Since the start of this year, Microsoft, eBay and PayPal have axed thousands of jobs in a pivot to artificial intelligence as companies revise their resources.

As reported by the Financial Times, tech companies have cut around 34,000 jobs in a matter of weeks as the focus turns to generative AI.

In addition to the heavyweight names mentioned above, Snap has also shed a significant number of roles as part of an industry-wide cut of 138 firms that have let staff go. These figures are significant but not quite at the same level as one year previous when Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon culled their numbers.

Layoffs.fyi — indicated 263,000 roles were lost in the tech sector during 2023 as analysts have indicated the latest round of cuts is a sign of the pivot to AI, while some companies have considered productivity relating to their overall output.

Brent Hill, an analyst at the renowned financial institution Jefferies, opined companies have assessed their workforces with the conclusion that “we’ve got a bunch of dead wood, and if we had a leaner organization, we can do more.”

“The lay-offs are going to continue, and it may get worse. It’s become contagious,” added Hill.

Who is next?

Last month, Amazon-owned Twitch was hit with the blow of around 500 employees being axed due to financial pressures, a further indicator of the cost-cutting and adjusting across the industry. Even the ‘Big Five’ are impacted as part of an extensive list of employers who have cut their cloth over the last few weeks.

Enterprise software company SAP confirmed a “company-wide transformation” in January, including the loss of around 8,000 jobs as it turns further to AI while reskilling staff as much as possible.

Autumn Mitchell, a QA tester at Microsoft subsidiary ZeniMax, commented on the current uncertainty, “Anybody working in tech or games right now is worried about lay-offs to some degree, either for themselves or someone they know.”

“You see one company announce lay-offs and think, Here we go, who’s it going to be next week?” Mitchell said.

Image: PVMS/Pexels.

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1X Technologies has confirmed a breakthrough in teaching skills to its human-like (android) robots.

The company announced that its robot named EVE can now take more actions thanks to special neural networks, which allow the bots to learn by watching videos of people doing activities. From this, EVE learns to copy the activities on its own, without needing complex programming.

The Norway-based humanoid robotics firm, backed by OpenAI, designs androids to “work alongside people, to meet the world’s labor demands” but it assures of their safety credentials by testing every android in real-world scenarios before they’re deployed.

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The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, is seeking a $7 trillion investment to overhaul the world’s semiconductor industry, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Semiconductor chips are a hugely limiting factor in the world of artificial intelligence (AI) development due to the extremely high computing power needed to train AI models. With this investment, Altman is looking to negate a factor that significantly limits OpenAI’s growth potential.

Despite huge investment and strategic focus from the US government, the semiconductor chip industry is complex. Due to its strategic value and the importance of chips to AI development, it is a highly regulated industry and the US has tight controls on the export of chips. Altman has met with Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to discuss his ambitious plan.

“OpenAI has had productive discussions about increasing global infrastructure and supply chains for chips, energy, and data centers—which are crucial for AI and other industries that rely on them,” said a spokesperson for OpenAI to the WSJ. “We will continue to keep the U.S. government informed given the importance to national priorities, and look forward to sharing more details at a later date.”

However, fundraising the $5 – 7 trillion dollars required will be no easy feat. As the WSJ reports, the size of the global semiconductor chip market was $527 billion last year and isn’t expected to reach $1 trillion until 2030. The investment sought dwarfs even the market for chip manufacturing equipment, which was approximately $100 billion last year.

Sam Altman is looking for an amount greater than most country’s GDP

Let’s just stop for a moment and put this figure in context because $7 trillion is an extravagantly large amount of money. The GDP of the United Kingdom is $3.1 trillion, less than half of what Alman is seeking. The combined value of Microsoft and Apple, the USA’s highest-valued businesses, is just over $6 trillion.

The tech entrepreneur has met with representatives from the government of the United Arab Emirates and businesspeople from Taiwan to try and advance his plans. Despite Middle Eastern interest, Altman wants to focus his chip plants in the US, in part due to the huge investment coming from the Biden administration into the chip industry.

OpenAI is partnered with Microsoft and has their full support. Altman has discussed his plans with Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, and Kevin Scott, its CTO, and is proceeding with their buy-in.

Nothing has yet been confirmed regarding this enormous plan, but Altman continues to meet with powerful people to push it forward.

Featured image credit: Midjourney

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OpenAI is said to be working on a “supersmart” assistant to run a computer for its user.

With the development of a ChatGPT bot to effectively assume autonomy over a device, this is one of two agents in the pipeline, according to a report from Business Insider.

The leading artificial intelligence (AI) research company appears to have grand ambitions to deliver an ultimate assistant for the present era, which would result in the software being able to fully complete tasks as prompted. It will focus on text typing functions, as well as cursor movement, and working with different apps.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly wants to deliver ChatGPT as a “supersmart personal assistant for work,” but the path ahead could lead to issues with Microsoft, its partner firm. The ‘Big Five’ tech giant (as well as Google) has already launched its own AI workplace assistant but these programs are said to be in their infancy.

The report suggests growing anticipation for the development from OpenAI, with work commenced on the project over a year ago. Talk of a game-changer will raise expectations but the end product is not in sight yet.

Matter of time

Generative AI has been lauded for significantly boosting workers’ productivity with some tasks, with the market for AI agents opening up in recent times. This growth area has been talked up by industry experts, including the co-founder of Google’s AI research subsidiary, DeepMind.

Mustafa Suleyman stressed that everyone could potentially have a personal assistant bot for themselves, a “chief of staff”, within the next five years in a conversation with CNBC on the rapid advances of AI.

“It will be able to reason over your day, help you prioritize your time, help you invent, be much more creative,” he said, adding “It will be a research assistant, but it will also be a coach and companion.”

Featured image: Dall-E

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With concerns over the impact of AI on the democratic process in the lead up to the 2024 United States presidential election, Midjourney has intimated it could ban political images entirely.

From Donald Trump campaigning with Donald Duck to Joe Biden being accompanied by Beyonce, anything is possible with artificial intelligence in terms of creating imagery and videos to blur the lines but worse than that is the fear of political disinformation – deliberately misleading – which has the potential to negatively influence public opinion in a meaningful way.

Generative AI program Midjourney, as well as other platforms, is cognisant of this issue with a decision to prohibit political imagery over the next 12 months said to be close.

Currently, as you can see from the headline picture here made on Midjournery, there is no restriction on creating images of the two men.

As reported by Bloomberg, Midjourney CEO David Holz opined in a Discord session, “I don’t know how much I care about political speech for the next year for our platform. I know it’s fun to make Trump pictures, I make Trump pictures,” he said.

“Trump is aesthetically really interesting. However, probably better to just not – better to pull out a little bit during this election. We’ll see,” added Holz.

Concern and control

Last March, Midjourney-created images of Trump being arrested went viral, as did pictures of the Pope depicted in a lavish Balenciaga jacket so it is easy to see where the concern of deepfakes comes from. The San Francisco-based company ended free trials soon after those pictures emerged.

Other tech firms are taking action too. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman commented at an event last week, “The thing that I’m most concerned about is that with new capabilities with AI, there will be better deepfakes than in 2020,” whilst Meta has confirmed it will be labeling more posts creating using AI in a direct move to target political interference.

It is a sensitive situation, requiring diligent action as 15 states prepare to go to the polls on Super Tuesday.

Image: Midjourney

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Researchers have developed the first-ever artificial intelligence (AI) child, Tong Tong (or Little Girl in English). It has the emotional intelligence and behavior of a three to four-year-old.

It has been developed by the Beijing Institute for General Artificial Intelligence (BIGAI) and according to the researchers, it can develop continually and improve its skills, knowledge, and values.

But don’t expect an army of robot toddlers to enter homes anytime soon. Tong Tong is virtual. She exists and learns in a virtual environment.

Unveiled at the Frontiers of General Artificial Intelligence Technology Exhibition in Beijing on 28-29 January, the AI can assign herself tasks based on how she has been programmed. For example, if she has been programmed to be tidy, she’ll clean up spills and straighten crooked picture frames. If she can’t reach the frame in her virtual world, she might get a stool to stand on to solve the problem.

𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝’𝐬 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐬𝐭 𝐀𝐈 𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝

Tong Tong is a virtual AI entity that can assign herself tasks, learn autonomously, and explore her environment.

She can display behavior and abilities similar to those of a three or four-year-old child… pic.twitter.com/SoZpKLegwY

— CodingNerds COG (@CodingnerdsCog) February 6, 2024

This is a big difference between common large language model (LLM) AI, which cannot act autonomously, and general AI, which can. The developers also said that Tong Tong has her own emotions and can experience joy, anger, and sadness. Currently, emotion is not within the capabilities of AI so we should treat this claim with a healthy dose of skepticism.

According to the South China Morning Post, BIGAI stated in a video “Tong Tong possesses a mind and strives to understand the common sense taught by humans. She discerns right from wrong, expresses her attitudes in various situations, and has the power to shape the future.” Understanding right from wrong is also something current AI technology is unable to achieve.

On Tuesday (Feb.6) Readwrite reported how when given wargame simulations generative AI tools often chose violence, including launching nukes!

Of course, it has been seen time and again that AI might not always behave as expected with researchers recently encountering an AI deliberately rejecting instructions. Luckily, Tong Tong is only the size of a toddler and should be easy to stop if she gets too recalcitrant.

Tong Tong is the brainchild of Zhu Songchun, director of BIGAI. He stated, “To advance towards general artificial intelligence, we must create entities that can comprehend the real world and possess a wide range of skills.”

Zhu lived and worked in the USA for 28 years and was a professor at UCLA until he moved to China and established BIGAI. He is a world-class AI scholar with several awards and accolades to his name.

What is the Tong Test?

The Tong Test is a new test developed by Zhu and his team at BIGAI and is designed to test AI’s communication and intelligence across five dimensions – vision, language, cognition, motion, and learning.

On their website, BIGAI says, “With nearly 100 specialized tasks and more than 50 general tasks, the Tong Test offers a complete testing regime for the development of general artificial intelligence.” The statement on the website included a quote from Zhu: “For general AI to integrate seamlessly into human environments, it must learn and execute tasks in complex settings, driven by values and an understanding of causality. This is why we proposed the Tong Test, a new direction for testing general AI, focusing on practical abilities and values.”

Featured image: BIGAI

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The fake LastPass password manager found on Apple’s App Store has now been pulled. It is currently unknown whether Apple or the bogus software developer uninstalled the phony program — which disguised itself as the LastPass password manager on the Apple App Store. Apple has not responded to inquiries about the removal, though Apple is quite vigilant about these types of issues and relentlessly guards its app store.

Christofer Hoff, Chief Secure Technology Officer for LastPass, in a statement to TechCrunch, said, “Upon seeing the fake ‘LassPass’ app in the Apple App store, LastPass immediately began a coordinated and multi-faceted approach across our threat intelligence, legal and engineering teams to get the fraudulent app removed.” Hoff continues, “Our threat intelligence team posted a blog yesterday to raise awareness and help inform the public and our customers of the situation. We are in direct contact with representatives from Apple, and they have confirmed receipt of our complaints, and we are working through the process to have the fraudulent app removed.”

To mislead consumers, the fraudster app mimicked LastPass’s branding and user interface

In an effort to mislead consumers, the fraudster app mimicked LastPass’s branding and user interface and was distributed under the identity of a single developer, Parvati Patel. The phony program included several typos, which should always give one pause and hints that something may be a fake. In addition to being released by a separate developer who was not LogMeIn — the company that owns LastPass.

It’s not really good for Apple Inc., which has been fighting against so many regulations recently — like the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA)- that such an apparently fraudulent app made it through Apple’s generally rigorous App Review process.

Appfigures, an app analytics company, reported that the phone app was released on January 21st, giving it a few weeks to get users’ attention. Appfigures saw that the users themselves appeared to have realized that the app was phony because every one of the Apple App Store reviews warned others about the bogus nature of this app. The fake app even leveraged keywords to rank in search.

The fake app may have succeeded in tricking some users, even though it probably didn’t fake-out too many. The worst for the LastPass Company is that it was forced to alert its real users in a public forum about the fraudulent app in the store — even though it should have never been released in the first place. The app wasn’t taken down from the App Store until the day after LastPass’s blog post was published.

Featured Image Credit: WeStartMoney; Pexels

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Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo announced the U.S. AI Safety Institute Consortium (AISIC). Raimondo said in a statement to Reuters, “The U.S. government has a significant role to play in setting the standards and developing the tools we need to mitigate the risks and harness the immense potential of artificial intelligence.”

The consortium members

Reuters published the list of consortium members, which includes BP (BP.L),  Cisco Systems (CSCO.O), IBM (IBM.N), Hewlett Packard (HPE.N), Northop Grumman (NOC.N), Mastercard (MA.N), Qualcomm (QCOM.O), Visa (V.N), and major academic institutions and government agencies, that will be housed under the U.S. AI Safety Institute (USAISI).

This group prioritizes the actions and guidelines listed in President Biden’s executive order:  “including developing guidelines for red-teaming (meaning identify new risks), capability evaluations, risk management, safety and security, and watermarking synthetic content.”

The executive order from U.S. President Joe Biden

Additionally, the Oct 30, 2023 executive order from U.S. President Joe Biden said that he “is seeking to reduce the risks that AI poses to consumers, workers, minority groups, and national security” with a new executive order. As per the Defense Production Act, creators of AI systems that endanger the national security, economics, health, or safety of the United States must notify the government of the United States of the findings of their safety texts before their public release.

In addition, agencies are instructed to establish guidelines for such testing and handle associated risks connected to cybersecurity, radiological, chemical, and biological hazards by the order Biden has signed at the White House. “To realize the promise of AI and avoid the risk, we need to govern this technology,” Biden said. “In the wrong hands, AI can make it easier for hackers to exploit software vulnerabilities that make our society run.”

The Commerce Department said in December 2023 that it was already taking the first steps toward “writing the key standards and guidance for the safe deployment and testing of AI.” The consortium also represents the biggest group of test and evaluation teams  who can now create a foundation for a “new measurement science in AI safety.”

Currently, generative AI has sparked both enthusiasm and concerns with its ability to produce text, images, and videos in response to open-ended cues, that it can eventually replace human labor in some occupations, disrupt elections, and have disastrous consequences.

The Biden administration is working to implement safeguards, but despite multiple high-level conferences, Congress has not passed laws addressing AI.

Featured Image Credit: Photo by Michelangelo Buonarroti; Pexels

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The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) has unveiled their new best friend: a robot called the CERNquadbot. The four-legged robot, a new type of robot for CERN, is reported to have successfully completed its first radiation protection test — and it passed with flying, radioactive colors.

“There are large bundles of loose wires and pipes on the ground that slip and move, making them unpassable for wheeled robots and difficult even for humans,” Chris McGreavy, a robotics engineer in CERN’s Controls, Electronics and Mechatronics (CEM) group, said in a statement. We conducted a proof-of-concept survey with the Radiation Protection group in this area. There were no issues at all: the robot was completely stable throughout the inspection.”

Getting to know CERNquadbot

This steel-clad pup helps fulfill a very specific niche for CERN. Until recently, CERN’s various robots, like the CERNbotSPS, Train Inspection Monorail, and CRANEbot, all could carry heavy loads like robotic arms. But while they could carry these arms and other tools, none of these robots could enter cluttered or otherwise obstructed areas. Even if they could move inside these areas, it was very limited.

“The TIMs are used for monitoring the large distances of the LHC from above and can travel long distances without recharging. They can deploy the quadbots in local areas to get more information about specific places that the TIM cannot easily access,” McGreavy added.

The Black Mirror connection

But what does all this have to do with Black Mirror? The CERNquadbot looks eerily similar to the robotic dogs at the center of “ Metalhead,” a season 4 episode of Charlie Brooker’s anthology series Black Mirror. In “Metalhead,” people are forced to fight for their lives after the robots turn murderous.

But before you start running, you should bear this in mind: at it stands, CERN has nothing to do with post-apocalyptic, murderous robo-dogs. At least not yet, anyway.

Featured Image: Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

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Starship Technologies, the autonomous robot delivery services provider, has secured a fresh round of funding to power the next phase of its development.

Led by Plural and Iconical, the funding round raised $90 million for the San Francisco-based company, taking its total funding to the figure of $230m since its inception in 2014.

Starship was founded by Ahti Heinla in Tallinn, Estonia, alongside Danish entrepreneur Janus Friis – the latter was the founder of Skype where the pair worked together.

Initially, their formidable robot machines were built for explorations on Mars but a change of tack resulted in the launch of Starship Technologies as a major player in autonomous robot delivery services. At present, demand is soaring with the company already operating in 80 locations worldwide, including the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, and Finland.

As reported by Venture Beat, Heinla stated following the funding, “Now we’re ready to take on the world and with ambitions to build a category-dominating company that can change the daily lives of millions of people in thousands of locations worldwide.”

Starship Technologies’ growth plan

Starship is aiming to fully exploit the opportunities afforded by last-mile delivery, which is the term for the final leg when a parcel is moved from a transport hub to its final destination.

Last-mile delivery is known to be intensive, in both its costs and carbon impact, at a time when online food deliveries and shopping in general are growing rapidly. Venture Beat highlighted the former is “expected to more than double by 2030, with last-mile delivery’s carbon emissions in Europe alone projected to reach 5.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2032.”

Robot delivery can take advantage of this situation, with Starship wanting to dominate the market from a significant platform of over six million deliveries to date.

Each Starship robot possesses impressive efficient credentials as they can run on a single full charge for 18 hours, with the equivalent energy usage as boiling a kettle for one cup of tea, for one average delivery. Autonomous wireless charging further enhances the efficiency of the robots which have contributed to a reduction of 1.8 million kilograms of carbon dioxide since they were first propelled into service.

Image: Starship/X

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Amazon is taking its work with artificial intelligence (AI) one step further, as it announces the beta of its new AI shopper, Rufus.

Now in its beta stage, Rufus is “a generative AI-powered expert shopping assistant” that’s trained on the e-commerce giant’s product catalog, customer reviews, community questions, and other web data to help customers make informed choices about the products they want to buy.

Amazon CEO Ted Jassy announced the launch on X today (2 Feb).

Ever notice it’s hard to get great answers on shopping journey questions? And, to get good answers where they’re deeply integrated into a shopping experience you love and trust?

Buying guidance like: “what is important to consider when buying headphones?”

Shopping missions… pic.twitter.com/Pc6EynyGir

— Andy Jassy (@ajassy) February 2, 2024

How Amazon’s Rufus AI works

At the core of Rufus is its ability to answer customer questions. It tells customers what specific factors they should consider when looking to buy a product, such as ‘what to consider when buying headphones’, for instance, while also giving them the option of shopping ‘by occasion or purpose.’ 

By this, Amazon means that customers can search for products based on an activity or event. So, if someone wants to start golfing, Rufus will recommend categories like golf clubs and base layers. Or, if you want to get a recommendation based on the occasion, you can also search for things like ‘the best Valentine’s gift’ and so forth.

Then, once you’ve narrowed it down to a specific product, Rufus can help you ask targeted questions tailored to that specific product, such as ‘Are these golf clubs good for beginners?’ Along with all that, Rufus also helps you compare and contrast items in different categories, like lip gloss versus lip oil.

So, basically, Rufus can generate an answer for your specific question by trawling through their own Amazon archives and the world wide web. 

At the moment, the beta is only available to “select” customers, but when it comes down to it, the interface is pretty simple. All customers need to do is type their questions into the usual search bar, which will then trigger a separate dialogue box for you to chat with Rufus and ask follow-up questions, if necessary. 

All in all, according to Amazon, Rufus “meaningfully improves how easy it is for customers to find and discover the best products to meet their needs, integrated seamlessly into the same Amazon shopping experience they use regularly.”

After the beta period, Rufus will be rolled out in full in the coming weeks.

Jassy described the product as: “An exciting next step in the Amazon shopping experience and I look forward to seeing how it helps customers make better, more informed, shopping decisions.”

Featured Image: Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash

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Remember cached links? They were underlined in green text reading “Cached” next to the main link when you searched for something on Google.

Granted, they weren’t an essential part of searching online but they were useful at providing a snapshot of a webpage’s content if the live site was unavailable or changed.

Well, they’re gone now.

Google has confirmed the removal of cache links from search results due to improved reliability of the internet.

In a previous era when you weren’t sure if your internet page would load, Google cache would have you covered, and it also enabled access to sites or info that could be blocked in a particular region.

Search Engine Land‘s Barry Schwartz reported initially on cache links not appearing in the search results last week, resulting in a question to Danny Sullivan, Google’s Public Liaison for Search.

Schwartz queried whether this was a permanent change, as below.

Hey, catching up. Yes, it's been removed. I know, it's sad. I'm sad too. It's one of our oldest features. But it was meant for helping people access pages when way back, you often couldn't depend on a page loading. These days, things have greatly improved. So, it was decided to…

— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) February 1, 2024

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Apple has steadily continued with its world domination ever since the first iPhone was released in 2007. And now, during the tech giant’s first earnings call of the year, CEO Tim Cook shared that the number of active Apple devices has crossed 2.2 billion worldwide.

To put that into context, it’s estimated that there are 2 billion children in the world. So technically, there are more iPhones, iPads, and Macs on this globe than there are literal children.

Tim Cook shared all during Apple’s latest earnings call

“We are pleased to announce that our installed base of active devices has now surpassed 2.2 billion, reaching an all-time high across all products and geographic segments,” Cook said in a press release.

“And as customers begin to experience the incredible Apple Vision Pro tomorrow, we are as committed as ever to the pursuit of groundbreaking innovation — in line with our values and on behalf of our customers.”

This is a 10% increase from the last time Apple recorded its amount of active devices in February 2023. According to Statista, Apple reached 1 billion devices in 2016, meaning that in just seven years, that number has almost doubled. But what’s next for Apple?

As they celebrate the release of the Apple Vision Pro, their new VR headset, there are plenty of rumors about the company’s eventual pivot to AI. At this point, such a pivot would be inevitable — especially since they’re reportedly working on their generative AI dubbed ‘Apple GPT.’

But despite gossip that iOS 18 might bring with it a host of AI-related updates, Cook and the rest of Apple have remained coy, saying only this in their press release:

“As we look ahead, we will continue to invest in these and other technologies that will shape the future. That includes artificial intelligence where we continue to spend a tremendous amount of time and effort, and we’re excited to share the details of our ongoing work in that space later this year.”

Featured Image: Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

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Tesla has agreed to a $1.5 million settlement to resolve a California lawsuit alleging improper hazardous waste management at its facilities.

The suit was filed by 25 counties across the state last week, claiming Tesla unlawfully dumped toxic materials like batteries, solvents, and electronic waste at local landfills and transfer stations over several years.

As part of the swift settlement announced yesterday (Feb 1) by the San Francisco District Attorney’s office, Tesla has agreed to appoint third-party auditors to inspect its trash containers for hazardous waste over the next five years. The company will also strengthen internal procedures to comply with state environmental laws regarding waste transport, storage, labeling, and disposal.

The lawsuit follows prior violations cited by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2019, for which Tesla paid a small fine and pledged improvements at its Fremont factory. However, investigations by undercover officers in recent years revealed continued issues with improperly labeled and handled dangerous waste.

District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said the new “settlement against Tesla, Inc. serves to provide a cleaner environment for citizens throughout the state by preventing the contamination of our precious natural resources when hazardous waste is mismanaged and unlawfully disposed.”

After being made aware of the hazardous waste issues through the District Attorney’s investigation, Tesla took steps to improve its compliance with the relevant environmental protection laws. Specifically, the company instituted new procedures across all of its service centers to quarantine and screen trash containers for hazardous materials.

Earlier this week Tesla, or at least its CEO Elon Musk, had a run-in with another state’s judiciary. A Deleware judge rejected a deal that would allow Musk to receive a $56 billion pay package.

Judge Kathaleen McCormick in Delaware called the compensation an “unfathomable sum,” ruling that he “failed” to prove that it was fair. The billionaire responded by announcing he planned to move Tesla’s legal headquarters to Texas.

Featured image: Joshua Sortino on Unsplash 

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Elon Musk has announced plans to move Tesla’s legal incorporation from Delaware to Texas following a judge’s decision to annul his whopping $55.8 billion compensation package.

In a post on his social media platform X on Thursday (Feb 1), Musk said Tesla will immediately hold a shareholder vote to shift the electric vehicle maker’s state of incorporation from Delaware, where many major U.S. firms are registered due to favorable tax and business laws.

The public vote is unequivocally in favor of Texas!

Tesla will move immediately to hold a shareholder vote to transfer state of incorporation to Texas. https://t.co/ParwqQvS3d

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 1, 2024

The billionaire also directly stated on Wednesday, “Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware” in response to the ruling by Kathaleen McCormick, the Delaware Court of Chancery judge. She found that Tesla’s board of directors was “perhaps starry-eyed” over Musk’s celebrity status when they negotiated the pay package in 2018, leading them to not fully disclose necessary details to shareholders.

The compensation deal, the largest ever granted an American CEO, helped boost Musk’s net worth to an estimated $220 billion in November 2023, making him the world’s richest person. A title he has recently lost after Tesla stock, which makes up a considerable portion of Musk’s net worth, was routed in January.

How Elon Musk was thwarted by one man with nine Tesla shares

The pay package ties Musk’s compensation to Tesla meeting certain stock price and profit goals rather than granting him a salary.

Shareholder Richard Tornetta sued to have the deal rescinded despite owning just nine shares in Tesla. He argued it was an overpayment not properly vetted by the board.

In 2021, Tesla had already moved its corporate headquarters from California, where Musk had criticized the state’s taxes and regulations, to Texas. The shift of legal jurisdiction would further align Tesla with its operational base in Texas.

An X poll posted by Musk showed over 87% of more than 1 million votes supported moving Tesla’s legal HQ to Texas. “The public vote is unequivocally in favor of Texas!,” Musk wrote.

Delaware is a popular state for incorporating thanks to business-friendly laws and policies as well as an efficient court system specialized in corporate issues. However, Elon Musk’s negative reaction shows the risks companies face if deals are later challenged in the state’s courts.

Musk has a following of 170 million on X, the platform he bought for $44bn in 2022, and has huge support on there.

Former Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy was extremely critical of the Delware ruling saying “courts shouldn’t second-guess the business judgments of boards to maximize shareholder value.”

Featured image:  Marcin Paśnicki from Pixabay

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The components of your antiquated desktop computer, laptop, TV, and other electronics include valuable metals like copper and gold. Tiny businesses are profiting from the e-waste industry’s unrealized potential by recycling outdated electronic circuit boards and can earn up to $85,000 daily. The projects will probably keep growing because there are estimated to be $55–60 billion worth of precious metals ready to be recovered from abandoned circuit boards globally.

E-waste is currently one of the biggest environmental threats to our planet. A significant amount of the more than 50 million tons of electronics that end up in the trash are recycled in third-world countries like India. The environmental crisis is anticipated to increase over the next ten years due to our thought processes that say we need a new laptop or gaming PCs, TVs, phones, watches, and other electrically powered gadgets — we want the newest upgrade.

From BusinessInsider:

Much of our e-waste doesn’t get recycled at all and is left in landfills. Only about 15% of the daily e-waste produced by American citizens is collected for recycling. Following several scrappers in a small startup in Sydney, Australia, BusinessInsider revealed that although individual scrappers cannot earn a living from e-waste at this time, those employed by larger companies, especially those with heavy machinery at their disposal, can potentially make substantial profits.

Scrappers can earn several thousand dollars per load when they find and gather e-waste

Mint Innovation was one “gold mining” startup that Business Insider spoke with. Scrappers can earn several thousand dollars per load if they find e-waste and bring it to Mint Innovation. Using a ton of specialized machinery and a proprietary sauce to disassemble electronic circuit boards and extract valuable metals from unwanted plastics and other materials to which the metals are attached, Mint Innovation has all but perfected the art of extracting metal from e-waste. The raw metals that Mint Innovation extracts from e-waste can bring in an impressive $85,000 a day for the completely automated system that it has constructed. That is equivalent to an annual income of almost $30 million.

Mint Innovation aptly demonstrates the amount of potential revenue that the e-waste business can currently access through tech innovation. However, the lack of infrastructure for processing e-waste makes it challenging for e-waste scavengers to earn a living. Innovation in “tough tech” sectors will continue.  That might readily alter as e-waste pollution keeps rising and more businesspeople become aware of the potential revenue e-waste can produce.

If you want to try your own “digging for gold” experiment — Tomshardware will guide you through the chemistry lesson on how to do it. Here. You won’t go away empty-handed from the tutorial.

Featured Image Credit: Tomshardware.com

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Microsoft has announced the arrival of the latest collection of Xbox Wireless Controllers, the Vapor series in Xbox Design Lab and the Xbox Wireless Controller – Dream Vapor Special Edition as revealed on Wednesday by the video game giant.

In this set, the top case on each device features a dynamic pattern unique to every controller. Those familiar with the Xbox Wireless Controller – Stormcloud Vapor Special Edition, will recollect the effect created, with a misty pattern weaving a textured finish to cherish.

Six top case options are available on the Vapor series with Xbox Design Lab, giving gamers access to some of the most unique controller device designs around for customization.

If bold and bright is your thing, Xbox has you covered here with a range of swirling, stylish hues.

For a green preference, the Electric Vapor top case merges the bold Electric Volt and the iconic Velocity Green, while the Nocturnal Vapor top case brings a contrast with its Dark Green and Grey swirl. Do you prefer something more fiery? You can turn up the heat with the Fire Vapor top, looking resplendent with a fiery red and orange swirl.

Or how about a cool blue with the Stormcloud Vapor, carrying a sleek blue swirl design? There should be something for almost everyone, including pink and purple offerings. The range includes a Cyber Vapor top case, showing off a striking pink and purple swirl, or change it around on the Dream Vapor top case with its soft pink and soft purple swirl.

In addition to the Vapor top cases, further personalization options are available from a choice of button and thumbstick styles. You can put your own mark on the designs with the extension of metallic triggers and D-pads, rubberized side and back grips.

You can even add a personalized engraving for a special finishing touch.

Enter the Dream Vapor

The other choice from the launch is the newest Special Edition design, the Xbox Wireless Controller – Dream Vapor.

This colorway utilises the pink and purple top case from the Vapor collection, for the introduction of a Special Edition controller that shows off a great offering from this device.

The subtle pink-purple swirl is extended all over the design, appearing on the soft pink thumbsticks, through to the bumpers, triggers, and hybrid D-pad.

Further unique elements are exclusive to this Special Edition controller whilst all the entries within the Vapor Collection retain all the added features on the latest generation of Xbox controllers, including a battery life of up to 40 hours of gameplay.

The controllers provide access to your gaming via the Bluetooth and Xbox Wireless connection, to play on Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PC, iOS and Android devices.

Images: Xbox.com

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Google may be adding a new Bluetooth feature for Android 15 that could allow broadcasting audio to nearby devices, according to Android Authority. Currently, unless someone is using an app with a built-in social listening feature like Spotify, it can be challenging for them to share what they are listening to with everyone else in their group. However, Auracast is said to be able to use Bluetooth Low Energy without the need for pairing.

In order for this to work, both the sender and receiver will need to have Auracast for it to work, which will only be available for the latest version. This is based on a work-in-progress code that is hidden at present. Android Authority reports that it is possible that “such predicted features may not make it to a public release.”

While investigating the Android 14 QPR2 Beta 3 release, there were a number of new audio “strings” reportedly found within the Settings function. It apparently contained a toggle for sharing audio, along with a button for scanning a QR code to link to a nearby audio stream, a button for selecting a different Bluetooth device for listening, and a section displaying a list of nearby audio streams.

Although Android 13 can already connect to nearby LE Audio broadcasts through a button in Android’s media output switcher, Google is believed to be making this feature more prominent in the Settings for Android 15.

What could we expect from Android 15?

Google hasn’t published official information on Android 15 and its possible release dates, however, it is expected that the company may launch the Android 15 Developer Preview in February or March 2024. There has been speculation regarding Android 15 bringing back lock screen widgets, a functionality removed from the operating system with Android 5.0 Lollipop.

Reports from Android Police also indicate that Android 15 has been named Vanilla Ice Cream, succeeding Android 14’s Upside Down Cake. This name, Vanilla Ice Cream, is said to be a homage to Android’s history. The term “vanilla Android” is commonly used to describe the basic version of Android, a nod to “plain android.”

It's a bit earlier than usual, but it seems the internal dessert code-name for Android 15 V has been revealed: "Vanilla Ice Cream". pic.twitter.com/pRTFJ4iIfO

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) March 3, 2023

Mishaal Rahman from Android Authority revealed that the cloud file selection for the Photo Picker will enable apps utilizing the native Photo Picker for media sharing to access images stored in Google Photos’ cloud storage, rather than being limited to only local files.

Another feature reportedly found in many custom skins is Private Space. It generates a list of apps that can be secured with a password or biometric feature, similar to Samsung’s Secure Folder.

Featured image: Canva

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Microsoft (MSFT) is set to report its second-quarter earnings for the 2024 fiscal year after the market closes today (Jan 30).

Analysts expect the world’s most valuable company to post strong results across its business segments as demand for cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) services continues.

Microsoft is charging full steam ahead on commercializing generative AI capabilities. This month, the tech giant opened up AI writing tool Copilot Pro to all consumers for $20 per month. It also removed previous restrictions on its Copilot for Microsoft 365 so any business can now access the AI-powered productivity features.

The company has invested heavily in OpenAI, the maker behind ChatGPT, as it looks to solidify itself as a leader in the red-hot AI space. Rivals like Alphabet, Amazon and Meta are racing to keep pace with their AI investments and products. Microsoft’s upcoming earnings will offer clues into whether its AI focus is paying off.

Microsoft’s year-on-year growth

Wall Street analysts forecast Microsoft will report adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $2.78 on revenue of $61.1 billion for the quarter. This would represent impressive year-on-year growth when the software posted EPS of $2.32 on $52.7 billion in revenue.

The star of the show will likely once again be Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud segment which contains its Azure public cloud platform. Intelligent Cloud revenue is projected to climb 18% year-over-year to $25.3 billion. Total commercial cloud revenue could top $32.2 billion, up 19% from last year’s quarter.

Analysts will be listening closely for an update on Azure’s growth rate and how that business performs relative to rivals like Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. Adoption of AI tools and services like Microsoft’s Copilot will also be an area of focus.

Microsoft 365 and LinkedIn should drive top-line growth and the Productivity and Business Processes segment is expected to generate $19 billion in the quarter, 12% higher than the prior year period.

The personal computing unit, consisting of Windows, devices, gaming and search is forecast to notch $16.8 billion in sales. Investors will be keen to hear about demand trends for Windows 11 and Xbox gaming services.

What time is the Microsoft earnings call?

Microsoft’s earnings call will take place on January 30 at 2:30 pm PT / 5:30 EST. It can be listened to live on the company’s investor site.

Microsoft remains well positioned heading into its earnings report, riding tailwinds from businesses digitally transforming operations via cloud computing and AI.

Featured image: Dall-E

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Microsoft has seen a $2 billion Xbox revenue boost after acquiring Activision Blizzard, according to its latest financial earnings report.

This quarter marks Microsoft’s initial earnings report as a company valued at $3 trillion. It is also the first instance of the company disclosing a 61% revenue increase due to its purchase of the video game holding company. As a result, the profit has elevated gaming to become Microsoft’s third biggest business division, surpassing Windows.

Microsoft claims much of this growth is due to the acquisition, which is said to have added $2 billion of revenue in the second quarter of fiscal year 2024. However, The Verge reports that the cost of integration, transaction costs, and other costs of revenue all total $930 million, with an eventual operating loss of $440 million.

Xbox hardware has also grown by 3% year-over-year, according to Venture Beat. Overall, the tech company’s revenues grew by 18% to $62 billion, and its shares are up by 33%. That being said, Microsoft CFO Amy Hood admitted that “[Xbox] hardware revenue will decline year over year,” during the conference call. She added that she expects gaming revenue to grow in the low 40% region, with 45 points due to Activision Blizzard.

CEO Satya Nadella reiterated that the company had set a record for monthly active users on Xbox, PC, as well as mobile in this quarter. He explained, “we now have over 200 million monthly active users alone, inclusive of Activision Blizzard King.”

He noted the recent unveiling of new games and updates to its well-established franchises. Nadella also pointed out the company’s progress in cloud gaming, mentioning a 44% year-over-year increase in streaming hours.

Microsoft cuts jobs despite growth

It comes as Microsoft announced that it planned to lay off 1,900 staff across its gaming divisions, including employees at Activision Blizzard and Xbox. It amounts to around 8% of Microsoft’s total gaming workforce of 22,000.

Only last week, the company exceeded $3 trillion for the first time in its history, positioning it as the world’s second-largest company in terms of market value, following Apple Inc. Much of this has been due to its investment in AI, as investors rallied around its expansion into the area.

Featured image: Canva / Activision Blizzard / Pexels

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