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“Become Contagious”: Tech Layoffs In the midst of AI investments

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Become Contagious Tech Layoffs In the midst of AI investments

As of Sunday, February 11, 141 businesses had made staff reductions this year, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks joblessness in the IT industry. These businesses include Snap, Microsoft, eBay, and PayPal.

The tech companies are making layoffs because they’ve determined that they have a lot of dead wood after reviewing their staffing levels. And we could accomplish more if we were a lighter organization, Brent Thill, an analyst at Jefferies, told the Financial Times (FT) on Sunday.

“The layoffs are going to continue and it may get worse. It’s become contagious,” Thill added.

As per Daniel Keum, an associate professor of management at Columbia Business School, IT businesses have been assessing which divisions they want to prioritize investments in and making staff cuts in areas that are expensive but not essential, as reported by the Financial Times.

One illustration of this is the hundreds of positions that Amazon’s Twitch video streaming business terminated this year. Keum continued, saying that businesses had been “actively hiring” in addition to the job losses this year.

After laying off more than 20,000 workers at the end of 2022, Meta announced that it will be employing “minimally” this year but will be making “significant investments” in generative AI, which would involve onboarding new employees.

Not just the tech industry has seen job losses this year. AI has been involved in recent large layoffs at businesses like UPS and BlackRock, as PYMNTS reported last week.

“However, many companies are hesitant to directly link technology with job cuts, instead focusing on the positive aspects of AI implementation,” that report said.

For example, UPS has stated that AI is not replacing labor, even though the business acknowledged that technology like AI contributed to their job reductions, which were the largest in its history. Instead, salespeople can build proposals with the assistance of machine learning, which eliminates the need for price expertise.

“Estimating the true impact of AI on job cuts is challenging,” PYMNTS wrote. “According to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, U.S. companies have announced over 4,600 job cuts since May, either to free up resources for hiring individuals with AI expertise or because AI technology replaced certain tasks. “

However, it is believed that this estimate understates the true number of job losses. According to Senior Vice President Andrew Challenger, many businesses would rather not make these layoffs public because doing so frequently attracts unfavorable media attention.

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Apple’s own 5G modem-equipped iPhone SE 4 is “confirmed” to launch in March

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Tom O’Malley, an analyst at Barclays, recently visited Asia with his colleagues to speak with suppliers and makers of electronics. The analysts said they had “confirmed” that a fourth-generation iPhone SE with an Apple-designed 5G modem is scheduled to launch near the end of the first quarter next year in a research note they released this week that outlines the main conclusions from the trip. That timeline implies that the next iPhone SE will be unveiled in March, similar to when the present model was unveiled in 2022, in keeping with earlier rumors.

The rumored features of the fourth-generation iPhone SE include a 6.1-inch OLED display, Face ID, a newer A-series chip, a USB-C port, a single 48-megapixel rear camera, 8GB of RAM to enable Apple Intelligence support, and the previously mentioned Apple-designed 5G modem. The SE is anticipated to have a similar design to the base iPhone 14.

Since 2018, Apple is said to have been developing its own 5G modem for iPhones, a move that will let it lessen and eventually do away with its reliance on Qualcomm. With Qualcomm’s 5G modem supply arrangement for iPhone launches extended through 2026 earlier this year, Apple still has plenty of time to finish switching to its own modem. In addition to the fourth-generation iPhone SE, Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo earlier stated that the so-called “iPhone 17 Air” would come with a 5G modem that was created by Apple.

Whether Apple’s initial 5G modem would offer any advantages to consumers over Qualcomm’s modems, such quicker speeds, is uncertain.

Qualcomm was sued by Apple in 2017 for anticompetitive behavior and $1 billion in unpaid royalties. In 2019, Apple purchased the majority of Intel’s smartphone modem business after the two firms reached a settlement in the dispute. Apple was able to support its development by acquiring a portfolio of patents relating to cellular technology. It appears that we will eventually be able to enjoy the results of our effort in four more months.

On March 8, 2022, Apple made the announcement of the third-generation iPhone SE online. With antiquated features like a Touch ID button, a Lightning port, and large bezels surrounding the screen, the handset resembles the iPhone 8. The iPhone SE presently retails for $429 in the United States, but the new model may see a price increase of at least a little.

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Google is said to be discontinuing the Pixel Tablet 2 and may be leaving the market once more

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Google terminated the development of the Pixel Tablet 3 yesterday, according to Android Headlines, even before a second-generation model was announced. The second-generation Pixel Tablet has actually been canceled, according to the report. This means that the gadget that was released last year will likely be a one-off, and Google is abandoning the tablet market for the second time in just over five years.

If accurate, the report indicates that Google has determined that it is not worth investing more money in a follow-up because of the dismal sales of the Pixel Tablet. Rumors of a keyboard accessory and more functionality for the now-defunct project surfaced as recently as last week.

It’s important to keep in mind that Google’s Nest subsidiary may abandon its plans for large-screen products in favor of developing technologies like the Nest Hub and Hub Max rather than standalone tablets.

Google has always had difficulty making a significant impact in the tablet market and creating a competitor that can match Apple’s iPad in terms of sales and general performance, not helped in the least by its inconsistent approach. Even though the hardware was good, it never really fought back after getting off to a promising start with the Nexus 7 eons ago. Another problem that has hampered Google’s efforts is that Android significantly trails iPadOS in terms of the quantity of third-party apps that are tablet-optimized.

After the Pixel Slate received tremendously unfavorable reviews, the firm first declared that it was finished producing tablets in 2019. Two tablets that were still in development at the time were discarded.

By 2022, however, Google had altered its mind and declared that a tablet was being developed by its Pixel hardware team. The $499 Pixel Tablet was the final version of the gadget, which came with a speaker dock that the tablet could magnetically connect to. (Google would subsequently charge $399 for the tablet alone.)

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Windows 11 PCs with Arm Processors now have an Official ISO for Clean Installations

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Power users occasionally prefer to start over when they acquire a new computer, so they follow the pro-gamers’ advice and reinstall Windows using a brand-new ISO image that comes straight from Microsoft and is free of bloatware and needlessly complex “driver management programs.” Up until recently, the new Snapdragon laptops’ more specialized version of Windows 11 didn’t support that.

The Windows 11 build on these new laptops is unusual because of the Arm64-based hardware, which differs from the typical x86 and x64 innards found in most laptops and desktops. Microsoft has finally released a disk image (or ISO file) for these devices after several months of waiting. To perform a direct reinstallation or make a bootable flash drive for a different device, you may now download it straight from Microsoft’s website. It is identical to the installation media utility that is currently available.

Be aware that there may be some glitches if you use this method for a fresh install. Compared to previous designs, the Snapdragon X system-on-a-chip has a lot fewer hardware variables, but because it’s so new, Windows Update might not include all the necessary components. You may need to use an Ethernet connection or the old-fashioned sneakernet to manually load drivers from another computer. You may also need to do some Googling to locate all the files you require for that.

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