TGIF. There’s only one thing* standing in between you and the weekend, and it’s our morning tech news briefing (*there’s sadly a few more hours, we’re sorry).
1. Not the best day for big tech
We started Thursday with notifications from Twitter that we had posted our limit of tweets for the day, despite not actually posting anything yet. That bug slowly fixed itself, but DMs then stopped working. While Twitter didn’t have the best day, neither did Meta’s Instagram or Facebook or Google’s YouTube. All four of these social media behemoths had an outage-plagued day, with bugs reported all around the world. As we noted yesterday, Wednesday was a painful day for anyone reliant on Microsoft Teams. Everything seems to be back to normal today.
2. Neuralink back in the spotlight
Staying somewhat in Elon world and overnight, reports emerged that Neuralink is facing new allegations of malpractice from animal rights advocacy group, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). The organisation claims that the Elon Musk-owned biotech company improperly and illegally transported hazardous materials, potentially contaminated with dangerous primate pathogens. “The company’s documented track record of sloppy, unsafe laboratory practices compel DOT to investigate and levy appropriate fines,” PCRM wrote.
3. Alphabet’s value takes a dive
Google’s parent company Alphabet’s value took a $US100 billion (around $144 billion) dive on Thursday, with reports, such as those from the ABC, attributing the drop to a blunder that happened yesterday with Google’s AI demo. While announcing its much-hyped AI-powered chatbot this week as part of a rapidly intensifying AI arms race between tech heavy-hitters, Google’s Bard decided to tell porkies about the James Webb Space Telescope. In a promotional post, the company included a GIF, demonstrating Bard in action. The same recording was also posted to the company’s Twitter account. Get the full story over here.
4. Breach of Aussie scam SMS rules
Modica, a company that says it specialises in “high volume, enterprise messaging solutions”, is the first to breach Australia’s new anti-SMS scam rules. Back in July, the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) registered new rules that require telcos to identify, trace and block SMS scams. The ACMA said an investigation found Modica allowed customers to send SMS using text-based sender IDs (i.e. a name) without making sufficient checks to ensure they weren’t being used to perpetrate scams. They walk away with a warning.
5. Another day, another batch of tech layoffs
Unfortunately, the inclusion of tech layoffs in your morning briefing is becoming as frequent as the mention of Elon Musk. Brought to our attention by The Verge, Axios is reporting that Yahoo plans to lay off more than 20 per cent of its total workforce as part of a major restructuring of its ad tech unit. The cuts will impact more than 50 per cent of Yahoo’s ad tech employees — more than 1,600 people. The Verge also noted that it’s not just Yahoo, with Deliveroo getting rid of around 350 jobs, and both GitLab and GitHub also making cuts to its workforce.
BONUS ITEM: Be like Marty, take a break, you’ve earned it.
GIANT says Marty “was just on a fresh air break” https://t.co/e34HZAwyvE
— George Stockburger (@StockburgerNews) February 9, 2023
Have a wonderful weekend.