Meta has announced another expansive round of layoffs to cut costs. CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the company is laying off another 10,000 workers and closing “about 5,000 additional open positions that we haven’t hired yet.” This follows layoffs of around 11,000 employees last year. The company is reducing the size of its recruiting team and will inform affected employees later today. It will then announce restructuring and layoff efforts for its technology departments at the end of April and business teams at the end of May. Zuckerberg, who will soon be going on paternity leave with his third child, recently described 2023 as a “year of efficiency.” He added in his note: “I think we need to prepare for the possibility that this new economic reality will continue for many years to come.”
–Matt Smith
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The most important stories you might have missed
Updates will begin for US users at the end of the month.
Google’s catch-up with ChatGPT continues, and the company is bringing its own version of next-generation chatbots and AI assistance to all of its Workspace products. According to the company, you’ll be able to “compose, reply, summarize, and prioritize” emails, “brainstorm, proofread, write, and rewrite” text documents, automatically generate images and even videos with Slides, have Sheets create shape formulas autonomous and automate transcription. notes in Meet video calls.
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You no longer have to pay $10 a month to view information from the last 30 or 90 days.
One of our biggest complaints about Fitbit products is the $10 monthly fee to view your historical data. Until now, you could only see up to seven days of your breathing rate, resting heart rate, and heart rate variation—and just 90 days of everything else—without paying for a subscription. Today, Google announced that it’s making “more of the insightful data from Fitbit’s health metrics dashboard available to all its users without a subscription.” Now you can see 30-day and 90-day views of your data, without paying for it.
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Kristen Sotakoun found out too much about me in a consensus test of my online safety.
In 30 minutes or less, TikToker and Chicago-based server Kristen Sotakoun can find out your birthday. “The first thing is to be entertaining. The second thing is to show them cracks in their social networks, which was something totally accidental that I became in TikTok”. Sotakoun, who goes by @notkahnjunior, calls it “consensual doxing.” Engadget’s Katie Malone offered her social media profiles for testing.
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You will be limited to sports during the early access phase.
YouTube TV is rolling out an early access multi-view feature that shows up to four sports streams simultaneously. Visit the Top Picks for You section and you’ll be able to choose from pre-selected multi-view groups such as the NCAA March Madness games. There is a full screen view for each match and you can change the audio and subtitles to the stream that grabs your attention. The feature works on smart TVs and living room media players running YouTube TV. You won’t need a high-powered device for all the processing on YouTube’s servers: your hardware only has to handle one source.
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Would you pay $699 to avoid picking up trash?
Okay, I’ll say it – I’d pay that much to avoid picking up pet poop.
I’m not sure I want to keep reading.