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A series of harrowing air safety incidents has forced numerous emergency landings of airliners across Russia, leaving passengers screaming — in anger or fear.

The Federal Communications Commission is about to start winding down a program that gives $30 monthly broadband discounts to people with low incomes, and says it will have to complete the shutdown by May if Congress doesn't provide more funding.

European Union regulators are concerned that Microsoft may be covertly controlling OpenAI as its biggest investor.

OpenAI has publicly responded to a copyright lawsuit by The New York Times, calling the case “without merit” and saying it still hoped for a partnership with the media outlet.

In a blog post, OpenAI said the Times “is not telling the full story.” It took particular issue with claims that its ChatGPT AI tool reproduced Times stories verbatim, arguing that the Times had manipulated prompts to include regurgitated excerpts of articles. “Even when using such prompts, our models don’t typically behave the way The New York Times insinuates, which suggests they either instructed the model to regurgitate or cherry-picked their examples from many attempts,” OpenAI said.

OpenAI claims it’s attempted to reduce regurgitation from its large language models and that the Times refused to share examples of this reproduction before filing the lawsuit. It said the verbatim examples “appear to be from year-old articles that have proliferated on multiple third-party websites.” The company did admit that it took down a ChatGPT feature, called Browse, that unintentionally reproduced content.

If you have the Brave Browser installed on your Windows devices, then you may also have Brave VPN services installed on the machine. Brave installs these services without user consent on Windows devices.

Brave Firewall + VPN is an extra service that Brave users may subscribe to for a monthly fee. Launched in mid-2022, it is a cooperation between Brave Software, maker of Brave Browser, and Guardian, the company that operates the VPN and the firewall solution. The firewall and VPN solution is available for $9.99 per month.

Vechev and his team found that the large language models that power advanced chatbots can accurately infer an alarming amount of personal information about users—including their race, location, occupation, and more—from conversations that appear innocuous.

Vechev and his team found that the large language models that power advanced chatbots can accurately infer an alarming amount of personal information about users—including their race, location, occupation, and more—from conversations that appear innocuous.

It's not the call you'd expect to get: The company that laid you off wants you back.

Do you go? It's a question that many of us might think we know the answer to: Hell, no! Yet, for some workers, the calculus is more complex.

Companies like Meta, the parent of Facebook, and Salesforce are bringing back some of the workers they let go. Big Tech is hungry for people with skills in areas such as artificial intelligence. Yet, like romantic breakups, whether one-time employees agree to try again will have a lot to do with how things ended.

Companies that handled layoffs poorly are likely to have a harder time convincing ex workers to go back, Sandra Sucher, a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School who's studied layoffs, said. In some cases where the layoffs were conducted reasonably well, a return might be something former workers would consider.

"If you want me back, you value me," Sucher told Insider. Still, former workers will want to know how they can rebuild their careers at an organization, she said. "What is my path going forward? Not just for right now."

We want you back

The renewed demand is an about-face from the start of the year, when many Silicon Valley giants were culling staffers after saying they'd taken on too many people during the pandemic. So far this year, tech companies have slashed about 350,000 workers, according to Trueup.io., the tech jobs site. But the cuts peaked in January.

Whether to return is a question some former Salesforce workers are likely asking. The company plans to hire some 3,000 employees after cutting 10% of its workforce at the start of the year. Salesforce told Bloomberg it expects to hire in areas like sales, engineering, and data cloud product teams — and said the new workers will help grow the company's AI business to draw further investments.

CEO Marc Benioff is calling on former workers who landed elsewhere, not just those who might have been laid off, to consider coming back. Salesforce recently held an event to court alums where it handed out stuffed toys with "boomerang" shirts to about 50 former execs.

But for the workers who were laid off — and who didn't leave to take another job — there might still be some hard feelings over how Salesforce handled the separations. Some workers criticized how the company communicated the cuts. The layoffs also seemed to fly in the face of the culture the cloud software company had built. Salesforce execs, and Benioff in particular, have over the years encouraged workers to view their colleagues and the company itself as "Ohana," a Hawaiian term referring to family.

Earlier this year, the company — under pressure from activist investors to boost growth and margins — said it would step up its focus on profitability and efficiency. The implication was that focus would trump the company's "Ohana" philosophy.

Things to ask yourself before you return

Sucher said for some workers, the fact that the company knows you — and you know it — could mean it's worth considering a return.

She said workers considering returning to a former employer might ask themselves questions such as: Why was I laid off? What's changed that you need me now? Why should I trust you again?

The decisions, in many cases, might not be easy. For some workers, there will be difficulty rebuilding the level of trust they once had.

"There'll be a part of me that is kind of looking at the organization and not trusting it in some very fundamental way," Sucher said.

One Reddit user, in late July, asked for advice on whether to return to a former employer that had laid the person off only to turn around weeks later and offer a management position in a different division.

The person, who'd already started another, less-lucrative job, faced a dilemma: "The company laid me off not too long ago so I obviously have reservations," the user wrote. The advice varied to return but keep looking, don't return, or demand more pay to return.

Another user wrote about getting a call from a department head who'd both hired and laid off this person asking if there was any interest in returning. "This was honestly the last thing I expected," the person wrote.

Workers who do go back are likely to remain guarded

Of course, this hot-cold approach to workers isn't new for those in industries like hospitality. At the onset of the pandemic, for example, many restaurant workers got laid off. When lockdowns eased, employers scrambled to fill open roles because those workers wanted better working conditions.

Now it's tech workers' turn. Some might demand better pay to go back, while others could be accustomed to the idea that there's little they could do to protect against sizable job cuts. Job security will remain a visible consideration though: On Trueup.io, alongside job listings for high-profile companies like Amazon and Meta, is a number showing how many days it's been since there have been layoffs at the employer.

It's possible that strong demand will pull some workers back. Broadly, there is robust appetite for people with AI skills. On LinkedIn, the number of global English-language job postings that mention artificial intelligence technologies is up 21 times from November 2022, when ChatGPT debuted, a LinkedIn spokesperson said in an email to Insider.

Sucher said those workers who do decide to give it another go with a former employer are likely going to want to know what a company's strategy is so that it doesn't find itself once again cutting staff.

She said, ultimately, those who do return after layoff will likely view the organization differently. "This has lasting effects on how people feel about security," Sucher said. "It destabilizes their assumption that if I do a good job, I get to keep my job."

MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Philippine officials vowed Monday to remove a floating barrier placed by China's coast guard to prevent Filipino fishing boats from entering a disputed lagoon in the South China Sea.

They said the 300-meter (980-foot) -long barrier at the entrance to the lagoon at Scarborough Shoal is "illegal and illegitimate." Chinese coast guard vessels laid the barrier, held up by buoys, on Friday as a Philippine government fisheries vessel approached. More than 50 Philippine fishing boats were outside the shoal at the time, the Philippine coast guard said.

"We condemn the installation of floating barriers by the Chinese coast guard," Philippine National Security Adviser Eduardo Ano said. "The placement by the People's Republic of China of a barrier violates the traditional fishing rights of our fishermen."

Ano said in a statement that the Philippines "will take all appropriate actions to cause the removal of the barriers and to protect the rights of our fishermen in the area." He did not elaborate.

It's the latest flare-up in long-simmering territorial disputes in the busy and resource-rich waterway, most of which is claimed by China. The Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan are involved with China in the conflicts, which have long been regarded as a potential Asian flashpoint and a delicate fault line in the U.S.-China rivalry in the region.

Washington lays no claim to the sea passageway, a major global trade route, but U.S. Navy ships and fighter jets have carried out patrols for decades to challenge China's expansive claims and promote freedom of navigation and overflight. China has told the U.S. to stop meddling in what it says is a purely Asian dispute.

The Chinese barrier denies Filipinos access to the rich fishing lagoon surrounded by underwater coral outcrops, Philippine coast guard spokesperson Commodore Jay Tarriela said.

He said China's coast guard installs the removable barrier when Philippine fishing boats show up in large numbers near the shoal.

"It's an illegal and illegitimate action coming from the People's Republic of China," Tarriela told reporters. "Definitely it affects our food security."

The Philippines says Scarborough Shoal lies within its exclusive economic zone, a 200-nautical mile (370-kilometer) stretch of water where coastal states have exclusive rights to fish and other resources.

Those rights were upheld by a 2016 arbitration decision set up under the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, Ano said.

China refused to participate in the arbitration sought by the Philippines in 2013, a year after a tense standoff between Chinese and Philippine ships at Scarborough. Beijing refused to recognize the 2016 arbitration ruling and continues to defy it.

Chinese coast guard ships have also blocked Philippine government vessels delivering supplies and personnel to Philippine-occupied Second Thomas Shoal, resulting in near-collisions that the Philippine government has condemned and protested.

Washington has said it's obligated to defend the Philippines, its oldest treaty ally in Asia, if Filipino forces, ships and aircraft come under attack, including in the South China Sea.

The company’s DVD subscription service is ending this month, bringing to a close an origin story that ultimately upended the entertainment industry.

In a nondescript office park minutes from Disneyland sits a nondescript warehouse. Inside this nameless, faceless building, an era is ending.

The building is a Netflix DVD distribution plant. Once a bustling ecosystem that processed 1.2 million DVDs a week, employed 50 people and generated millions of dollars in revenue, it now has just six employees left to sift through the metallic discs. And even that will cease on Friday, when Netflix officially shuts the door on its origin story and stops mailing out its trademark red envelopes.

“It’s sad when you get to the end, because it’s been a big part of all of our lives for so long,” Hank Breeggemann, the general manager of Netflix’s DVD division, said in an interview. “But everything runs its cycle. We had a great 25-year run and changed the entertainment industry, the way people viewed movies at home.”

When Netflix began mailing DVDs in 1998 — the first movie shipped was “Beetlejuice” — no one in Hollywood expected the company to eventually upend the entire entertainment industry. It started as a brainstorm between Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph, successful businessmen looking to reinvent the DVD rental business. No due dates, no late fees, no monthly rental limits.

Edgar Ramos looking through a window inside a machine with metal and wires. Edgar Ramos working at one of the facility’s DVD sorting machines. Despite the reduced staff, this operation still receives and sends some 50,000 discs a week.

“I am sad,” Mr. Ramos said. “When the day comes, I’m sure we will all be crying. Wish we could do streaming over here, but it is what it is.”

It did much more than that. The DVD business destroyed competitors like Blockbuster and altered the viewing habits of the public. Once Netflix began its streaming business and then started producing original content, it transformed the entire entertainment industry. So much so that the economics of streaming — which actors and writers argue are worse for them — is at the heart of the strikes that have brought Hollywood to a standstill.

Even before the strikes, streaming had rendered DVDs obsolete, at least from a business perspective. At its height, Netflix was the Postal Service’s fifth-largest customer, operating 58 shipping facilities and 128 shuttle locations that allowed Netflix to serve 98.5 percent of its customer base with one-day delivery. Today, there are five such facilities — the others are in Fremont, Calif.; Trenton, N.J.; Dallas; and Duluth, Ga. — and DVD revenue totaled $60 million for the first six months of 2023. In comparison, Netflix’s streaming revenue in the United States for the same period reached $6.5 billion.

Despite the reduced staff, this operation still receives and sends some 50,000 discs a week with titles ranging from the popular (“Avatar: The Way of Water” and “The Fabelmans”) to the obscure (the 1998 Catherine Deneuve crime thriller, “Place Vendôme”). Each of the employees at the Anaheim facility has been with the company for more than a decade, some as long as 18 years. (One hundred people at Netflix still work on the DVD side of the business, though most will soon be leaving the company.)

Erik Melendrez, 33, who has worked at the warehouse since he was 18, at one of the automated stations that sorts DVDs.

Anh Tran and Mr. Melendrez at a station that sorts returned DVDs. At its height, Netflix operated 58 shipping facilities and 128 shuttle locations. Today, there are five such facilities.

A few of them started straight out of high school, like Edgar Ramos, and they can run Netflix’s proprietary auto-sorting machines and its Automated Rental Return Machine (ARRM), which processes 3,500 DVDs an hour, with the precision of Swiss watch engineers.

“I am sad,” Mr. Ramos said while sorting envelopes into their ZIP code bins. “When the day comes, I’m sure we will all be crying. Wish we could do streaming over here, but it is what it is.”

Mike Calabro, Netflix’s senior operations manager, has been with the company for more than 13 years. He said the unexpected moments of frivolity were a big part of why he had stayed, like the drawings made by renters on the envelopes or the Cheetos dust and coffee stains that often mark the returns, evidence of a product that has been well integrated into customers’ lives.

But when asked if he had ever met some of the most active customers in person, Mr. Calabro quickly replied, “No!” In fact, the anonymous look of the facility, which provides a stark contrast to the giant Netflix logos that adorn the company’s other real estate, is intentional. Visitors, it is clear, are not welcome.

“If we put Netflix out on the door, we would have people showing up with their discs, saying: ‘Hey, I’d like to return this. Can you give me my next disc?’” Mr. Calabro said.

That was the usual transaction with a video rental retailer, but Netflix wanted to make sure customers knew this was something different.

“It was a decision we made very early on,” Mr. Breeggemann said. “If they knew where we were, we’d run into that problem. And then it wouldn’t be a good customer experience. We wanted to mail both ways.”

Lorraine Segura, a senior operations manager, works with the labels that go on packages.

Ms. Segura, who started in 2008, used to rip open 650 envelopes an hour. When automation came, she was one of the few employees who traveled to the facility in Fremont, Calif., to learn how to run the machines.

Netflix’s DVD operations still serve around one million customers, many of them very loyal.

Bean Porter, 35, lives in St. Charles, Ill., and has subscribed to Netflix’s DVD and streaming services since 2015. She said she was “devastated” that there would be no more DVDs. Ms. Porter was able to use her subscription to watch DVDs of shows like “Yellowstone” and “The Handmaid’s Tale” — episodic television made for other streaming services that would have required her to buy additional subscriptions.

She and her husband also watch three or four movies a week and find Netflix’s DVD library to be deeper and more diverse than any other subscription service. She often hosts cookouts in her backyard and invites neighbors to watch movies on an outdoor screen. That is easier to do with a DVD, she said, than with streaming because of internet connectivity issues. And she has become involved with the DVD operations’ social media channel, posting videos, interacting with other customers and chatting directly with the social media managers working for the company.

“I’m pretty angry,” she said. “I’m just going to have to do streaming, and I feel like what they’re doing is forcing me into having less options.”

To ease the backlash, Netflix is allowing its DVD customers to hold on to their final rentals. Ms. Porter intends to keep “The Breakfast Club,” “Goonies” and “The Sound of Music.” As for the last DVD she intends to watch: She’s leaving that up to fate.

“I have 45 movies left in my queue, and where I land is where I’ll land, as there are too many good options to pick from,” she said.

The morning’s DVDs being shipped out to subscribers. At its height, Netflix was the Postal Service’s fifth-largest customer.

Netflix’s DVD operations still serve around one million customers.

The employees have a more sanguine attitude. Lorraine Segura started at Netflix in 2008 and used to rip open envelopes — 650 envelopes an hour. When automation came, she was one of the few employees who traveled to the facility in Fremont to learn how to run the machines and pass that training on to others. Now she runs the floor with Mr. Calabro as a senior operations manager.

“I’ve learned a lot here: how to fix machines, how to make goals and hit targets,” she said before leading her team in a round of ergonomic exercises to prevent repetitive stress injuries. “I feel empowered now to get out in the world and do something new.”

Amazon, frequently under the microscope for its pioneering but often criticized management techniques, now requires its employees to commit to office work at least three days a week. This new policy will necessitate some employees to uproot their lives and move to larger hubs closer to main offices.

Amazon spokesperson Brad Glasser has defended this return-to-office mandate, claiming it has stimulated more energy, collaboration and connections within the company. And it might benefit Seattle by attracting more well-paid residents to the area.

However, the ground reality as seen by the employees seems starkly different. According to Slack messages from several workers, a significant number of employees, previously operating virtually, now face a pressing dilemma: relocate to an Amazon hub, find a nearby office or tender their resignation. This abrupt policy shift has left employees feeling disconcerted and undervalued, with some already contemplating job changes and others anxious about the prospect of increased workloads due to potential colleague resignations.

This “relocate or resign” policy bears an uncanny resemblance to AT&T’s June ultimatum to its employees, which has raised several eyebrows and suspicions of a covert layoff strategy. It’s not uncommon for corporations to use intricate and complex language to obscure their actions and intentions. In this case, the seemingly straightforward phrase “relocate or resign” could be a smoke screen concealing an attempt to shrink workforce numbers without the accompanying negative press that mass layoffs invariably attract.

The policy lands like a one-two punch for employees. They are caught off guard by the sudden change, and then face a Hobson’s choice — a choice where only one option is realistically feasible. They are either forced to disrupt their lives and relocate or hand in their resignation, creating an environment akin to an ambush and leading to a lose-lose situation that leaves no winners.

The fallout from such a policy can be devastating to team morale and corporate culture — two cornerstones of any organization’s success. Forcing employees to relocate can severely destabilize team morale, similar to a gust of wind sweeping through a delicately constructed house of cards. Employees, feeling like expendable pawns in a grand corporate chess game, face an enormous emotional strain having to choose between their job and their home. This can lead to a significant drop in morale, causing a domino effect throughout the organization.

Moreover, such policies can fracture the company culture, the adhesive that binds an organization together, creating a sense of community and shared purpose. The fallout from these policies creates a ripple effect throughout the organization. Employees who remain, witnessing their colleagues forced to make life-altering decisions, may begin to question their own job security, leading to a pervasive sense of fear and unease. This can envelop the office like a fog, dampening productivity and motivation, and reducing the company culture to a mere ghost of its previous vibrant self.

However, amid such challenges, it’s essential to focus not just on the stumbles but also on recovery and prevention. Companies should make empathy and understanding the bedrock of their policies, treating employees as people with lives outside of work rather than just chess pieces to be moved around a board at will. Additionally, in the aftermath of the pandemic, the future of work has shifted. Embracing a flexible hybrid model that caters to employees’ needs, instead of adhering to a rigid structure, can prove to be more efficient and foster a more conducive work environment.

If companies seek to avoid the pitfalls of demoralizing their workforce and shattering their corporate culture, they should not follow in the footsteps of Amazon or AT&T. Values of understanding, flexibility and empathy are not just beneficial for the well-being of employees, but they also have the potential to boost business outcomes by fostering a motivated, engaged workforce.