Four-day workweek boosted productivity by 40%, Microsoft Japan experiment shows

In a rare corporate experiment to test a four-day work system, Microsoft Corp.’s Japan branch found that their productivity improved by about 40 percent, the company said.

The test involved 2,300 regular office workers in August.

Amid calls for improving efficiency in the workplace in a country notorious for having long working hours, the firm conducted the trial to see if it would boost employees’ performance.

Microsoft Japan Co., which released a report on the experiment last week, made every Friday in August a special paid holiday for all its regular workers in the country.

The Microsoft logo is seen in 2016 in Issy-les-Moulineaux, outside Paris. | AP

To raise productivity, the management asked workers to communicate more often via an online chat tool instead of having meetings and sending emails.

Even when they had physical meetings, workers were asked to finish them within 30 minutes in principle and limit the number of participants to five at the most.

As a result, the experiment saw a 39.9 percent increase in sales per worker, and 58.7 percent and 23.1 percent drops in the amount of paper used for printing documents or used in copy machines and in electricity consumption respectively, compared to August last year.

About 92 percent of the employees viewed the four-day workweek in a positive manner, the report showed.

It did not reveal the total amount of overtime hours worked during the period, but the spokesman said it did not increase.

He said Microsoft Japan does not plan to make four-day workweeks a permanent fixture but it may use them from time to time.

In a bid to eradicate Japan’s notorious corporate culture of long working hours, the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has been touting the importance of work-style reforms.

According to the Japan Productivity Center, a Tokyo-based research body, Japan’s hourly labor productivity, based on data from the OECD, was calculated at ¥4,733 ($47.5) in 2017, meaning it ranked 20th among the 36 OECD countries.

While four-day weeks are unlikely to become common in Japan anytime soon, a recent poll showed a vast majority of Japanese workers view the idea of a four-day week system favorably.

In a July online poll by internet service provider Biglobe Inc., 80 percent of 1,000 respondents answered positively about the four-day workweek system.

Asked what day they would like to take off if a four-day week was introduced, 51 percent said Wednesday.

(Source: JT)

Microsoft workers decry grueling '996' working standard at Chinese tech firms

A letter on Github demanded companies comply with labor laws, limiting workers to 40 hours a week versus a 12-hour day standard

Microsoft employees have published a letter on the software development platform Github in solidarity with tech workers in China.

Workers at tech companies in the country have used the Microsoft-owned platform to complain about grueling working conditions and the “996” standard in the industry, a philosophy endorsed by the tech billionaire Jack Ma. The name is based on the idea of working from 9am to 9pm, six days a week.

Microsoft workers called on Chinese tech companies to comply with local labor laws, which limit their workers to 40 hours a week, with a maximum of 36 hours per month of overtime.

“These same issues permeate across full time and contingent jobs at Microsoft and the industry as a whole,” the workers said.

A philosophy endorsed by Jack Ma, tech billionaire, says that young people should work from 9am to 9pm, six days a week. Photograph: Andy Wong/AP

The repository hosting the material is called 996.icu, a reference to a comment from one poster that said such a schedule could land workers in the intensive care unit. Users created a list of more than 150 companies they said have inhumane working conditions, including Huawei, Bytedance (makers of the app TikTok), and Ant Financial (associated with Alibaba). It quickly became one of the fastest-growing GitHub repositories in the service’s history, being starred more than 200,000 times.

As the repository has gained traction, Tencent and Alibaba, both mentioned in the list, have restricted access to the material on their browsers. In their letter, Microsoft workers called on Microsoft and Github to keep the forum “uncensored and available to everyone”.

“History tells us that multinational companies will pit workers against each other in a race to the bottom as they outsource jobs and take advantage of weak labor standards in the pursuit of profit,” the letter said. “We have to come together across national boundaries to ensure just working conditions for everyone around the globe.”

The letter initially had 30 signatures, and workers behind it called on fellow employees to contact them to add names. The move is the latest internal tech protest. In February, Microsoft workers released a petition opposing a $480m contract to provide the US army with augmented reality headsets in a letter signed by more than 50 employees.

In November 2018, Google employees walked off the job over reports that a former executive who had been ousted for sexual harassment had received a $90m severance package. Workers involved in organizing that protest have reported internal backlash and demotions for their actions.

(Source: The Guardian)

Hotmail, MSN and Outlook emails exposed to hackers for months, Microsoft reveals

Criminals bypassed the tech giant's cyber security measures by abusing a customer support portal

Hackers had access to Hotmail, MSN and Outlook emails from a large number of accounts for two months, Microsoft has revealed.

The technology giant confirmed that email accounts of non-corporate users were breached, with the contents of around 6 per cent of emails exposed by cyber criminals exploiting a customer support portal.

According to an email sent to the majority of affected users and then posted online, the firm said a Microsoft support agent's credentials were compromised, potentially allowing unauthorised access to some account information.

For most, this included a person's email address, folder names, subject lines of emails and the names of other email addresses users communicated with between 1 January and 28 March 2019, but not the content of emails or attachments.

However, when approached for comment on the incident, Microsoft confirmed that a small group of users had also been notified that bad actors could have gained unauthorised access to the wider contents of their emails.

The company said it was providing additional guidance and support to those users.

"We addressed this scheme, which affected a limited subset of consumer accounts, by disabling the compromised credentials and blocking the perpetrators' access," a Microsoft spokesman said of the incident.

Microsoft operates email services including Outlook, MSN and Hotmail.

The company has not confirmed the number of accounts, in total, affected by the breach.

The firm warned in its email that users might receive more spam and phishing emails as a result of the incident, and urged users not to click on links from email addresses they did not recognise.

The company added that although password information had not been affected, it encouraged users to change their log-in details "out of caution".

Microsoft said it had also increased detection and monitoring for the affected accounts.

The incident follows the discovery in January of more than 770 million email addresses from a variety of services in an online database allegedly used by hackers.

The tech giant said Hotmail, MSN and Outlook users affected by the issue have been notified via email.

(Source: Independent)

Inside the marriage of Bill and Melinda Gates

Melinda French was less than impressed when her boss asked her out on a date.

It was 1987, and the recent Duke graduate had just joined Microsoft as a product manager. CEO Bill Gates approached her at a company picnic and asked if she'd be interested in grabbing dinner in two weeks. She responded, "That's not spontaneous enough for me," Fortune reported in 2015.

Fast-forward three decades, and Bill and Melinda Gates are married with three kids, worth $92.2 billion, and run a namesake philanthropic enterprise boasting a $40.3 billion endowment.

Here's a look at their marriage.

At the picnic, Melinda gave Bill her number and told him to call her closer to the day he had in mind.

Instead, he called her up later that night with a wry question: "Is this spontaneous enough for you?" Turns out, it was.

Melinda and Bill dated for seven years before they wed. Melinda told Fortune her mom didn't think that seeing the CEO was a good idea in the beginning.

But the couple didn't listen. Business Insider's Tanza Loudenback reported they "kept a low profile at work and asked colleagues and family members to respect their privacy."

"When I look back, Bill was the same kind of guy I was hanging out with in college," Melinda told Fortune. "I had a lot of respect for them, and they had respect for me."

"I was definitely attracted to his brilliant mind, but beyond that, his curiosity," she told Fortune. "And he has a huge sense of fun. I love that wry side of him."

After they were engaged, Bill and Melinda traveled to Africa in late 1993. During the trip, they encountered people in extreme poverty.

On a walk on a beach in Zanzibar, Melinda told TED in an interview, the couple "started to talk about" how they might use their fortune to help others.

That's when the idea that would ultimately become the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation began to take root. "It's not fair that we have so much wealth when billions of others have so little," Melinda wrote, in the couple's most recent annual letter.

The couple married in 1994 in what was then Manele Bay Hotel in Hawaii. They tied the knot by the "par-3 12th hole" on the property's golf course, according to Forbes. The event reportedly cost $1 million.

To keep the wedding private, Bill booked all the rooms in the hotel, along with all of the helicopters on the island of Maui to "prevent unwanted visitors from flying over," Forbes reported.

Bill's parents gifted the newlyweds with a sculpture of two birds, sitting side-by-side and staring at the horizon. "It's still in front of our house," Melinda wrote in the couples' 2018 annual letter. "I think of it all the time, because fundamentally we’re looking in the same direction."

The next year, the couple's lavish home — nicknamed "Xanadu 2.0" — was completed in Medina, Washington. The mansion's estimated worth was $124 million in 2016.

The couple has raised two daughters and a son — and didn't let any of them own a cellphone until they were 14, according to The Mirror.

Bill told Rolling Stone the children were raised Catholic. "We've raised our kids in a religious way," he said. "They've gone to the Catholic church that Melinda goes to and I participate in."

Bill and Melinda would read books from a range of genres to their kids as they grew up, from "Guess How Much I Love You" to "Fahrenheit 451."

Gates has said his wife is a driving force when it comes to bringing the family together. "Melinda is very creative about helping me find chances to spend time with the kids," Gates wrote in a 2017 Reddit AMA. "Even just driving them to school is a great time to talk to them."

Each of the Gates' kids will inherit about $10 million of their parents' $89.6 billion fortune, while much of the rest will go to charitable causes.

"We want to strike a balance where they have the freedom to do anything but not a lot of money showered on them so they could go out and do nothing," Bill told TED.

The Gates also support their kids in other ways. The couple spent $37 million purchasing a string of Wellington, Florida properties in 2016. The reason? Their daughter Jennifer is a nationally ranked show jumper, and the Florida town is the equestrian capital of the US.

Melinda has said her relationship with her husband has changed over time. "We've had to change to really be coequals," she said. "It's not something that immediately happens overnight, but we're both committed to it."

According to Melinda, Bill was used to being in charge from his Microsoft days when they first started the foundation.

But these days, Bill and Melinda work as partners at the foundation. They both received Presidential Medals of Freedom in 2016 from President Barack Obama for their efforts.

They work to make sure their schedules are synchronized, complimentary, and balanced. "Melinda and I look over our schedules a lot to make sure we are balancing things well," Gates wrote in a 2018 Reddit AMA.

In response to a question about how the couple handles arguments, Melinda jokingly wrote "we never disagree" in the Gates' 2018 annual letter.

"Our occasional disagreements these days are over tactics. Because I've been a public figure longer, and because I’m a man, some people assume I am making the big decisions. That's never been the case," Bill wrote in the Gates Foundation's annual letter for 2018.

Melinda added that the couple avoids serious disagreements by sharing fundamental values, trust, and a sense of open-mindedness.

Warren Buffett, who is close with the couple, told Fortune that Bill was "smart as hell, obviously," but that "in terms of seeing the whole picture," Melinda was smarter.

In a Reddit AMA, Gates disclosed that his wife and Buffett were his two favorite celebrities...

... followed by Bono and Jimmy Carter. He added that Nelson Mandela was the most impressive political leader he's ever met.

When it comes to their working partnership, Bill wrote that the perception that Melinda is "the heart" of the organization is a bit of a stereotype, in the 2018 annual letter.

"Just as she knows I'm more emotional than people realize, I know she's more analytical than people realize. When I get really enthusiastic about something, I count on her to make sure I'm being realistic."

"Melinda and I believe that everyone deserves the chance for a healthy and productive life — and so with the help of our amazing partners, we are working to find innovative ways to help people in need all over the world," Bill wrote during one of his Reddit AMAs.

(Source: BI)

Firefox is about to stop supporting Windows Vista

Firefox is about to stop supporting Windows Vista and websites are not working. Is there a cheap or preferably free solution?

I read your article about Windows 10 updates and that most PCs with Vista should be tossed in the trash bin. I really don’t want to do that. I bought my computer with a disability settlement, and I simply don’t have the money for upgrades. It is an HP Model m8530f with an AMD Phenom 9550 quad-core processor and 5GB of memory. I use it for writing, blogging, internet access, simple games, nothing intense. But I do need to do something because there is only one web browser I can use effectively, and some websites have begun to shun us unfortunate Vista folks. Please tell me how to do this. I am not stupid or illiterate, just a little on the broke side, and a bit (OK, a lot) of a procrastinator. Jeanne

Microsoft launched Windows Vista in January 2007 and stopped supporting it in April last year. Any PCs still running Vista are therefore likely to be eight to 10 years old, and showing their age. In particular, hard drives are increasingly prone to fail after about five years, or 50,000 hours use, so it’s important to keep good backups.

Vista was a pretty good operating system, at least after Microsoft released the Service Pack 1 update, but very few people still use it. Microsoft has since launched Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and several versions of Windows 10. It’s no longer worth software providers and websites spending money testing and adapting their code to make sure it works with Vista, so you’re likely to face increasing problems using it online.

You are also at a greater risk from malware. Microsoft no longer provides Vista security patches, and has stopped updating Microsoft Security Essentials. You should therefore install antivirus software that still supports Vista, though I’m not sure which still do, apart from Malwarebytes and Comodo. Whatever you have already installed should be OK as long as the supplier keeps updating the virus signatures.

You will also run into more problems with browsers. I assume that the one browser you can use effectively is Firefox. The bad news is that Firefox will stop supporting Windows XP and Vista in June. Mozilla says: “For planning purposes, enterprises using Firefox should consider May 2018 as the support end date for Windows XP and Vista.” You have only a few weeks left.

Hardware matters
The good news is that your 2008-vintage desktop PC looks powerful enough to run Windows 7 or a flavour of Linux. Indeed, according to HP’s spec sheet, you could upgrade your m8530f to use a faster but hotter processor and up to 8GB of memory. I assume you could also upgrade the Nvidia GeForce 9300 GS currently installed, and probably swap your fast 750GB hard drive for a faster SSD. You could even upgrade the 350W power supply to a 550W version.

If your HP m8530f continues to work correctly, you don’t need any of these upgrades. The point is that if it fails, you should be able to replace or upgrade faulty parts without junking the whole machine. This may not even cost very much. People often break up PCs like this and sell the working parts on eBay for “spares or repair”.

The 2.2GHz Phenom X4 9550 has a PassMark benchmark score of 2542, which still qualifies as “mid range”. It’s only about a third of the speed of a current 3.6GHz Intel Core i3-8100 (PassMark 8078), but it’s still faster than the 1.1GHz quad-core Pentium N4200 (PassMark 2022) used in budget laptops like the Asus VivoBook Max.

 ‘I bought my computer with a disability settlement, and I simply don’t have the money for upgrades.’ Photograph: Alamy

Windows upgrades
The bad news is that I don’t think your HP m8530f will run Windows 10. HP says it hasn’t tested products that were bought before August 2013, and it hasn’t written any Windows 10 drivers for them. Windows 10 might still run with the drivers Microsoft supplies, but you’d have to try this yourself, and my web searches didn’t find anybody who’d written it up.

Microsoft doesn’t support an upgrade from Vista to Windows 10. Trying it would involve doing a “clean installation” that deletes your current software and applications. I can’t recommend that unless there’s a good chance of Windows 10 working.

However, you could upgrade to Windows 7. The first and most obvious drawback is that you would have to buy a Windows 7 Upgrade or the full Windows 7 software. (For your purposes, they’re the same thing.) You might be able to pick up a cheap copy locally or from eBay, but it can be hard to identify a reputable seller.

The second and less obvious drawback is that Windows 7 will only be supported until 14 January 2020. However, most businesses still use Windows 7, and I expect that most browser and anti-virus software suppliers will continue to support it after Microsoft support ends. This happened before, with Windows XP.

Note: I don’t recommend upgrading from Vista to Windows 8.1 – which will be supported until January 23 – because that also requires a clean installation.

The Linux option
GNU/Linux is well known for prolonging the life of hardware that is no longer a viable platform for Windows, and it supports all today’s major PC browsers. There are, of course, some drawbacks. The main problem is that Linux doesn’t run Windows software natively, and it doesn’t run programs such as Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, Apple iTunes, Intuit’s QuickBooks and most major games.

You can run some Windows software on Linux using Wine (originally from Wine Is Not an Emulator), but you may have to give up or replace some programs that are important to you.

The other problem is learning to use Linux. This is not as easy as its fans often claim, especially when something goes wrong. Of course, you would have to relearn some things whether you switched to Windows 10, MacOS or Linux, but Linux has the steepest learning curve.

Fortunately, you don’t have to commit to Linux to try it. You can use your PC to create a “Live CD” (or DVD or USB thumbdrive) that will run Linux without disturbing Vista. There are hundreds of options, but you might try Linux Mint – my usual recommendation for newbies – or Ubuntu Mate or Ubuntu Gnome.

Linux runs relatively slowly from a DVD so use a fast USB thumbdrive if you can. You can create one with a free utility, LinuxLive USB Creator.

If the experiment goes well, you can install Linux alongside Vista in a dual-boot configuration, so that you can load either at will. Lots of websites have step-by-step instructions. Read a few related to the version of Linux you decide to install.

You might also consider installing Ubuntu 18.04, codenamed Bionic Beaver, which is due to be released today. With this version, Ubuntu has returned to the standard Gnome 3 desktop instead of Unity.

Linux tends to change rapidly, but the LTS (Long Term Support) versions – such as Mint 18.3 and Ubuntu 18.04 – are supported for up to five years. After a decade of Vista, you may appreciate the stability.

(Source: The Guardian)

Bill Gates’ daughter and her Arab boyfriend visit Kuwait

Jennifer Gates, daughter of American billionaire and Microsoft founder Bill Gates, and her Egyptian boyfriend, Nayel Nassar, are still going strong.

The duo, who have been dating for a while now, are often spotted visiting countries around the world and they recently spent a holiday together in Kuwait.

Chicago-born Nassar, an accomplished equestrian and Stanford graduate, was raised in the Gulf state and is said to often make trips back to the country. This time his girlfriend came along.

The couple arrived in Kuwait during the past holiday season and enjoyed a quick stay in the country.

Even though Gates posted photos of the trip on her private Instagram page, the images were leaked earlier this week and have now gone completely viral.

Nassar also posted similar photos on his public Instagram account in Decemeber 2017.

The photo is now going viral

In her caption of the now-leaked photo which was originally posted to Gates' Instagram page, she wrote:

"A magical three days in Kuwait with my favorite person. Happy holidays everyone."

It was also uploaded on Nassar's Instagram

People love it

بنت بيل غيتس اغنى رجل بالعالم حاليًا في الكويت مع زوجها المصري

تعليقي : ياحلو البساطة من غير بهرجة👍 pic.twitter.com/XkBwBzGxg6

— Abdullatif Ramadhan (@AbdullatifQ8y) January 20, 2018

"My comment on this: Simplicity without flashiness is the most beautiful thing."

The couple recently celebrated their first anniversary

Gates and Nassar celebrated their one year of dating last week. To mark the occasion Nassar posted a photo of the couple on Instagram, captioning it:

"Happy first year my love! Here's to many more."

(Source: Step Feed)

Microsoft Paint to be killed off after 32 years

Long-standing basic graphics editing program, used throughout childhoods since the 1980s, has been marked for death

Microsoft’s next Windows 10 update, called the Autumn (or Fall in the US) Creators Update, will bring a variety of new features. But one long-standing stalwart of the Windows experience has been put on the chopping block: Microsoft Paint.

First released with the very first version of Windows 1.0 in 1985, Paint in its various guises would be one of the first graphics editors used by many and became a core part of Windows. Starting life as a 1-bit monochrome licensed version of ZSoft’s PC Paintbrush, it wasn’t until Windows 98 that Paint could save in JPEG.

With the Windows 10 Creators Update, released in April, Microsoft introduced the new Paint 3D, which is installed alongside traditional Paint and features 3D image making tools as well as some basic 2D image editing. But it is not an update to original Paint and doesn’t behave like it.

Now Microsoft has announced that, alongside Outlook Express, Reader app and Reading list, Microsoft Paint has been signalled for death having been added to the “features that are removed or deprecated in Windows 10 Fall Creators Update” list.

Falling under the deprecated column for apps that are “not in active development and might be removed in future releases”, Microsoft Paint’s ticket has been called and now it’s only a matter of time before it is removed like your favourite piece of old furniture from your childhood home.

Paint was never one of the most capable apps, and was limited to the bitmap (BMP) and PCX formats until 1998, but if you wanted to scribble something out using your mouse or make a quick cut and paste job, Paint was always there, even on work computers.

The most recent version of Paint for Windows 7 and later was much improved, but still considered feature poor compared to other free alternatives such as the third-party Paint.NET.

When Microsoft Paint will officially be removed from Windows has yet to be confirmed, while a precise date for the release of the Windows 10 Autumn Creators Update is equally up in the air. Whether, like Clippy, Windows users will celebrate or decry Paint’s removal, it will be a moment in the history of Windows as one of its longest-standing apps is put out to pasture.

(Source: The Guardian)

How a Microsoft font may bring down Pakistan's Nawaz Sharif govt

The undoing of Pakistan's Nawaz Sharif government might be a Microsoft Word font the PM's daughter Maryam used while allegedly forging documents she submitted to a team investigating illegal offshore properties flagged in the Panama Papers, the country's media reported.

Pakistan's Twitterati is having a field day with that bit of information, calling it #Fontgate.

Maryam Nawaz Sharif

On page-55 of the investigative team's final report submitted on Monday, it says Maryam's documents had on them sentences typed in the "Calibri" font which was not available before January 31, 2007, said The Express Tribune report. The documents themselves, though, were from 2006.

Ergo: forgery.

Still, the report noted that Wikipedia says the Calibri font was made much before 2007, in 2004. However, it was made available for public use in 2007.

Twitter was abuzz in Pakistan with #Fontgate

As someone said - and this comment holds good for India too - "Never a dull moment in Pakistani politics."

(Source: TOI)