#Microsoft

0 today

May 29Friday

Ruan YiFeng's WeblogMay 29, 08:08

Technology Enthusiasts Weekly Issue 398: Token Costs Are Hard to Afford

Peter Steinberger posted one month of usage showing 7.6 million requests and 603 billion tokens, with CodexBar estimating a $1.3 million value under preset rates rather than his actual spend as an OpenAI employee.

Why it matters: HKR-H/K/R all pass: the CodexBar case turns token economics into concrete usage and cost. This is strong practitioner commentary, not a model or platform release, so it fits the 72–77 featured band.

May 23Saturday

AI HOT (Curated Pool)May 23, 13:23

Microsoft Says AI Use Can Cost More Than Human Wages

Microsoft says AI use costs more than human wages in specific work scenarios, with its report comparing token- and agent-based usage costs against the cost of hiring people for the same tasks.

Why it matters: HKR-H/K/R all pass, but the disclosed facts stop at a broad Microsoft cost claim; jobs, amounts, and methodology are not given. Strong featured cost signal, not a major release.

May 19Tuesday

AI HOT (Curated Pool)May 19, 19:35

Former executive says Microsoft’s AI strategy faltered, with Copilot paid usage below 3%

Former Microsoft executive Matt Veloso said Microsoft generated about $30 billion from its AI partnership between 2023 and 2025, while related costs reached $100 billion; he also said actual usage among paid Copilot users is below 3%.

Why it matters: HKR-H/K/R all pass: a former executive gives concrete Microsoft AI cost, revenue, and Copilot usage numbers. Kept at 80 because this is a single former-exec claim, not an official Microsoft disclosure.

Apr 25Saturday

Hacker News front pageApr 25, 23:51

What's Missing in the 'Agentic' Story

Mark Nottingham critiques the “AI agent works for you” story and lists 8 trust-misalignment cases online. One example says Microsoft’s new Outlook sends third-party email passwords to its cloud and 700+ data partners. The key issue is delegation boundaries, not model capability alone.

Why it matters: HKR-H/K/R all pass, but this is sourced commentary rather than a model or product release. Mark Nottingham’s Web-protocol authority and HN traction put it at the featured threshold, not P1.

Take

The weakest part of the agent story is the lazy jump from “acts for the user” to “is loyal to the user.” Nottingham is not scoring model intelligence here. He is asking where delegation stops. His concrete hook is ugly: Microsoft’s new Outlook allegedly sends third-party email passwords to Microsoft’s cloud, with the article pointing to 700-plus data partners. A user thinks they are configuring a client; the platform quietly gains leverage.

Most agent demos still show booking, emailing, and browser control. The permission model looks like old OAuth debt with a nicer UI. OpenAI and Anthropic both push computer-use patterns; once the browser and inbox are attached, the hard problem moves from prompt injection to final authority. I don’t read this as anti-agent. It is a warning that vendors are selling delegation while dodging accountability.

Apr 17Friday

最佳拍档 (BestPartners)Apr 17, 07:00

Turn your coworker into a Skill? GitHub viral project and Anthropic Skills explained

The video says the open-source “coworker.skill” project gained over 13,000 GitHub stars in days, but it produces a standardized SKILL.md prompt package, not a digital worker replacement. It gives a timeline: Anthropic launched Claude Skills on Oct 16, 2025, then published Agent Skills as an open standard on Dec 18; the mechanism keeps only a short summary in context until a task matches. The real point is scope: it fits standardized workflows like reports, docs, and code review, while the post does not disclose cross-platform compatibility rates or any settled legal standard.

Why it matters: This clears HKR-H/K/R: the coworker-to-Skill hook is sticky, the post adds dates/stars/mechanism, and the labor/IP angle resonates. I kept it at 76 because it is secondary commentary, not a primary release or first-hand test, and key compatibility/legal facts are still undiscolse

Take

coworker.skill blowing up shows how badly companies confuse workflow packaging with capability capture. The repo hit 13,000 GitHub stars in days, but the output is still a SKILL.md bundle: YAML metadata plus Markdown instructions, loaded only when the task matches. Anthropic shipped Claude Skills on Oct. 16, 2025, then published Agent Skills as an open standard on Dec. 18. That mechanism saves context; it does not manufacture a colleague.

The useful cases are boring: Excel, Word, PDF, PowerPoint, weekly reports, docs, code review checklists. The workplace panic starts when managers demand “employee Skills” and get anti-distillation sludge back: Redis TTL guidance becomes “follow team rules; parameters depend on business context.” That is not knowledge management. That is management mistaking prompt packaging for judgment.

Feb 27Friday

OpenAI NewsFeb 27, 13:30

Joint Statement from OpenAI and Microsoft

OpenAI and Microsoft issued a joint statement. The provided content includes only the headline and no body text, so the only confirmed fact is that the statement came from the two companies; its subject, actions, and timing are not stated.

Why it matters: An official statement gives this enough weight: it says OpenAI's new funding and partners do not change Microsoft's existing terms. HKR-K and HKR-R pass because the alliance shapes cloud distribution and market power; HKR-H is weak and detail density is limited.

Take

OpenAI and Microsoft are narrowing the blast radius of the Amazon partnership: new infrastructure partners are allowed, but the control plane stays put. The hard line is explicit: Azure remains the exclusive cloud provider for stateless OpenAI APIs, including stateless calls generated through third-party collaborations such as Amazon. Microsoft’s IP license, revenue share, and AGI process also stay unchanged.

For builders, that matters more than the friendly language. OpenAI can commit extra compute through Stargate or Amazon-style infrastructure deals, but enterprise API distribution and compliance gravity still sit with Microsoft. Microsoft is not blocking OpenAI from raising money or buying capacity elsewhere. It is keeping the API choke point. Amazon gets a slice of the infrastructure story, not the main OpenAI API lane.

Feb 12Thursday

MIT Technology Review · AIFeb 12, 19:00

AI is already making online crimes easier. It could get much worse.

Microsoft said it blocked $4 billion in scams and fraudulent transactions in the year to April 2025, with many likely aided by AI-generated content. The article cites research estimating at least half of spam email is now LLM-generated, and LLM use in targeted email attacks rose from 7.6% in April 2024 to 14% in April 2025. Don’t overread “fully automated AI hackers”: the immediate issue is AI scaling phishing, deepfakes, and malware support, while the post does not disclose total attack growth.

Why it matters: HKR-H/K/R all pass: the swindle angle is strong, and the article adds concrete abuse metrics ($4B blocked, half of spam, 7.6%→14%). Featured, not p1, because this is a solid trend report on AI-enabled fraud, not a same-day industry-moving release or incident.