.
"We ... question the definition of 'hostile political leaders' described in the recent job posts hitherto mentioned. Who does it concern? Has Amazon already spied on Members of the European Parliament? Did it intend to?," the letter asks.
This follows a letter sent to the EU by union leaders on Wednesday demanding it look into whether Amazon's alleged surveillance of unions potentially broke European labor, data, and privacy laws.
In their letter the unions also drew attention to a Vice report from September that Amazon was surveilling Facebook groups of its Flex delivery drivers.
On Monday, Recode reported on a leaked confidential Amazon memo from February of this year which shows the company has been investing in software to amass and analyze data relating to various "threats" to the company, including union organization.
"Amazon workers' right to union representation and their right to data protection are not checked at the warehouse door," Christy Hoffman, general secretary of the international UNI Global Union, told Business Insider.
"Amazon's repulsive behavior towards workers who want better, safer jobs shows why unions and by regulators must act to hold the company accountable. We hope that Bezos and Amazon management take the MEP's concerns serious and make the changes necessary to ensure workers' rights are respected."
You can read the full text of the MEPs' letter here:
Dear Mr Bezos,
Recently, Amazon published two job advertisements soliciting "intelligence analysts." These "analysts" would have been tasked with monitoring various "threats" perceived by Amazon, including, among other things, labor organizing (trade unionism).
These words appear three times amidst other categories such as "hate groups," "terrorism," and "hostile political leaders," putting them on the same level.
French and Spanish language skills were requested of applicants as well, suggesting that Amazon's monitoring would be exercised in Europe.
We wonder about your intentions with great concern: does Amazon's monitoring intentionally target trade unionists, Amazon workers, as well as political representatives (including ourselves) who could possibly express criticism of its activities?
Because of the indignation of various actors, Amazon removed these two offers from online job boards. Amazon explained: "the job post was not an accurate description of the role – it was a mistake, and since then, it has been corrected." How could such job offers be published?
There are increasing warnings about your company's anti-union policy. Recently, a group of Amazon employees were fired in the United States because they organized a meeting with other employees for voicing grievances about their working conditions while the Covid-19 pandemic spread around the world. On our continent, workers and trade unionists from several European countries testified that they experience pressures preventing them from organizing, that their demands fall on deaf ears, and that they live under permanent fear of firings and the threat of unemployment.
Within Amazon warehouses, intensity of tasks, a constant drive towards productivity, management based on timed control of manual gestures, and the use of blackmail on a worker's individual performance allow you to avoid any form of workers' collective organization. These management practices are already more than questionable. Recruiting employees to spy on potential opponents, should they be internal or external, is intolerable.
As Members of the European Parliament, we recall that the freedom of association and the right to organize are the core values of the International Labour Organisation. Respecting these rights is not optional. These fundamental conventions of our society are binding for Amazon.
We also question the definition of "hostile political leaders" described in the recent job posts hitherto mentioned. Who does it concern? Has Amazon already spied on Members of the European Parliament? Did it intend to?
We represent countries where democracy and freedom of expression cannot be challenged by any company – not even by Amazon. We are its guarantors. The exponential growth of Amazon's profits since the beginning of the global pandemic does not allow you to exonerate yourself from respecting fundamental legal principles.
We are concerned about whether European trade unions, as well as local, national, or European elected representatives, are affected by this approach to "threat monitoring," which aims to repress collective action and trade union organizing.
We hope that your answer will relieve us of our concerns about union rights and political freedoms created by these recent advertisements for intelligence analysts at Amazon.
Among his biggest statements at GTC 2020, Huang believes the chipmaker’s EGX edge AI platform is ’the iPhone moment for the world’s industries’ and that its new partnerships with VMware are ’as exciting as when VMware first virtualized the data center.’
Google is announcing a big rebranding and redesign for its suite of office apps today, rebranding G Suite with a new name: Google Workspace. Along with the new branding for the product that encompasses Gmail, Docs, Meet, Sheets, and Calendar are new features designed to make all those products feel like they’re more integrated with one another. Google is also changing up its pricing tiers just a bit, adding a new “Business Plus” level with more device management features.
As an example of the new features, a Chat window can spawn a new document for everybody in the group without needing a new tab. And in Google Docs, instead of chasing each others’ cursors around or opening up a chat window, you can immediately just start a video call...
Google is replacing its iconic Gmail envelope logo with a design that’s a lot more in keeping with other Google products. The new Gmail logo is now an M made out of Google’s core blue, red, yellow, and green brand colors. It more closely matches similar logos for Google itself, Google Maps, Google Photos, Chrome, and many more Google products. The envelope is no more.
Fast Company reports that Google considered dropping the M altogether or fully removing the Gmail red color, but people involved in user research studies weren’t happy with the changes. The studies did, however, help Google realize that the envelope part of the Gmail logo wasn’t a critical design element, allowing the team to experiment with keeping the M and adding...
Google is announcing a big rebranding and redesign for its suite of office apps today, rebranding G Suite with a new name: Google Workspace. Along with the new branding for the product that encompasses Gmail, Docs, Meet, Sheets, and Calendar are new features designed to make all those products feel like they’re more integrated with one another. Google is also changing up its pricing tiers just a bit, adding a new “Business Plus” level with more device management features.
As an example of the new features, a Chat window can spawn a new document for everybody in the group without needing a new tab. And in Google Docs, instead of chasing each others’ cursors around or opening up a chat window, you can immediately just start a video call...
A teaser image (which we’ve brightened) shows the upcoming sneaker designs. | Image: Cole Haan
Shoemaker Cole Haan is collaborating with Slack, everyone’s favorite occasionallyoffline workplace messaging service on a new pair of limited-edition sneakers. The Slack-branded shoes are expected to be properly unveiled Wednesday when they’re set to “drop” (am I saying that right?). But for now Cole Haan has teased the designs in a dimly lit image posted to its social media channels.
I may live to regret saying this but... I actually don’t hate the look of them? Cole Haan is producing four different versions of the sneaker which each use one of Slack’s primary colors for their soles, and they all have small Slack logos on the heel cap. To be clear, I am absolutely not in the market for a pair of workplace-messaging-app-branded...
We've noted for years that the U.S. simply adores throwing billions in tax breaks and subsidies at telecom monopolies in exchange for broadband networks that somehow, mysteriously, only wind up half deployed. AT&T's particularly gifted at this particular grift, routinely promising a massive boost in network investment if it gets merger approval, deregulation, or subsidization. Like most recently when it nabbed a $42 billion tax break from the Trump administration in exchange for not only network investment that never happened -- but 41,000 layoffs.
Because AT&T's so politically powerful -- and of course all but bone grafted to the intelligence and law enforcement communities -- the company never faces more than a wrist slap for its empty promises, if that. This month it's the state of Mississippi that's pissed off, accusing AT&T of taking $283 million from the FCC's Connect America Fund to deploy broadband to 133,000 locations in Mississippi, then once again failing to deliver. More specifically, AT&T promised it would use the money to expand fixed wireless service to these locations, then falsely reported the locations served when they weren't.
"Our investigation has found concrete, specific examples that show AT&T Mississippi has reported location addresses... as being served when, in fact, the addresses are without service under their [Connect America Fund] obligations," said a letter to the FCC sent Tuesday by all three Mississippi PSC commissioners. "This pattern of submitting false data to the USAC [the Universal Service Administrative Company, which administers the program on the FCC's behalf] merits a full compliance audit by the FCC, USAC, or whichever appropriate agency. We feel it is our duty to alert you to this issue."
This is far from the first time AT&T has misrepresented its broadband availability. The company back in April was forced to admit to the FCC it misrepresented broadband availability across 20 states in its territories. AT&T's also fighting efforts to improve broadband map accuracy on several fronts. In a news release, Public Service Commissioner Brandon Presley urged the FCC to investigate what it called a history of inconsistencies and falsehoods:
"Our investigation has revealed a wide array of inconsistencies in what AT&T advertises as available and what actually exists when consumers try to get Internet service," Presley said. "All the while, AT&T has submitted data saying that they have used federal funds to bring Internet service to these specific homes. AT&T knows, for a fact, that information that they have provided regarding where their Internet service exists is false. They know that through their own, internal records. It's imperative that the FCC and other appropriate federal agencies work with us to hold them accountable."
Of course this is where an independent federal regulator would investigate AT&T more deeply, especially given more than two decades of similar complaints. But that of course isn't going to happen at Ajit Pai's FCC, which is not only a glorified rubber stamp for the industry it's supposed to be holding accountable to the public, but routinely participates in the industry's willful misrepresentation of broadband availability to try and hide the patchy coverage and muted competition that is the hallmark of the U.S. telecom industry.
Understand this: the FCC actively and routinely helps telecom monopolies misrepresent broadband availability and downplay high prices to try and obfuscate market failure. Regulatory capture remains a massive problem, no matter how many telecom-funded consultants, think tankers, and politicians try to convince you that U.S. broadband is a miracle of free market innovation.
Centripetal Networks sued Cisco on claims the networking giant incorporated its network protection technology into its network switches and routers and the monitoring offerings that analyze their data.
The Qiui Cellmate Chastity Cage can be remotely locked using a mobile app, with no manual override. | Image: Qiui
A security flaw in an internet-enabled male chastity device allows hackers to remotely control the gadget and permanently lock in wearers, researchers disclosed today.
The Cellmate Chastity Cage, built by Chinese firm Qiui, lets users hand over access to their genitals to a partner who can lock and unlock the cage remotely using an app. But multiple flaws in the app’s design mean “anyone could remotely lock all devices and prevent users from releasing themselves,” according to UK security firm Pen Test Partners.
Breaking open the chastity cage by hand would require bolt cutters or an angle grinder
Even worse, as the chastity cage does not come with a manual override or physical key, locked-in users have few options to break out. One is...
Nvidia will use AI to make sure you’re always looking at your camera. | Image: Nvidia
Nvidia has announced a new videoconferencing platform for developers named Nvidia Maxine that it claims can fix some of the most common problems in video calls.
Maxine will process calls in the cloud using Nvidia’s GPUs and boost call quality in a number of ways with the help of artificial intelligence. Using AI, Maxine can realign callers’ faces and gazes so that they’re always looking directly at their camera, reduce the bandwidth requirement for calls by up to 90 percent by only transmitting “key facial points,” and upscale the resolution of videos. Other features available in Maxine include face re-lighting, real-time translation and transcription, and animated avatars.
Nvidia’s face alignment feature will make sure you’re always...
Microsoft is rebranding its Bing search engine to Microsoft Bing today as part of a rebranding effort. While the vast majority of people are likely to still just call it Bing, Microsoft unveiled its shift toward Microsoft Bing in a blog post today. Microsoft doesn’t go into detail about why it added the company’s name to the Bing brand, other than it reflecting “the continued integration of our search experiences across the Microsoft family.”
This rebranding means Bing is now using its own updated logo and a Microsoft Bing logo on the search engine’s homepage. It’s not clear if Microsoft will eventually retire the Bing logo in favor of this more Microsoft-centric logo or simply use both in the future.
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
A teaser image (which we’ve brightened) shows the upcoming sneaker designs. | Image: Cole Haan
The Qiui Cellmate Chastity Cage can be remotely locked using a mobile app, with no manual override. | Image: Qiui
Nvidia will use AI to make sure you’re always looking at your camera. | Image: Nvidia
Microsoft’s new Bing logo. | Microsoft