Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger sent a note to all employees after their second-quarter 2024 earnings were published on Aug. 1, 2024. This note shared that the company wanted to save $10 billion in 2025 by laying off 15,000 people, which is 15% of the workforce.
“Beyond our costs, we need to change the way we operate”, Gelsinger said in his note. “There’s too much complexity, so we need to both automate and simplify processes. It takes too long for decisions to be made, so we need to eliminate bureaucracy. And there’s too much inefficiency in the system, so we need to expedite workflows”
According to CNBC, Intel’s shares plunged the most in 50 years on Friday, reaching a price not seen since 2013. The stock plummeted 26% to $21.48 at the close. It was the second worst day ever for the shares, behind only a 31% drop in July 1974, which was three years after Intel’s IPO. The company’s market cap is now below $100 billion.
Intel’s decision to outsource their next generation Lunar Lake processors also contributed to the loss. Usually, Intel produces their chips in their own foundry, while other companies like AMD design the chips and outsources the manufacturing, but their foundry business has been falling behind the latest technologies, so they had to outsource to stay relevant. Due to this outsourcing, the cost of Lunar Lake will be fairly high for Intel, and will likely impact Intel’s margins in the coming year. Intel’s next generation Panther Lake processors will be made internally by Intel using their 18A (1.8nm-class) process technology.
All of this happened right after their instability nightmare with 13th and 14th gen desktop CPUs. To summarize what happened, motherboard manufacturers were putting too much voltage through their processors, which caused them to degrade faster and crash unexpectedly. While this is partially the fault of the motherboard manufacturers, Intel also takes the blame because the do not provide clear guidelines on how much voltage should be supplies to the processor in the first place. However, we now know that there are some defects in these processors that are causing these issues. According to Intel, a faulty CPU microcode that raises the voltage too high is to blame for the instability issues.
To combat this, owners of Intel’s 13th and 14th Gen Core desktop processors are set to get an extra two years of warranty coverage. Intel on Thursday announced its extended warranty program for its Raptor Lake PC chips on Reddit, increasing the length of its CPU warranty from three to five years. This extended warranty will also cost Intel a significant amount of money in RMAs over the next few years.
On Tuesday, Microsoft services, including Outlook, Azure, and even Minecraft, were down for about 10 hours and caused thousands of users to report issues. This comes less than two weeks after the major global outage caused by a faulty update from the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.
“While the initial trigger event was a Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attack… initial investigations suggest that an error in the implementation of our defences amplified the impact of the attack rather than mitigating it,” said an update on the website of the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform.
DDoS attacks work by flooding a website or online service with internet traffic in an attempt to throw it offline, or otherwise make it inaccessible.
Similar to the CrowdStrike outage, this outage appears to have impacted other services that rely on Microsoft’s platforms, like Azure, their cloud computing platform behind many of its servers. It also listed its cloud systems Intune and Entra as among those impacted.
Microsoft said it had implemented a fix for the problem which “shows improvement”, and it would monitor the situation “to ensure full recovery”.
“We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience,” Microsoft said in a post on Twitter.
Back in June, AI music creation companies Suno and Udio were sued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), a group representing major record labels like Universal Music Group (UMG), Sony Music Entertainment, and Warner Records. Both lawsuits accuse the AI music companies of committing “copyright infringement involving unlicensed copying of sound recordings on a massive scale.” The RIAA is seeking damages of up to $150,000 for every work infringed.
Now, several weeks after the lawsuit, Suno and Udio have now accused the record labels of attempting to stifle competition within the music industry. The AI companies argue that training their AI models off of copyrighted materials in lawful under fair-use.
“Helping people generate new artistic expression is what copyright law is designed to encourage, not prohibit,” Udio wrote in its filing. “Under longstanding doctrine, what Udio has done — use existing sound recordings as data to mine and analyze for the purpose of identifying patterns in the sounds of various musical styles, all to enable people to make their own new creations — is a quintessential ‘fair use’ under copyright law.”
In a blog post accompanying its own filing, Suno said that major record labels had misconceptions about how its AI music tools work, likening its model training to “a kid learning to write new rock songs by listening religiously to rock music” as opposed to just copying and repeating copyrighted tracks. Suno also admitted to training its model on online music, noting that other AI providers like OpenAI, Google, and Apple also source their training data from the open internet.
We will see how this plays out in the coming months.
Senators Ron Wyden from Oregon and Edward Markey from Massachusetts want the Federal Trade Commision (FTC) to investigate how car companies collect data from their users and punish them if they violated the law. The two senators requested the FTC to look into auto manufactures data collection in a July 26 letter to FTC Chair Lina Khan.
Based on Mozzila’s report from 2023 on the privacy concerns with cars, Hyundai, GM, Honda, and other manufacturers outfit their vehicles with sensors that gather reams of telemetric data which is then sold on to third-party brokers. In April, a New York Times investigation into GM revealed how widespread the privacy violations are.
“GM failed to obtain informed consent from consumers before sharing their data, and used manipulative design techniques, known as dark patterns, to coerce consumers into enrolling in its Smart Driver program, according to information the company provided Senator Wyden’s office,” the letter said.
A dark pattern is when a company uses deceptive practices to trick you into agreeing to something you normally wouldn’t. A GM car prompts new drivers to enroll in its Smart Driver program by telling them they’ll get emails about safety reports or their car alarm going off. When they agree, they’re also agreeing to let GM sell their data.
But not enrolling in GM’s Smart Driver program won’t save you.
“GM also confirmed to Senator Wyden’s staff that it shared location data on all drivers who activated the internet connection for their GM car, even if they did not enroll in Smart Driver,” the letter said. “These disclosures of location data—to other, unnamed third parties — have been going on for years.”
Two of the big companies buying customer data are LexisNexis Risk Solutions and Verisk, data brokers that work with insurance companies. The data is a valuable resource for insurance companies that provide information about a driver’s habits on the road to adjust their premiums. Often, this leads to people paying more for insurance than they would if their car weren’t spying on them.
Wyden and Markey want the FTC to investigate Honda, Hyundai, and GM to get a grip on how bad this problem is.
“Given the high number of consumers impacted, and the outrageous manipulation of consumers using dark patterns, the FTC should also hold senior company officials responsible for their flagrant abuse of their customers’ privacy,” it said.
As reported by Reuters,
The U.S. Justice Department filed a lawsuit Friday against TikTok and parent company ByteDance for failing to protect children’s privacy on the social media app as the Biden administration continues its crackdown on the social media site.
The government said TikTok violated the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act that requires services aimed at children to obtain parental consent to collect personal information from users under age 13.
The suit, which was joined by the Federal Trade Commission, said it was aimed at putting an end “to TikTok’s unlawful massive-scale invasions of children’s privacy.”
Representative Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, said the suit “underscores the importance of divesting TikTok from Chinese Communist Party control. We simply cannot continue to allow our adversaries to harvest vast troves of Americans’ sensitive data.”
TikTok said Friday it disagrees “with these allegations, many of which relate to past events and practices that are factually inaccurate or have been addressed. We are proud of our efforts to protect children, and we will continue to update and improve the platform.”
The DOJ said TikTok knowingly permitted children to create regular TikTok accounts, and then create and share short-form videos and messages with adults and others on the regular TikTok platform. TikTok collected personal information from these children without obtaining consent from their parents.
