6 months ago:
Video download link | md5sum 27f7863e432cc2cf4403306186be5565
.NET in Ubuntu and Chiseled Containers – Canonical & Microsoft
Original here from Microsoft
Summary: Canonical isn’t working for GNU/Linux or for Ubuntu; it’s working for “business partners” (WSL was all along about promoting Windows)
Related: SiliconANGLE is Selling Coverage (Fake ‘Journalism’)
Earlier this week: IBM Loves Microsoft*
Yesterday: The transformational journey of Microsoft and Red Hat: A commitment to open source and cloud technologies (openwashing and “clown”-washing of mass surveillance or imperialism through systemic outsourcing)
A huge proportion of articles and videos in that site are sponsored by the company/ies this coverage is about and sometimes they even disclose this, albeit only at the very bottom (in small fonts). This is no exception:
Summary: SiliconANGLE insists that paying SiliconANGLE money for coverage does not lead to bias, but every sane person who keeps abreast of SiliconANGLE — and I read their entire feed every day — knows that it’s a ludicrous lie (Red Hat/IBM and the Linux Foundation also buy puff pieces and “event coverage” from SiliconANGLE, so it’s marketing disguised as “journalism”
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* As a GNU developer put it in a message to me, “IBM not only loves Microsoft, they might secretly be married! 
Since 2019, I surmised that the Microsoft-led plan is to squash the Free Software Movement and the FSF in order to make the Linux Foundation the centre of FLOSS. That way, Bill [Gates] and company will have complete control. I also believe that the 2019 attacks to remove RMS from the FSF were already in tow when they found opportunity in RMS’ email concerning Epstein and Minsky. What RMS needs is a board that understands the dynamics of management and marketing as well as being strategically savvy in the game of mega corporate power play. People who can’t be bought.”
Reality:
But forget about reality… Microsoft was eager to tell people they don’t need search engines and should instead get hyped-up chatbots.
Paid-for Microsoft fluff aplenty (we give just one example from each month; the marketing/propaganda strategy changed). Starting with January:
February:
March:
April:
May:
Summary: With an estimated market share of 93% worldwide, Google Search has only gained share [1, 2] — not lost share — since Microsoft introduced vapourware for Bing (whilst in fact laying off a lot of Bing staff — a simple fact that the media barely mentioned)
The latest on Microsoft layoffs that only one news site wrote about, based on leaked communications:
Summary: The Microsoft-friendly (or Microsoft-sponsored) media isn’t mentioning this, but there are still Microsoft layoffs this week and those have nothing to do with prior layoff waves
Summary: Marketers from Microsoft — and former Chief Marketing Officers or HR VPs too — are trying to spin Microsoft’s collapsing business units (and mass layoffs that are under-reported and grossly under-counted in the media); how much of Microsoft’s remaining financial activity is just financialization and debt-loading (e.g. buying companies to offload debt onto them)?
Microsoft is 80 billion dollars in debt (a lot higher than its cash reserves or bank balance) and the layoffs carry on and on this year (example from this past Friday). The bleeding does not stop.
“The bleeding does not stop.”As an associate put it this morning, “it is telling that Microsoft is [as per news sites] linking the possibility of salary raises to stock price because it suggest that Microsoft makes most of its money through financialization and that the Office format monopoly rents are weak or gone and that the OEM monopoly rents are weak or probably gone, since they are now basically giving away Windows.” (Almost no cost, as the competition with GNU/Linux is fierce)
“Notice how the media now quotes as financial expert a marketing person.”We’re going to see some interesting things ahead because government bailouts will be harder for Microsoft to secure (Trump and Biden bailed Microsoft out with "defence" contracts worth tens of billions of dollars). Now that the US government grapples with the possibility of default (aside from almost $32 trillion in national debt there is also close to $18 trillion in US household debt), not to mention many failing banks (hundreds more are said to be on the verge of collapse right now) there are not many chips left on the table. Will people’s pensions be thrown at the stock market, tied to stocks where the valuation is massively inflated and unrealistic?
Notice how the media now quotes as financial expert a marketing person*. To quote: “Microsoft’s Chief Marketing Officer Chris Capossela has reportedly told employees that “the most important lever for almost all our employees’ compensation upside is the stock price.”” █
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* That Microsoft “report” and similar ones (same ‘script’) has helped distract from the layoffs (we saw numerous of the same spiel, an identical ‘script’). Last week Microsoft spread a bunch of fluff about salaries and salary increases while many layoffs were quietly signed off.
Didn’t Microsoft say repeatedly and insist that chatbots are the future? The layoffs pattern does not match the hype pattern.
Summary: Published earlier today was this sole report (it’s weekend and reporters are away, some on holiday); talk about bad timing to announce layoffs unless the whole point is brushing the news under a rug (there were also loads of Microsoft layoffs last week, but the media barely mentioned this; Microsoft changed the subject to “salaries”)
Text behind the paywall: (the only publicly available information at this point)
Nuance Communications, the speech-to-text pioneer bought by Microsoft last year, is cutting jobs as it focuses more narrowly on the health care market.
Employees at Burlington-based Nuance received an e-mail on Friday from chief executive Mark Benjamin notifying them of the cutbacks as part of the continued integration with Microsoft, which paid nearly $20 billion for the company.
“We continue to see macroeconomic pressures affect our industries, as well as market shifts that are evolving our customers’ needs,” Benjamin wrote in the e-mail, which was obtained by the Globe. “It is critically important that we maintain our ability to make key investments in our businesses so that we can deliver on our current plans and are able to capitalize on the future opportunities we have ahead of us. In order to do this, we made the difficult decision this week to eliminate some positions across the company.”
Benjamin did not detail the scope of the layoffs at Nuance, which had about 7,000 employees when the Microsoft deal was announced in 2021. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.
Nuance has a long and winding history in developing image-processing and speech-recognition software and applications. The company started in 1994 as a spinoff from SRI International, the research center formerly known as the Stanford Research Institute. In 2005, Nuance merged with ScanSoft, a Xerox imaging spinoff that had roots with Ray Kurzweil and had also acquired speech technology of Lernout & Hauspie. The company’s voice recognition technology later was incorporated into Apple’s Siri digital assistant.
In 2019, Nuance decided to narrow its focus and spun off its automotive division as Cerence.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
The ‘Open Source’ Initiative, or OSI for short, is basically a Microsoft front group these days
Summary: Microsofters are speaking ‘on behalf’ of OSI again, jointly with ‘Linux’ Foundation, essentially promoting Microsoft’s own initiatives [1, 2, 3, 4] and traps like proprietary GitHub, which abuses the GPL (the OSI’s chief actively lobbies for Microsoft — on Microsoft’s payroll — in class action litigation over GPL violations)
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
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