Instagram has cut 60 technical program manager positions, eliminating a layer of management at the company, according to a new report from The Information. The impacted employees have two months to apply for other jobs at the company. After the two month period, their employment will be terminated if they are unable to secure a different role at the company.In a LinkedIn post, a former Instagram employee noted that some technical program managers may be expected to “re-interview for PM roles” or project man ...

Google announced today that the company plans to support more real-money games (RMG) on the Play Store this year by allowing more types of games in the category following local laws.The search giant said that the program with extended support for real-money gaming will start in India, Brazil, and Mexico in June with roll out in more countries planned in the future.Google is also considering a new service fee model for subscriptions and in-app purchases. However, the company didn’t disclose many details abou ...

Audible, the Amazon-owned audiobook company, is laying off 5% of its staff, according to a leaked memo obtained by Business Insider.Per the memo, Audible CEO Bob Carrigan praised staff for a strong 2023 and assured them that the business was in good shape… but, due to the “increasingly challenging landscape,” the company is still making cuts. This is a common refrain in the tech sphere, where companies across all sectors have been beleaguered by ongoing layoffs since 2022.Audible did not respond to requests ...

Microsoft today announced that it has worked with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to use its Azure Quantum Elements service to whittle down millions of potential new battery materials to only a few — with one of them now in the prototype stage.Now, before you get too excited about the ‘quantum’ part of ‘Azure Quantum Elements’ (and why wouldn’t you — it’s in the name, after all), let’s get this out of the way first: no quantum computer was used in this project. A ...

The European Union is checking whether Microsoft’s investment in generative AI giant OpenAI is reviewable under the bloc’s merger regulations, it said today.The development comes in the wake of the turmoil at OpenAI in late November when the then board voted to oust founder and CEO Sam Altman — a shock move that triggered an aggressive counter manouever by OpenAI investor Microsoft, which stepped in to say it was hiring Altman. The tech giant also extended an offer to any other OpenAI staffers who wanted to ...

Isomorphic Labs, the London-based, drug discovery-focused spin-out of Google AI R&D division DeepMind, today announced that it’s entered into strategic partnerships with two pharmaceutical giants, Eli Lilly and Novartis, to apply AI to discover new medications to treat diseases.The deals have a combined value of around $3 billion. Isomorphic will receive $45 million upfront from Eli Lilly and potentially up to $1.7 billion based on performance milestones, excluding royalties. Novartis, meanwhile, will pay $ ...

A day after an Apple Watch import ban went into effect in the U.S., an appeals court has instituted a pause. The halt also comes a day after Apple filed an emergency request with the U.S. Court of Appeals.The pause will remain in place until the court takes additional action. However, the Apple Watch Series 9 and Watch Ultra 2 remain unavailable on the company’s site nearly a week after initially being pulled.The fight centers around a pair of trademarks which Southern California health tech company Masimo ...

The New York Times wants OpenAI and Microsoft to pay for training dataThe New York Times is suing OpenAI and its close collaborator (and investor), Microsoft, for allegedly violating copyright law by training generative AI models on Times’ content.In the lawsuit, filed in the Federal District Court in Manhattan, The Times contends that millions of its articles were used to train AI models, including those underpinning OpenAI’s ultra-popular ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Copilot, without its consent. The Times is ...

We’ve known about the Vision Pro for more than half-a-year now (not to mention the years of rumors), but Apple’s first “spatial computing” device is one of consumer electronics’ biggest question marks heading into the new year. The $3,499 headset was given an “early-2024” release time frame when it was unveiled at WWDC in June, but since then, the company hasn’t gotten more specific.Apple oracle Ming-Chi Kuo offered an early holiday gift on December 24, narrowing down what he believes will be a “late-Januar ...

General Motors has temporarily halted sales of the brand new Chevy Blazer EV after some of the first vehicles shipped encountered a number of software problems.The automaker says it is “working quickly to roll out a fix, and owners will be contacted with further information on how to schedule their update.” It didn’t offer a time frame for the stop-sale order, though it claims a “limited number” of vehicles are affected.The Blazer EV only just had its official launch a few weeks ago, but pretty quickly, two ...