Techmeme
January 21, 2023, 2:45 AM

Top News

Bloomberg:
Alphabet plans to cut ~12,000 jobs, 6%+ of its global workforce; CEO Sundar Pichai says he takes “full responsibility for the decisions that led us here”  —  Google parent Alphabet Inc. said it will cut about 12,000 jobs, more than 6% of its global workforce …
Emily Baker-White / Forbes:
According to six employees and an internal doc, TikTok and ByteDance staff engage in “heating”, or inflating video view counts, to court influencers and brands  —  TikTok and ByteDance employees regularly engage in “heating,” a manual push that ensures specific videos …
Sarah Wynn / The Block:
The US SEC charges Avraham Eisenberg with manipulating Mango Markets' governance token MNGO to steal $116M of crypto assets and says MNGO was sold as a security  —  - The SEC brought charges against Avraham Eisenberg on Friday after the U.S. securities regulator said Eisenberg stole $116 million from Mango Markets.
Lora Kolodny / CNBC:
Internal records: Twitter now has around 1,300 active employees, including fewer than 550 full-time engineers, and about 1,400 non-working employees  —  - Internal records show that Twitter has shed about 80% of its employees since Elon Musk took over and headcount is hovering around 1,300 employees today.
Dietrich Knauth / Reuters:
US prosecutors provide a list of ~$700M worth of Sam Bankman-Fried's seized assets, including ~$525M in Robinhood stock and $94.5M cash at Silvergate Bank  —  Federal prosecutors have seized nearly $700 million in assets from FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried in January, largely in the form of Robinhood stock …
Mia Sato / The Verge:
In a staff call, CNET and Red Ventures executives said they were pausing AI-generated content on CNET and other websites and detailed their proprietary AI tool  —  The call, which lasted under an hour, was held a week after CNET came under fire for its use of AI tools on stories …
The Verge:
Can Duruk / Margins:
The main reason ChatGPT is a threat to Google is because the latter's monopoly position allowed search to degenerate into a spam-ridden, SEO-fueled hellscape  —  I hate monopolies and welcome our AI overlords … I don't really cook often, but I do love making pasta aglio e olio.
Nico Grant / New York Times:
Kevin Simauchi / Bloomberg:
Josh Scott / BetaKit:
Waterloo-based Magnet Forensics, which develops digital investigation software, agrees to be acquired by Thoma Bravo for CA$1.8B  —  Kitchener-Waterloo's Magnet Forensics has entered into a definitive agreement to be acquired by software-focused American private equity firm Thoma Bravo.

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More News

Brian Fung / CNN:
Drew Harwell / Washington Post:

Earlier Picks

Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat:
Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch:
The Block:
Catherine Larkin / Bloomberg:
Karissa Bell / Engadget: