Ai Faner's early report reading

• Alphabet is laying off employees, and the CEO is taking bonus equity
• World faces worst rice shortage in 20 years
• Xiaomi responds to Indian court's rejection of asset unfreezing application
• Cheap price: School Chromebooks are starting to break
• Sony Interactive Entertainment acquires new game studio
• Why is the starship exploding in the air, but the employees are cheering?
• China Aerospace Releases Three Commercial Liquid Rocket Engines
• Many Apple products may switch to OLED screens in 2027
• The new Mac Studio will be postponed
• Pixel Fold real machine exposure
• It is rumored that iOS 17 will come with native diary apps
• Following the closure of the store, Hutouju’s e-commerce also stopped
• Shanghai's fourth Blue Bottle coffee shop opens next week
• Zendaya Appointed as Louis Vuitton Global Ambassador
• "Slam Dunk" domestic box office breaks 300 million
• "Saint Seiya" live-action version exposed the official poster
• The new chapter of "12 Nights" "12 Days" will be launched next week

Alphabet is laying off employees, and the CEO is taking bonus equity

• Alphabet's CEO paid $226 million in total compensation last year, including stock awards worth $218 million.
• Alphabet is in the midst of major layoffs, and employees in many places have gone on strike due to layoff disputes.
• In order to cut expenses, Google secretly stopped the construction of the new campus.

According to securities documents submitted by Alphabet, Google's parent company, its CEO Sundar Pichai's total compensation in 2022 will be as high as $226 million, which is more than 800 times the median employee salary. This includes a three-year stock award of approximately $218 million.

The year before, Pichai received no stock awards and was paid $6.3 million.

At the same time, Alphabet is laying off employees around the world: In January this year, it announced that it would lay off 12,000 people, equivalent to 6% of its global workforce.

Earlier this month, hundreds of Google employees in the London office went on strike over the layoff controversy. Google employees in Zurich have also organized a similar strike.

The latest news also pointed out that in order to cut costs, Google also stopped the construction of a new 80-acre campus in San Jose, California, which was supposed to break ground before the end of this year.

Now, Google has laid off the development team of the park and deleted the progress update of the project on the official website.

People familiar with the matter believe that Google may restart the project in the future, but the scale is estimated to be smaller than originally planned.

World faces worst rice shortage in 20 years

• This year's global rice deficit is the largest since 2003/04.
• The shortage stems from the conflict between Russia and Ukraine and bad weather in major producing countries such as China.
• The rice market may return to balance within the next year.

According to Jiemian News, a new research report from Fitch Solutions pointed out that this year the global rice market will face the largest gap in 20 years.

The report predicts that the global rice deficit in 2022/2023 will reach 8.7 million tons, the largest since 2003/2004. At that time, there was a gap of 18.6 million tons in the global rice market.

The rice supply shortage is mainly due to the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, as well as bad weather in major rice producing countries such as China and Pakistan.

Farmland in China, the world's largest rice producer, was hit by heavy summer monsoon rains and floods in the second half of last year.

Last year, China's main rice-growing provinces of Guangxi and Guangdong saw their second-highest cumulative rainfall in at least 20 years, according to agricultural analytics firm Gro Intelligence.

In addition, the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict has caused prices of other major grains to soar, and rice, as a substitute, has also increased demand.

However, the report said that the shortage is also likely to pass quickly: the global rice market will return to a state of almost balance in 2023/24, and return to surplus in 2024/25.

Meanwhile, the report forecasts that India will be the "major engine" of global rice production over the next five years.

Xiaomi responds to Indian court's rejection of asset unfreezing application

A court in the state of Karnataka has dismissed Xiaomi India's appeal against the country's law enforcement agencies to seize 55.51 billion rupees ($680 million) of its assets.

In this regard, a Xiaomi spokesperson said that Xiaomi's business in India complies with local laws and regulations, and they are "studying the matter and awaiting written orders."

In 2022, Xiaomi's assets in India were frozen by the federal financial crimes agency, which accused Xiaomi of illegally sending money to foreign entities by posing as royalties.

Xiaomi said in a statement that more than 84 percent of the seized money was for royalties paid to U.S. chip company Qualcomm.

The cheap price: School-bought Chromebooks are starting to break

When the new crown broke out in 2020, American schools placed orders to purchase a large number of Google Chromebooks to support students' online classes at home.

Three years later, the Education Foundation (RIPG), a US public interest research group, found that these relatively inexpensive laptops may be more expensive than schools thought.

The biggest issue with Chromebooks is repairability, mainly because parts are hard to come by. Some schools even go so far as to buy new Chromebooks and use them to provide accessories for other older Chromebooks.

System updates are another big issue. Google promises 8 years of automatic system updates for Chromebooks.

However, the starting time of this calculation is not when the school starts to use the device, but when Google certifies the device, so the automatic update of the system can only be used for 4-5 years.

This also makes it difficult for schools to resell these products, and some have to pay others to recycle broken devices reasonably.

These high costs are starting to make schools reconsider Chromebooks as a way to save money.

Sony Interactive Entertainment acquires new game studio

Sony Interactive Entertainment announced that it has reached an agreement with ProbablyMonsters Inc. to acquire the game studio Firewalk Studios.

Firewalk Studios is committed to the development of multiplayer games that PlayStation has attached great importance to in recent years, and will also create original 3A multiplayer games for PS5 consoles and PCs for Sony.

Firewalk will be the 20th studio to join PlayStation Studios.

Why is the starship exploding in the air, but the employees are cheering?

On April 20, SpaceX's Starship lifted off for about four minutes before exploding in mid-air and disintegrating.

Although the starship "exploded", there were still cheers and applause in the live video.

Lewis Hong, a former SpaceX executive, recently addressed this topic on the podcast Silicon Valley 101.

According to Lewis, during this launch, the starship not only flew, but also passed the maximum dynamic pressure point of MaxQ resistance (MaxQ refers to the time when the rocket accelerates to the fastest speed and the pressure is the highest, and it is also the most dangerous time for the rocket) .

He believes that from this point of view, the performance of the starship is still not bad. The results of this launch were not expected by many internal colleagues, but a lot of effective data has been accumulated. As long as the launch pad is not damaged, these problems can be avoided by flying again in a few months.

Lewis said that people at SpaceX often joked that as long as it didn't blow up on the launch pad, it was considered a success. But from his point of view, assuming that the starship can leave the launch pad and enter the orbit of space accurately, this is a very important milestone. If the recovery can be completed after launch, it will be even more icing on the cake.

The above views are excerpted from "Silicon Valley 101", the full version of the program https://go.ifanr.com/8PZFvs

China Aerospace Releases Three Commercial Liquid Rocket Engines

Yesterday, the Sixth Academy of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation held a commercial aerospace engine product promotion meeting in Xi'an, and released three liquid rocket engines for commercial aerospace.

The YF-102 engine is my country's first open cycle, reusable liquid oxygen kerosene engine developed by the Sixth Academy. On April 2, 2023, the engine successfully achieved its maiden flight as the first-stage power of the Tianlong-2 commercial rocket.

The two-stage YF-102V engine fully inherits the technical basis and main component structure of YF-102, adopts mature production technology, and has the characteristics of high reliability and good economy.

The YF-209 liquid oxygen methane engine has a vacuum thrust of 780 kN and has the capability of deep variable thrust. The number of mission starts is not less than 3 times, and the number of repeated uses is not less than 30 times.

Many Apple products may switch to OLED screens in 2027

According to research firm Omdia, Apple will replace most of the screens of its iPad and MacBook products and external displays with OLED screens by 2027.

The report predicts that OLED global shipments will increase from 9.7 million in 2022 to 70 million in 2028. Apple is expected to be one of the big contributors to growth.

Omdia believes that Apple will start to use OLED screens for the iPad Pro that will be launched next year, and the OLED version of the MacBook Pro should be launched in 2026.

The new Mac Studio will be postponed

According to "Bloomberg" Mark Gurman speculated that the new Mac Studio will not be released on this year's WWDC, but he expects this new product will still be launched within this year.

He added that the next-generation Mac Studio likely won't use the M2 chip, so as not to dent sales of the new Mac Pro.

Pixel Fold real machine exposure

Relatively credible whistleblower Kuba Wojciechowski shared a video on Twitter showing the Pixel Fold in action.

Wojciechowski said the video was filmed more than a month ago.

According to previous news, the Pixel Fold has a folded screen size of 5.8 inches and a 7.6-inch tablet when unfolded. It is equipped with Google's self-developed Tensor G2 processor and is expected to sell for about $1,700.

It is rumored that iOS 17 will come with native diary apps

The Wall Street Journal claims that Apple is working on a Day One-like native diary app for iOS 17. At present, the application has no official name, and the internal code is "Jurassic".

The app will offer iPhone users the ability to write diaries and video recordings, and will support input from other similar apps, and of course, will be built in a way that protects users' privacy.

One argument is that journaling is a great way to manage your mental health. Now Day One has reached the top ten in the App Store's "Health" list.

Following the closure of the store, Hutouju’s e-commerce also stopped

After stores in many cities across the country are closed, the e-commerce platform of the new Chinese dim sum brand Hutouju will also suspend operations.

According to "First Finance and Economics", due to the impact of force majeure, Hutou Bureau could not operate normally, so it decided to temporarily shut down the business of the e-commerce platform, and the restart time is to be determined. The after-sales service of Hutou's major platforms will be available until April 30.

On March 30, the Standard Chartered Cake Shop of Hutou Bureau was revealed to have closed down. On a social platform, someone revealed that Hutou Bureau had experienced the following events: financing of 300 million yuan, frenzied store opening, Internet celebrity marketing, fund breakdown, store closure and withdrawal City, 200 million in arrears, wage arrears, appeasement and deception, bankruptcy and liquidation.

Shanghai's fourth Blue Bottle coffee shop opens next week

Blue Bottle Coffee announced that the fourth store in Shanghai is located in Panlong Tiandi, Qingpu District, and will open on April 28.

Blue Bottle Coffee Blue Bottle Coffee was founded in 2002. In February 2022, Blue Bottle Coffee's first store in China, Shanghai Yutong Store, officially opened.

Zendaya Appointed as Louis Vuitton Global Ambassador

The new-generation actress has officially become the new global brand ambassador of Louis Vuitton.

With the announcement of the new news, the official also simultaneously released the first wave of image advertisements performed by Zendaya.

"Slam Dunk" domestic box office breaks 300 million

As of 14:00 yesterday, the combined box office of the Japanese animation film "Slam Dunk" has exceeded RMB 300 million, easily making it into the top ten box office of Japanese animation in mainland movie history.

"Slam Dunk" screened nearly 194,000 games on the second day of its domestic release, breaking the single-day screening record for animated films; the next day's box office rose slightly by 2% compared with the first day, reaching a box office of 96 million yuan, contributing nearly 80% of the market for the whole day share.

"Saint Seiya" live-action version exposed the official poster

The live-action movie "Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac" released the official poster and behind-the-scenes special. The film will be released in Japan on April 28 and in North America on May 12.

The live-action version of "Saint Seiya" is directed by the Polish Thomas Barginski, who once served as the producer of the American drama "The Witcher". Starring Makensuke Nitta.

The new chapter of "12 Nights" "12 Days" will be launched next week

The film "12 Days" is a new chapter of "12 Nights", with Wu Jianxiong as the producer and producer, Lin Aihua as the director and screenwriter, and Stephy Tang and Ma Zhiwei co-starring. It will be launched on iQiyi and Tencent Video on April 26.

The movie tells the story of the flight attendant Anan and the bank elite Simon who has returned from studying in the UK. They have known each other for a year.

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