MSFT - マイクロソフト （Microsoft Corporation） マイクロソフト

Washington: The US has joined an international panel for setting ethical guidelines for the use of artificial intelligence. The Trump administration had earlier dismissed the idea. White House's chief technology officer, Michael Kratsios, told The Associated Press on Thursday it is important to establish shared democratic principles as a counter to China's record of "twisting technology" in ways that threaten civil liberties. "Chinese technology companies are attempting to shape international standards on facial recognition and surveillance at the United Nations," he said. The Trump administration had been the lone holdout among leaders of the Group of Seven - the world's wealthiest democracies - in setting up the Global Partnership on AI. The partnership launched Thursday after a virtual meeting between national technology ministers. It was nearly two years after the leaders of Canada and France announced they were forming a group to guide the responsible adoption of AI based on shared principles of "human rights, inclusion, diversity, innovation and economic growth." The Trump administration objected to that approach, arguing that too much focus on regulation would hamper US innovation.

CNBC : Cisco to acquire ThousandEyes, which provides SaaS network performance monitoring, for a price that sources say is ~$1B — - ThousandEyes says its customers include Microsoft, Slack, PayPal and Lyft. — Cisco has been snapping up cloud software companies to make up for slowing growth in its core networking business.

Microsoft never sleeps. Even before Microsoft made the Windows 10 May 2020 Update (version 2004) generally available to users, the company began working on upcoming feature updates to Windows 10. As it did with version 2004, Microsoft has been releasing a series of public preview builds to members of Microsoft's Windows Insider Program. After years of using “Redstone” in its code names for upcoming releases, Microsoft switched to a new format with version 1903, released in May 2019. The code names now use a YYH1/YYH2 format, with the YY standing for the last two numbers of the year and H1 or H2 referring to the first or second half of the year. So Windows 10 version 2004, which was released in May 2020, was code-named “20H1” (for first half of 2020). The next feature update, due in the fall of 2020, is code-named 20H2. To read this article in full, please click here

Microsoft announced on Thursday that the Xbox Series X will support "thousands of games" when it launches this holiday season thanks to backward compatibility. The Xbox team has already spent over 100,000 hours testing Xbox 360 and original Xbox games to make sure that they will be playable on the Xbox Series X. Microsoft says backward compatible games can also support HDR and up to 120FPS. There were a number of reasons that the PlayStation 4 overtook the Xbox One so quickly and never looked back, but if there was one area where Microsoft took on Sony and won during this console generation, it was support for classic games. Microsoft made backward compatibility a priority relatively early on, and that commitment has seemingly only grown stronger as the next generation of consoles approaches this holiday season. In a blog post on Thursday , Xbox Series X director of program management Jason Ronald detailed the long "journey" that the company has taken to make older games playable on its new consoles.

Microsoft stock has multiple, positive catalysts over the short term and the long term. These catalysts will push the shares higher.

Anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, and activists with very different political views have come together to voice their anger at Germany's pandemic measures. While the protests still represent a minority of people, public health experts are becoming concerned that people are developing negative attitudes towards vaccines. Anger has also been directed at Microsoft founder Bill Gates as part of a bizarre conspiracy theory which claims he is responsible for the coronavirus pandemic. Scientists have said that about 70% of the world's population would need to be vaccinated to slow the spread of coronavirus. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories . In the last few weeks, thousands of people have been gathering across European cities and several US states to protest lockdown restrictions that have put in place due to the coronavirus pandemic. No place, however, has seen larger protests than Germany. For nine consecutive weekends, the country has watched thousands of people protest lockdown measures in cities including Berlin, Munich, Stuttgart, Cologne, and Frankfurt, according to the Guardian.

Here are five things in technology that happened this past week and how they affect your business. Did you miss them?

In a recent blog post, the Microsoft founder offers a useful tip for being intentional about your time. Right now, that's more important than ever.

Arjun Kharpal / CNBC : Report: Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are among American tech companies providing web services to blacklisted Chinese surveillance firms like Dahua, Hikvision — - Amazon, Microsoft and Google are among a number of American firms that are providing various web services to blacklisted Chinese surveillance firms, a new report claims.

American behemoths such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft are providing web services to Chinese companies included in the infamous US Entity List, according to UK-based tech research firm Top10VPN. Read Full Article at RT.com

Here's 5 Reasons Why Gold Miners Have Massive Outperformance In The Tank Tyler Durden Sat, 05/16/2020 - 20:30 Authored by Bryce Coward via Knowledge Leaders Capital blog, As I write this note on a dreary Friday afternoon from Boulder, CO, I am reminded of my town’s origin. Its first non-native settlers established the town 1858 as a base camp for gold and silver miners. Nestled literally at the foot of the Rockies, its location was ideal for supplying the Colorado mining boom at that time and by 1871 a railroad had been built to connect Denver, Golden, Boulder and the mining operations directly to the West of Boulder. One such mining operation was in what is still known as Gold Hill, which I highly recommend visiting for a live music and BBQ event the next time you are in Colorado (COVID permitting). Today we may be in the early days of a different kind of gold boom. This time the boom isn’t because there are new gold reserves to be dug out of the ground. Rather, the steady supply of gold compared to the extraordinary growth of new money requires that the dollar value of the former must rise to keep parity with the latter.

Washington, May 16 (IANS) The US government is reportedly preparing to sue Google for its anti-market ad practices where it allegedly monopolized online ads. The Justice Department and a group of state attorneys general are likely to file antitrust lawsuits against Alphabet-owned Google, according to a Wall Street Journal report on Friday that cited people familiar with the matter. The Justice Department is moving toward bringing a case as soon as this summer. "Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican is likely to file a case, probably in the fall," according to the report. On a call with the media, Paxton said the primary focus of the investigation was the broad reach of Google's online advertising network. "We think Google has 7,000 data points on just about every human being alive. They control the buy-side (of online advertising), the sell-side and the market which we are concerned gives them way too much power," Paxton was quoted as saying. In a statement to The Verge, Google said: "We continue to engage with the ongoing investigations led by the Department of Justice and Attorney General Paxton and we don't have any updates or comments on speculation".

On Thursday, Red Hat and Amazon Web Services announced an extended partnership that makes it easier for customers to use and pay for Red Hat's popular Kubernetes-based service on Amazon's cloud. This is one of the first major moves under IBM's new CEO Arvind Krishna, but Red Hat says that it's another sign of its independence from Big Blue — IBM itself didn't drive the collaboration. IBM has its own cloud service, but Red Hat's Kubernetes service also now runs on AWS and Microsoft Azure. Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories . Not too long ago, IBM positioned itself as a competitor to Amazon Web Services, the retailer's dominant cloud computing platform. A new team-up between Amazon and IBM's newly-acquired Red Hat subsidiary shows that things may be changing. On Thursday, Red Hat and Amazon Web Services announced an extension of their existing partnership to deliver a version of OpenShift, a key Red Hat product, on Amazon Web Services. OpenShift is used to help developers write code once, that can then run across multiple cloud providers or data centers with minimal change to the code.

Brunner has the ability to invest all over the world, and its biggest exposure is to the US where the tech giants are based. Its largest holdings include Microsoft and Swiss medical group Roche.

Google Shares Tumble On Reports Of Imminent Antitrust Lawsuit Tyler Durden Fri, 05/15/2020 - 16:30 While bulls had comforted themselves that amid a "work from home" pandemic lockdown, any regulatory actions against the mega-tech firms would likely be put on hold, it appears that is not the fact. The Wall Street Journal reports that both the Justice Department and a group of state attorneys general are likely to file antitrust lawsuits against Alphabet's Google - and are well into planning for litigation. According to people familiar with the matter, The Justice Department is moving toward bringing a case as soon as this summer. The timeline confirms AG Barr's previous comments in March that he wanted the Justice Department to make a final call this summer. “I’m hoping that we bring it to fruition early summer,” Mr. Barr said at the time. “And by fruition I mean, decision time.” Much of the states’ investigation has focused on Google’s online advertising business . Mr. Paxton, Texas AG, said the pandemic was not slowing the states’ efforts. “We’ve issued [civil subpoenas] to Google and impacted third parties.