Techmeme
January 31, 2024, 5:55 AM

Top News

Alphabet:
Alphabet reports Q4 revenue up 13% YoY to $86B, net income up 52% to $20.7B, Google Cloud revenue up 26% to $9.2B, and headcount down 4%+; GOOG drops 5%+  —  MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. - January 30, 2024 - Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG, GOOGL) today announced financial results for the quarter and fiscal year ended December 31, 2023.
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Todd Spangler / Variety:
Universal Music Group plans to cease licensing content to TikTok after their agreement expires on January 31, saying they failed to reach new licensing terms  —  UMG said that its agreement with TikTok is set to expire on Jan. 31.  “The companies have not agreed to terms for a new agreement …
Microsoft:
Microsoft reports Q2 revenue up 18% YoY to $62B, net income up 33% YoY to $21.9B, Office Commercial revenue up 15% YoY, and LinkedIn revenue up 9% YoY  —  REDMOND, Wash. — January 30, 2024 — Microsoft Corp. today announced the following results for the quarter ended December 31, 2023 …
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Sheila Chiang / CNBC:
Samsung reports Q4 revenue down 3.8% YoY to ~$51B, vs. ~$52.1B est., operating profit down ~35% YoY to ~$2.1B, vs. ~$2.6B est., and rising 2024 memory demand  —  - Samsung on Wednesday reported a 34.57% drop in operating profit in the fourth quarter from a year ago, in line with its guidance issued earlier this month.
Vitalik Buterin / Vitalik Buterin's website:
A look at the four major categories of apps that could emerge at the intersection of crypto and AI, and the prospects and challenges of each category  —  Special thanks to the Worldcoin and Modulus Labs teams, Xinyuan Sun, Martin Koeppelmann and Illia Polosukhin for feedback and discussion.
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Apple Vision Pro review: marvelous display, great hand and eye tracking, and works seamlessly in the ecosystem, but pricey and video passthrough can be blurry  —  The Apple Vision Pro is the best consumer headset anyone's ever made — and that's the problem.
More: Wall Street Journal, Marques Brownlee on YouTube, CNET, Tom's Guide, Washington Post, CNBC, Daring Fireball, Bloomberg, The Verge on YouTube, AppleInsider, Spyglass, iJustine on YouTube, MacRumors, 9to5Mac, iThinkDifferent, The Wall Street Journal on YouTube, Creative Strategies, Business Insider, The Overspill, MSPoweruser, 9to5Mac, Enterprise Times, Wccftech, TechEBlog, MacRumors, Boing Boing, Constellation Research, MacDailyNews, Philip Elmer‑DeWitt, The Guardian, BGR, OSnews, Spyglass, AppleInsider, SlashGear, Macworld, UploadVR, Tom's Guide on YouTube, On my Om, PetaPixel, The Metaverse Insider, Club386, Washington Post, Digital Trends, iClarified, Techmeme Ride Home Podcast on YouTube, Dexerto, CNET, Cult of Mac, MacStories, Washington Post, 9to5Mac, Philip Elmer‑DeWitt, iMore, BGR, Variety, CNET on YouTube, The Verge on YouTube, ZDNet, and MacRumors
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Sam Kessler / CoinDesk:
Block begins layoffs under a previously disclosed plan to cut staff by up to 10%, by imposing an “absolute cap” of a 12,000 headcount, which was 13,000 in Q3'23  —  The company plans to drastically reduce its headcount throughout 2024 through a series of layoffs and reorganizing measures.
Nilay Patel / The Verge:
Q&A with Sen. Brian Schatz on Congress' dysfunction in the tech space, regulating tech firms, the EU's DMA, AI, deepfakes, social media laws for kids, and more  —  Today, I'm talking with Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii.  He's been in the Senate for a little more than a decade now, and he's seen a lot in that time.
More: BloombergThreads: @aaronrosspowellInstagram: Senator Brian SchatzX: @senbrianschatz and @ksandler1
Paige Smith / Bloomberg:
Employee letter: PayPal plans to lay off around 2,500 employees, or about 9% of its workforce, and will cut back on open roles  —  - CEO Alex Chriss has vowed to improve operating leverage  — Latest round of cuts will affect about 9% of the workforce  —  PayPal Holdings Inc. will reduce …
Arsheeya Bajwa / Reuters:
AMD reports Q4 revenue down 10% YoY to $6.2B, net income up 3,076% to $667M, Data Center revenue up 38% to $2.3B, Q1 revenue forecast below est.; AMD drops 5%+  —  Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O) forecast first-quarter revenue below market estimates on Tuesday …
Adrienne LaFrance / The Atlantic:
Silicon Valley's powerful companies claim to embrace Enlightenment values, but instead are leading an antidemocratic, illiberal, and authoritarian technocracy  —  If you had to capture Silicon Valley's dominant ideology in a single anecdote, you might look first to Mark Zuckerberg …
Financial Times:
Bernstein estimates PDD spent ~$3B on marketing Temu in the US in 2023; the Chinese group says Temu has 70M US MAUs, up from an estimated 13M in January 2023  —  High-spending marketing push by PDD Holdings-owned internet marketplace leads to doubts over growth strategy
Financial Times:
Bain: as of September 2023, autonomous vehicles in China had driven a cumulative total of 70M kilometers, on par with the US, despite Beijing's safety concerns  —  Experts believe carmakers and tech companies are closing gap with US rivals despite Beijing's safety concerns

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Featured Podcasts

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Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
Ashley Capoot / CNBC: