Tag: slows
Dropbox lays off 16% of staff to refocus on AI, as sales growth slows
Facing a slowdown in revenue growth, cloud storage company Dropbox announced today that it is laying off 500 employees, or 16% of its workforce, mainly in order to be able to hire staff with AI expertise.
Although revenue for the fourth quarter last year — the last quarter for which Dropbox reported earnings — was up by 5.8% year over year to $598.8 million, the company has experienced a slowdown in sales recently. Meanwhile, in order to stay competive, the company needs to ramp up its AI capabilities.
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California’s Rain Slows Construction for Its High-Speed Bullet Train
But while standing water at some locations has prevented work crews from reaching their job sites, the Central Valley director for the Cailfornia High-Speed Rail Authority said it’s the prospects for a lengthy summer run of water in local irrigation canals that present a greater potential disruption to construction later this year….
At the Tule River viaduct near Highway 43 and Avenue 144 south of Corcoran, drone video posted to social media on March 22 by the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office shows vehicles stranded in floodwaters and support columns for the structure sticking out of the water. “There’s a lot of work we can’t get to,” Garth Fernandez, who heads up the rail agency’s Central Valley region, told The Fresno Bee in a telephone interview this week. “So at Tule River and Deer Creek, right now we are not working. … We don’t even have access to that (Deer Creek) site right now because it’s all under water.” Fernandez added that in the meantime, the rail agency and its contractor have turned their attention to providing what help they can to nearby communities that are being affected by flooding….
While some construction locations are facing delays because of standing flood water, crews have been able to continue working at other sites in Madera, Fresno, Kings and Kern counties — a 119-mile stretch covered by three separate construction contracts…. So far, no significant damage has been reported on any of the high-speed rail structures that have been completed or are in various stages of construction. “From north to south, water is flowing underneath all of our completed structures,” Fernandez said. “All of our structures are on piles and deep foundations, so I don’t believe we’ll have an issue with damage to our structures… We may have some areas of erosion, some embankments washed out in a couple of places, but that minor damage can be resolved rather easily,” he added. “But for all of our major structures, the current reporting is that we are holding good.”
The rail line has been designed to cope with major floods; viaducts and a railbed that will elevated above the level of the surrounding land are expected to minimize the risk of damage from future floods, Fernandez said. “Our facilities are designed for a 100-year flood, so (the current events are) showing that our design is actually working,” he said. “It’s designed in a way that even though it’s a large system north to south, it’s able to convey all the flood water past our embankments and our alignment.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.