01.18.23
Gemini version available ♊︎Behind the Microsoft Layoffs There’s an Even Darker Reality
Video download link | md5sum 7fb0edfd2781c995111982f6fd392be8
Do Not Lose Sight of What Microsoft Hides
Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0
Summary: The Microsoft layoffs are big (even bigger if one counts the contractors), but beneath the surface there’s a company that’s failing to evolve and is instead resorting to more illegal operations, which include not just mass bribery but also mass plagiarism (plagiarism-as-a-service)
THE most accessed posts this month concern Microsoft layoffs because the mainstream/corporate media refused to cover the issue until it was “too late” for Microsoft to hide it. The media did not bother investigating the matter. Any real journalist could ask a Microsoft insider (discreetly of course!), especially a manager, about the matter. If I can do this, salaried journalists certainly could. But nowadays journalism isn’t about informing the public but about attracting (or retaining) advertisers, including Microsoft.
“I’m a huge fan of guerrilla marketing.”
–Joe Wilcox, Microsoft Watch ‘Reporter’
“Remember that Microsoft makes journalists toe the line to retain their “access” to official channels of information,” an associate reminds us. We’ve documented extensive evidence of this over the years, e.g. this Microsoft internal document. [PDF]
“…nowadays journalism isn’t about informing the public but about attracting (or retaining) advertisers, including Microsoft.”The post we published hours ago confirms the layoffs (the scale is not yet confirmed and the divisions impacted are mostly unknown). We only know that Microsoft will certainly downplay the whole thing, lie about what the motivations are, and as the video above notes, Microsoft will continue to bombard the media with its "Hey Hi" PR (plagiarism). Don’t lose sight of Azure’s failure (shut-down datacentres and layoffs for several consecutive years). Microsoft is not a security vendor, not a gaming company (XBox sales lose* the company money!), it continues to fail at “Clown Computing”, and now there are layoffs, partly obscured by a Microsoft PR campaign about “Hey Hi” (AI). Look away from the noise to find the signal. Even several bailouts from President Biden [1, 2] did not or could not prevent layoffs because the company fails to actually sell things (Microsoft has had a tight “lobbying” grip on Biden since the Obama years). It’s still far too reliant on monopoly rents, such as secret and potentially illegal OEM agreements (Windows and more).
Just to clarify how/why Azure is failing, as the video above notes almost nobody uses it and the company was left with a lot of unused server capacity, resulting in a waste of energy. Energy has gotten a lot more expensive. Don’t believe the paid-for hype! █
“[A]fter analysing a five-day working week in the media, across 10 hard-copy papers, ACIJ and Crikey found that nearly 55% of stories analysed were driven by some form of public relations. The Daily Telegraph came out on top of the league ladder with 70% of stories analysed triggered by public relations. The Sydney Morning Herald gets the wooden spoon with (only) 42% PR-driven stories for that week.”
–“Over half your news is spin”
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* Since the early days of the XBox it has barely made any money (revenue and profit aren’t the same thing); Microsoft suffered losses, but it persisted nevertheless. One might argue that it has not really been much about dominating that market and that XBox was never about being or becoming a gaming console. Instead, this losing venture has been about fighting against general-purpose computing with a lot of restrictions inside the underlying hardware, in effect making a test bed for DRM and other lock-in using previously-commodity hardware. It’s like the handle and razor blades. Microsoft and Bill Gates have long loathed sharing and generics. Their business model was mostly based on stealing from the Commons and creating privatised monopolies, instead.
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