First came Twitter, then Meta, Amazon, and Microsoft, and now Google has become the latest tech giant to announce a round of layoffs affecting thousands of its employees. Around 12,000 jobs are expected to be cut globally, or over 6 percent of the company’s headcount. Google’s sister company Verily announced a smaller round of layoffs earlier this month.
Elsewhere, Netflix announced big news during its latest earnings release. Co-founder Reed Hastings is stepping down from his position as co-CEO after 25 years of running the company, but he’ll stay on as executive chairman. The company also plans to move forwards with its restrictions on password-sharing, which will see users charged extra if they want to stream outside of the primary household.
For now, here’s a tweet to start your day:
Stay tuned, as we continue to update this list with the most important news of today: Friday, January 20th, 2023.
Britain’s prime minister was fined because of this Instagram video.
There’s a long history of internet posts getting people into legal trouble, but this entry is unusual because it’s Britain’s prime minister Rishi Sunak.
This promotional video on his Instagram showed him riding in a car without a seatbelt on. The New York Times reports that violation can result in a fine of up to £500 (about $620 US), and said Sunak’s office confirmed he would pay without specifying an amount.
Part of the US’ no fly list has reportedly leaked.
A security researcher says they found the file on a regional airline’s unsecured server. According to The Daily Dot, the airline has confirmed that “NoFly.csv” was indeed genuine, and from 2019.
Have you been wondering about Gemini, Genesis, and the Grayscale Trust?
If so, this deep dive from the podcast Odd Lots is fantastic.
Three Arrows Capital and BlockFi were both borrowing from Genesis in order to get involved with a Grayscale arbitrage trade… and now Genesis is bankrupt. Of course, this is also why CoinDesk is up for sale, since Genesis, Grayscale, and CoinDesk share a parent company.
Today on The Vergecast: Elon Musk status update, M2 MacBook Pros, and tech layoffs.
Alex Heath joins the show’s first segment to talk us through the latest update on Elon’s first few months at Twitter, and then we turn to Apple’s eventless hardware announcement, HomePod and all.
We also dove into the revelations about CNET’s AI-written stories and discussed the recent spate of Big Tech layoffs, although we recorded the show (available in audio form here for your podcast apps) prior to Friday morning’s bombshell news from Google.
Invincible season 2 is a work in progress coming later this year.
The way streamers drop multiple new “seasons” of animated shows back-to-back these days often makes people forget how much work goes into animation. The reason there hasn’t been a second season of Amazon Prime’s Invincible adaptation yet? It isn’t finished.
But from the looks and sounds of a new teaser dropped today, fans can look forward to seeing more Invincible sometime late this year.
