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Intuit is reportedly cutting about 3,000 jobs, or 17% of its workforce, as it restructures around AI and simplifies its corporate organization. TechCrunch reports: The layoffs come during a bad year for the tech workforce. The tech industry has already cut more than 100,000 jobs this year, per Statista, and is on track to outpace both 2024 and 2025 if the layoff trend continues. Companies such as Amazon, Block, Cisco, Cloudflare, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle have let go of thousands of employees each, all of them citing a need to refocus expenditures around AI projects as a reason to cut jobs and restructure their organizations. [...]
Intuit, however, hasn't been perceived as a beneficiary of the AI boom, with its shares consistently underperforming in the broader S&P 500 over the past 12 months. The company has been caught up in the broader current of worries that traditional software-as-a-service firms will not be able to keep up or compete, as new and upcoming AI products and services threaten to change how software is developed and how it is used. In its fiscal second quarter ended January, Intuit reported revenue of $4.65 billion, a 17% increase, and net profit of $693 million, a 48% improvement compared to a year earlier. The company expects revenue to increase by about 10% in the third quarter, for which it will report results later today.
Intuit, however, hasn't been perceived as a beneficiary of the AI boom, with its shares consistently underperforming in the broader S&P 500 over the past 12 months. The company has been caught up in the broader current of worries that traditional software-as-a-service firms will not be able to keep up or compete, as new and upcoming AI products and services threaten to change how software is developed and how it is used. In its fiscal second quarter ended January, Intuit reported revenue of $4.65 billion, a 17% increase, and net profit of $693 million, a 48% improvement compared to a year earlier. The company expects revenue to increase by about 10% in the third quarter, for which it will report results later today.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Google on Wednesday published exploit code for an unfixed vulnerability in its Chromium browser codebase that threatens millions of people using Chrome, Microsoft Edge, and virtually all other Chromium-based browsers. The proof-of-concept code exploits the Browser Fetch programming interface, a standard that allows long videos and other large files to be downloaded in the background. An attacker can use the exploit to create a connection for monitoring some aspects of a user's browser usage and as a proxy for viewing sites and launching denial-of-service attacks. Depending on the browser, the connections either reopen or remain open even after it or the device running it has rebooted.
The unfixed vulnerability can be exploited by any website a user visits. In effect, a compromise amounts to a limited backdoor that makes a device part of a limited botnet. The capabilities are limited to the same things a browser can do, such as visit malicious sites, provide anonymous proxy browsing by others, enable proxied DDoS attacks, and monitor user activity. Nonetheless, the exploit could allow an attacker to wrangle thousands, possibly millions, of devices into a network. Once a separate vulnerability becomes available, the attacker could use it to then compromise all those devices.
"The dangerous part here is that you can just have a lot of different browsers together that you can in the future run something on that you figure out," said Lyra Rebane, the independent researcher who discovered the vulnerability and privately reported it to Google in late 2022 in an interview. He said using the exploit code Google prematurely published would be "pretty easy," although scaling it to wrangle large numbers of devices into a single network would require more work. In the thread of Rebane's disclosure to Google, two developers said in separate responses that it was a "serious vulnerability." Its severity was rated S1, the second-highest classification.
Since its reporting 29 months ago, the vulnerability remained unknown except to Chromium developers. Then on Wednesday morning, it was published to the Chromium bug tracker. Rebane initially assumed the vulnerability was finally fixed. Shortly thereafter, he learned that, in fact, it remained unpatched. While Google removed the post, it remains available on archival sites, along with the exploit code. Google representatives didn't immediately respond to an email asking how and why it published the vulnerability and if or when a fix would become available. The exploit works by abusing Chromium's Browser Fetch API to open a service worker that remains persistently active. A malicious website can trigger it through JavaScript, creating a connection that can be used "for monitoring some aspects of a user's browser usage and as a proxy for viewing sites and launching denial-of-service attacks," reports Ars.
Depending on the browser, those connections "either reopen or remain open even after it or the device running it has rebooted," effectively turning the device into part of a "limited botnet."
The unfixed vulnerability can be exploited by any website a user visits. In effect, a compromise amounts to a limited backdoor that makes a device part of a limited botnet. The capabilities are limited to the same things a browser can do, such as visit malicious sites, provide anonymous proxy browsing by others, enable proxied DDoS attacks, and monitor user activity. Nonetheless, the exploit could allow an attacker to wrangle thousands, possibly millions, of devices into a network. Once a separate vulnerability becomes available, the attacker could use it to then compromise all those devices.
"The dangerous part here is that you can just have a lot of different browsers together that you can in the future run something on that you figure out," said Lyra Rebane, the independent researcher who discovered the vulnerability and privately reported it to Google in late 2022 in an interview. He said using the exploit code Google prematurely published would be "pretty easy," although scaling it to wrangle large numbers of devices into a single network would require more work. In the thread of Rebane's disclosure to Google, two developers said in separate responses that it was a "serious vulnerability." Its severity was rated S1, the second-highest classification.
Since its reporting 29 months ago, the vulnerability remained unknown except to Chromium developers. Then on Wednesday morning, it was published to the Chromium bug tracker. Rebane initially assumed the vulnerability was finally fixed. Shortly thereafter, he learned that, in fact, it remained unpatched. While Google removed the post, it remains available on archival sites, along with the exploit code. Google representatives didn't immediately respond to an email asking how and why it published the vulnerability and if or when a fix would become available. The exploit works by abusing Chromium's Browser Fetch API to open a service worker that remains persistently active. A malicious website can trigger it through JavaScript, creating a connection that can be used "for monitoring some aspects of a user's browser usage and as a proxy for viewing sites and launching denial-of-service attacks," reports Ars.
Depending on the browser, those connections "either reopen or remain open even after it or the device running it has rebooted," effectively turning the device into part of a "limited botnet."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
iain.davidson100 has added a photo to the pool:
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Pre dawn fog drifting over the Sydney Opera House. Shot from Cammeraygal country.
WASHINGTON (ANP) - De Amerikaanse president Donald Trump en de Israëlische premier Benjamin Netanyahu zijn dinsdag tijdens een telefoongesprek met elkaar in aanvaring gekomen over de te volgen koers ten aanzien van Iran. Dat meldden de Amerikaanse media Axios en The Wall Street Journal op basis van anonieme bronnen.
Het meningsverschil draaide naar verluidt om een herzien voorstel dat gericht is op het beëindigen van het conflict met Iran. Qatar en Pakistan hadden, samen met andere partners, een geactualiseerd vredesvoorstel gepresenteerd dat bedoeld was om de verschillen tussen Washington en Teheran te overbruggen.
Volgens Axios stond Netanyahu na het telefoongesprek "in vuur en vlam". Trump zou na het gesprek hebben gezegd dat Netanyahu "alles zal doen wat ik van hem verlang".
Trump liet onlangs weten dat hij een nieuwe militaire aanval uitstelt, aangezien er serieuze onderhandelingen gaande waren. Hij omschreef de gesprekken als een positieve ontwikkeling. Netanyahu is daarentegen sceptisch over onderhandelingen en wil de oorlog volgens de berichten hervatten.
Kyiv learns of five scenarios Russia has drawn up and will increase forces in the north, says Zelenskyy; Ukraine’s attacks heap pressure on Russian oil refining. What we know on day 1,548
Ukraine will send reinforcements to its northern regions and step up diplomatic pressure on Belarus to counter what Kyiv believes are Russian plans to launch a new offensive north of the capital, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said. Kyiv knew of five scenarios Russia had drawn up, Ukraine’s president added. “We analysed in detail the available data from our intelligence agencies on Russia’s planning of offensive operations in the Chernihiv-Kyiv direction,” Zelenskiy said. “Our forces in this sector will be increased.”
Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukraine’s top army commander, said Kyiv had data that the Russian general staff was actively calculating and planning offensive operations from the north. The dictator Alexander Lukashenko allowed Russian troops to march on Ukraine from Belarus in 2022. Zelenskyy said it was “already tiresome that there is constantly such a threat to Ukraine that the Russians may at some point drag Belarus into an expansion of the war. They should understand there will be consequences for them and they will be significant.”
In the initial full-scale invasion in 2022, Ukraine successfully repelled a huge Russian armoured column that attempted to attack Kyiv from the north. Ukraine’s border guards spokesperson, Andriy Demchenko, told Ukrinform news agency on Wednesday: “As of now, we haven’t detected any movement of equipment or personnel directly at our border, but of course, we can see the pressure Russia is putting on Belarus.”
Virtually all major oil refineries in central Russia have been forced to halt or scale back fuel output following Ukrainian drone attacks in recent days, Reuters has reported, citing official data and its own sources. The combined capacity of refineries that have fully or partially shut down exceeds 83m tonnes per year, or about 238,000 tonnes per day, accounting for around a quarter of Russia’s total refining capacity. The share of the refineries in Russia’s fuel output is over 30% for gasoline and about 25% for diesel. Moscow has introduced a gasoline exports ban, while the Ukrainian strikes have reduced Russia’s crude oil exports – adding pressure to Moscow’s federal budget, where oil and gas accounts for roughly a quarter of revenue.
Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, spoke to Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday as the UK government scrambled to reverse a public relations disaster over its latest package of sanctions on Russian oil and gas. After a storm of negative publicity and a row in parliament, Starmer and ministers were forced to spend Wednesday explaining why the package initially exempts diesel and jet fuel made in other countries using Russian oil. Starmer insisted sanctions on those products would be phased in to keep the market stable.
However, Ukrainian officials expressed disappointment, write Peter Walker and Luke Harding. One former senior government figure described western sanctions policy against Russia as “too little too late”. They added: “I’m not sure I understand the logic behind this British decision. The only way Ukraine can stop the war is to put physical sanctions on Russia and destroy its infrastructure.”
Zelenskyy said Ukraine had been in contact with Britain on Wednesday and said the issue of sanctions was “always very sensitive … We conveyed our signals on the matter to London. We expect that everything will be discussed this week on a bilateral level.” Zelenskyy later posted that he had spoken to Starmer by telephone and thanked him for the support provided for Ukraine. The two sides were “working to reinvigorate substantive diplomacy”. No 10 said Starmer had “reaffirmed the UK’s steadfast support for Ukraine”. A spokesperson added that “as a result of the UK’s actions to date, there will be less Russian oil on the market, with Russia weaker as a result”.
The EU is set to disburse €3.2bn to Ukraine next month, the first such payment under a giant loan approved in April, Brussels said on Wednesday.
Continue reading...Initial testing found evidence of metals in water samples, months after province’s residents began reporting unusual numbers of dead fish washing ashore
Papua New Guinea’s government has warned communities not to fish from parts of the New Ireland coastline as preliminary tests show evidence of metals in some water samples, after months of residents reporting dead marine life in the area.
On 7 May the fisheries minister, Jelta Wong, said initial testing conducted by an independent company detected various metals in water samples taken from affected areas around Kafkaf village and Larairu lagoon in New Ireland, an island in eastern PNG.
Continue reading...US and Taiwanese presidents have not spoken directly since Washington shifted diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taipei in 1979
US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would speak with Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te, an unprecedented move for a US leader that could roil US relations with China.
US and Taiwanese presidents have not spoken directly since Washington shifted diplomatic recognition to Beijing from Taipei in 1979.
Continue reading...Surveillance that misses a haemorrhagic fever or fails to consider endemic risks at a departure port will be blind to something far more dangerous
Two rare disease outbreaks within two weeks – Andes hantavirus and Bundibugyo Ebola – have caused deaths and triggered costly international responses. Together they expose a gap not in our ability to respond, but in our willingness to anticipate, prevent and use precaution.
The hantavirus outbreak on a cruise expedition in the south Atlantic played out slowly. Three weeks passed between the death of one passenger on 11 April and the linkage to hantavirus on 2 May. In that time, passengers onboard the MV Hondius continued their itinerary, having been advised that the man had probably died of natural causes. They toured remote islands and ate together at the same tables. More than 30 passengers disembarked at St Helena and flew in different directions.
Continue reading...Everlee Wihongi was detained at Los Angeles airport on 10 April after she had returned to US from a family trip
There have been numerous disturbing moments during New Zealander Everlee Wihongi’s ongoing detention in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but there is one that stands out, her mother says.
When detainees are transferred between facilities they are required to remove their assigned uniforms and put on the clothes they wore the day they were detained, Betty Wihongi, tells the Guardian from Wisconsin, her home of nearly 30 years.
Continue reading...Jeff Landry’s visit has proved controversial, with the territory’s PM saying there was no sign ‘anything has changed’ in the US position
The US special envoy to Greenland has said it’s time for Washington “to put its footprint back” on the Arctic island, as he wound up his first visit to the island since his appointment in December 2025.
Donald Trump has repeatedly argued that the US needs to control Greenland – a Danish autonomous territory – because of national security concerns, claiming that if it does not, the island risks falling into the hands of China or Russia.
Continue reading...
Already the planet's largest supplier of GPUs, Nvidia now intends to conquer the CPU market. “We have visibility to nearly $20 billion in total CPU revenue this year, setting us up to become the world’s leading CPU supplier,” Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said during the company’s Q1 2027 earnings call on Wednesday. Nvidia is no stranger to CPUs having announced its first Arm datacenter chip, codenamed Grace, back in 2021. However until recently the company integrated most of these parts into GPU systems that users almost always deployed in AI datacenters and supercomputers. That changed in February when Nvidia revealed Meta was among the first hyperscalers now deploying standalone Grace CPU Superchips in its datacenters to power a variety of workloads including the Social Network’s AI agents. At its GTC conference in March, Nvidia officially expanded its CPU line up to include a standalone Vera CPU system. Each chip features 88 custom Olympus Arm cores with support for simultaneous multi-threading (SMT) — that’s Hyperthreading in Intel speak — along with confidential computing capabilities. Nvidia can equi[ each chip with up to 1.5 TB of LPDDR5x SOCAMM memory, which offers higher memory bandwidth at up to 1.2 TB/s and uses little power (which is why it's often used in laptops). “Vera will deliver up to 1.5x faster performance per core, 2x performance per watt, and 4x density per rack compared to x86-based alternatives,” Kress claimed. Nvidia’s reference designs pack up to two Vera CPUs onto a single board and via high-speed NVLink interconnects. Nvidia’s Vera is also paired in a 2:1 ratio of Rubin GPUs to CPUs in its most powerful rack-scale AI compute platforms. Since the chip was detailed this spring, Kress claims nearly every major hyperscaler and system builder plans to deploy the chips. This week, several top AI labs and hyperscalers, including Anthropic, OpenAI, Oracle, and SpaceX took delivery of Nvidia’s first Vera-based systems. “Vera CPU opens a brand new $200 billion TAM for Nvidia, a market we have never addressed before,” she said. While Nvidia is expanding its addressable market to include standalone CPUs, it should be noted that much like the company’s Ethernet networking products, they’re designed primarily with AI and HPC applications in mind. The chips can’t replace x86 processors in every application, yet. Kress’ comments come as Nvidia caps off a strong end to the first quarter of its 2027 fiscal year. The GPU giant raked in $58.3 billion in profits on $81.6 billion in revenue for the quarter, the latter of which grew 85 percent YoY and 20 percent from the prior quarter. Kress attributed the sequential jump to an “inflection in inference demand.” The quarter saw Nvidia change how it breaks out revenues. The company’s business units have now been organized into a datacenter group which includes cloud, hyperscale, neocloud and enterprise sales, plus an edge group, which serves as a catchall for gaming, robotics, automotive, and vRAN products. Datacenter revenues accounted for the vast majority of revenues, at $75.2 billion. Of that $38 billion came from hyperscaler and public cloud customers, while neocloud, industrial, and enterprise customers paid the remaining $37 billion. Edge sales accounted for a mere $6.4 billion, with the company citing demand for Blackwell-based workstation gear as a key driver. Looking ahead to Q2, Nvidia forecast revenue will hit $91 billion plus or minus two percent. That prediction assumed no datacenter sales in China. Nvidia has been trying for months to reignite its GPU business in the Middle Kingdom since Uncle Sam gave the company the green light to sell its aging H200 processors to Chinese customers for the first time ever back in December. Despite receiving approval from the Trump administration and receiving billions of dollars worth of orders, shipments remain stuck in Beijing’s red tape. ®
