Sedating Oneself (and Shareholders) With Fuzzy Buzzwords and Pointless Acquisitions

posted by Roy Schestowitz on May 08, 2024

IBM has been trying to buy time.

IBM sinking

Hours ago: (regarding IBM being 63 billion dollars in debt)

The cloud computing business is down as the hype gets deflated; there are aws layoffs every month and azure has had mass layoffs every year since 2020. Those are the facts. Who cares about facts?

IBM is chasing yesterday's buzzwords and now it's late to hang on to the latest ('AI').

They need products and substance instead. Buying companies for 'hype factor' is about manipulating the stock price, based on sentiments. Time for more buybacks.

Other Recent Techrights' Posts

Where We Stand With the Winter Series: We'll need to protect names and sources
Gemini Links 10/02/2026: "The Last Messiah", Discord for Adults: Links for the day
Mobbing at the European Patent Office (EPO) - Part V - Strongest Strike Under António Campinos: SUEPO Munich is also reminding people of the threat of PIPs
GNU/Linux May Have Grown to 7% in Equatorial Guinea: Has there been some kind of mass migration there or is this just noise in the data?
Slop at Microsoft is a Miserable Failure, Now Microsoft Takes the "Vista Route" (Paying People to Say Good Things About It): This is brainwash, it's meant to delay the implosion of the bubble
Rumours About February 2026 Microsoft Layoffs: Silent Layoffs or 30,000 Culled Tomorrow: Sooner or later (and soon) Microsoft will need to say something and file some WARN notifications
GNU/Linux at 12% in Guam, Based on statCounter (Compared to 2-3% a Year Ago): Guam's "uptick" in GNU/Linux usage started weeks after "end of 10"
Fighting Slop With the Public Domain (and Why Slopfarms Perish Faster Than New Ones Appear): We can combat the nonsense by producing more human-made works until the slop bubble implodes
After Employee Reviews at IBM Staff Expects Another Large Wave of PIPs and "RAs" (Layoffs): From what we can see in the "public Web"
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, February 09, 2026: IRC logs for Monday, February 09, 2026
Is Europe Abandoning Digital Opium?: GAFAM-controlled social control media
Microslop is Slop, Slop is Considered "Quality": no wonder Microsoft's stuff breaks down so often
thelayoff.com Deletes On-Topic Discussions (Layoffs) While Leaving in Tact Pro-Corporate Trolling Made by LLMs (Slop): Who at thelayoff.com deems spam made by LLMs (slop) to be on-topic and unworthy of zapping, whereas actually on-topic and authentic threads get routinely deleted?
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Delusion - Part IV - Machos in Charge of the House (and System), Even If the Faces Are Female (Optics): basically a Windows/Microsoft (US) shop
Gemini Links 09/02/2026: Great Salt Lake Ecological Observatory and Offpunk 3.0 "A Community is Born" Release: Links for the day
Links 09/02/2026: Mass Plagiarism and Pollution/FakeCoin Company Nvidia Contacted Anna’s Archives, Narges Mohammadi Gets Second Prison Sentence: Links for the day
Links 09/02/2026: Russia Intentionally Killing Civilians, Jimmy Lai Effectively Sentenced for Life for Publishing News: Links for the day
Microsoft Competitions, Addictions, and Popularity Contests Are Not Going to Help Perl, They'll Waste Everybody's Time and Give Microsoft More Control Over Its Competition: Microsoft does not like Perl
A Can of WORMS - Part IV - They Would Even Attack RMS for Criticising Autocrats (Saying This is "Politics"): Conforming to society's perceived expectations isn't how effective activism can ever be done or was ever done in the recent past
Gemini Links 09/02/2026: The Exploration Myth and Making JavaScript Fun: Links for the day
EPO Outrage and Maintaining the Pressure: A vending machine does not fall over after a first push
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 08, 2026: IRC logs for Sunday, February 08, 2026
"Low Performer" and "Underperformer" as Harmful Misnomers That Damage a Company's Reputation: Misnomers need to be avoided or called out
Expensive errors: Forbes Gold price, $44 billion Bitcoin given away by Bithumb, South Korea: Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 08/02/2026: Microsoft OSI (Openwashing Lobby) in Europe, Raised Against Social Control Media Provocateurs in EU: Links for the day
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) Lobbies for Microsoft in the EU, Promoting Proprietary Lock-in: OSI pushing and selling Microsoft and GitHub. OSI is Microsoft front group.
Getting the European Court of Justice to Annul the Illegal and Unconstitutional Unified Patent Kangaroo Court (UPC): We're still working on it
Finland's Dependence on GAFAM (US) Needs to be Lessened, EU Must Follow This Path: It's unwise to make one's entire national infrastructure (computer systems) dependent on a regime which compares its black citizens to monkeys and assassinates nonviolent dissenters
Links 08/02/2026: Microsoft GitHub as Burden on Developers and "The Chomsky Epstein Files": Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/02/2026: "Doing Not Much Tweaking" and "Reclaiming Digital Agency": Links for the day
Forbes: BitCoin, Cryptocurrency pages removed from investment database, links stop working: Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Bitcoin warning followed immediately by network outage: Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Money Funneled to Protection of Software Freedom, But Nothing Really Lost: Crossposted from personal site
They Tell Us Slop Replaces Workers, But the Reality Is, US Debt Has Surged 2,300 Billion Dollars in Six Months (the Economy is Collapsing): Oligarchy already entertains the option of running away to (or colonising) some other planet without pitchforks and "unwashed masses"
Mozilla Firefox Sinks to Just 1.5% in the United States: According to analytics.usa.gov
We're Still Fast: The site is even faster than the BBC's despite being on shoestring budget with only a small technical team
Gemini Protocol is Not a Waste of Time of Effort: We see more and more GNU/Linux- or BSD-focused bloggers turning to Gemini
Our Gemini Protocol Support Turns 5 Today: today is a rare anniversary for us
In Today's World, One Must be Tough and Principled to Get Ahead Morally: But not financially (sellouts)
Over at Tux Machines...: GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 07, 2026: IRC logs for Saturday, February 07, 2026
The Right Wing in the United States Does Not Support Free Speech, It Supports Its Own Speech: Free speech is often opposed by those who also oppose Free software
IRC is a Lot Better Than Social Control Media (They're Not the Same at All): A good social analogy for IRC is, there are many buildings with a party in each building
Microsoft 'Open' 'AI' is 'Dead Meat': Or 0xDEADBEEF as some geeks might call it
When Identifying "Low Performers" and "PIPs" Aren't About Improving Performance But Reinforcing a Clique in Your Company/Organisation: It's very troubling to see once-respectable brands like IBM and institutions like the EPO resorting to this
Slop and Flop (IBM), Slopfarms and Hybrids (Linuxiac): Did Bobby Borisov assume he would never get caught?
Crowdfunding vs Bitcoins: donations are better investment than digital tulip mania: Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock