Sandhya Gupta

Violent protests at the world’s largest iPhone factory in China

Workers at the largest iPhone factory worldwide, located in Zhengzhou, central China, engaged in violent altercations early on Wednesday.

Police authorities in China have beaten up workers who were demonstrating over wages and working conditions at the largest iPhone factory, as the number of Covid-19 cases in the nation reached a new daily high.

Videos posted online showed hordes of policemen in white protective clothing and plastic riot shields facing thousands of protestors wearing masks. After a demonstrator retrieved a metal pole that was used to assault him, police struck him with clubs and kicked him. In other films, demonstrators could be seen shooting fire extinguishers at police.

In response to concerns about unsafe working conditions, thousands of employees at Foxconn, the largest contract manufacturer of cellphones and other electronics, left the facility in Zhengzhou last month, making it difficult for the company to fulfill orders for the iPhone 14.

According to an employee named Li Sanshan, demonstrations started on Tuesday when workers who had traveled great distances to accept a position at the factory claimed that the company altered the conditions of their compensation.

Foxconn apologized and said that the confusion over compensation was caused by a “technical error”. In an extraordinary move meant to placate dissatisfied new hires who were instrumental in the violent protests that shook the largest iPhone plant in the world, Foxconn has started providing 10,000 yuan to any worker who opts to quit.

The compensation, which typically exceeds a month’s pay for Foxconn’s blue-collar workers, is likely to appease some workers after they staged an unusually violent protest on Wednesday that brought attention to the negative economic and social effects of Xi Jinping’s Covid Zero plan.

The rallies are being held amid intense resentment over the Covid restrictions, which have forced millions of individuals to remain in their homes and closed businesses and offices in many parts of China. With 31,444 new infections, China on Thursday recorded the most Covid cases ever.

Despite the comparatively low numbers of infections and fatalities in comparison to other nations, China’s Communist party is nevertheless dedicated to its “zero-Covid” strategy, which strives to isolate each case and completely eradicate the virus.

By Wednesday night, the plant was operating normally, according to a statement from Foxconn. However, the demonstrations brought attention to how Xi’s program, which relies on quick lockdowns to eradicate the disease anywhere it appears, is burdening the economy and upending large portions of the entire supply chain.

The Foxconn incident serves as yet another warning to Apple about the risks of relying on a sizable production system headquartered in China in an era of unpredictable policies and shaky trade ties.

Factories like Foxconn’s, which assemble toys, consumer electronics, and other things for the global market, are the foundation of China’s position as an export powerhouse. Foxconn employees’ growing discontent poses a danger to further halting production at a facility that produces the majority of Apple’s bestselling products for export.

Apple has already issued a warning that it will supply fewer smartphones than expected during the crucial holiday quarter, and that wait periods for iPhones have gotten so long that they may extend past Christmas in some circumstances.

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

Elon Musk says Twitter is done with layoffs and ready to hire again

Elon Musk is hiring again after firing roughly two-thirds of Twitter’s 7,500 employees in only three weeks.

According to a tweet from a The Verge reporter, Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk assured employees in an all-hands meet that the business does not expect future layoffs and is hiring for engineering and ad sales positions. Musk stated that Twitter is hiring for engineering and ad sales positions and that there are no further planned layoffs.

According to The Verge, Musk declared during the meeting that he planned to decentralize Twitter by establishing technical teams in Brazil, Japan, India, and other countries. He asserted throughout the discussion that Twitter’s technological stack has to be completely rebuilt.

Additionally, he asserted that somewhat decentralizing things is a good idea. Musk made a suggestion that engineering teams might also be established in India as part of this.

However, Twitter does not currently have any job vacancies advertised on its website, and Musk did not name the specific technical or sales positions for which the company was recruiting. During the meeting, he stated, “In terms of critical hires, I would say people who are great at writing software are the highest priority.” Last week, The Verge reported that Twitter recruiters had begun contacting engineers and inviting them to join “Twitter 2.0 — an Elon company.”

During a half-hour Q&A session with staff members from Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, Musk claimed there are “no plans” to transfer Twitter headquarters to Texas, as he did with Tesla, but that it may make sense to have “dual-headquartered” offices in Texas and California.

Anyone joining Twitter today will do so in a far smaller organization than it was prior to Musk’s takeover. The precise number of exits during his tenure is unknown, but before he fired over half the workforce, there were almost 7,400 workers with access to Twitter’s internal systems.

Long-serving engineers, some of whom had served the company for over ten years, as well as an increasing number of corporate leaders, have left the company. On Musk’s first day, Twitter’s CEO, CFO, and chief legal officer were all fired.

The executives of Twitter’s biggest content and advertising partnerships have either left their positions or been fired. As per former and current employees, several “essential” teams were totally destroyed by the layoffs and resignations.

Another significant change is the suspension of Twitter’s $8 subscription-based “Blue Verification” mark’s re-launch. Elon Musk has also temporarily suspended the “Blue Verified” badge “until there is high confidence of stopping impersonation”.

According to Musk, the social media giant is delaying the rollout of a new system for awarding verified ticks to users and may instead employ other “colour checks” to verify businesses and people. Musk also mentioned that Twitter will soon be in a position to compete with YouTube in terms of offering a video streaming service, dropping a hint that Twitter may do so with “higher compensation for creators” and a pleasant video experience.

The new Twitter CEO today advised Twitter critics to go on other social media sites and ended his statement with the Hindi greeting “Namaste.” He tweeted,” Hope all judgy hall monitors stay on other platforms – please, I’m begging u.”

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

Meta rolls out new privacy updates in bid to keep teen users safe

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Sandhya Gupta

New online safety precautions have been introduced by social media behemoth Meta to protect teenage users.

Last year, Meta introduced some of the steps that might be taken to keep teenagers away from possibly suspicious adults. For instance, the company forbids adults from contacting minors with whom they are not connected or from seeing adolescents in its People You May Know suggestions.

On Monday, Meta said that it would add new safeguards to its social networking sites Facebook and Instagram to safeguard young users from harm online. Facebook announced in a blog post that anybody below 16, or 18 in some regions, will now automatically have more private settings for their accounts.

The company is experimenting with additional safeguards to prevent teens from communicating with questionable adults they are not related to, and they won’t display them in the People You May Know section for teens.

The company is also completely eliminating the message button from teen Instagram profiles when they are visited by suspicious adults as an additional degree of security. According to Meta, an adult account that has lately been reported or blocked by a youngster qualifies as suspicious.

The updated tools come with more standard privacy settings and safety notifications. Some privacy options allow kids to control who may view their friends list, posts that they’re tagged in, and who can add comments on their public posts.

Meta noted, “We’re working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) to build a global platform for teens who are worried intimate images they created might be shared on public online platforms without their consent.”

In order to combat the online proliferation of self-generated personal photographs, new tools and training are also being developed. Meta is collaborating with Thorn and their NoFiltr brand to develop instructional resources that will assist youngsters in lessening the shame and stigma associated with intimate photographs.

Meta noted, “We found that more than 75% of people that we reported to NCMEC for sharing child exploitative content shared the content out of outrage, poor humor, or disgust, and with no apparent intention of harm. Sharing this content violates our policies, regardless of intent.

We’re planning to launch a new PSA campaign that encourages people to stop and think before resharing those images online and to report them to us instead.”

Teens can use a variety of tools created by Meta to inform the platform when something in one of its apps causes them to feel uncomfortable. They are encouraged to use these tools through new notifications the company has introduced.

For instance, the company sends teens safety notifications with instructions on how to deal with abusive messages from adults and prompts them to report profiles to the platform when they block someone.

Over 100 million users viewed safety notifications on Messenger in a single month in 2021. Additionally, the company has made it simpler for users to access the reporting tools. As an outcome, the company received over 70% more reports from minors, in Q1 2022 compared to Q1 2021, on Instagram DM, and Facebook Messenger.

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

Bob Iger is returning to head Disney as Bob Chapek steps down

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Sandhya Gupta

One of Disney’s most successful CEOs, Bob Iger, is coming back to lead the media conglomerate once more.

Disney has reverted the CEO change that caught everyone off guard in 2020, with Bob Iger resuming his position as the CEO and taking the place of Bob Chapek, his replacement. Iger, who also holds the majority of the company’s stock, will now begin a fresh two-year tenure as CEO.

Susan Arnold, Chairman of the Board for Disney stated, “We thank Bob Chapek for his service to Disney over his long career, including navigating the company through the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic. The Board has concluded that as Disney embarks on an increasingly complex period of industry transformation, Bob Iger is uniquely situated to lead the Company through this pivotal period”.

As per Disney, Susan Arnold will continue serving as the chairperson and there has been no change to the board. Iger led Disney as CEO for 15 years, from 2005 to 2020, before choosing to step aside and transfer control to Bob Chapek.

Notably, Chapek and Disney agreed to a three-year contract extension in June. Iger declared upon his return that he was excited to rejoin Disney and that he was hopeful about the company’s future.

Bob Iger noted, “Disney and its incomparable brands and franchises hold a special place in the hearts of so many people around the globe — most especially in the hearts of our employees, whose dedication to this company and its mission is an inspiration.

I am deeply honored to be asked to again lead this remarkable team, with a clear mission focused on creative excellence to inspire generations through unrivaled, bold storytelling.”

Iger managed Disney’s significant deals with Marvel, Pixar, and 21st Century Fox during his previous stint. The returning CEO also informed the Disney workers, including the cast members, via email that they would learn more about this decision “tomorrow and in coming weeks” from the leadership.

The corporation had not benefited greatly from Chapek’s 11-month tenure as the CEO. The share price of the company decreased by over 40% during his tenure. He was also criticized for not actively opposing Florida’s anti-gay law. Under his leadership, the corporation terminated senior content executive Peter Rice and missed the chance to secure digital streaming rights for the Indian Premier League.

The news was well received by investors, who drove Disney stock up 9% on Monday after it had lost about 36% of its worth this year.

The announcement comes at a pivotal time for Disney. A little more than two weeks have passed since Disney released its Q4 2022 financial results, stating that both its media and park sectors fell short of analyst expectations. Its streaming sector has expanded as more subscribers choose a package option that combines Disney Plus, ESPN Plus, and Hulu, but streaming fees are also rising.

In Q3 2022, the business reported revenues of $20.2 billion, falling short by over $1 billion of analyst estimates. Disney’s CFO at the time, Christine McCarthy, stated that the goal for the company is to become profitable by the 2024 fiscal year.

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

WhatsApp To Soon Launch New Yellow Pages-Style Business Directory

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Sandhya Gupta

WhatsApp is formally debuting a brand-new business directory feature in the UK, Colombia, Brazil, Indonesia, and Mexico. The new tools will be introduced for the first time in Brazil, one of Whatsapp’s largest markets, outside of pilot projects.

WhatsApp has revealed the release of a business directory feature that supports in-app transactions. Users can use this feature to find nearby businesses. Users can look up the business by categories including banking, dining, and travel.

After a brief test in So Paulo, Brazil, last year, WhatsApp decided to officially launch the service. In Brazil, the feature is only accessible through Android, however, it is accessible through both Android and iOS in the other four countries.

At a meeting in Brazil devoted to WhatsApp, the company said that the “business search” tool will help people find contacts for businesses more quickly. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, noted, “We want to make it easier for people to get more done on WhatsApp.

Part of that is building better ways to engage with businesses. The ultimate goal here is to make it so you can find, message, and buy from a business all in the same WhatsApp chat.” To start a conversation with a business on Whatsapp, users previously had to enter a mobile number to their phone contacts or follow a link on a different site.

The feature’s release coincides with WhatsApp’s increased marketing of itself as a platform for users to contact businesses in addition to family and friends. According to Meta, more than 175 million users use WhatsApp to communicate with business accounts daily as of October 2020.

Other e-commerce-related features have also been introduced to the service, such as support for in-app shopping.. According to a press statement from WhatsApp, the merchant payments functionality is now being tested in Brazil “with multiple payment partners.”

The business-oriented features of WhatsApp are noteworthy since they represent one of the few means the platform is monetized using the WhatsApp Business API. It doesn’t similarly display ads as Instagram and Facebook, two of Meta’s other top services, do. However, a Meta executive told Reuters a year ago that WhatsApp’s business model “in some form or another” is likely to include adverts in the future.

With the debut of person-to-person payments in 2020, Meta recently announced WhatsApp’s “first-ever end-to-end shopping experience” in India with JioMart earlier this year. However, the expansion in Brazil has been more delayed. The payments function of WhatsApp was shut down by Brazil’s national bank in 2020, not long after it was introduced.

The Financial Times reported in April of this year that Meta was having trouble obtaining payment providers for its payment-to-merchant service.

Over 2 billion people use WhatsApp worldwide. According to the company’s quarterly earnings, which were cited by TechCrunch last month, the click-to-WhatsApp ad business had increased revenue by 80% year over year and was on course to reach $1.5 billion annually.

Recently, Meta reported its first-ever yearly revenue drop and laid off over 11,000 employees.

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

Nvidia and Microsoft Collaborate To Build AI Supercomputers

Leave a Comment / News, Tech News / By Sandhya Gupta

Nvidia and Microsoft are working together over a “multi-year collaboration” to build “one of the most powerful AI supercomputer in the world,” which will be capable of handling the large processing workloads needed to teach and scale AI.

According to the reports, the AI supercomputer will be driven by Microsoft Azure’s cutting-edge supercomputing technology along with Nvidia GPUs, networking, and a comprehensive stack of AI software to support businesses in training, deploying, and scaling AI, including big, cutting-edge models.

NVIDIA’s A100 and H100 GPUs will be part of the array, coupled with their Quantum-2 400Gb/s Infiniband networking technology. In particular, this would be the first public cloud to feature NVIDIA’s cutting-edge AI tech stack, allowing businesses to train and use AI on a large scale.

Manuvir Das, VP of enterprise computing at Nvidia, noted, “AI technology advances as well as industry adoption are accelerating. The breakthrough of foundation models has triggered a tidal wave of research, fostered new startups and enabled new enterprise applications. Our collaboration with Microsoft will provide researchers and companies with state-of-the-art AI infrastructure and software to capitalise on the transformative power of AI.”

NVIDIA will work with Azure to research and accelerate advancements in generative AI, a rapidly developing field of artificial intelligence where foundational models like the Megatron Turing NLG 530B serve as the basis for unmonitored, self-learning algorithms to generate new text, digital images, codes, audio, or video.

Additionally, the companies will work together to improve Microsoft’s DeepSpeed deep learning optimization tool. Azure enterprise clients will have access to NVIDIA’s full suite of AI processes and software development tools that have been tailored for Azure. In order to speed up transformer-based models used for huge language models, generative AI, and generating code, among other uses, Microsoft DeepSpeed will make use of the NVIDIA H100 Transformer Engine.

With twice the capacity of 16-bit operations, this technology uses DeepSpeed’s 8-bit floating point accuracy capabilities to significantly speed up AI calculations for transformers.

Verge reports that due to the recent quick expansion of these AI models, there has been a major increase in the demand for robust computer infrastructure.

The partnership is intriguing for several reasons, but notably, because it makes one of the largest computing clusters accessible to companies. Due to optimizations made in the newest ‘Hopper’ generation of NVIDIA GPUs, this will not only enable companies to train and implement AI at a level that was previously impractically pricey to do but also allow them to do it at a significant level of efficiency.

Although NVIDIA has a supercomputer of its own, the collaboration demonstrates that they are aware of the enormous computational demands placed on them by contemporary algorithms. This development represents a collaboration between two of the largest organizations in the AI industry.

Microsoft has experience in this area, as seen by its relationship with OpenAI and dedication to the development of ethical and safe AI. Contrarily, NVIDIA has been a pillar of AI development and research for the past ten years thanks to its potent GPUs and supporting tech stack, which includes CUDA and Tensor cores.

Sandhya Gupta

I am a law graduate from NLU Lucknow. I have a flair for creative writing and hence in my free time work as a freelance content writer.

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