Techmeme
January 18, 2023, 10:20 AM

Top News

Todd Bishop / GeekWire:
Memo: Microsoft plans to lay off 10,000 employees through March 31, reducing headcount by less than 5%, and will take a $1.2B charge to facilitate the move  —  Citing a need to “align our cost structure with our revenue and where we see customer demand,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told employees …
Mark Gurman / Bloomberg:
Sources: Apple indefinitely postpones its lightweight AR glasses due to technical difficulties and is instead planning a lower-cost MR headset for 2024 or 2025  —  Apple Inc. is still planning to unveil its first mixed-reality headset this year, but an even more important follow-up product …
Rohan Goswami / CNBC:
FTX identifies ~$5.5B in “liquid” assets for recovery, including $415M in “unauthorized third-party transfers” possibly tied to a hack found after its collapse  —  - FTX has identified about $5.5 billion worth of digital assets for recovery, a number that includes $415 million in “hacked crypto.”
CoinDesk:
Analysis: 196 members of the new Congress accepted donations from Sam Bankman-Fried or other FTX senior executives, including Kevin McCarthy and Chuck Schumer  —  The session began with 196 U.S. lawmakers who took direct contributions from Sam Bankman-Fried and other former FTX executives …
David Yaffe-Bellany / New York Times:
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Apple announces an updated HomePod with a similar design to the original from 2018, Matter support, and more, available now for $299, shipping February 3  —  It will be sold alongside the HomePod Mini, the smaller version of the speaker introduced in 2020, and features support …
Jon Porter / The Verge:
Samsung Galaxy S23, S23 Plus, and S23 Ultra specs allegedly leak, showing 6.1, 6.6, and 6.8-inch screens, Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, the Ultra's 200MP sensor, and more  —  Spec sheets for all three devices in Samsung's upcoming flagship smartphone lineup, the Galaxy S23 series, appear to have leaked online.
Billy Perrigo / TIME:
Investigation: starting in November 2021, OpenAI contracted Kenya-based Sama to label violent and toxic content, paying workers $2/hour, to improve ChatGPT  —  Content warning: this story contains descriptions of sexual abuse  —  ChatGPT was hailed as one 2022's most impressive technological …
Erin Woo / The Information:
Source: Twitter manager Siddharth Rao told employees that daily revenue was 40% lower than a year earlier and more than 500 top advertisers have paused spending  —  A senior Twitter manager told employees that the company's daily revenue on Tuesday was 40% lower than the same day a year ago …
Patrick McGee / Financial Times:
As Apple shifts from China, experts worry India will struggle with iPhone production due to supply chain issues, labor woes, a lack of automation, and more  —  The tech giant increasingly finds itself beholden to America's biggest geopolitical rival.  But is diversification even possible?
Bloomberg:
Noam Scheiber / New York Times:
Apple plans to hire a third-party firm to audit its US labor practices, focusing on human rights, after an investor coalition pushed for the assessment  —  The tech giant will assess its compliance with its official human rights policy, according to a federal filing.
Matt Levine / Bloomberg:
By suing Genesis Global Capital and Gemini Trust over Gemini Earn in 2023, the SEC is years late to addressing the crypto lending product marketed as a security  —  Earn  —  Well, of course: … We covered this in 2021, when Coinbase Global Inc.'s similar crypto lending program was shut down by the SEC before it started.
Bloomberg:
Amazon begins laying off 18,000+ employees, impacting around 1% of its total workforce and 6% of its corporate staff, mostly in its retail and HR departments  —  Amazon.com Inc. is set to begin a round of layoffs ultimately affecting more than 18,000 employees in the largest job cull in its history …
Hyunjoo Jin / Reuters:
Tesla's Autopilot software director testified in 2022 that an October 2016 video promoted by Elon Musk was staged, showing self-driving features the cars lacked  —  A 2016 video that Tesla (TSLA.O) used to promote its self-driving technology was staged to show capabilities like stopping …
Benjamin Mayo / 9to5Mac:
Apple updates its Mac mini with M2 and M2 Pro options, improved graphics performance, up to 32GB of RAM, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, and more, starting at $599  —  Apple today launched the new Mac mini lineup, available with M2 and M2 Pro chips inside.  The M2 Mac mini starts at a new lower price of $599.
Joe Rossignol / MacRumors:

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Earlier Picks

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Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: