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January 28, 2026, 11:45 AM
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| Beth Galetti / About Amazon: |
Amazon plans to cut ~16,000 roles across the company as part of an ongoing effort to reduce organizational layers and bureaucracy, after cuts in October 2025 — I want to let you know that we're making additional organizational changes across Amazon that will impact some of our teammates.
More: GamesIndustry.biz, Reuters, Irish Independent, Thurrott, Bloomberg, Washington Post, BBC, Business Insider, TechCrunch, Business Insider, Barron's Online, Quartz, CRN, NBC News, Straight Arrow News, PR Daily, ZeroHedge News, Engadget, Yahoo Finance, Network World, Associated Press, The Wrap, Türkiye Today, Fast Company, Digit, Washington …, CNBC, WPXI-TV, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, The Guardian, Cord Cutters News, NewsMax.com, GeekWire, Tech in Asia, Crypto Briefing, The Grocer, BMI, and CNN
Bluesky: @sharonodea.com, @carlquintanilla, and @dankim.com
Forums: r/nottheonion, r/worldnews, r/Layoffs, r/XGramatikInsights, r/coding, r/technology, and Slashdot
| Business Insider: |
Memo: Amazon appeared to mistakenly alert some AWS staff about planned layoffs in an email invite to a January 28 “Project Dawn” meeting on company efficiency — - Some Amazon employees got a worrying calendar invitation on Tuesday. — The invitation discussed upcoming job cuts and …
More: CNBC, Reuters, Business Insider, Bloomberg, Associated Press, BusinessDay, Silicon Republic, Gulf News, The Independent, Trak.in, Neowin, Blockonomi, Tech Times, Newser, Business Today, Deadline, Benzinga, Mediaite, Times Now, and Moneycontrol
X: @eugenekim222. LinkedIn: Annie Palmer. Bluesky: @quinnypig.com, @carnage4life, and @businessinsider.com. Mastodon: @GossiTheDog@cyberplace.social
Forums: r/Layoffs, r/amazonemployees, r/technology, and r/news
| Abner Li / 9to5Google: |
A Google bug report apparently leaks the planned Android desktop interface, showing a taller status bar, a new mouse cursor, Chrome extensions, and more — A Google bug report on the Chromium Issue Tracker today has inadvertently leaked the Android desktop interface for the first time.
More: Android Authority, How-To Geek, HotHardware, PCWorld, Engadget, Tom's Hardware, Tom's Guide, SammyGuru, PCMag, Android Central, Business Standard, The Verge, VideoCardz.com, and SamMobile
Forums: r/chromeos and Slashdot
| Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: |
Memo: Tim Cook told Apple staff that he is “heartbroken by the events in Minneapolis”, calls for a “deescalation”, and says he discussed it with President Trump — Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook became the latest executive to weigh in on the killing …
More: Wall Street Journal, Wall Street Journal, The Intercept, CNBC, PCMag, Page Six, On my Om, Deadline, Quartz, Life on the Wicked Stage, The Indian Express, Newsweek, Forbes, Times of India, The Mac Observer, The Verge, iPhone in Canada, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Dow Jones Newswires, MacRumors, The Information, AppleInsider, 9to5Mac, and MacTech.com
X: @markgurman, @elemenous, @patrickmcgee_, @lukemiani, @jonfavs, @davidclinchnews, @apollozac, @timodc, @whatapityonyou, @carlfranzen, @jbillinson, @nateparrott, @alexisohanian, @golub, @caro_milanesi, @gianmarcosoresi, @snazzylabs, @jackiekcalmes, and @jordanzakarin
Bluesky: @lizzieohreally, @joshuafoust.com, @juddlegum, @pivotpod, @kimmasters, and @paleofuture
Forums: r/apple, r/apple, r/politics, and MacRumors Forums
| Mia Sato / The Verge: |
ADL study of Grok, ChatGPT, Llama, Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek: Grok performed worst at identifying and countering antisemitic content, while Claude was best — In a study, the Anti-Defamation League fed Grok, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, DeepSeek, and Llama antisemitic, anti-Zionist …
More: Jewish Insider, ADL, and ADL
Bluesky: @reckless and @carnage4life
Forums: r/technology and r/singularity
| Jack Ryan / Bloomberg: |
Paolo Ardoino says Tether now holds ~140 tons of gold, worth ~$23B, has been buying one to two tons per week, and plans to keep doing so for the next few months — There are roughly 370,000 nuclear bunkers in Switzerland, a legacy of the Cold War that are now rarely used. One of them, though, is a hive of activity.
More: Reuters, CoinDesk, Wall Street Journal, Unchained, Tether, Financial Times, The Daily Hodl, crypto.news, Watcher Guru, Cryptonews, The Block, Cointelegraph, and Bloomberg. X: @arashmassoudi
| Arjun Kharpal / CNBC: |
ASML reports Q4 net sales of €9.7B, vs. €9.6B est., and €2.84B net profit, vs. €3.01B est., and says it expects China to account for 20% of its total 2026 sales — ASML reported on Wednesday orders that smashed past expectations while 2026 sales guidance was also ahead …
More: TechCrunch, Semafor, Bloomberg, Tech in Asia, Capital Brief, Dow Jones Newswires, Yahoo Finance, ASML, and The Economic Times
X: @jimcramer, @thetranscript_, @ericjackson, @jerrycap, and @skundojjala
| Sarah Jacob / Bloomberg: |
| Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: |
Snap launches a wholly-owned subsidiary called Specs Inc. for its upcoming AR glasses, in a bid to facilitate minority investment and offer distinct branding — Specs will now be launched under... Specs. … Snap is launching a separate business for its upcoming Specs augmented reality glasses … | Abhijeet Mishra / SamMobile: |
Samsung says it will introduce a display feature for the Galaxy S26 series that improves “privacy at a pixel level” to protect users from “shoulder surfing” — Samsung has confirmed that the Galaxy S26 series will introduce a new display feature designed to improve privacy when using your phone in public.| Reuters: |
Sources: China approved its first batch of Nvidia H200 imports, covering 400K+ chips for ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent, during Jensen Huang's visit to China — China has given the green light to three of its largest tech companies to buy Nvidia's (NVDA.O) H200 artificial intelligence chips … | Financial Times: |
Sources: Elon Musk proposes timing SpaceX's IPO with a rare planetary alignment and his June birthday; SpaceX seeks to raise up to $50B at a ~$1.5T valuation — Celestial calendar meets high finance, as billionaire's personal impulses shape plans to raise $50bn in record listing
More: Benzinga, Newser, The Guardian, Proactive, Bloomberg, Tech in Asia, Reuters, Watcher Guru, RTÉ, and Blockonomi
| Tyler Kingkade / NBC News: |
Some US college students say they are using AI “humanizer” tools to alter text to avoid cheating accusations; AI detection tools now aim to catch “humanizers” — Students are taking new measures, such as dumbing down their work, spying on themselves and using AI … | Robert Hart / The Verge: |
ESA astronomers say they used AI model AnomalyMatch to scan 100M image cutouts from the Hubble Legacy Archive in 2.5 days, finding ~1,400 “anomalous objects” — The AI model took just 2.5 days to search 100 million image cutouts and flag oddities like jellyfish galaxies.
More: esahubble.org, HotHardware, and NASA Science
| Dylan Butts / CNBC: |
SK Hynix reports Q4 revenue up 66% YoY to $23B, above ~$22.4B est., and operating profit up 137% YoY to $13.3B, both company records, driven by AI HBM demand — South Korea's SK Hynix on Wednesday reported record full-year profit for 2025, more than doubling its operating earnings as shortages … | Karissa Bell / Engadget: |
LinkedIn launches a new feature to let users display verified “vibe coding” and AI proficiency levels from third-party partners including Replit and Lovable — You can connect AI coding tools from Replit, Lovabl and Relay.app directly to your profile.
More: TechCrunch and Fast Company
| Jess Weatherbed / The Verge: |
Bluesky says it is working to make feeds more “live”, interactive, and timely during live events, and teases improvements to posting and follow suggestions — The Bluesky 2026 roadmap teases updates for feeds, follows, posting, and real-time features.| Melissa Heikkilä / Financial Times: |
Sources: Hugging Face declined Nvidia's $500M investment offer at a $7B valuation in late 2025; Hugging Face says it does not want a single dominant investor — Amid investor frenzy over AI, the ‘anti Silicon Valley’ group chose independence and desire to promote open models
Bluesky: @justinhendrix
| Casey Newton / Platformer: |
A critique of a large UK social media study that suggested measures like social media bans are unlikely to have an effect on teens' long term mental health — The “moral panic” framing misses how platforms actually harm kids. PLUS: Newsom investigates TikTok over Trump, and the Clawdbot frenzy
More: Techdirt, Pixel Envy, Crikey, BBC, Digital Watch Observatory, Crooked Timber, BBC, and Euronews
| Kate Clark / Wall Street Journal: |
Sources: SoftBank is in talks to invest up to $30B more in OpenAI; SoftBank is already one of its largest shareholders after investing $22.5B in December 2025 — The Japanese conglomerate is exploring further investment as part of the startup's efforts to raise up to $100 billion| Daniel Kuhn / The Block: |
PayPal survey in October 2025: 40% of merchants already accept crypto, led by large enterprises, 85% expect crypto payments to be commonplace by 2030, and more — Partner offers — Quick Take — Four in 10 surveyed merchants said they already accept crypto at checkout … | Mary Ann Azevedo / This Week in Fintech: |
Slice, which uses AI agents to encode tax policies and legal rules across 60+ countries, raised a $25M Series A led by Insight, taking its total funding to $32M — Slice Global Equity, an equity compliance and management startup, announced Wednesday that it has raised $25 million in Series A funding.
More: FinSMEs, Ventureburn, Pulse 2.0, Axios, and Tech Funding News
| Gil Press / Forbes: |
Tel Aviv-based Factify raised a $73M seed led by Valley Capital to develop an AI-native document standard intended to replace the legacy PDF format — Tel Aviv-based Factify has raised $73 million in a seed funding round to establish a new document standard for AI, the company announced Wednesday.
More: SiliconANGLE, FinSMEs, Globes, and CTech
| Kate Clark / Wall Street Journal: |
A look at “neolabs” such as Safe Superintelligence and Humans&, which give priority to long-term AI R&D over immediate profits; dozens have become unicorns — Flapping Airplanes is one of a wave of new startup research labs drawing intense interest from investors, the latest chapter in the AI race
Bluesky: @edzitron.com
| Sri Muppidi / The Information: |
Sources: Anthropic raises its revenue forecasts to $18B in 2026, $55B in 2027, and $148B in 2029, delaying its cash flow positive expectations by a year to 2028 — Anthropic has hiked its revenue forecasts for the next several years, projecting that sales will quadruple this year … | Chris Welch / Bloomberg: |
Apple Creator Studio review: the subscription suite offers value, but lacks a photo management tool to rival Lightroom and lacks iOS support for flagship apps — Apple Inc.'s new Creator Studio software bundle represents a new test for the company's fast-growing services business …
More: MacRumors, Engadget, 9to5Mac, Apple, Gizmodo, AppleInsider, T3, The Mac Observer, MacTech.com, Cult of Mac, Tom's Guide, TechRadar, PCMag, Six Colors, Trusted Reviews, Creative Bloq, MusicRadar, and MacDailyNews. X: @bzamayo
| Taylor Soper / GeekWire: |
Amazon plans to discontinue its Amazon One palm recognition system on June 3 and will automatically delete all user data; One remains for healthcare check-ins — Amazon is discontinuing its Amazon One palm recognition ID system for stores later this year, the company said in messages to users Tuesday night.| Natalie Lung / Bloomberg: |
Toronto-based self-driving truck startup Waabi raised a $750M Series C led by Khosla and G2 and partners with Uber, which can invest $250M based on performance — Waabi Innovation Inc., a Canadian startup that develops self-driving technology for trucks, has secured $1 billion in funding … | Carl Zimmer / New York Times: |
Google DeepMind researchers unveil AlphaGenome, an AI model trained on molecular data to predict 11 different genomic processes, such as gene splicing — AlphaGenome is a leap forward in the ability to study the human blueprint. But the fine workings of our DNA are still largely a mystery.
More: Gizmodo, Nature, The Guardian, BBC, Scientific American, Chemistry World, Science Media Centre, STAT, and Science News
| New York Times: |
Internal documents from 2025: Microsoft expects its annual water consumption to reach 28B liters by 2030, up from 7.9B liters in 2020 and 10.4B liters in 2024 — Driven by the artificial intelligence frenzy, Microsoft is internally projecting that water use at its data centers will more than double …
More: WinBuzzer. X: @ralph_grabowski. LinkedIn: Adam Satariano. Bluesky: @justinhendrix. Forums: r/technology
| Mike Wheatley / SiliconANGLE: |
Adaptive6, which treats cloud cost inefficiencies as security vulnerabilities to help companies cut bills, raised a $28M Series A, for $44M in total funding — Cloud cost governance and optimization startup Adaptive6 Inc. says it's ready to help large enterprises save millions of dollars … | Samantha Subin / CNBC: |
Outtake, which uses autonomous AI agents to help companies detect and remove cyberthreats, raised $40M led by Iconiq, after a $16.5M Series A in April 2025 — Alex Dhillon spent almost five years at Palantir before leaving to build cybersecurity startup Outtake.
LinkedIn: Jonah Benning-Shorb
| Ethan Millman / The Hollywood Reporter: |
Spotify paid out $11B+ to the music industry in 2025, up 10% YoY, bringing its all-time payments to $70B, and now accounts for ~30% of recorded music revenue — Spotify head of music Charlie Hellman called payouts “the largest annual payment to music from any retailer in history.”
More: Music Ally, Fox Business, Spotify, Los Angeles Times, Hypebot, Reuters, Billboard, Variety, and Forbes
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