Archives January 2024

In a rather substantial blow, Elon Musk‘s record-breaking $56 billion compensation package from Tesla was struck down today by a Delaware judge. The ruling upholds a shareholder‘s challenge, declaring the package unfair and exceeding the bounds of corporate governance.
The 2018 package, tied to ambitious performance goals, awarded Musk stock options contingent on Tesla achieving significant market capitalisation and financial milestones.While Tesla soared under Musk’s leadership, reaching a $1 trillion valuation at one point, the judge ruled that the package lacked proper oversight and safeguards against excessive executive pay.
Judge Kathaleen McCormick found that the Tesla board, heavily influenced by Musk, “failed to engage in a meaningful or objective analysis of the compensation package,” falling short of their fiduciary duty to protect shareholders’ interests. She pointed to the lack of independent compensation consultants, insufficient board negotiations, and the package’s potential to grant Musk billions even if Tesla missed some targets.
According to the ruling, McCormick said, “The defendants proved that Musk was uniquely motivated by ambitious goals and that Tesla desperately needed Musk to succeed in its next stage of development, but these facts do not justify the largest compensation plan in the history of public markets.”
Musk’s lawyers are expected to appeal the decision, arguing that the package was fair and played a crucial role in Tesla’s meteoric rise. They are likely to point out that Musk received no salary or bonuses from Tesla, and that his compensation was solely tied to achieving ambitious performance targets.

What Musk has to say on the decision

Post the ruling, Musk took to X and made a short comment. “Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware,” he said in the post. “I recommend incorporating in Nevada or Texas if you prefer shareholders to decide matters,” he said in another post. He also started a poll asking users “should Tesla change its state of incorporation to Texas, home of its physical headquarters?”

Block, a fintech corporation headed by Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey that has several subsidiaries including Square, Cash App, and Afterpay, is laying off employees in “large numbers”. According to an internal memo from CEO Jack Dorsey obtained by Business Insider, the company’s growth has outpaced its business and revenue growth, necessitating the need for job cuts.
The company laid off around 1,000 employees, affecting Cash App, Foundational, and Square divisions, which account for 10% of its workforce. Previously, the company cut 40 roles in its music streaming platform, Tidal.
The executives decided not to do it separately but instead preferred to take the action at once. Dorsey in his memo acknowledges this and writes that the teams were confident with their direction and the company was ready to take the decision. “Why is so much happening in one single day? All of these teams were confident in the direction they’re taking, and were ready to take action within the next 2-3 weeks,” Dorsey wrote in his memo.
Last year, Block announced plans to decrease its headcount to 12,000 workers from 13,000 by late 2023.
“We decided it would be better to do at once rather than arbitrarily space them out, which didn’t seem fair to the individuals or to the company,” wrote Dorsey in the note to employees. “When we know we need to take an action, we want to take it immediately, rather than let things linger on forever.”
Block had a challenging year as its revenue from Cash App, Afterpay, and Bitcoin declined. Its subsidiary, Square, also faced tough competition. To address these challenges, Block introduced generative AI to Square, acquired Hifi, a fintech startup, focused on music, and launched Bitkey, a self-custody Bitcoin wallet. Despite these challenges, Block reported $5.62 billion in revenue in Q3 of 2023, with $44 million in profit from Bitcoin holdings.
Paypal is also cutting down the staff to keep the costs low. In a letter to the staff, CEO Alex Chriss said that the company’s decision will affect around 2,500 employees, who will be notified about their fate between today and the end of the week.

One of the big reasons which companies give while laying off employees is: cost-cutting. Yet, it ends up costing quite a bit of money for them — at least in the short-term. Just ask Google — not the search but the company. According to the latest quarterly results posted by Alphabet, Google spent billions of dollars on employee layoffs. The numbers, released its quarterly earnings report today, revealing a substantial $2.1 billion charge for employee severance and related costs incurred during the company’s mass layoffs in early 2023. And that figure is just for 2023.
Google, which announced its cutting at least another 1,000 jobs in the first month of 2024, has already spent $700 million on layoffs.
The first round of layoffs, announced in January 2023, saw Google shed approximately 12,000 employees, representing roughly 6% of its global workforce. The move, attributed to economic uncertainty and a need to streamline operations, sent shockwaves through the tech industry, sparking concerns about a broader tech sector slowdown
The latest earnings report confirms the significant financial impact of the layoffs. The $2.1 billion charge represents a substantial cost, equivalent to nearly 7% of the company’s net income for the past year. While analysts had anticipated severance costs, the actual figure exceeded predictions, highlighting the human cost of restructuring efforts.
Google’s revenues keep growing
Despite the financial burden of the layoffs, Google’s revenue continued to grow, albeit at a slightly slower pace. Q4 revenue reached $86.3 billion, a 13% year-over-year increase, and full-year revenue for 2023 topped $307.4 billion. However, the growth fell short of analyst expectations, further underscoring the challenges the company faces in the current economic climate.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai has already hinted that layoffs will remain the order of the day in 2024. Pichai has said that it won’t reach the levels of 2023 but a lot of teams will be affected as Google continues to streamline its operations.

Amidst the sea of emails vying for your attention, some messages stand out as particularly important or require immediate action. Gmail, Google’s popular email platform, provides a simple yet effective solution for this challenge: the “Star” feature. By strategically marking certain emails with a star, you can create a personalised system for prioritising and organising your messages.
Starring important emails in Gmail is a great way to quickly and easily keep track of them later. Here are the steps on how to do it:
On your computer:

On your Android device:

On your iPhone or iPad:

Important tips to keep in mind:

Amazon has said that it reached an important delivery speed milestone in 2023: the company made deliveries to Prime members at the fastest speeds ever globally, with more than 7 billion units arriving the same or next day. These deliveries include more than 4 billion in the US and more than 2 billion in Europe.
“We achieved our fastest-ever global shipping speeds last year by focusing on a few key initiatives—shortening the distance our deliveries had to travel to reach customers, improving our inventory placement, and building out our Same-Day Delivery service,” said Doug Herrington, CEO of Worldwide Amazon Stores.
How Amazon achieved this milestone
Amazon said that it regionalised its operations and transportation networks, dividing them into smaller, easier-to-serve regions in the US. In Europe, the company shortened the average distance each package travelled by as much as 25 kilometres in 2023 compared to 2022.
Amazon wants to delivery faster in 2024
Amazon said that after reaching our fastest delivery speeds ever in 2023, it is working to make deliveries even faster in 2024.
“We’re continuing to reimagine our operations network, harnessing the power of AI to place even more items in just the right places to anticipate and meet customer demand. We also plan to further expand our Same-Day Delivery service to reach more customers,” the company said..
What Amazon CEO has to say
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that he was proud that the company “delivered for Prime members at our fastest speeds ever in the history” of Amazon.

“Customers care a lot about getting their orders delivered quickly. It’s why we spend as much energy and time across the company to make this so. Am proud to share in 2023 that we delivered for Prime members at our fastest speeds ever in the history of the company—that includes more than 7 billion items arriving [the] same day or next around the world,” he said in a post on X.
“And in 2024, we’re working to make deliveries even faster by shortening the travel distance for each package, and expanding Same-Day sites and our delivery network to reach even more customers across the world. Very excited for what’s ahead!” he added.

Apple’s start of 2024 wasn’t a great one. Among various other factors, one of the reasons that impacted the company’s market cap was the 30% reported drop in sales of iPhones in China. While the Cupertino-based tech giant quickly got ‘good news’, beating Samsung to become world’s number one smartphone maker in 2023, an analyst has painted a gloomy picture for iPhone shipments in 2024.
According to analyst Ming Chi-Kuo, iPhone shipments in 2024 are “likely to decline significantly by about 15% year-over-year (YoY) due to structural challenges”.
“Apple has lowered its 2024 iPhone shipments of key upstream semiconductor components to about 200 million units (down 15% YoY). Apple may have the most significant decline among the major global mobile phone brands in 2024,” he said, citing his latest supply chain survey.
He noted that iPhone 15 series “will decline by 10–15% YoY in 1H24” and the new iPhone 16 series (which is expected to launch in September this year) may witness a similar decline in 2H24. These numbers are compared to iPhone 14 series shipments in 1H23 and iPhone 15 series shipments in 2H23, respectively.
Why iPhone shipments may decline in 2024
Kuo claims that the iPhone faces structural challenges, which will lead to a significant decline in shipments in 2024. These challenges include “the emergence of a new paradigm in high-end mobile phone design and the continued decline in shipments in the Chinese market.”
Notably, Apple’s sales were reported to have declined in the first week of 2024 with local brands like Huawei and Xiaomi cropping up. As per Kuo, it is due to this reason that the trend of Apple’s weekly shipments decline is expected to continue.
This sentiment was shared by Barclays, which published a research note suggesting “weakness on iPhone volumes and mix.”
“The new high-end mobile phone design paradigm includes AI (GenAI) and foldable phones. The main reason for the decline in the Chinese market is the return of Huawei and the increasing preference for foldable phones among high-end users as their first choice for phone replacement,” he said in his research note.
Samsung to benefit with AI features
Kuo noted that Samsung, whom Apple beat to become the leader in the market in terms of smartphone shipments, is going to benefit from the higher-than-expected demand due to the integration of GenAI functions. He highlighted that Samsung has revised up the shipments of the Galaxy S24 series in 2024 by 5–10% “while Apple has revised down the shipment forecast of iPhone 15 in 1H24.”
He further noted that Apple is not expected to launch new iPhone models with significant design changes, and the GenAI ecosystem/ applications will not arrive until 2025 at the earliest. Apple’s iPhone shipment momentum and ecosystem growth is likely to be until then.

Google introduced the Car Crash Detection feature with Pixel 3 in 2019. Later on, Apple introduced a similar version of this feature with its iPhone 14 series in 2022. Now, more smartphone brands are reportedly planning to bring this feature to their devices. According to Android tipster Mishaal Rahmann, Samsung is also working on its own version of the Car Crash Detection feature and may bring to some of its high-end smartphones.

Samsung Car Crash Detection: What to expect

In a post shared on social media platform X (spotted by Sammobile), Rahmann revealed that Samsung’s version of the Car Crash Detection feature may arrive for a handful of the company’s flagship devices. This includes the newly-launched Galaxy S24 series and its latest foldables like the Galaxy Z Fold 5.

Since the Android 14-based OneUI 6.1 doesn’t include the feature, it may arrive with the One UI 7 update which is expected to release later this year, the report notes.

What is Car Crash Detection and how it works

The Car Crash Detection feature uses your smartphone’s accelerometer, gyroscope and microphone to get audio and movement data. This data is then used to determine whether you’ve been involved in an accident.

In such cases, the smartphone will show you an option to call emergency services or to confirm whether you’re okay when this feature is enabled. If you don’t click anything on the screen for a few minutes, the smartphone will automatically call emergency services and send them your current location.

On Google’s Pixel smartphones, the feature also offers the option to silently share your current location with the fire and medical emergency services as well as the police once Car Crash Detection comes into play.
The report didn’t mention if Samsung’s version of the feature will include this option. However, the company is expected to offer the feature with options that are on par with its competitors, Apple and Google.
The Times of India Gadgets Now awards: Cast your vote now and pick the best phones, laptops and other gadgets of 2023

If you have a car equipped with a FASTag and maintain a sufficient balance, it is advisable to verify the status of your KYC (Know Your Customer). NHAI has announced that FASTags with incomplete KYC will be deactivated by banks on January 31. NHAI emphasises the importance of completing KYC for FASTags in compliance with RBI guidelines.
The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) has introduced the “One Vehicle, One FASTag” initiative aimed at optimising and improving toll collection efficiency.This NHAI program aims to discourage the use of a single FASTag for multiple vehicles or the use of multiple FASTags for a single vehicle.
How to update FASTag KYC
If you have still not updated the FASTag KYC, tomorrow(January 31) is the last day to do so. Follow the below mentioned steps to complete the process:

Documents required for KYC:

According to a new report, AMD may be working on a graphics card that offers the same performance as the Nvidia RTX 4080 but at only half the price. This isn’t the first time these rumors cropped up either, with a report back in 2023 about the manufacturer focusing on the mid-range market.

The latest report asserts that the mid-range options of the AMD Radeon 8000 series will allegedly cost between $400-600 (around £315-£472 / AU$606-AU$910), according to PCGamesN. This is a huge price cut on its own but becomes a downright steal when compared to the MSRP of the RTX 4080. And in a graphics card generation that’s already suffering from a severe lack of affordable options, the possibility of AMD pushing out a card so powerful and budget-friendly is an excellent way to appease a significant market while standing out from its competition.

Developer Rebel Wolves has confirmed that it plans to make significant changes to its remake of The Witcher.

The remake of the 2007 title – initially codenamed Canis Majoris – was announced back in 2022 and will be helmed by a crew of CD Projekt Red veterans including CEO Jakub Robosz, who said in a recent interview with Edge (via GamesRadar) that a multitude of elements of the classic role-playing game need to be addressed for the remake to work.