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Submission + - Autosave or Manual Save, That is the Question

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Whether you're editing documents or code — locally or in the cloud, single-user or in collaboration with others — autosave has increasingly become the default and sometimes the only behavior rather than manual saving. Which may be a plus for those who forget to periodically save their work, but a minus to those who wish to intentionally control when and where their files are saved.

Interesting, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of published empirical studies to explain how Miclyrosoft, Google, Apple, and others arrived at the decision that autosave-as-default for the masses was the wiser choice (a skeptic might point to cloud architecture limitations, unstable software & infrastructure, reduced technical support costs, and industry herd behavior as deciding factors).

In the absence of rigorous, peer-reviewed studies, which is the lesser of the two evils for your work: autosave, and run the risk of silently preserving inadvertent mistakes, or manual save, and run the risk of silently discarding changes? And, with increased emphasis on risk/governance and collaborative document sharing, any thoughts on why documents aren't typically opened in View instead of Edit mode to reduce the risk of inadvertent changes?

So, is Ctrl-S a bug and/or a feature?

Submission + - In Backlash Against Tech in Schools, Parents Are Winning Rollbacks

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: From Salt Lake City to New York City, the New York Times reports, parents are demanding more sway over the digital tools that schools give children:

"Los Angeles parents are fed up with schools loading up students with laptops and tablets, and assigning schoolwork on a slew of apps. Some families, who had decided against giving their children screens at home, told school board members that they were appalled to find young students using school-issued devices — even in kindergarten. Some parents complained that their children were able to play video games or watch social media videos during school. Others reported that an A.I. app, which fourth graders were assigned to use to create portraits of the fictional Swedish schoolgirl Pippi Longstocking, generated sexualized imagery."

"Such concerns prompted parents last year to form a group called Schools Beyond Screens to push for increased technology oversight in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second-largest public school system. Last week, the Los Angeles school board passed a resolution requiring the district to restrict student access to YouTube, eliminate digital devices entirely through first grade and develop screen time limits for higher grades — becoming the first major U.S. school system to do so. The parents’ successful campaign points to an escalating national reckoning for the powerful classroom technology industry. Encouraged by the fast spread of school cellphone bans, parents, teachers and legislators across the United States have banded together to ensure that technology use in schools is beneficial for learning."

Submission + - Is "Outsourcing Our Thinking to AI" a Bug or a Feature?

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In a year-end podcast, GeekWire noted that Microsoft President Brad Smith offered his own evidence to investors that AI-is-real at Microsoft's Annual Shareholder Meeting in December, explaining that he relied on Copilot’s Researcher Agent's memory (YouTube, audio) earlier in the day to recall and explain an issue for company leaders that Microsoft faced seven or eight years ago (to help them deal with a similar problem they now faced), and it generated a 25-page report with 100 citations that so wowed his colleagues that they clamored for him to share the prompt he used to produce it so they too could learn how to use AI so effectively. While Smith didn't share either the report or prompt with investors in the webcast, the anecdote alone left his fellow Microsoft execs nodding and smiling in amazement (GeekWire couldn't resist wondering aloud how many of the recipients used their AI agents to summarize the 25-page report rather than having to actually read it).

Reminiscing about Def Leppard in her weekly Ed-Tech and AI newsletter Second Breakfast, watchdog Audrey Watters on Friday painted a much bleaker picture of the what-me-worry-about-thinking AI utopia presented to Microsoft investors, cautioning: "Our understanding of the world — knowledge, memories, skills — are never, as are the versions of these things fixed in print or in the machine, inert. And importantly, the more we know, the more we practice knowing — thinking, reading, writing, imagining, talking to one another — the more we strengthen our ability to know. And the inverse is true too: the less we practice, the weaker our cognitive powers. The more superficial and scattered our mental activities – skimming, clicking — the more shallow our thinking. The more we 'outsource our thinking' to 'AI' (hell, to the computer or the Web), the more we might find ourselves unable to think deeply at all. [...] There's a product, but there is no process for you, the user. No discernment, no contemplation. No recollection or consolidation of earlier thoughts and ideas and memories. No cognitive effort through which you will think or learn or know or grow or ever remember any of this."

Sharing Watters' concerns, The New Yorker's Jessica Winter asks, What Will It Take to Get A.I. Out of Schools? "The tech world assumes that A.I.-aided education is necessary and inevitable. A growing number of parents, educators, and cognitive scientists say the opposite," Winters begins. She closes with a reminder that "Nowhere is it written that a multinational conglomerate with a market cap of roughly four trillion dollars is fated to command our public schools, or to grant fellowships to the leaders of those schools, or to monetize the inefficient children who attend them. Another item in the Student Tech Bill of Rights, in fact, is the 'right to a learning environment that is free from undue corporate influence.'"

Submission + - Why AI Babysitter Is the Hottest New Profession

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "AI may allow anyone to generate code, but only a computer scientist can maintain a system," explained Google.org Global Head Maggie Johnson in a LinkedIn post, Computer Science Education in the AI Era. Johnson was formerly Director of Education at Google and a founding Board member of the Google.org-funded nonprofit Code.org, which last year launched a campaign to make CS and AI a high school graduation requirement.

Johnson continued: "As AI-generated code becomes more accurate and ubiquitous, the role of the computer scientist shifts from author to technical auditor or expert. While large language models can generate functional code in milliseconds, they lack the contextual judgment and specialized knowledge to ensure that the output is safe, efficient, and integrates correctly within a larger system without a person’s oversight. [...] The human-in-the-loop must possess the technical depth to recognize when a piece of code is sub-optimal or dangerous in a production environment. [...] "We need computer scientists to perform forensics, tracing the logic of an AI-generated module to identify logical fallacies or security loopholes. Modern CS education should prepare students to verify and secure these black-box outputs."

The NY Times reports that companies are already struggling to find engineers to review the explosion of AI-written code. Any thoughts on what AI Babysitting might/should pay?

Submission + - Stanford Daily Ponders Fate of Bill Gates Namesake Building on April Fools' Day

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Gates Computer Science Building renamed Peter Thiel Center for Panoptic Computing reads the headline of an April Fools' Day story that ran in the Humor section of The Stanford Daily (with the further disclaimer that "This article is purely satirical and fictitious"). The story begins: "Following revelations that the billionaire founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates, had a longstanding relationship with convicted child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, Stanford has announced it will strip Gates’ name from the William H. Gates Computer Science Building and instead honor alumnus Peter Thiel B.A. ‘89, JD ‘92. Gates, who is not a Stanford alumnus, gave an initial gift of $6 million toward the building’s construction in 1992."

While fictional, the story does make one wonder what may become of the academic and institutional buildings worldwide named after Bill Gates in the blowback over his past ties to Epstein, which have already played a factor in the breakdown of his marriage to Melinda French Gates and friendship with Warren Buffet. In addition to The Gates Computer Science Building at Stanford, this includes the Bill and Melinda Gates Computer Science Complex at the University of Texas at Austin, Bill and Melinda Gates Hall at Cornell, The Bill & Melinda Gates Center for Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, and The William H. Gates Building at MIT's Stata Center. Buildings named after Gates' parents include Mary Gates Hall and William H. Gates Hall at the University of Washington, and The William Gates Building at the University of Cambridge (UK).

Aside from the Thiel angle, The Stanford Daily's April Fools' Day story may not be as far-fetched as it may seem — many universities' naming policies include provisions allowing donors' names to be removed from buildings, programs, or other facilities under extraordinary circumstances. For example, the University of Washington's Regent Policy No. 50 states, "The University reserves the right to revoke and terminate any naming on reasonable grounds not limited to the revelation of corporate or individual acts detracting from the University’s mission, integrity, or reputation." Then again, UW notes that Bill's parents and siblings served as UW Regents for decades, so one expects Bill will be granted some leeway here for what he has characterized as 'foolish' choices on his part.

Submission + - Washington Post Announces Transition to 'Modern' All-GenAI Content Format 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Inspired in part by Amazon's success in using LLMs to eliminate the cost of Java programmers, Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos on Wednesday announced that the Post is pivoting to a 'modern' all-GenAI content format. "Our HR AI agents are notifying our remaining journalists that their services are no longer needed and thanking them for creating past content that powers the AI models that are replacing them," added Matt Murray, the Post’s executive editor.

It's the latest cost-cutting move at WaPo, which laid off more than 300 journalists in February as it closed its sports and books sections and fired all staff photographers, blaming the layoffs in part on "the rise of generative A.I." The move, Bezos explained, will also enable the Post to use GenAI-produced images to accompany its GenAI-produced news stories, eliminating the need to pay freelance photographers.

At the end of 2024, Mr. Bezos described the Post's struggles to cut costs and boost readership in an interview at a conference hosted by The New York Times: “We saved The Washington Post once, and we’re going to save it a second time,” he said at the time. "And now, thanks to the magic of Amazon Bedrock," Bezos said Wednesday in a zoom call from his $500 million yacht Koru (his home away from homes), "we're going to save it again."

Submission + - Chromebook Remorse: Tech Backlash at Schools Extends Beyond Phones

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In addition to student cell phone bans, the New York Times' Natasha Singer reports that some schools are also rethinking the wisdom of always-on-and-available school-issued laptops :

Inge Esping, the principal of McPherson Middle School, has spent years battling digital devices for children’s attention. Four years ago, her school in McPherson, Kan., banned student cellphones during the school day. But digital distractions continued. Many children watched YouTube videos or played video games on their school-issued Chromebook laptops. Some used school Gmail accounts to bully fellow students.

In December, the middle school asked all 480 students to return the Chromebooks they had freely used in class and at home. Now the school keeps the laptops, which run on Google’s Chrome operating system, in carts parked in classrooms. Children take notes mostly by hand, and laptops are used sparingly, for specific activities assigned by teachers. “We just felt we couldn’t have Chromebooks be that huge distraction,” said Ms. Esping, 43, Kansas’ 2025 middle school principal of the year. “This technology can be a tool. It is not the answer to education.”

McPherson Middle School no longer gives students their own Chromebooks to use in school and take home. The laptops are now kept in classroom carts and used only for specific activities assigned by teachers. McPherson Middle School, about an hour’s drive from Wichita, is at the forefront of a new tech backlash spreading in education: Chromebook remorse.

Elsewhere in the Times, an opinion piece by CS prof Cal Newport explains why Johnny — and his parents — can't concentrate and what to do about it.

Submission + - Melania Trump Hosts World's First Spouses at White House AI Show-and-Tell

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In Melania and the Robot, the New York Times reports on First Lady Melania Trump's inaugural Fostering the Future Together Coalition Summit, which brought together international leaders, First Spouses from around the world, tech leaders, educators, and nonprofits to collaborate on practical solutions that expand access to educational tools while strengthening protections for children in digital environments (Day 2 WH summary). The Times begins:

"On Wednesday, Mrs. Trump appeared at the White House alongside Figure 3, a humanoid, A.I.-powered robot whose uses, according to the company that makes it, include fetching towels, carrying groceries and serving champagne. But Mrs. Trump joins tech executives and some researchers in envisioning a world beyond robot butlery. She is interested in how these robots could cut it as educators. Both clad in shades of white, the first lady and the visiting robot walked into a gathering of first spouses from around the world, a group that included Sara Netanyahu of Israel, Olena Zelenska of Ukraine, and Brigitte Macron of France. The dulcet tones from a (presumably human) military orchestra played as the first lady and her guest entered the event. Both lady and robot extolled the virtues of further integrating robots into the educational and social lives of children. In the history of modern first-lady initiatives, which have included building a national book festival (Laura Bush), reshuffling the food pyramid (Michelle Obama) and advocating for free community college (Jill Biden), Mrs. Trump’s involvement of a humanoid robot in education policy was a first."

"Figure 3 delivered brief remarks and delivered salutations in several languages. With its sleek black-and-white appearance, Figure 3 would fit right in with the first lady’s branding aesthetic, which includes a self-titled coffee table book and movie, not least because the name “MELANIA” was emblazoned on the side of its glossy plastic head. After Figure 3 teetered gingerly away, Mrs. Trump looked around the room and told them that the future looked a lot like what they had just witnessed. 'The future of A.I. is personified,' she told her audience. 'It will be formed in the shape of humans. Very soon artificial intelligence will move from our mobile phones to humanoids that deliver utility.' She invited her guests to envision a future in which a robot philosopher educated children."

Submission + - Tech-Backed CS Teachers Association Pivots to AI Literacy, Scores $11M NSF Grant

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: On Thursday, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) announced an $11 million award to the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) in furtherance of the Trump administration's executive order on Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth that directed federal agencies to promote AI literacy. The award will launch Artificial Intelligence Professional Development (PD) Weeks: CS Foundations for Creating with AI, a multistate initiative that will prepare thousands of K-12 educators to teach foundational computer science (CS) and AI at scale. "Artificial Intelligence is transforming every sector of our economy, and American students must be prepared not just to use AI, but to understand it and create with it," explained the NSF's Brian Stone. "We are thinking beyond AI towards what the White House calls the 'Future of Intelligence.'"

CSTA joined fellow tech-backed nonprofit Code.org last December to pivot the nation's K-12 schoolchildren from coding to AI literacy during CS Education Week. Replacing CSEdWeek's Hour of Code event was a new Hour of AI event, a move called for and backed by Microsoft — that featured AI literacy tutorials from Microsoft, Google, and Amazon, all of whom are Strategic CSTA Partners and Code.org Lifetime Supporters.

"Computer science teachers will continue to be leaders in preparing students for an AI-enabled future," said CSTA Executive Director Jake Baskin in a LinkedIn post. "Over the next two years, this initiative will allow us to equip thousands of K-12 educators nationwide with the knowledge and instructional strategies needed to teach foundational CS and AI at scale. On the heels of last year's announcement of the AI education Executive Order, Baskin (formerly Director of State Government Affairs at Code.org) joined the nation's tech leaders in signing a letter of support that appeared in a New York Times ad to kick off a new Code.org led campaign to make CS and AI a graduation requirement for all students.

Submission + - CS Course-Resisting NOLA Catholic High School Raises Ire of Tech-Backed Code.org

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In its March 11th meeting, the Code.org Advocacy Coalition — whose members include Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft — raised concerns about the filing of Louisiana House Bill 787, which aims to remove a new requirement for all high school students — public and private — to complete a computer science course to continue to be eligible for Louisiana TOPS scholarships. Public school students are subject to a new Code.org-backed CS course high school graduation requirement, but that requirement does not apply to private school students.

"So, to try to explain Louisiana's situation," Code.org told Coalition members (video, 16:08), "is that they have two sections of code that are basically applicable to this. One is their strict graduation requirements. It says every student has to have these courses before they graduate. That's what most states have. It only applies to public schools. They have a completely different section of code that is about their TOPS scholarship program, their state provided scholarship program. And what the DOE has tried to do for several years now is tried to have those two things mirrored. So, when we wrote the CSGRAD requirement in Louisiana, those two things were mirrored. We had to actually fix it, but they ended up being mirrored. What the problem, or what has the impetus for this legislation being filed is that TOPS applies to any student in the state of Louisiana wanting state graduation or state college funds. So, that includes private school students, includes Catholic school students, etc. So, though the straight graduation requirement does not apply to them, if they want state scholarship funding, they have to meet everything that the state says because the two sections of code are mirrored. This legislation would remove the computer science from the TOPS requirement, so the state scholarship money."

And while even Code.org agreed this seems like a reasonable ask, they went on to explain why this bill — which was blamed on a New Orleans Catholic High School in a slide — must be defeated due to fears that it may impact the Coalition's mission. From the transcript: "And you say, okay, well that's not a huge deal. That's how most of our states are that we have a graduation requirement for all public schools. It doesn't apply to private schools. I agree on the face. The problem goes back to that the DOE does like for those two things to be mirrored. And our fear is that if this legislation starts having legs and gets close to the finish line that DOE or LOSA and I have no indication that they would do this, but just knowing that they want the two mirrored, they may say, well, if you're going to remove it from TOPS, remove it from graduation requirement. I hope they wouldn't, but that is unfortunately a reality we might have to face. [...] We're going to continue trying to fight it. And I want to give Jamie and the DOE down in Louisiana major props because they have bent over backwards over the past two years to try to make alternative methods, giving all these schools things that they can do with students including a competency level exam that can replace it for those students in the Catholic schools. There's a lot that they've done and this is pretty much from one of the Catholic schools in the state. Most of the rest of them have at least figured out the process. But I was in a meeting down there once and the principal of this one particular school looked at me and said, "I will work to get this repealed no matter what y'all do." So, this is coming pretty much from one individual or one school. So, we're going to continue fighting it. We're going to hope that it does not have legs and we'll see how it goes. But if you have connections to Louisiana, you might want to activate those to try to head off this and defeat it."

Submission + - NY Times Credits Python for Making Interest Calculation Easier than Assembly 1

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: "One early computer language was Assembly, and it was devilishly hard to write," explains Clive Thompson in this week's New York Times Magazine cover story, Coding After Coders: The End of Computer Programming. "Say you wanted to write some code that would calculate how much you’d have if you got 5 percent interest on $10,000 over 10 years. Back in the 1960s, that would have required perhaps nine lines of pretty obtuse Assembly. [...] By the ’80s and ’90s, as computers became more powerful, engineers were able to create languages that took care of all that memory management for you, and also turned common asks into simple commands. In Python, a coder can perform that exact same calculation very simply: 'total_amount = 10000 * (1.05 ** 10).' That single line tells the computer to multiply 10,000 by the interest rate over 10 years and store the result in the variable labeled 'total_amount.' Programmers no longer need to think about where all the data is being stored in the computer’s memory; Python does that for them. It is, in other words, a layer of abstraction on top of all that fiddly memory business. Writing in that language is delightfully easier."

Not so fast, replied readers, who took issue with implying that Python — first released in 1991 — deserves credit for making interest calculation easy, pointing out that other languages such as FORTRAN, COBOL, and BASIC did so as much as 30+ years earlier. "Great article. Some of the history seems a little off though," said etaeng. "I was programming in the 1960s, and I can assure you that we had computer languages that created layers of abstraction even way back then," replied Post Mortem. "Notably, Fortran handled scientific and mathematical problems and Cobol addressed the business world. The code for Cobol would look something like, 'ADD INTEREST TO PRINCIPAL'. So while the author’s point is fundamentally correct, it’s a mistake to think that it took until the ‘80s and ‘90s for usable natural language approaches to arise." Commenter Howard Fairman explained, "the supposedly-breakthrough Python code for calculating compound interest actually dates from the advent of Fortran — 'formula translation' — in 1957." And gs had this to say: "An interesting but overlong article. But that interest calculation could also be done in the 1950s [IBM’s 1958 FORTRAN demo of compound interest by John Backus] in one line of COBOL or FORTRAN code. You didn‘t have to wait til the 1990s for Python."

Submission + - DOJ Documents Suggest Jeffrey Epstein Got a Million-Dollar Microsoft Payday

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Among the tidbits in Fortune's How Jeffrey Epstein pulled Bill Gates and Microsoft into a web of sex, money, and secrets is the tale of how the convicted sex offender became a seven-figure negotiator for the departure of Microsoft Windows Chief Steven Sinofsky, who before his 2012 resignation was widely seen as a potential successor to then CEO Steve Ballmer. According to DOJ documents, Fortune reports, Epstein not only worked behind the scenes to help put together Sinofsky's $14 million dollar exit package from Microsoft, including reviewing documents from Microsoft President Brad Smith (then Microsoft's top lawyer), he was also paid handsomely for his advice.

From the article: "On April 3, 2013, he [Epstein] asked for a sizable sum to handle Sinofsky’s exit package directly: 'I will charge you a one million dollar fee,' Epstein wrote in an email to Sinofsky, after earlier writing that he was upset with the Microsoft executive’s seeming ingratitude for his help. [...] Sinofsky ultimately signed a $14 million exit deal with Microsoft. On Sept. 16, 2013, Epstein received a forwarded email with the subject line 'Sinofsky': in the body it said: 'Wire is completed.' The next morning, Epstein’s accountant confirmed: 'Wire hit JPM yesterday. Confirming $1,000,000.'"

Comment Tangible Products People Want (Score 4, Insightful) 22

It'd be nice to see AI used to help generate tangible products that people genuinely want and need - housing, transportation, farming, healthcare, etc. - especially if savings are passed on to consumers. Hard to get excited over the use of AI to generate task lists, emails, infinite pull requests, and "25-page reports with 100 citations" that no one wants/needs, the future of AI painted by excited execs at Microsoft's 2025 Annual Shareholders Meeting. :-)

Submission + - Tech Giant CEOs No-Shows at Rev. Jesse Jackson's Memorial Service

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: Before this week, the last time the three living former U.S. Presidents got together was at the Trump Inauguration in 2025 in Washington, DC. Joining them were current and former CEOs of Google, Meta, Amazon, and Apple (Microsoft's CEO didn't attend, but the company sent a $1 million check).

So, on Friday, when former Presidents Bush, Obama, and Biden reconvened in Chicago at the memorial service for civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr., one might have expected to see the tech giant CEOs join them again. After all, their companies pledged to work with Jackson to do better on their hiring efforts, as Jackson first pressured Google and then the others into finally publishing their woeful EEO-1 diversity numbers that they formerly kept under wraps under the guise of 'trade secrets'. "We’ve always been reluctant to publish numbers about the diversity of our workforce at Google," confessed Google HR Chief Laszlo Bock in a 2014 mea culpa blog post. "We now realize we were wrong, and that it’s time to be candid about the issues. Put simply, Google is not where we want to be when it comes to diversity, and it’s hard to address these kinds of challenges if you’re not prepared to discuss them openly." The tech giants redoubled their racial equity pledges in 2020.

So, why wouldn't the tech CEOs come together at Jackson's memorial service and celebrate Jackson's life and accomplishments? Even Trump publicly praised Jackson (albeit with some unnecessary swipes at others). Well, one possible explanation might be that the workforce transparency the tech giants promised Jackson to determine how successful their efforts were going never fully materialized. The tech giants largely chose to spin their own cherrypicked metrics of workforce diversity success instead of publishing meaningful raw data for others to objectively analyze. Worse than that, a Wired report in November 2025 revealed that as Jackson's health took a turn for the worse, some tech giants — including Google, Microsoft, and Meta — stopped their decade-long practice of publishing statistics about the gender and racial makeup of their workforce altogether. "The broad loss in transparency," Wired reported, "could obscure the impact of President Donald Trump’s anti-DEI policies on the tech workforce." Yusef Jackson [Jesse Jackson's son], who now leads the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, said the group would fight the nondisclosure of diversity data.

All of which would certainly not make for the greatest of press, especially if it came out in the same week that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg closed on a new record breaking $170 million mansion on Miami's exclusive 'Billionaire Bunker' island that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos also calls home (and a billion-dollar tax shelter). By the way, Meta's last-published EEO-1 report shows that the number of reported Black employees was 43.6% lower at the end of 2023 than at the end of 2022, compared to an overall workforce reduction of 21.8% (Zuckerberg dubbed 2023 Meta's "Year of Efficiency").

Writing in Fortune, Brennan Nevada Johnson has a message for tech CEOs: "Reverend Jackson did not protest technology, but rather insisted on participating in shaping it. He forced an industry that prides itself on innovation to innovate socially. Today, despite much pushback due to the current administration, diversity reports, inclusive recruiting pipelines, and equity initiatives do exist across major tech firms. It’s so important that we honor Reverend Jackson’s legacy of continuing accountability. The future is still being built, and as Reverend Jesse Jackson reminded Silicon Valley [and even children], it must be built by all, for all."

Submission + - How Jeffrey Epstein Ingratiated Himself With Top Microsoft Execs

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: In How Jeffrey Epstein Ingratiated Himself With Top Microsoft Executives, the NY Times begins, "For more than two decades, the convicted sex offender developed a network at the tech giant, making him privy to [CEO] succession discussions and other business. [...] The files from the Justice Department show that he spent more than a decade developing a network of Microsoft executives, including Mr. Gates; Nathan Myhrvold, a former technology chief; Steven Sinofsky, who ran Microsoft’s Windows division; Linda Stone, a former technology research executive; Reid Hoffman, a Microsoft board member; and employees of Mr. Gates’s personal investment and charity funds. [...] Frank Shaw, Microsoft’s communications chief, said the company was disappointed to read emails between Mr. Epstein and “former Microsoft employees acting in their personal capacities.” Without mentioning a name, Mr. Shaw acknowledged the emails showed that a former executive — who was Mr. [Steven] Sinofsky — had shared confidential company business with Mr. Epstein."

Email released by the DOJ related to Microsoft included: 1. Epstein being tipped off to the announcement of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's planned resignation announcement in Aug. 2013 by a forwarded email from the President of bgC3 [aka Gates Ventures], a personal service company for Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, on a day that saw Microsoft stock soar 7%., 2. Epstein being given a heads up by a redacted sender about a rumored 2011 Bill Gates return to Microsoft that never panned out, 3. Epstein being told in a 2013 Steven Sinofsky email about Ballmer's desire to buy a phone company that included some other juicy insider tidbits (when Microsoft's Nokia purchase was announced the following year, Microsoft stock sank 6%). In other correspondence, Sinofsky — who headed Microsoft's Windows Division — thanked Epstein for his advice in negotiating a $14 million exit package from Microsoft and later forwarded Epstein old internal email from top execs discussing the poor sales of the Microsoft Surface tablet.

In one Microsoft-related Epstein email, former Harvard President Larry Summers — who recently announced he's giving up his Harvard teaching appointments — sent Epstein a terse two-word email dissing Melinda Gates' Women in Tech initiative. "I'm gagging," Summers wrote, attaching an article about Gates' efforts (a search didn't find any reply from Epstein). Summers came under fire in 2005 when he said that women lack natural ability in math in science. Summers earlier resigned his OpenAI Board seat amid fallout over his Epstein ties that came to light following the DOJ's release of documents last November, which included the revelation that Summers and his wife were invited to dine with Bill and Melinda Gates at Epstein's NYC mansion in 2013 , Melinda's one and only Epstein encounter. Interestingly, Microsoft President Brad Smith — who coincidentally helped negotiate Microsoft's $14M exit package for Epstein-advised Sinofsky — cautioned OpenAI CEO Sam Altman about naming Summers to the OpenAI Board in November 2023. “Your future would be decided by Larry [Summers],” Smith texted. “He’s smart but so mercurial [...] too risky.” The advice went unheeded, with Altman saying the choice of Summers was non-negotiable.

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