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January 11, 2024, 4:20 PM
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Top News

Louise Matsakis / Semafor:
Google lays off hundreds of staff working on Assistant and says the restructuring would help improve Assistant as the company explores integrating newer AI tech  —  Google is laying off hundreds of people working on its voice-activated Google Assistant software and eliminating a similar number …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google reorganizes its Devices & Services teams responsible for Pixel, Fitbit, and Nest; Fitbit co-founders James Park and Eric Friedman are leaving Google  —  Google is reorganizing the Devices & Services teams responsible for Pixel, Nest, and Fitbit hardware.
Nico Grant / New York Times:
Sources: several hundred Google engineering employees received notices that their roles were eliminated and lost corporate access; most hardware cuts were in AR  —  The company, which has been working to trim expenses, laid off employees who worked on core engineering, the Google Assistant product and hardware such as the Pixel phone.
Alex Heath / The Verge:
Internal memo: Discord CEO Jason Citron says the company is laying off 17% of its staff, or 170 people, after growing its workforce “by 5x since 2020”  —  Discord is laying off 17 percent of its staff, a move that CEO Jason Citron said is meant to “sharpen our focus and improve …
Abner Li / 9to5Google:
Google plans to remove 17 “underutilized” Assistant features in February, including controlling audiobooks, media alarms, recipes, messages, events, and more  —  Bard is the future of Assistant.  Ahead of that happening, Google announced today that Assistant features with low usage will be removed in February.
Jesse Hamilton / CoinDesk:
US SEC Chair Gary Gensler concedes that losing in court after rejecting Grayscale's spot bitcoin ETF left the agency with little choice but to approve such ETFs  —  The SEC chair said a court forced his hand and that the agency's decision to greenlight a spot bitcoin ETF doesn't signal support of that or any other digital asset.
Reuters:
The US SEC approves spot bitcoin ETFs from BlackRock, Grayscale, ARK 21Shares, Bitwise, WisdomTree, Fidelity, VanEck, Invesco, Valkyrie, Hashdex, and Franklin
Carly Page / TechCrunch:
Ivanti confirms hackers are exploiting two critical vulnerabilities in its corporate VPN software, but says patches won't be available until the end of January  —  U.S. software giant Ivanti has confirmed that hackers are exploiting two critical-rated vulnerabilities affecting …
Reuters:
USDC stablecoin issuer Circle confidentially files for a US IPO, without saying the number of shares for sale or a price range; Circle was valued at $9B in 2022  —  Circle Internet Financial, the company behind stablecoin USDC, said on Thursday that it had confidentially filed …
Charisma Madarang / Rolling Stone:
Dudesy, an AI-driven podcast curated by humans, releases an hour-long comedy special featuring an AI-generated recreation of George Carlin, who died in 2008  —  The hour-long special arrived from Dudesy, a podcast run by artificial intelligence … Following the special's release …
Bloomberg:
Sources describe how AI replaced the metaverse as Mark Zuckerberg's top priority, leading Meta to ruthlessly cut jobs and focus on quickly releasing AI products  —  Meta's founder has become deeply engaged in his company's AI efforts ahead of its 20th anniversary, but his close attention hasn't always proved to be a recipe for success.
Dina Bass / Bloomberg:
Google Cloud eliminates fees for customers who leave for a rival service, effective immediately, which may put pressure on Amazon and Microsoft to do the same  —  Antirust officials have been looking at cloud data-transfer policies  —  The cost of switching between cloud-computing providers …
Emma Roth / The Verge:
After announcing the $199 R1 “Large Action Model” AI handheld at CES, Rabbit sold 10K units in one day; second batch orders are set to ship in April to May 2024  —  The R1, the pocket-size gadget from Rabbit that's supposed to use your apps for you, has already sold out of its first batch.
Alanna Durkin Richer / Associated Press:
eBay will pay $3M to resolve charges over a harassment campaign by staffers who sent spiders and other disturbing items to those behind the EcommerceBytes blog  —  Online retailer eBay Inc. will pay a $3 million fine to resolve criminal charges over a harassment campaign waged by employees …
Matt Burgess / Wired:
A researcher finds 800GB of data online tied to school software maker Raptor, used by 5,300+ US districts, including evacuation plans and student medical files  —  More than 4 million school records, including safety procedures, student medical files, and court documents, were also publicly accessible online.
Dominic-Madori Davis / TechCrunch:
PitchBook: female-founded US companies raised $44.4B out of $170.59B in VC funding in 2023; companies with all-female founding teams raised ~$3.1B, down 39% YoY  —  Female-founded companies in the U.S. raised $44.4 billion out of the $170.59 billion in venture capital allocated last year.

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This is a Techmeme archive page. It shows how the site appeared at 4:20 PM ET, January 11, 2024.

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.

From Mediagazer

Michael Gold / New York Times:
President-elect Donald Trump announces he has chosen Karoline Leavitt, who served as his campaign's press secretary, to be his White House press secretary

John Koblin / New York Times:
NBC names Craig Melvin as Hoda Kotb's successor on Today, teaming up with Savannah Guthrie, starting January 13; Melvin has been Today's news anchor since 2018

Katie Kilkenny / The Hollywood Reporter:
On Fox News, LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong discussed his new approach to publish “views from both sides”, and said the paper had conflated news and opinion

More News

Naman Ramachandran / Variety:
Netflix removes an Indian film depicting a Hindu character eating meat after backlash from Hindu groups; producer Zee apologizes and plans to edit the film

Earlier Picks

John Timmer / Ars Technica:
Harvard spinout QuEra, a quantum computing startup, plans to release an error-corrected quantum computer with 10,000 physical and 100 logical qubits by 2026
Maxwell Strachan / VICE:
A survey of 9,388 software engineers in December 2023: ~90% believe getting a job now is harder than pre-pandemic and 60%+ believe AI will lead to less hiring
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