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Monthly Archives: February 2020

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Amazon CEO Says Massive Corporate Layoffs Were About Agility - Not AI or Cost-Cutting
by msmash on 31/10/2025 at 2:40 pm
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says the company's latest big round of layoffs -- about 14,000 corporate jobs -- wasn't triggered by financial strain or AI replacing workers, but rather a push to stay nimble. From a report: Speaking with analysts on Amazon's quarterly earnings call Thursday, Jassy said the decision stemmed from a belief that the company had grown too big and too layered. "The announcement that we made a few days ago was not really financially driven, and it's not even really AI-driven -- not right now, at least," he said. "Really, it's culture." Jassy's comments are his first public explanation of the layoffs, which reportedly could ultimately total as many as 30,000 people -- and would be the largest workforce reduction in Amazon's history. The news this week prompted speculation that the cuts were tied to automation or AI-related restructuring. Earlier this year, Jassy wrote in a memo to employees that he expected Amazon's total corporate workforce to shrink over time due to efficiency gains from AI. But his comments Thursday framed the layoffs as a cultural reset aimed at keeping the company fast-moving amid what he called "the technology transformation happening right now." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Adobe Struggles To Assure Investors That It Can Thrive in AI Era
by msmash on 31/10/2025 at 2:00 pm
An anonymous reader shares a report: Adobe brought together 10,000 marketers, filmmakers and content creators to its annual conference this week to persuade them that the company's software products are adapting to AI and remain the best tools for their work. But it's Adobe's investors, rather than its users, who are the most skeptical that generative AI technology won't disrupt the company's business as the top seller of software for creative professionals. Despite a strong strategy, Adobe is "at risk of structural AI-driven competitive and pricing pressure," wrote Tyler Radke, an analyst at Citigroup. The company's shares have lost about a quarter of their value this year as AI tools like Google's video-generating model Veo have gained steam. In an interview with Bloomberg Television earlier this week, Adobe Chief Executive Officer Shantanu Narayen said the company is undervalued as the market is focused on semiconductors and the training of AI models. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Scientists Reveal Roof Coating That Can Reduce Surface Temperatures Up To 6C On Hot Days
by BeauHD on 31/10/2025 at 1:00 pm
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Australian scientists have developed roof coatings that can passively cool surfaces up to 6C below ambient temperature, as well as extract water from the atmosphere, which they say could reduce indoor temperatures during extreme heat events. One coating made from a porous film, which can be painted on to existing roofs, works by reflecting 96% of incoming solar radiation, rather than absorbing the sun's energy. It also has a high thermal emittance, meaning it effectively dissipates heat to outer space when the sky is clear. Its properties are known as passive radiative cooling. [...] In a study, published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, the researchers tested a prototype for six months on the roof of the Sydney Nanoscience Hub, pairing the cool paint with a UV-resistant topcoat that encouraged dew droplets to roll down into a receptacle. As much as 390 milliliters per sq meter per day could be collected for about a third of the year, the scientists found. Based on that water capture rate, an average Australian roof -- about 200 sq meters -- could provide up to 70 liters on days favorable for collecting dew, they estimate. [...] In well-insulated buildings, a 6C decrease in roof temperature "might result in a smaller fraction of that cooling being reflected in the top level of the house," [said the study's lead author, Prof Chiara Neto of the University of Sydney], but greater temperature reductions would be expected in most Australian houses, "where insulation is quite poor." She said the coating could also help reduce the urban heat island effect, in which hard surfaces absorb more heat than natural surfaces, resulting in urban centers being 1C to 13C warmer than rural areas. The researchers found that the prototype coating was comprised of poly(vinylidene fluoride-co-hexafluoropropene), which is used in the building industry but was "not a scalable technology going forward" due to its environmental issues. However, they are now commercializing a water-based paint with similar performance that is affordable and environmentally safer, costing about the same as standard premium paints. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
How a Chorus of Synchronized Frequencies Helps You Digest Your Food
by BeauHD on 31/10/2025 at 10:00 am
alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: It is known in the scientific community that if you have a self-sustained oscillation, such as an arteriole, and you add an external stimulus at a similar but not identical frequency, you can lock the two, meaning you can shift the frequency of the oscillator to that of the external stimulus. In fact, it has been shown that if you connect two clocks, they will eventually synchronize their ticking. Distinguished Professor of Physics and Neurobiology David Kleinfeld found that if he applied an external stimulus to a neuron, the entire vasculature would lock at the same frequency. However, if he stimulated two sets of neurons at two different frequencies, something unexpected happened: some arterioles would lock at one frequency and others would lock at another frequency, forming a staircase effect. Searching for an explanation, Kleinfeld enlisted the help of his colleague, Professor of Physics Massimo Vergassola, who specializes in understanding the physics of living systems, and then recruited Ecole Normale Superieure graduate student Marie Sellier-Prono and Senior Researcher at the Institute for Complex Systems Massimo Cencini. Together, the researchers found they could use a classical model of coupled oscillators with an intestinal twist. The gut oscillates naturally due to peristalsis -- the contracting and relaxing of muscles in the digestive tract -- and provided a simplified model over the complex network of blood vessels in the brain. The intestine is unidirectional, meaning frequencies shift in one direction in a gradient from higher to lower. This is what enables food to move in one direction from the beginning of the small intestine to the end of the large intestine. "Coupled oscillators talk to each other and each section of the intestine is an oscillator that talks to the other sections near it," stated Vergassola. "Normally, coupled oscillators are studied in a homogeneous setting, meaning all the oscillators are at more or less similar frequencies. In our case, the oscillators were more varied, just as in the intestine and the brain." In studying the coupled oscillators in the gut, past researchers observed that there is indeed a staircase effect where similar frequencies lock onto those around it, allowing for the rhythmic movement of food through the digestive tract. But the height of the rises or breaks, the length of the stair runs or frequencies, and the conditions under which the staircase phenomenon occurred -- essential features of biological systems -- was something which had not been determined until now. The findings have been published in the journal Physical Review Letters. Read more of this story at Slashdot.
SpaceX: Starship Will Be Going To the Moon, With Or Without NASA
by BeauHD on 31/10/2025 at 7:00 am
schwit1 shares a report from Behind the Black: SpaceX is going to land this spaceship manned on the Moon, whether or not NASA's SLS and Orion are ready. And even if those expensive, cumbersome, and poorly designed boondoggles are ready for those first two Artemis landings, SpaceX is likely to quickly outmatch them with numerous other private missions to the Moon, outside of NASA. It has the funds to do it, and it knows it has the customers willing to buy the flights. The news comes from a detailed update SpaceX released today on the Starship lunar lander. Here's the section where SpaceX "made it clear that it sees Starship and Superheavy as its own space effort, irrelevant of NASA": "To return Americans to the Moon, SpaceX aligned Starship development along two paths: development of the core Starship system and supporting infrastructure, including production facilities, test facilities, and launch sites -- which SpaceX is self-funding representing over 90% of system costs -- and development of the HLS-specific Starship configuration, which leverages and modifies the core vehicle capability to support NASA's requirements for landing crew on and returning them from the Moon. SpaceX is working under a fixed-price contract with NASA, ensuring that the company is only paid after the successful completion of progress milestones, and American taxpayers are not on the hook for increased SpaceX costs. SpaceX provides significant insight to NASA at every stage of the development process along both paths, including access to flight data from missions not funded under the HLS contract. Both pathways are necessary and made possible by SpaceX's substantial self-investments to enable the high-rate production, launch, and test of Starship for missions to the Moon and other purposes. Starship will bring the United States back to the Moon before any other nation and it will enable sustainable lunar operations by being fully and rapidly reusable, cost-effective, and capable of high frequency lunar missions with more than 100 tons of cargo capacity." Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Someone Snuck Into a Cellebrite Microsoft Teams Call and Leaked Phone Unlocking Details
by BeauHD on 31/10/2025 at 3:30 am
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 404 Media: Someone recently managed to get on a Microsoft Teams call with representatives from phone hacking company Cellebrite, and then leaked a screenshot of the company's capabilities against many Google Pixel phones, according to a forum post about the leak and 404 Media's review of the material. The leak follows others obtained and verified by 404 Media over the last 18 months. Those leaks impacted both Cellebrite and its competitor Grayshift, now owned by Magnet Forensics. Both companies constantly hunt for techniques to unlock phones law enforcement have physical access to. "You can Teams meeting with them. They tell everything. Still cannot extract esim on Pixel. Ask anything," a user called rogueFed wrote on the GrapheneOS forum on Wednesday, speaking about what they learned about Cellebrite capabilities. GrapheneOS is a security- and privacy-focused Android-based operating system. rogueFed then posted two screenshots of the Microsoft Teams call. The first was a Cellebrite Support Matrix, which lays out whether the company's tech can, or can't, unlock certain phones and under what conditions. The second screenshot was of a Cellebrite employee. According to another of rogueFed's posts, the meeting took place in October. The meeting appears to have been a sales call. The employee is a "pre sales expert," according to a profile available online. The Support Matrix is focused on modern Google Pixel devices, including the Pixel 9 series. The screenshot does not include details on the Pixel 10, which is Google's latest device. It discusses Cellebrite's capabilities regarding 'before first unlock', or BFU, when a piece of phone unlocking tech tries to open a device before someone has typed in the phone's passcode for the first time since being turned on. It also shows Cellebrite's capabilities against after first unlock, or AFU, devices. The Support Matrix also shows Cellebrite's capabilities against Pixel devices running GrapheneOS, with some differences between phones running that operating system and stock Android. Cellebrite does support, for example, Pixel 9 devices BFU. Meanwhile the screenshot indicates Cellebrite cannot unlock Pixel 9 devices running GrapheneOS BFU. In their forum post, rogueFed wrote that the "meeting focused specific on GrapheneOS bypass capability." They added "very fresh info more coming." Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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