Amazon sees largest-ever drop in workforce

Amazon has reduced its direct workforce by nearly 1 lakh, the largest sequential drop in its history, primarily at its fulfillment centres and distribution network. https://ift.tt/axzgOAP

How Modi's government is increasingly skirting India's own internet rules to crack down on free speech and dissent on social media, under a "fake news" pretext (Mark Bergen/Bloomberg)

Mark Bergen / Bloomberg:
How Modi's government is increasingly skirting India's own internet rules to crack down on free speech and dissent on social media, under a “fake news” pretext  —  Sandeep Ravindranath, an Indian filmmaker, posted his latest work to YouTube in May. The video …

Why Indonesia has blocked Yahoo, Paypal and several gaming websites

Indonesia has blocked search engine website Yahoo, payments firm Paypal and several gaming websites due to failure to comply with licensing rules, an official said on Saturday, sparking a backlash in social media. https://ift.tt/K1GxeqW

Meta concerned about next quarter as it faces its first-ever revenue drop

Total revenue, which consists almost entirely of ad sales, fell 1% to $28.8 billion in the second quarter ended June 30, from $29.1 billion last year. The figure slightly missed Wall Street's projections of $28.9 billion, according to Refinitiv. https://ift.tt/IKyPTaq

Amazon sees resilient consumer demand as shares jump 13 percent

Amazon, like much of the retail industry, is facing a reckoning. Major rival Walmart Inc this week said it would make much less this year than it once expected. US consumer confidence has tumbled to a recent low, and some are sticking to lower-priced essentials to manage economic woes. https://ift.tt/zEo3MqK

Sources: a Chinese government PR division asked to open a stealth account on TikTok, targeting Western audiences; TikTok declined the "sensitive" request (Olivia Solon/Bloomberg)

Olivia Solon / Bloomberg:
Sources: a Chinese government PR division asked to open a stealth account on TikTok, targeting Western audiences; TikTok declined the “sensitive” request  —  A Chinese government entity responsible for public relations attempted to open a stealth account on TikTok targeting Western audiences …

Terminators in Call of Duty Vanguard and Warzone: 10 things to know

https://ift.tt/IUFjYMz

Sources: EU is considering creating a new directorate headed by two top antitrust officials, amid concerns EU competition watchdog may struggle to enforce DMA (Foo Yun Chee/Reuters)

Foo Yun Chee / Reuters:
Sources: EU is considering creating a new directorate headed by two top antitrust officials, amid concerns EU competition watchdog may struggle to enforce DMA  —  The European Commission is considering creating a new directorate that may be headed by two top antitrust officials to enforce tough …

Crypto platform Zipmex files for bankruptcy protection in Singapore

Singapore-based Zipmex resumed withdrawals last week, a day after suspending them on July 20, and said it was working to address its exposure of $53 million to crypto lenders Babel Finance and Celsius. https://ift.tt/Zq0jfe5

Snapchat to pay musicians up to $100K per month for top-performing songs

Popular social media platform Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, has announced a new creator fund that will award independent musicians up to $100,000 per month. https://ift.tt/Uy7jzIH

An interview with a Baidu robotaxi safety operator, who sits in the passenger seat and monitors how self-driving cars cope with Beijing's streets (Zeyi Yang/MIT Technology Review)

Zeyi Yang / MIT Technology Review:
An interview with a Baidu robotaxi safety operator, who sits in the passenger seat and monitors how self-driving cars cope with Beijing's streets  —  We spoke to Liu Yang, who has one of the strangest jobs around: to sit in the passenger seat and monitor how self-driving cars cope with Beijing's streets.

Worldwide Mobile Pricing 2022 survey of mobile data prices: five of the world's 10 most expensive places are in sub-Saharan Africa; Israel is the cheapest (Annie Njanja/TechCrunch)

Annie Njanja / TechCrunch:
Worldwide Mobile Pricing 2022 survey of mobile data prices: five of the world's 10 most expensive places are in sub-Saharan Africa; Israel is the cheapest  —  A new report detailing the cost of mobile data in different markets across the world, bears the evidence of why internet use …

Sources: Jack Ma plans to relinquish control of Alibaba's Ant Group, potentially pushing back Ant's IPO for a year or more; regulators approve of the change (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street Journal:
Sources: Jack Ma plans to relinquish control of Alibaba's Ant Group, potentially pushing back Ant's IPO for a year or more; regulators approve of the change  —  The shift, long under consideration to reduce governance risks, comes as the Chinese fintech giant seeks to move on from a tough year

Gmail’s new unified design is now rolling out to everyone

Google is now rolling out the new redesigned user interface based on Material Design 3 to everyone. The newly redesigned look comes along with the best features of Google Workspace. Now you will have Meet, Chat and Spaced together in the new fresh looking Gmail. https://ift.tt/w1Fy6Pp

An interview with Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma on the company's $1B annual revenue goal, post-IPO stock price crash, giving investors more info, and more (Saritha Rai/Bloomberg)

Saritha Rai / Bloomberg:
An interview with Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma on the company's $1B annual revenue goal, post-IPO stock price crash, giving investors more info, and more  —  Paytm was the poster boy for India's tech startups, only to lose two-thirds of its value since its IPO and become a symbol of the industry's crash.