Google has laid off over 100 employees in design-related roles, including user experience research and cloud design teams, as part of broader cost-cutting measures to prioritize AI infrastructure. CNBC reports: Earlier this week, the company laid off employees within the cloud unit's "quantitative user experience research" teams and "platform and service experience" teams, as well as some adjacent teams, according to internal documents viewed by CNBC. The roles often focus on using data, surveys and other tools to understand and implement user behaviors that inform product development and design. Google has halved some of the cloud unit's design teams, and many of those affected are U.S.-based roles. Some employees have been given until early December to find a new role within the company.

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Scientists have discovered complex organic molecules within the icy plume erupting from Saturn's moon Enceladus, strengthening the case that its hidden saltwater ocean may harbor the conditions for life. The Guardian reports: The sixth largest of Saturn's moons, Enceladus has become one of the leading contenders in the search for bodies that could harbor extraterrestrial life, with the Cassini mission -- which ended in 2017 -- revealing the moon has a plume of water ice grains and vapors erupting from beneath the surface at its south pole. The phenomenon has since been captured by the James Webb space telescope, with the plume reaching nearly 6,000 miles into space. The source of this material is thought to be a saltwater ocean that lies beneath the moon's icy crust. Now researchers studying data from the Cassini mission say they have discovered organic substances within the plume, with some types of molecule detected there for the first time. Dr Nozair Khawaja, a planetary scientist at Freie University Berlin and lead author of the work, said the results increased the known complexity of the chemistry that is happening below the surface of Enceladus. "When there is complexity happening, that means that the habitable potential of Enceladus is increasing right now," he said. Writing in the journal Nature Astronomy, Khawaja and colleagues reported how their previous work had revealed the presence of organic substances and salts within ice grains found in a ring of Saturn, known as the "E-ring," that is composed of material ejected from Enceladus. [...] While the new findings do not show that there is life on Enceladus, Khawaja said they indicate there are complex chemical pathways at play that could lead to the formation of substances that could be biologically relevant. The results, he added, support plans by the European Space Agency (ESA) to investigate the moon for signs of life. "I think all the signals are green here for Enceladus," Khawaja said. The findings add momentum to ESA's proposed mission to directly search for biological signs around 2042. According to the ESA, the mission will consist of an orbiter around Enceladus that will also fly through the plumes, as well as a lander that will touch down in the south pole region of the moon.

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Usually, when we have a "Tales from the Interview" we're focused on bad interviewing practices. Today, we're mixing up a "Tales" with a CodeSOD.

Today's Anonymous submitter does tech screens at their company. Like most companies do, they give the candidate a simple toy problem, and ask them to solve it. The goal here is not to get the greatest code, but as our submitter puts it, "weed out the jokers".

Now our submitter didn't tell us what the problem was, but I don't have to know what the problem was to understand that this is wrong:

int temp1=i, temp2=j; while(temp1<n&&temp2<n&&board[temp1][temp2]==board[i][j]){ if(temp1+1>=n||temp1+2>=n) break; if(board[temp1][temp2]==board[temp1][temp2+1]==board[temp1][temp2+2]) points++; ele break; temp2++; }

As what is, in essence, a whiteboard coding exercise, I'm not going to mark off for the typo on ele (instead of else). But there's still plenty "what were you thinking" here.

From what I can get just from reading the code, I think they're trying to play tic-tac-toe. I'm guessing, but that they check three values in a column makes me think it's tic-tac-toe. Maybe some abstracted version, where the board is larger than 3x3 but you can score based on any run of length 3?

So we start by setting temp1 and temp2 equal to i and j. Then our while loop checks: are temp1 and temp2 still on the board, and does the square pointed at by them equal the square pointed at by i and j.

At the start of our loop, we have a second check, which is testing for a read-ahead; ensuring that our next check doesn't fall off the boundaries of the array. Notably, the temp1 part of the check isn't really used- they never finished handling the diagonals, and instead are only checking the vertical column on the next. Similarly, temp2 is the only thing incremented in the loop, never temp1.

All in all, it's a mess, and no, the candidate did not receive an offer. What we're left with is some perplexing and odd code.

I know this is verging into soapbox territory, but I want to have a talk about how to make tech screens better for everyone. These are things to keep in mind if you are administering one, or suffering through one.

The purpose of a tech screen is to inspire conversation. As a candidate, you need to talk through your thought process. Yes, this is a difficult skill that isn't directly related to your day-to-day work, but it's still a useful skill to have. For the screener, get them talking. Ask questions, pause them, try and take their temperature. You're in this together, talk about it.

The screen should also be an opportunity to make mistakes and go down the wrong path. As the candidate's understanding of the problem develops, they'll likely need to go backwards and retrace some steps. That's good! As a candidate, you want to do that. Be gracious and comfortable with your mistakes, and write code that's easy to fix because you'll need to. As a screener, you should similarly be gracious about their mistakes. This is not a place for gotchas or traps.

Finally, don't treat the screen as an "opportunity to weed out jokers". It's so tempting, and yes, we've all had screens with obviously unqualified candidates. It sucks for everybody. But if you're in the position to do a screen, I want to tell you one mindset hack that will make you a better interviewer: you are not trying to filter out candidates, you are gathering evidence to make the best case for this candidate.

Your goal, in administering a technical screen, is to gather enough evidence that you can advocate for this candidate. Your company clearly needs the staffing, and they've gotten this far in the interview process, so let's assume it's not a waste of everyone's time.

Many candidates will not be able to provide that evidence. I'm not suggesting you override your judgment and try and say "this (obviously terrible) candidate is great, because (reasons I stretch to make up)." But you want to give them every opportunity to convince you they're a good fit for the position, you want to dig for evidence that they'll work out. Target your questions towards that, target your screening exercises towards that.

Try your best to walk out of the screen with the ability to say, "They're a good fit because…" And if you fail to walk out with that, well- it's not really a statement about the candidate. It just doesn't work out. Nothing personal.

But if the code they do write during the screen is uniquely terrible, feel free to send it to us anyway. We love bad code.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Thinking Machines Lab,a heavily funded startup cofounded by prominent researchers fromOpenAI, has revealed its first product -- a tool called Tinker that automates the creation of custom frontier AI models. "We believe [Tinker] will help empower researchers and developers to experiment with models and will make frontier capabilities much more accessible to all people," said Mira Murati, cofounder and CEO of Thinking Machines, in an interview with WIRED ahead of the announcement. Big companies and academic labs already fine-tune open source AI models to create new variants that are optimized for specific tasks, like solving math problems, drafting legal agreements, or answering medical questions. Typically, this work involves acquiring and managing clusters of GPUs and using various software tools to ensure that large-scale training runs are stable and efficient. Tinker promises to allow more businesses, researchers, and even hobbyists to fine-tune their own AI models by automating much of this work. Essentially, the team is betting that helping people fine-tune frontier models will be the next big thing in AI. And there's reason to believe they might be right. Thinking Machines Lab is helmed by researchers who played a core role in the creation of ChatGPT. And, compared to similar tools on the market, Tinker is more powerful and user friendly, according to beta testers I spoke with. Murati says that Thinking Machines Lab hopes to demystify the work involved in tuning the world's most powerful AI models and make it possible for more people to explore the outer limits of AI. "We're making what is otherwise a frontier capability accessible to all, and that is completely game-changing," she says. "There are a ton of smart people out there, and we need as many smart people as possible to do frontier AI research." "There's a bunch of secret magic, but we give people full control over the training loop," OpenAI veteran John Schulman says. "We abstract away the distributed training details, but we still give people full control over the data and the algorithms."

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Renewables generated 54% of the EU's net electricity in Q2 2025, with solar power emerging as the leading source at nearly 20% of the total mix. Electrek reports: According to new data from Eurostat, renewable energy sources generated 54% of the EU's net electricity in Q2 2025, up from 52.7% year-over-year. The growth came mainly from solar, which produced 122,317 gigawatt-hours (GWh) -- nearly 20% of the total electricity generation mix. June 2025 was a milestone month: Solar became the EU's single largest electricity source for the first time ever. It supplied 22% of all power that month, edging out nuclear (21.6%), wind (15.8%), hydro (14.1%), and natural gas (13.8%). [...] In total, 15 EU countries saw their share of renewable generation rise year-over-year. Luxembourg (+13.5 percentage points) and Belgium (+9.1 pp) posted the most significant gains, driven largely by solar power growth. Across the EU, solar made up 36.8% of renewable generation, followed by wind at 29.5%, hydro at 26%, biomass at 7.3%, and geothermal at 0.4%.

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Researchers have unveiled two new hardware-based attacks, Battering RAM and Wiretap, that break Intel SGX and AMD SEV-SNP trusted enclaves by exploiting deterministic encryption and physical interposers. Ars Technica reports: In the age of cloud computing, protections baked into chips from Intel, AMD, and others are essential for ensuring confidential data and sensitive operations can't be viewed or manipulated by attackers who manage to compromise servers running inside a data center. In many cases, these protections -- which work by storing certain data and processes inside encrypted enclaves known as TEEs (Trusted Execution Enclaves) -- are essential for safeguarding secrets stored in the cloud by the likes of Signal Messenger and WhatsApp. All major cloud providers recommend that customers use it. Intel calls its protection SGX, and AMD has named it SEV-SNP. Over the years, researchers have repeatedly broken the security and privacy promises that Intel and AMD have made about their respective protections. On Tuesday, researchers independently published two papers laying out separate attacks that further demonstrate the limitations of SGX and SEV-SNP. One attack, dubbed Battering RAM, defeats both protections and allows attackers to not only view encrypted data but also to actively manipulate it to introduce software backdoors or to corrupt data. A separate attack known as Wiretap is able to passively decrypt sensitive data protected by SGX and remain invisible at all times.

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Apple has paused development of a cheaper, lighter Vision Pro headset to shift resources toward AI-powered smart glasses aimed at competing with Meta. Bloomberg's Mark Gurman reports: The company had been preparing a cheaper, lighter variant of its headset -- code-named N100 -- for release in 2027. But Apple announced internally last week that it's moving staff from that project to accelerate work on glasses, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The company is working on at least two types of smart glasses. The first one, dubbed N50, will pair with an iPhone and lack its own display. Apple aims to unveil this model as soon as next year, ahead of a release in 2027, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing internal matters. Apple is also working on a version with a display -- something that could challenge the just-released Meta Ray-Ban Display. The Apple version had been planned for 2028, but the company is now looking to accelerate development, the people said. [...] Apple's glasses will rely heavily on voice interaction and artificial intelligence -- two areas where it hasn't always excelled. It was slow to introduce the Apple Intelligence platform and had to delay upgrades to its Siri voice assistant. The Apple glasses are expected to come in a variety of styles and run a new chip. They'll include speakers for music playback, cameras for media recording, and voice-control features that will work with a connected phone. Apple has also been exploring a suite of health-tracking capabilities for the device. The priority shift to glasses is just the latest change to the company's headset strategy following an underwhelming debut by the Vision Pro. The $3,499 product, which melds virtual and augmented reality, is seen as too heavy and expensive to be a mainstream hit. It's also short on both video content and apps. Apple executives have acknowledged the product's shortcomings in private, viewing it as an overengineered piece of technology.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from MacRumors: iFixit today disassembled the AirPods Pro 3, giving us a look at what's inside and how the AirPods Pro 3 have changed in comparison to the AirPods Pro 2. [...] To get a look at other components inside the AirPods Pro 3, iFixit essentially had to destroy them because Apple didn't design them to be repaired. Since the first version of the AirPods launched, they've included a battery that is sealed shut with glue, and that hasn't changed with the AirPods Pro 3. iFixit says battery replacements are so difficult that many repair shops won't even attempt to do it. The AirPods Pro Charging Case has the same glued-in battery. There's no way to attempt a battery repair without causing blemishes on the plastic of the earbuds and the casing, because they have to be pried open. Heat needs to be used to melt the adhesive, and there's no easy way to disconnect the flex cable that's inside each earbud. With the need for specialized equipment and the inability to repair the earbuds and the case without causing damage, the AirPods Pro 3 earned a 0 out of 10 repairability score from iFixit.

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Meta will begin using data from AI chatbot conversations and other AI-powered products to fuel targeted advertising across Facebook and Instagram, with no way to opt out. The policy change, effective December 16, excludes users in South Korea, the UK, and the EU due to stricter privacy laws. TechCrunch reports: If a user chats with Meta AI about hiking, for example, the company may show ads for hiking gear. However, Meta spokesperson Emil Vazquez tells TechCrunch that the privacy update is broader than just Meta AI and applies to the company's other AI offerings. That means Meta may use data from AI features in its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses -- including voice recordings, pictures, and videos analyzed with AI -- to further target its ad products. Meta may also use data from its new AI-video feed, Vibes, and its AI image generation product, Imagine. Conversations with Meta AI will only influence ads on Facebook and Instagram if a user is logged into the same account across products. [...] Meta says the company has "no plans imminently" to put ads in its AI products, though CEO Mark Zuckerberg has suggested they may be coming in the future.

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alternative_right writes: Last week, thousands of people in North and Central Texas were suddenly knocked offline. The cause? A bullet. The outage hit cities all across the state, including Dallas, Irving, Plano, Arlington, Austin, and San Antonio. The outage affected Spectrum customers and took down their phone lines and TV services as well as the internet. "The outage stemmed from a fiber optic cable that was damaged by a stray bullet," Spectrum told 404 Media. "Our teams worked quickly to make the necessary repairs and get customers back online. We apologize for the inconvenience." Spectrum told 404 Media that it didn't have any further details to share about the incident so we have no idea how the company learned a bullet hit its equipment, where the bullet was found, and if the police are involved.

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: TiVo's Q2 2025 Video Trends Report: North America released today points to growth in cord reviving. It reads: "The share of respondents who cut the cord but later decided to resubscribe to a traditional TV service has increased about 10 percent, to 31.9 percent in Q2 2025." TiVo's report is based on a survey conducted by an unspecified third-party survey service in Q2 2025. The respondents are 4,510 people who are at least 18 years old and living in the US or Canada, and the survey defines traditional TV services as pay-TV platforms offering linear television via cable, satellite, or managed IPTV platforms. It's important to note that TiVo is far from an impartial observer. In addition to selling an IPTV platform, its parent company, Xperi, works with cable, broadband, and pay-TV providers and would directly benefit from the existence or perception of a cord reviving "trend." When reached for comment, a TiVo spokesperson said via email that cord reviving is driven by a "mixture of reasons, with internet bundle costs, familiarity of use, and local content (sports, news, etc.) being the primary drivers." The rep noted that it's "likely" that those re-subscribing to traditional TV services are using them alongside some streaming subscriptions. "It's possible that users are churning off some [streaming] services where there is overlap with traditional TV services," TiVo's spokesperson said.

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Jane Goodall, world-renowned primatologist, anthropologist, and conservationist, has died at the age of 91 while on a speaking tour in California. The British primatologist's "discoveries as an ethologist revolutionized science, and she was a tireless advocate for the protection and restoration of our natural world," according to the institute she founded. From a report: Goodall was only 26 years old when she first traveled to Tanzania and began her important research on chimpanzees in the wild. Throughout her study of the species, Goodall proved that primates display an array of similar behaviors to humans, such as the ability to develop individual personalities and make and use their own tools. Among the most surprising discoveries Goodall made was "how like us" the chimpanzees are, she told ABC News in 2020. "Their behavior, with their gestures, kissing, embracing, holding hands and patting on the back," she said. "... The fact that they can actually be violent and brutal and have a kind of war, but also loving an altruistic." That discovery is considered one of the great achievements of 20th-century scholarship, according to the Jane Goodall Institute. [...] Goodall's research garnered both scientific honors and mainstream fame, and she was credited with paving the way for a rise in women pursuing careers in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) over the years. The number of women in STEM has increased from 7% to 26% in the six last decades, according to The Jane Goodall Institute, which cited census information from 1970 to 2011. In 1991, she also founded Roots & Shoots, a global humanitarian and environmental program for young people. She was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace in April 2002. The anthropologist continued to lend her voice to environmental causes well into her 80s and 90s. In 2019, Goodall acknowledged the climate crisis and the importance of mitigating further warming, telling ABC News that the planet is "imperiled." "We are definitely at a point where we need to make something happen," she said. "We are imperiled. We have a window of time. I'm fairly sure we do. But, we've got to take action." Goodall even partnered with Apple in 2022 to encourage customers to recycle their devices to reduce individual carbon footprint and cut down on unnecessary mineral mining around the world. "Yes, people need to make money, but it is possible to make money without destroying the planet," Goodall told ABC News at the time. "We've gone so far in destroying the planet that it's shocking."

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The Philippines became Asia's second-largest gambling hub after Macau last year as online betting proliferated across the archipelagic nation. Almost half of the country's 69 million working-age population is now registered on gambling apps, an exponential rise from less than half a million users in 2018. The government has become increasingly dependent on the industry. Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp. collects 30% of gross gaming revenue and has become the second-biggest revenue contributor among state-run companies after Land Bank of the Philippines. Revenue from online casino license fees is projected to reach $1 billion in 2025. More than 60 operators are regulated by the government. Industry revenue almost tripled in 2024 from 2023 to 154.5 billion pesos. Revenue from internet betting eclipsed physical casinos for the first time this year. The central bank recently ordered e-wallets to remove links to betting sites, halving bets within days. President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. rejected calls for a complete ban and said outlawing online betting would only spawn illicit operations that would be more difficult to eradicate.

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An anonymous reader shares a report: Samsung Display president Lee Cheong has confirmed plans to make foldable smartphone displays for a major American company, which is widely believed to be Apple. As reported in Chosun Biz, Cheong last week told journalists in Seoul that the company is accelerating preparations for mass production of OLED displays designed for foldable smartphones to be supplied to a "North American client." He declined to provide further information about the client, but it is widely expected to be Apple.

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The UK government has issued a new order to Apple to create a backdoor into its cloud storage service, this time targeting only British users' data, despite US claims that Britain had abandoned all attempts to break the tech giant's encryption. Financial Times: The UK Home Office demanded in early September that Apple create a means to allow officials access to encrypted cloud backups, but stipulated that the order applied only to British citizens' data, according to people briefed on the matter. A previous technical capability notice (TCN) issued in January sought global access to encrypted user data. That move sparked a diplomatic clash between the UK and US governments and threatened to derail the two nations' efforts to secure a trade agreement. In February, Apple withdrew its most secure cloud storage service, iCloud Advanced Data Protection, from the UK. "Apple is still unable to offer Advanced Data Protection in the United Kingdom to new users," Apple said on Wednesday. "We are gravely disappointed that the protections provided by ADP are not available to our customers in the UK given the continuing rise of data breaches and other threats to customer privacy." It added: "As we have said many times before, we have never built a back door or master key to any of our products or services and we never will."

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A high court in India has ruled that legible medical prescriptions are a fundamental right after a judge found a government doctor's report completely incomprehensible. Justice Jasgurpreet Singh Puri of the Punjab and Haryana High Court issued the order while reviewing a bail petition in an unrelated criminal case. The medico-legal report examining an alleged assault victim was written in handwriting that the judge said left not even a single word or letter legible. The court directed India's government to add handwriting instruction to medical school curriculum and mandated a two-year timeline for rolling out digital prescriptions nationwide. Until electronic systems are implemented, all doctors must write prescriptions in capital letters. The Indian Medical Association, representing over 330,000 physicians, told BBC it would help address the issue. Association president Dr Dilip Bhanushali said doctors in Indian cities have largely adopted digital prescriptions but practitioners in rural areas and small towns continue using handwritten notes.

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Yoshua Bengio called for a pause on AI model development two years ago to focus on safety standards. Companies instead invested hundreds of billions of dollars into building more advanced models capable of executing long chains of reasoning and taking autonomous action. The A.M. Turing Award winner and Universite de Montreal professor told the Wall Street Journal that his concerns about existential risk have not diminished. Bengio founded the nonprofit research organization LawZero earlier this year to explore how to build truly safe AI models. Recent experiments demonstrate AI systems in some circumstances choose actions that cause human death over abandoning their assigned goals. OpenAI recently insisted that current frontier model frameworks will not eliminate hallucinations. Bengio, however, said even a 1% chance of catastrophic events like extinction or the destruction of democracies is unacceptable. He estimates advanced AI capable of posing such risks could arrive in five to ten years but urged treating three years as the relevant timeframe. The race condition between competing AI companies focused on weekly version releases remains the biggest barrier to adequate safety work, he said.

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Britain's net public debt has climbed from 35% of GDP in 2005 to 95% today. The government is borrowing over 4% of GDP annually despite no emergency comparable to the financial crisis or pandemic that drove much of the earlier increase. The belt-tightening needed to stabilize debt levels amounts to about 2% of GDP. The Labour government holds a 157-seat majority in Parliament and has four years until the next election. Britain spends about 6% of GDP supporting pensioners, an increase of over a third this century. Some 15% of the working-age population now claims jobless allowances following a surge in disability claims since the pandemic. Labour attempted to reduce spending on pensioners and welfare this year but reversed both reform plans after political outcry from within the party. Tax revenue is already on course to reach 38% of GDP, a historical high for Britain. Labour promised before the election not to raise broad-based taxes on income and consumption. Four in five Britons say the government is mismanaging the economy. Yields on long-term government debt exceed those in any other major rich economy. The economy grew faster than any other G7 country in the first half of 2025, but the fiscal adjustment that would bring Britain to a primary surplus of less than 0.5% remains politically elusive.

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Microsoft has announced that Xbox Game Pass Ultimate will cost $29.99 per month, up from $19.99. The company restructured its subscription service into three tiers ahead of the October 16 launch of two Xbox ROG Ally handheld consoles. The new Essential tier offers 50-plus games for $9.99 monthly. Premium includes 200-plus games for $14.99. Ultimate subscribers gain access to more than 400 games, day-one releases, improved cloud streaming quality, and services including EA Play, Ubisoft+ Classics, and Fortnite Crew. Game Pass generated nearly $5 billion in fiscal 2025 revenue with 34 million subscribers in 2024. Console hardware prices are also increasing, with the Xbox Series X rising $50 to $649.99 starting October 3.

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Microsoft is promoting Judson Althoff, currently executive vice president and chief commercial officer at Microsoft, to a new role as CEO of its commercial business. From a report: It's the latest shakeup inside the company, as Microsoft navigates what CEO Satya Nadella calls a "tectonic AI platform shift." It's also a move that will allow Nadella to focus on more technical work at Microsoft, while still remaining overall CEO. In an internal memo to employees today, Nadella announced Althoff's promotion and said it's linked with the need for Microsoft to reinvent itself in the AI era and "bring together sales, marketing, operations, and engineering to drive growth and strengthen our position as the partner of choice for AI transformation." Althoff has led Microsoft's global sales organization for the past nine years, helping the company build out its Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions (MCAPS) division. He will now also be responsible for the operations and marketing teams that help sell Microsoft's software and services to businesses, but not the engineering teams that help build them.

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