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January 11, 2024, 4:20 PM
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Louise Matsakis / Semafor:
Google lays off hundreds of staff working on Assistant and says the restructuring would help improve Assistant as the company explores integrating newer AI tech  —  Google is laying off hundreds of people working on its voice-activated Google Assistant software and eliminating a similar number …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google reorganizes its Devices & Services teams responsible for Pixel, Fitbit, and Nest; Fitbit co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman are leaving Google  —  Google is reorganizing the Devices & Services teams responsible for Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit hardware.
Nico Grant / New York Times:
Sources: several hundred Google engineering employees received notices that their roles were eliminated and lost corporate access; most hardware cuts were in AR  —  The company, which has been working to trim expenses, laid off employees who worked on core engineering, the Google Assistant product and hardware such as the Pixel phone.
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Internal memo: Discord CEO Jason Citron says the company is laying off 17% of its staff, or 170 people, after growing its workforce “by 5x since 2020”  —  Discord is laying off 17 percent of its staff, a move that CEO Jason Citron said is meant to “sharpen our focus and improve …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google plans to remove 17 “underutilized” Assistant features in February, including controlling audiobooks, media alarms, recipes, messages, events, and more  —  Bard is the future of Assistant.  Ahead of that happening, Google announced today that Assistant features with low usage will be removed in February.
Jesse Hamilton / CoinDesk:
US SEC Chair Gary Gensler concedes that losing in court after rejecting Grayscale's spot bitcoin ETF left the agency with little choice but to approve such ETFs  —  The SEC chair said a court forced his hand and that the agency's decision to greenlight a spot bitcoin ETF doesn't signal support of that or any other digital asset.
Reuters:
The US SEC approves spot bitcoin ETFs from BlackRock, Grayscale, ARK 21Shares, Bitwise, WisdomTree, Fidelity, VanEck, Invesco, Valkyrie, Hashdex, and Franklin
Carly Page / TechCrunch:
Ivanti confirms hackers are exploiting two critical vulnerabilities in its corporate VPN software, but says patches won't be available until the end of January  —  U.S. software giant Ivanti has confirmed that hackers are exploiting two critical-rated vulnerabilities affecting …
Reuters:
USDC stablecoin issuer Circle confidentially files for a US IPO, without saying the number of shares for sale or a price range; Circle was valued at $9B in 2022  —  Circle Internet Financial, the company behind stablecoin USDC, said on Thursday that it had confidentially filed …
Charisma Madarang / Rolling Stone:
Dudesy, an AI-driven podcast curated by humans, releases an hour-long comedy special featuring an AI-generated recreation of George Carlin, who died in 2008  —  The hour-long special arrived from Dudesy, a podcast run by artificial intelligence … Following the special's release …
Bloomberg:
Sources describe how AI replaced the metaverse as Mark Zuckerberg's top priority, leading Meta to ruthlessly cut jobs and focus on quickly releasing AI products  —  Meta's founder has become deeply engaged in his company's AI efforts ahead of its 20th anniversary, but his close attention hasn't always proved to be a recipe for success.
Dina Bass / Bloomberg:
Google Cloud eliminates fees for customers who leave for a rival service, effective immediately, which may put pressure on Amazon and Microsoft to do the same  —  Antirust officials have been looking at cloud data-transfer policies  —  The cost of switching between cloud-computing providers …
Emma Roth / The Verge:
After announcing the $199 R1 “Large Action Model” AI handheld at CES, Rabbit sold 10K units in one day; second batch orders are set to ship in April to May 2024  —  The R1, the pocket-size gadget from Rabbit that's supposed to use your apps for you, has already sold out of its first batch.
Alanna Durkin Richer / Associated Press:
eBay will pay $3M to resolve charges over a harassment campaign by staffers who sent spiders and other disturbing items to those behind the EcommerceBytes blog  —  Online retailer eBay Inc. will pay a $3 million fine to resolve criminal charges over a harassment campaign waged by employees …
Matt Burgess / Wired:
A researcher finds 800GB of data online tied to school software maker Raptor, used by 5,300+ US districts, including evacuation plans and student medical files  —  More than 4 million school records, including safety procedures, student medical files, and court documents, were also publicly accessible online.
Dominic-Madori Davis / TechCrunch:
PitchBook: female-founded US companies raised $44.4B out of $170.59B in VC funding in 2023; companies with all-female founding teams raised ~$3.1B, down 39% YoY  —  Female-founded companies in the U.S. raised $44.4 billion out of the $170.59 billion in venture capital allocated last year.

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From Mediagazer

Ted Johnson / Deadline:
A federal judge has dismissed an antitrust challenge to Paramount's WBD acquisition brought by a group of consumers, but allows them to file a revised complaint

Todd Spangler / Variety:
Trump names Danielle Thumann, an adviser to FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, to serve as an FCC commissioner; if confirmed, she'd bring the Republican majority to 3-1

Susie Banikarim / Columbia Journalism Review:
Immediately after the Chattanooga Times Free Press was sold to a local freight exec, over 50 employees were laid off and 10 chose to leave, out of 128 staffers

More News

Naman Ramachandran / Variety:
Netflix removes an Indian film depicting a Hindu character eating meat after backlash from Hindu groups; producer Zee apologizes and plans to edit the film

Earlier Picks

John Timmer / Ars Technica:
Harvard spinout QuEra, a quantum computing startup, plans to release an error-corrected quantum computer with 10,000 physical and 100 logical qubits by 2026
Maxwell Strachan / VICE:
A survey of 9,388 software engineers in December 2023: ~90% believe getting a job now is harder than pre-pandemic and 60%+ believe AI will lead to less hiring
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