Microsoft news – Page 118

Posted on April 14, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Microsoft makes AccountGuard service available at no cost to protect healthcare and human rights organizations from cyberattacks

We’re deeply concerned about cyberattacks impacting workers on the front lines of the COVID-19 fight. News reports have shown recent criminal or nation-state attacks targeting Brno University Hospital in the Czech Republic, Paris’ hospital system, the computer systems of Spain’s hospitals, hospitals in Thailand, medical clinics in the U.S. state of Texas, a healthcare agency in the U.S. state of Illinois and even international bodies such as the World Health Organization. Our teams at Microsoft have also detected and responded to attacks targeting the healthcare sector in many countries, and we know they are coming from criminals and multiple nation-states. In addition, our threat intelligence teams have identified nation-state attacks against human rights organizations around the world for some time, both prior to and during the COVID-19 pandemic.

That’s why, starting today, we’re making our AccountGuard threat notification service available at no cost to healthcare providers on the front lines as well as human rights and humanitarian organizations around the world. Healthcare organizations can sign up here, and human rights and humanitarian organizations can sign up here.

Every patient deserves the best possible healthcare treatment, and we all need to thank and applaud the truly heroic work by those risking their own health to help those who are sick. Their work is challenging enough but is being made more difficult by cyberattacks, now or in the future. Some attacks, such as the one on Brno University Hospital, have resulted in delays in COVID-19 testing, new patients being turned away and treatments being postponed. Others, such as the attack in Illinois, have held up access to critical COVID-19-related healthcare guidance.

Nearly all these attacks have two things in common: a person and email. An attacker will often disguise malicious content as a message from a health authority or medical equipment provider. These emails sent to work or home inboxes seek to obtain the person’s credentials and often contain documents or links that will infect a computer and spread the infection through a network, enabling attackers to control it. In some cases, attackers could be looking for COVID-19-related intelligence, or to disrupt the provision of desperately needed care or supplies. With today’s announcement, we are seeking to notify customers when we see attacks and provide guidance to help.

Microsoft AccountGuard, which we first offered to political campaigns through our Defending Democracy Program, monitors nation-state threat actors targeting enterprise mailboxes and the personal email accounts of employees or volunteers who opt in. This gives our threat intelligence teams a broad view of the avenues attackers typically use. When we see such activity targeting an organization enrolled in AccountGuard, we notify them immediately so they can take steps to stop an attack or root out the attacker. AccountGuard has previously been available to political campaigns, parties, members of the U.S. Congress and democracy-focused non-profits. Nearly 100,000 email accounts in 29 countries are enrolled in AccountGuard and we’ve made 1,450 threat notifications to those participating.

Through today’s announcement, we’re making AccountGuard available to healthcare providers including hospitals, care facilities, clinics, labs and clinicians providing front line services as well as pharmaceutical, life sciences and medical devices companies that are researching, developing and manufacturing COVID-19-related treatments. Our notifications will help these organizations defend against nation-state attacks, and our AccountGuard advice and training support will help them harden their defenses against all forms of cyberattacks. AccountGuard for Healthcare will be available until the COVID-19 pandemic subsides.

In addition to making AccountGuard available to those working directly in the healthcare field, another important part of today’s announcement is the availability of AccountGuard for worldwide human rights and humanitarian organizations. Today, nearly every human rights or humanitarian organization is focused on protecting the rights of people impacted by COVID-19 whether it’s supporting hospitals in conflict zones, amplifying the voices of medical professionals, helping to ensure elections are conducted safely in new ways or helping children who are out of school. In many instances, nation-states and cyber criminals use attacks to gain intelligence on these organizations and the people who these groups protect, or to disrupt their work.

While cybersecurity threats are not new to human rights defenders, these groups have been increasingly under attack, even before the pandemic arose. In the past year, the Microsoft Threat Intelligence Center, or MSTIC, has tracked five separate nation-state activity groups that have attempted nearly nine hundred times to target or compromise hundreds of accounts belonging to employees of nine prominent human rights organizations around the world. Protecting these organizations has never been more important.

Leading human rights and humanitarian organizations including Amnesty International, CyberPeace Institute, Freedom House, Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights have already registered for our AccountGuard threat notification service through an initial pilot.

Both AccountGuard for Healthcare and AccountGuard for Human Rights Organizations will initially be available to organizations in the 29 countries where we already offer AccountGuard, subject to review of local laws and regulations, and we will be adding new countries based on need and local law. AccountGuard is available to organizations using Office 365 for business email and extends additional security to the personal accounts of their front line workers who use Microsoft’s consumer email services such as Outlook.com and Hotmail.

Whether you’re a front line worker or not, it’s always important to make sure you trust the sender of an email before you open it, that you look out for misspellings or slight inaccuracies in emails that may offer clues of an untrustworthy message, and that you know you trust a URL before you click on it. We’ve published more on protecting yourself from COVID-19-related phishing attacks here. Today’s news is in addition to the work we’ve already announced to track and prevent cyberthreats targeting healthcare organizations and our announcement yesterday on providing non-profits working on the COVID-19 response with greater access to technology.

Posted on April 14, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Nothing can stop a team: Microsoft 365 CVP Jared Spataro on videos debuting today

“Nothing can stop a team.” If you said that to me a few months back, I would have probably thought: Yes. Teamwork is powerful. At Microsoft we’re big believers in the power of teams, and we understand that successful teamwork today requires so much more than just connecting during meetings or over chat. It’s about sharing crucial knowledge quickly to keep work moving forward while also keeping everyone up to speed. We built Microsoft Teams as a place where customers could call, meet, chat, and collaborate all in one place—so that teams always have the critical context they need to work together, even when they need to work apart.

Fast-forward to a world of remote everything. Teachers connecting with students in virtual classrooms. Doctors and nurses taking essential consultations online. Factory-floor managers pivoting to produce much-needed medical supplies. And they’re using Teams to do it. We have watched as millions of you lean into, and build upon, the Teams technology. So now, at this extraordinary inflection point in human history, when I hear the words “nothing can stop a team,” I think: Wow, yes. What a profound and moving truth. And thanks to our customers, we get to see that truth play out every day.

Today, we are debuting a series of stories from customers who embody the spirit of unstoppable teams. This first video is unlike any other we’ve created. It had no director. No crew. No just-right lighting or fancy mics. It’s just real people, connecting over real Teams meetings and calls, to share the impactful work they’ve been doing since they’ve had to work apart. For me, their stories capture the essence of why Microsoft exists in the first place: to empower every individual and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As a platform and tools company, we’re here to help educators and healthcare professionals connect with students and patients from anywhere, to help multinationals and small businesses stay productive, and to help people everywhere keep reaching higher—even in difficult times.

A bit more about the organizations we featured:

Founded in 1088, the University of Bologna is the oldest university in the western world. And innovation is at the heart of their continued success over the centuries. “Unibo,” as insiders call it, first reached out to Microsoft at the end of February to ask for support in bringing their classes online to help create learning continuity for the students. In its first week, the university went live with 50 percent of the classes, and by the second week they were at 100 percent. They now reach 87,000 students with more than 3,600 courses online, with positive feedback from IT, faculty, and the students. The school reports that the response was extraordinary, with students and teachers turning to social media to spread the news. As one professor put it on Twitter: “This was big.”
The Metropolitan Police Service is running its London COVID-19 technology response on Teams. Across the organization, from uniform police patrol officers to forensic teams, up through command teams and across specialists and operational support, the Metropolitan Police Service is now “living on Teams” to keep each other connected and running smoothly so it can keep London safe.
St. Luke’s University Health Network serves approximately 1 million people across 10 counties in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. In a matter of weeks, they transformed the way they work and deliver patient care through Teams and since April 1 have scheduled over 17,000 patient virtual visits. This allowed them to continue critical outpatient visits while protecting both patients and physicians from COVID-19 exposure and preserving valuable resources like masks and gloves. Tablets have also been installed in patient rooms so providers could engage with infected patients via Teams, minimizing exposure while still allowing for face-to-face connections between patients and caregivers.
In response to COVID-19 L’Oréal quickly adapted a plant in France to produce hand sanitizer and then expanded the effort to 28 of its factories across the globe. Teams allowed for this to happen rapidly with efficient and effective coordination and communication. L’Oréal has started to donate thousands of liters of hand sanitizer to hospitals, pharmacies, care personnel staff, and retailers’ staff around the world who need it to operate. “Teams technology made it possible to work remotely in all continuity to implement quickly our new priorities,” added Barbara Lavernos, EVP Technologies and Operations.

Hearing these customers’ stories, I am blown away by the sheer strength of our human will to connect and keep work moving. They come from different countries and very different industries, but together they represent millions of people around the world who are discovering that nothing can stop a team. At Microsoft, we are committed to building the tools that help keep them working together, through the COVID-19 crisis and beyond.

Posted on April 13, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Microsoft commits more tech and cloud support for nonprofits on the frontline of COVID-19

Every day, communities around the world are indebted to critical care and first response nonprofits playing an incredibly important role in supporting and delivering vital services. The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a spotlight on these community heroes as their employees and volunteers have gone beyond the call of duty to sacrifice their own well-being for all of us. At Microsoft, we’ve heard countless stories of nonprofits transitioning to a remote working environment while continuing their services, such as helping at-risk children and families during the crisis.

Two and half years ago, we launched Tech for Social Impact within Microsoft Philanthropies to make world-class cloud technology accessible and affordable for nonprofits to drive even greater impact. Today, we’re building on our long-standing support to the nonprofit sector by committing $35 million to double our Microsoft Azure credits, increase our Windows benefits and add new pro bono services to help critical care and first response nonprofits in their efforts to combat COVID-19. This will help free up scarce resources, support remote work and training, and enable organizations to securely utilize data analysis in their COVID-19 response. While we have temporarily placed limits in some regions on free Azure offers to prioritize existing customers, Microsoft is committed to serve and enable first responders with the technology and resources they need in this critical time.

The commitment specifics:

Eligibility: 

This offer is prioritized for critical care and first response nonprofits, limited to: health support, human services, public safety, food and nutrition, housing support and COVID-19 research organizations. It is active between now and June 30, 2020, for eligible nonprofits.

Benefits:

Double the Azure credit for specified nonprofits from $3,500 to $7,000 to be used within 12 months
To support Window Virtual Desktop scenarios we are making 100 licenses of Windows Upgrade available through our TechSoup donation offer and coupling that with a Windows Enterprise E3 trial for up to 100 seats for six months.  This will provide the base operating system licenses to take advantage of all the Windows Virtual Desktop capabilities for mid-size organizations
To help organizations rapidly deploy we are setting up three new remote services free of charge:

o Azure Onboarding Concierge: To help organizations set up their Azure credit subscription, understand administrator roles, cost management and governance best practices

o Windows Virtual Desktop Help Desk: To support organizations with technical questions during their deployment of Windows Virtual Desktop, and will engage organizations with a partner or FastTrack for long–term extended support to ensure an efficient and effective deployment

o Microsoft Community Training (MCT) Concierge: Microsoft Community Training supports personalized learning for a large-scale mobile-based community. This service provides an overview of available content and assists with configuration and deployment

Getting Started:

Existing eligible organizations:  See these benefits in the Microsoft Nonprofit Portal by clicking the COVID-19 response offer and begin provisioning
New eligible organizations: Start by registering through the Microsoft Nonprofit Portal by clicking “get started” to begin the nonprofit validation process and, once approved as an eligible nonprofit that meets the first response and critical care requirements, the Microsoft nonprofit portal will be provisioned with the COVID-19 response offer
Additional details: See our FAQ guide

We’ve heard from many organizations responding to COVID-19 of the need to organize and drive actionable insights from their data. To support this, we are announcing the Nonprofit Data Warehouse Quickstart available for all nonprofits, which helps organizations integrate disparate data sources into a single data warehouse and visualize the data via PowerBI. With this tool, organizations can leverage the power of data to determine the most efficient use of resources and more effectively support communities on the ground in this challenging climate.

This Microsoft Philanthropies announcement, alongside our AI for Health focus, is part of Microsoft’s larger commitment toward combating COVID-19, as we are working to support remote education and empower students around the world, enabling businesses to work from home, securing needed medical supplies and supporting local communities. Today’s news builds on our current offers for all nonprofits and we recommend reviewing our COVID-19 Resource Guide for Nonprofits for additional background information.

We deeply appreciate the heroic work of nonprofits across the globe and remain steadfast in our efforts to provide them with the resources to help us overcome COVID-19.

Posted on April 13, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

CMO Chris Capossela: Taking a people-first response to COVID-19

Every one of us has experienced an upheaval in how we operate day-to-day the past few weeks. Some moments are tough. Others pull at your heart. But within all of that, people have shown they can adapt, grow, and learn together. My team at Microsoft, Marketing and Consumer Business (MCB), has been working around the clock to answer questions and provide guidance and support during a very uncertain time. I wanted to share what we’ve learned over the past month from our employees, customers, and our partners.

We’re building connections—in a time when we’re practicing social distancing.

A group of people on a Microsoft Teams call. Credit Helen Wilson.

Right now, people around the world rely on digital tools that enable collaboration, creation, and connection. Whether people are getting together for remote work or distance learning, a happy hour with old friends or a family game night, we’ve seen Microsoft Teams become an essential tool. Teams is a reliable, secure, and accessible platform that brings together video conferencing, file sharing, and so much more into a central hub for teamwork. Coupled with across-the-board support, Teams has quickly become the tool businesses, governments, and educators (including the world’s oldest university) choose.

We’re providing critical solutions for healthcare organizations on the front lines. St. Luke’s University Health Network in Pennsylvania is using Teams to video chat with patients most vulnerable to COVID-19. And when a hospital in Shanghai needed a communications tool, we got it up and running in days.

When an elementary school needed to stream its graduation ceremony, we helped them coordinate everything in less than a week. From supporting big moments like these to providing digital, industry-specific training, we try to anticipate people’s needs and help them navigate our products.

One thing I’ve loved seeing is how Teams encourages people to dream bigger and try new things, from graduations to global wine tastings. Despite all that’s happening around us, people continue to adapt, and what they come up with can surprise and inspire us all.

We’re thinking creatively about how to support our employees and our customers.

When we made the tough decision to temporarily close our Microsoft Store locations, we offered our store associates an entirely optional opportunity to work from home—and even though they didn’t need to do it, nearly 80% raised their hand. Moments like these leave me in awe because it speaks volumes to the kind of people that make up Microsoft. These are people who say “yes” because they see the value in what we’re doing together and believe that we each can play an important role in helping others.

True to form, our associates have exceeded our expectations. Every day, they bring their skills and knowledge to support customers, from enterprise to education, with energy and enthusiasm. They’re leveraging their talents in new and interesting ways—in just one month, they’ve trained 65,000 people, addressed hundreds of support questions, assisted with numerous outbound sales calls, and conducted virtual meetings to demonstrate tech. This has enabled us to keep our company moving forward, empower our employees, and respond to increased customer demands—a win-win-win!

We’re innovating to support customers, partners, and the changing landscape.

Behind the scenes look at a Microsoft virtual event recording. Credit Bob Bejan.

Once we realized that people around the world would need to shift to virtual events, our production teams quickly mobilized to provide the support needed to make those digital transformations. We’ve developed a scalable framework, and we’re sharing best practices we learned along the way, working with our customers to reimagine what’s possible and create successful solutions and experiences for all. For example, when Nuance Communications needed to pivot its global R&D conference to virtual-only, we helped make that happen—helping them save money, decrease the event’s overall carbon footprint, and more importantly enabled them to keep people excited. We’re also putting these learnings into action within Microsoft as we look to pivot all future events in the next fiscal year to digital-first experiences.

Moving forward, we remain committed to providing spaces where connections are formed, innovation is accelerated, and new paths are forged with our customers and partners.

We’re doing our part to support our communities.

We’ve partnered with The Seattle Foundation, United Way King County (UWKC), and other businesses to develop the COVID-19 Response Fund. We’ve donated medical supplies and meals. We’ve encouraged a culture of giving. But to address the severity of this pandemic, we know it’s going to take much more—and it’s going to take everyone.

That’s why we recently launched Give with Bing, a new way to support the causes people care about by simply searching with Bing. All a user needs to do is switch on “Give Mode” to join Microsoft Rewards, and their searches will earn points that are automatically donated to a nonprofit of their choosing. It’s an easy way to give back and raise money for vulnerable communities.

Microsoft employees are also mobilizing within their communities, putting into action the mission and values that underscore all we do. Follow #MicrosoftTogether on Twitter and LinkedIn and help me celebrate the work our teams are leading, from gathering food donations, raising money, and bringing forward innovative and inclusive design ideas.

A tweeted photo of Microsoft employees donating food

The reality is that we’re not sure what’s to come. What we do know is that we’re in this together. People and organizations across communities are coming together in new ways, going above and beyond what’s expected. Take UWKC—not only have they partnered with us, the team has also established a COVID-19 Community Relief Fund designed to further fill gaps to ensure people can access essential items and housing assistance during this time.

I’m humbled by the work people are doing within and beyond Microsoft to address this pandemic. As the weeks go on, I hope we can continue this momentum and move closer toward a solution.

Posted on April 13, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

CVP Gavriella Schuster announces update to Microsoft partner ecosystem

Historically around this time of the year, I like to share an update on the state of the partner ecosystem from Microsoft’s One Commercial Partner (OCP) organization. Given the impact and magnitude of the COVID-19 situation, I think now more than ever, it’s important to continue to focus on our path forward. In this vein, you may have seen the information I recently shared on resources and program updates to specifically help partners navigate through the COVID-19 world we are all now operating in.

The Microsoft partner community is a powerful ecosystem. For decades, it has been and continues to be at the center of how we bring technologies and business transformation to customers in markets around the world. Today, Microsoft partners are playing a critical role helping companies everywhere adjust to a new way of working. The remote-work, business continuity solutions and services they’re delivering during this global pandemic will be the foundation of workplace productivity moving forward.

With this in mind, I’d like to share some updates on where we’re going and what we’re doing to help our partners continue to make more possible in the months and years to come.

Updates

We support partners in several ways through our extensive technology portfolio, global reach, training and skill investments, but we are continuing to evolve how we work together in order to maximize the value of their partnership with Microsoft. Here are some of the things we’re working on:

Program updates:

Increased learning opportunities: We’re giving partners increased access to training, support and go-to-market services.

Focus on differentiated value: Partners will have more options to differentiate their skills and expertise to customers with new competencies, advanced specializations and through the Azure Expert MSP Program.

Rewarding customer success: Partners are increasingly earning rewards for driving strong results and positive outcomes for their customers, with reward models specifically designed to help build and accelerate growth.

Enhanced tools:

Partner Center: Partners are onboarding this year to Partner Center, which provides a centralized experience for partners and a single place to manage their relationship with Microsoft, their customers and other partners. Streamlining a number of processes into one place makes it easier for partners to do business with Microsoft.

On-demand support: We’re working on new ways to give partners quicker and easier access to Microsoft support to help them better solve challenges and meet customer needs.

Evolved co-selling programs: To further support our commitment to shared growth and profitability within ecosystem, partners can access co-selling programs so they can accept and share referrals from Microsoft (first-party solutions) and other partners (third-party solutions).

These capabilities are just the beginning. They only scratch the surface, as we continue to prioritize investments that support new opportunities to position our partners for growth in the future.

Investment strategy

Fueled by the market opportunities we see through tech intensity, digital transformation, and the cloud, we need to continue evolving in order to meet emerging customer needs and expectations. We’re committed to investing in and delivering what partners need to innovate, grow their businesses and deliver on the promise of digital transformation for customers across organizations and industries.

As we look ahead, here are just a few of the areas for partner opportunity we see:

Teams for modern business: Now more than ever, the ability to connect remotely is vital, whether that be with coworkers, friends or family. Partners have an opportunity to support activation and usage for their customers. We’re seeing adoption and change management partners focus on extensions to further customize to their customers’ business needs.

Tech intensity: Partners have an increasing number of ways they can help meet customers’ emerging needs and expectations. One is supporting their movement toward tech intensity, as organizations move past adopting the latest technologies and develop their own digital capabilities.

Azure migration: The latest versions of Windows Server, SQL Server and Windows Virtual Desktop offer tremendous opportunity for businesses to secure and modernize their workloads. Our partners are in a unique position to help customers migrate to the cloud and unlock the benefits of Azure to transform workloads with the latest data and AI capabilities.

Security: While the cloud has opened the door for a myriad of possibilities, it has also made security a top priority for customers. Security is engineered into our products, but we are counting on partners to help secure the customer’s environment from endpoint to datacenter.

New offerings

To ensure our partners have the resources and support necessary to grow their businesses, we are consistently listening to feedback and ideas. This helps inform the investments we’re making and the ways we’re evolving to drive even greater value.

Below are two offerings we’ve recently launched:

New advanced specialization: Competencies remain important for all partners, but advanced specializations provide the opportunity to further highlight technical scenarios where partners are delivering high quality services and differentiate themselves from the competition. At Inspire 2019, we unveiled five new specializations, and recently added one more to the mix on April 7. The Adoption and Change Management Advanced Specialization allows partners to showcase proven expertise in Adoption and Change Management to drive usage of Microsoft Teams, SharePoint and Yammer.

New Teams Practice Development Playbook: The Teams Practice Development Playbook, launched on April 6, is designed to help partners understand the growth opportunity that Microsoft Teams provides to them as well as to their customers. Topics covered include which areas of Teams to focus on, how to cross-sell, suggestions for approaching governance, and an overview of add-ons and customizations.

In addition, we’re proud that another one of our partners – Wipro Limited, a leading global information technology consulting and business process company – recently launched a dedicated Microsoft Business Unit (MBU). Wipro’s new business unit will focus on the development and evangelization of solutions leveraging Microsoft’s enterprise cloud services. Earlier this year, Tata Consultancy Services and HCL announced their own MBUs.

It’s exciting to see three new MBUs since the start of the fiscal year as it continues to affirm the benefits our partners see when they can dive deep with our solutions.

Global partner impact

We know that partners help make more possible. That sentiment rings especially true during the unprecedented times we’re operating in today. Every day I hear stories of partners stepping up to address scientific and business continuity needs related to COVID-19. Here are just a few:

Rescale: Researchers, engineers and scientists are in a race against time, running countless computer simulations to develop test kits and a vaccine. Unfortunately, researchers often face barriers to running large-scale simulations. Rescale, a leader in enterprise big compute, has joined forces with Microsoft Azure and other tech companies to create a new initiative entitled “Tech vs COVID” that immediately offers high performance computing (HPC) resources at no cost to teams working to develop test kits and vaccines for COVID-19.

BlueYonder: COVID-19 is having an enormous impact on global supply chain. There is high demand for medical equipment and supplies, and a shortage of medical parts and products. Through real-time visibility, AI and machine learning, BlueYonder’s data science team is feeding data into its AI-driven Luminate Control Tower platform to help visualize and predict current and future impacts of the coronavirus. The insight is helping governments and companies have better inventory visibility, predict shortages and adapt to the dynamic supply chain challenges.

Velrada: Specially-trained Red Cross volunteers are calling Australians who are currently self-isolating, providing psychological first aid support during the COVID-19 pandemic. Working with Microsoft partner Velrada and using Dynamics 365 and Power BI, the Red Cross has deployed an easy-to-use platform that lets volunteers work from home as they make the calls and check on an individual’s well-being.

These incredible stories are a testament to the impact our partners have in “normal” times and extraordinary times like we’re experiencing today. Satya recently noted that, “No one company is going to solve a challenge like this alone…Our unique role as a platform and tools provider allows us to connect the dots, bring together an ecosystem of partners, and enable organizations of all sizes to build the digital capability required to address these challenges.”

Echoing his sentiment above, as we navigate this unpredictable environment together, I want to assure our partners that Microsoft is committed to working to safeguard business continuity and ensure our ecosystem is set up to reach its full potential. We look forward to continuing to evolve our relationship with all of our partners in the months and years to come.

Posted on April 13, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott: What we’ll need to survive, and thrive, amid economic uncertainty

To make ends meet, my dad was a real hustler. He had been a tall, good-looking center for the high school basketball team, had lots of girlfriends, and was super popular. But like so many others he was drafted into the Vietnam War and returned depressed, a condition that only increased as he grew older.

At first, he worked with his father, my grandfather, in the construction business. But working for someone else wasn’t for him, so he tried his hand as an entrepreneur—a gas station and convenience store, a trucking company, and later a variety of construction companies. Even though my dad was physically imposing—six feet two, north of three hundred pounds, and incredibly strong from a lifetime playing sports and doing hard labor—he really excelled at the more intellectual side of business. He could bid on a job with shocking speed and accuracy, even before computers were accessible to small-business managers. Even so, those business ventures didn’t work out, and we went bankrupt—twice.

To this day, I can remember packing up all our belongings, loading them into the back of a crappy blue Ford Granada, and driving away from the house my father had built with his own hands but could no longer afford. And even now, despite the success I’ve been fortunate to have in the tech industry, debt makes me anxious; I am loath to take any on, even when financial advisers tell me it would be advantageous to do so. What I understand now is that the drama surrounding our family went much further and much deeper.

Reprogramming the American Dream: From Rural America to Silicon Valley―Making AI Serve Us All

We were hardly alone. The small town where we lived — Gladys, Virginia — was starting to die economically caught in the crosshairs of technological and political turmoil. I can remember when everyone had jobs, and nearby downtown Brookneal, Virginia was so busy that there were stoplights, department stores, a local paper full of news. But one by one the textile mills began to close as jobs and factories moved to where labor was cheaper. The big buildings that once bustled with textile workers sat empty. Demand for tobacco dwindled, and the nearby auctions where farmers brought their crop to sell were shuttered. The big furniture plants were the last to close as manufacturing gradually moved overseas.

Downtown just disappeared. The local businesses and even the newspaper became shadows of their former selves.

What I remember most, though, and still feel deeply, is the community. People cared about each other. No matter our economic situation, we gave vegetables to others from our garden. My dad stacked firewood for the old church ladies so they would have fuel to heat their homes in the winter. We helped where we could, and folks helped us in return. There was genuine compassion, and I like to think I’ve carried that with me as an engineer, a manager, and the cofounder with my wife of a family foundation. Despite the hard times, if you were paying close attention— and I was—there were still a few good jobs around. The industrial engineer who manages the plant and the back-office manager, for example. There were still jobs for those with the education and training to perform the most valuable tasks.

In a small Southern town like Gladys, I was considered kind of weird because I’d rather read the World Book Encyclopedia or sit around and contemplate the meaning of infinity. It was a religious town, yet I was always asking in Sunday school about dinosaurs in the Garden of Eden. I was a ball of skepticism and a constant agitator for proof. Most of the answers that I got from the adults to my (undoubtedly irritating) questions were terribly unsatisfying. Even at a young age, I had an abiding faith in the scientific method, in conclusions and theories based on evidence and reproducible experiments. This came naturally to me, but it also was nurtured in a tiny workshop in central Virginia.

Today, when I read about the plight of blue-collar and rural workers, I can’t help but think about Shorty Tibbs, my grandfather. It was awesome being the grandson of Shorty Tibbs because everyone in Campbell County seemed to know and care about him, love that improbably extended to me when strangers learned who I was. His real name was Elwood, but his shipmates during World War II nicknamed him for his height, and it stuck. He had a flair for the dramatic. His ship was hit by a Japanese kamikaze fighter plane, which narrowly missed the engine room belowdecks where he was on duty. He returned from the war to work on the family farm and lost his hand in a terrible accident involving a mechanical corn harvester.

Despite the setback, Shorty could fix anything, so he decided to start a small appliance repair shop in Brookneal, just down the road from our house in Gladys. Walking into that dirty, dusty shop as a kid was what I imagined walking into heaven must be like. From the old pinewood floors to the rafters high above were piled old, broken sewing machines, dishwashers, washing machines, and all manner of electronic and mechanical gadgets and widgets in various states of disrepair. One of my favorites among many odd antiques was a foot-powered sewing machine, fully functional but of no practical use by the 1970s, like something from the Island of Misfit Toys.

I must have inherited my grandfather’s curiosity because his shop was one of the most magical places for me to visit. When we designed our home in California years later, I had the architects reclaim some oak floorboards from a nearby barn to remind me of my grandfather’s shop. I used to watch my grandfather when he worked, not realizing then that his approach was very much that of an engineer or scientist. He would examine a broken piece of consumer technology like a toaster or blender and, through a process of elimination, begin to diagnose what was still functioning and what was broken. Like a computer scientist, he used abstraction to suppress the more complex details that were not relevant to the problem he was addressing. There was no need to work inside the electric motor or heating element, for example, if the problem was one level above that.

A broken toaster or blender was just a black box—completely opaque—to the stymied customer who brought it to my grandfather, but for him it was a puzzle to be solved. He could take the problem all the way down through the layers of complexity to bare metal if he had to. For him there was no abstraction boundary. He would just punch through it. There were always new components and functionality to be discovered. He was using the scientific method, an empirical approach, and that inspired me. If he were alive today, I have no doubt that he would fix the advanced hardware and software that now comes in gadgets of every kind. If he didn’t understand something, he’d soon master it after watching a few YouTube videos, and employ his dogged persistence. As inspiring as his engineering feats were, today I am equally enthralled by the larger lessons he taught me. At one level, he showed me the value of making things work, converting something that had been useless into something that was made useful again. Like everyone in our community, he worked incredibly hard. He was self-reliant, and believed in taking care of people. He made the life he wanted, and always did right by his family and neighbors. To me, this is a very American story. Whether you swing a hammer for a living, repair appliances, or come to this country looking for opportunity, these values are part of our American dream.

Perhaps the biggest lesson I learned from my grandfather, and the greatest gift that he gave me, was his approach to problem solving. He was unflappably confident that he could figure things out, that each exploration of a problem, no matter how frustrating, helped him come to a better understanding of himself and his relationship with the world around him, and that human need itself is what makes a problem worth solving. It’s this understanding of problem solving and my own humanity that has never once made me wonder what my role is in a world with increasingly capable AI.

I’m a human with curiosity about the fascinating canvas of nature and people and our complex creations, with compassion for the problems other humans have, and with a desire to help solve them. To varying extents, this is something we all share.

AI is a useful tool for exploring that curiosity and for solving human problems. Neither it, nor anything else, will ever take away that curiosity and compassion. There are a lot more people with hidden and untapped technical skills like Shorty Tibbs out there in job-deprived rural America and the Rust Belt.

Kevin Scott is the author of “Reprogramming the American Dream: From Rural America to Silicon Valley―Making AI Serve Us All,” from which this essay has been adapted.

Posted on April 13, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

Launch trailer debuts for Gears Tactics, coming April 28 and now available for pre-load on PC

Summary

Gears Tactics Launch trailer – featuring all-new gameplay from the fast-paced, turn-based strategy game – debuted today.
Gears Tactics is now available for pre-load for Xbox Game Pass for PC (Beta), Windows 10 PC, and Steam ahead of its April 28 launch.
The Xbox One version is in development and will arrive later this year.

We’re two weeks away from Gears Tactics bringing the fast pace, visceral action and trademark executions of the Gears franchise to the turn-based strategy genre on PC., To ensure you and your squad are ready to get boots on the ground and keep the Locust underground, we’re bringing you an action-packed Gears Tactics trailer that introduces the game’s heroes, customizable items and weapons, five unique character classes, and a tease of the enemy onslaught that awaits. The aggressive gameplay of Gears infused into the turn-based strategy genre will have you rethink your approach for each unique action – three per turn – as Gears Tactics encourages freedom of movement, fluidity in character skillsets and features unprecedented action and boss battles.

Gears Tactics is now available for pre-load for Xbox Game Pass for PC (Beta), Windows 10, and Steam ahead of its April 28 launch for the PC. Pre-order Gears Tactics or play with Xbox Game Pass for PC (Beta) before May 4 to receive the Thrashball Cole Character Pack which includes Augustus Cole as a recruit and the Thrashball Armor Set, complete with rare abilities.

For more about the game, check out Five Things You Need to Know about Gears Tactics, how Microsoft and Intel optimized Gears Tactics for PC as well as ongoing developer blog posts at gearstactics.com.

Series fans will want to check out “Gears of War: Bloodlines,” the new novel by New York Times bestselling author Jason Hough, that sets the stage for the events of Gears 5 and Gears Tactics, and the father-daughter relationship between the games’ leads, Kait and Gabe Diaz. “Gears of War: Bloodlines” is available in paperback, ebook and audiobook on April 21, 2020.

For those interested in going behind the scenes with the artists and developers, “Gears Tactics: The Art of the Game” tracks the entire development process from concept sketches to final production art. Gears Tactics: The Art of the Game is available April 28, 2020 from Titan Books.

For the latest on the Gears franchise, stay tuned to Xbox Wire and follow @GearsofWar on Twitter.

Posted on April 10, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

How Microsoft is repurposing dining resources to serve communities in need

Inside the Commons, Microsoft’s bustling hub of cafés and stores, quiet now for weeks because of COVID-19, there is a daily ritual of hope, and determination. On a recent morning, as the biggest and brightest moon of the year—the Pink Moon—disappeared behind an empty playfield, a small army of dedicated volunteers filed in to take up their posts on an otherwise deserted Redmond campus.

They’re here to lend a hand, and to do something productive in uncertain times.

A quiet Microsoft Commons in the time of COVID-19.

As so many good ideas do, this one started with a problem: How to make sure kids and families, who depend on school for daily meals, but are stranded at home, still get the sustenance they rely on?

How does Microsoft continue to support our suppliers, many of which are local, while most of the food services on campus are shuttered with the majority of employees working from home?

The answer? Repurpose some of Microsoft’s food for schools and families during this time of crisis and magnified need.

Volunteers from Dining and Eventions at Microsoft, managed by Compass Group USA, arrive to assemble lunches.

Every day, 60-65 volunteers from Microsoft’s dining and catering services arrive before dawn. They’ve devised a makeshift assembly-line system to organize and distribute the lunch components and pack them for shipment. Using the open spaces usually bustling with campus lunch-goers or reserved for meetings and conferences, they pack with care, in about three hours, 6,420 lunches for delivery.

Shouts of hello and good morning fill the otherwise vacant hallways. A camaraderie bolstered by a shared feeling of doing something useful fills up the cavernous space.

The effort is both serious—and scrappy. Last month, as closures mounted, the team had to quickly repurpose menus from more than 25 onsite cafes, with the help of Microsoft’s dietician, who herself once worked for a school district. The menu thoughtfully takes into account the needs of growing bodies (and follows the National School Lunch Program guidelines).

Two photos display the contents of the packed lunches

Lunches are carefully crafted with a nutritious balance in mind.

On this day the lunches are being prepared for local Boys and Girls Clubs and YMCA, Hopelink and Northwest Harvest. They include: a sandwich (from Molly’s in Seattle), fruit, vegetable, snack, dessert and milk.

Kris Valencia is a fixture on the scene, greeting the day’s volunteers, and organizing workflow. Valencia is the executive chef for Eventions, Microsoft’s onsite catering and event production department, managed by Compass Group USA.

Kris Valencia, executive chef for Microsoft Eventions, near the loading dock where the lunches are packaged for transport.

“Every day, people are making a lot of sacrifices, with kids at home and other struggles. If I’m going to be a leader for this program, I want to be there for my people,” he says. “They are here because they want to do something in this time of crisis. To give something back and because Microsoft has been so gracious to provide pay for associates while the cafes have been closed.”

On a recent weekday, a flyby of an empty Microsoft Redmond campus.

In March, Microsoft announced that it would continue to pay wages to its hourly workers, including 4,500 who work in Puget Sound facilities. Of that total, 1,300 are foodservice employees of Compass Group, Microsoft’s onsite foodservice partner.

“It has been truly inspiring to see how our teams have come together during this time,” says Jodi Smith Westwater, senior services manager for dining operations. “Hospitality is in our nature. It’s what we do. And it matters now more than ever. I’m so very proud of our team’s dedication and energy.”

The positive energy is palpable, and in some corners, as the morning light streams in, so does lively (and loud) dance music. People are happy for the opportunity to be productive. There’s also a persistent sentiment of gratitude.

Female volunteer in apron packing lunches

Rebecca Carney-Bravemen, a Compass Group employee, adds the milk. She typically works as a lead catering cook at Microsoft.

“It’s a pretty stressful time,” says Rebecca Carney-Bravemen. “But we still have our jobs. I wanted to do more for others who aren’t as privileged. Coming here in the morning makes me feel like I’m doing something.”

Valencia rotates the volunteers, most working three days on, and two days off. The current plan is to extend the program until the end of April, but that might change, given Washington state’s recent school closure extension.

Female volunteer packing lunches with health advisory sign visible

A Compass Group employee preps the lunch boxes. Signs displaying safety guidelines appear throughout the space.

Safety is paramount, and Compass Group has refocused its Quality Assurance team to ensure the proper protocols, including strong requirements for social distancing, are in place. Volunteers must wash hands every 25 minutes. Each station has 6-8 people to ensure everyone can stay 6 feet apart. Only two people can ride in the freight elevators at a time. Masks are available, but voluntary, for now, per guidance from the Centers for Disease Control. Each day, everyone must sign a Health Reporting Agreement, and attest to being symptom (and fever) free, to participate.

Male volunteer placing bags of chips into lunches

A catering cook with Microsoft Eventions, Chester Cullers puts the finishing touches on a line of lunches.

“School kids need these. If we weren’t here, they wouldn’t be getting lunch,” says Chester Cullers, as he fills a line of white boxes with barbecue chips. “I know how tough it is out there. A lot of people can’t be out in public.”

Soon, the boxed lunches make their way downstairs where they are packaged into bigger boxes and onto pallets and loaded into refrigerator trucks for delivery to Building 125. They’ll remain there overnight in a refrigerated space before being picked up before dawn the next day and transported to communities in need.

Female volunteer saran-wrapping shipment boxes

A Dining at Microsoft employee wraps a pallet of lunches for transport.

Even without the typical bustle of humans on what today is a very quiet Microsoft Redmond campus, the human spirit—and a quiet, but determined, ingenuity—lives on. The team has other big ideas, too, building from a continued desire to use resources wisely, to stay safe and to help others.

Published on April 10, 2020.

Words by Aimee Riordan.

Photos by Brian Smale.

Posted on April 10, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

How research can enable more effective remote work

Due to recent events, millions of office workers have needed to rapidly adjust to working from home—learning new collaboration tools and best practices, re-thinking how to stay connected with colleagues outside the office, and adapting to new social norms around meetings. Working remotely presents both technical and social challenges, and researchers at Microsoft have been working across disciplines to understand and support both aspects of this challenge for decades.

Below is just a small sample of the work researchers at Microsoft and their colleagues have produced to improve the remote work experience. For those seeking to build better remote work products and services—or for anyone who wants to be more productive at home—we hope this research can provide some guidance, insight, and inspiration.

Although these are truly challenging times, we can benefit from a strong foundation of interdisciplinary research that can help us all stay productive and connected—with the hope of emerging from this crisis better-equipped to work together.

Paying attention can be harder in remote meetings. Sean Rintel at Microsoft Research Cambridge recently published two papers that can inform the design of features to support remote participants’ attention. One paper models how we ‘see’ attention in meetings. It suggests that machine perception may help us gather, signal, and follow attention when remote. The second paper suggests that low engagement in meetings may not always be a problem. Not every meeting requires our full engagement, but until we develop technological support for more nuanced roles, it is good practice to be up front about your engagement level. Together, these papers suggest that AI supported attention personalization could make future remote meetings more inclusive and effective by helping us overcome constraints and assumptions.
One benefit to everyone attending a meeting virtually is that it can be easier to review missed content if you show up to a meeting late or have to step out for a moment. For instance, Kori Inkpen, Sasa Junuzovic, and John Tang from Microsoft Research Redmond have explored using “accelerated instant replay” (AIR) to help people catch up quickly and then jump (back) into the real-time meeting.
In a world without business travel, negotiating time zone constraints becomes even more important. John Tang at Microsoft Research Redmond and Kori Inkpen at the Microsoft Research AI Lab have catalogued strategies for mitigating time zone-related obstacles to productivity and provided guidelines to help overcome these obstacles. Tang and Inkpen also worked with Asta Roseway, Mary Czerwinski, and Paul Johns from Microsoft Research Redmond to explore novel uses of asynchronous video to support collaboration across time zones and developed two prototype systems, Time Travel Proxy and Video Threads.
Some features in Microsoft Teams were inspired by work at Microsoft Research Cambridge on utilizing multiple devices to support better presentation and collaboration over video; researchers’ participation in an internal hackathon led to close collaboration on development of the product. Their previous research into ad hoc adaptability in video calling, wireless smartphone mirroring in video calls, and shared slideware control helped enhance users’ ability to join meetings on multiple devices and use a phone as a companion device. Learn the inside story of the hackathon and product collaboration in this article on companion experiences for Microsoft Teams.

Looking forward, there will be an unprecedented opportunity for researchers to learn from the current situation to figure out not only how to manage future disruption, but also to incorporate new ways of working at home or in the office. Microsoft is committed to investing in research internally and externally to make this happen. For example, in more typical times, remote work often involves meetings with both remote and co-located colleagues. Better understanding and supporting productivity in these hybrid meetings is the subject of one of the academic projects Microsoft funds through the Microsoft Productivity Research program in collaboration with Dr. Mirjam Augstein and Dr. Thomas Neumayr at the University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria.

If you’d like to do a deeper dive into the literature on remote work, below is a selection of additional papers from Microsoft researchers on the subject.

Researchers at Microsoft have been working across disciplines to address the unique and complex challenges of meeting remotely, such as improving the quality, fidelity, and utility of meetings; addressing design issues; merging physical and virtual collaboration; and exploring the use of avatars:

“Hybrid meetings” (meetings with remote and co-located participants)

Spatialized audio and video for video calling

“Accelerated instant replay” during a video call

Avatars in remote meetings

Remotely collaborating when completing tasks in the physical world

Researchers are also addressing the challenges of remote team building by helping people maintain connections across time zones, welcome new remote team members, and e engage in shared experiences:

Working across time zones

Remote employee onboarding

Co-watching video

Long before remote work became a way of life, researchers at Microsoft exploring the social and technical aspects of collaborating remotely. Below is a selection of work on the subject dating back nearly thirty years:

Microsoft researchers have also made substantial contributions to researcher areas adjacent to remote work that are increasingly relevant in today’s context—in how remote work technologies can support family life and play. For instance:

Connecting family across distance

Remote Play

Video Communication for First Responders

Thanks to Kori Inkpen, Sean Rintel, Abi Sellen, and John Tang, who also contributed to this post.

Posted on April 9, 2020 by sick skills — Leave a comment

DIYer and TV host Trisha Hershberger’s journey through gaming keeps evolving

“I really like to tinker with my tech. Some other manufacturers don’t necessarily give you those kind of options,” she says. “Most of the games that I play are through Steam, or now the Epic Games Store as well, and that is my happy place. So I have an Xbox downstairs in my living room, but really where I’m happiest is seated in my gaming chair at my desk with my two-PC streaming set up, ready to go.”

Her path to her profession is just as distinctive as her gear.

“I never studied technology in school. I was just always an enthusiast. And again, kind of as a result of my gaming habit. And I certainly never considered that technology would be a part of my career. I went to school for entertainment,” she says. “I was a theater major in school. I knew that I liked performing. I knew that I liked being public-facing. And just never really thought about the marriage of those two things until I got out to Los Angeles and tripped and fell into YouTube, as I like to say it.”

She went to an audition that she thought was for a news journalism gig, but they started asking her what she knew about technology and video games. And as someone who had been an enthusiast from a young age, she had a lot to say.

“My favorite job is so hard to pick because I have had the opportunity to do some really cool stuff. I mean, in general, the work that I do, just getting to geek out with people about gadgets, getting to talk about PC modding and building, and getting to play and talk about video games for a living is kind of the dream job,” she says. “So almost every job that I’ve had up until this point has been the dream job.”

As someone who operates her own production company, creating content for Fandom, Caffeine, Newegg and Kingston Technology as well as her own Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and Twitch channels, she’s also a longtime advocate for women and girls and for other entrepreneurs forging their own path in a male-dominated space.

“The lesson I always try to impart to up and comers in this space is to do it because you love it. There’s a lot of hurdles to overcome for anyone in this industry — especially if you are something ‘other’ than what people are expecting in any way — sex, race, age, orientation, etc.,” Hershberger says. “If you honestly love what you do, it makes those hurdles seem smaller when you look at the big picture.”

Lead photo: Trisha Hershberger. (Photo by Alan Weissman)

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