The U.S. Defense Department said on Friday it has completed a comprehensive re-evaluation of its $10 billion JEDI cloud computing contract proposals and determined that Microsoft Corp’s (MSFT.O) submission still represents the best value for the government.

Despite the reaffirmed award, the result of a comprehensive re-evaluation by the U.S. Department of Defense, the contract remains on hold after a judge in February granted Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) request to temporarily halt the deal from moving forward.

Amazon, which has argued the contract process reflected undue influence from President Donald Trump, said on Friday it would “not back down in the face of targeted political cronyism or illusory corrective actions, and we will continue pursuing a fair, objective, and impartial review.”

The company called the Pentagon’s “re-evaluation nothing more than an attempt to validate a flawed, biased, and politically corrupted decision” and said in the last review it “offered a lower cost by several tens of millions of dollars”

Amazon, which had been seen as a front-runner to win the contract, filed a lawsuit in November weeks after the contract was awarded to Microsoft. Trump has publicly derided Amazon head Jeff Bezos and repeatedly criticized the company.

Amazon closed down 2.2%.

Microsoft said it appreciated “that after careful review, the DoD confirmed that we offered the right technology and the best value. We’re ready to get to work.”

The Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure Cloud (JEDI) contract could reach as much as $10 billion and is part of a broader digital modernization of the Pentagon aimed at making it more technologically agile.

The Amazon lawsuit said the 2019 Pentagon decision was full of “egregious errors”, which it suggested were a result of “improper pressure from Trump, who launched repeated public and behind-the-scenes attacks” to steer the contract away from Amazon to harm Bezos.

As well as deriding the Amazon head, Trump has accused the Washington Post newspaper, owned by Bezos, of unfair coverage.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper has rejected that there was bias and said the Pentagon made its choice fairly.

Source: Reuters

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Tech giant Microsoft has launched the Family Safety app, designed to help protect a family's digital and physical safety.
The new screen time and parental controls app help you customize your kids' web access and balance healthy screen times. The application is available on iOS and Android.

"Introducing the Family Safety app. Customize your kids' web access, balance healthy screen times, and stay connected to what matters most--all in one place. Available on iOS and Android," Microsoft tweeted.

"Over the past few months, I have been using the preview with my family, and it has been a game-changer! As a kid, my two favourite things to do after school were to ride my bike and play soccer with my neighbourhood friends. Nowadays, my kids are always on their devices, whether playing video games with their friends, on social media or learning remotely. Today, I am excited to share with you how any family worried about their kids’ online safety can benefit from the Microsoft Family Safety app and how it has helped us to create healthier habits for my kids, while also giving my wife and me peace of mind," Liat Ben-Zur, Corporate Vice President, Modern Life, Search, and Devices, Microsoft, said in a statement.

With the help of the Family Safety app, one can use web and search filters to block adult content and set browsing to kid-friendly websites with either allowed or blocked websites list.

This feature helps in maintaining healthy digital habits and works in a tight concert with the Microsoft Edge browser on Windows, Xbox, and Android.

Source:(ANI)

 

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Walmart Inc (WMT.O) is partnering with Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) in the software maker’s bid for Bytedance-owned TikTok, the world’s largest retailer said on Thursday.

ByteDance has been in talks to sell TikTok’s North American, Australian and New Zealand operations which could be worth $25 billion to $30 billion to companies including Microsoft and Oracle (ORCL.N), people with knowledge of the matter have told Reuters.

U.S. President Donald Trump has demanded that China’s ByteDance, which owns TikTok globally, sell its U.S. operations, citing potential national security risk due to the vast amount of private data the app is compiling on U.S. consumers.

“We are confident that a Walmart and Microsoft partnership would meet both the expectations of U.S. TikTok users while satisfying the concerns of U.S. government regulators,” the retailer said in a statement.

The two companies are two years into a five-year partnership as part of the retailer’s push for wider use of cloud and artificial intelligence.

Walmart said TikTok’s integrated e-commerce and advertising capabilities in other markets “is a clear benefit to creators and users in those markets.”

The retailer’s shares were up about 4.4% on the news.

source:reuters

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Apple is delaying a new privacy feature in the next version of its iPhone operating system that will make it more difficult for app makers to track people online to help sell digital ads.

The decision outlined Thursday affects iOS 14, which is expected to be released as a free software upgrade to roughly a billion iPhone users later this month. Apple intended iOS 14 to automatically block tracking as soon as it came out, but the company now says it will hold back the tool until early next year.

The same safeguard was supposed be in the next operating systems for iPads and Apple TVs, too.

The feature would require apps to explicitly ask users to permission to collect and share data about their online behavior through a unique code that identifies every iPhone. That requirement raised fears that most people would block the tracking, making it more difficult for free apps to sell the ads that generate most of their revenue.

Currently, apps are automatically given a tracking code unless users of iPhones and other Apple devices go to the extra trouble of changing their privacy controls on their own.

Facebook, which runs the largest digital ad network behind Google, last week warned that the new privacy feature in iOS 14 threatened to deliver a major blow to many apps at a time they are already struggling amid a coronavirus-triggered recession.

Although Apple is postponing the new anti-tracking tool, the Cupertino, California, company emphasized that it shouldn’t be interpreted as a sign it is backing down from its outspoken commitment to protect the privacy of its customers as a “fundamental right.”

“We want to give developers the time they need to make the necessary changes” to apps and advertising models, the company said in a statement.

Apple’s postponement disappointed those trying to combat the digital surveillance that’s inherent in online tracking, said Craig Danuloff, CEO of The Privacy Co., which recently introduced its own privacy app to help protect iPhone users from prying eyes.

“One can only see this delay as harming millions of users who do not at all understand the level of tracking that’s going on,” Danuloff said.

source: AP

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