An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: While the world awaits closing arguments later this year in the US government's antitrust case over Google's search dominance, a California judge has dismissed a lawsuit from 26 Google users who claimed that Google's default search agreement with Apple violates antitrust law and has ruined everyone's search results. Users had argued (PDF) that Google struck a deal making its search engine the default on Apple's Safari web browser specifically to keep Apple from competing in the general search market. These payments to Apple, users alleged, have "stunted innovation" and "deprived" users of "quality, service, and privacy that they otherwise would have enjoyed but for Google's anticompetitive conduct." They also allege that it created a world where users have fewer choices, enabling Google to prefer its own advertisers, which users said caused an "annoying and damaging distortion" of search results.

In an order (PDF) granting the tech companies' motion to dismiss, US District Judge Rita Lin said that users did not present enough evidence to support claims for relief. Lin dismissed some claims with prejudice but gave leave to amend others, allowing users another chance to keep their case -- now twice-dismissed -- at least partially alive. Under Lin's order, users will not be able to amend claims that Google and Apple executives allegedly sealed the default search deal on the condition that Apple would not create its own general search engine through "private, secret, and clandestine personal meetings." Because plaintiffs showed no evidence pinpointing exactly when Apple allegedly agreed to stay out of the general search market, these meetings, Lin reasoned, could just as easily indicate "rational, legal business behavior," rather than an "illegal conspiracy."

Users attempted to argue that Google and Apple intentionally hid these facts from the public, but Lin wrote that their "conclusory and vague allegations that defendants 'secretly conducted meetings' and 'engaged in conduct to obfuscate internal communications' are plainly insufficient." Sharing bystander photos documenting Google's Sundar Pichai and Apple's Tim Cook meeting at a restaurant with a manila folder tucked under Pichai's elbow did not help users' case. Lin was also not moved by users demonstrating that Google has a history of destroying evidence, because "they put forth no specific factual allegations that defendants did so in this case." However, users will have 30 days to amend currently "inadequately" alleged claims that "Google's exclusive default agreement, under which Apple set Google as the default search engine for its Safari web browser, foreclosed competition in the general search services market in the United States," Lin wrote. If users miss that deadline, the case will be tossed with no opportunities to further amend claims.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Alibaba Group cut its staff by roughly 20,000 over the course of 2023, adding to a spate of layoffs spanning global tech companies from Silicon Valley to Hangzhou. China's e-commerce pioneer ended December with 219,260 employees, down from close to 240,000 a year earlier, it said in detailing its earnings for the holiday quarter on Wednesday.

The company's pace of eliminating roles has been fairly steady, as it reduced headcount by roughly the same number over the course of 2022 as well. Mirroring US peers like Meta Platforms, Alibaba paired the reduction in staff with a significant buyback, extending its authorization for repurchases by another $25 billion on Wednesday. The company bought back $9.5 billion worth of shares in 2023.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Tom's Hardware: According to a recent report published by the Aargauer Zeitung (h/t Golem.de), around three million smart toothbrushes have been infected by hackers and enslaved into botnets. The source report says this sizable army of connected dental cleansing tools was used in a DDoS attack on a Swiss company's website. The firm's site collapsed under the strain of the attack, reportedly resulting in the loss of millions of Euros of business. In this particular case, the toothbrush botnet was thought to have been vulnerable due to its Java-based OS. No particular toothbrush brand was mentioned in the source report. Normally, the toothbrushes would have used their connectivity for tracking and improving user oral hygiene habits, but after a malware infection, these toothbrushes were press-ganged into a botnet.

Stefan Zuger from the Swiss branch of the global cybersecurity firm Fortinet provided the publication with a few tips on what people could do to protect their own toothbrushes -- or other connected gadgetry like routers, set-top boxes, surveillance cameras, doorbells, baby monitors, washing machines, and so on. "Every device that is connected to the Internet is a potential target -- or can be misused for an attack," Zuger told the Swiss newspaper. The security expert also explained that every connected device was being continually probed for vulnerabilities by hackers, so there is a real arms race between device software/firmware makers and cyber criminals. Fortinet recently connected an 'unprotected' PC to the internet and found it took only 20 minutes before it became malware-ridden. UPDATE 1/7/24: This attack "didn't actually happen," writes Jason Koebler via 404 Media. "There are no additional details about this apparent attack, and most of the article cites general research by a publicly traded cybersecurity company called Fortinet which has detected malicious, hijacked internet of things devices over the years. A search on Fortinet's website shows no recent published research about hacked smart toothbrushes."

The cybersecurity firm Fortinet said in a statement: "To clarify, the topic of toothbrushes being used for DDoS attacks was presented during an interview as an illustration of a given type of attack, and it is not based on research from Fortinet or FortiGuard Labs. It appears that due to translations the narrative on this topic has been stretched to the point where hypothetical and actual scenarios are blurred. FortiGuard Labs has not observed Mirai or other IoT botnets target toothbrushes or similar embedded devices."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Vancouver Sun: A cryptocurrency firm has lost a bid to force B.C. Hydro to provide the vast amounts of power needed for its operations, in a court ruling that upholds the provincial government's right to pause power connections for new crypto miners. Conifex Timber Inc., a forestry firm that branched out into cryptocurrency "mining," had gone to the B.C. Supreme Court to have the policy declared invalid. But Justice Michael Tammen ruled Friday that the government's move in December 2022 to pause new connections for cryptocurrency mining for 18 months was reasonable and not unduly discriminatory.

B.C. Hydro CEO Christopher O'Riley had told the court in an affidavit that the data centers proposed by Conifex would have consumed 2.5 million megawatt-hours of electricity a year. That's enough to power and heat more than 570,000 apartments, according to data on the power provider's website. Energy Minister Josie Osborne said when the policy was introduced that cryptocurrency mining consumes "massive amounts of electricity" by running banks of high-powered computers around the clock, but adds "very few jobs" to the local economy. In a statement released Monday, the company said it's "disappointed" with the court's ruling and is considering an appeal. "Conifex continues to believe that the provincial government is missing out on several opportunities available to it to improve energy affordability, accelerate technological innovation, strengthen the reliability and resiliency of the power distribution grid in British Columbia, and achieve more inclusive economic growth," said Conifex in a statement.

Google has been trying to break into TV for close to two decades. It's here now: Its YouTube TV offering has become one of the biggest pay-TV services in the US. Business Insider: YouTube TV -- which, like conventional pay TV, sells a bundle of dozens of channels -- now has "more than 8 million" subscribers, YouTube CEO Neal Mohan announced Tuesday morning. That makes YouTube the fourth-largest pay TV service in the country, behind Charter and Comcast (14.1 million each) and DirecTV, at around 11 million.

YouTube last disclosed subscriber numbers in 2022, when YouTube TV had 5 million customers. It likely got a meaningful boost last fall when it started selling the NFL's Sunday Ticket service as an add-on to its basic package of TV channels. YouTube's ascent into the mainstream of pay TV represents a couple of things. For starters, it shows you that YouTube and its owner Google have been persistent and patient about trying to crack TV, and its enormous twin revenue streams: subscriptions and ads.

"Tapestry." "Beacon." "Comprehensive curriculum." "Esteemed faculty." "Vibrant academic community." They're among the laundry list of colorful words, flowery phrases and stale syntax that are likely to tip off admissions committees to applicants who've used AI to help write their college or graduate school essays this year, according to essay consultants who students are hiring en masse to un-ChatGPT, and add a "human touch" to, their submissions. Forbes: "Tapestry" in particular is a major red flag in this year's pool, several essay consultants on the platform Fiverr told Forbes. Mike, an Ivy League alum and former editor-in-chief of the Cornell Business Journal who now edits hundreds of grad school applications each cycle through Capitol Editors, said it's appeared repeatedly in drafts from at least 20 of his clients in recent months.

"I no longer believe there's a way to innocently use the word 'tapestry' in an essay; if the word 'tapestry' appears, it was generated by ChatGPT," he told Forbes. Though many such words, on their own, could have come from a human, when a trained eye sees them used over and over again in the same cadence across multiple essays, "it's just a real telltale sign."

DocuSign will cut 6% of its workforce, it said Tuesday, as part of a restructuring plan that aims to improve the company's "financial and operational efficiency." CNBC: The online signature provider said the majority of the employees impacted by the layoffs will be within its sales and marketing organizations. DocuSign employs 7,336 workers, according to its most recent filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which means the cuts will affect around 440 jobs. DocuSign said the restructuring plan will be largely complete by the end of its second fiscal quarter of 2025, according to the release. The company added that it expects to "meet or exceed" its fourth-quarter and fiscal-2024 guidance that it outlined in a release in December.

Andrew Ross Sorkin, reporting for The New York Times: Adam Neumann shot to fame by turning WeWork into a cultural and business phenomenon, before being ousted from the work space operator in dramatic fashion. But for the past several months, he has been trying to buy the now-bankrupt business -- with the help of the hedge fund mogul Dan Loeb, DealBook is the first to report. Neumann's new real estate company Flow Global is pushing WeWork to consider its takeover approach, according to a letter his lawyers sent to WeWork's advisers on Monday. Flow which has already raised $350 million from the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, disclosed in the letter that Loeb's Third Point would help finance a transaction.

Flow has sought to buy WeWork or its assets, as well as provide bankruptcy financing to keep it afloat. But Flow's lawyers accused WeWork of stonewalling for months. "We write to express our dismay with WeWork's lack of engagement even to provide information to my clients in what is intended to be a value-maximizing transaction for all stakeholders," wrote the lawyers led by Alex Spiro of Quinn Emanuel, who also represents Elon Musk and Jay-Z.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The recent surprise announcement that Meta will soon be shutting down its Facebook Groups API is throwing some businesses and social media marketers into disarray. On January 23, Meta announced the release of its Facebook Graph API v19.0, which included the news that the company would be deprecating its existing Facebook Groups API. The latter, which is used by developers and businesses to schedule posts to Facebook Groups, will be removed within 90 days, Meta said. This includes all the Permissions and Reviewable Features associated with the API, it also noted.

Meta explained that a major use case for the API was a feature that allowed developers to privately reply in Facebook Groups. For example, a small business that wanted to send a single message to a person who posted on their Facebook Group or who had commented in the group could be messaged through the API. However, Meta said that another change in the new v19.0 API would enable this feature, without the need for the Groups API. But developers told TechCrunch that the shutdown of the API would cause problems for companies that offer solutions to customers who want to schedule and automate their social media posts. [...]

What's more, developers tell us that Meta's motivation behind the API's shutdown is unclear. On the one hand, it could be that Facebook Groups don't generate ad revenue and the shutdown of the API will leave developers without a workaround. But Meta hasn't clarified if that's the case. Instead, Meta's blog post only mentioned one use case that would be addressed through the new v.19.0 API. [...] On Meta's forum for developers, one developer says they're "pretty shocked" by the company's announcement, noting their app relies on the Groups API and will essentially no longer work when the shutdown occurs. Others are frustrated that Meta hasn't clearly explained if posting on Groups will be done with a Page Access token going forward, as the way the announcement is worded it seems that part is only relevant for those posting private replies, not posting to the group as a whole. [...] the whole thing could just be some messaging mistake -- like Meta perhaps forgot to include the part where it was going to note what its new solution would be. There is concern, however, that Meta is deprioritizing developers' interests having recently shut down its developer bug portal as well.

The Dutch parent of Russian tech company Yandex is selling its search engine and other services at a steeply discounted price of $5.21 billion to a group of Russian-based managers and oil company Lukoil. According to the Associated Press, it marks "one of the biggest deals for Western-held companies to exit Russia since the invasion of Ukraine." From the report: The price reflects a 50% discount that Moscow imposes on companies from "unfriendly" countries like the Netherlands as a condition of exiting business in Russia, according to a statement Monday from Nasdaq-exchange listed Yandex NV. [...] The sale in cash and shares worth 475 billion rubles would transfer Yandex's core business -- representing more than 95% of its revenue, assets and employees -- to the group of up to 50 managers, Lukoil and business entities owned by investors Alexander Chachava, Pavel Prass and Alexander Ryazanov.

The 50% discounted sale price was based on the average value of Yandex shares on the Moscow exchange for the three months ending Jan. 31 -- $10.2 billion. That's after shares had already fallen by more than half in ruble terms since their peak before the invasion. After the sale, Yandex NV would be left with its international businesses -- employing 1,300 people -- including self-driving technology and generative artificial intelligence as well as a data center in Finland.

Yandex, founded in 1997 as Russia's answer to Google and Yahoo, serves Russian-speaking customers through its search engine and with widely used apps for food delivery, car-sharing and shopping. Co-founder Arkady Volozh, who had earlier moved to Israel, resigned as CEO in 2022 after he was hit with European Union sanctions. He subsequently condemned Russia's invasion as "barbaric." The Nasdaq exchange suspended trading in Yandex shares days after the invasion.

The king has been diagnosed with cancer, Buckingham Palace has announced. The Guardian: The diagnosis was made recently while Charles underwent treatment at the London Clinic for a benign enlarged prostate. In a statement, Buckingham Palace said: "During the king's recent hospital procedure for benign prostate enlargement, a separate issue of concern was noted. Subsequent diagnostic tests have identified a form of cancer. His majesty has today commenced a schedule of regular treatments, during which time he has been advised by doctors to postpone public-facing duties. Throughout this period, his majesty will continue to undertake state business and official paperwork as usual. The king is grateful to his medical team for their swift intervention, which was made possible thanks to his recent hospital procedure. He remains wholly positive about his treatment and looks forward to returning to full public duty as soon as possible."

Social media company Snap said on Monday that it would lay off 10% of its global workforce, or around 500 employees, in part to "promote in-person collaboration." From a report: The company has executed multiple rounds of layoffs since 2022, most recently in November, when it trimmed a small number of product employees. The company expects it will incur charges ranging from $55 million to $75 million, according to a regulatory filing. The company's last major round of cuts was in August 2022, when it laid off 20% of staff and restructured its business lines.

From mergers to AI, the EU's aggressive rule-making hampers its ability to compete with China and the U.S. Greg Ip, writing for WSJ: These are humbling times for Europe. The continent barely escaped recession late last year as the U.S. boomed. It is losing out to the U.S. on artificial intelligence, and to China on electric vehicles. There is one field where the European Union still leads the world: regulation. Having set the standard on regulating mergers, carbon emissions, data privacy, and e-commerce competition, the EU now seeks to do the same on AI. In December it unveiled a sweeping draft law that bans certain types of AI, tightly regulates others, and imposes huge fines for violators. Its executive arm, the European Commission, might investigate Microsoft's tie-up with OpenAI as potentially anticompetitive. Never before has "America innovates, China replicates, Europe regulates" so aptly captured each region's comparative advantage.

The technocrats who staff the EU in Brussels aren't anti-free market. Just the opposite: they still believe in free trade, unlike the U.S. or China. Much of their regulation is aimed at protecting consumers and competition from meddling national governments. But there's a trade-off between consumer protection and the profit motive that drives investment and innovation, and the EU might be getting that trade-off wrong. For example, to preserve competition, European regulators have resisted mergers that leave just a handful of mobile phone carriers per market. As a result Europe now has 43 groups running 102 mobile operators serving a population of 474 million, while the U.S. has three major networks serving a population of 335 million, according to telecommunications consultant John Strand. China and India are even more concentrated.

European mobile customers as a result pay only about a third of what Americans do. But that's why European carriers invest only half as much per customer and their networks are commensurately worse, Strand said: "Getting a 5G signal in Germany is like finding a Biden supporter at a Trump rally." Putting European networks on a par with the U.S. would cost about $300 billion, he estimated. This has knock-on effects on Europe's tech sector. Swedish telecommunications equipment manufacturer Ericsson's sales in Europe suffer in part because many carriers are too small and unprofitable to update to the latest 5G networks. "Europe has prioritized shorter-term low consumer prices at the expense of quality infrastructure," chief executive Borje Ekholm told me in Davos earlier this month. "I'm very concerned about Europe. We need to invest much more in infrastructure, in being digital."

The "technology building blocks" for space solar are already available, reports Clean Technica. "It's just a matter of scaling, systems integration, and adjustments for space-hardiness."

And several groups are looking at it — including the U.S. Space Force To help push costs down, the California Institute of Technology has proposed a sandwich-type solar module that integrates solar harvesting along with conversion to a radio frequency into one compact package, accompanied by a built-in antenna. Last month researchers at the school wrapped up a months-long, in-space test of different types of solar cells. Another approach is illustrated by the Michigan startup Virtus Solis, an industry partner of the University of Bristol. Last June the company and the school received £3.3 million in funding from the UK Net Zero Innovation program, for developing an open-source model for testing the performance of large, centralized antennas in space. "The concept depends upon the use of gigascale antenna arrays capable of delivering over 2GW of power from space onto similar gigascale antenna arrays either at sea or on the ground," the school explained.

As for how such a thing would be launched into space, that's where the U.S. Space Force comes in. Last August, the Space Force awarded a small business contract to the U.S. startup Orbital Composites. The company is tasked with the mission of developing its patented "quantum antenna" and in-space fabrication tools for secure communications in space applications, including space-to-space as well as space-to-Earth and vice versa. The basic idea is to let 3D printing doing much of the work in space. According to Orbital, in-space fabrication would save more than 100 times the cost of applying conventional fabrication methods to large-scale orbiting antennas. "By harnessing the potential of In-Space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing (ISAM), the company eyes the prospect of creating significantly larger space antennas," Orbital Composites explains. "By fabricating antennas in space, larger and more complex designs are possible that eliminate the constraints of launch and rocket fairings...."

If you're guessing that a hookup between Virtus and Orbital is in the works, that's a good guess. On February 1, at the SpaceCOM conference in Orlando, Florida, Virtus Solis let slip that it is working with Orbital Composites on a space solar pilot project. If all goes according to plan, the project will be up and running in 2027, deploying Virtus's robot-enabled fabrication system with Orbital's 3D printing. As of this writing the two companies have not posted details, but Space News picked up the thread. "The 2027 mission is designed to showcase critical power-generation technologies including in-space assembly of solar panels and transmission of more than one kilowatt to Earth," Space News explained. "The news release calls the 2027 mission "a precursor to large-scale commercial megawatt-class solar installations in space by 2030...."

To be clear, Orbital's press release about its new Space Force quantum antenna contract does not mention anything in particular about space solar. However, the pieces of the puzzle fit. Along with the Virtus and Grumman connections, in October of 2022 Orbital won a small business contract through SpaceWERX, the Space Force's innovative technologies funding arm, to explore the capabilities of ISAM systems.
"SpaceWERX comes under the umbrella of the U.S. Air Force's AFWERX innovation branch, which has developed a program called SSPIDR, short for Space Solar Power Incremental Demonstrations and Research Project," the article points out. (While Virtus believes most space-based solar power systems could deliver megawatt hours of electricity at prices comparable to today's market.)

The VC fund Neo "identifies awesome young engineers, includes them in a community of tech veterans, and invests in companies they start or join," TechCrunch explained in 2018.

Long-time Slashdot reader theodp notes that Neo is also benefiting from the education non-profit Code.org: Eleven years ago, Neo Founder and CEO Ali Partovi together with twin brother Hadi (Code.org CEO and a Neo investor) publicly launched the nonprofit Code.org (backed and advised by big tech companies). With the support of prominent tech giant leaders and their companies, Code.org pushed coding into K-12 classrooms (NYT, alt.) and now boasts that "591,636 teachers have signed up to teach our intro courses on Code Studio and 19,177,297 students are enrolled," helping to build a pipeline of "college students who excel at CS". Neo taps into this pipeline, and it looks like others also betting on their success include Neo investors tied to Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon, and Uber — including Code.org boosters Bill Gates, Satya Nadella, Reid Hoffman, Jeff Wilke, Sheryl Sandberg, Eric Schmidt.

"I love meeting more and more @Neo founders and Neo scholar candidates who learned to code on Code.org," Neo CEO Ali Partovi tweeted last summer.
in November Partovi welcomed "32 exceptional CS students" chosen from over 1,000 applicants to be Neo Scholars, "a year-long program of events, trips, and mentorship, as well as long-term membership in our community."

The Verge reports that Threads is "booming," according to figures shared by Mark Zuckerberg on Meta's earnings call, with 130 million active users a month.

TechCrunch reports: Threads is continuing to grow, having tripled its downloads month-over-month in December, which gave it a place in the top 10 most downloaded apps for the month across both the App Store and Google Play...

Threads famously had a record-breaking launch, reaching 100 million registered users within its first five days. However, the app saw its daily downloads decline starting last September through the end of the year. But in December, Threads once again returned to growth, likely due to the push Meta had given the app by displaying promos on Facebook that featured Threads' viral posts. Today, there are an estimated 160 million Threads users, according to one tracker...

The app could also be benefiting from its move into the "fediverse" — the social network comprised of interconnected servers that communicate via the ActivityPub protocol, like Mastodon... In addition, Threads recently announced the launch of an endpoint, allowing developers of third-party apps and websites to use a dynamic URL to refill text into the Threads composer. For example, there's now a website where anyone can generate Threads share links and profile badges. Marketing tool provider Shareaholic also just launched Threads Share buttons for websites, including both desktop and mobile sites. This flurry of activity around Threads is helping to move the app up in the chart rankings, though some inorganic boosts from Meta itself are likely also responsible for the jump in downloads, given the size.

Although hydrogen-dedicated renewable energy capacity is expected to increase by 45 GW between 2022 and 2028, the estimates are 35% lower than what the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecasted a year ago. Reuters reports: There is growing political momentum for low-emission hydrogen but actual implementation has been held up by uncertain demand outlooks, a lack of clarity in regulatory frameworks, and a lack of infrastructure to deliver hydrogen to end users, the IEA said in an emailed response to questions. Slow progress on real-world implementation "is a consequence of barriers that could be expected in a sector that needs to build up new and complex value chains," the IEA said. Uncertainties have been exacerbated by inflation and sluggish policy implementation.

Expected renewable energy capacity for hydrogen production represents just 7% of the capacity pledged for the same period and one tenth the sum of government targets for 2030, IEA said in its report. Around 75% of expected capacity is based in three countries, with China taking the lion's share, followed by Saudi Arabia and the United States, the IEA says.

In an effort to boost tourism and innovation, Japan will launch a new visa program for digital nomads, allowing remote workers to work in the country for up to six months while enjoying sightseeing trips. Tech Times reports: Starting from the end of March, Japan will introduce a unique visa status aimed at IT engineers and remote workers employed by overseas companies. The program is designed to cater to the evolving work landscape, recognizing the surge in digital nomads-individuals who can seamlessly work from anywhere in the world. Nikkei Asia (paywalled) tells us that to be eligible for this digital nomad visa, applicants must boast an annual income of at least 10 million yen ($68,000).

Citizens from 50 countries and regions, including the U.S., Australia, and Singapore, which have existing visa waiver agreements with Japan, can apply. Private health insurance is a prerequisite, ensuring the well-being of the visa holders during their stay. Self-employed individuals engaged in overseas business can also benefit from this innovative program. Moreover, they have the option to bring their family members along, provided they are covered by private health insurance.

While the program offers the freedom to explore Japan, it has unique conditions. Digital nomads under this visa will not receive a residence card or certificate, limiting access to specific government benefits. The visa is non-renewable, requiring reapplication after a six-month interval, and applicants must spend that time outside the country. Japan joins the ranks of over 50 countries issuing digital nomad visas. Notably, South Korea allows up to two years, while Taiwan offers a three-year stay, with the possibility of permanent residency. The diverse offerings cater to digital nomads' varied needs and preferences, seeking a balance between work and exploration.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Meta is poised to become Wall Street's top comeback kid. It was only a couple of years back the Facebook owner suffered the single biggest market value destruction in stock-market history. But the company has come a long way since then, on Thursday it dazzled shareholders with yet another impressive quarterly earnings report as the social media giant focuses on cutting back costs and shoring up billions in profits. The stock rose as much as 21% Friday, poised to add roughly $200 billion to its market capitalization. This would be the biggest single-session market value addition, eclipsing the $190 billion gains made by Apple and Amazon in 2022.

"Solid execution, faster growth, and increased capital structure efficiency improve the outlook from here," Brian Nowak, an analyst at Morgan Stanley, wrote in a note Friday. "Meta's AI pipeline for both users and advertisers is robust, with more tools set to launch and scale throughout '24," he added. Meta, which reduced headcount by 22% in 2023, unveiled plans for a $50 billion stock buyback, and announced its first quarterly dividend on Thursday, a sign to investors that it has money to spare and a reason for them to stick around. While the company is making big cost cuts, it continues to spend aggressively on artificial intelligence advancements, namely in generative AI but also on the background technologies to help feed its social media products and power its ad targeting.

Layoffs are being mentioned on US earnings calls at the highest rate since the pandemic -- and as Meta Platforms shows, such cost cutting can pay off for investors. Bloomberg: Efforts by the Facebook parent to slash costs and refocus its business upended the lives of thousands of workers, but has since helped propel its stock 340% from a 2022 low. With an economic soft landing being the base case for many, positioning by firms to protect margins -- particularly in the technology sector -- is being welcomed by investors. Mentions of job cuts and synonyms per earnings calls this season have jumped to the highest levels since the second quarter of 2020, according to a Bloomberg transcript analysis of S&P 1500 Composite Index firms. For the technology industry in particular, "more recent cuts come out of a position of strength," said Wolf von Rotberg, equity strategist at Bank J. Safra Sarasin. "Confidence in the sector appears high that growth can persist even with a smaller workforce," he said.