Punjab Times

Boeing to lay off 17,000 employees to ‘stay competitive’

In a message to employees, Boeing President and CEO Kelly Ortberg has announced that the company is reducing the size of its total workforce by 10 percent. That means Boeing is cutting roughly 17,000 jobs, including executives and managers, over the coming months. Ortberg, who only took the helm back in August, explained that the company has to “make structural changes” to ensure it can “stay competitive” and deliver for its customers over the long term. 

Ortberg announced the upcoming layoffs in the midst of a machinist strike that had shut down production in most of Boeing’s plants, including the ones manufacturing its best-selling plane, the 737 Max. Around 33,000 union machinists are involved in the strike, which has been going on since mid-September. As AP explains, that’s had a big impact on Boeing’s pockets, since it gets paid for half of what a plane costs after it delivers a customer’s order. 

In addition to the layoffs, Ortberg announced that Boeing will delay the development of its 777X planes due to the challenges it has faced in development, along with the ongoing work stoppage. It now plans to deliver the new wide-body planes in 2026 instead of 2025. 

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Leak: AMD’s Ryzen 9000X3D chips aren’t looking like a leap forward

The Ryzen 9 9950X CPU
Image: AMD

Somebody goofed — and now AMD’s unannounced Ryzen 9000X3D desktop processors have been partially revealed. But like Intel’s new Arrow Lake desktop CPUs, it doesn’t look like they’ll be a huge performance improvement on their predecessors. If so, that’s a shame given how poorly received AMD’s Ryzen 9000 was, to begin with.

According to slides from an MSI presentation published by HardwareLuxx today (via VideoCardz), the new chips may have respectable multicore performance gen-over-gen, with an eight-core 9000X3D outperforming a Ryzen 7 7900X3D by up to 28 percent in Cinebench R23. But they can offer as little as 2 percent gains in Black Myth: Wukong and Shadow of the Tomb Raider, according to MSI’s preliminary testing.

And against the…

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Boeing is cutting 10 percent of its workforce

Alaska Airlines At Los Angeles International Airport
Photo by Kevin Carter / Getty Images

Boeing will be laying off “roughly” 10 percent of its workforce, president and CEO Kelly Ortberg announced in an email to staff on Friday. That number equates to 17,000 jobs, Reuters reports.

The layoffs will take place “over the coming months” and will include “executives, managers and employees,” Ortberg says. Leadership teams plan to share more information about how the layoffs will affect specific organizations in the company next week.

The announcement of layoffs follows what’s been an extremely difficult year for the company. In January, Boeing 737 Max planes were grounded after a hole blew in one mid-flight. In July, the company accepted a guilty plea deal over 737 Max crashes that happened in 2018 and 2019 and killed more than…

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Google pulled its Wear OS update for old Pixel Watches to fix a big problem

Pixel Watch 2 on a nightstand
Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Google is working on a fix for a buggy Wear OS 5 update. The company says it paused the OTA update rollout on September 26th after people, including my colleague Richard Lawler, reported their Pixel Watch 1 and 2 devices were stuck on a blank screen due to the update.

Google plans to resume the Wear OS 5 rollout for older Pixel Watches “later this year,” as previously reported by Droid Life.

If the update bricked your watch, there are ways to get it working again. Google’s support site has a bunch of general troubleshooting steps for getting out of a frozen watch, as well as instructions on how to factory reset from Fastboot if you can’t get to the usual settings.

If your Pixel Watch is healthy and working, Google also just rolled out a…

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Researchers identify signs tied to more severe cases of RSV

Clinician-scientists analyzed samples from patients’ airways and blood, finding distinct changes in children with severe cases of RSV, including an increase in the number of natural killer (NK) cells in their airways. The descriptive study, which focuses on understanding the underpinnings of severe disease, may help to lay groundwork for identifying new targets for future treatments. …read more

Casio made a furry robot designed to cuddle and calm you down

A person pets the top of Casio’s Moflin robotic pet.
Unlike Sony’s robotic dog, Aibo, Casio’s Moflin can’t run away on its own. | Image: Casio

Casio has opened preorders for its robotic pet called Moflin that looks like a cross between a hamster and Star Trek’s Tribbles. Unlike Sony’s robot dog Aibo that can follow you around, Moflin is designed to be held and cuddled, and over time, Casio says it will learn who you are and attempt to develop a simulated bond expressed through unique sounds and movements.

Originally developed through a collaboration with a Japanese startup called Vanguard Industries, Moflin is now being manufactured and distributed by Casio. It can be preordered for ¥59,400 (around $398 USD) and is expected to be available starting on November 7th. Casio is also offering an optional subscription service called Club Moflin for ¥6,600 (about $44 USD) per year,…

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