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Last fall, President Donald Trump's executive order raising the fee for H-1B visas to $100,000 - like many of his immigration policies - led to near-immediate chaos. Thousands of workers who had flown overseas to renew their visas ended up stranded abroad . Details about who would be affected only emerged after the fact. Six months later, the disorder from the initial announcement has mostly subsided. The H-1B registration season for the next fiscal year has just begun. With H-1B applications open until March 19th, it's unclear what effect, if any, the new rules will have on hiring, immigration, and the workforce, but experts are warning the … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/aqy3isd

In September, Donald Trump claimed that "the United States is getting a tremendous fee " for brokering the TikTok deal. Now sources tell the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times that fee is expected to be in the range of $10 billion. The money is supposedly being paid by new investors, including Oracle and Silver Lake. Reports are that $2.5 billion was already paid to the Treasury when the deal closed on January 22nd. The rest will be paid out in installments. This is the latest example of the Trump administration inserting itself into private business in unprecedented ways, including taking on a 10-percent stake in Intel last August, … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/i6ocpgN

According to Reuters , Meta is looking to offset spending on AI and data centers with a massive round of layoffs. Sources familiar with the matter say the company could lay off as much as 20 percent of its staff, eliminating roughly 15,800 positions. That would be the largest series of layoffs at the company since it terminated 22,000 workers over just a few months between November 2022 and early 2023 . Word of the potential downsizing comes after Meta signaled that it was all but giving up on VR and the Metaverse , slashing budgets and closing studios . Instead, the company has been spending big to attract AI talent , build data centers , and ac … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/V7RMywf

It's only been a year since Digg founder Kevin Rose, Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, and a few others announced the link-sharing site would relaunch, promising a "social discovery built by communities, not by algorithms." Now, two months after opening its Reddit-like platform to the public, Digg is announcing a "hard reset" that's shutting down operations and will "significantly downsize the Digg team." When they announced its relaunch, Rose told The Verge that AI could "remove the janitorial work of moderators and community managers." Now, the new Digg's CEO Justin Mezzell writes in a note pinned to the homepage that, "We knew bots were … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/AHgoLN4

Instagram will no longer support end-to-end encrypted messages starting May 8th. In a statement to The Verge , Meta spokesperson Dina El-Kassaby Luce says the platform is discontinuing the feature because "very few people" were using E2EE in their DMs. Instagram has begun notifying impacted users about the change inside its app, and has also posted an update to its support page , suggesting that users download E2EE chats and images before it discontinues the feature, as spotted earlier by PiunikaWeb . "Anyone who wants to keep messaging with end-to-end encryption can easily do that on WhatsApp," El-Kassaby Luce adds. After bringing E2EE to Wh … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/Ytw6IPh

I'm not entirely sure why the Pixel 10A exists. Google hasn't upgraded the chipset, cameras, or battery in the new phone, and the tweaks it's made elsewhere are minimal at best. The flatter camera island is good, I guess! In one sense this isn't a big problem: The Pixel 9A is an excellent device , and for the last year was easily the best phone you could buy for $500 in the US . The new 10A is available to buy now at that same great price ($499 for 128GB of storage or $100 more for 256GB), but with the 9A still on sale, and dropping in price, there's one big question: Why not just buy the 9A - which is almost the same phone - for $50 less? G … Read the full story at The Verge. from The Verge https://ift.tt/vYMgdwy