Techmeme
January 22, 2023, 4:50 PM

Top News

New York Times:
Emails and sources: Google fired 16% of its ~400-person Fuchsia OS team, Research cut jobs in lower traction areas, and Cloud cut operational and other roles  —  The layoffs amount to about 6 percent of the global work force at the company, the latest tech giant to make cuts after a pandemic hiring spree.
Aaron Tilley / Wall Street Journal:
Apple's lean hiring may help the company avoid layoffs; Apple's workforce grew ~20% from 2019 to 2022, Amazon's grew 100%, Meta 94%, Alphabet 57%, Microsoft 53%  —  The iPhone maker's workforce grew 20% in the past three years, a far slower pace than rivals  —  Tech Layoffs Pile Up as Bosses Reverse Course
Jez Corden / Windows Central:
Microsoft has laid off the entire teams behind the virtual reality platform AltspaceVR, which will shut down in March, and the Mixed Reality Tool Kit framework  —  HoloLens, Virtual Reality, and Mixed Reality are all but dead at Microsoft.  —  What you need to know
The Daily Dot:
CommuteAir took down a 2019 copy of the US No Fly List, after a researcher said they found it on an unsecured server and that it had 1.5M+ entries, many aliases  —  One of the most sensitive U.S. government documents was left online.  —  An unsecured server discovered by a security researcher …
Wall Street Journal:
A look at Mittens, a ruthless Chess.com bot with a kitten avatar introduced on January 1 that is driving more people than ever to play in the site's history  —  A ruthless bot with an innocuous avatar is driving chess players crazy  —  The heels of the chess world have included Soviet grandmasters …
Eric Wallerstein / Wall Street Journal:
Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
Q&A with Netflix co-CEOs Greg Peters and Ted Sarandos about shared leadership, what role Reed Hastings may play, adding FAST channels, the ad tier, and more  —  So that's what an orderly transfer of power looks like.  —  While Disney chief Bob Iger ousted every potential threat …
Nilesh Christopher / Rest of World:
Creators from India's hinterland are going viral on YouTube Shorts and running into copyright issues for “fact channels” that add context to other users' videos  —  A new generation of creators found success on YouTube Shorts.  Now, YouTube is after them for violating its community guidelines.
Keri Blakinger / The Marshall Project:
How some US incarcerated people use contraband mobile phones to educate themselves, make TikToks, find love, publicize prison conditions, earn money, and more  —  Despite the security concerns of administrators, incarcerated people use phones to hustle, make TikToks or publicize prison conditions.

Sponsor Posts

Subquadratic:
Subquadratic: the LLM built for 12M-token reasoning  —  SubQ can reason across entire codebases and document sets in one pass with no RAG workarounds.  Read how SubQ 1.1 Small holds near-perfect retrieval out to 12M tokens.
Cloudflare:
Cloudflare Connect 2026: The Agentic Conference  —  Stop preparing for agents.  Start running them.  100+ sessions, workshops, and speakers from OpenAI, Arm, and Cloudflare across AI, security, and performance.
Zoho:
App Spotlight: Google Sheets Magic Lookup for Zoho CRM  —  Our App Spotlight brings you hand-picked apps to enhance the power of your Zoho apps and tools.  Visit Zoho Marketplace to explore all apps, integrations …
IDrive:
Protecting your Cloud Applications Data  —  Backing up Office 365, Google Workspace, Dropbox & Salesforce data is critical to preventing data loss or corruption, complying with laws and avoiding critical downtime in case of a disaster.

Featured Podcasts

Big Technology Podcast:
Special Report: Will AI Wipe Out Humanity? (And Who Profits)
The Big Technology Podcast takes you behind the scenes in the tech world featuring interviews with plugged-in insiders and outside agitators.
Subscribe to Big Technology Podcast.
Channels with Peter Kafka:
The Atlantic's CEO on AI, Billionaire Owners, and Moonlighting as a Creator
Media and tech aren't just intersecting - they're fully intertwined. To understand how those worlds work, Peter Kafka talks to industry leaders, upstarts and observers.
Subscribe to Channels with Peter Kafka.
Sources:
Mark Zuckerberg on Muse, Meta's biggest AI bet yet
Candid conversations with the leaders shaping what's next in AI and the broader tech industry. Hosted by Alex Heath, who has covered Silicon Valley for more than a decade.
Subscribe to Sources.
Lenny's Podcast:
How we built Grok Bot in a month | Roman Ugarte (SpaceXAI)
Interviews with world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover actionable advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.
Subscribe to Lenny's Podcast.
Invest Like the Best:
Walter Russell Mead - How America Keeps Winning
The leading destination to learn about business and investing. We do this by showcasing exceptional talent and ideas.
Subscribe to Invest Like the Best.
Grit:
The AI Race Has a Leaderboard | Arena CEO Anastasios Angelopoulos
Grit explores what it takes to create, build and scale world-class organizations.
Subscribe to Grit.
 

About This Page

This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:50 PM ET, January 22, 2023.

The most current version of the site as always is available at our home page. To view an earlier snapshot click here and then modify the date indicated.

More News

Annie Palmer / CNBC:

Earlier Picks

Dietrich Knauth / Reuters:
Can Duruk / Margins:
Sarah Wynn / The Block:
Lora Kolodny / CNBC: