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Twitter Bot Highlights Gender Pay Gap One Company at a Time

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Twitter Bot Highlights Gender Pay Gap One Company at a Time

Every Worldwide Ladies’s Day, photographs of smiling girls seem in a gradual stream on social media alongside testimonials from manufacturers keen to indicate their help for gender equality.

This week, nevertheless, the stream was disrupted by a Twitter account that spat again pay hole information of corporations, colleges and nonprofits.

The account, @PayGapApp, targets corporations in Britain, the place the general public has entry to mountains of information about employers’ pay disparities and males working full time earned 7.9 p.c greater than girls as of April 2021.

Every time a college or hospital in Britain promoted Worldwide Ladies’s Day on Twitter this week with sure key phrases or hashtags, together with #IWD and #BreakTheBias, the pay hole account mechanically retweeted the message with a observe about how the median hourly pay for ladies employed on the group in contrast with that of males.

Francesca Lawson, a copywriter and social media supervisor in Manchester, England, created the automated account, or bot, along with her accomplice, Ali Fensome, a software program guide.

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“The bot exists with a purpose to empower workers and members of the general public to carry these corporations to account for his or her function in perpetuating inequalities,” stated Ms. Lawson, 27. “It’s no good saying how a lot you empower girls you probably have a stinking pay hole.”

Since 2018, the British authorities has required corporations with 250 or extra workers to report wage variations between women and men every year. The stories can be found to the general public on a searchable authorities web site.

Ms. Lawson stated she created the Twitter account so the general public may retrieve this data extra simply. “For it to have affect, individuals want to have the ability to discover it,” Ms. Lawson stated.

On Wednesday, the day after Worldwide Ladies’s Day, the pay hole account had greater than 205,000 followers. Some organizations had deleted tweets that the pay hole account had highlighted, whereas others responded with their plans to deal with the pay hole.

English Heritage, a charity that manages historic websites reminiscent of Stonehenge, responded to a observe that its girls staff have been paid 3.9 p.c lower than males with a hyperlink to its report on the information, from April 2020.

“Since then, we’ve been working onerous to cut back our pay hole & it’s closing,” English Heritage stated on Twitter. “However no matter its dimension, a spot continues to be a spot and the charity is dedicated to eliminating it.”

The pay hole account highlights median hourly pay information, however corporations in Britain are additionally required to offer data on gaps in common bonuses. Some corporations additionally voluntarily present extra information and context of their stories.

Australia and Germany have additionally ordered corporations to report on their pay gaps, however there was no comparable requirement for companies in america, the place girls’s annual earnings have been 82.3 p.c of males’s in 2020, based on the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The hole is even wider for Black and Hispanic girls.

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Ms. Lawson stated she hoped the recognition of her account would present that there was demand for extra information like this. “I might hope that different governments would wish to begin making reporting that information obligatory because of this,” she stated.

The couple first created the account the weekend earlier than Worldwide Ladies’s Day in 2021 and used it as a check run to see what labored and what didn’t. Now, they’re making an attempt to determine learn how to greatest use the eye the account has generated to advertise different points associated to inequality. Ms. Lawson stated she wish to see some copycat efforts.

“The extra people who find themselves doing this work,” she stated, “then the less locations there are for corporations to cover.”

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How the NFL Moved the Vikings-Rams Playoff Game Away From the L.A. Fires

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How the NFL Moved the Vikings-Rams Playoff Game Away From the L.A. Fires

Matthew Giachelli got the call he anticipated on Thursday morning: The N.F.L. was moving the Rams’ playoff game to Arizona because of the wildfires raging in Los Angeles, and the league needed 200 gallons of paint pronto.

The game on Monday between the Rams and the Minnesota Vikings would now be held at State Farm Stadium outside Phoenix, and it had to look and feel as if it were being played in the Rams’ usual home, SoFi Stadium. That included painting the field with the team’s and league’s logos and colors. The hometown Cardinals, though, did not have some of the needed hues on hand, including the Rams’ blue and yellow.

Giachelli’s company, World Class Athletic Surfaces in tiny Leland, Miss., provides paint to most N.F.L. and top college teams. Within hours, he and his co-workers had loaded five-gallon buckets of nine custom paint colors, as well as stencils for the N.F.L. playoff logos, onto a truck that left Thursday afternoon on a 1,500-mile journey to Arizona.

“I definitely regret what’s going on in California, but I’m glad we could meet their needs,” said Giachelli, the vice president of production and distribution.

Getting the right paint was just one of hundreds of details that the league, the Rams, the Vikings, the host Arizona Cardinals and ASM Global, which operates State Farm Stadium, have juggled since the N.F.L. decided to move the wild-card round game.

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The N.F.L. has canceled preseason games and postponed and moved regular-season games over the years because of hurricanes, snowstorms and other calamities. But it had not moved a winner-take-all playoff showdown since 1936, when the site of its championship game was changed from Boston to New York to drum up ticket sales.

A battalion of people — from the front-office workers to the training staffs to the thousands of game-day workers — have been mobilized on short notice. Each game, particularly in the playoffs, generates tens of millions of dollars for television networks, advertisers and stadium operators, and with the season coming down to its last few weeks, there was little margin for error.

“If it can be played, they play it, and in this case, it can be played in Glendale,” said Joe Buck, who will call the game for ESPN on Monday. “We’re in the playoffs now, and you’ve got all this pressure to get this first round finished before Kansas City and Detroit,” which had first-round byes, “get back in.”

A big reason the N.F.L. is the world’s most valuable league is scarcity. There are just 272 regular-season games and 13 playoff games, so each one is of critical importance to the 32 teams. (By contrast, there are about 400 Major League Baseball games every month during the season.) They are also critical to the owners of those teams and the league, as well as broadcast networks, sponsors and other companies that spend billions of dollars a year to attach their businesses and brands to the N.F.L.

It has not escaped notice that one of those businesses, State Farm, will have its name attached to Monday night’s broadcast less than a year after it announced that it would not renew 30,000 homeowner policies and 42,000 policies for commercial apartments in California. (The N.F.L. has donated $5 million to Los Angeles relief efforts.)

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With so much riding on each contest, the N.F.L. does everything it can to play every game every year. When the league creates its season schedule each spring, it prepares contingency plans including an alternate site for each game. In 2022, when a massive snowstorm hit western New York, the Buffalo Bills played a home game at Ford Field in Detroit.

During the pandemic, outbreaks in locker rooms forced the league to postpone several games, though none were canceled. When pandemic conditions in Santa Clara County, Calif., deteriorated, the San Francisco 49ers moved to Arizona for a month, playing three home games in State Farm Stadium. Arizona was also a backstop in 2003 when the Chargers moved their home game against the Miami Dolphins because of fires in San Diego.

This time, the fires spread so quickly, the league decided to move the game five days before kickoff. Kevin Demoff, the president of the Rams, said the team had been in constant contact with officials in Los Angeles, who initially thought the game could be held at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, which was unaffected by the fires.

But that changed midweek, when fires broke out close to the team’s training facility in Woodland Hills, forcing some players and staff to evacuate their homes and for one practice to be cut short. Demoff said he did not want the players and staff to be distracted, nor did he want city and county resources to be diverted for the game when they could be used to help others in need.

Moving the game is “just a recognition that there’s some things bigger than football and we owe this to our community to make sure that this game can be played safely and not be a distraction,” Demoff said Friday.

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ESPN was on hold as well. Four of its production trucks were en route to Los Angeles from Pittsburgh when the league told the network on Wednesday night that the game could be moved to Glendale. The crews spent the night in Kingman, Ariz. On Thursday, the plan was to set up in both stadiums in case the league waited until Saturday to decide where to play. So the trucks continued on to Los Angeles while another set of trucks left for Glendale. When the N.F.L. said Thursday that the game had been moved, the first set of trucks, which had reached Ontario, Calif., turned around and arrived in Glendale with time to spare.

The Cardinals also helped out the Rams in ways beyond just lending their stadium. The team’s owner, Michael Bidwill, sent two team planes to Los Angeles to help the Rams get their entourage and equipment to Arizona.

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Sonos CEO to step down after disastrous app overhaul

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Sonos CEO to step down after disastrous app overhaul

Sonos Chief Executive Patrick Spence is stepping down and leaving the company’s board in a shake-up that comes as the wireless speaker maker tries to win back the trust of its customers.

Last year, the Santa Barbara-based company botched the overhaul of its phone app that customers use to control their speakers and other audio products. The misstep and bumbled efforts to correct it, which left many unable to work their speakers, infuriated the brand’s loyal customers and took a toll on the company’s bottom line.

Spence, who has led Sonos for eight years, will be employed with the company until June 30 and provide strategic advisory services, according to a regulatory filing. He will receive a cash severance payment of $1.9 million.

Tom Conrad, a longtime Sonos board member, will serve as the interim chief executive.

Sonos said Monday in a news release that it’s working with an executive search firm to find a new chief executive “who will build on the Sonos legacy of innovation and excellence in serving its customers while also driving profitable growth.”

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Conrad, 55, served as chief executive of Zero Longevity Science and previously worked in executive roles at Quibi, the short-lived streaming platform, Snap and Pandora Media. He will receive $175,000 per month as Sonos’ interim CEO and be awarded $2.65 million of Sonos restricted stock units.

“I am deeply honored to step into this role at such an important moment for Sonos,” Conrad said in a statement. “Nearly two decades ago, when I led the earliest initiative to integrate Pandora and Sonos, I got my first glimpse of the magic that Sonos could bring to millions of lives every day.”

In a note to staff that Conrad posted about on the social media site X, formerly known as Twitter, the executive also acknowledged the struggles the company has faced.

“I’ve heard from many of you about your own frustrations about how far we’ve drifted from our shared ideals,” he wrote in the note. “There’s a tremendous amount of work in front of us, including what I’m sure will be some very challenging moments, decisions, and trade-offs…”

Sonos’ app debacle has been costly. The company said last year it would invest between $20 million and $30 million to fix the app and provide more customer support, create a customer advisory board and extend its warranty for certain products, among other changes. Executives pledged to forgo their annual bonuses if the plan failed.

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In August, the company said it would lay off 100 employees, which amounted to 6% of its workforce.

And Sonos, which competes against Amazon, Bose, Apple and other tech giants that make smart speakers, has seen its stock drop about 9% over the last 12 months. On Monday afternoon, shares of the company were trading at $14.30.

The company’s revenue also declined last year even as it released new products such as its first pair of headphones and a new soundbar. In 2024, Sonos reported fiscal year revenue of $1.52 billion, a decrease of 8% from 2023. The company’s net loss widened from $10.27 million in 2023 to $38.15 million in 2024, according to its financial results.

The company is scheduled to report its fiscal first-quarter results in February.

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Biden Administration Adopts Rules to Guide A.I.’s Global Spread

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Biden Administration Adopts Rules to Guide A.I.’s Global Spread

The Biden administration issued sweeping rules on Monday governing how A.I. chips and models can be shared with foreign countries, in an attempt to set up a global framework that will guide how artificial intelligence spreads around the world in the years to come.

With the power of A.I. rapidly growing, the Biden administration said the rules were necessary to keep a transformational technology under the control of the United States and its allies, and out of the hands of adversaries that could use it to augment their militaries, carry out cyberattacks and otherwise threaten the United States.

Tech companies have protested the new rules, saying they threaten their sales and the future prospects of the American tech industry.

The rules put various limitations on the number of A.I. chips that companies can send to different countries, essentially dividing the world into three categories. The United States and 18 of its closest partners — including Britain, Canada, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan — are exempted from any restrictions and can buy A.I. chips freely.

Countries that are already subject to U.S. arms embargoes, like China and Russia, will continue to face a previously existing ban on A.I. chip purchases.

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All other nations — most of the world — will be subject to caps restricting the number of A.I. chips that can be imported, though countries and companies are able to increase that number by entering into special agreements with the U.S. government. The rules could rankle some foreign governments: Even countries that are close trading partners or military allies of the United States, such as Mexico, Switzerland, Poland or Israel, will face restrictions on their ability to purchase larger amounts of American A.I. products.

The rules are aimed at stopping China from obtaining from other countries the technology it needs to produce artificial intelligence, after the United States banned such sales to China in recent years.

But the regulations also have broader goals: having allied countries be the location of choice for companies to build the world’s biggest data centers, in an effort to keep the most advanced A.I. models within the borders of the United States and its partners.

Governments around the world, particularly in the Middle East, have been pumping money into attracting and building enormous data centers, in a bid to become the next center for A.I. development.

Jake Sullivan, President Biden’s national security adviser, told reporters on Sunday that the rule would ensure that the infrastructure for training the most advanced artificial intelligence would be in the United States or in the jurisdiction of close allies, and “that capacity does not get offshored like chips and batteries and other industries that we’ve had to invest hundreds of billion dollars to bring back onshore.”

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Mr. Sullivan said the rule would provide “greater clarity to our international partners and to industry,” while countering national security threats from malicious actors that could use “American technologies against us.”

It will be up to the Trump administration to decide whether to keep the new rules or how to enforce them. In a call with reporters on Sunday, Biden administration officials said that the rules had bipartisan support and that they had been in consultations with the incoming administration about them.

Though companies in China have begun to develop their own A.I. chips, the global market for such semiconductors is dominated by U.S. companies, particularly Nvidia. That dominance has given the U.S. government the ability to regulate the flow of A.I. technology worldwide, by restricting U.S. company exports.

Companies have protested those limitations, saying the restrictions could hamper innocuous or even beneficial types of computing, anger U.S. allies and ultimately push global buyers into buying non-American products, like those made by China.

In a statement, Ned Finkle, Nvidia’s vice president for government affairs, called the rule “unprecedented and misguided” and said it “threatens to derail innovation and economic growth worldwide.”

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“Rather than mitigate any threat, the new Biden rules would only weaken America’s global competitiveness, undermining the innovation that has kept the U.S. ahead,” he said. Nvidia’s stock dipped nearly 3 percent in premarket trading on Monday.

Brad Smith, the president of Microsoft, said in a statement that the company was confident it could “comply fully with this rule’s high security standards and meet the technology needs of countries and customers around the world that rely on us.”

In a letter to Congressional leadership on Sunday that was viewed by The New York Times, Jason Oxman, the president of the Information Technology Industry Council, a group representing tech companies, asked Congress to step in and use its authority to overturn the action if the Trump administration did not.

John Neuffer, the president of the Semiconductor Industry Association, said his group was “deeply disappointed that a policy shift of this magnitude and impact is being rushed out the door days before a presidential transition and without any meaningful input from industry.”

“The stakes are high, and the timing is fraught,” Mr. Neuffer added.

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The rules, which run more than 200 pages, also set up a system in which companies that operate data centers, like Microsoft and Google, can apply for special government accreditations.

In return for following certain security standards, these companies can then trade in A.I. chips more freely around the globe. The companies will still have to agree to keep 75 percent of their total A.I. computing power within the United States or allied countries, and to locate no more than 7 percent of their computing power in any single other nation.

The rules also set up the first controls on weights for A.I. models, the parameters unique to each model that determine how artificial intelligence makes its predictions. Companies setting up data centers abroad will be required to adopt security standards to protect this intellectual property and prevent adversaries from gaining access to them.

Governments facing restrictions can raise the number of A.I. chips they can import freely by signing agreements with the U.S. government, in which they would agree to align with U.S. goals for protecting A.I.

Under the guidance of the U.S. government, Microsoft struck an agreement to partner with an Emirati firm, G42, last year, in return for G42 eliminating Huawei equipment from its systems and taking other steps.

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The Biden administration could issue more rules related to chips and A.I. in the coming days, including an executive order to encourage domestic energy generation for data centers, and new rules that aim to keep the most cutting-edge chips out of China, people familiar with the deliberations said.

The latter rule comes in response to an incident last year in which U.S. officials discovered that Huawei, the sanctioned Chinese telecom firm, had been obtaining components for its A.I. chips that were manufactured by a leading Taiwanese chip firm, in violation of U.S. export controls.

The announcements are among a flurry of new regulations that the Biden administration is rushing to issue ahead of the presidential turnover as it tries to close loopholes and cement its legacy on countering China’s technological development. The administration has issued new limits on exports of chip-making equipment to China and other countries, proposed new restrictions on Chinese drones, added new Chinese companies to a military blacklist, and hurried to finalize new subsidies for U.S. chip manufacturing.

But the A.I. regulations issued Monday appear to be among the most sweeping and consequential of these actions. Artificial intelligence is quickly transforming how scientists carry out research, how companies allocate tasks between their employees and how militaries operate. While A.I. has many beneficial uses, U.S. officials have grown more concerned that it could enable the development of new weapons, help countries surveil dissidents and otherwise upend the global balance of power.

Jimmy Goodrich, a senior adviser for technology analysis at the RAND Corporation, said the rules would create a framework for protecting U.S. security interests while still allowing firms to compete abroad. “They are also forward-looking, trying to preserve U.S. and allied-led supply chains before they are offshored to the highest subsidy bidder,” he said.

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