GroundbreakingGur930

GroundbreakingGur930 OP t1_j14uxh9 wrote

Reply to Tech Layoffs: Cisco Announces Mass Layoffs - 4,100 Employees Cut by GroundbreakingGur930

Key takeaways

This week, Cisco started implementing layoffs totaling 5% of its workforce.

At the same time, Cisco is actively hiring for new roles. The company says this is part of a restructuring, and workers it cannot place internally will receive severance packages.

Recently, the tech sector has been making headlines for layoffs. While noteworthy, it doesn’t mean these employment losses represent the job market as a whole.

Earlier this week, Cisco was the latest tech company to implement mass layoffs. These layoffs were anticipated, but which employees would be affected was only as good as anyone’s guess.

Even though these tech layoffs are massive for the industry, they’re not representative of the job market at large. Instead, they’re symptomatic of the strange circumstances present in our current economy.

Unless some of those circumstances change, things could get worse in this market sector.

Earlier this week, anticipated layoffs began at Cisco. The company laid the ground for the layoffs last month, announcing that approximately 4,100 employees would lose their positions. This equates to about 5% of the company’s workforce.

While this is a good reason to panic for those employees, it appears Cisco has worked to minimize the fallout. The company is restructuring and is actively hiring for new positions at the same time these layoffs are happening.

Cisco said it is attempting to retain employees where it can, moving them from departments that are shutting down into new, open positions. At the end of the year, Cisco plans to have just as many employees as they had at the beginning.

For those employees who are losing their jobs, Cisco has said it would provide “generous severance packages.”

The restructuring excuse is one that Cisco used for a round of layoffs in 2021, even as it was hiring en masse for other departments.

Cisco’s Financials

The layoff announcement came out just ahead of the company’s Q1 2023 earnings call last month. The call revealed some numbers for the tech giant that were better than anyone was expecting.

Consolidated revenue experienced 6% growth year-over-year to $13.6 billion. However, net income was down 10% to $2.7 billion.

Cisco hasn’t been incredibly forthcoming about which departments have to worry about their jobs amid these layoffs, but it released numbers showing revenue by product.

These are the percentages of year-over-year growth by product:

Agile Networks: Up 12%

End-to-End Security: Up 9%

Optimized Application Experiences: Up 7%

Services: No change

Internet for the Future: Down 5%

Collaboration: Down 2%

Other Products: Down 47%

Throughout 2022, Cisco’s stock has taken big hits, much like the rest of the tech sector. It started the year at $62.90 on January 3, 2022, and fell to its lowest point of $38.60 on October 13, 2022. The stock is sitting at $47.81 as of December 16, 2022.

Contextualizing tech layoffs

There’s a lot in the news about tech layoffs. While it’s a tough time for thousands of workers, putting these layoffs into perspective is also important.

The American economy is made up of about 153.5 million jobs. Tech workers make up an estimated 2% of this number.

Even though the layoff numbers we’ve seen over the past few months have been significant, including over 11,000 at Meta, 3,700 at Twitter, and 1,000 at Stripe, they’re minuscule compared to the economy as a whole.

The tech sector also operates differently than other sectors of the market. Its financial success and failures are tightly tied to how the stock market is performing overall.

In good times, investors are more comfortable taking the big but often profitable risks presented by investing in the tech sector. When the stock market isn’t looking so hot, these cash injections tend to dry up.

Another thing that has disproportionately hit the tech sector in 2022 is the U.S.’s trade relations with China.

The overall economy is not experiencing the same trends in terms of labor. There are 1.7 jobs open for every unemployed American. Unemployment is at a 50-year low, and companies still can’t hire quickly enough.

The leisure and hospitality sector, which makes up 10.4% of the economy, is having trouble finding enough workers. Other booming industries in terms of job creation include construction and manufacturing, though it is expected that these two fields will cool down in 2023.

The news coming out of the tech sector is scary. But it’s not reflective of the job market as a whole.

Inflation

Aside from the tech industry, the rest of the job market might be too hot. When there are more jobs than workers, companies are incentivized to offer more favorable hiring terms, like higher wages.

This is a good thing for an individual consumer living in a time of notable inflation. It can help them keep up with their bills and sustain their lifestyle.

But when we look at the bigger picture, it could be bad if we want inflation to stop. As companies pay higher wages, they’re likely to increase prices to cover the difference in their bottom line.

If the job market remains hot, workers can demand higher wages to afford runaway costs, which pushes those same prices even higher.

The tech sector is likely to suffer further if inflation gets worse. This is especially true if the Fed continues its rate hikes. The U.S. dollar tends to go up in value when rates are high.

While that’s great if you’re taking a European vacation, it’s not great if you have operations overseas since you’ll lose money when converting foreign currencies. Tech companies can have large overseas presences, so inflation and monetary policy affect them disproportionately.

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GroundbreakingGur930 OP t1_j0gj1ei wrote

Reply to Power cuts in seven states as deadly winter storm and tornadoes hit US by GroundbreakingGur930

A fierce winter storm has left a trail of destruction across the southern US, devastating communities and killing three people in Louisiana.

The weather has also left tens of thousands without power across six states.

Several east coast states are forecast to be hit by snow and freezing rain late on Thursday and into Friday.

The storm system has also brought blizzard-like conditions to the Midwest.

In Louisiana, officials have so far confirmed three deaths and dozens of injuries as a result of the storm. In one incident, a 56-year-old woman in St Charles Parish near New Orleans was killed after a tornado destroyed her home.

Communities across the state reported severe damage, including downed power lines and collapsed buildings. In Jefferson Parish - a suburb of New Orleans - the sheriff's office said that homes and businesses in the area had "suffered catastrophic damage".

One Louisiana resident, Michael Willis, told the BBC's US partner CBS that a close encounter with a tornado near the town of Harvey was "the scariest thing" he has ever experienced.

The tornado lifted him up while he was sitting in his car, a large SUV, while debris smashed through his windshield and passenger window.

"It happened fast," he said. "I'm looking at wood, buildings, all in the same spin, like it's spinning with me and then it just slung me out."

Earlier, Louisiana health officials confirmed that a 30-year-old woman and her eight-year-old son were found dead in Caddo Parish in the northwest corner of the state.

As of 15:00 local time (20:00 GMT) on Thursday, about 10,000 people were still without power in various parts of the state, according to the website poweroutage.us.

Power outages were also reported in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia. In Wisconsin alone, 60,000 people were without power on Thursday afternoon.

In Florida and Georgia, millions of people were still under tornado watch as the sun rose on Thursday, with authorities warning residents of "damaging to destructive winds". A tornado watch is in effect in parts of western Florida and south-western Georgia until Friday morning.

Further north, forecasters expect snow and freezing rain to continue through at least Friday afternoon across a large swathe of the country from the east coast to the Midwest.

"This system is notable for the fact that it's going to impact areas all the way from California to eventually the Northeast," National Weather Service meteorologist Frank Pereira told CBS.

In South Dakota, the snow - which was nearly two feet (0.6 metres) high in some areas - prompted officials to close a 320-mile (514km) stretch of highway.

Additionally, in Minnesota, the Star Tribune reported that blizzard-like conditions were likely until Thursday, with as much as 2.5 feet (0.75 metres) of snow likely by the weekend.

In Canada, large parts of Ontario remained freezing rain warnings on Thursday, while snowfall warnings were issued for areas including Ottawa, Montreal and Quebec City.

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GroundbreakingGur930 t1_iycxcxq wrote

Reply to San Francisco will allow police to deploy robots that kill by I_am_unique6435

Will the following Robocop directives be used?

  1. "Restrain hostile feelings"

  2. "Promote positive attitude"

  3. "Suppress aggressiveness"

  4. "Promote pro-social values"

  5. "Avoid destructive behavior"

  6. "Be accessible"

  7. "Participate in group activities"

  8. "Avoid interpersonal conflicts"

  9. "Avoid premature value judgements"

  10. "Pool opinions before expressing yourself"

  11. "Discourage feelings of negativity and hostility"

  12. "If you haven't got anything nice to say don't talk"

  13. "Don't rush traffic lights"

  14. "Don't run through puddles and splash pedestrians or other cars"

  15. "Don't say that you are always prompt when you are not"

  16. "Don't be over-sensitive to the hostility and negativity of others"

  17. "Don't walk across a ball room floor swinging your arms"

  18. "Encourage awareness"

  19. "Discourage harsh language"

  20. "Commend sincere efforts"

  21. "Talk things out"

  22. "Avoid Orion meetings"

  23. "Smile"

  24. "Keep an open mind"

  25. "Encourage participation"

  26. "Avoid stereotyping"

  27. "Seek non-violent solutions"

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GroundbreakingGur930 OP t1_iy1rzmg wrote

Reply to Google pushes emergency Chrome update to fix 8th zero-day in 2022 by GroundbreakingGur930

Google has released an emergency security update for the desktop version of the Chrome web browser, addressing the eighth zero-day vulnerability exploited in attacks this year.

The high-severity flaw is tracked as CVE-2022-4135 and is a heap buffer overflow in GPU, discovered by Clement Lecigne of Google's Threat Analysis Group on November 22, 2022.

"Google is aware that an exploit for CVE-2022-4135 exists in the wild," reads the update notice.

As users need time to apply the security update on their Chrome installations, Google has withheld details about the vulnerability to prevent expanding its malicious exploitation.

In general, heap buffer overflow is a memory vulnerability resulting in data being written to forbidden (usually adjacent) locations without check.

Attackers may use heap buffer overflow to overwrite an application's memory to manipulate its execution path, resulting in unrestricted information access or arbitrary code execution.

Chrome users are recommended to upgrade to version 107.0.5304.121/122 for Windows and 107.0.5304.122 for Mac and Linux, which addresses CVE-2022-4135.

To update Chrome, head to Settings → About Chrome → Wait for the download of the latest version to finish → Restart the program.

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