Tech
Boeing Bids Farewell To An Icon, Delivers Last 747 Jumbo Jet
SEATTLE, Wash. — On Tuesday, Boeing said goodbye to an icon by delivering its final 747 jumbo jets in front of thousands of workers who helped build the planes over the past 55 years.
The giant yet graceful 747 has served as a cargo plane, a commercial aircraft capable of carrying nearly 500 passengers, a transport for NASA’s space shuttles, and the Air Force One presidential aircraft since its first flight in 1969. It transformed travel by connecting previously unconnected international cities and democratizing passenger flight.
However, over the last 15 years, Boeing and its European rival Airbus have introduced more profitable and fuel-efficient widebody planes with only two engines to maintain, as opposed to the 747′s four. The final plane is the 1,574th built by Boeing in Washington state’s Puget Sound region.
Thousands of workers joined Boeing and other industry executives from around the world — as well as actor and pilot John Travolta, who has flown 747s — Tuesday for a ceremony Boeing marking the delivery of the last 747 to cargo carrier Atlas Air at the company’s massive factory north of Seattle.
“If you love this business, you’ve been dreading this moment,” said Richard Aboulafia, a longtime aviation analyst. “Nobody wants a four-engine airliner anymore, but that doesn’t diminish the aircraft’s enormous contribution to the development of the industry or its remarkable legacy.”
More Than 50,000 Boeing Employees Worked On The Contract
After losing a massive military transport contract, the C-5A, Boeing set out to build the 747. The plan was to use the new engines developed for the transport — high-bypass turbofan engines that burned less fuel by passing air around the engine core, allowing for a longer flight range — for a newly imagined civilian aircraft.
More than 50,000 Boeing employees worked for less than 16 months to build the first 747, a Herculean effort that earned them the moniker “The Incredibles.” The construction of a massive factory in Everett, north of Seattle, required the construction of the world’s largest building by volume. The factory had yet to be finished when the first planes were completed.
Desi Evans, 92, was among those in attendance. He joined Boeing in 1957 at its factory in Renton, south of Seattle, and worked for the company for 38 years before retiring. His boss informed him in 1967 that he would join the 747 programs in Everett the following morning.
“They told me to wear rubber boots, a hard hat, and warm clothing because it’s a sea of mud,” Evans recalled. “And they were preparing for the factory’s construction.”
State Of The Art Technology
As a supervisor, he was in charge of figuring out how the passenger cabins would be put together. He also oversaw the crews that worked on sealing and painting the planes.
“It was an incredible time when that very first 747 rolled out,” he said as he stood in front of the last plane parked outside the factory. “You felt ecstatic as if you were making history. You’re a part of something big, and it’s still big even if this is the final installment.”
The plane’s fuselage measured 225 feet (68.5 meters), and the tail was as tall as a six-story building. The plane’s design included a second deck very important extending from the cockpit back over the first third of the plane, giving it a distinctive hump and inspiring a nickname, the Whale. The 747 was dubbed the “Queen of the Skies” in a more romantic sense.
Some airlines converted the second deck into a first-class cocktail lounge, and even the lower deck featured lounges or even a piano bar on occasion. One decommissioned 747, built-in 1976 for Singapore Airlines, has been converted into a 33-room hotel near Stockholm’s airport.
“It was the first big carrier, the first widebody, so it set a new standard for airlines to figure out what to do with it and how to fill it,” said Guillaume de Syon, an aviation Boeing and mobility expert at Pennsylvania’s Albright College. “It became the essence of mass air travel: You couldn’t fill it with people paying full price, so you need to lower prices to get people onboard. It contributed to the deregulation of air travel that occurred in the late 1970s.”
The first 747 entered service on Pan Am’s New York-London route in 1970, and its timing was terrible, according to Aboulafia. It debuted shortly before the 1973 oil crisis, during a recession that saw Boeing’s employment fall from 100,800 in 1967 to 38,690 in April 1971. The infamous “Boeing bust” was commemorated by a billboard near Seattle-Tacoma International Airport that read, “Will the last person leaving SEATTLE — Turn out the lights?”
Delta Was The Last To Use 747 For Flights
The 747-400 series, an updated model, arrived in the late 1980s and had much better timing, coinciding with the Asian economic boom of the early 1990s, according to Aboulafia. He remembered flying from Los Angeles to Hong Kong on a Cathay Pacific 747 as a twentysomething backpacker in 1991.
“Even people like me could travel to Asia,” Aboulafia explained. “Previously, you had to stop for fuel in Alaska or Hawaii, which was much more expensive. This was a no-brainer — and reasonably priced.”
Delta was the last U.S. airline to use the 747 for passenger flights, which ended in 2017, though some international carriers, including Lufthansa, continue to use it.
Carsten Spohr, CEO of Lufthansa, recalled flying in a 747 as a young exchange student and said that when he realized he’d be traveling to the West Coast of the United States for the event on Tuesday, there was only one way to go: first-class in the nose of a Lufthansa 747 from Frankfurt to San Francisco. He assured the audience that Lufthansa would continue to fly the 747 for many years.
“We just adore the airplane,” he explained.
Atlas Air ordered four 747-8 freighters early last year, with the final one decorated with an image of Joe Sutter, the engineer who oversaw the original design team for the 747, arriving on Tuesday. Atlas CEO John Dietrich referred to the 747 as the greatest air freighter, owing to its unique ability to load through the nose cone.
SOURCE – (AP)
(VOR News) – The most recent version of Meta AI, which was created by Mark Zuckerberg and is accessible on social media platforms that are under the authority of the business, is now capable of accomplishing a great deal more than you might have thought it was able to accomplish in the past.
You might have assumed that it was capable of accomplishing anything, but this is a considerable advance over that perception. It is possible that you did not believe that it would be able to complete this particular duty.
What are your thoughts on this?
TechCrunch reports that Meta’s AI-powered assistant has recently been upgraded with a plethora of improvements, one of which being the introduction of the new “Imagine Yourself” generative AI model.
Meta recently updated its assistant, so we made this update.
All members of the general public have access to this most recent update. This upgrade for the assistant was just recently implemented with the purpose of enhancing the functioning of the helper.
On the other hand, what precisely is the new AI model capable of doing, and how does it operate when it makes use of its capabilities?
“The new generative AI model in Meta AI is the driving force behind a new feature that enables the option to make attractive selfies,” TechCrunch reports.
“This new feature enables users to create selfies that are captivating.” In response to the introduction of the new functionality, this feature was developed. The function was developed, as indicated by the information that is presented here.
It is possible for the Imagine Yourself model to make use of an image of a specific person in order to accomplish the goal of delivering visuals of that person.
The phrase “Imagine me” followed by anything that is not regarded to be “not safe for work” (NSFW) is an example of a prompt that can be used to prompt the model. In addition to that, this prompt can be utilised to prompt the respective model.
Imagine Yourself is currently accessible in beta form; however, Meta has not revealed the data that was used to train this artificial intelligence model.
This is despite the fact that the beta version is currently available. This is in spite of the fact that the model was informed by the data throughout its training.
According to TechCrunch, the terms of service for the company make it abundantly clear that any public posts or images that are affiliated with its platforms are open to scrutiny by the general public. This has been stated in the company’s terms of service.
This Meta information was obtained from this source.
Furthermore, Meta AI is providing new editing tools that simplify the process of adding, removing, amending, or adjusting things by applying easy prompts.
These tools are included in the company’s offerings. The availability of these instruments will not be difficult. Within a short period of time, these tools will be made available for offline download.
Within the following month, a completely new button that will be referred to as “Edit with AI” will be introduced. More options for fine-tuning the editing process will be made available to you when you click this button. Users will have the ability to access this button within the system.
Additionally, Meta has announced that within the next few days, users will have access to new shortcuts that will enable them to contribute images generated by Meta AI to feeds, articles, and comments across all Meta applications.
This initiative is expected to take place within the next few days. By virtue of the fact that Meta AI will be able to produce these photographs, this will be feasible. The abbreviated form of these shortcuts will be available to users for their convenience.
SOURCE: GN
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(VOR News) – During the second quarter of the fiscal year 2024, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) recorded sales of $20.82 billion, which was higher than the estimates provided by analysts.
This is a forty percent improvement over the same time period the previous year. Over the same period of time in the previous year, the Taiwanese chipmaker posted earnings of NT$247.85 billion, which is equivalent to $7.6 billion.
This is a 36% increase. According to FactSet, analysts had expected that the company would take in a net income of NT$236.4 billion, which is equivalent to $7.3 billion, during the second quarter of 2024. This figure exceeded that forecast.
This represents a thirty percent increase when compared to the previous year, when the company declared a profit of eight hundred and eighteen billion NTD. This year, the share price of TSMC has climbed by almost 70 percent.
Apple relies on TSMC as a semiconductor manufacturer, and the company has an exclusive partnership with NVIDIA, a company that manufactures chips for artificial intelligence research and development.
Every consumer wants their electronic devices to be equipped with artificial intelligence capabilities, as stated by C.C. Wei, chief executive officer of TSMC.
The artificial intelligence market is currently dominated by TSMC.
I made this statement while I was having a discussion with analysts. He continued by stating that he anticipated that production will reach capacity by the year 2025 or 2026, but that supply would continue to be difficult to come by beyond then.
“I also attempted to achieve a balance between supply and demand, but I am unable to do so at this time,” he explained to reporters. As a result of the extremely high demand, I had to put in a lot of effort in order to fulfill the requirements of my clients.
The Taiwan-listed shares of the chipmaker experienced a decline of 2.43% by the time trading on Thursday came to a conclusion.
As a result of the demand from its customers, which include Apple and Nvidia, TSMC predicted in April that its revenues for the second quarter may increase by as much as thirty percent, which was a figure that exceeded the expectations.
In order to surpass the initial expectations, it increased its sales projections for the second quarter from $19.1 billion to between $19.6 billion and $20.4 billion between those two numbers.
In addition, TSMC made the announcement that it would continue to adhere to its plans to invest up to 32 billion dollars this year, the majority of which will be allocated to the development of innovative technology.
TSMC announced in June that their net revenue for the month of May increased to seven billion dollars, representing a thirty percent increase between the previous year and the current year.
The income of the company for the months of January through May climbed by 27% compared to the same period in the previous year.
This was despite a 2.7% decline from April for TSMC.
C.C. Wei, chairman and chief executive officer of TSMC, repeated past forecasts that the semiconductor industry, excluding the memory sector, will climb by 10% this year, with artificial intelligence being the primary driver of this growth.
Chip markets around the world, including those of TSMC, experienced a decline in the early hours of Wednesday as a result of comments made by former President Donald Trump that were critical of Taiwan and rumors that the administration of Vice President Joe Biden was purportedly considering imposing more stringent trade restrictions.
By the time the market closed, the shares of TSMC that are listed in Taiwan had experienced a decrease of 2.4%.
It has been claimed that the administration of Vice President Joe Biden is mulling over the idea of imposing an export embargo known as the foreign direct product rule on allies such as Japan and the Netherlands in the event that these countries continue to provide China advanced chipmaking technology.
SOURCE: QZ
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(VOR News) – On Thursday, shares of Nokia, a Finnish telecom business, dropped after the company disclosed a decline in its operational profit for the second quarter that was around 32 percent lower than the previous quarter.
We were able to attribute this reduction to the fact that there was a dearth of demand for the 5G equipment that Nokia was producing.
By the time the market opened at nine o’clock London time, the stock of the business that is listed in Helsinki had already experienced a decline of eight percent.
Today, Nokia reported a comparable operating profit of $462 million.
This value was reported by the company. When compared Nokia to the 619 million euros that were recorded for the same period of time in the previous year, this implies a loss of roughly a third more than what was stated.
Data provided by LSEG indicates that the firm reported a decline in its net sales of 18%, bringing the total to 4.47 billion euros.
This Nokia represents the lowest level of net sales attained since the fourth quarter of 2015. This decline was attributed to “ongoing market weakness” by the corporation at the time of the decline.
“The most significant impact was the challenging comparison period from the previous year, which saw the peak of India’s rapid 5G deployment, with India accounting for three quarters of the decline,” Mr. Pekka Lundmark, CEO of Nokia, remarked in the announcement of the results. “The most significant impact was the challenging comparison period.”
Continuing along the same lines, he emphasized that the landscape in the mobile networks business continues to be “challenging as operators continue to be cautious.”
In spite of this, Nokia forecasts that the business situation will become “stabilizing” and that there will be a “significant acceleration in net sales growth in the second half” of the year. The order intake that was seen in the most recent quarter served as the basis for these forecasts.
According to the company’s CEO, “though the dynamic is showing signs of improvement, the recovery of net sales is occurring somewhat later than we had anticipated, which will have an effect on our business group’s net sales assumptions for the year 2024.”
Despite the fact that this has taken place, we are still well on our approach to fulfilling our full-year target, which is further supported by the early action that we have taken addressing cost.
The business continues to strive for a result that is either near to or slightly below the midpoint of its comparable operating profit prediction for the entire year, which ranges from 2.3 billion to 2.9 billion euros.
Nokia’s founders set this goal for the company.
AT&T, the largest telecommunications company in the United States, made the decision to select Ericsson as the provider for the construction of a telecom network that is completely based on a technology known as ORAN at the end of the previous year.
A severe blow was handed to Nokia by this decision, as the company had previously been awarded a significant contract in the North American market.
Both the Finnish company and its Swedish competitor, Ericsson, have initiated strong cost-cutting initiatives in the midst of an industry-wide fight against a slowing economy and infrastructure expenditure cuts from mobile carriers. Ericsson is a Swedish company that competes with the Finnish company.
The revelation that Nokia will be cutting off as many as 14,000 employees came in October, following the company’s realization that it had experienced a major decline in profitability during the third quarter.
By the year 2026, the company intends to achieve a reduction in its gross expenses of between 800 million and 1.2 billion euros within the time frame.
The business made the announcement on Thursday that it had made “significant progress” on its entire cost reduction program and that it had implemented actions with the goal of cutting expenses by a total of 400 million euros up to this time.
SOURCE: CNBC
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