Tesla profits climb despite price cuts | CNN Business

July 20, 2023July 19, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Tesla reported a much bigger-than-expected increase in profits, despite a series of price cuts that trimmed the amount of revenue per vehicle sold.

Tesla (TSLA) reported adjusted earnings of $3.1 billion, or 91 cents a share, up 20% from the second quarter last year. Analysts surveyed by Refinitiv had forecast earnings of 82 cents a share.

Its profit margin of 18.2% was also better than expected, although profit margins were still smaller than they were last year due to the series of price cuts the company announced since earlier this year. A year ago, Tesla’s margin was 25%, and even reported a 19.3% profit margin in the first quarter, when it first started to put the price cuts in place. But the forecast was that the continued price cuts would drop the profit margin under 17% in the most recent quarter.

Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One review: Good fun | Digital Trends

July 13, 2023July 11, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

With the exception of a uniquely slimy arms dealer played by the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman, the villains in the Mission: Impossible movies have always been rather serviceable, even forgettable. That is, if you’d even consider them the villains. Time, altitude, gravity, probability: These are the real threats facing Ethan Hunt, the Tom Cruise-shaped pinball launched through every exhilarating espionage machine in the series.

In Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One, a sequel whose convoluted absurdity begins with the punctuation in its title, Hunt finally faces an enemy as intangible as the laws of nature he regularly defies. The Entity, as it’s called, is a sentient computer virus—a mass of malevolent code capable of hacking every database on the planet, and reshaping the world by redefining its notions of truth. It’s a timely foe for an age of invisible danger, disinformation, and AI anxiety. In its ability to predict and effectively control the future, it’s also a rather fitting adversary for Hunt. Has the living manifestation of destiny met his match in, well, the unliving master of it?

Easyjet cancels 1,700 flights from July to September | BBC News

July 11, 2023July 10, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Easyjet has confirmed it has cancelled 1,700 flights as people prepare to travel on their summer holidays.

The airline has axed flights during July, August and September, travelling to and from Gatwick airport.

Easyjet blamed constrained airspace over Europe and ongoing air traffic control difficulties, which are causing regular cancellations.

The company said 95% of affected passengers had been rebooked onto alternative flights.

Easyjet announced the decision as many schools in England and Wales prepare to break-up for the summer holidays.

Threads: Meta sets out planned new features | BBC News

July 11, 2023July 10, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Threads is looking into adding an alternative home feed, of only posts, in chronological order, from the people each individual user follows, according to Instagram boss Adam Mosseri.

It currently shows a mix of recommended content and posts from those followed.

Threads was billed as an “initial version” at launch and the company has signalled more features are to come.

But a planned system to make Threads compatible with some other apps, such as Mastodon, has met with resistance.

Instagram, which is owned by Meta, built the Threads app.

Google adjusts privacy policy allowing use of public data for AI training | Mashable

July 6, 2023July 5, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Google can now use public data to help train and create AI products, according to new privacy policy changes.

As of July 1, the tech giant’s newly adjusted policy reads: “Google uses information to improve our services and to develop new products, features and technologies that benefit our users and the public. For example, we use publicly available information to help train Google’s AI models and build products and features like Google Translate, Bard, and Cloud AI capabilities.”

Previously, the policy only stated that publicly available information could be used to help train Google “language models” and gave a single mention of Google Translate.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta launches Instagram’s Threads app, a rival to Twitter amidst Elon Musk backlash | CNN Business

July 6, 2023July 5, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Facebook has tried to compete with Twitter in numerous ways over the years, including copying signature Twitter features such as hashtags and trending topics. But now Facebook’s parent company is taking perhaps its biggest swipe at Twitter yet.

Meta on Wednesday officially launched a new app called Threads, which is intended to offer a space for real-time conversations online, a function that has long been Twitter’s core selling point.

The app appears to have many similarities to Twitter, from the layout to the product description. The listing, which first appeared earlier this week as a teaser, emphasizes its potential to build a following and connect with like-minded people.

Could vaccines prevent and treat Alzheimer’s disease? | Live Science

July 5, 2023July 4, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Despite decades of Alzheimer’s research, scientists have not found a treatment that halts or dramatically slows the disease. Now, scientists are investigating if a completely new approach — so-called Alzheimer’s vaccines — could alter the disease’s course.

The logic behind this effort? Much of the previous research has placed beta-amyloid plaques, clumps of protein that accumulate in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, front-and-center. But drugs that remove beta-amyloid plaques alone don’t seem to have much impact on the disease course. So some researchers have proposed that the plaques are a consequence, rather than a cause of Alzheimer’s.

Teamsters at UPS are close to the biggest strike in recent memory | Fast Company

June 30, 2023June 29, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

It’s already been a hot strike summer, with thousands of workers in different industries walking off the job to protest poor working conditions or demand their bosses come to the negotiating table and hammer out a fair union contract. But we’re all still waiting to find out what will happen with what could be the biggest strike of the year—frankly, of the past several decades.

The Teamsters union is the largest in the nation, representing 1.2 million logistics workers across the U.S. and Canada. They are currently in the middle of contentious contract negotiations with the United Parcel Service, a corporation that employs 340,000 Teamster package delivery and warehouse workers.

AWS Launches $100M Generative AI Innovation Center | Small Biz Trends

June 28, 2023June 27, 2023 ~ knjohn ~ Leave a comment

Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), the cloud computing subsidiary of Amazon, has announced its significant investment in the development of generative artificial intelligence (AI). With a $100 million commitment, the new AWS Generative AI Innovation Center aims to support customers and partners globally in their quest to harness the potential of generative AI. This move, with its direct engagement approach, could open up fresh opportunities for small business owners to innovate and leverage AI technology.

Generative AI, a type of machine learning (ML) that can create new data instances like images, sound, and text, can prove transformative across industries. The AWS Generative AI Innovation Center seeks to leverage this capability, assisting businesses in envisioning, designing, and launching new generative AI products, services, and processes. This initiative builds on AWS’s longstanding commitment to AI technology development, and its goal to bring this technology to customers and partners worldwide.