Author: openjargon

• Ukraine's air defenses shot down 30% of Russian missiles last month, per The Wall Street Journal.
• That's down from 46% over the last 6 months, and 73% in the 6 months before that, the Journal reported.
• Russia is exploiting gaps in Ukraine's defenses before Western supplies reach the front lines.

Ukraine's air defenses shot down just 30% of Russian missiles last month, compared to 46% over the last six months, according to The Wall Street Journal, highlighting a worrying trend for Ukraine.

Its success rate was as high as 73% in the six months before that, the Journal reported.

The outlet drew its analysis from daily data shared by the Ukrainian Air Force Command, it said.

Ukraine has struggled to intercept Russia's missile and drone attacks as it runs dangerously low on air defense systems and ammunition.

According to the data cited by the Journal, Ukraine has shot down just 10% of Russian ballistic missiles and has failed to intercept any S-300 and S-400 missiles fired by Russia into Ukraine this year.

At the same time, Russia has ramped up its drone and missile attacks by around 45% over the last six months, the Journal reported, citing the data.

It has almost doubled the number of Shahed drones it has deployed, tripled the number of ballistic missiles, and doubled the number of hypersonic Kinzhal and Zircon missiles it has fired, compared to the preceding six months, per the outlet.

Despite some gaps in the data, and Ukraine using it for propaganda purposes, an unnamed spokesperson for the Armed Forces of Ukraine and an unnamed independent defense analyst told the Journal that the statistics gave an overall accurate picture.

It is a picture that will be of concern to Ukraine and its allies.

Ukraine is waiting on significant resources from the US after Republicans in Congress finally agreed to a $61 billion military aid package.

Before the vote in Congress, the Pentagon said it could rush vital air defense weapons and artillery shells to Ukraine within days of the military aid bill clearing the Senate and receiving President Joe Biden's signature.

But according to a recent assessment by The Institute for the Study of War, Russia is exploiting Ukraine's weakened air defense systems before further supplies make it to the front lines.

And Russia's large-scale bombardments have the potential to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses while also depleting ammunition supplies, making it sometimes impossible for air defense systems to reload fast enough, an unnamed UAF spokesperson told the Journal.

An unnamed European military intelligence official told the Journal that the next two months or so will be key in determining whether Russian forces can be stopped before Western air defense systems reach the front lines.

• Sarah Franklin, CEO of HR software platform Lattice, is letting workers stay fully flexible.
• "The data is pretty clear that mandates don't increase productivity," Franklin told Fortune.
• While some tech companies are mandating workers back to the office, Franklin believes the future of work is hybrid.

While some Big Tech giants are dragging workers back to the office, Sarah Franklin, the CEO of HR software platform Lattice, is letting her employees stay fully flexible.

Lattice provides software for companies to track and reward employee performance amid the changing landscape of remote work — and its CEO is practicing what it preaches.

"The data is pretty clear that mandates don't increase productivity," Franklin told Fortune, "the focus for us at Lattice is carrot, not stick."

She continued: "We've seen firsthand data showing a dramatic dip, across the board, with regard to employee engagement. I deeply believe that many of the stick tactics of these mandates strip people of their sense of being an adult, at a job, wanting to do the work."

Franklin became CEO of the company after cofounder Jack Altman — the brother of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman — stepped down at the end of 2023. The company raised $175 million in 2022 and was valued at $3 billion.

Prior to joining Lattice, Franklin spent 15 years at Salesforce, serving as President and CMO, where she worked directly under CEO Marc Benioff.

Benioff is a fan of remote work when it comes to his own working life: "I'm a remote worker. I've always been a remote worker my whole life, " he previously told MSNBC.

He added, "I don't work well in an office. It just doesn't work with my personality." 

But his stance has flip-flopped when it comes to Salesforce employees.

Leaked company messages last year showed that non-remote employees were expected to be in the office three days a week, and those in customer-facing roles had to come four days a week.

Franklin has been more steadfast in her encouragement of hybrid work. She told Fortune that she believes that hybrid workplaces are the future.

And she's not the only one bucking the strict RTO trend.

The CEO of tech giant Globant, Martin Migoya, is letting his 30,000 employees stay fully remote. The company is opting for a carrot-over-stick approach, too, enticing workers back with office upgrades that include more lounge areas and private rooms for remote calls.

CEOs can't seem to agree on whether remote work disrupts productivity.

Many companies have cited productivity concerns as the reason for bringing in strict RTO measures. However, some research has shown that RTO mandates don't necessarily encourage more productivity, and the companies that adopt these policies aren't necessarily more profitable.

• Sweetgreen introduced caramelized garlic steak, which is now the most expensive protein on its menu.
• Its CEO said the steak should boost its dinner sales and expand its customer base.
• "There's a lot of fast-casual customers that won't go somewhere unless there is a meat option," he said.

Sweetgreen just added steak to its menu for the first time, which it says could attract new protein-hungry customers and boost its evening sales.

The salad chain, which has over 225 locations, added caramelized garlic steak on Tuesday. It features in three new set entrées and can also be added to custom dishes.

Axios reported that it's the first red meat Sweetgreen has sold. The only other meat it currently sells is chicken. It also sells salmon.

Sweetgreen says the steak is seasoned with a garlic spice blend and roasted to get a "deep caramelized char on the outside and a juicy center on the inside," before being finished with olive oil and herbs. It's "reminiscent of classic steakhouse flavors," Sweetgreen said in a press release.

At a Sweetgreen in Manhattan, the three new entrées featuring the steak cost between $16.15 and $17.15.

And it's the chain's priciest protein yet.

It costs $6.45 to add the steak to another set entrée or to a custom bowl at the Manhattan location. In comparison, Sweetgreen charges $2.75 to add roasted tofu, $3.75 to add blackened or roasted chicken, and $6.15 to add miso glazed salmon.

Cofounder and CEO Jonathan Neman told investors on Thursday that during its test of the steak in Boston in February, it became a "dinnertime favorite" and was included in nearly one in five dinner orders. Customers returned to order it, and the test exceeded Sweetgreen's expectations, he said.

"Incorporating steak into our menu provides customers with something they've been seeking for years," Neman said. "A lot of the surveys, consumer insights that we had is there's a lot of fast-casual customers that won't go somewhere unless there is a meat option."

Neman said that Sweetgreen introduced steak to boost its dinner sales and expand its customer base. The chain generates most of its revenue from its lunchtime trade, with dinner orders accounting for about 35% of its business. It revamped its protein plates range in the fall to help drive evening sales.

But it's unclear how the steak fits into Sweetgreen's sustainability goals, The New York Times reported. Sweetgreen says that it plans to become carbon neutral by 2027, and beef has a massive carbon footprint.

Sweetgreen says that the cows used for the steak are grass-fed and pasture-raised. A spokesperson for the chain told The Times that the steak is mostly sourced from farms in Australia and New Zealand that are "rooted in regenerative farming principles."

• Lexis Czumak-Abreu started doing engineering jobs on the side while studying pre-med in college.
• She told Business Insider she enjoyed the problem-solving and physical elements of the job.
• Czumak-Abreu ultimately abandoned plans to be a surgeon. and now works as an electrician full-time.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Lexis Czumak-Abreu, a 27-year-old electrician in New York state. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I became interested in medicine because my mom is a physician's assistant. I went to pre-med school, intending to become a surgeon. But now I work as an electrician.

It's extremely rewarding. At the end of a job, you can turn the electricity on and see the whole system work right in front of you.

I grew up around electricians. Several of my male family members, including my dad, are electricians. I did an apprenticeship with an electrician company in 2015 and kept up electrician jobs on the side when I needed money for my family.

I'd work between 20 and 25 hours a week as an electrician. It was second nature to me.

I wanted to become a surgeon but changed my mind

In pre-med school, I chose to specialize in phlebotomy to get my foot in the door. But I had to work in a hospital drawing people's blood all day. I absolutely hated it.

I thought: "I'm not a people person. I'm not meant to be here."

While at college, I got several personal trainer certifications and worked as a trainer on the side. But again, it didn't work for me. I'm good at speaking to people, but I'm quite antisocial. I like to work alone.

I kept up some electrical work on the side, too. I finished my degree with an associate's in pre-med in 2019, but I decided not to continue in medicine.

I became a full-time electrician instead of continuing in medicine

I could no longer work as a personal trainer under the COVID-19 restrictions. Electricians were considered essential workers. I couldn't just stay unemployed. I started working as an electrician full-time.

I'd go on jobs solo, including running my own jobs, or with another person. Once the pandemic was over, I realized I wanted to keep doing it.

No 2 days are the same

I work a 40-hour workweek. My shifts are normal 9-to-5 working hours, but sometimes our hours change. We get told in advance, though.

Unlike in an office job where you go to the same building every day, I work somewhere different every day. I experience different things and see different people every day.

When a job is finished, I feel a sense of accomplishment and closure. I can finish the job and move on to another one. It doesn't feel like one long job forever.

There are challenges and dangers

I've gotten small electrical shocks, but that comes with the job. I've had an electric shock from an outlet before. That woke me up.

Early in my career, I got a shock when I accidentally put my hand on a panel. Someone else had to pull me off the panel. I was slightly shaken after that, but it made me much more cautious.

I've never been seriously injured. When working with more dangerous equipment, you wear more protective equipment.

It's physically demanding

The more experienced you get, the higher the voltage you can work with because you need to be experienced to work with deadly voltage. I mainly do commercial jobs now, such as pole lighting or utility generators for towns or businesses, though sometimes I still do residential work in people's homes.

I prefer commercial work, but it can be tricky to troubleshoot and solve a problem when it's something I've never learned before. Moving heavy copper wire and big pipes can be labor-intensive, physical work.

I have to train in the gym to keep up with the men in the industry. Handling heavy equipment that is double my body weight can be more taxing on my body than theirs. There are days when I come home exhausted, but it's better than a repetitive office job.

I've experienced sexism

I mostly work on my own.

Sometimes, when running jobs, I feel like people aren't taking me seriously. I haven't had many negative comments, but sometimes, I can tell from people's body language that they're uncomfortable.

The worst was an older lady who asked my company if a male colleague could replace me. It used to upset me, but I don't take that stuff too seriously anymore. I know some people in the world just aren't used to that.

Once they see my work, there's no issue. Most people in the area of upstate New York I work in know me now anyway.

I'm glad I became an electrician

I'm glad I gave myself the opportunity to try other career paths to figure out they don't work for me.

I'm happy where I am and excited to move into working with even higher voltage in the future.

• Microsoft is adding an AI feature to its Edge web browser in an apparent bid to win more users.
• Rival web browsers Chrome and Safari are far more popular than Edge, StatCounter data shows. 
• Google added AI features for its browser in January, and Apple is rumored to roll some out too. 

Microsoft might be the most valuable listed company, but it's failed to get very many people to abandon Chrome or Safari in favor of its own web browser.

However, Edge may become a little more enticing with the addition of a new AI feature.

Microsoft plans to launch an "AI theme generator" next month that will let users create their own browser themes by using a text prompter to create images.

"Applying the theme includes setting the generated image on the Edge new tab page, and applying the image's dominant color to the browser frame," according to an update to its 365 road map.

Microsoft Edge launched in 2015 to rival web browsers Google Chrome and Apple's Safari. It was intended to replace Internet Explorer, which was retired in 2022.

Chrome is the web browser for most internet users. Data from StatCounter shows the Google offering had a global market share of more than 65% in April. Safari had more than 18%, with Edge lagging behind on about 5%.

In January, Google announced three new generative AI features for Chrome. They include a browser theme generator, a tab organizer that suggests and creates tab groups based on a user's open tabs, and a tool called "Help Me Write" to assist users in writing pieces such as reviews.

According to Apple Insider, Apple is gearing up to launch an AI browser assistant called "Intelligent Search" that can automatically generate summaries of web pages by identifying subjects and key phrases. It's expected to be announced with the rollout of its latest iOS 18 update at its Worldwide Developers Conference next month.

Microsoft didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider, made outside normal working hours.

What a difference three months makes.

At the end of 2023 and the start of 2024, it appeared that the US was on a glide path to what I termed "economic nirvana": Growth would stay steady, if not spectacular, as inflation cooled off to a more manageable pace. This combination would not only let America continue its four-year expansion but also allow the Federal Reserve to ease up on its attempts to rein in the economy — and maybe even cut interest rates.

The data released over the past couple of months has forced me to reconsider my expectations for that nirvana, or at least the timing of its arrival. Recent signs point instead to an inflationary boom: a slightly hotter economy in which growth has stayed strong while inflation has sped back up. The labor market has been resilient, with recent jobs reports mostly coming in ahead of expectations and the Employment Cost Index, a widely followed measure of employee-compensation growth, picking up.

But perhaps the most eye-catching development has been the persistence of inflation, which caught economists, analysts, and, most importantly, members of the Federal Reserve by surprise. The core personal consumption expenditures index — the Fed's favored inflation gauge that excludes volatile categories such as food and energy — has accelerated, undoing much of the progress from the previous six months. This inflationary-boom dynamic has pushed out expectations for rate cuts, caused some more alarmist analysts to suggest that the US is about to be gripped by another bout of high inflation, and left some wondering whether the Fed's next move will instead be to hike rates.

It is, of course, fair to reevaluate one's expectations when new data is presented. Sticking with one's projection just to avoid being wrong is a sign of poor analysis. But after carefully examining the underlying inflation dynamics that have driven the recent freak-out about renewed overheating, I estimate the worries are overdone.

In the lead-up to 2024, the pace of price hikes was falling back to earth — or at least the Fed's goal of 2% year over year. Core PCE rose at an annually adjusted rate of 1.9% in the six months ending in December. It seemed like "mission accomplished." But in the first three months of this year, the measure heated back up: Core PCE surged to 4.4%. Typically, price increases are a slow-moving process, so it is rare to see core inflation accelerate this much this quickly. When I started digging into the data, however, I had a hard time explaining the reversal based on the fundamentals.

I think of inflation as a triangle: Each leg helps explain our overall price picture. The first leg is expectations — various surveys help gauge the degree to which inflation has become embedded in the minds of consumers and businesses. If these expectations start to creep up, that could be an indication that inflation is soon to follow. The second element is aggregate demand: If people suddenly have more to spend, that can push up spending and cause prices to rise along with it. One way to measure this is unemployment — if there is a sudden surge in Americans getting new jobs, demand is likely to jump as well. The final piece is supply shocks: How much have one-off disruptions helped raise prices on things like imported consumer goods or oil? Using this framework, it's difficult to pinpoint why inflation has strengthened so much.

The Survey of Professional Forecasters has found longer-run expectations for inflation have leveled out at 2% — the Fed's target. The unemployment rate is up modestly from 12 months ago, which suggests that price hikes aren't being driven by a sudden surge in consumer or household demand. And there have been no widespread supply bottlenecks to speak of. The ISM vendor-deliveries index, which measures the amount of time purchasing managers have to wait to get the goods they need, indicates that the supply chain is running smoothly.

On a deeper level, it appears that the acceleration in inflation is somewhat random, with much of the recent pickup being driven by industry-specific factors as opposed to overall economic conditions. Healthcare-services inflation is a notable example. PCE inflation includes both what consumers pay out of pocket for their care and payments made on behalf of individuals by employers or the government. Well, because of government rule adjustments in the first quarter, Medicaid payments surged, helping to drive up the overall index. Similarly, the cost of financial services went up as fees paid to financial advisors increased, but this is simply a lagged response to the strong performance of the stock market at the end of 2023. Since fees are a set percentage of a person's portfolio, the big run-up in equities at the end of last year meant that people may have paid more in total dollars to their advisor, but that's only because the value of their investments was also soaring.

These one-offs have had an outsize impact on the overall inflation picture. Ahead of 2024, the contribution from acyclical components to core inflation was essentially zero. Over the past three months, it has swelled to 4.4%. By contrast, the impact of cyclical components — those elements that are correlated to the overall health of the economy — on inflation has slowed marginally since last year.

Given the nature of the recent hot inflation readings, the fundamental case for a return to the path of nirvana is strong.

For one thing, economic growth is not getting away from the Fed. If growth were materially accelerating, it would drive up the demand leg of the inflation stool, increasing prices as Americans went out and threw around their newfound cash. But that's not what's happening. Real GDP rose at a 1.6% annualized pace in the first quarter, with private demand — which excludes company inventory buildups, government spending, and net exports — climbing 3.1%. The strong growth in private demand suggests that second-quarter GDP could be even more robust. Rather than a sudden reignition of the economy, the under-the-hood data suggests that this is simply the US settling into a steady-state economy.

Bringing inflation down from multidecade highs was never going to be a simple or straightforward task — the start of the year has proved as much.

For one, investments in residential real estate surged, adding half a percentage point to GDP in the first quarter. But with borrowing rates rising and building permits declining, that kind of housing contribution is unlikely to repeat. Second, the rise in consumption over the past two months was driven almost entirely by declines in the savings rate. Put another way, Americans were fueling their purchases by dipping into their cash reserves. I would not expect households to dip into their savings quite as much going forward, especially since wage growth is still moderating. The Indeed Wage Tracker, a measure of changes in wages and salaries advertised in job postings on Indeed, has been steadily slowing — down to 3.1% growth over the past year. This measure tends to move ahead of the more widely followed Wage Growth Tracker from the Atlanta Fed by roughly eight months. Add all this up, and it paints a picture of a resilient but certainly not red-hot economy.