[Futurism] "The idea of tying your real life to your virtual avatar has always fascinated me — you instantly raise the stakes to the maximum level and force people to fundamentally rethink how they interact with the virtual world and the players inside it," Luckey wrote in a blog post about the grim prototype. "Pumped up graphics might make a game look more real, but only the threat of serious consequences can make a game feel real to you and every other person in the game."
:
"If you die in the game," he wrote, paraphrasing an age-old trope, "you die in real life." Was going to use a Servicemaster biohazard .jpg, but, nah.
[NYPost] Facebook parent Meta laid off more than 11,000 employees on Wednesday in a companywide culling that was widely expected as Mark Zuckerberg’s firm struggles through a downturn.
The round of pink slips impacted roughly 13% of Meta’s overall workforce and constitute the most significant layoffs in the company’s history. Prior to the cuts, Meta had more than 87,000 employees globally.
Meta’s stock has plunged more than 70% this year as Zuckerberg pours billions into a troubled metaverse project despite sagging ad revenue and declines in its user base. Meta shares rose 5% in premarket trading after the layoffs were announced.
Zuckerberg apologized to employees regarding the layoffs in a companywide memo — and admitted that he had underestimated the extent to which Meta’s revenue would decline during the company’s recent slump.
The Meta boss also acknowledged the company has overspent on his watch, noting that he "made the decision to significantly increase our investments" while betting that the pandemic-era e-commerce boom would be a permanent trend.
"Unfortunately, this did not play out the way I expected," Zuckerberg said. "Not only has online commerce returned to prior trends, but the macroeconomic downturn, increased competition, and ads signal loss have caused our revenue to be much lower than I’d expected. I got this wrong, and I take responsibility for that."
The CEO said job cuts would impact employees across Meta’s "family of apps," which includes Instagram and WhatsApp, as well as the Reality Labs division responsible for building the metaverse. Meta’s recruiting team will be ’disproportionately affected" by the layoffs as the company pulls back on hiring.
Zuckerberg’s letter said company has decided to "remove access to most Meta systems" for impacted workers — a move he said was necessary due to "the amount of access to sensitive information."
Zuckerberg outlined additional cost-cutting moves, including cuts to "discretionary spending" and extending a companywide hiring freeze through the first quarter. Meta will require desk sharing for employees "who already spend most of their time outside the office," he added.
"I view layoffs as a last resort, so we decided to rein in other sources of cost before letting teammates go. Overall, this will add up to a meaningful cultural shift in how we operate," Zuckerberg added.
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/09/2022 09:37 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[9 views]
Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats
#1
Maybe they can share a macchiato with the Twitter layoffs.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
11/09/2022 12:54 Comments ||
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#2
Suckerpurge...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/09/2022 15:35 Comments ||
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#3
I bet the first culled will be they who insist on working from home.
(In my "department" loss of productivity is around 25%)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Control of Congress hung in the balance early Wednesday as Democrats showed surprising strength, defeating Republicans in a series of competitive races and defying expectations that high inflation and President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings would drag the party down.
In the most heartening news for Democrats, John Fetterman flipped a Republican-controlled Senate seat that is key to the party’s hopes of maintaining control of the chamber. It was too early to call critical Senate seats in Wisconsin, Nevada, Georgia and Arizona that could determine the majority. In the House, meanwhile, Democrats kept seats in districts from Virginia to Kansas to Rhode Island, while many districts in states like New York and California had not been called.
Democrats also were successful in governors’ races, winning in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — battlegrounds critical to Biden’s 2020 win over former President Donald Trump. But Republicans held on to governors’ mansions in Florida, Texas and Georgia, another battleground state Biden narrowly won two years ago.
With votes still being counted across the country, Republicans still had the opportunity to win control of Congress. But the results were uplifting for Democrats who were braced for sweeping losses, and raised questions about the size of Republicans’ governing majority if they win the House.
Rep. Kevin McCarthy, the Republican poised to be House speaker if the GOP takes control of the chamber, was optimistic the GOP would take control, telling supporters, "When you wake up tomorrow, we will be in the majority." Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said, "While many races remain too close to call, it is clear that House Democratic Members and candidates are strongly outperforming expectations across the country."
#1
Yesterday provided a strong endorsement of the Biden Administration and Democratic governance. Biden and his handlers will see it as such. Two years of galloping inflation, a failing economy, an open Southern border, escalating crime, free college tuition, and sky rocketing gas prices were not enough to remove the scales from voter's eyes.
This must surely be the governance the majority of Americans desire. How could it be read otherwise ?
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky urged the international community to “force Russia into real peace talks” — a change in tone since September when Kyiv seemed to close the door on negotiations
… a “change in tone.” At 6:50pm Eastern on America’s national Election Night.
I wonder what could possibly have caught the little man’s attention?
Posted by: Billy B ||
11/09/2022 9:10 Comments ||
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Gee, could it possibly be because the GOP dominated House will scrutinize where exactly the $5 billion in slush sent to Kyiv is actually going?
Go get ‘em, Jim Jordan.
(Hint: as a head start, check out the Pandora Papers to find the Caribbean offshore accounts of these thieves.)
Posted by: Billy B ||
11/09/2022 9:37 Comments ||
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#13
* $5B in US-funneled slush EVERY MONTH.
Here’s an overview of Zelensky et Cie’s corruption. His British Virgin Islands-registered money laundering vehicle is called “Maltex Multicapital Corporation.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rode to power on pledges to clean up the Eastern European country, but the Pandora Papers reveal he and his close circle were the beneficiaries of a network of shady Caribbean offshore companies, including some that owned expensive London property.
Key Findings
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his partners owned a network of offshore companies based in the British Virgin Islands, Cyprus, and Belize.
Zelensky’s current chief aide, Serhiy Shefir, as well as the head of the country’s Security Service, were part of the offshore network. Offshore companies were used by Shefir and another business partner to buy pricey London real estate.
Around the time of his 2019 election, Zelensky handed his shares in a key offshore company over to Shefir, but the two appear to have made an arrangement for Zelensky’s family to continue receiving money from the offshore entity.
Posted by: Billy B ||
11/09/2022 9:44 Comments ||
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#14
Generation Z has extremely high rates of mental sickness and extremely high usage of social media ganja.
#15
My takeaways: Deme bete noir MTG won in a walk, other dem bete noir Boebert may lose.
All the scraggly beard Twitter "conservatives" in the sidebar at Rantingly have the collective mental firepower of a soggy party popper. Woe betide the future of conservatism if they are not marginalized and tuned out.
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
11/09/2022 10:15 Comments ||
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#16
Fetterman won because of early voting and mail-in.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
11/09/2022 10:32 Comments ||
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#17
^ I hope they enjoy her
Posted by: Frank G ||
11/09/2022 10:33 Comments ||
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#18
I look at the $200M wasted spent by the dems on the Beto and Tank Adams campaigns as 'payback' to the media carrying the libs water.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
11/09/2022 10:36 Comments ||
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#19
^18 - the silver lining.
Posted by: Bobby ||
11/09/2022 10:48 Comments ||
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#20
Both parties, candidates and their affiliated political PACs spent $312,131,203 in Pennsylvania
… to elect a brain-damaged lifetime loser freak whose inane gibberish makes a homeless meth addict look like a model of lucidity.
#24
Between now and 2024 the real abuse of power by this administration can be expected. This election, whether honest or not, has set the apparent context of the American people not being that upset with the way things are when push comes to shove. This will embolden the people in charge behind the senile Puppet to keep him on a while longer and push even more socialism down our throats.
Make no mistake, the EFFBEYE will be hyper-actively looking for the beginnings of the "ugly ones" described above.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
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[NYPost] Facebook parent Meta laid off more than 11,000 employees on Wednesday in a companywide culling that was widely expected as Mark Zuckerberg’s firm struggles through a downturn.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Control of Congress hung in the balance early Wednesday as Democrats showed surprising strength, defeating Republicans in a series of competitive races and defying expectations that high inflation and President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings would drag the party down.
