Proprietary/Artificial Intelligence (AI) Leftovers

posted by Roy Schestowitz on Oct 19, 2023

• Layoff tsunami: LinkedIn, KPMG, Rolls-Royce and others to kick out 4000 employees soon

  Some of the prominent companies that have recently announced job cuts include industry leaders like LinkedIn, KPMG, Rolls-Royce, Stack Overflow, and Coal India.

• Microsoft's Activision Blizzard Acquisition Reveals the Worst Thing About Gaming Culture

  If you play enough video games, you might find yourself battling against a new all-consuming empire every week. But in the real world, it seems gamers are happier to cheer those empires on.

  For nearly two years, Microsoft has been working to finalize its acquisition of Activision Blizzard in the face of challenges from the Federal Trade Commission and the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority. Through lawsuits and concessions to the agencies, Microsoft finally won its case on October 13 and proceeded to celebrate in the most baffling way imaginable — with a strangely saccharine trailer welcoming hordes of characters owned by Activision Blizzard to their new “home.”

• Mass Layoffs Continue: Rolls-Royce to Cut 6% of Global Workforce, LinkedIn 3%

  LinkedIn announced its cuts on Monday; they will affect a total of 668 employees from LinkedIn’s engineering, talent, and finance teams, or more than 3% of its global workforce of over 20,000.

  For LinkedIn, a subsidiary of Microsoft, this is the second round of layoffs this year. In May, the company cut 716 sales, operations and support team jobs. The aim is to streamline operations, enhance efficiency, and facilitate quicker decision-making processes within the organization.

  “While we are adapting our organizational structures and streamlining our decision making, we are continuing to invest in strategic priorities for our future and to ensure we continue to deliver value for our members and customers,” LinkedIn said.

• Malware-dropping browser updates soaring in popularity • The Register

• X, formerly Twitter, rolls out US$1 annual fee for new users in New Zealand and the Philippines | X (formerly known as Twitter) | The Guardian

  Platform owned by Elon Musk says subscription trial is aimed at combating bots on the service

• X starts testing Not A Bot, a subscription model that will charge users $1 a year [Ed: But bot operators can also pay a buck a year]

  New users to X Corp. in New Zealand and the Philippines will to have to pony up $1 a year for the privilege of using the platform previously known as Twitter.

• Twitter Now Charging $1 Per Year for New Accounts in Some Regions [Ed: Poor Pinoys; they get charged to use Twitter, whereas people in rich Brunei use it for free]

  Rumors have been swirling that Elon Musk will begin charging an access fee for X/Twitter. The first iteration of that appears to be here with a ‘not a bot’ fee charged to New Zealand and the Philippines.

• Apple MacBook Sales Drop 30% in 2023 Despite 15-inch Air Launch: Report

  Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo says that the 15-inch MacBook Air has underperformed in 2023

• iPhone 15 image retention not a hardware issue, but a software bug, and it's fixed in iOS 17.1

  Update to iOS 17.1 - when it's out, of course (or grab the beta now) - and your image retention blues should be a thing of the past.

• Microsoft Announces the Sunset of Azure Database for MariaDB

  Time's ticking for Azure MariaDB users. By 9/19/2025, all workloads will be gone. Microsoft recommends migrating to Azure MySQL.