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Microsoft Probed, Amazon Sued, and ChatGPT Hallucinations
Here’s this week’s news, jobs... and a brand new section! Wow!
It’s December 10th, and you know what that means! It’s the 31st anniversary of DOOM. Not the first FPS in video game history but arguably the most influential, DOOM has spawned 7 sequels with an 8th on the way in 2025. It’s the video game that elder millennials spent hours hunched over in their youth, sometimes engaging in DOOM marathons at LAN parties! Remember LAN parties? Man, we’re old. Anyway, we’ve reached the end of this memory cul-de-sac, so lets get started:
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Broken Windows: Microsoft Sued in UK for Price Gouging
Small, fledgling business Microsoft is having a rough week in UK courts after getting slapped with a £1 billion lawsuit. The crime? Allegedly making businesses pay through the nose for Windows Server licenses when they dare to use competing cloud platforms, according to The Register.
The lawsuit claims Microsoft is flexing their 70-80% market share to squeeze extra cash from companies who won't pledge allegiance to Azure. This is coming after Google filed their own complaint back in September claiming Microsoft jacked up prices by 400% for non-Azure users.
This isn't Microsoft's first rodeo with antitrust accusations. Some might say (not us! legally!) that they are overtly familiar with the rodeo. So, in what might be history's most coincidentally timed announcement, Microsoft just dropped their GBP prices by 5-6%, citing currency exchange rates. Which definitely has nothing to do with the court case.
The outcome of this UK lawsuit could set important precedents in the future for how tech giants structure their licensing fees. Microsoft has declined to comment about the matter. Which, y’know, is a statement in and of itself.
Better Call Bezos! Amazon Delivery Slowed for Lower-Income Prime Subscribers
About 48,000 low-income Prime subscribers in the Washington DC metro area had their Prime deliveries slowed, according to a new lawsuit filed this week. About 4.5 million packages were ordered over the last 4 years, and only 25% of those orders arrived within Prime’s boasted 2-day window.
Amazon’s excuse for this is apparently due to “the sole reason of protecting the safety of drivers”, according to Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel. Interestingly enough, packages delivered to a different, (cough) more affluent (end cough) zip code just 3 minutes away arrived with same-day delivery. If this escalates, this could be a huge legal battle for Amazon: each delivery to almost 50,000 users since mid-2022 is considered a potential violation, according to Ars Technica.
No word from Jeff Bezos, who is famously a very affable guy with a big heart who personally looks into all issues with his company with an eye out for the little guy. Just kidding: he recently bought $600M worth of yachts and a $68M bunker to ride out the apocalypse which is totally, totally normal behavior.
Misinformation Expert Caught Using ChatGPT in Court… But There’s More to This Story
This story is nuanced: really easy headline to write, but an interesting court battle behind it that might change your immediate opinion.
The TLDR; is: the founder of Stanford Social Media Lab, Jeff Hancock, was caught red-handed when 2 citations were “hallucinated” by ChatGPT in a lengthy legal document, according to The Verge.
But here’s the interesting part: the rest of the document—the overwhelmingly vast majority of it—was fine. But right-wing YouTuber MrRegan (real name: Christopher Khols) says that Jeff Hancock’s work is “unreliable” and thus shouldn’t be part of the legal battle he’s waging against Minnesota’s “Use of Deep Fake Technology to Influence an Election” law. Khols—and Minnesota state Rep Mary Franson—suggests that its totally fine to use deep fakes and that this law violates his First Amendment free speech protections. Riiiight.
The case could be a big deal down the line. Providing, of course, that nobody else uses ChatGPT to do their homework for them.
⚙️ Tool Time
At Experts Exchange, we’re always thinking a step ahead. This week, we’re introducing a new section where we recommend our favorite apps/tools/software and give you the low-down on what we like and why you need it. Big EE shout-out to our reader CJ for inspiring this new add-on!
Everyone should use a password management tool. Even the skeptical.
Think using a password manager is silly? Laugh now, cry later. Password managers are incredible protection against cybersecurity threats and also prevent against you from overusing the ol’ classics, like “password123” and “Band-I-liked-in-high-school-plus-year-of-my-birth-with-an-exclamation-point-afterwards”.
We recommend Bit Warden. Bit Warden has an impressively friendly UX which is a big help to all of us super-technical folks who spend hours staring at screens all day. You can even categorize your logins and passwords by collections or folders, which is a huge help if you’re an IT pro switching between projects.
Their competitor 1Password is good, but we’ve found it’s a little bit too one-note for most jobs in that it’s harder to categorize and very easy to get locked out of completely—which can be a nightmare in and of itself.
Bit Warden offers the triple benefit of:
simplified 2FA
automatic cloud backup
and the ability to access your passwords from any device with an internet connection.
You’ll never need to worry about losing your passwords or forgetting them. Which, for us, is well worth the purchase price alone. Plus: did you know Bit Warden is built to be especially friendly for developers?
👨💻 Job Opportunities
Do you enjoy the development, implementation, and customization of SharePoint-based solutions? Who doesn’t!? How about web parts, master pages, custom page layouts, content types, and workflows? If you’re falling out of your chair with excitement, apply today.
DevOps Lead @ GovCIO (Remote)
Government IT jobs pay well and are often for a great cause, so we bet there’s someone with 8-12 years experience out there who would love to “modernize the Kiosk Gravesite Locator software on 113 Kiosks across our National Cemeteries” for iOS and Android.
Healthcare IT is a hot job market and if you’re up to building an app for Cigna, this well-payin’ job (up to $163K a year) could be for you. The job description is surprisingly light on qualifications needed, which could mean a more open-door for those with less experience.
Product Manager @ Stellar IT Solutions (Remote / On-Site / Hybrid)
There’s a job here for a special candidate with 5+ years in retail marketing tech, and knowledge of best practices in Meta, Snapchat, Yelp, TikTok, Pinterest… and even Rakuten!
🛩 Industry Moves
US Regulators Probe Microsoft
The story we talked about at the top of the newsletter has a new development stateside: the FTC have opened a “wide-ranging” probe into the small, local, artisanal mom-and-pop technology conglomerate Microsoft. According to Reuters, “[the] FTC would be looking into its software licensing, cloud computing businesses, and practices related to cybersecurity and artificial intelligence products.”
OpenAI Partners To Build AI For Military Use
This will end well! OpenAI—the totally non-problematic makers of ChatGPT—are partnering with tech company Andruil to develop AI for national security missions. Apparently nobody has seen the Terminator movies because this is literally Skynet wt-actual-f.
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