Business

Back to the Office

Employees must’ve been spending too much time on TikTok

Amazon is typically the one making deliveries to people’s homes. However, this time, they’re attempting to deliver their employees back to work from their homes… full time. 

In case that wasn’t clear enough: Amazon will be forcing its employees to work in the office five days a week now, beginning in January. Flex Index analyzed office requirements for more than 9,000 companies (who collectively employ more than 100 million people) and found that around half of U.S. firms had asked workers to return to the office in January.

This, plus Amazon now, sound like troubling trends. Is your company going to force you to return to the office too?

Well, the good news is… of those ~4,500 companies that required employees to return, only a third have kept the strict five-day in-office mandate in place in the months since. Currently, 37% of employers offer hybrid working, which is up from 20% last year. 69% of employers offer some flexibility over where their employees work, which is up from 50% a year ago.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said this decision is about “being better set up to invent, collaborate, and be connected enough to each other and our culture to deliver the absolute best for customers and the business.” Amazon is currently requiring their employees to work three days a week in the office.

And he’s not alone in this thought process. A new survey of business leaders revealed that 80% of U.S. CEOs envision their employees will be working in the office five days a week within the next three years, according to KPMG. That number was 37% earlier this year.

Amazon might also be looking to buy TikTok, following their latest partnership. As part of Amazon’s “Project Handshake”, they have teamed with TikTok to allow users to link their TikTok accounts with their Amazon profiles, enabling them to shop directly from TikTok without having to leave the app (a dangerous convenience!). Project Handshake is Amazon’s attempt to merge social media with ecommerce. The next natural step might be to buy said social media app.

Around the Water Cooler:

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Tech

You’re Messages Are About to be A Lot Safer

The GSM Association, which is the organization that is responsible for developing the Rich Communication Services standard, announced Tuesday that it's working to implement end-to-end encryption for messages sent between Android and iPhone devices. However, no timeline has been given yet.

This announcement comes after Apple’s recent adoption of RCS, with the launch of iOS 18, which replaced SMS with RCS messaging for texts sent to Android users. RCS brings with it the ability to send high-resolution photos, read receipts and typing indicators - just like in iMessage. However, it does lack end-to-end encryption, which is certainly a security concern.

Not all RCS providers offer end-to-end encryption, however Google Messages is an exception, as they added it last year. So it can be done. The implementation of end-to-end-encryption for these cross-platform messages would prevent message services or cell carriers from viewing the content of these messages, as well as state surveillance.   

These moves are aimed towards bridging the gap between the two messaging/phone services, so you won’t have to kick Android users out of your group chats anymore! 

GSMA technical director Tom Van Pelt said that the next milestone for ‌RCS‌ Universal Profile is the "first deployment of standardized, interoperable messaging encryption between different computing platforms."

What’s the Latest:

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Politics

Kamala Going For the Latino Vote

In the swing states, she makes her push.

With election day now just 47 days away, Vice President Kamala Harris is targeting the Hispanic vote in an attempt to sway the all-important swing states (Pennsylvania, Nevada, Arizona). 

The Latino vote is credited as a big reason why President Joe Biden was able to win the 2020 election. And yet, according to a recent poll, 55% of Latino voters nationwide said they have not been contacted by either campaign. Seems like a big missed opportunity for both Harris and former president Donald Trump.

Though, apparently, an even bigger miss for Harris - who has held fewer events focused on the Latino voter than Trump. In response, the Harris campaign has now spent $3 million on spanish-language radio ads, as well as starting a WhatsApp channel. They also began a campaign for Hispanic Heritage Month, which runs from September 15th to October 15th, and will campaign at Mexican-boxer Canelo Alvarez fights. 

Pennsylvania is one of these all-important swing states and currently the home to 600,000 Latino voters. But 49% of them said, in the aforementioned poll, that they haven’t been contacted by either side yet. 

This whole aspect of campaigning is filled with the phoniness that comes with politics. There will be more outreach over the next month in an attempt to help win the election. But notice how that outreach doesn’t occur during the other months of the term or campaign? Only when it can assist the politician - not the other way around. Like a one way road.

What did JFK say? Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country?

Anywho… Harris is playing catch up after Joe Biden suffered a steep decline in Latino voter support during his term. Biden went from 65% support to 55%, with that 10% moving to Trump’s side. And that demographic might play an even larger role in this election, as there are now 36.2 million Hispanics eligible to vote, which is 3.9 million more than 2020.

Around the Hill:

❌ Teamsters decline to endorse Harris or Trump.

👨‍🍳 Joe Rogan give the Harris campaign a “chefs kiss”.

Finance

Rate Cuts Are Finally Here

How much can we expect, and is there more?

The day finally arrived. The Federal Reserve announced a decision yesterday to cut interest rates 0.5%. There are also expectations of additional cuts through 2026. The timing was not a huge surprise, but the size of the cut might have been to some, as 0.5% is higher than many had forecasted.

With the news, the updated September FOMC median forecast of interest rates was lowered to 4.4% for the end of 2024, 3.4% for the end of 2025 and 2.9% for the end of 2026 (it’s currently sitting just below 5%). So there might be more good news in the years ahead, as this was the first cut in more than four years (March of 2020 - the start of the pandemic).

From the Street:

💵 Rate Cuts Big Effect on the S&P 500.

📈 Intuitive Machines stock jumps by 40%.

World News

Historical Patterns Point to Conflict

WWIII incoming, we hope not…

When a rising power attacks a ruling power, the result is typically bloodshed, in the form of war. In fact, this has been the case in 12 of the last 16 instances, spanning the past 500 years. 

It’s called The Thucydides Trap, named after the Greek historian and military general. Which stems from his thought that the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta in 431 BC was inevitable, because of the Spartans’ fear of the growth of the Athenian power. And when it’s led to war, it’s usually been a bad result for all parties involved. 

In the rare instances in which it did not lead to war, it required painful adjustments in attitudes and actions from both sides instead. The concern is, could we be heading in this direction again, with rising powers like China, Russia and Iran threatening the ruling power (the U.S.)?

Apparently Russia and China are now ramping up joint military drills. So, just something to keep in mind…

Around the Globe:

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Entertainment

Diddy Get’s Raided By The Feds

Who needs that much baby oil…

The moment everyone had been waiting for… Sean “P Diddy” Combs was finally arrested Monday night in New York City. Combs was seen enjoying what might be his last hours of freedom in Central Park during Monday afternoon. He had flown to NYC two weeks ago at the suggestion of his lawyer, while awaiting his arrest. His lawyers said this was to cooperate with the investigation and to turn himself in (right…).

The 54-year-old Combs was charged with racketeering, sex trafficking and transportation to engage in prostitution. As the accusations go, he would hold many “freak offs” at his homes, where he would fly in commercial sex workers for a multi-day event of drugs and debauchery, sending everyone home with IV bags after the event. He also, allegedly, recorded these events (unbeknownst to the victims), after coercing people to perform degrading sexual acts, as a form of blackmail. 

Bags of pink powder were found in Combs’ hotel room, which authorities said were similar to the bags they found at his properties that had tested positive for drugs, such as ecstasy. They also found “freak off supplies” during those raids of his homes, which included 1,000+ bottles of baby oil and lubricant. 

Apparently, P. Diddy really took that “Bad Boy for Life” mantra seriously.

Despite offering up a bond package of $50 million, which included the passports of his daughters and mother, the equity of the home of his mother’s condo in Florida, and home detention with GPS monitoring, Combs was still denied bail (Combs net worth, FYI, is $400 million, according to Forbes estimates). Combs had already surrendered his own passport to his attorneys in April. 

“Sean Combs has never evaded, avoided, eluded or run from a challenge in his life. He will not start now,” his lawyer said in a letter to a judge on Tuesday, following the arrest. “As he has handled every hardship, he will meet this case head-on, he will work hard to defend himself, and he will prevail.”

Combs has denied any wrongdoing throughout this entire process, despite a plethora of lawsuits being thrown at him, including one as recent as last week, accusing him of sexual assault. 

Combs’ lawyer said P. Diddy is not like R. Kelly - “This is different,” he told the court. “These were consenting adults.” His lawyer also added that P. Diddy is only guilty of cheating, not sex trafficking. Still, the P.Diddy/R.Kelly memes have been great.

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