Ai

When announcing its layoffs this year, the Redmond, Wash.-based company insisted that it was flattening its management layers, as opposed to targeting software engineers and developers at lower levels. However, the Seattle Times reported that only around 17 percent of those laid off at the Redmond campus were designated as managers. Microsoft’s cuts also come after one of its best quarters ever, with the company announcing $26 billion in profit from January through March. Its stock is up nearly 20 percent year-to-date, at a time when tech companies across the board are looking to replace certain jobs, particularly in coding and engineering, with AI. With H-1B workers are typically seen as cheaper than Americans to employ, outrage has been spreading across social media from those who oppose the visa. There is no confirmed link between Microsoft’s layoffs and its H-1B applications.

Look, the economics of this just don’t make sense and the “what trillion dollar problem will AI solve?” question takes up a lot of space in my brain. I see people talking about the limited ways in which they work with it now, and wonder what happens when the bill comes due. We wouldn’t, as a society, pay a trillion dollars to solve those problems. Not even close.

While I’d say I’m still excited to talk about how AI is improving some things that I do, and especially helps me code from time to time. Just today claude latest decided to define two const variables in the same file.. So yea..

As we go through this transformation together, be curious about AI, educate yourself, attend workshops and take trainings, use and experiment with AI whenever you can, participate in your team’s brainstorms to figure out how to invent for our customers more quickly and expansively, and how to get more done with scrappier teams. When I first started at Amazon in 1997 as an Assistant Product Manager, I worked on leaner teams that got a lot done quickly and where I could have substantial impact. We didn’t have tools resembling anything like Generative AI, but we had broad remits, high ambition, and saw the opportunity to improve (and invent) so many customer experiences. Fast forward 28 years and the most transformative technology since the Internet is here. Those who embrace this change, become conversant in AI, help us build and improve our AI capabilities internally and deliver for customers, will be well-positioned to have high impact and help us reinvent the company.

For example, customer service tasks in call centers and through online chat functions will become more AI dependent soon and other tasks not, McMillon said.

Take humanoid robot workers. Companies have recently pitched robot workers to Walmart, McMillon said on stage. Yet “until we’re serving humanoid robots and they have the ability to spend money, we’re serving people,” he said. “We are going to put people in front of people.” 

With the following procedure, we’ll be able to extract an (imperfect) image of the world as it exists in an LLM’s tangled web of internal knowledge.

The images due it justice, but essentially it asks for any given coordinate is the location land or sea. And the resulting images probably give cartographers conniptions. it both allows you compare contrast knowledge and make fun of it too?

ps reminds me of this cool site https://what3words.com and obligatory https://xkcd.com/977/

Microsoft is bringing Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4.1 AI models to its Microsoft 365 Copilot today. … Claude Sonnet 4 and Claude Opus 4.1 will also be available as model options in Copilot Studio

Well two things. 1. MSFT has long ago abandoned its MSFT first policies. I get though the sentiment of shock. but 2. for tech people the model is everything. for everyone else. its just another service. And I think companies recognize this.

The swift advancement of artificial intelligence (AI) has sparked significant concern that this new technology will replace jobs and stifle hiring. … Businesses reported a notable increase in AI use over the past year, yet very few firms reported AI-induced layoffs. Indeed, for those already employed, our results indicate AI is more likely to result in retraining than job loss … Looking ahead, however, layoffs and reductions in hiring plans due to AI use are expected to increase, especially for workers with a college degree.

Microsoft and GitHub, not to mention rivals like Google, have gone all-in on a technology that a sizable or at least vocal portion of their customers simply don’t want. And with billions in capital expenditures to recoup, they’re making it difficult to avoid.

During Microsoft’s July 30, 2025 earnings call, CEO Satya Nadella said GitHub Copilot continued to exhibit strong momentum and had reached 20 million users.

I mean 1. MSFT just flat out bought its way into the space between GitHub and VSCode (which Cursor is a fork of) and 2. its really easy to say you’ve reached 20 million users when its in your face in every single app.

The percentage of young Gen Z employees between the ages of 21 and 25 has been cut in half at technology companies over the past two years, according to recent data from compensation management software business Pave

Article indicates that average age of tech companies has risen by ~5 years and also that % of workforce under 25 has shrank. will see how things shake out. I have to admit I wonder how much of the “we don’t need ‘old’ people” crowd has changed their tune since they are now the old people (in tech).

Last month, search referrals to top U.S. travel and tourism sites tumbled 20% year over year, according to the latest data from Similarweb. E-commerce companies saw their referrals fall 9%. For news and media sites, search traffic dropped 17%. The finance, lifestyle, and food-and-drink categories all saw similar types of declines on the month.

Maybe make traditional search useful again? People are flocking to a tool that works. Shoving 10 ads in my face to find an irrelevant linke due to SEO hijacking does not cause me to shed one tear. My prediction is that more content will recede behind paywalls and only the trash will remain. Including this blog! lol.