Business

Meta announces 5% cuts in preparation for ‘intense year’ — read the internal memo. Even after a great run the last two years, Meta is still laying off employees. That’s the nature of businesses and capitalism. They will do everything to maximize profits. What is interesting will be what happens after. Meta is not the only one that announced layoffs. Others recently did too. These redeployed individuals will enter the competition for good jobs and it will just make it harder for everyone to land one now. The uncertain time continues to persist. So hang on to your job while you can. It’s treasherous water out there.

Arm: The Silicon Blueprint. An important yet less known player in the AI race. If you are not familiar with Arm, this Business Breakdown episode will be helpful.

Google is making AI in Gmail and Docs free — but raising the price of Workspace. Companies like Google or Microsoft have the resources to push their AI features. Money, connections and product suites such as Workplace or Microsoft 365. OpenAI is synonymous with LLM and AI chatbot. But what about other startups or tools? How can they find the necessary distribution to get to the end users? It’s also interesting that Google’s AI features used to cost $20 per user per month, yet is now priced at $2. What does such a drop say about the demand for paid AI features?

CFPB study on Buy Now Pay Later. The agency released a study on BNPL usage and risks of default from BNPL users. I can tell you from experience that lenders are trying to incorporate into underwriting data on student loans and alternative loans such as BNPL. Data from the agency shows that BNPL users are more riskier and carry higher student loan balance. The problem for lenders is that BNPL providers do not report usage to the bureaus, so it’s hard for lenders to gain visibility into BNPL activities.

Judge partially halts Illinois law ending card fees for taxes, tips. It’s really baffling to me why bigger institutions are exempt from this new law while smallers ones are not yet. The bigger players have the resources to comply. Regardless, it’s really difficult to comply. Banks will have to parse out taxes and tips from the true amount of a transaction. They will have to rewrite the back-end system and likely rely on the networks.

The State of Video Gaming in 2025

Other Stuff I Find Interesting

25 Ways To Kill The Toxic Ego That Will Ruin Your Life. Some good nuggets if you want to improve your life and career. There are a few things in there that I didn’t do 10 years ago. I suffered from the ignorance and gradually learned.

This Twitter account shared how cinnamon is harvested. Very interesting

How engineers in the 13th century in Granada managed to build a self-sustaining water system up on a 200m mountain without a powered pump. It is incredible. My wife and I visited Alhambra, but we didn’t know about this marvelous engineering achievement. The way that the 12 lions could tell the time of day accurately is astonishing.

Is the World Becoming Uninsurable? As Trump takes office, I don’t see any progress towards climate change in the foreseeable future. Not that there was much progress under Biden, but it’s even less likely now. The insurance cost will only go up from here. People who look for a home need to take that into consideration.

An interactive map that shows who ruled what region in what period of time. It’s fascinating. Whoever did this, it must have taken a lot of time. I wish there were more information on my country, though.

Stats

RTP payment volume surged by 94% in 2024

“Payment card fraud losses worldwide reached $33.83 billion in 2023”

In 2024, bourbon had its steepest annual sales decline of the century, down by 4%