Techmeme
January 5, 2023, 12:15 PM

Top News

Wall Street Journal:
Amazon plans to lay off 18,000+ employees, more than its initial target of 10,000 in November 2022, with the “majority” coming from retail and recruiting  —  Cuts focused on the company's corporate staff exceed earlier projection  —  Amazon AMZN -0.79%decrease …
Leyland Cecco / The Guardian:
Apple quietly launches a catalog of books narrated by AI on its Books app, in a move that publishers, authors, and agents warn may upend the audiobook market  —  Exclusive: tech firm quietly launches new audiobook catalogue narrated by AI - but move expected to spark backlash
David Benoit / Wall Street Journal:
US bank Silvergate, which caters to crypto, reports liquidating debt to cover $8.1B withdrawals as FTX collapsed and laying off 40% of its staff; SI falls 40%+  —  Bank sold assets at a loss to cover withdrawals and cut 40% of its staff but remains committed to crypto
Jessica Conditt / Engadget:
Sony unveils Project Leonardo, a PS5 accessibility controller kit with circular gamepads, for use on its own or with DualSense; pricing and release are TBC  —  Sony is building a better PlayStation 5 controller with Project Leonardo, a kit that promises to make games easier to play for people with limited motor control.
Mitchell Clark / The Verge:
Sony has sold ~30M PlayStation 5 consoles and says the shortage is over, meaning everyone “should have a much easier time” finding a PS5 at retailers globally  —  The PlayStation 5 shortage is finally over — at least according to Sony.  “Everyone who wants a PS5 should have a much easier …
Jules Roscoe / VICE:
The FTC proposes a rule banning worker non-compete clauses, saying they harm healthy competition in the labor and product markets and block entrepreneurship  —  The agency stated that noncompete clauses are bad for both the labor market and innovation.  The proposed rule would make them illegal.
Angus Berwick / Reuters:
Source: FTX's former top lawyer Daniel Friedberg has cooperated with US prosecutors, telling them what he knew of SBF and others misusing customer funds  —  FTX's former top lawyer Daniel Friedberg has cooperated with U.S. prosecutors as they investigate the crypto firm's collapse …
Wall Street Journal:
NY AG Letitia James files a civil suit against Alex Mashinsky, alleging the co-founder of Celsius defrauded investors out of billions by making false statements  —  Alex Mashinsky made false statements to investors about the crypto lender, lawsuit alleges  —  New York Attorney General …
Levi Winslow / Kotaku:
After YouTuber Coffeezilla reported on Logan Paul's apparently sham NFT game CryptoZoo, Paul finally responds, acknowledging some involved were “bad actors”  —  Blockchain investigator Stephen ‘Coffeezilla’ Findeisen may see Paul in court  —  After keeping his mouth shut …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Amazon's Ring announces its first dashboard camera, the Ring Car Cam, with inside and outside recording, after a two-year delay, shipping in February for $250  —  Amazon.com Inc.'s Ring division introduced its first car dashboard camera after a two-year delay, expanding beyond home security with a new category.
Crystal Kim / Axios:
A US judge rules that the crypto deposits in bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network's yield-bearing accounts belong to Celsius and not the individual holders  —  Celsius Network's bankruptcy might have just set a precedent in determining what crypto assets belong to whom when stored on a centralized platform.
Lawrence Abrams / BleepingComputer:
A hacker leaks a dataset allegedly containing the email addresses of 200M+ Twitter users, claimed to be a cleaner version of the 400M dataset from December 2022  —  A data leak described as containing email addresses for over 200 million Twitter users has been published on a popular hacker forum for about $2.
Ax Sharma / BleepingComputer:
CI/CD service CircleCI says it is investigating “a security incident” and “out of an abundance of caution” all customers should “rotate any and all secrets”  —  CircleCI, a software development service has disclosed a security incident and is urging users to rotate their secrets.
Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge:
Michael Elsen-Rooney / Chalkbeat New York:
The New York City Department of Education, the largest US school system, bans access to OpenAI's ChatGPT on school devices and networks, citing cheating fears  —  New York City students and teachers can no longer access ChatGPT — the new artificial intelligence-powered chatbot …

Sponsor Posts

ElevenLabs:
ElevenAgents by ElevenLabs  —  You know us for voice.  Now meet ElevenAgents — featuring Expressive Mode, our most human-sounding AI voice technology in 70+ languages with ultra-low latency.  Hear it for yourself.
Intel:
5G's most deployed platform  —  Powering live networks with built-in Inference across Core and RAN.  That's the power of Intel Inside®
Zoho:
Introducing Leaderboard in Zoho Publish  —  Managing one business location is straightforward.  Managing ten, fifty, or hundreds?  That's where clarity disappears.When multiple locations operate under the same brand or business …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
Why OpenAI Killed Sora, Did Apple Just Save Siri?, Meta's Big Loss
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Hard Fork:
The Ezra Klein Show: How Fast Will A.I. Agents Rip Through the Economy?
The future is already here. Each week, journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton explore and make sense of the latest in the rapidly changing world of tech.
Subscribe to Hard Fork.
Great Chat:
Bubble talk
A podcast mostly about tech. Brought to you weekly by Angela Du, Sally Shin, Mac Bohannon, Helen Min, and Ashley Mayer.
Subscribe to Great Chat.
Access:
AI takes over meetings, the SF vs London tech scene, and ethics in media
A show about the tech industry's inside conversation, hosted by tech reporter Alex Heath and founder whisperer Ellis Hamburger.
Subscribe to Access.
The Upstarts Podcast:
Harvey's Winston Weinberg: From Law Associate To $11 Billion Legal AI Startup CEO
Veteran tech reporter Alex Konrad sits down with breakout entrepreneurs taking on the status quo to shake up their fields in AI, design, nuclear energy, space, and more.
Subscribe to The Upstarts Podcast.
Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith:
Everybody Goes Home: How technology is helping prevent wildfires from spreading
Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith speaks with leaders in government, business, and culture to explore the most critical challenges at the intersection of technology and society.
Subscribe to Tools and Weapons with Brad Smith.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 12:15 PM ET, January 5, 2023.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Earlier Picks

Vincent Manancourt / Politico:
New York Times: