Tech companies like Google and Microsoft have offered a muted response to unrest in Iran, prompting side projects by employees to fight censorship and more (Paresh Dave/Wired)

Paresh Dave / Wired: Tech companies like Google and Microsoft have offered a muted response to unrest in Iran, prompting side projects by employees to fight censorship and more  —  Companies like Google have offered a muted response to unrest in Iran.  Grassroots coders are tackling internet censorship on their own.

Google cuts most of the Area 120 team and will graduate three of the incubator’s projects in 2023; sources: staff not involved in those projects were laid off (Julia Love/Bloomberg)

Julia Love / Bloomberg: Google cuts most of the Area 120 team and will graduate three of the incubator’s projects in 2023; sources: staff not involved in those projects were laid off  —  Alphabet Inc.’s Google has cut most of the jobs at Area 120, its in-house incubator for new projects, as part of a […]

Emails and sources: Google fired 16% of its ~400-person Fuchsia OS team, Research cut jobs in low traction areas, and Cloud cut operational and other roles (New York Times)

New York Times: Emails and sources: Google fired 16% of its ~400-person Fuchsia OS team, Research cut jobs in low traction areas, and Cloud cut operational and other roles  —  The layoffs amount to about 6 percent of the global work force at the company, the latest tech giant to make cuts after a pandemic […]

Internal records: Twitter now has around 1,300 active employees, including fewer than 550 full-time engineers, and about 1,400 non-working employees (Lora Kolodny/CNBC)

Lora Kolodny / CNBC: Internal records: Twitter now has around 1,300 active employees, including fewer than 550 full-time engineers, and about 1,400 non-working employees  —  – Internal records show that Twitter has shed about 80% of its employees since Elon Musk took over and headcount is hovering around 1,300 employees today.

In a staff call, CNET and Red Ventures executives said they were pausing AI-generated content on CNET and other websites and detailed their proprietary AI tool (Mia Sato/The Verge)

Mia Sato / The Verge: In a staff call, CNET and Red Ventures executives said they were pausing AI-generated content on CNET and other websites and detailed their proprietary AI tool  —  The call, which lasted under an hour, was held a week after CNET came under fire for its use of AI tools on […]

Waterloo-based Magnet Forensics, which develops digital investigation software, agrees to be acquired by Thoma Bravo for CA$1.8B (Josh Scott/BetaKit)

Josh Scott / BetaKit: Waterloo-based Magnet Forensics, which develops digital investigation software, agrees to be acquired by Thoma Bravo for CA$1.8B  —  Announcement comes hours after IIROC halted trading of Magnet’s shares.  —  Kitchener-Waterloo’s Magnet Forensics has entered into a definitive agreement …

Sources: Google executives met with Larry Page and Sergey Brin last month to discuss Google’s AI efforts, as the company seeks to combat OpenAI’s ChatGPT (Nico Grant/New York Times)

Nico Grant / New York Times: Sources: Google executives met with Larry Page and Sergey Brin last month to discuss Google’s AI efforts, as the company seeks to combat OpenAI’s ChatGPT  —  A rival chatbot has shaken Google out of its routine, with the founders who left three years ago re-engaging and more than 20 […]

The Chinese government grants Didi permission to republish its apps on Apple’s, Huawei’s, Xiaomi’s, and other app stores, after over a year of regulatory limbo (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg: The Chinese government grants Didi permission to republish its apps on Apple’s, Huawei’s, Xiaomi’s, and other app stores, after over a year of regulatory limbo  —  Didi Global Inc.’s main apps have returned to the country’s biggest mobile stores, allowing the ride-hailing giant to resume growth …

India releases rules on social media influencers and virtual avatars promoting content without disclosing payment, adding an up to ~$12.3K fine for violations (Jagmeet Singh/TechCrunch)

Jagmeet Singh / TechCrunch: India releases rules on social media influencers and virtual avatars promoting content without disclosing payment, adding an up to ~$12.3K fine for violations  —  As the market of social media influencers is getting bigger in India, the South Asian nation has introduced endorsement guidelines …

How Huntington’s disease affects different neurons

In patients with Huntington’s disease, neurons in a part of the brain called the striatum are among the hardest-hit. Degeneration of these neurons contributes to patients’ loss of motor control, which is one of the major hallmarks of the disease. Neuroscientists at MIT have now shown that two distinct cell populations in the striatum are […]

Texas Instruments names COO Haviv Ilan as its next CEO starting on April 1, replacing Rich Templeton, who has been CEO for 19 years and will remain its chairman (Jordan Novet/CNBC)

Jordan Novet / CNBC: Texas Instruments names COO Haviv Ilan as its next CEO starting on April 1, replacing Rich Templeton, who has been CEO for 19 years and will remain its chairman  —  – Rich Templeton has run Texas Instruments for almost 19 years, and the company has outperformed one exchange-traded fund for chips.

SEC filing: T-Mobile says a hacker stole data for ~37M customer accounts, including names and addresses, but no passwords, SSNs, or financial information (Catherine Larkin/Bloomberg)

Catherine Larkin / Bloomberg: SEC filing: T-Mobile says a hacker stole data for ~37M customer accounts, including names and addresses, but no passwords, SSNs, or financial information  —  T-Mobile US Inc. said a hacker obtained data for 37 million customer accounts, though it didn’t include payment card information or personal identifying numbers.

Netflix plans to roll out paid password sharing “more broadly” later in Q1 2023 and expects some “cancel reaction” before an improvement in overall revenue (Emma Roth/The Verge)

Emma Roth / The Verge: Netflix plans to roll out paid password sharing “more broadly” later in Q1 2023 and expects some “cancel reaction” before an improvement in overall revenue  —  The era of Netflix password sharing will soon come to a close.  Netflix has plans to enforce password-sharing rules …

A look at the art world’s deal-with-the-devil approach to the NFT market, after allegations that FTX bought the $24.4M trove of 107 Bored Apes NFTs at Sotheby’s (Nate Freeman/Vanity Fair)

Nate Freeman / Vanity Fair: A look at the art world’s deal-with-the-devil approach to the NFT market, after allegations that FTX bought the $24.4M trove of 107 Bored Apes NFTs at Sotheby’s  —  Auction houses and talent agencies thought the Web3 works were a fast track to billions.  If it weren’t for a global crypto […]

Twitter launches Blue on Android for $11 per month, the same as iOS and $3 more than the web, after launching an annual subscription (Ivan Mehta/TechCrunch)

Ivan Mehta / TechCrunch: Twitter launches Blue on Android for $11 per month, the same as iOS and $3 more than the web, after launching an annual subscription  —  A day after launching an annual Twitter Blue subscription, the social media company made the paid plan available for purchase for Android users today.

Crypto investors say Sam Bankman-Fried frequently promoted and manipulated “Samcoins”, including Solana, Serum, FTT, and Maps, to benefit FTX and Alameda (New York Times)

New York Times: Crypto investors say Sam Bankman-Fried frequently promoted and manipulated “Samcoins”, including Solana, Serum, FTT, and Maps, to benefit FTX and Alameda  —  Sam Bankman-Fried found ways to control the prices of digital coins to benefit his companies, FTX and Alameda, according to cryptocurrency investors.

Similarweb: Twitter referral traffic to 12 major news outlets fell 12% on average from November 2022 to December 2022; only traffic to NY Post and Fox News grew (Digiday)

Digiday: Similarweb: Twitter referral traffic to 12 major news outlets fell 12% on average from November 2022 to December 2022; only traffic to NY Post and Fox News grew  —  Under the leadership of Elon Musk, Twitter’s role as a traffic referral source to publishers’ sites is largely declining.

Sources: Apple is working on an iPad-based smart display with smart home controls, video, and FaceTime and on a new Apple TV for H1 2024 with a faster processor (Mark Gurman/Bloomberg)

Mark Gurman / Bloomberg: Sources: Apple is working on an iPad-based smart display with smart home controls, video, and FaceTime and on a new Apple TV for H1 2024 with a faster processor  —  Apple Inc. is working on a slate of devices aimed at challenging Amazon.com Inc. and Google in the smart-home market …

Research: Southeast Asia online food delivery spending rose 5% YoY to $16.3B in 2022, the slowest in at least four years; Grab extended its lead with 54% of GMV (Yoolim Lee/Bloomberg)

Yoolim Lee / Bloomberg: Research: Southeast Asia online food delivery spending rose 5% YoY to $16.3B in 2022, the slowest in at least four years; Grab extended its lead with 54% of GMV  —  Southeast Asia’s food delivery spending grew at the slowest pace in at least four years in 2022, highlighting the challenges faced […]