Image:ShutterstockECの巨人と言われたAmazon。その力をリアル店舗で発揮することは叶いませんでした。米Amazonが、アメリカ現地時間27日（火）にブログを更新。Amazonのスーパーマーケット「AmazonFresh」、自動化コンビニの「AmazonGo」を閉店することを発表しました。現在、アメリカにある58店舗の「AmazonFresh」、14店舗の「AmazonGo」は

Amazon announced on Wednesday that it is eliminating approximately 16,000 roles across the company as part of organizational changes that began in October 2025 and are only now being finalized by certain teams. Senior Vice President Beth Galetti shared the news in a memo to employees, framing the reductions as an effort to reduce layers, increase ownership, and remove bureaucracy. The memo follows another memo that the company accidentally sent to employees.

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alternative_right shares a report from Phys.org: New findings from NASA's Perseverance rover have revealed evidence of wave-formed beaches and rocks altered by subsurface water in a Martian crater that once held a vast lake -- considerably expanding the timeline for potential habitability at this ancient site. In an international study led by Imperial College London, researchers uncovered that the so-called 'Margin unit' in Mars's Jezero crater preserves evidence of extensive underground interactions between rock and water, as well as the first definitive traces of an ancient shoreline. These are compelling indicators that habitable, surface water conditions persisted in the crater (home to a large lake around 3.5 billion years ago) further back in time than previously thought. "Shorelines are habitable environments on Earth, and the carbonate minerals that form here can naturally seal in and preserve information about the ancient environment," said lead author Alex Jones, a Ph.D. researcher in the Department of Earth Science and Engineering (ESE) at Imperial. The findings have been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

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Amazon appears to have prematurely acknowledged layoffs inside AWS after an internal email referencing "organizational changes" and "impacted colleagues" was mistakenly sent to cloud employees. CNBC reports: "Changes like this are hard on everyone," Colleen Aubrey, senior vice president of applied AI solutions at Amazon Web Services, wrote in an email viewed by CNBC. "These decisions are difficult and are made thoughtfully as we position our organization and AWS for future success." The note also references a post from Amazon's HR boss Beth Galetti and said the company notified "impacted colleagues in our organization." The subject of the email mentions "Project Dawn," and the email says it was "canceled," possibly indicating it was recalled by the sender after the fact. It's unclear what Project Dawn refers to. The job cuts come after Amazon announced in October that it would lay off 14,000 corporate employees. At the time, the company indicated the cuts would continue in 2026 as it found "additional places we can remove layers." Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said the layoffs were meant to reduce management layers and bureaucracy inside the company. He also predicted last June that efficiency gains from AI would shrink Amazon's corporate staff in the coming years.

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Apple quietly released its first update to iOS 12 since 2023 to keep iMessage, FaceTime, and device activation working on older hardware through January 2027. The update applies to legacy devices like the iPhone 5S, iPhone 6/6 Plus, and 2013-era iPads. Macworld reports: The update appears to be related to a specific issue. According to Apple's "About iOS 12 Updates" page, iOS 12.5.78 "extends the certificate required by features such as iMessage, FaceTime, and device activation to continue working after January 2027." Meanwhile, the iOS 16 update says it "provides important bug fixes and is recommended for all users." When iOS 13 arrived, it dropped compatibility for the iPhone 5S, iPhone 6, and iPhone 6 Plus, as well as the 2013 iPad Air and iPad Mini 3, so users of those phones should specifically take note. To update to the latest version, head over to the Settings app, then General and Software Update, and follow the instructions. Further reading: Apple Launches AirTag 2 With Improved Range, Louder Speaker

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“闘う” をコンセプトに活動するガールズグループ・NEO JAPONISM（ネオジャポニズム／略称：ネオジャポ）が1月19日、都内にて「新メンバー入団記者会見」を行い、本多ともはが新メンバーとして加入することを発表した。新メンバー...続きを読む

Amazon is closing all of its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh physical stores in a shift to focus on its online same-day delivery service and new big-box retail stores. From a report: The e-commerce giant said Tuesday that some of its shuttered Amazon-branded brick-and-mortar stores would be converted into Whole Foods Market locations. Amazon said its branded stores failed to deliver the right economic model and distinctive customer experience necessary for large-scale expansion. Amazon's same-day delivery service for groceries is currently available in more than 5,000 U.S. cities and towns. The company said it plans to expand the service to more communities in 2026 but didn't specify where. Amazon said it planned to open over 100 new Whole Foods Market stores over the next few years.

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Samsung said today that its Galaxy Z TriFold, the first tri-fold smartphone to ship in the U.S., will be available starting January 30 at a price point of $2,899 -- substantially more expensive than any other phone on the U.S. market, including Samsung's own $2,000 Galaxy Z Fold 7 and a fully loaded 2TB iPhone 17 Pro Max. The company will only sell the device through its website and Samsung Experience Stores; mobile carrier partners including Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T won't be offering it directly. The TriFold unfolds into a 10-inch tablet, measures 3.9mm at its thinnest point, and is rated for 200,000 folds over its lifetime. Samsung launched the TriFold in South Korea on December 12 at 3.59 million won, about $2,450 at the time. Early reviews have praised the expansive inner screen for video but noted the 309-gram weight, thick folded dimensions, and half-baked software as significant drawbacks.

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Court documents unsealed last week in a copyright lawsuit against Anthropic reveal that the AI company ran an operation called "Project Panama" to buy millions of physical books, slice off their spines, scan the pages to train its Claude chatbot, and then send the remains to recycling companies. The company spent tens of millions of dollars on the effort and hired Tom Turvey, a Google executive who had worked on the legally contested Google Books project two decades earlier. Anthropic bought books in batches of tens of thousands from retailers including Better World Books and World of Books. A vendor document noted the company was seeking to scan between 500,000 and two million books. Before Project Panama, Anthropic co-founder Ben Mann downloaded books from LibGen, a shadow library of pirated material, over 11 days in June 2021. He later shared a link to the Pirate Library Mirror site with colleagues, writing "this is awesome!!!" Meta employees similarly downloaded books from torrent platforms after approval from Mark Zuckerberg, court filings allege, though one engineer wrote that "torrenting from a corporate laptop doesn't feel right." Anthropic settled for $1.5 billion in August without admitting wrongdoing.

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Photo：BusinessInsiderBrandStudio「4mの高さから落としても大丈夫です」アメリカ・ラスベガスで聞いたこの言葉。堅牢性の高いスマホやPCの話と思いきや、スマホケースメーカー・TORRAS（トラス）の担当者によるものです。物価高や円安、そして今後はメモリー高騰の影響を受けて、スマートフォンの価格も高止まりしています。今使っているもしくはこれから買うスマホは長く使いたいもの

Image:PhotoAgency/Shutterstock.comさすがにサービス停止まではないだろうと思うけど～。生成AIの業界リーダーとして、不動の地位を築いてきた感さえあるOpenAIのChatGPT。ところが、このところGoogle（グーグル）のGeminiに追い上げられて危機感を覚え、なんとかリードを保とうと必死の様相を呈しているといった指摘があったりしました。OpenAI、もしかする

An anonymous reader shares a report: Video game developer and distributor Valve must face a 656 million-pound ($897.7 million) lawsuit in Britain, which alleges it charged publishers excessive commissions for its Steam online store, after a tribunal ruled on Monday the case could continue. Valve was sued in 2024 on behalf of up to 14 million people in the United Kingdom who bought games or additional content through Steam or other platforms since 2018. Lawyers representing children's welfare advocate Vicki Shotbolt, who is bringing the case, allege Valve prevents publishers selling products more cheaply or earlier on rival platforms to Steam by imposing conditions on them. They say Valve requires users to buy all additional content through Steam if they've bought that game through the platform, effectively "locking in" users to make purchases on its platform. This allows Valve to charge "unfair and excessive" commissions of up to 30%, Shotbolt's lawyers said at a hearing in October.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: An insider who correctly leaked information about Oblivion: Remastered and other titles is warning that GTA 6's physical release could be pushed back. GTA 6 is set to finally launch on November 19, 2026, but fans hoping to get their hands on a physical copy could be stuck waiting even longer. According to a report from Polish site PPE, insider Graczdari says Rockstar's parent company, Take-Two, isn't planning to release a physical edition of GTA 6 at launch. "We are getting more and more information that the box version will not be released simultaneously with the digital version to prevent leaks," the report says.

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The independent coffee shops and quirky boutiques that make neighborhoods like Hayes Valley in San Francisco or Williamsburg in Brooklyn desirable are caught in a frustrating economic trap: they create value that ends up in the pockets of nearby homeowners rather than their own cash registers. An essay in Works in Progress magazine argues that when an interesting new store or restaurant opens, commercial and residential property values rise in the surrounding area, but the retailer itself captures only a fraction of that value through its actual sales. Almost half of stores in one San Francisco shopping district shuttered within four years even as the neighborhood thrived and rents climbed. The authors propose several fixes drawn from historical and international practice. Shopping malls and mixed-use developments solve this through unified ownership, allowing a single entity to cross-subsidize interesting tenants. Hong Kong's Mass Transit Railway buys land around new stations before building begins, making it one of the few profitable transit systems in the world. Business Improvement Districts let businesses tax themselves for shared amenities, though they currently don't capture value that spills over to nearby residents. The essay suggests creating hybrid institutions -- something between homeowners' associations and business improvement districts -- that could levy hyperlocal taxes to keep valued retail alive.

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Saudi Arabia is preparing to significantly scale back Neom, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's flagship development that sprawls across a Belgium-sized stretch of Red Sea coastline and was once billed as the world's largest construction site. Financial Times is reporting that Prince Mohammed, who chairs the project, now envisions something "far smaller" as a year-long review nears completion. The Line, a futuristic 170-kilometer linear city that served as Neom's centerpiece, will be radically reimagined as a result, the report added. Architects are already working on a more modest design that would repurpose infrastructure built over the past few years. Neom could pivot toward becoming a data center hub, taking advantage of seawater cooling from its coastal location as Saudi Arabia pushes to become a leading AI player. The Trojena ski resort is also being downsized and will no longer host the 2029 Asian Winter Games as originally planned. Construction largely stalled after longtime CEO Nadhmi al-Nasr abruptly departed in November 2024.

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The video game industry is experiencing something that most consumer-facing businesses would consider remarkable: organized online campaigns from players are actually forcing studios to cancel projects or publicly walk back any association with AI-generated content. Running With Scissors, the publisher behind the Postal shooter franchise, recently scrapped a title after players accused its trailer of containing AI-generated graphics. Goonswarm Games, the developer behind the canceled project, subsequently shut down entirely and cited six years of lost work alongside what it described as a flood of threats and accusations. Sandfall Interactive's "Obscur: Expedition 33" had its Indie Game Awards Game of the Year honor rescinded after the developer said it had considered AI-generated images, even though the final release contained none. Larian Studios, the developer behind Baldur's Gate 3, faced immediate backlash after CEO Swen Vincke mentioned in an interview that the company was using generative AI to "explore ideas" for an upcoming release. Vincke later clarified on X that artists use AI only for reference images the way they would use "art books or Google," and Larian executives eventually stated on Reddit that AI would play no role in final artwork.

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Appleの現上級副社長ジョン・ターナス氏Image:Apple近く退任が噂されるAppleのティム・クックCEO。次のCEOは誰なのか世界が注目するなか、有力視されているのはジョン・ターナス氏。現在、Appleでハードウェアエンジニアリング担当上級副社長を務めています。Bloombergの報道によれば、ターナス氏は、近々、ハードウェアエンジニアリング部門から手を広げ、ハードのデザイン関連も部門内