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Techmeme
January 30, 2024, 6:10 PM

Top News

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: CNET, CNBC, Marques Brownlee on YouTube, Wall Street Journal, Tom's Guide, The Verge on YouTube, Daring Fireball, Washington Post, iJustine on YouTube, AppleInsider, 9to5Mac, MacRumors, OSnews, AppleInsider, Creative Strategies, Macworld, UploadVR, The Wall Street Journal on YouTube, MacDailyNews, Philip Elmer‑DeWitt, BGR, Tom's Guide on YouTube, The Guardian, CNET, SlashGear, Club386, Washington Post, Constellation Research, Washington Post, Techmeme Ride Home Podcast on YouTube, Dexerto, iPhone in Canada Blog, Cult of Mac, Wccftech, ZDNet, 9to5Mac, Philip Elmer‑DeWitt, PetaPixel, The Metaverse Insider, iMore, TechRadar, Gizmodo, On my Om, The Apple Post, Spyglass, BGR, MacStories, CNET on YouTube, Road to VR, Forbes, Business Insider, Variety, MIXED Reality News, The Verge on YouTube, Digital Trends, iClarified, 9to5Mac, The Messenger, ZDNet, and MacRumors
Chance Miller / 9to5Mac:
Apple's visionOS doesn't let users rearrange icons or pin web apps to the home screen, which is particularly limiting given Netflix and YouTube don't offer apps  —  In addition to not letting you rearrange home screen icons, visionOS 1.0 also doesn't support the ability to pin web apps to the home screen.
Alphabet:
Alphabet reports Q4 revenue rose 13% YoY to $86B, net income rose 52% to $20.7B, Google Cloud revenue rose 26% to $9.2B, and headcount dropped 4%+ to 182,502  —  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.
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:
Paige Smith / Bloomberg:
In a letter to employees, PayPal says it 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
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.
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Apple says Apple Card now has 12M+ US users, over 1M are sharing their card via Apple Card Family, and users earned $1B+ in Daily Cash rewards in 2023  —  Apple Card has over 12 million users in the United States, Apple said today.  Apple Card holders earned more than $1 billion in Daily Cash rewards in 2023.
Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft Edge automatically imports open Chrome tabs after a Windows update, even with Edge's import tool disabled; users have reported the behavior for months  —  Last week, I turned on my PC, installed a Windows update, and rebooted to find Microsoft Edge automatically open with the Chrome tabs I was working on before the update.
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, and Q1 revenue forecast below estimates  —  Chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O) forecast first-quarter revenue below market estimates on Tuesday, as it grapples with uncertain demand …
Sergiu Gatlan / BleepingComputer:
New York's AG sues Citibank over its alleged failure to defend customers from online scams, citing poor responses to potential fraud and not reimbursing victims  —  New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Citibank over its failure to defend customers against hacks and scams and refusing …
Karin Matussek / Bloomberg:
German police seize nearly 50K bitcoin, worth $2B+, from two suspects who allegedly acquired the crypto using profits from an illegal file-sharing platform  —  German prosecutors provisionally seized nearly 50,000 Bitcoin worth about $2.1 billion as part of an investigation into what they see as an illegal file-sharing platform.
Jennifer Pattison Tuohy / The Verge:
Arlo, which offers smart home devices, raises the price of its Arlo Secure service from $5/month to $8/month for a single camera, after a price hike in 2023  —  In more “things are just getting expensive” news, the Arlo Secure subscription service is climbing.  Again.
More: TechHive and BGRForums: r/arlo
Yogita Khatri / The Block:
Portal, a startup building a BTC-based cross-chain decentralized exchange and wallet, raised a $34M seed from Coinbase and others, for a $42.5M total in funding  —  - Portal has raised $34 million in a seed funding round from Coinbase Ventures, OKX Ventures and others.

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