Amazon Music Unlimited prices are going up in the US and UK, rising a dollar from $10 to $11 stateside and £10 to £11 across the pond starting on February 21, 2023. Student plans are also going up by a dollar in both regions from $5/£5 to $6/£6. That f…
Netflix 創辦人 Reed Hastings 退任 CEO
市場上其中一個最具影響力的串流平台 Netflix，他們的共同創辦人兼共同 CEO Reed Hastings 有著多個傳奇故事，但在 2023 年新伊始就宣佈退任的決定。
Google is laying off 12,000 employees
Google parent Alphabet is cutting around 12,000 jobs, or around six percent of its global workforce, it wrote in a company-wide email sent to employees. CEO Sundar Pichai said that he was “deeply sorry” to workers that will be let go and that it was a “difficult decision to set us up for the future.” The layoffs will be felt globally and across the entire company, and Pichai said he takes “full responsibility for the decisions that led us here.”
Alphabet went on a hiring spree over the last few years during a period of “dramatic growth,” but Pichai said that “we hired for a different economic reality than the one we face today.” Over the past few weeks Microsoft, Amazon, Meta and others instituted equally painful and dramatic job cuts due to economic conditions.
Google is the last of those to implement layoffs, thanks in part to its powerful ad and cloud-computing divisions. However, the company saw a 27 percent drop in profit last quarter compared to the year before, and Pichai said Alphabet would need to reduce expenses and hiring. However, activists and analysts called for more aggressive cuts, noting that the company’s headcount had gone up 20 percent since 2017, according to Bloomberg.
Pichai said that that employees would be paid during the full notification period of 60 days minimum. Alphabet will also offer severance packages starting at 16 weeks salary plus two weeks for every additional year at Google “and accelerate at least 16 weeks of GSU vesting.” It’ll also pay 2022 bonuses and remaining vacation time, while offering 6 months of healthcare, job placement services, and “immigration support for those affected.”
Over just the past two weeks, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta laid off 10,000, 18,000 and 11,000 employees respectively. Google has cut other expenses of late as well, shutting down Stadia, cancelling the next-generation Pixelbook laptops and more. It plans to focus even more strongly on AI, saying its “getting ready to share some entirely new experiences for users, developers and businesses.”
The FAA grounded all US flights because contractors mistakenly deleted files
The contractors working on the Federal Aviation Administration’s NOTAM system apparently deleted files by accident, leading to the delays and cancellations of thousands of US flights. If you’ll recall, the FAA paused all domestic departures in the US o…
Bungie offers displaced Stadia ‘Destiny 2’ players a free month of GeForce Now
Now that Stadia is gone, Bungie is steering players toward NVIDIA’s GeForce Now. The developer has offered Destiny 2 users a free month on the game streaming service, sending unique codes to each user, according to an email seen by 9to5Google. “We managed to snag some free codes for NVIDIA’s high-performance cloud gaming platform,” Bungie wrote. “Redeem your one-month code of a GeForce Now priority membership, for free.”
Destiny 2 featured prominently in Stadia’s marketing up until the end, but also figured in GeForce Now promotion for various devices, as shown in the image above. Of the remaining cloud services, Destiny 2 is available on GeForce Now but not Xbox Cloud, Amazon’s Luna or PlayStation Now.
Google announced in September that it would shut down Stadia for good as the service failed to gain traction with users. It refunded all game and hardware sales, and some game studios stepped in to help port games over to other services. If you have a Stadia controller, you can enable Bluetooth support via an online tool so it can be used with PC, iOS or Android devices.
Bungie’s offer was sent to each Destiny 2 user, so check your inbox for the invitation and unique code, then be sure to redeem it before February 19th. That will give you a free month of GeForce Now Priority, which offers 1080p gaming, 6-hour session lengths and up to 60fps refresh rates (it’ll cost $10 per month or $50 for six months after that). The service just introduced a new Ultimate membership tier with a new RTX 4080 boost that offers 4K resolutions, 8-hour sessions and up to 120 fps for $20 per month, or $100 for six months.
Ubisoft 已停止「團隊競技」新作 Project Q 的開發
Ubisoft 已停止「團隊競技」新作 Project Q 的開發，他們上週宣佈自己會砍掉三款籌備中的遊戲。
Sony 宣佈又有 13 款遊戲將登陸 PS VR2，包括《Tetris Effect》、《Rez Infinite》等
Sony 宣佈又有 13 款遊戲將登陸 PS VR2，包括《Tetris Effect》、《Rez Infinite》等，這樣總共就將有 30 多款遊戲會在 2 月 22 日硬體發售後的一個月內推出。
T-Mobile data breach compromised 37 million customers’ data
T-Mobile has admitted that hackers were able to steal the information of around 37 million postpaid and prepaid customers in another major data breach. The carrier said in a regulatory filing that it discovered the issue on January 5th, but that it bel…
LG OLED Flex 開箱動手玩：一鍵自動彎曲的電視 / 電競螢幕
LG OLED Flex 最近在香港結束了預購活動，宣告這款能一鍵自動彎曲的電視 / 電競螢幕已經以 HK$24,980 進入市場了。小編就來先為大家開箱一下這台 LG OLED Flex，看看是怎樣讓它「曲直不分」。
隨著廣告主流失，Twitter 可能難以實現收支平衡
隨著廣告主流失，Twitter 可能難以實現收支平衡，好在他們跟媒體合作還維持得不錯。