Morning Tidings

Tag: Impacted

  • Amazon Layoffs: E-Commerce Giant Cuts Jobs Amid Global Churning in Alexa Division, India Unit Impacted

    Amazon Layoffs: E-Commerce Giant Cuts Jobs Amid Global Churning in Alexa Division, India Unit Impacted

    New Delhi, November 18: Amazon has announced to lay off “several hundred employees” from its Alexa division, including in India, amid a renewed focus on artificial intelligence (AI). The number of employees being impacted by the decision in India could not be ascertained yet.

    The e-commerce giant will “communicate with impacted colleagues in India next week”. In a memo sent to employees, Daniel Rausch, vice president of Alexa and Fire TV team, said that the company is eliminating “several hundred roles”. Amazon Layoffs: E-Commerce Giant Laying Off Hundreds Employees in Alexa Division, India Team Impacted.

    “As we continue to invent, we’re shifting some of our efforts to better align with our business priorities, and what we know matters most to customers — which includes maximising our resources and efforts focused on generative AI,” he told employees in the memo. “These shifts are leading us to discontinue some initiatives, which is resulting in several hundred roles being eliminated,” Rausch added.

    He said that the company “will communicate with impacted colleagues in India next week, and are following local processes in other regions, which may include time for consultation with employee representative bodies, and possibly resulting in longer timelines to communicate”.

    Amazon did not provide further details on the initiatives being discontinued. The e-commerce giant had conducted layoffs in its Devices & Services division last year as part of company-wide cuts. Rausch said that the investments in generative AI are bringing “our vision for an even more intuitive, intelligent, and useful Alexa closer than ever before”. Amazon Layoffs Continue: E-Commerce Giant Lays Off ‘Just Over’ 180 Employees in Its Gaming Division, Shuts Down Crown Channel.

    “We will reach out to colleagues in the US and Canada who are impacted by these role reductions. Notification emails will be sent out shortly, and we expect all notifications in the .S and Canada to be completed this morning (Pacific time),” the memo further read. “To those of you impacted by these reductions, please know we did not make this decision lightly,” it added.

    The company is providing impacted employees packages that include a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, external job placement support, and paid time to conduct job search. Dave Limp, in charge of the Devices & Services division at Amazon, in August announced to leave the company. Former Microsoft executive Panos Panay has succeeded him.

    (The above story first appeared on Morning Tidings on Nov 18, 2023 11:28 AM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website morningtidings.com).

  • Amazon Layoffs: E-Commerce Giant Laying Off Hundreds Employees in Alexa Division, India Team Impacted

    Amazon Layoffs: E-Commerce Giant Laying Off Hundreds Employees in Alexa Division, India Team Impacted

    San Francisco/New Delhi, November 17: Amazon is laying off “several hundred employees” from its Alexa devision, including in India, amid a renewed focus on artificial intelligence (AI), the media reported on Friday. In a memo sent to employees and seen by GeekWire, Daniel Rausch, vice president of Alexa and Fire TV team, said that the company is eliminating “several hundred roles”. “As we continue to invent, we’re shifting some of our efforts to better align with our business priorities, and what we know matters most to customers — which includes maximising our resources and efforts focused on generative AI,” he told employees in the memo.

    “These shifts are leading us to discontinue some initiatives, which is resulting in several hundred roles being eliminated,” Rausch added. He said that the company “will communicate with impacted colleagues in India next week, and are following local processes in other regions, which may include time for consultation with employee representative bodies, and possibly resulting in longer timelines to communicate”. Amazon did not provide further details on the initiatives being discontinued, the report noted. Amazon Layoffs Continue: E-Commerce Giant Lays Off ‘Just Over’ 180 Employees in Its Gaming Division, Shuts Down Crown Channel

    The e-commerce giant had conducted layoffs in its Devices & Services division last year as part of company-wide cuts. Rausch said that the investments in generative AI are bringing “our vision for an even more intuitive, intelligent, and useful Alexa closer than ever before”. “We will reach out to colleagues in the US and Canada who are impacted by these role reductions. Notification emails will be sent out shortly, and we expect all notifications in the U.S. and Canada to be completed this morning (Pacific time),” the memo further read. Tech Layoffs Dampen Festivities; Google, Amazon, Snap and Others Announce Fresh Job Cuts

    “To those of you impacted by these reductions, please know we did not make this decision lightly,” it added. The company is providing impacted employees packages that include a separation payment, transitional health insurance benefits, external job placement support, and paid time to conduct job search. Dave Limp, in charge of the Devices & Services division at Amazon, in August announced to leave the company. Former Microsoft executive Panos Panay has succeeded him.

    (The above story first appeared on Morning Tidings on Nov 17, 2023 10:47 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website morningtidings.com).

  • More Than 35,000 Java Packages Impacted by Log4j Vulnerabilities, Says Google

    New Delhi, Dec 19: As the world scrambles to plug serious security bugs that can derail the Internet for millions, Google has said that more than 35,000 Java packages, amounting to over 8 per cent of the Maven Central repository (the most significant Java package repository), have been impacted by the recently disclosed vulnerabilities with widespread fallout across the software industry. Apache Log4j2 Vulnerability: Hackers Making Over 100 Attempts To Exploit a Critical Security, Warn Cyber Researchers

    Cyber criminals are making thousands of attempts to exploit a second vulnerability involving a Java logging system called ‘Apache log4j2’.

    According to Google, this vulnerability has captivated the information security ecosystem since its disclosure on December 9 because of both its severity and widespread impact.

    “As a popular logging tool, ‘log4j’ is used by tens of thousands of software packages (known as ‘artifacts’ in the Java ecosystem) and projects across the software industry,” Google said in a blog post.

    User’s lack of visibility into their dependencies and transitive dependencies has made patching difficult; it has also made it “difficult to determine the full blast radius of this vulnerability”.

    As of December 16, Google found that 35,863 of the available Java ‘artifacts’ from Maven Central depend on the affected log4j code.

    This means that more than 8 per cent of all packages on Maven Central have at least one version that is impacted by this vulnerability.

    “As far as ecosystem impact goes, 8% is enormous. The average ecosystem impact of advisories affecting Maven Central is 2%, with the median less than 0.1%,” said Google.

    So far, nearly 5,000 ‘artifacts’ have been patched, leaving more than 30,000 more.

    Meanwhile, Apache has released version 2.17.0 of the patch for Log4j after discovering issues with their previous release, which came out last week.

    On Friday, security researchers tweeted about potential issues with 2.16.0, with some identifying the “denial of service vulnerability”.

    Cybersecurity firms have found that major ransomware groups like Conti are exploring ways to take advantage of the vulnerability.

    They warned that hackers were making over 100 attempts every minute to exploit a critical security vulnerability in the widely-used Java logging system called ‘Apache log4j2’, leaving millions of companies globally at cyber theft risk.

    Several popular services, including Apple iCloud, Amazon, Twitter, Cloudflare and Minecraft, are vulnerable to this ‘ubiquitous’ zero-day exploit, now dubbed as one of the most serious vulnerabilities on the Internet in recent years. Global Ransomware Attacks Fueled by Unregulated Cryptocurrencies, Says Report

    ‘Apache Log4j’ is used in many forms of enterprise and open-source software, including cloud platforms, web applications and email services.

    (The above story first appeared on Morning Tidings on Dec 19, 2021 12:14 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website morningtidings.com).

  • Chicken Wings Shortage In United States: Poultry Industry Impacted In Pandemic; Leads To Severe Shortage Across The Country

    Chicken Wings Shortage In United States: Poultry Industry Impacted In Pandemic; Leads To Severe Shortage Across The Country

    Have the chickens left the building in the United States? Things are not looking up for chicken wings enthusiasts in the country. There’s a poultry crisis broiling on the horizon with many restaurants reporting severe chicken wings shortage, that has forced them to hike up the price or completely take them off their menu. According to the country’s largest poultry producer, the increases in demand has led to wings shortage across the country.

    Joe Sanderson, CEO of Sanderson Farms, at the Goldman Sachs Global Staples Forum on Tuesday said, “We cannot supply enough wings to anybody, at retail or at foodservice.”

    According to FOXBusiness, Wing prices soared to $3.16 per pound for customers picking Sanderson’s dock, while boneless chicken breast prices have climbed 236% since the fall to $2.25 per pound while tenders have spiked 77% to $2.43.

    Why the sudden shortage?

    The pandemic is the leading cause of the sudden dip in poultry production. The demand for comfort food – fried Chicken, Wings, tenders and what have you’s – exponentially increased during the lockdown.

    The Chicken Sandwich war – The battle for chicken sandwich dominance- that began on August 12, 2019, to little fanfare took off like wildfire during the pandemic, with major fast-food chains like KFC, Mcdonalds and Burgerking throwing their hat into the coop. The orders soared and farms couldn’t keep up with the demand.

    The volatile weather also impeded the supply chain as it impacted the chicken flocks. The National Chicken Council blamed the harsh winter as a root cause and indicated that extra time is needed for supply to “catch up” with demand.

    The poultry industry is already hard at work controlling the messaging around the growing alarm over a chicken shortage. National Chicken Council spokesman Tom Super said there was a “very tight supply but short of a shortage.”

    Last month, a regional fast-food chain, Charlotte-based Bojangles, said that they were short on chicken supremes at some locations. They are still running low on tenders, fox reported.

    (The above story first appeared on Morning Tidings on May 23, 2021 05:46 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website morningtidings.com).

  • Cyclone Tauktae Impact In Gujarat, Maharashtra And Other States: What We Know So Far About States Impacted By the Storm; Where is it Headed Next?

    Cyclone Tauktae Impact In Gujarat, Maharashtra And Other States: What We Know So Far About States Impacted By the Storm; Where is it Headed Next?

    Cyclone Tauktae intensified on Sunday and was classified as “Extremely Severe Cyclonic Storm,” by the India Meteorological Department (IMD). The first cyclone of 2021, Tukatae, is presently moving through Mumbai and will likely hit Gujarat by Monday evening. As heavy rains uproot trees and disrupt life around the nation, the cyclone that barreled down across the western coast, killing 8 in Karnataka’s Malnad and coastal districts, is expected to hit many more states in the nation. 

    How many states have been Impacted by the cyclone so far? 

    India is already grappling with the second wave of Covid-19, and the country had to bear a heavy gust of wind and torrential rainfall as it lashed through the coastal belt of Kerala, Karnataka and Goa on Sunday. The IMD warned that the storm formed over the Lakshadweep in the Arabian Sea has intensified into an extremely severe cyclonic storm Tauktae and is moving towards the Gujarat coast. Many people were evacuated and relocated into relief camps along the coastal belt.

    As of Monday morning, the storm was 160 km west-southwest of Mumbai and 250 km south-southeast of Diu, the IMD reported.

    On Monday, heavy winds and rainfall swept through the streets of Mumbai, prompting authorities to urge the citizens to stay inside and closed the local train services and flight operations in the city. All operations at the city’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport have been shut till 6 pm. The Bandra-Worli sea link has been closed as the storm intensified in Mumbai. Fishermen have been asked not to venture out into the sea. Many states in the country including Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, and Maharashtra were put on alert. 

    Where is it headed? 

    Cyclone Tauktae is expected to pass close to the Mumbai coast then reach the Gujarat coast by Monday evening.

    The States Expected to be hit by the Cyclone Tukatae

    The IMP has put Gujarat on Red alert as the cyclone will pass through Gujarat by Monday evening and will cross the Gujarat coast between Porbandar and Mahuva in the Bhavnagar district. The cyclone is expected to make landfall between 8 pm and 11 pm on Monday after passing through the Gujarat coast. The IMD warned that the landfall will wreak havoc in the region with “high-speed winds, severe storm surge and torrential downpour.”

    The Cyclone Tauktae was named by Myanmar, translates to gecko – a highly vocal lizard, in the Burmese language. The Cyclone has put everyone in the nation on high alert and the authorities have requested citizens to stay inside and stay safe as substantial rainfall is expected in most states in the country including Gujarat, Rajasthan, Delhi, Haryana and Uttarakhand until Thursday.

    (The above story first appeared on Morning Tidings on May 17, 2021 04:45 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website morningtidings.com).