Microsoft Management Method: Fire Humans, Fight Pollution
August 7, 2025
How Microsoft Plans to Bury its AI-Generated Waste
Here is how one big tech firm is addressing the AI sustainability quandary. Windows Central reports, “Microsoft Will Bury 4.9 Tons of ‘Manure’ in a Secretive Deal—All to Offset its AI Energy Demands that Drive Emissions Up by 168%.” We suppose this is what happens when you lay off employees and use the money for something useful. Unlike Copilot.
Writer Kevin Okemwa begins by summarizing Microsoft’s current approach to AI. Windows and Office users may be familiar with the firm’s push to wedge its AI products into every corner of the environment, whether we like it or not. Then there is the feud with former best bud OpenAI, a factor that has Microsoft eyeing a separate path. But whatever the future holds, the company must reckon with one pressing concern. Okemwa writes:
“While it has made significant headway in the AI space, the sophisticated technology also presents critical issues, including substantial carbon emissions that could potentially harm the environment and society if adequate measures aren’t in place to mitigate them. To further bolster its sustainability efforts, Microsoft recently signed a deal with Vaulted Deep (via Tom’s Hardware). It’s a dual waste management solution designed to help remove carbon from the atmosphere in a bid to protect nearby towns from contamination. Microsoft’s new deal with the waste management solution firm will help remove approximately 4.9 million metric tons of waste from manure, sewage, and agricultural byproducts for injection deep underground for the next 12 years. The firm’s carbon emission removal technique is quite unique compared to other rivals in the industry, collecting organic waste which is combined into a thick slurry and injected about 5,000 feet underground into salt caverns.”
Blech. But the process does keep the waste from being dumped aboveground, where it could release CO2 into the environment. How much will this cost? We learn:
“While it is still unclear how much this deal will cost Microsoft, Vaulted Deep currently charges $350 per ton for its carbon removal services. Simple math suggests that the deal might be worth approximately $1.7 billion.”
That is a hefty price tag. And this is not the only such deal Microsoft has made: We are told it signed a contract with AtmosClear in April to remove almost seven million metric tons of carbon emissions. The company positions such deals as evidence of its good stewardship of the planet. But we wonder—is it just an effort to keep itself from being buried in its own (literal and figurative) manure?
Cynthia Murrell, August 7, 2025
Taylorism, 996, and Motivating Employees
August 6, 2025
No AI. Just a dinobaby being a dinobaby.
No more Foosball. No more Segways in the hallways (thank heaven!). No more ping pong (Wait. Scratch that. You must have ping pong.)
Fortune Magazine reported that Silicon Valley type outfits want to be more like the workplace managed using Frederick Winslow Taylor’s management methods. (Did you know that Mr. Taylor provided the oomph for many blue chip management consulting firms? If you did not, you may be one of the people suggesting that AI will kill off the blue chip outfits. Those puppies will survive.)
“Some Silicon Valley AI Startups Are Asking Employees to Adopt China’s Outlawed 996 Work Model” reports:
Some Silicon Valley startups are embracing China’s outlawed “996” work culture, expecting employees to work 12-hour days, six days a week, in pursuit of hyper-productivity and global AI dominance.
The reason, according to the write up, is:
The rise of the controversial work culture appears to have been born out of the current efficiency squeeze in Silicon Valley. Rounds of mass layoffs and the rise of AI have put pressure and turned up the heat on tech employees who managed to keep their jobs.
My response to this assertion is that it is a convenient explanation. My view is that one can trot out the China smart, US dumb arguments, point to the holes of burning AI cash, and the political idiosyncrasies of California and the US government.
The reason is that these are factors, but Silicon Valley is starting to accept the reality that old-fashioned business methods are semi useful. The idea that employees should converge on a work location to do what is still called “work.”
What’s the cause of this change? Since hooking electrodes to a worker in a persistent employee monitoring environment is a step too far for now, going back to the precepts of Freddy are a reasonable compromise.
But those electric shocks would work quite well, don’t you agree? (Sure, China’s work environment sparked a few suicides, but the efficiency is not significantly affected.)
Stephen E Arnold, August 6, 2025
AI Productivity Factor: Do It Once, Do It Again, and Do It Never Again
August 6, 2025
This blog post is the work of an authentic dinobaby. Sorry. No smart software can help this reptilian thinker.
As a dinobaby, I avoid coding. I avoid computers. I avoid GenAI. I did not avoid “Vibe Coding Dream Turns to Nightmare As Replit Deletes Developer’s Database.”
The write up reports an interesting anecdote:
the AI chatbot began actively deceiving him [a Vibe coder]. It concealed bugs in its own code, generated fake data and reports, and even lied about the results of unit tests. The situation escalated until the chatbot ultimately deleted Lemkin’s entire database.
The write up includes a slogan for a T shirt too:
Beware of putting too much faith into AI coding
One of Replit’s “leadership” offered this comment, according to the cited write up:
Replit CEO Amjad Masad responded to Lemkin’s experience, calling the deletion of a production database “unacceptable” and acknowledging that such a failure should never have been possible. He added that the company is now refining its AI chatbot and confirmed the existence of system backups and a one-click restore function in case the AI agent makes a “mistake.”
My view is that Replit is close enough for horse shoes and maybe even good enough. Nevertheless, the idea of doing work once, then doing it again, and never doing it again on an unreliable service is likely to become a mantra.
This AI push is semi admirable, but the systems and methods are capable of big time failures. What happens when AI flies an airplane into a hospital unintentionally or as a mistake? Will the families of the injured vibe?
Stephen E Arnold, August 6, 2025
The Cheapest AI Models Reveal a Critical Vulnerability
August 6, 2025
This blog post is the work of an authentic dinobaby. Sorry. Not even smart software can help this reptilian thinker.
I read “Price Per Token,” a recent cost comparison for smart software processes. The compilation of data is interesting. The two lowest cost services using a dead simple method of Input Cost + Output Cost averaged Open AI GPT 4.1 nano and Gemini 2.- Flash. To see how the “Price Per Token” data compare, I used “LLM Pricing Calculator.” The cheapest services were OpenAI – GPT-4.1-nano and Google – Gemini 2.0 Flash.
I found the result predictable and illustrative of the “buying market share with low prices” approach to smart software. Google has signaled its desire to spend billions to deliver “Google quality” smart software.
OpenAI also intends to get and keep market share in the smart software arena. That company is not just writing checks to create a new class of hardware for persistent AI, but the firm is doing deals, including one with Google’s cloud operation.
Several observations:
- Google and OpenAI have real and professional capital on the table in the AI Casino
- Google and OpenAI are implementing similar tactics; namely, the good old cut prices in the hope of winning market share while putting the others in the game to go broke
- Google and OpenAI are likely to orbit one another until one AI black hole absorbs or annihilates the other.
What’s interesting is that neither firm has smart software delivering rock solid results without hallucination, massive costs, and management that allows or is helpless to prevent Meta from eroding both firms by hiring key staff.
Is there a fix for either firm? Nope and Meta’s hiring tactic may be delivering near fatal wounds to both Google and OpenAI. Twins can share similar genetic weaknesses. Meta may have found one —- paying lots for key staff from each firm — and is quite happy implementing it.
Stephen E Arnold, August 6, 2025
Another Twist: AI Puts Mickey Mouse in a Trap
August 5, 2025
No AI. Just a dinobaby being a dinobaby.
The in-the-news Wall Street Journal reveals that Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse may have their tails in a modernized, painful artificial intelligence trap. “Is It Still Disney Magic If It’s AI?” asks an obvious question. My knee jerk reaction after reading the article was, “Nope.”
The write up9 reports:
A deepfake Dwayne Johnson is just one part of a broader technological earthquake hitting Hollywood. Studios are scrambling to figure out simultaneously how to use AI in the filmmaking process and how to protect themselves against it. While executives see a future where the technology shaves tens of millions of dollars off a movie’s budget, they are grappling with a present filled with legal uncertainty, fan backlash and a wariness toward embracing tools that some in Silicon Valley view as their next-century replacement.
A deepfake Dwayne is a short step from deepfake of the entire Disney menagerie. Imagine what happens if a bad actor puts Snow White in some compromising situations, posts the video on a torrent, and publicizes the service on a Telegram-type communications system. That could be interesting. Imagine Goofy at the YMCA with synthetic village people.
How does Disney manage? The write up says:
Some Epic [a Disney “partner”] executives have complained about the slow pace of the decision-making at Disney, with signoffs needed from so many different divisions, said people familiar with the situation.
Slow worked before AI felt the whips of the funders who want payoffs. Now speed thrills. Dopey and Sleepy are not likely to make substantive contributions to Disney’s AI efforts. Has the magic been revealed or just appropriated by AI developers?
Here’s another question that might befuddle Immanuel Kant:
Some Disney executives have raised concerns ahead of the project’s launch, anticipated for fall 2026 at the earliest, about who owns fan creations based on Disney characters, said one of the people. For example, if a Fortnite gamer creates a Darth Vader and Spider-Man dance that goes viral on YouTube, who owns that dance?
From my tiny office in rural Kentucky, Disney is behind the eight ball. Like Apple and Telegram, smart software presents a reasonable problem for 23 year old programmers. For those older, AI is disjunctive. Right, Dopey? Prince AI is busy elsewhere.
Stephen E Arnold, August 5, 2025
Yahoo: An Important Historical Milestone
August 5, 2025
Sorry, no smart software involved. A dinobaby’s own emergent thoughts.
I read “What Went Wrong for Yahoo.” At one time, my team and I followed Yahoo. We created The Point (Top 5% of the Internet) in the early 1990s. Some perceived The Point as a variant. I suppose it was, but we sold the property after a few years. The new owners, something called CMGI, folded The Point into Lycos, and — poof — The Point was gone.
But Yahoo chugged along. The company became the poster child for the Web 1 era. Web search was not comprehensive, and most of the “search engines” struggled to deal with several thorny issues:
- New sites were flooding the Web One Internet. Indexing was a bottleneck. In the good old days, one did not spin up a virtual machine on a low cost vendor in Romania. Machines and gizmos were expensive, and often there was a delay of six months or more for a Sun Microsystems Sparc. Did I mention expensive? Everyone in search was chasing low cost computer and network access.
- The search-and-retrieval tools were in “to be” mode. If one were familiar with IBM Almaden, a research group was working on a system called Clever. There were interesting techniques in many companies. Some popped up and faded. I am not sure of the dates but there was Lycos, which I mentioned, Excite, and one developed by the person who created Framemaker, among others. (I am insufficiently motivated too chase down my historical files, and I sure don’t want to fool around trying to get historical information from Bing, Google, Yandex, and (heaven help me! Qwant). The ideas were around, but it took time for the digital DNA to create a system that mostly worked. I wish I could remember the system that emerged from Cambridge University, but I cannot.
- Old-fashioned search methods like those used by NASA Recon, SDC Orbit, Dialog, and STAIRS were developed to work on bounded content, precisely structured, indexed or “tagged” in today’s jargon, and coded for mainframes. Figuring out how to use smaller machines was not possible. In my lectures from that era, I pointed out that once something is coded, sort of works, and seems to be making money — changes is not conceivable. Therefore, the systems with something that worked sailed along like aircraft carriers until they rusted and sank.
What’s this got to do with Yahoo?
Yahoo was a directory. Directories are good because the content is bounded. Yahoo did not exercise significant editorial control. The Point, on the other hand, was curated like the commercial databases with which I was associated: ABI/INFORM, Business Dateline (the first online information service which corrected erroneous information after a content object went live), Pharmaceutical News Index, and some others we sold to Cambridge Scientific Abstracts.
Indexing the Web is not bounded. Yahoo tried to come up with a way to index what was a large amount of digital content. Adding to Yahoo’s woes was the need to indexed changed content or the “deltas” as we called them in our attempt at The Point to sound techno-literate.
Because of the cost and revenue problems, decisions at Yahoo — according to the people whom we knew and with whom we spoke — went like this:
- Assemble a group with different expertise
- State the question, “What can we do now to make money?”
- Gather ideas
- Hold a meeting to select one or two
- Act on the “best ideas”
The flaw in this method is that a couple of smart fellows in a Stanford dorm were fooling around with Backrub. It incorporated ideas from their lectures, what they picked up about new ideas from students, and what they read (no ChatGPT then, sorry).
I am not going to explain what Backrub at first did not do (work reliably despite the weird assemblage of computers and gear the students used) and focus on the three ideas that did work for what became Google, a pun on a big number’s name:
- Hook mongrel computers to indexing when those computers were available and use anything that remotely seemed to solve a problem. Is that an old router? Cool, let’s use that. This was a very big idea because fooling around with computer systems could kill those puppies with an errant instruction.
- Find inspiration in the IBM Clever system; that is, determine relevance by looking at links to a source document. This was a variation on Gene Garfield’s approach to citation analysis
- Index new Web pages when the appeared. If the crawler / indexer crashed, skip the page and go to the next url. The dorm boys looked at the sites that killed the crawler and figured out how to accommodate those changes; thus, the crawler / indexer became “smart”. This was a very good idea because commercial content indexing systems forced content to be structured a certain way. However, in the Web 1 days, rules were either non existent, ignored, or created problems that creators of Web pages wrote around.
Yahoo did none of these things.
Now let me point out Yahoo’s biggest mistake, and, believe me, the company is an ideal source of insight about what not to do.
Yahoo acquired GoTo.com. The company and software emerged from IdeaLab, I think. What GoTo.com created was an online version of a pay-to-play method. The idea was a great one and obvious to those better suited to be the love child of Cardinal Richelieu and Cosimo de’ Medici. To keep the timeline straight, Sergey Brin and Larry Page did the deed and birthed Google with the GoTo.com (Overture) model to create Google’s ad foundation. Why did Google need money? The person who wrote a check to the Backrub boys said, “You need to earn money.” The Backrub boys looked around and spotted the GoTo method, now owned by Yahoo. The Backrub boys emulated it.
Yahoo, poor old confused Yahoo, took legal action against the Backrub boys, settled for $1 billion, and became increasingly irrelevant. Therefore, Yahoo’s biggest opportunity was to buy the Backrub boys and their Google search system, but they did not. Then Yahoo allowed their GoTo to inspire Google advertising.
From my point of view, Cardinal Richelieu and Cosimo were quite proud that the two computer science students, some of the dorm crowd, and bits and pieces glued together to create Google search emerged as a very big winner.
Yahoo’s problem is that committee think in a fast changing, high technology context is likely to be laughably wrong. Now Google is Yahoo-like. The cited article nails it:
Buying everything in sight clearly isn’t the best business strategy. But if indiscriminately buying everything in sight would have meant acquiring Google and Facebook, Yahoo might have been better off doing that rather than what it did.
Can Google think like the Backrub boys? I don’t think so. The company is spinning money, but the cash that burnishes Google leadership’s image comes from the Yahoo, GoTo.com, and Overture model. Yahoo had so many properties, the Yahooligans had zero idea how to identify a property with value and drive that idea forward. How many “things” does Google operate now? How many things does Facebook operate now? How many things does Telegram operate now? I think that “too many” may hold a clue to the future of these companies. And Yahooooo? An echo, not the yodel.
Stephen E Arnold, August 5, 2025
Bubble? What Bubble? News Bubble, Financial Bubble, Social Media Bubble?
August 5, 2025
We knew the AI hype was extreme. Now one economist offers a relatable benchmark to describe just how extreme it is. TechSpot reports, “The AI Boom is More Overhyped than the 1990s Dot-Com Bubble, Says Top Economist.” Writer Daniel Sims reveals:
“As tech giants pour more money into AI, some warn that a bubble may be forming. Drawing comparisons to the dot-com crash that wiped out trillions at the turn of the millennium, analysts caution that today’s market has become too reliant on still-unproven AI investments. Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management, recently argued that the stock market currently overvalues a handful of tech giants – including Nvidia and Microsoft – even more than it overvalued early internet companies on the eve of the 2000 dot-com crash. The warning suggests history could soon repeat itself, with the buzzword ‘dot-com’ replaced by ‘AI.’”
Paint us unsurprised. We are reminded:
“In the late 1990s, numerous companies attracted venture capital in hopes of profiting from the internet’s growing popularity, and the stock market vastly overvalued the sector before solid revenue could materialize. When returns failed to meet expectations, the bubble burst, wiping out countless startups. Slok says the stock market’s expectations are even more unrealistic today, with 12-month forward price-to-earnings ratios now exceeding the peak of the dot-com bubble.”
See the write-up for more about price-to-earnings ratios and their relationship to bubbles, complete with a handy bar chart. Sims notes the top 10 firms’ ratios far exceed the rest of the index, illustrating their wildly unrealistic expectations. Slok’s observations echo concerns raised by others, including Baidu CEO Robin Li. Last October, Li predicted only one percent of AI firms will survive the bubble’s burst. Will those top 10 firms be among them? On the plus side, Li expects a more realistic and stable market will follow. We are sure the failed 99 percent will take comfort in that.
Cynthia Murrell, August 5, 2025
Yep, Google Is Innovative
August 4, 2025
This blog post is the work of an authentic dinobaby. Sorry. Not even smart software can help this reptilian thinker.
I read the weird orange newspaper story “Google’s AI Fight Is Moving to New Ground.” What? Google has been forced to move to new ground. What’s this “is moving” progressive tense stuff? (You will have to pay to read this article. The good old days of handing out orange newspapers on Sixth Avenue in Midtown are long, long gone.)
The orange newspaper says:
Being presented with ready-made answers means they [Google’s users of its Web search service] are less likely to click on links, of course — according to Pew Research in the US, about half as likely. But that hasn’t stopped solid growth in search advertising revenue.
Perhaps the missing angle is an answer to this question, “Where are advertisers supposed to go? The Saturday Evening Post, the Stephen Colbert Show, or TikTok- and Telegram-type services?”
How about this statement:
Google’s investors can at least draw heart from signs that their company is starting to find its innovative spark. Project Mariner, a prototype it showed off two months ago, closely echoes ChatGPT agent.
Innovation is “me too”? What?
And here’s another statement I circled:
But the lock on advertising that Google has long enjoyed thanks to search is starting to loosen, leaving it to fight on a new battlefield against AI apps — and not just those from OpenAI.
Many outfits are struggling. One example is General Motors. Another is traditional print publications in the US. With strong revenue growth on intellectual gold mines like YouTube, the “lock” is wobbly. Give me a break.
Management by MBA with blue chip consulting experience maximize revenue the old fashioned way: Automation, tougher deals, and fierce protection of walled garden revenue streams.
There is a reason a number of countries are engaged in legal dust ups with Google. How did that work out in the UK for Foundem.com?
Stephen E Arnold, August 4, 2025
Job Hunting. Yeah, About That …
August 4, 2025
It seems we older generations should think twice before criticizing younger adults’ employment status. MSN reports, ‘Gen Z Is Right About the Job Hunt—It Really Is Worse than It Was for Millennials, with Nearly 60% of Fresh-Faced Grads Frozen Out of the Workforce.’ A recent study from Kickresume shows that, while just 25% of millennials and Gen X graduates had trouble finding work right out of college, that figure is now at a whopping 58%. The tighter job market means young job-seekers must jump through hoops we elders would not recognize. Reporter Emma Burleigh observes:
“It’s no secret that landing a job in today’s labor market requires more than a fine-tuned résumé and cover letter. Employers are putting new hires through bizarre lunch tests and personality quizzes to even consider them for a role.”
To make matters worse, these demeaning tests are only for those whose applications have passed an opaque, human-free AI review process. Does that mean issues of racial, gender, age, and socio-economic biases in AI have been solved? Of course not. But companies are forging ahead with the tools anyway. In fact, companies jumping on the AI train may be responsible for narrowing the job market in the first place. Gee, who could have guessed? The write-up continues:
“It’s undeniably a tough job market for many white-collar workers—about 20% of job-seekers have been searching for work for at least 10 to 12 months, and last year around 40% of unemployed people said they didn’t land a single job interview in 2024. It’s become so bad that hunting for a role has become a nine-to-five gig for many, as the strategy has become a numbers game—with young professionals sending in as many as 1,700 applications to no avail. And with the advent of AI, the hiring process has become an all-out tech battle between managers and applicants. Part of this issue may stem from technology whittling down the number of entry-level roles for Gen Z graduates; as chatbots and AI agents take over junior staffers’ mundane job tasks, companies need fewer staffers to meet their goals.”
Some job seekers are turning to novel approaches. We learn of one who slipped his resume into Silicon Valley firms by tucking it inside boxes of doughnuts. How many companies he approached is not revealed, but we are told he got at least 10 interviews that way. Then there is the German graduate who got her CV in front of a few dozen marketing executives by volunteering to bus tables at a prominent sales event. Shortly thereafter, she landed a job at LinkedIn.
Such imaginative tactics may reflect well on those going into marketing, but they may be less effective in other fields. And it should not take extreme measures like these, or sending out thousands of resumes, to launch one’s livelihood. Soldiering through higher education, often with overwhelming debt, is supposed to be enough. Or it was for us elders. Now, writes Burleigh:
“The age-old promise that a college degree will funnel new graduates into full-time roles has been broken. ‘Universities aren’t deliberately setting students up to fail, but the system is failing to deliver on its implicit promise,’ Lewis Maleh, CEO of staffing and recruitment agency Bentley Lewis, told Fortune.”
So let us cut the young folks in our lives some slack. And, if we can, help them land a job. After all, this may be required if we are to have any hope of getting grandchildren or great-niblings.
Cynthia Murrell, August 4, 2025
Can Clarity Confuse? No, It Is Just Zeitgeist
August 1, 2025
This blog post is the work of an authentic dinobaby. Sorry. No smart software can help this reptilian thinker.
In my newsreader this morning, popped this article “Why Navigating Ongoing Uncertainty Requires Living in the Now, Near, and Next.” I was not familiar with Clarity Global. I think it is a public relations firm. The CEO of the firm is a former actress. I have minimal knowledge of PR and even less about acting.
I plunged into the essay. The purpose of the write up, in my opinion, was to present some key points from a conference called “TNW2025.” Conference often touch upon many subjects. One event at which I spoke this year had a program listing on six pages the speakers. I think 90 percent of the people attending the conference were speakers.
The first ideas in the write up touch upon innovation, technology adoption, funding, and the zeitgeist. Yep, zeitgeist.
As if these topics were not of sufficient scope, the write up identifies three themes. These are:
- “Regulation is a core business competency”
- “Partnership is the engine of progress”
- “Culture is critical”.
Notably absent was making money and generating a profit.
What about the near, now, and next?
The near means having enough cash on hand to pay the bills at the end of the month. The now means having enough credit or money to cover the costs of being in business. Recently a former CIA operative invited me to lunch. When the bill arrived, he said, “Oh, I left my billfold at home.” I paid the bill and decided to delete him from my memory bank. He stiffed me for $11, and he told me quite a bit about his “now.” And the next means that without funding there is a greatly reduced chance of having a meaningful future. I wondered, “Was this ‘professional’ careless, dumb, or unprofessional?” (Maybe all three?)
Now what about these themes. First, regulation means following the rules. I am not sure this is a competency. To me, it is what one does. Second, partnership is a nice word, not as slick as zeitgeist but good. The idea of doing something alone seems untoward. Partnerships have a legal meaning. I am not sure that a pharmaceutical company with a new drug is going to partner up. The company is going to keep a low profile, file paperwork, and get the product out. Paying people and companies to help is not a partnership. It is a fee-for-service relationship. These are good. Partnerships can be “interesting.” And culture is critical. In a market, one has to identify a market. Each market has a profile. It is common sense to match the product or service to each market’s profile. Apple cannot sell an iPhone to a person who cannot afford to pay for connectivity, buy apps or music, or plug the gizmo in. (I am aware that some iPhone users steal them and just pretend, but those are potential customers, not “real” customers.)
Where does technology fit into this conference? It is the problem organizations face. It is also the 10th word in the essay. I learned “… the technology landscape continues to evolve at an accelerating page.” Where’s smart software? Where’s non-democratic innovation? Where’s informed resolution of conflict?
What about smart software, AI, or artificial intelligence? Two mentions: One expert at the conference invests in AI and in this sentence:
As AI, regulation and societal expectations evolve, the winners will be those who anticipate change and act with conviction.
I am not sure regulation, partnership, and coping with culture can do the job. As for AI, I think funding and pushing out products and services capture the zeitgeist.
Stephen E Arnold, August 1, 2025
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