Month: July 2022

Amazon’s direct workforce declined by 99K in Q2 to 1.52M, a record QoQ drop, mainly due to attrition in its warehouses following pandemic-driven expansion (Todd Bishop/GeekWire)

Todd Bishop / GeekWire: Amazon’s direct workforce declined by 99K in Q2 to 1.52M, a record QoQ drop, mainly due to attrition in its warehouses following pandemic-driven expansion  —  Amazon’s direct workforce declined by 99,000 employees from the first to the second quarter, to 1.52 million people …

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Apple expects a faster sales growth in Q4, citing easing parts shortages and strong iPhone demand; Tim Cook says Apple is also “being more deliberate” in hiring (Reuters)

Reuters: Apple expects a faster sales growth in Q4, citing easing parts shortages and strong iPhone demand; Tim Cook says Apple is also “being more deliberate” in hiring  —  Apple Inc (AAPL.O) on Thursday said parts shortages are easing and that demand for iPhones is unceasing despite consumers tightening …

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A look at Apple’s union-busting campaign, as some retail workers ask management to stop inflicting “traumatic” pressure on other workers trying to unionize (Caitlin Harrington/Wired)

Caitlin Harrington / Wired: A look at Apple’s union-busting campaign, as some retail workers ask management to stop inflicting “traumatic” pressure on other workers trying to unionize  —  Workers are calling on management to stop inflicting “traumatic” pressure on other workers trying to unionize.

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Foam Cutter Moves Like a Hot Knife Through Butter

Make enough attempts to cut foam using whatever you’ve got — utility knife, hacksaw, serrated plastic knife — and you’ll wish hard for something that cuts cleaner, faster, and better. While there are all sorts of ways to build a hot wire foam cutter, this design from [jasonwinfieldnz] is both interesting and imitable. If you

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An in-depth look at the issues facing Afterpay, Klarna, Affirm, and other BNPL players, such as economic uncertainty, competition, regulators, and customer debt (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg: An in-depth look at the issues facing Afterpay, Klarna, Affirm, and other BNPL players, such as economic uncertainty, competition, regulators, and customer debt  —  For three days each week during the month of April in 2014, a seasoned product manager named Lulu Young, an engineering manager …

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Space and Time, a decentralized blockchain data platform, raised a $10M seed led by Framework Ventures, and says it is building a new cryptographic protocol (Kharishar Kahfi/The Block)

Kharishar Kahfi / The Block: Space and Time, a decentralized blockchain data platform, raised a $10M seed led by Framework Ventures, and says it is building a new cryptographic protocol  —  Framework Ventures is leading the seed funding round.  —  The $10 million in funds will be used to add engineers to work on the

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Jetpack Compose 1.2 packs text improvements

Jetpack Compose 1.2, Google’s toolkit for building native Android UIs, is now generally available. Highlights of the update include text improvements such as font padding and downloadable fonts. Jetpack Compose is the Google-recommended way to build new Android apps for phones, tablets, and foldables. The 1.2 release was declared stable on July 27. [ Also

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Instagram’s new feature Dual copies BeReal’s front and back camera capture quirk, but misses that people like BeReal because it’s non-addictive by design (Amanda Silberling/TechCrunch)

Amanda Silberling / TechCrunch: Instagram’s new feature Dual copies BeReal’s front and back camera capture quirk, but misses that people like BeReal because it’s non-addictive by design  —  BeReal is all about friends and habits — not the algorithm  —  We know the drill: Snapchat adds the Stories feature, Instagram nabs it.

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VeeFriends, Gary Vaynerchuk’s NFT project that provides online and in-person community events, raised $50M led by a16z (@chrislyons)

@chrislyons: VeeFriends, Gary Vaynerchuk’s NFT project that provides online and in-person community events, raised $50M led by a16z  —  gm! I’m very excited to announce that @a16z crypto is leading a $50M round in @veefriends. We look forward to helping the team fuel expansion plans for its creative, technical and experiential operations that support the

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Intel is winding down its Optane memory business, incurring a $559M inventory impairment; it’s Intel’s sixth non-core business sold under CEO Pat Gelsinger (Paul Alcorn/Tom’s Hardware)

Paul Alcorn / Tom’s Hardware: Intel is winding down its Optane memory business, incurring a $559M inventory impairment; it’s Intel’s sixth non-core business sold under CEO Pat Gelsinger  —  3D XPoint at the last crossroad.  —  Intel’s Q2 2022 earnings report today was uncharacteristically disappointing …

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Roku misses with Q2 revenue up 18% YoY to $764M, vs. $805.2M est., 200M fewer streaming hours at 20.7B, and 1.8M active accounts added to 63.1M; stock down 25%+ (Todd Spangler/Variety)

Todd Spangler / Variety: Roku misses with Q2 revenue up 18% YoY to $764M, vs. $805.2M est., 200M fewer streaming hours at 20.7B, and 1.8M active accounts added to 63.1M; stock down 25%+  —  Roku fell well short of Wall Street financial forecasts for the second quarter — and the streaming platform saw the number

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YouTube rolls out a new tool that lets creators select up to 60 seconds of any video they posted and turn it into Shorts, available on Android and iOS (Sarah Perez/TechCrunch)

Sarah Perez / TechCrunch: YouTube rolls out a new tool that lets creators select up to 60 seconds of any video they posted and turn it into Shorts, available on Android and iOS  —  YouTube wants to quickly ramp up the number of short-form “Shorts” videos available on its platform in order to better compete

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