Toyota recalls, Google and Microsoft layoffs, and 'open banking': Business news roundup

The latest generation of the Toyota Tundra and the Lexus LX improved over the previous models in a big way: Toyota’s ancient, gas-guzzling 5.7-liter V8 was dropped in favor of a brand new twin-turbo 3.5-liter V6. With up to 409 horsepower (389 horsepower in the Tundra) it makes more power and gets better gas mileage than the V8 it replaced. Unfortunately, within a year or so of the new engine debuting in the Toyota Tundra and Lexus LX, some owners began reporting problems. They all had one thing in common: engine failure. Now, as The Drive reports, Toyota finally found a reason for the failures and is issuing a recall.

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Lisa Hendrickson is almost out of sand.

Hendrickson is the mayor of Redington Shores, Florida, a well-heeled beach town in Pinellas County. Her town occupies a small section of a razor-thin barrier island that stretches down the western side of the sprawling Tampa Bay metro area, dividing cities like Tampa and St. Petersburg from the Gulf of Mexico. Many of her constituents have an uninterrupted view of the ocean.

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The banking industry took its time to transition from paper bills to plastic cards. Now it’s in the midst of a more rapid transformation: going digital.

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Summers keep getting hotter, and the consequences are impossible to miss: In the summer of 2023, the Northern Hemisphere experienced its hottest season in 2,000 years. Canada’s deadliest wildfires on record bathed skylines in smoke from Minnesota to New York. In Texas and Arizona, hundreds of people lost their lives to heat, and in Vermont, flash floods caused damages equivalent to a hurricane.

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Microsoft and Google are slashing jobs from their otherwise very successful Cloud divisions as the companies shift gears to focus on AI.

Microsoft is cutting “hundreds” of roles from its Azure division’s Strategic Missions & Technologies team, a group that was formed to focus on cutting edge technologies such as quantum computing and space engineering, Insider reported June 3, citing unnamed sources. Also on Monday, reports surfaced that Google laid off at least 100 sales and engineering employees in its cloud unit.

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More than two dozen passengers on a United Airlines flight from Vancouver to Houston who were previously on a cruise puked so much on the plane that it had to be taken out of service for deep cleaning. No, this isn’t the plot of “Airplane!”

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Costco Wholesale shoppers who are also avid readers may have to look elsewhere for books, as the retailer plans to stop selling them on a regular basis throughout the year starting in January 2025.

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Walmart hopes its new program will help it offset its worker shortage.

The company said on Wednesday that it is introducing a pipeline program that will help it funnel its hourly employees into higher level positions.

In May, the company said that it planned to slash thousands of corporate positions in Texas and California, while mandating that a chunk of its remote workers relocate to one of three of its central hubs in either Arkansas, New Jersey or Northern California.

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According to Ted Townsend of the Greater Memphis Chamber, the factory could be the “largest multi-billion dollar investment in the city of Memphis’s history”

X, which is already dealing with a porn bot problem, has updated its policy to allow adult content on the site — with some exceptions.

As of May, users can “share consensually produced and distributed adult nudity or sexual behavior” as long as its labeled with a content warning and not highly visible in places such as profile photos and headers. X, formerly known as Twitter, already allows nudity on the platform. The company previously estimated that adult content made up 13% of the site’s posts, according to an internal presentation seen by Reuters.

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