Financial news

• Google parent company’s second-quarter earnings outpace expectations

  23-07-2024 23:13
  
  Alphabet reports $84.7bn in revenue, on back of Search and Cloud, up from the same period last yearGoogle’s parent company, Alphabet, outperformed analysts’ expectations on Tuesday, reporting second-quarter earnings of $1.89 per share, the same as its first quarter results.Alphabet’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, touted the results as proof that the company’s investments across different areas of its tech empire were seeing positive returns. Continue reading...
  
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• Meta launches open-source AI app ‘competitive’ with closed rivals

  23-07-2024 20:47
  Tech firm says its freely available and usable Llama 3.1 405B model is comparable with likes of OpenAI and AnthropicMeta has claimed that its new artificial intelligence model is the first open-source system that will rival products from competitors such as OpenAI and Anthropic.In a blogpost, the company said its new model, with the unwieldy name of Llama 3.1 405B, “is competitive” with others – including those from OpenAI and Anthropic – “across a range of tasks&rd
  
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• Fixed-rate mortgages below 4% back on sale in UK

  23-07-2024 20:12
  
  Brokers hope Nationwide’s mortgage deal is sign of ‘summer of savings’ for homebuyersFixed-rate mortgages priced below 4% are back on sale for homebuyers for the first time since February, with brokers hoping it is “a sign of things to come”.Nationwide Building Society said from Wednesday it would be cutting rates by up to 0.25 percentage points across its two-, three- and five-year fixed mortgage products. Continue reading...
  
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• Ireland’s datacentres overtake electricity use of all urban homes combined

  23-07-2024 17:21
  
  Statistics raise concerns that rise in demand for data processing driven by AI could derail climate targetsIreland’s energy-hungry datacentres consumed more electricity last year than all of its urban homes combined, according to official figures.The country’s growing fleet of datacentres used 21% of its electricity, an increase of a fifth on 2022, according to the Central Statistics Office. Continue reading...
  
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• West coast fares could rise to incentivise people ‘to not travel by rail’, UK watchdog says

  23-07-2024 15:48
  
  DfT told to look into lessening demand amid reduced capacity after HS2’s second leg axedThe axing of HS2’s second leg is likely to mean higher train fares on the west coast mainline from London to Manchester and beyond to reduce demand, according to a report from the government’s spending watchdog.Rishi Sunak cancelled work on the HS2 high speed railway north of Birmingham last September, citing spiralling costs, and promised to divert the £36bn budget to other transport
  
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• Amazon is moving heaven and earth to beat back unions – but it’s losing ground fast | Callum Cant

  23-07-2024 13:00
  The razor-thin margin of defeat at a Coventry warehouse shows the global pressure for recognition is reaching a tipping pointCallum Cant is a sociologist of work and author of Feeding the MachineIt was 6am and raining hard when I arrived at the picket line outside Amazon’s Coventry warehouse. Despite the weather, hundreds of workers were gathering on either side of the road in an industrial estate on the city’s outskirts. When I chatted to them, they told hopeful stories of how a pay
  
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• TechScape: Why CrowdStrike-style chaos is here to stay

  23-07-2024 12:37
  
  Countless theories for the cybersecurity firm’s outage are flying around, but whatever the reason, this sort of thing is likely to happen again • Don’t get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article here“Where did CrowdStrike go wrong” is, if anything, a slightly overdetermined question.We can work backwards. Pushing an update to every single computer on your network at the same time means that by the time you discover a problem, it’s too l
  
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• Parking to passports: how to check holiday costs and ensure entry into EU

  23-07-2024 08:00
  
  Compare prices for official and off-site airport parking, and make sure your passport is still valid for travelInsurance, pets and phones: how to get the best deal on holiday costsThe UK has some of the highest airport parking charges in the world. However, you can reduce the eye-watering bill by booking ahead, and, often, going away from the airport site. Try the Purple Parking comparison website to find the cheapest deals – it covers all the UK airports, and offers a 15% discount for sig
  
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• Cheap Virgin Media O2 Volt broadband deal came at a high price

  23-07-2024 08:00
  
  I thought I’d closed my account but now three default notices are preventing me getting a mortgageA close relative is terminally ill and I urgently need to relocate to support them. However, my credit rating is preventing me getting a mortgage because O2 has registered three defaults. My account should have been closed in June 2023 when I cancelled my Virgin Media O2 Volt package, but O2 continued to issue bills for a further three months.I have repeatedly asked O2 to correct my credit fil
  
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• A whole new community on the site of a defunct power station near Erewash? Yes, please | Polly Toynbee

  23-07-2024 07:00
  
  Labour can unlock £70bn from the planning system and build new homes. Here in Derbyshire, some can’t wait to get startedWhen Keir Starmer promises that his new government will “bulldoze” through the planning system as “the builders not the blockers”, there is bound to be opposition from noisy nimbys – but not from planners keen for “change”.By nature idealists, planners talk of improving lives and environments, enthused by Labour’s prom
  
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• George Monbiot on the record jail terms given to Just Stop Oil activists – podcast

  23-07-2024 06:00
  
  Last week, five supporters of the Just Stop Oil climate campaign who conspired to cause gridlock on London’s orbital motorway were sentenced to lengthy jail terms by a judge who told them they had ‘crossed the line from concerned campaigner to fanatic’. Columnist and campaigner George Monbiot tells Ian Sample why the sentences are so significant, how they fit into a crackdown on protest in the UK in recent years, and what impact they could have on future climate activism in the
  
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• Martin Lewis shares three rules that can make a credit card 'more powerful' than debit

  23-07-2024 02:02 via express.co.uk
  
  Personal finance expert explained 'a credit card has two purposes' - but warned the trick isn't for everyone
  
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