Internal Memo From Meta Warns of ‘Serious Times’ For The Company

2022 could be a tough year for Meta, formerly known as Facebook. Chief product officer Chris Cox posted a memo to employees this past week outlining the challenges the company is facing, and describing lean times ahead. In the memo, Cox noted “We are in serious times here and the headwinds are fierce.” He goes on to say the company will have to execute flawlessly despite the company pulling back on new hiring and reigning in budgets. The memo is part of the company’s bi-annual examination of where it needs to invest its resources. As such, the memo lays out what Meta will be focusing on for the second half of 2022. It was delivered as part of the company’s weekly Q&A with CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

In the meeting, Zuckerberg predicted a difficult rest of the year for Meta. “If I had to bet, I’d say that this might be one of the worst downturns that we’ve seen in recent history,” he said, according to audio obtained by Reuters. The company is facing both macroeconomic forces impacting everyone, as well as privacy-related setbacks. As an example, its CFO previously predicted the company would lose around $10 billion in 2022 just due to Apple’s new privacy policies. These policies require iOS users to be notified when an app wants to track them, and be allowed to opt-out of that process. Still, plenty of other tech companies are also predicting an impending slowdown in the economy after years of record-breaking revenues. Therefore, Meta is not alone in holding a cautious outlook for the rest of the year.

It was previously reported the company was already beginning to reduce its hiring. At the same time, the company was also experiencing a mass exodus of employees. As we reported back then, Zuckerberg was fine with it since he didn’t want any stragglers hanging around. The CEO has doubled down on that stance in the latest Q&A. He also said the company will begin to push employees even harder to weed out people who are under performing. “Part of my hope by raising expectations and having more aggressive goals, and just kind of turning up the heat a little bit, is that I think some of you might decide that this place isn’t for you, and that self-selection is OK with me,” he said. “Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here,” he concluded.

As far as the future goes, the memo posted by The Verge includes six areas it will focus on for 2022. The most obvious is its TikTok competitor named Reels. One of its highest priorities is monetizing that short-form video platform as soon as possible. It’s also investing in its new “discovery engine.” This is what it calls its effort to put content in your feed from people you don’t follow. It will need better AI to fine-tune its algorithm though, so it’s investing heavily in AI. Cox said it needs to increase the number of GPUs in its data centers by 5X over the rest of this year to achieve that. Additionally it will be focusing on its metaverse plans. Part of that includes the launch of its high-end Project Cambria headset later this year. Cox says Cambria will mark the beginning of its “prosumer / industrial-grade mixed reality product line.” He said the company is “laser-focused” on bringing Cambria to market in the near future.

The Starburst prototype is the world’s only HDR VR headset. (Image: Meta)

The other areas of its focus will be community and business messaging. This includes its WhatsApp and Messenger platforms. It’ll also be working on privacy-related matters. We take that to mean figuring out how to deal with new privacy laws being passed around the globe. The company obviously doesn’t want to get blindsided again like it seemed to be by Apple’s anti-tracking update.

Meta is also betting big on the metaverse, but that will take some time to come to fruition. It has already stated it anticipates there will be a billion people using it by 2030. It expects metaverse users will eventually be spending hundreds of dollars per year on bobbles and avatar clothes. Getting the e-commerce part of its current metaverse, Horizon Worlds, is also one of its priorities.

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New Beer in Singapore is Made From Recycled Sewage Water

(Photo: Brewerkz) Your local craft brewery might have a range of beers made with creative ingredients, like small-batch coffee, native botanicals, or even steeped pizza crusts.  But unless you’re in Singapore, it’ll be difficult to find this one: a blonde ale brewed with recycled sewage water.

Singaporean brewery Brewerkz worked with the country’s Public Utilities Board (PUB) to produce the unique pour. PUB has been investigating ways to reduce water waste for quite some time, beginning with a study on sewage water sterilization in the 70s. By 1998, PUB had found a way to treat, reclaim, and produce sewage water for reuse without sacrificing affordability or public health. The sterilized water—called NEWater—was first introduced to raw water reservoirs, from which it would eventually make its way into the general water supply. Now, however, NEWater is sold for direct consumption in plastic water bottles.

Brewerkz started using this newer, drinkable iteration of NEWater to brew “NEWBrew” in 2018. The tropical blonde ale just began hitting supermarket shelves in April, where it’s expected to sell out by July thanks to a surprising level of demand. In fact, the brew has already sold out at Brewerkz locations.

One of PUB’s “used water” facilities. (Photo: PUB)

NEWBrew isn’t just a novelty beverage: it’s also intended to raise awareness for water conservation. From California to Sydney, Australia, areas experiencing water shortages have begun to test and even embrace the idea of reintroducing treated sewage water into the general supply. With each sale of bottled NEWater or a canned NEWBrew, Brewerkz and PUB hope to remind consumers to use water mindfully.

The average brewery goes through seven gallons of water for every gallon of beer, which creates the perfect environment in which to test strategies like PUB’s. But as one can imagine, NEWater must endure a stringent filtration and sanitization process before it makes its way to Brewerkz. Sewage water first goes through microfiltration, which separates out microscopic particles and bacteria. Then it undergoes reverse osmosis (a common, scalable filtration method) that uses a semi-permeable membrane to allow water molecules through while holding viruses and other “undesirables” behind. While these two steps alone might be sufficient to create a potable product, PUB sanitizes the filtered water using ultraviolet light before sending it off to Brewerkz and bottling facilities.

“NEWBrew is a showcase of the high quality of Newater and is proof that sustainability can be delicious,” said Tan Wee Han, owner and CEO of Brewerkz, during a media tasting in Tanah Merah.

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Samsung’s Smart TV Hub Adds Stadia, Xbox, And GeForce Now Streaming

There are numerous ways to play high-end games in the cloud in 2022, but rarely can you access all the top streaming services from a single screen. However, Samsung is making that a reality for anyone with one of its latest smart TVs. Its new Gaming Hub interface is getting support for Stadia, GeForce Now, and Xbox Cloud Gaming. Not enough? Amazon Luna is coming, too. 

We are still admittedly early in the era of cloud gaming, but it’s not going anywhere. Samsung’s integrated approach has advantages as the selection of games varies from one service to the next. So, like streaming video services, people may end up paying for more than one gaming cloud at a time. In that world, a Samsung TV makes it easy to jump between different services without using up all your HDMI ports. 

To play cloud-rendered games on the big screen, all the popular services have their preferred hardware. For Stadia it’s the Chromecast, GeForce Now works best on the Shield TV, and Xbox Cloud Gaming is tightly integrated with the Xbox console (its plans to build a streaming stick have been delayed). Samsung’s current lineup of TVs will put all these services on one device. When Luna does arrive in Gaming Hub, you’ll be able to ditch your Fire TV. There are some TVs that offer Stadia or GeForce Now, but the inclusion of Xbox is a big deal for Samsung’s TVs.

Samsung says Gaming Hub will work with all popular Bluetooth controllers. Although, presumably the Wi-Fi-enabled Stadia and Luna controllers will work with their respective services (they connect directly to the internet instead of going through the streaming device). In the same vein, Gaming Hub will list any game consoles you have physically connected to the TV. It supports controller passthrough, so you can have one controller or headset paired with the TV for use on multiple devices and services. 

Samsung makes some of the best TVs on the market right now, but its software is pretty heavy compared to others on the market. The Gaming Hub might give people more reason to stick with Samsung’s smart features rather than adding a streaming box like a Chromecast or Amazon Fire TV. There’s no installation necessary — Gaming Hub will be included with these TV sets with native support for the aforementioned cloud gaming services. Or rather, it will be. Samsung’s Gaming Hub won’t be available on your TV right this minute, but it will arrive as part of a free software update later this year.

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Report: TSMC’s Biggest Customers Are Asking to Reduce Wafer Orders

(Photo: TSMC) It appears there’s an interesting scenario playing out behind the scenes of TSMC right now. In response to a sudden and unexpected downturn in the tech market, Apple, AMD, and Nvidia are reportedly trying to change orders they made long ago. Though TSMC does appear to be granting AMD and Apple’s wishes, the report says it’s taking a harder stance with Nvidia. It’s apparently told Team Green it will not alter the terms of the deal, but it will push it back a bit if necessary.

The report comes from Digitimes, and has been translated by a bilingual Twitter account named RetiredEngineer. It states that TSMC’s three biggest customers are backpedaling on future orders for wafer capacity. Apple has already begun production of the iPhone 14, but has already cut its “first wave” order of 90 million phones by 10 percent. AMD reduced its order for 7/6nm by 20,000 wafers for the fourth quarter as well. However, it states order volume for 5nm wafers for PCs and servers is unchanged. That is assumedly its Zen 4, Epyc/Threadripper, and RDNA3 products.

TSMC 12-inch foundry. Photo by TSMC.

Nvidia is apparently in a much tougher spot though, and is getting pushback from TSMC. The company famously switched from Samsung’s 8nm process to TSMC’s 5nm node for its RTX 40-series. In doing so, it allegedly made a massive down payment on 5nm and below wafer capacity. This was all done mid-pandemic, so it was a smart move at the time. Now that crypto mining has crashed though, there’s a deluge of 30-series GPUs on the market. The article calls it “enormous channel inventory.” This has caused Nvidia’s partners to reduce their orders, so Nvidia is asking for some slack from TSMC. However, TSMC is reportedly unwilling to reduce its order.

All it’s offering Nvidia is to push the first shipment of GPUs back one quarter. Or, if it really needs it, it can be pushed to Q1 of 2023. However, if Nvidia takes this offer it will be responsible for finding a replacement for the now-idle fab capacity. That is likely going to be a very tough ask. Not only because of the current market conditions, but what they’re projected to be at the end of the year. It’s the whole reason why these companies are asking to reduce their orders in the first place. Also, those quarterly numbers aligns with the rumors Nvidia would be unveiled the RTX 40-series in September. Pushing it back on quarter would put it in Q4, and then one more is Q1. We certainly hope that doesn’t happen, but it seems likely.

The overarching message of the article is about how the situation is causing “pessimism” within the semiconductor industry. That’s according to a full translation on Reddit. The unprecedented nature of the three company’s request is giving everyone jitters. Adding stress to the situation is global inventories for cell phones, TVs, and notebooks are increasing rapidly. It looks like a total reversal in terms of supply and demand that was experienced over the past two years. The bottom line is that TSMC will likely revise its 2022 annual projections. Despite this unexpected hiccup, the company remains confident in its outlook for the next five years. As we’ve noted before, it’s about to begin its 3nm production, which is expected to be a very popular node. TSMC thinks so too, and plans to keep it operational for at least three years.

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Giant African Land Snails Have Invaded a County in Florida

(Photo: Charles J. Sharp/Wikimedia Commons) Florida’s Pasco County has been under quarantine for over a week, thanks to a growing population of invasive, disease-carrying giant snails.

The giant African land snail is native to, well, Africa, but was confirmed to have appeared in Florida by the state’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (FDACS). The species’ invasion was first identified on June 23. Residents of Pasco County’s New Port Richey area have been advised to limit the movement of plants, soil, and other “regulated articles” to avoid inadvertently spreading the snails themselves, as well as their mucus or their eggs.

Aside from the risk to native agriculture, giant African land snails sometimes carry a parasite called rat lungworm, which can cause meningitis in humans. The FDACS warns that touching the snails without gloves and other protective equipment could result in transmission of the disease. A single snail can lay up to 2,500 eggs per year, making population control uniquely difficult amid a wider public health emergency. They can also burrow into soil and “hibernate” to survive cold or dry temperatures for up to a year. 

(Photo: Nicole Casuso, FDACS-DPI)

It hasn’t been confirmed how the giant African land snail made its way to Florida, but the FDACS suspects the invasion has something to do with the illegal pet trade. The US prohibits people from keeping the snails as pets, due to both disease and population control concerns. Of course, people attempt to sneak them home anyway. If government officials don’t spot the snails mid-transport, the invasive species ends up thriving and reproducing in yards, gardens, and other plant-heavy areas. The FDACS warns the snails make meals out of more than 500 native plants, as well as stucco and exterior paint, which the snails consume for calcium. 

Luckily, the species’ terrifying size doesn’t make it impervious to pest control. Despite growing to eight inches long and five inches in diameter, the snails are susceptible to metaldehyde, a plant-safe pesticide. Treatment typically includes surrounding plants and crops with granules, sprays, or dusts containing high concentrations of metaldehyde. The FDACS says it began using the pesticide to treat the New Port Richey area on June 29. The full course of treatment could take up to three years. 

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Analyst: AMD’s PC Revenue To Drop 26 Percent in 2022 YoY

An analyst for Morgan Stanley has some bad news for AMD: 2022 is going to be a rough ride. The financial firm had previously paused its coverage of the PC industry, but has restarted it with a report from analyst Joseph Moore. He predicts a tough year-over-year (YoY) forecast for AMD, but notes that the company isn’t alone in this regard.

Moore believes in both 2022 and 2023 AMD will experience what he termed a “material correction.” We’re guessing that means the olden days of pandemic-fueled record business are over. The decline of crypto mining will also have a significant impact on AMD’s bottom line. The most surprising part of his analysis is that he thinks AMD’s PC-related revenue will drop 26 percent YoY. He says it will also lose some PC market share “in part” to Intel’s success with its 12th Gen Alder Lake CPUs. Moore doesn’t expand on why it might suffer such heavy losses. However, the entire industry is facing some strong headwinds right now as inflation continues roils markets.

Despite the dour outlook for 2022, Moore thinks AMD’s revenue will only decrease by two percent in 2023. In addition, he expects the company to make “minor share gains” with PC clients, and “material gains” with its Epyc server products. “Overall we are optimistic that the company’s prospects in [the] data center will provide enough growth to drive further positive estimate revisions over the next several quarters,” he said. In addition, he also expects the company to make major gains in the notebook market this year. He expects its revenue from notebooks to increase 35 percent. That will be followed by AMD taking market share from Intel in 2023.

The point of Moore’s prognosis is to advise investors about AMD’s future outlook. Like all tech companies, its stock has taking a beating lately. It’s lost half its value in the past six months, going from $150 a share in January to its current price of $73. However, its shares rose one percent in the wake of Moore’s report according to Seeking Alpha. The reason is despite a difficult near-future outlook, he believes it will fare much better in 2023. Moore also established a per-share target of $103, and noted the shares’ current price is a “reasonable valuation.”

Although Moore is focused on AMD for this assessment, he admits the industry as a whole is heading for troubled waters. “The demand picture across all of the end markets is mixed given the plateauing economy,” he wrote. Yes, about that plateauing economy, it seems like the driving force in AMD’s theoretical downturn. Has Alder Lake had a noticeable impact on AMD’s CPU sales? It’s likely, but AMD also didn’t launch a counter-attack against it until the spring of 2022. That’s roughly six months after Alder Lake launched. AMD belatedly released its Ryzen 7 5800X3D along with a raft of new CPUs for AM4 users in the April and May timeframe.

However, there are a lot of forces at work here other than Alder Lake. The crypto mining market is disappearing before our very eyes. Inflation is also causing people to be more judicious in their spending decisions. There’s already enough signs on the horizon that tough times are ahead that Intel is rumored to be cutting prices on its high-end Alder Lake CPUs, which it’s never done before. The world’s largest motherboard manufacturers — Gigabyte and Asus — are also projected to ship 25 percent fewer motherboards this year. That’s also due in part to the end of GPU mining, which is affecting the whole industry.

Overall, it looks like 2022 is going to be a difficult year for all the big name PC companies. There’s now so many GPUs on the market companies like NewEgg are having fire sales. Inflation is the highest it’s ever been, and gas prices are even higher. At the same time, DIY PC builders are hesitant to upgrade with Zen 4 and Raptor Lake on the horizon. The same goes for GPUs with RDNA3 and Ada Lovelace arriving later this year. At the same time, this was all anticipated. At the end of 2021 analysts predicted that as the pandemic fades away, so would the record-breaking sales. Nobody predicted back then that mining would crash too, but it’s adding fuel to the fire too. The current level of inflation was also not anticipated in year-end reports, but it’s obviously not helping matters.

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M2 MacBook Pro Can Hit 108C Under Full Load

Apple announced its upgraded M2 SoC at WWDC recently, and the first laptop to use it is the 13″ MacBook Pro. The laptop became available to testers a few days ago, allowing content creators to put it through its paces. This week YouTuber MaxTech compared the new 13″ M2 Pro to the older M1-based Pro with the M1 Pro SoC. In the tests, the newer M2-based Pro’s cooling performance, or lack thereof, is shockingly bad. He found when exporting 8K Canon RAW footage the M2 model hit 108C and experienced severe thermal throttling. This stands in stark contrast to the 14″ M1 MacBook Pro, which never throttled in the same test.

The video released by MaxTech features side-by-side comparisons of both notebooks; the 13″ MacBook Pro with M2 and the 14″ model with the M1 Pro. One of the major differences in the two laptops is the cooling system. The M2 model has only a single fan inside its 13″ chassis. The 14″ model with the Pro chip has two fans. It’s possible Apple determined a second fan was necessary due to the “Pro” designation of the SoC. However, as MaxTech discovered, that second fan is also needed in the M2 model. As noted above, he saw it hit outrageous temps under sustained load. He wrote on Twitter the temps were the highest he’d ever seen on a Mac. Adding insult to injury, he said that includes Intel-based Macs.

The high temps were achieved exporting 8K Canon RAW footage, which is as stressful as you can get for an SoC. That’s because it stressed both the CPU and GPU to the limit throughout the export. What’s surprising is the MacBook hit those temps while the single fan was spinning at its 7,200rpm peak. This means that since the fan was doing all it could do to keep temps in-check, there was only one way for the system to lower temps more: thermal throttle itself. This is when clock speeds are lowered to reduce temperatures. This reduces performance, but prevents a chip from overheating and damaging itself.

The way it did this was to instantly drop the P-core clocks from 3,200MHz to 1,894MHz. The E-cores went from 2,228MHz to 1,444Mhz. The GPU also dropped from 1,393 MHz to just 289Mhz. This resulted in a drastic reduction in power consumption. The entire package went from sucking down 29.46W to just 7.31W. This allowed the M2 chip to drop all the way down to 84C for a bit, before making the climb back up to over 100C. The YouTuber said this cycle repeated itself over and over until the export finished. This back-and-forth throttling lead to reduced performance, and it was crushed in the test by the M1 Pro laptop. The M2 took almost 20 minutes to finish the export, with the M1 Pro taking a smidge over 11 minutes. The dual-fan M1 Pro model also never throttled in the test either.

Since the M1 Pro is not directly comparable to the M2, he also tested the M1-based 13″ MacBook Pro. That’s the model the new M2-based machine is replacing, so it’s apples-to-apples. In the same export test, he says the M1 model maxed out at 94C. However, he says the CPU wasn’t running at 100 percent the entire time, but the GPU was. The M1 model also never throttled. This seems to indicate something changed with the M2 model, either in the fan curve, thermal paste used, or something else.

For now, we will have to wait and see what other reviewers have to say about this matter. Though MaxTech’s tests seem straightforward, it’s always informative to get confirmation from multiple sources before declaring something as “buggered.” However, this comes in the wake of multiple reports confirming Apple severely limited SSD performance in the 13″ M2 model. Apple went with a single 256GB NAND chip in the base model. The M1 version used two chips to hit the same capacity. The result is a drastically slower SSD, at least compared to the M1 model. Higher capacity SSDs on the M2 do not suffer this fate, so it is seemingly due to the single chip versus using two.

The M2 model of the MacBook Pro has just a single SSD, with an empty pad next to it that was populated on the M1 model. (Image: MaxTech on YouTube)

Overall, it makes the 13″ M2 MacBook Pro seem like a flawed laptop. We’re curious to see what other reviewers have to say about its thermals in the coming days. This revelation has people expressing doubts about the upcoming M2-based MacBook Air, which is fan-less. However, that model is not designed for exporting 8K footage, so it will probably fare better in the cooling department. Still, it’s not a good look for Apple’s newest SoC, especially since its M1 line was so successful.

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