AmbiguousProps

Amazon reported fourth-quarter earnings slightly below Wall Street estimates even as sales surged and it reported the fastest growth in its prominent cloud computing business in 13 quarters.

The Seattle-based online behemoth on Thursday reported net income of $21.2 billion, or $1.95 per share, for the three-month period ended Dec. 31. That compares with $20 billion, or $1.86 per share, in the year-ago quarter.

Revenue rose 14% to $213.4 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with $187.8 billion in the year-ago period.

Analysts were expecting $1.97 per share on sales of $211.4 billion, according to analysts polled by FactSet.

Revenue from its cloud service arm called Amazon Web Services increased 24% to $35.6 billion. Analysts were expecting $34.9 billion.

Amazon said it plans to increase capital spending to $200 billion this year from $125 billion as it sees opportunities in artificial intelligence, robots, semiconductors and satellites, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in a press release. Wall Street analysts were expecting spending to rise to around $147 billion, according to FactSet.

(in households with multiple people)

About 4 in 10 U.S. adults named health care or health issues in an open-ended question that asked respondents to share up to five issues they want the government to work on in the coming year. That’s up from about one-third last year.

The high cost of health care came as a shock to Republican Joshua Campbell when he and his wife recently sought a medical plan for their young daughter. The 38-year-old small business owner from Hot Springs Village, Arkansas, voted for Trump last year, and he mostly approves of the way Trump is handling his job, particularly on immigration. But health care expenses have become a major priority for him going into 2026.

“Health care costs are pretty crazy,” he said. “I just thought, ‘Man, there’s got to be something better than what we have.’”

Health care is a particularly high concern for adults between the ages of 45 and 59 — people who may have higher health care costs than younger adults but aren’t yet eligible for Medicare.

The poll shows a similar landscape to the one Trump faced at the end of his first year in office during his first term, when health care reform was at the top of many Americans’ minds. But Trump has an added complication now. At the end of 2017, very few mentioned cost of living concerns — now, about one-third do.

Campbell described his politics as conservative, and while he recalled viewing the Affordable Care Act somewhat negatively when it first passed, he said he now views it as a step toward helping improve health care.

“I do think they were at least trying, and at least trying to do something,” he said. “And I don’t really see that — it’s one of the things from the Republican Party as well that I don’t necessarily agree with. Or I think that they should be doing better at.” Cost and inflation concerns remain pressing

Inflation and the high cost of living have been a top priority for many Americans since the end of 2021. Tommy Carosone is reminded every time his wife returns from the grocery store, especially with their two kids, both teenagers, still at home.

“My wife is spending so much more money on groceries than just a few years ago. Every time she comes home from the grocery store, I hear about it,” said Carosone, from St. Peter’s, Missouri. “She tells me it’s stupid expensive, especially meat. Ground beef, bacon, anything from the deli. It’s outrageous.”

The 44-year-old jet aircraft mechanic, the sole wage earner for his family of four, doesn’t see the cost of living coming down any time soon. He voted for Trump and generally agrees with his tariff agenda as a way to make the U.S. more competitive, and he figures prices will stay higher until the trade war ends.

“In the meantime, what are you going to do, not eat?” he said.

Carosone said he is glad he voted for Trump and had been concerned before Trump took office again about illegal immigration. But it doesn’t register even as a top priority for him now, in light of action the administration is taking.

“It’s a lot better,” he said. “It’s not really one of the main concerns I have now. I mean, don’t stop. That’s for sure. But I don’t think it’s something that’s a top concern.”

About 2 in 10 U.S. adults want the federal government to focus on housing costs next year. That issue has been rising in recent years, with young adults being especially likely to mention it. About one-quarter of adults under age 30 want the government to focus on housing expenses, compared with about 1 in 10 of those 60 or older.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/42655760

Thousands of demonstrators gathered in the western German city of Giessen on Saturday as the far-right Alternative for Germany’s new youth organization was set to kick off its founding convention.

Groups of protesters blocked or tried to block roads in and around the city of some 93,000 people in the early morning. Police said they used pepper spray after stones were thrown at officers at one location.

The new youth organization of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany, or AfD, is to be set up in a meeting at Giessen’s convention center. Its predecessor, the Young Alternative — a largely autonomous group with relatively loose links to the party — was dissolved at the end of March after AfD decided to formally cut ties with it.

More in the article.

Police in Hong Kong arrested three men on suspicion of manslaughter, several local news media reported, in connection with a blaze that has killed at least 36 people and left another 279 missing in the city’s deadliest fire in years.

Hundreds of residents were evacuated as the fire which started on Wednesday afternoon, spread across seven of the eight high-rise apartment buildings in a housing complex in Tai Po district, a suburb in the New Territories. At least 29 others remained hospitalized. Bright flames and smoke shot out of windows as night fell.

Authorities said earlier that investigators would be looking into factors including whether material on the exterior walls of high-rise buildings met fire resistance standards, as the rapid spread of the fire was unusual.

Officials said the fire started on the external scaffolding of one of the buildings, a 32-storey tower, and later spread to inside the building and then to nearby buildings, likely aided by windy conditions.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.today/post/42209343

When Russians look back at 2025, they might remember it as the year when the government took even tighter control of the internet.

Credit cards that won’t buy a ticket on public transport. ATMs that don’t connect to a network. Messaging apps that are down. Cellphones that don’t receive texts or data after a trip abroad. Mothers of diabetic children even complain with alarm that they can’t monitor their kids’ blood glucose levels during outages.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/38929150

Overview here

https://forum.syncthing.net/t/does-anyone-know-why-syncthing-fork-is-no-longer-available-on-github/25661/39

The new owner of the repo has a fresh github account and apparently has the signing keys from Catfriend1 too.

Time will tell if they are trustworthy, but for the extra paranoid it might make sense to pause updates for a while.

The new repo has two releases in it now. GitHub is silently redirecting to the new repo, even in Obtainium, meaning it's possible that if you had this previously installed via Obtainium and updated now, you may have apks installed that may or may not contain the changes in the repo.

This is a mess. I deleted the repo from Obtainium (luckily I don't auto install updates) and will wait to see what happens over the next few months. Might just save my notes in a network share instead of using syncthing from my phone. Idk, notes are all that I was using it for.

In this edition, a libertarian who voted for Trump is surprised that Trump is going after Thomas Massie and Rand Paul.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/37968628

Amazon is preparing to lay off tens of thousands of corporate workers, reversing its pandemic hiring spree. The cuts come months after the retail giant’s CEO warned white-collar employees their jobs could be taken by artificial intelligence.

I'm sure the tRump slump has nothing to do with it

Wildland fire veterans are seething at a claim made by federal officials that two crews raided by immigration agents at the scene of a wildfire in Washington state were “NOT firefighters.”

Many political figures and media outlets have repeated the claim, even though public documents show the crews have firefighting classifications and were assigned to key frontline roles battling the blaze.

“Everybody in the profession sees through it, but the public doesn’t and that’s concerning,” said Riva Duncan, a former wildland fire chief who served more than 30 years with the U.S. Forest Service. “It’s a lie. Everybody I’ve talked to is very upset about it. It does not just those two crews a disservice, but it does all firefighters a disservice.”

Duncan also serves as vice president of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of wildfire professionals.

Last week, federal immigration officials staged a raid at the site of the Bear Gulch fire in Washington, the largest active wildfire in the state. Agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection questioned two crews, totaling 44 members, and arrested two firefighters who they said were in the country illegally.

But the facts clearly show that the crews were firefighters. In planning documents drafted by the management team overseeing the fire and posted to a public federal database, the crew from contracting company ASI Arden Solutions, Inc., is listed as a “CR2I” crew. That’s shorthand for a Type II Initial Attack wildland firefighting crew.

“They’re just one level below a hotshot crew,” Duncan said. “[Saying they’re not firefighters] is incredibly insulting to them.”

The other crew, from contracting company Table Rock Forestry, Inc., is listed as a “CRW2,” short for a Type II wildland firefighting hand crew. That means both crews were certified under National Wildfire Coordinating Group standards as firefighters who met rigorous qualifications and held “red cards” verifying their status to fight fire.

Additionally, the documents show that both crews were assigned to active firefighting roles in the days leading up to the raid. The crews were tasked with securing the fire edge, protecting structures, constructing fire lines and addressing hazards caused by the initial suppression work.

Many wildfire veterans who have served in similar roles privately expressed anger that the crew’s status was called into question because they had been assigned to cut firewood on the day of the raid. That frustration is heightened by the widespread belief, shared by many fire professionals, that the crews were given that assignment under false pretenses to lead them into contact with federal immigration agents.

“They were doing suppression work, and it was only when they were reassigned that day [that they were raided],” Duncan said. “To paint this picture that they would never do that to actual firefighters, it’s total spin.”

More in the article.

Archive link

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/22132981