Author: arthursheikin@gmail.com

[ad_1] Facebook Tweet Email Link New York  —  Back-to-school shopping is already under way. And this year’s essential: avoiding tariffs. Two-thirds of Americans with school-aged children started shopping for the upcoming school year in July, the earliest on record, according to a new survey from the National Retail Federation. Families, concerned that President Donald Trump’s tariffs could drive prices even higher, are looking for deals and pulling back on spending. “Consumers are being mindful of the potential impacts of tariffs and inflation on back-to-school items, and have turned to early shopping, discount stores and summer sales for savings on school…

[ad_1] Facebook Tweet Email Link President Donald Trump wants to make the United States a leader in artificial intelligence – and that means scrubbing AI models of what he believes are “woke” ideals. The president on Wednesday said he signed an executive order prohibiting the federal government from procuring AI technology that has “been infused with partisan bias or ideological agendas such as critical race theory.” It’s an indication that his push against diversity, equity and inclusion is now expanding to the technology that some expect to be as critical for finding information online as the search engine. The move…

[ad_1] Barbie dolls aren’t flying off the shelves for toymaker Mattel.On Wednesday, the toy company reported in its second-quarter earnings that its dolls category revenue declined 19% compared to the same period last year. Sales for the dolls category were $335 million.Mattel’s dolls product category includes brands like Barbie, American Girl, and Barney, among others.In a Wednesday earnings call, Mattel’s newly installed finance chief, Paul Ruh, said the decline in doll sales was “primarily due to fewer new Barbie product launches.”Mattel’s CEO, Ynon Kreiz, added that “lower associated retailer promotional support” contributed to weak doll sales.However, the toymaker’s other brands…

[ad_1] CNN  —  “It’s ultimately up to the president to decide.” That’s more or less the go-to line for Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and a host of other top Trump aides and White House officials when they share the administration’s plans for tariffs and trade negotiations. With the August 1 deadline for higher tariffs rapidly approaching, President Donald Trump has a week to make a number of critical decisions about trade that could shape the future of the US and global economies. Trump in early April paused most of his so-called reciprocal tariffs. They’re set to…

[ad_1] Investors clamouring for a budget Tesla just got more intel about it.The EV giant’s CEO, Elon Musk, said on Wednesday that Tesla’s long-awaited affordable model will resemble the Model Y.Musk was speaking to investors in Tesla’s latest earnings call when an analyst asked for more details about the budget-friendly EV Musk has long been touting.”It’s just a Model Y. Let the cat out of the bag there. Dancing cat that can talk and sing and dance,” Musk said. “That’s the cool part.”Musk did not give further details on the model or its release date. Lars Moravy, Tesla’s vice president…

[ad_1] Things could get worse before they get better, at least according to Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk.Tesla’s second-quarter earnings showed its steepest year-over-year revenue decline in at least a decade, below already grim Wall Street estimates.After the earnings call, Tesla shares were down more than 4% in after-hours trading.Here are the five biggest takeaways from Tesla’s call and how analysts are taking it:1. Brace yourself for the next few quartersThe CEO told analysts Wednesday that the EV maker is heading into a “weird transition period.”The earnings report said the problems come from “shifting tariffs, unclear impacts from changes to fiscal…

[ad_1] At the Winning the AI Race Summit, a conference hosted by venture capitalists in Washington, DC, Vice President JD Vance said he was “optimistic” about artificial intelligence automating American jobs.Vance was responding to a question asked by podcaster and tech investor Jason Calacanis about how Trump 2.0 is thinking about job displacement because of AI.”For every self-driving car we put on the road, that’s four drivers who are going to have their jobs retired,” Calacanis, an early Uber investor, added. “For every Optimus robot or humanoid robot that eventually makes it into a factory, that’ll be five or six…

[ad_1] A new AI coding challenge has revealed its first winner — and set a new bar for AI-powered software engineers.  On Wednesday at 5pm PST, the nonprofit Laude Institute announced the first winner of the K Prize, a multi-round AI coding challenge launched by Databricks and Perplexity co-founder Andy Konwinski. The winner was a Brazilian prompt engineer named Eduardo Rocha de Andrade, who will receive $50,000 for the prize. But more surprising than the win was his final score: he won with correct answers to just 7.5% of the questions on the test. “We’re glad we built a benchmark…

[ad_1] Google CEO Sundar Pichai brushed off concerns about the company’s ability to attract and keep top AI talent during the tech giant’s second-quarter earnings call, calling its retention metrics “healthy.”On Wednesday, Pichai publicly addressed the latest wave of AI talent wars raging across Silicon Valley. These wars have been supercharged by Meta’s announcement of a ‘superintelligence’ division and the poaching of some researchers with multimillion-dollar pay packages.The competition has become so intense that some analysts worry it could increase the growing costs of staying at the cutting edge of AI.Bernstein analyst Mark Shmulik asked Pichai about recruiting top researchers…

[ad_1] If you ever feel like the five-day workweek leaves you burned out, you may not be imagining it.A new global study led by Boston College researchers Wen Fan and Juliet Schor found fresh evidence that four-day workweeks — without a pay cut — are beneficial for employees’ well-being.Over a six-month period, the researchers tracked nearly 2,896 employees across 141 organizations in the US, UK, Australia, Canada, Ireland, and New Zealand. They also tracked a control group of 300 people working a traditional five-day workweek.These organizations voluntarily participated in the four-day workweek trials and were given eight weeks ahead of…