Amazon Testing New Fast Delivery Setup; Folding iPhone-May be $2400; Landlord Rent Setting Tool Gets Gutted; Amazon Web Services- $50 Billion to Build Government AI Infrastructure 

Posted: November 25, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Amazon is trialing a new rapid delivery idea in Seattle. Geekwire.com reports that Amazon is using a closed Amazon Fresh site as a mini warehouse for  most popular and fast moving items. It is something like a convenience store…open 24/7 but not to you. It functions as a pick up site for  Amazon Flex drivers. Amazon employees will fulfill online orders…picking and bagging items from a stock room, then putting them on shelves for Flex drivers to pick up and deliver to the nearby neighborhoods within hours of ordering. Flex drivers are independent contractors who deliver packages using their own vehicles, signing up for delivery blocks through the Amazon Flex app. The program has often been described as Uber for package delivery. 

We’ve heard price rumors ranging from the $1900 plus level up to $2500 for the upcoming folding iPhone. Now, according to mac rumors.com, analyst Arthur Liao is postulating it will be $2399. Noted analyst Ming-Chi Kuo had previously said it would land at between $2000 and $2500, and Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman has predicted it will be somewhere around $2000. The foldable ‌iPhone‌ will be expensive because of the premium components that Apple plans to use. The display panel and hinge will push pricing toward the upper end of market expectations, Fubon Research suggests. One truly big deal is that the iPhone is expected to be the first folder with no crease at all in the middle of the screen. Fubon Research sees Apple selling about 5.4 million of the folders in 2026. That is a pretty modest number compared to 228 million total iPhones sold in 2024, the last full year we have figures for. 

A controversial tool used by landlords to set rental prices has had its ears pinned back after a settlement with the Department of Justice. The DOJ said in a press release that the proposed settlement “would help restore free market competition in rental markets for millions of American renters.” The antitrust settlement is with RealPage. For years since the pandemic started, rental prices outpaced inflation, and the DOJ suspected that RealPage was the dominant force driving a market that never favored renters. Under the settlement, RealPage admits no wrongdoing, and doesn’t pay a fine. Arstechnica.com notes that if the court approves the deal, however, RealPage has agreed to update its software so that rival landlords cannot access “competitively sensitive information to determine rental prices in runtime operation.” Additionally, RealPage will “remove or redesign features that limited price decreases or aligned pricing between competing users of the software.” And the company will “cooperate in the United States’ lawsuit against property management companies that have used its software.”

Amazon is spending an eye-watering $50 billion to build out AI infrastructure for the US government. Techcrunch.com reports that it will be a ‘high performance computing infrastructure’ built specially for the feds. It will expand government agency access to AWS AI services. Amazon will break ground on the data centers in 2026. Amazon has long supplied cloud infrastructure to the US government…starting back in 2011. 

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ’Technified’ for now. 

YouTube Launches Likeness Detection Tech; Judge Rules Zuckerberg Must Testify in Trial About Social Media Effects on Young Users; Amazon DNS Problem Knocked Out Half the Web; Amazon Plans More Mass Automation 

Posted: October 21, 2025 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , , | Leave a comment

YouTube’s likeness detection tech has officially rolled out to eligible creators in the YouTube Partner Program, after a pilot run. Techcrunch.com reports that the tech identifies and manages AI-generated content featuring the likeness of creators, such as their face and voice. It is designed to prevent people from having their likeness misused, whether for endorsing products and services they have not agreed to support or for spreading misinformation. There have been plenty of examples of AI likeness misuse in recent years. On its Creator Insider channel, the company provided instructions on how creators can use the technology. Creators can make a removal request or a copyright request. Creators can also opt out of the tech if they want to.

A judge has ordered Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg to testify at the first trial about the adverse effects of social media on younger users. According to CNBC.com, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel and Instagram’s Adam Mosseri will also have to testify at the trial slated to start in January. It is alleged that social media companies failed to warn users of features created to ‘be addictive’ and ‘drive compulsive’ behaviors in minors. Meta has moved to stop Zuckerberg and Mosseri from testifiying, and Snap argues that Spiegel testifying would be an ‘abuse of discretion.’

The saga of Amazon Web Services’ huge outage Monday continues. Arstechnica.com notes that it was the biggest outage since last year’s CrowdStrike event. More than 28 AWS services were disrupted, possibly causing billions in damages. Snapchat, Signal, and Reddit went dark. Flights got delayed. Banks and financial services went down. Massive games like Fortnite could not be accessed. Some of Amazon’s own services were hit, too, including its e-commerce platform, Alexa, and Prime Video. Ultimately, millions of businesses simply stopped operating, unable to log employees into their systems or accept payments for their goods. “The incident highlights the complexity and fragility of the Internet, as well as how much every aspect of our work depends on the Internet to work,” Mehdi Daoudi, the CEO of an Internet performance monitoring firm called Catchpoint, told CNN. “The financial impact of this outage will easily reach into the hundreds of billions due to loss in productivity for millions of workers that cannot do their job, plus business operations that are stopped or delayed—from airlines to factories.”

In other Amazon news, Amazon is planning to sell twice as many products by 2033…but the some half million humans that would require may be out of luck. The online giant intends to scale up its robotics operations, and would thereby avoid hiring some 600,000 people! Engadget.com reports that the huge robotics department at Amazon would help it automate 75% of all operations. That will save them a whopping 30 cents on each item packed and delivered to consumers. Ok, to be fair, that 30 cents for all those items does add up to real money. In the short run, Amazon plans to hire 250,000 people for this holiday season.

I’m Clark Reid and you’re ‘Technified’ for now.