Things To Do In SW Florida

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google’s corporate parent on Wednesday announced its first-ever quarter with more than $100 billion in revenue, a milestone that illustrates the unwavering power of its internet empire amid legal and competitive threats.

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The news of Alphabet Inc.’s accelerating growth in revenue and profit comes on the heels of a court ruling in the U.S. Justice Department’s landmark monopoly case against Google’s dominant search engine that was widely seen as a mild rebuke that wouldn’t hobble the company.

Alphabet performed like a powerhouse during the July-September period, delivering a profit of nearly $35 billion, or $2.87 per share, a 33% increase from the same time last year. Revenue rose 16% from last year to $102.3 billion. Both figures easily exceeded the analysts’ projections that steer the stock market. read more

By CORA LEWIS, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — The Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate by a quarter point Wednesday for the second time since September. Before that, it had gone nine months without a cut.

The federal funds rate is the rate at which banks borrow and lend to one another. While the rates consumers pay to borrow money aren’t directly linked to this rate, shifts affect what you pay for credit cards, auto loans, mortgages, and other financial products.

“While the full economic impact of such a move will unfold over time, early indicators suggest that even modest rate cuts can have meaningful consequences for consumer behavior and financial health,” said Michele Raneri, vice president and head of U.S. research at credit reporting agency TransUnion.

The Fed has two goals when it sets the rate: one, to manage prices for goods and services, and two, to encourage full employment. Typically, the Fed might increase the rate to try to bring down inflation and decrease it to encourage faster economic growth and increase hiring. The challenge now is that inflation is higher than the Fed’s 2% target but the job market has been weak. The government shutdown has also prevented the collection and release of data the Fed relies on to monitor the health of the economy. read more

By BARBARA ORTUTAY

Character.AI is banning minors from using its chatbots amid growing concerns about the effects of artificial intelligence conversations on children. The company is facing several lawsuits over child safety, including by the mother of a teenager who says the company’s chatbots pushed her teenage son to kill himself.

Character Technologies, the Menlo Park, California-based company behind Character.AI, said Wednesday it will be removing the ability of users under 18 to participate in open-ended chats with AI characters. The changes will go into effect by Nov. 25 and a two-hour daily limit will start immediately. Character.AI added that it is working on new features for kids — such as the ability to create videos, stories, and streams with AI characters. The company is also setting up an AI safety lab.

Character.AI said it will be rolling out age-verification functions to help determine which users are under 18. A growing number of tech platforms are turning to age checks to keep children from accessing tools that aren’t safe for them. But these are imperfect, and many kids find ways to get around them. Face scans, for instance, can’t always tell if someone is 17 or 18. And there are privacy concerns around asking people to upload government IDs. read more

NEW YORK (AP) — Microsoft has deployed a fix to address an outage of their Azure cloud portal that left users unable to access Office 365, Minecraft and other services.

The tech company wrote on its to its Azure status page that a configuration change to its Azure infrastructure caused the outage, and that its fix is being rolled out.

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Microsoft didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, but the company acknowledged issues with its Azure Front Door, a global content and application delivery network, service on its status page and social media accounts. read more

Robert Taylor set out to build an ultramodern pool with a sunken bar and a vanishing edge, surrounded by waterfalls and turquoise blue pebbles, all in the front yard of his home.

Seminole County quickly approved his application. But when the bulldozers and heavy equipment rolled into the quiet upper middle-class neighborhood just north of Maitland and started digging a big hole, some of his neighbors became outraged when they realized what Taylor was doing.

“The county’s regulations say you can’t have that” in a front yard, said Jason White, who lives across the street from Taylor, about the proposed pool. “It would be totally out of place with our neighborhood. … This would diminish the appearance and harmony of our street.”

Seminole staff agreed: They said they made a mistake in approving Taylor’s request.

The county then ordered Taylor to immediately stop the work and seek a variance from Seminole’s Board of Adjustment.

On Monday, the county board agreed in a 2-to-1 vote that Taylor is entitled to a variance from the county’s development rules and could move forward with building his aquatic oasis. read more