How Microsoft Employees Pressured the Company Over Its Oil Industry Ties (grist.org) 144
The non-profit environmental site Grist reports on "an internal, employee-led effort to raise ethical concerns about Microsoft's work helping oil and gas producers boost their profits by providing them with cloud computing resources and AI software tools." There's been some disappointments — but also some successes, starting with the founding of an internal sustainability group within Microsoft that grew to nearly 10,000 employees:
Former Microsoft employees and sources familiar with tech industry advocacy say that, broadly speaking, employee pressure has had an enormous impact on sustainability at Microsoft, encouraging it to announce industry-leading climate goals in 2020 and support key federal climate policies.
But convincing the world's most valuable company to forgo lucrative oil industry contracts proved far more difficult... Over the past seven years, Microsoft has announced dozens of new deals with oil and gas producers and oil field services companies, many explicitly aimed at unlocking new reserves, increasing production, and driving up oil industry profits...
As concerns over the company's fossil fuel work mounted, Microsoft was gearing up to make a big sustainability announcement. In January 2020, the company pledged to become "carbon negative" by 2030, meaning that in 10 years, the tech giant would pull more carbon out of the air than it emitted on an annual basis... For nearly two years, employees watched and waited. Following its carbon negative announcement, Microsoft quickly expanded its internal carbon tax, which charges the company's business groups a fee for the carbon they emit via electricity use, employee travel, and more. It also invested in new technologies like direct air capture and purchased carbon removal contracts from dozens of projects worldwide.
But Microsoft's work with the oil industry continued unabated, with the company announcing a slew of new partnerships in 2020 and 2021 aimed at cutting fossil fuel producers' costs and boosting production.
The last straw for one technical account manager was a 2023 LinkedIn post by a Microsoft technical architect about the company's work on oil and gas industry automation. The post said Microsoft's cloud service was "unlocking previously inaccessible reserves" for the fossil fuel industry, promising that with Microsoft's Azure service, "the future of oil and gas exploration and production is brighter than ever."
The technical account manager resigned from the position they'd held for nearly a decade, citing the blog post in a resignation letter which accused Microsoft of "extending the age of fossil fuels, and enabling untold emissions."
Thanks to Slashdot reader joshuark for sharing the news.
But convincing the world's most valuable company to forgo lucrative oil industry contracts proved far more difficult... Over the past seven years, Microsoft has announced dozens of new deals with oil and gas producers and oil field services companies, many explicitly aimed at unlocking new reserves, increasing production, and driving up oil industry profits...
As concerns over the company's fossil fuel work mounted, Microsoft was gearing up to make a big sustainability announcement. In January 2020, the company pledged to become "carbon negative" by 2030, meaning that in 10 years, the tech giant would pull more carbon out of the air than it emitted on an annual basis... For nearly two years, employees watched and waited. Following its carbon negative announcement, Microsoft quickly expanded its internal carbon tax, which charges the company's business groups a fee for the carbon they emit via electricity use, employee travel, and more. It also invested in new technologies like direct air capture and purchased carbon removal contracts from dozens of projects worldwide.
But Microsoft's work with the oil industry continued unabated, with the company announcing a slew of new partnerships in 2020 and 2021 aimed at cutting fossil fuel producers' costs and boosting production.
The last straw for one technical account manager was a 2023 LinkedIn post by a Microsoft technical architect about the company's work on oil and gas industry automation. The post said Microsoft's cloud service was "unlocking previously inaccessible reserves" for the fossil fuel industry, promising that with Microsoft's Azure service, "the future of oil and gas exploration and production is brighter than ever."
The technical account manager resigned from the position they'd held for nearly a decade, citing the blog post in a resignation letter which accused Microsoft of "extending the age of fossil fuels, and enabling untold emissions."
Thanks to Slashdot reader joshuark for sharing the news.
Aristocracy. Aristocracy never changes (Score:3, Insightful)
How dare they allow poor people to get access to cheap energy that couldn't get it before, the founding block for elevating themselves out of poverty?
They should forever be sucking at the teat of the aid agency, to which proud microsoftie very publicly donates to get status among his other high class peers who all obviously fly to their vacations several times a year.
Seriously the amount of hypocrisy among Greens never ceases to amaze me. People who's lives are so hilariously carbon intensive we could uplift entire families out of poverty if they halved their trips to vacations... actively seek to damage and destroy ways to provide cheap energy to the poor. While using it as a status symbol among others in their peer group who are just as wasteful.
Truly, aristocracy hasn't changed a bit. It's all the same "we have benevolent goals, and we're willing to sacrifice a lot of poor to get to them".
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You forgot to show your math.
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You forgot google scholar exists and a single search for "how much does a single vacation flight cause in relative emissions" will demonstrate that this is a well studied issue with math far better than what "I" could show.
Or are you going to try to deny that rich microsoftie managers do not fly to their vacations as a norm several times a year, as most rich American upper class twats do?
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Oil is literally driven by aristocracies, you moron. People who actually claim to have medieval feudal titles in the Middle East, as well as Russian oligarchs and Texas land-baron dynasties.
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Ahhh, yes.... the old "We were stupid and did this horrible thing. So it's 100% A-OK hunky-dory for anyone else to do the same horrible thing." talking point rears its head. No one is saying that poop people should not be able to improve their lives. The point is that they have the opportunity to learn from our own mistakes and do better by not repeating them.
But Douglas Adams was prophetic in yet another way: "Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of oth
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>No one is saying that poop people should not be able to improve their lives.
Actually a lot of people are saying this. In scientific research and popular culture. Google "degrowth".
But on top of that, they also do a lot of things to make sure that "poop people" (hell of a freudian slip, tell me more what you think about the poor) stay poor. Denying them cheap energy is one of the biggest things being done. And note the present rather than past tense. Block on loan money to build cheap power across poor n
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+1 agree.
People don't seem to understand that, even if we wave a magic wand tomorrow and get all our energy via sunshine and fairy farts, we'll still need petrochemicals. They are an incredibly valuable resource, so valuable that it doesn't make sense to burn them if we have better alternatives.
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Amount of fossil fuels used for non-combustion purposes in the United States: 7% [eia.gov].
And of that 7%, because we're not burning the materials, very little ends up in the air.
If we waved that magic wand you speak of, even in the absolute worst case where we burn all the plastics, fertilizers, lubricants, etc. after use, we would drop fossil fuel based atmospheric carbon emissions by ~93%.
So, you were saying?
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This is another gross misunderstanding by Greens. Oil contains ALL of the fractional distillation elements. You don't get to pick and choose. And it makes no sense to just extract some and leave most to poison the earth.
This is why reducing demand for individual distillates doesn't really work for reducing total oil consumption. This is why I bitch about rich twats flying. Almost everywhere, the main limiting distillate is kerosene. Jet fuel precursor. The only exception to this was during the pandemic grou
Re: Aristocracy. Aristocracy never changes (Score:2)
You should take a moment to examine the entities feeding you the "lifting people out of poverty" and "somehow that's hypocriscy!" bits. I'll give you a hint: There's a conflict of interest.
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There certainly is hypocrisy to go around, but nothing comes even close to the Green hypocrisy. Greens hate the poor and want them to die off, so they don't rape Mother Gaia as they do en masse today. Degrowth being the mainstream Green ideology today is literally nothing but that once you squeeze out all the pretty words and go to what it means to "degrow humanity". They don't hide this either, just google the papers on Degrowth and read the shit that would make the most hardcore eugenicists of the 20th ce
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Yes, it was bombarded by the Greens. I actually go and read scientific journals. This is why I'm pretty much the only one here on slashdot strongly recommending that people go to scholar.google.com and look for "Degrowth". It's an exceedingly popular topic among the Greens. They lecture on it. They write papers on it. It's mainstream.
While outside of it, people understand that genocide is bad. No matter how benevolent you state your goals are.
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This is why I'm pretty much the only one here on slashdot strongly recommending that people...
I bet that's totally the reason.
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There's the wonderful thread on "scientific paper" just now on slashdot, where I literally break down paper's authors' own admission that it's fake. Within the paper.
Arguments against this are utterly hilarious. Everything from "but their summary says different" to "most scientists don't think about it". It's a great microcosm of what I'm talking about. People don't know and they don't want to know. All they want is safe popular narrative they can follow to maintain their status.
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Yep, those conniving Greens.
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That's the least of their sins. Open genocidality of the kind that makes Mao, Stalin and Hitler combined seem like really nice people is the main problem I have with them.
Re: Aristocracy. Aristocracy never changes (Score:2)
I can definitely see why you're sitting alone at your own table
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Appeal to popularity is the last refuge of the ignorant populist.
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Appeal to popularity is the last refuge of the ignorant populist.
Yeah?
...I actually go and read scientific journals. This is why I'm pretty much the only one here on slashdot...
Ah. Heh.
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And now, you're reduced to single syllables.
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Ha! I'm not insecure enough to fall for that, especially after that stumble.
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How does one fall below the ground? How deep of a hole did you dig for yourself?
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Mmm hmm. Have a good weekend, man.
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Thanks, you too. It's sunny here for a change.
Re:Aristocracy. Aristocracy never changes (Score:4, Insightful)
>Those poor people you don't actually care about, a lot of them are going to be poorer when the temperature's up by another 2.5 degrees.
Actually a lot richer. Current calculations are that in about hundred years time, planet will warm around 2 degrees. During this time, global GDP will be up several hundred percent, and global warming will shave between 5% and 30% off that growth.
Cheap energy is far, FAR more important to the poor than potential damage of global warming. Because not only does it enable them to get out of the danger zone of poverty that will be harshly impacted by potential dangers, but it also enables a lot of mitigating techniques and factors.
For example, the oft raised problem of desertification vs cheap energy. Look at Sahel. Before available diesel supplies to the area to run tractors, it couldn't feed its own population. Today with that available in many regions across Sahel, these became booming net producers of food, which in turn also makes locals push cattle out to new marginal lands closer to Southern Sahara. Which excrete the seeds to the desertified regions alongside natural fertilizer, slowly reclaiming the desert in ag pockets where cheap energy is available.
In the rest of Sahel where we failed to deliver cheap energy to run tractors, Sahara is either stagnant or growing instead.
Because "global warming" and "damage from global warming" do not directly correlate. Many things that lead to former often also mitigate the latter. The worst thing you can do is enable the former while blocking the latter.
And that is what microsofties in the story do.
Re:Aristocracy. Aristocracy never changes (Score:4, Insightful)
Citation needed.
I especially like how you ignore that people will die and lose their homes in the "x% off that growth" you cite.
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Hey, I remember the last time your political side used "if only we could save one life" argument as a tool of general population wide policy. Are you sure you want to go down that path again?
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What you didn't take into account - the poor people that you are attempting to side with live downwind from the fossil fuel plants, and will have shorter life expectancy and lower residual property values if they even own their homes due to elevated cancer rates and pollution from the fossil fuels.
Let's just say what's really happening here: why are you clamoring for "the poor" while trying to reduce poor people's life expectancy as a beard to keep your own energy prices low?
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>the poor people that you are attempting to side with live downwind from the fossil fuel plants, and will have shorter life expectancy and lower residual property values
We were talking about Big Oil. The only place rich enough to burn oil in fossil fuel plants are Middle Easterners.
Red herring denied.
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Actually the thread was talking about "cheap energy" derived from fossil fuel sources which includes coal and natgas. And the US does use petroleum for electrical generation too. [brainly.com]
Goalpost moving denied.
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You really didn't read what the chart says, just what the person presenting the chart as something completely different said, huh?
Why am I not surprised. You did look like someone who would find the most hilarious topic, checked that it has a "EXPERT VERIFIED" with pretty checkmark next to it. And not bother to actually fact check.
Here are the actual numbers on electricity:
https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs... [eia.gov]
Petroleum in total is less than half a percent. It's mostly portable diesel generators for off the grid
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It's nice that I didn't even need to tear apart your bullshit, because other people already did for me.
Seems there's quite a bit of disagreement with you on this.
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Anti-scientific views very popular, yes. Doesn't change the reality one bit though. We still don't burn oil in plants unless we absolutely must for some very specific reason, because of just how expensive it is, and the chart you presented still doesn't represent when you claim.
No matter how many people as stupid as you claim it does.
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>downwind from the fossil fuel plants
Mhm.
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Cheap energy is far, FAR more important to the poor than potential damage of global warming.
You're right. Poor people don't care much about global warming. On the other hand cancer, lung disease, and all other "benefits" of cheap energy other than global warming are also disproportionately affecting the poor.
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You remind me of the charities "saving" people in Thailand from prostitution. Who are always shocked, SHOCKED to find that people they "saved" and "returned to their wonderful villages" are back on the streets within a month.
Turns out whoring out on streets of Bangkok is way better living than subsistence farming. Just like dying from lung cancer at your old age is way better than dying thirty years earlier due to schistosomiasis.
Because if you think lung cancer is bad, google that particular illness. You'l
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So have you given up flying? I have.
Does your house use natural gas? Mine does not.
Are you sure you want to throw stones?
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Nope.
Yes...HELL yes, keeps my electric bill reasonable...gas heat, gas water heater, gas clothes dryer, gas stovetop and oven.
Gas...the ONLY way to cook!!
Personally...I enjoy and plan to continue to enjoy the standard of living I grew up with and worked hard to attain.
I see no reason to give anything up.
But, you be you.
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Summary: I'm a selfish git who got his, everyone else including the entirety of humanity can fuck off.
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Maybe they can start eating oil?
Maybe they could eat solar panels and windmills instead?
What petroleum oil does for the poor is give them fuel and lubricants for diesel tractors, tractors they can use to plant and harvest food on industrial scales. Oil also means kerosene stoves for canning and pasteurizing food so there is less food wasted to spoilage. It also means fuel for generators for producing electricity, electricity for refrigeration to preserve food longer. People eat because they have oil.
Could people eat because they have e
Re: Aristocracy. Aristocracy never changes (Score:1)
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What petroleum oil does for the poor is give them fuel and lubricants for diesel tractors, tractors they can use to plant and harvest food on industrial scales
Yes, with impoverished people famously having hundred-acre fields with sufficient water rights to irrigate, and million-dollar farm implements for cultivating food on industrial scales.
Do you even think about the words you're writing before hitting submit?
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Want to see something depressing?
A two-year corn/soybean rotation at today's commodity prices gives (Corn, 200 bushels per acre * 200 acres * 4.50 per bushel) + (Soybeans, 60 bushels per acre * 200 acres * 12 per bushel) = $324k. Assuming 25% profit margin (324 *0.25) = $81k for two years = $40.5k/year.
The depressing bits...
200 acres * $4.2k/acre = $840,000. * 0.05 = $42k per year. Sell the farm and put the money in a 5% ROI investment to make more money with the only labor being checking your portfolio.
T
Yes insane, but quibble on nuclear (Score:2)
(nuclear power: the safest, cleanest and cheapest power source we know).
Cleanest, yes, there's a good argument for that. Cheapest: no. While many people (e.g., MIT [mit.edu]) argue that nuclear power could be cheap, today's nuclear power plants are the most expensive source of electrical generation we currently use, not the cheapest.
I'll also point out that if we go for large-scale implementation of nuclear power, we're going to have to implement fuel reprocessing, which is a can of
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That's because of laws that were intended to shut down nuclear without explicitly doing so. These regulations don't improve safety, yet increase costs. And the result? In China, new nuclear plants cost over 10 times less than they do in the western world -- and yet, they had no nuclear disasters.
All the three nuke fails we had (Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, Fukushima) -- have all happened in power plants in operation since 1970s, built with early-1960s designs.
Meanwhile, coal plants are allowed to vent a
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and yet, they had no nuclear disasters.
FYI this is the exact same argument that people used for RBMK reactors until early April of 1986. How did that work out? How is that continuing to work out for Ukraine?
Not yet != never going to happen.
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While the leaders of Communist China might not much care about the safety of those they rule over they do care about their own safety. They might cut corners on a nuclear power plant were individual safety is compromised but not likely on anything that could result in another Chernobyl.
Perhaps those reading this have heard this trope before, "once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action."
China has dozens of civil nuclear power reactors in operation now, with dozens more under con
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And how do fare coal and gas reprocessing plants? Because putting a few barrels under a mountain is such a problem, yet spraying everything into air is all-ok. But hey, let's pretend that isn't a problem!
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Whataboutism at it's finest.
Hey look over there at a completely useless and infeasible technology, to distract from the stupendously expensive, complex, and fraught with policy problems technology I support!
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There's no "whataboutism" when our task is to select from a few choices. An answer to criticism of choice A which says "B suffers from this problem more" is invalid only when discussing merits of A on its own rather than answering "which one is better?".
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Except that the whole mention of irrelevant "coal and gas reprocessing plants" was directly to distract from the very real problems with nuclear fuel reprocessing, while absolutely nothing was said to refute the very real problems that I raised.
How, exactly, is that not whataboutism?
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I accept your concession of the argument.
Also, your grammar sucks. If you're going to copypasta the same dumbass response to multiple topics and threads, can you at least make sure it's a complete sentence?
Don't want a world where all money isn't green (Score:3)
It is the opposite of a free society, and can be observed on the small scale in any place subject to a mafia's whims.
Want to do X or hire Y to do Z? Only if The Boss says it's okay. Otherwise, tough shit.
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You can't breathe money. The longer you deny that, the more the hunger grows for the Stalin you're so afraid of to arise and sweep you away.
Personally, I'm a conservative. I'd rather keep capitalism and make it work for people. Your head-in-the-sand, "let them eat cake" attitude is not conducive to that. Neither is foaming at the mouth about mafia bosses or deep states. Meanwhile the adults are trying to solve problems. You are why "conservative" is a dirty word and the movement has no credibility.
Re: Don't want a world where all money isn't green (Score:2)
All economic activity has costs of some kind.
If I built a road, or a train track, or a bike path, or a dock, that's one epsilon less wild land for some bird to frolic in beyond the reach of Man. Question is, do I value that bird more than I value the utility we all get out of that road, or house, or factory. And even if I do, can I get broad consensus from society at large to seize that land by eminent domain so its owner can't build on it?
If not, then demanding my employer not sell to that land's owner bec
Alternatives? (Score:1, Troll)
These idiots act like we aren't switching off oil and natural gas quicker by choice, as if renewables were easy, if only we'd try!
Out here in the real world, gas and oil are hard to replace mainly because rich kids' parents like theirs won't let anything be built anywhere near them. These kiddies are focusing on oil because they're radicalized and selfish.
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Out here in the real world, gas and oil are hard to replace mainly because rich kids' parents like theirs won't let anything be built anywhere near them. These kiddies are focusing on oil because they're radicalized and selfish.
Their parents fought for oil, and they're fighting against oil, so they're selfish? OK there sport
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No, it's that they're just playing with a fad, just like their parents did. If they actually cared about the subject, they'd stop virtue signaling that they hate oil, as if that's gonna reduce oil usage.
Re: Alternatives? (Score:2)
If you don't care about anything or anyone it's easy to assume that nobody else does, either. But the first thing to know about assuming everyone else is like you is that you're wrong.
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so they're selfish?
Yes. Well not just selfish, selfish implies they got theirs and are just keeping others down. They are, hypocritical too. In the current world it is not possible to sustain your quality of life without oil. Those who think otherwise simply have zero concept of how oil is fundamental to every aspect of our lives.
This post brought to you by a PC made with lots of polymers that come from oil, aluminium manufacturer using coke made form oil, circuit boards manufactured with solvents that come from oil, shipped
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https://www.realcleareducation... [realcleareducation.com]
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All these nitwits work for Google, which does nothing but virtue signal, like you. That's the cushy, super well paid career they chose.
And the energy industry people are right about you. You people don't give a shit about the nitty gritty of ACTUALLY making the shift happen. You only spout empty rhetoric like making them "malevolent" execs "accept responsibility." The real world shift happens when a million different practical, real world problems get solved, mostly engineering ones. But these pricks c
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Most of the engineering problems are in the rearview mirror. Not that you'll ever admit it.
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"To Change World, Protest Less, Study More - Jeff Bloodworth, RCEd"
https://www.realcleareducation... [realcleareducation.com]
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Okey dokey.
You no jokey.
Charlie don't pee in the tea!!
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My dad thinks so.
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At least read the god damn title of the story.
Here, let me help you with a circular link: How MICROSOFT Employees Pressured the Company Over Its Oil Industry Ties [slashdot.org].
The details matter if you don't want to look like a moron.
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Actually, this detail doesn't matter.
Micro$oft (Score:5, Insightful)
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To be fair, the private affairs of Bill Gates did not become common knowledge until much later. Him screwing around on his wife, etc.
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I was working for MSFT when it happened - it was after Gates had left any active role at the company. Somewhere in 2017-18? He left as chairman in '14.
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Still though, that was just one example of many unethical things Microsoft does. No one joins Microsoft thinking, "I am now working at a charity." It's all business.
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No question. I knew they were sleazeballs since the 1980s. I also knew my retirement planning was not up to snuff, and they fixed it during my 5 year purgatory there.
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Never mind that. Imagine going to work for Microsoft 10 years ago and not already realizing they were unethical. I suppose way back in the '80s, before there was much in the way of a tech press or common internet access, one might have been able to be fooled and sign on to the house of gates without realizing that they were abandoning all ethics and principles. But anyone joining a decade ago... or, hell, any time since the "Windows isn't done until Lotus doesn't run." days... knew exactly what they were
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Imagine working for Microsoft for 10 years before realizing they were unethical.
I'm still trying to figure out what is "unethical" about a company selling a service to another company that is operating perfectly legally, providing a highly in demand energy product.
I'm beginning to think we should keep a list of people involved in "just stop oil" campaigns and use that list to cut them off from all oil based services. No gas, no power sourced from oil and gas, no plastics, no lubricants, I honestly wonder how quickly these people's tune will change.
Not really (Score:5, Interesting)
Microsoft's offerings aren't unlocking anything that wasn't available before. Oil majors largely use the cloud services to compensate for shitty laptops, not for doing advanced computational analysis. Actual production is unlocked through high performance computing which companies invested in themselves.
Here's a list. And this list is just made up of companies which have published publicly their stats to the Top500 Supercomputer list. There are many in the industry who have not:
24: HPC5 - Eni
29: Discovery 5 - Exxon Mobil
37: Dammam-7 - Saudi Aramco
53: Gwahr-1 - Saudi Aramco
60: Pangea-3 - Total Energies
81: HPC-4 - Eni
Several of these supercomputers are above many of the Microsoft Azure HPCs available for lease.
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Oh I should also mention I only looked at the first page. There's more super computers owned by oil companies ranked between 200 and 500.
That's what a for-profit company does (Score:1, Flamebait)
Smashing Communist trolls (Score:3)
And that's the best thing possible. Everywhere adopted, Capitalism lifts most people out of poverty within a generation, whereas Communism — after it is done killing off millions [researchgate.net] — keeps the survivors perpetually poor.
Compare Soviet Estonia with Finland, Eastern vs. Western Germany, Northern vs. South Korea: identical peoples, same cultural and religious backgrounds, yet vastly different quality of
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And that's the best thing possible. Everywhere adopted, Capitalism lifts most people out of poverty within a generation, whereas Communism — after it is done killing off millions [researchgate.net] — keeps the survivors perpetually poor.
Compare Soviet Estonia with Finland, Eastern vs. Western Germany, Northern vs. South Korea: identical peoples, same cultural and religious backgrounds, yet vastly different quality of life and prosperity levels.
That's a false statement. Ethical and moral constraints have their role [lawliberty.org] and do affect business-decisions.
Indeed: when ethical and moral considerations help with profit they are adopted; otherwise, they are ignored.
How is this going to work? (Score:1)
You mean they didn't setup camping in Nadella's office in protest? How do they expect to foment change without tents?
Wrong tree to bark at (Score:3)
By the way, can any country in the world sustain its army without oil? Especially in a conflict with equal-strength adversaries who don't limit themselves in this aspect? I believe a collapse of western fossil fuel industry would be a nice bonus for Xi's plans.
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By the way, can any country in the world sustain its army without oil? Especially in a conflict with equal-strength adversaries who don't limit themselves in this aspect? I believe a collapse of western fossil fuel industry would be a nice bonus for Xi's plans.
Could any nation sustain its navy without nuclear power? Especially in a conflict with a near-peer that doesn't restrict themselves from nuclear power?
China doesn't fear any navy that lacks nuclear powered ships. A possible exception to that might be Japan, this is because Japan is close and by having nuclear power plants they can't have their energy supplies cut off in a naval blockade like so many other nations.
World War Two showed that future naval warfare would depend on who had the best aircraft carr
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You seem to have forgotten about the largest naval battles that were ever waged, and that exactly 0% of the ships involved were nuclear powered. This would have been in the period of 1939 to 1945, also known as World War 2.
It can be done with diesel, and has been for like 80 years. Nuclear navies are obviously superior, but let's not pretend that it can't be done without when the most obvious glaring examples are right there on the History Channel like every hour of every day (unless they are showing abso
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Could any nation sustain its navy without nuclear power? Especially in a conflict with a near-peer that doesn't restrict themselves from nuclear power?
You can't nuclear power tanks, drones, or planes. But you can run navy on oil. Then answer is yes, you absolutely could sustain a navy without nuclear power. But more critically, just having a navy won't win you any wars.
so? (Score:2)
Are they putting forth some sort of idea that microsoft providing these services would put out more co2 than some other provider?
How high up their buttocks are their heads anyway thinking that microsoft is in position to provide truly unique services for databases and analyzing?
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Are they putting forth some sort of idea that microsoft providing these services would put out more co2 than some other provider?
This is how "cancel culture" starts. You have a group pressure various organizations to deny services to some group in the hopes everyone follows along, and if enough people follow along then presumably the personae non gratae would fade away for lack of a market for their products or a platform from which to gain members.
Like you I believe this to be a poorly thought out tactic since if there is profit in the business of fossil fuels then someone will want to participate in the business. This may be beca
Who do they think they are working for? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Oil ðY is the blood of a modern economy (Score:1)
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Headline should be (Score:2)
"Idiot resigns saving MS the trouble of sacking them"
Such idiots (Score:2)
What is NOT needed is burning O&G.
So, MS should continue to sell services to O&G and deny it to those employees that drive their large LICE SUV to work.
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Whether such consequences of the actions by American Communists are honestly unintended or deliberate, we ought to strip these people from power.
I agree. And that includes all the Putin/KGB ass kissers in the GOP.
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