Google lays off employees across teams. 2 other stories and a trivia

This line-up of stories will help you discover the latest happenings around the tech world, today.

1. Google lays off employees across teams

Google is in the midst of substantial layoffs, impacting hundreds of employees in various departments, including digital assistant, hardware, and engineering.

This restructuring move, according to the company, is part of its ongoing cost-cutting efforts, driven by heightened competition in the artificial intelligence (AI) sector.

The affected workforce includeincludees those dedicated to the voice-based Google Assistant and the augmented reality hardware team.

This organizational shift extends beyond the digital assistant team, affecting divisions like hardware responsible for Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit, as well as Google’s central engineering organization.

The Alphabet Workers Union, representing Google employees, criticized the job cuts in a statement posted on X (formerly Twitter), expressing concerns about job security amid the company’s substantial profits.

These workforce adjustments unfold against industry-wide shifts, with companies like Microsoft and Google focusing on the growing adoption of generative AI technology, exemplified by the success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Trivia: Which of the following best describes an application “deadlock?”

A. It cannot be opened because it requires an unknown password.
B. It is locked by the system and cannot be deleted.
C. It cannot access a necessary resource and becomes unresponsive.
D. It avoids quitting since unsaved files are still open.

See Answer below

2. Yellow Card partners Coinbase to expand across Africa

Yellow Card, a fintech player, has partnered with Coinbase, the U.S. cryptocurrency exchange, with the goal of streamlining and broadening access to USDC (USD Coin) and other digital assets throughout the African continent.

The Integration of the Yellow Card Widget into Coinbase’s platform claims to enable seamless access to Yellow Card’s extensive payment network spanning 20 African countries.

This collaboration signifies a significant advancement in reshaping the accessibility and utilization of digital assets across the region.

The Yellow Card Widget, according to the startup, serves as a robust addition to Yellow Card’s existing Payments API, already facilitating local currency transactions for businesses serving African customers.

The Yellow Card-Coinbase partnership carries profound implications for the broader digital financial ecosystem in Africa beyond the immediate user benefits.

3. Bolt launches new safety measure to combat offline transactions in Kenya

Ride-hailing giant, Bolt, has implemented a novel feature in its application to dissuade users from partaking in offline journeys and making payments outside the platform.

The update presents a cancellation option for riders encountering situations where drivers propose offline trips and request payments external to the app.

In response to this issue, Bolt’s riders in Kenya can now opt to cancel a trip by selecting the specific circumstance of ‘driver asked to pay off-the-app’.

Linda Ndungu, Country Manager at Bolt, underscored the importance of this recent feature, stating: “We are pleased to introduce our latest cancellation option, strategically designed to minimize offline trips and address instances where drivers insist on charging rates exceeding those on the app.”

In keeping with its commitment to safety, Bolt strongly encourages both passengers and drivers to utilize the safety features integrated into the app’s Safety Toolkit, specifically crafted to operate seamlessly during active (in-app) trips.

Trivia Answer: It cannot access a necessary resource and becomes unresponsive

A deadlock is a condition where a program cannot access a resource it needs to continue. When an active application hits a deadlock, it may “hang” or become unresponsive.

Resources, such as saved or cached data, may be locked when accessed by a specific process within a program. Locking the data prevents other processes from overwriting the data prematurely. If a process or query needs to access locked data, but the process locking the data won’t let it go, a deadlock may occur.

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