Alexa, insert David and Victoria Beckham "be honest" meme

What's the real reason for the layoffs?

Amazon stock is flat over the past year. The rest of the "magnificent seven":

- Google: +70%

- Nvidia: +49% - Apple: +7%

- Meta: Flat

- SHOP (closest comp): +19.41%

- Mercado Libre (international comp): +20.73%

So basically, the "tech world" is dividing itself, in the eyes of investors, into two camps: companies that will benefit from AI tailwinds and companies that will not. And all the money is going to the companies that will.

Amazon is more and more considered to be part of the latter group.

This is especially concerning of Amazon because it seems like AWS--the cash cow--has somehow missed becoming the cloud provider for AI compute needs.

As such, Amazon needs to give investors some reason to hold amazon stock. If you're not part of a rising tide, the only reason left is "we are very profitable."

So yeah, Amazon will have to cut costs to show more profitability and become further investable.

So yes, the layoffs have to do with AI...but not the way they are spinning it.

Thanks for an insightful answer!

They just wanted to do a mass layoff and (for now) it looks better if you say “because AI”. It tranquilizes stakeholders because they think “AI is taking those tasks, the business will be unaffected”

Until the business gets affected

Might just be management doing that "you can cut the bottom 5-10% of your workforce every 5 years without impacting productivity at all" thing.

Unstable and uncertain economy

To lower costs

There is also navidrome https://navidrome.org

I just started using Finamp for Android

https://github.com/jmshrv/finamp

I recommend the beta edition as the UI is quite evolved from the previous version.

Qobuz and 7digital both have extensive libraries of high quality music.

Edit: and of course bandcamp exists but I wouldn't call their collection extensive.

Don't forget bandcamp.

Yes, but not every artist is on there. I do use it if the artist has one but that's rare.

Friendly reminder that the UK left the EU over "sovereignty concerns" among other reasons.

The EU is the one with actual privacy regulations, for now at least.

Care to expand on why VW and Stellantis are going to dominate the EV market?

VW is already the EV leader by sales, Stellantis will follow suit by the end of the decade at top 2.

There are few important reasons:

1. VW and Stellantis combine a huge array of relevant (in EU) brands including (by memory) Jeep, Maserati, Audi, Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Porsche, Lancia, Seat, Cupra, Lancia, Skoda, Volkswagen, Opel, Peugeot, Citroen, Lamborghini.

2. VW and Stellantis have already all the network made of service, parts, dealerships.

3. All markets are different, and as you can imagine European brands know how to build cars for that market.

4. Both companies are gigantic and well diversified across the globe with their supply chains and plenty of deals with Chinese ev and battery makers. Even if the Chinese end up dominating the European market, they will still have to build here and do it in a JV.

The government will keep changing the rules until VW wins. Using tariffs, price floors, subsidies, whatever it takes.

European and national politics have been anything but kind to European automakers for quite some time.

Cruft solves exactly this problem https://cruft.github.io/cruft/

HSBC used to distribute hardware keys to its retail customers just a few years ago

These keys eventually stop working, need a new battery, etc. Instead of the onus being on the customer to "pull" a new one of these keys, it would be better if you "push" them ( mail a new one proactively every January 1st, give a $20 one-time service credit for activating it, and $5 a month credit for continuing to use it )

I had a hardware token for paypal 20 years ago

It's because the consumption side has completely changed. Most people now don't even own a PC so they're not likely to even notice this problem.

probably.. I was at a range and took a quick snap of my target, because I wanted to review it in a bit calmer environment.. I remember standing there, seeing the bullet holes in the paper, and I distinctly recall two holes that had multiple hits. When I opened the picture on the phone to look, lo and behold, those were generic bullet holes, they except, not mine.. I zoomed in and nope, they're fake.. I have had so many experiences with this on different Samsung phones.. that stuff is just OFF, like, a picture of my kid in low light, and the phone just decided part of his face was probably the wallpaper, so it just put wallpaper pattern there instead of skin.. I've been over every setting I can dig up, can't find anything that should do this..

I am in the EU and I still get the nag screen sometimes, it's awful.

There's also ExpressVPN