Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Media

The AV1 Video Codec Gains Broader Hardware Support 44

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
AV1 -- a next-generation, royalty-free video codec developed by the Alliance for Open Media, a consortium including tech giants like Google, Mozilla, Cisco, Microsoft, Netflix, Amazon, Intel, and Apple -- is finally making inroads. From a report: We are finally seeing more hardware support for this codec. The new M3 chips from Apple support AV1 decode. The iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max also feature an AV1 hardware decoder. The official Android 14 Compatibility Definition makes support for AV1 mandatory. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, widely used by Android phones released in 2023, supports AV1. With the exception of Microsoft Edge, all browsers support AV1.

Submission + - At Wells Fargo, a Quest to Increase Diversity Leads to Fake Job Interviews (nytimes.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Joe Bruno, a former executive in the wealth management division of Wells Fargo, had long been troubled by the way his unit handled certain job interviews. For many open positions, employees would interview a “diverse” candidate — the bank’s term for a woman or person of color — in keeping with the bank’s years-long informal policy. But Mr. Bruno noticed that often, the so-called diverse candidate would be interviewed for a job that had already been promised to someone else. He complained to his bosses. They dismissed his claims. Last August, Mr. Bruno, 58, was fired. In an interview, he said Wells Fargo retaliated against him for telling his superiors that the “fake interviews” were “inappropriate, morally wrong, ethically wrong.” Wells Fargo said Mr. Bruno was dismissed for retaliating against a fellow employee.

Mr. Bruno is one of seven current and former Wells Fargo employees who said that they were instructed by their direct bosses or human resources managers in the bank’s wealth management unit to interview “diverse” candidates — even though the decision had already been made to give the job to another candidate. Five others said they were aware of the practice, or helped to arrange it. The interviews, they said, seemed to be more about helping Wells Fargo record its diversity efforts on paper — partly in anticipation of possible regulatory audits — rather than hiring more women or people of color.

In an emailed statement, Raschelle Burton, a Wells Fargo spokeswoman, said the bank expected all employees to follow its hiring policies and guidelines, which are communicated across the firm. “To the extent that individual employees are engaging in the behavior as described by The New York Times, we do not tolerate it,” Ms. Burton said. Ms. Burton said she was aware that informal directives about hiring diverse candidates had long circulated inside the bank. But those rules were from an earlier era that the bank’s current leaders had nothing to do with, she added. Most of Wells Fargo’s top management turned over in 2020 after a scandal involving the creation of fraudulent accountsdamaged the bank’s reputationand led to more than $4.5 billion in fines. The internal confusion around Wells Fargo’s diversity policies highlights how even the noblest goals can end up getting warped as they make their way from idea to practice, ultimately hurting the very people they were meant to help.

Slashdot Top Deals

The aim of science is to seek the simplest explanations of complex facts. Seek simplicity and distrust it. -- Whitehead.

Close