Bloomberg: Sources: Twitter staff in Singapore have been reassigned as remote workers until further notice, amid cost-cuts which include not paying rent on global HQ — Workers at Twitter Inc.’s Singapore office were told to empty out their desks and vacate the premises, said people familiar with the situation …
Read MoreCredit: Copyright by World Economic Forum swiss-image.ch/Photo by Sebastian Derungs, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons Bill Gates has upgraded his personal phone from the Galaxy Z Fold 3 to another Samsung foldable. The phone was gifted to him by Samsung Chairman Lee Jae-Yong when he visited South Korea. Gates also revealed details of
Read MoreFor anyone with even the slightest bit of engineering interest, wind turbines are hard to resist. Everything about them is just so awesome, in the literal sense of the word — the size of the blades, the height of the towers, the mechanical guts that keep them pointed into the wind. And as if one
Read MoreDanny Nelson / CoinDesk: Sources: the DOJ is investigating Ian and Dylan Macalinao over Solana stablecoin exchange Saber Labs, after an exposé showed they faked a web of DeFi protocols — The investigation follows a CoinDesk exposé that showed Ian and Dylan Macalinao used a web of 11 pseudonymous identities …
Read MoreForbes: JPMorgan Chase is suing the founder of Frank, a student loan software startup it bought for $175M, for allegedly lying about scale by creating 4M+ fake users — The financial giant is suing the founder of a Mark Rowan-backed startup it acquired, claiming the fintech, Frank, had sold the financial giant on a “lie.”
Read MoreSarah Perez / TechCrunch: Data.ai: in 2022, mobile app global spending fell 2% YoY to $167B, downloads grew 11% YoY to 255B, game spending fell 5% YoY, and non-game spending grew 6% YoY — The app ecosystem’s nonstop growth finally slipped this past year. An annual review of the app economy by mobile analytics firm
Read MoreWhen you think of Tomy — more properly, Takara Tomy — you think of toys and models from Japan. After all, they have made models and toys as iconic as Transformers, Thomas, Jenga, Boggle, and Furby. They also made figures associated with Thunderbirds and Tron, two favorites in our circles. However, their recent design for
Read MoreApple is reportedly actively working on a new generation of the MacBook Pro with a touchscreen display.
Read MoreRon Miller / TechCrunch: Canalys, IDC, and Gartner report global PC shipments fell for the fourth consecutive quarter in Q4 2022, by 28%-29% YoY to 65.3M-67.2M units; Dell fell ~37% YoY — When you look at fourth quarter worldwide PC sales data from Canalys, IDC and Gartner, it’s fair to say that the news was
Read MoreGary Marcus / The Road to AI We Can Trust: Source: OpenAI will get all of the equity back once $92B in profit plus $13B in initial investment are repaid to Microsoft and once other investors earn $150B — I don’t usually write about business deals, much less about rumors about business deals, but this
Read MoreMark Gurman says that the next generation of the Mac Pro could launch as soon as this spring.
Read MoreJoe Rossignol / MacRumors: Kuo: mass shipments of second-generation AirPods Max and $99 AirPods will likely begin in the second half of 2024 or the first half of 2025 — Mass shipments of second-generation AirPods Max and more affordable AirPods will likely begin in the second half of 2024 or the first half of 2025
Read MoreTom Warren / The Verge: Microsoft updates Xbox Series X and S consoles to automatically switch to energy-saving Shutdown mode and is working on a smarter Sleep mode for active hours — Microsoft is planning to switch Xbox Series X and S owners over to an energy-saving power mode in a bid for sustainability and
Read MorePhoto by Natalia Kolesnikova / AFP via Getty Images A Russian Soyuz spacecraft docked to the International Space Station (ISS) began leaking coolant early last month, leading to concerns about whether the vehicle would be safe to transport ISS crew members back to Earth. NASA and Russian space agency Roscosmos have now announced they will
Read MoreIf you’ve ever wanted to work for NASA, here’s your chance. Well, don’t expect a paycheck or any benefits, but the Agency is looking for volunteers to help process the huge amount of exoplanet data with their Exoplanet Watch program. If you have a telescope, you can even contribute data to the project. But if
Read MoreIllustration by Alex Castro / The Verge Apple’s Music and TV apps for Windows have made an appearance, with preview versions of the apps being spotted on the Microsoft Store by The Verifier (via MacRumors). LAst October, Microsoft announced they were coming to the platform, letting users finally ditch the old iTunes app and Apple
Read MoreJacquelyn Melinek / TechCrunch: AWS partners with Ava Labs, which develops the Avalanche blockchain, to support Avalanche’s infrastructure and dApp ecosystem through the AWS marketplace — Amazon Web Services (AWS) has partnered with Ava Labs, the company building out layer-1 blockchain Avalanche, to help scale blockchain …
Read MoreMaria Heeter / The Information: Source: Stripe lowers its internal valuation by ~11% to $63B, its third known cut since June 2022, bringing the total reduction to ~40% in the past six months — Stripe has cut the internal value of its shares by about 11%, implying a valuation of $63 billion, according to a
Read MoreBoth heart rate and Android workout tracking integrations are necessary for VR fitness to become popular. | Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge Meta is adding two new fitness-related features to the Meta Quest. The first is Health Connect integration, meaning Android users can finally sync their Quest workout data automatically. Perhaps more
Read MoreAn M2 MacBook Air with a screen that doesn’t respond to touch. | Photo by Becca Farsace / The Verge Apple is working on Macs with touchscreens, according to a report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman. While it’s uncertain whether the devices will actually come to market, Gurman says in a tweet that we could see
Read MoreA photo of a Verily building. | Image: Verily Verily, the health-focused company housed under Google parent Alphabet, is laying off staff and announcing a sweeping reorganization, as shared in an email from CEO Stephen Gillett posted on Verily’s blog. “Approximately 15 percent of Verily roles” have been cut, Gillett said, which translates to more
Read MoreEmoji reactions on Google Meet float up the left side of the screen and “burst” when multiple are used. | Image: Google Meet Google is finally rolling out emoji reactions for Meet, something myself and other colleagues have been patiently waiting for since Google announced the feature last year. Now the video conferencing platform will
Read MoreIllustration: The Verge Courts have unsealed Google’s motion to dismiss an antitrust lawsuit over its search engine — one that could fracture a core Google service in order to increase online competition. In a motion for summary judgment filed on December 12th, the company argues that the complaint misrepresents its agreements with browser developers and
Read MoreFrank Landymore / Futurism: CNET has been using AI, which it calls automation technology, to write financial explainer posts under a CNET Money Staff byline, apparently since November 2022 — Next time you’re on your favorite news site, you might want to double check the byline to see if it was written by an actual
Read MoreFinancial Times: Sources: Apple promises investors to disclose details about its App Store removals, including the number of removal requests by country and their legal basis — Activists had raised concerns about how iPhone maker’s decision-making process affected freedom of expression
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