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January 11, 2024, 8:35 PM
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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 …
Jon Victor / The Information:
Alphabet Union says Wednesday's layoffs at Google impacted more than 1,000 people, making it the largest round of cuts since January 2023  —  A spokesman for a union representing workers at Google's owner, Alphabet, said Wednesday's layoffs at Google impacted more than 1,000 people …
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 …
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
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
Reuters:
LSEG: US bitcoin ETFs saw $4.6B worth of shares traded on January 11, their first day of trading; Grayscale, BlackRock, and Fidelity dominated trading volumes  —  U.S.-listed bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) saw $4.6 billion worth of shares trade hands as of Thursday afternoon …
Matt Levine / Bloomberg:
A look at SEC's hilariously grudging approval of bitcoin ETFs and the likelihood that they will be “physical” ETFs or interest-paying ETFs in the future
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
Sandali Handagama / CoinDesk:
Some crypto advocates welcome bitcoin ETFs as an inevitable part of going mainstream, while others worry they threaten the original promise of decentralization
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.
Casey Newton / Platformer:
Platformer is leaving Substack and migrating to Ghost, saying it doesn't believe Substack will publicly commit to proactively removing pro-Nazi material  —  We've seen this movie before — and we won't stick around to watch it play out  —  After much consideration, we have decided to move Platformer off of Substack.
Jordan Novet / CNBC:
Microsoft briefly unseated Apple as the world's most valuable publicly traded company in early trading on Thursday but closed out the day under Apple  —  - Microsoft on Thursday briefly unseated Apple as the world's most valuable publicly traded company in early trading but closed out the day under Apple.
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 …
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 …
Jason Koebler / 404 Media:
Google formally endorses right to repair and will testify in favor of a law in Oregon, says regulators should ban “parts pairing”, a tactic used by Apple  —  Google says repair should be easy and “parts pairing” should be illegal.  —  Google formally endorsed the concept of right …
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 …
Juli Clover / MacRumors:
Apple says Al Gore and James Bell will retire from its board this year, and Wanda Austin, ex-president and CEO of The Aerospace Corporation, will join the board  —  Both Al Gore and James Bell are retiring from Apple's board of directors, Apple announced today.
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  —  In a Wednesday post on X (formerly Twitter), the startup Rabbit announced that it sold through its first 10,000-unit production run in just one day.
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 8:35 PM ET, January 11, 2024.

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From Mediagazer

Pamela McClintock / The Hollywood Reporter:
Disney confirms pulling a transgender storyline from animated series Win or Lose, saying “many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects” with their kids

Brooks Barnes / New York Times:
Sources: Disney worried that it had a flawed case in Trump's ABC lawsuit, and fighting it could hurt the Disney brand and damage press protections for others

Mark Kleinman / Sky News:
Letter: The Scott Trust's deal to sell the Observer to Tortoise came despite a last-minute bid from Ecotricity founder Dale Vince to thwart the deal

More News

Shubham Sharma / VentureBeat:
1X, an OpenAI-backed developer of humanoid robots with plans to bring its bipedal robot NEO to the market, raised a $100M Series B from EQT Ventures and others
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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