Better batteries

• Ford announced it is opening a $3.5 billion electric vehicle factory in Michigan that will produce batteries with a new formula.
• The lithium iron phosphate battery's chemistry means they are more durable, faster charging, and more affordable.
• The new factory will generate 2,500 new jobs.

Neeva launches

• Neeva launched an AI search engine in the US in January to a limited audience of users.
• The engine was marketed as an "authentic, real-time AI search.
• The timing of the announcement was auspicious, as Microsoft and Google battle back and forth over integrating AI into their respective search engines.
• Users have to subscribe to access the engine because Neeva doesn’t monetize through advertising and prevents third-party trackers from using personal data to display personalized ads.

All aboard the Blue Glenn

• NASA is planning a mission to Mars on Blue Origin's new spacecraft, New Glenn.
• The mission will be Blue Origins' first big government contract with the New Glenn and was made possible through the Venture-Class Acquisition of Dedicated and Rideshare (VADR) program at NASA.

AP-yikes

• Twitter announced that developers will have to pay $100 per month for access to the basic tier of the Twitter API, basically a "low level of API usage."
• Twitter expended the deadline before free API access is shut down until February 13th.
• Researchers who depend on access to the API to conduct research about misinformation or hate speech will be severely impacted, as will small developers without the capital to pay the new premium.

Sorry FTC!

• The FTC sued Meta in July to try and block them from acquiring the VR developer Within.
• Within makes VR fitness applications like Supernatural.
• At the conclusion of the trial between Meta and the FTC, a judge ruled that Meta could proceed with the acquisition.

10 times

• Microsoft recently released a demonstration of a ChatGPT-enabled Bing.
• Since announcing that Microsoft would be incorporating the chatbot into its search engine, the Bing app has seen a 10x increase in new downloads.
• The jump in downloads shows the growing demand for new AI experiences, but users who want access to the new Bing will need to sign up for a waitlist and make Bing their default search engine on their PC or mobile device.

Google’s A.I.-powered ‘multisearch,’ which combines text and images in a single query, goes global

• Google’s new “multisearch” feature is now available for global users on mobile devices.
• Multisearch is powered by Google’s AI Mutlitask Unified Model, which can draw connections between different formats of media and information.
• The combination of words and images will help Google process and understand more complex search queries and will be especially helpful for shopping.

ChatGPT goes mainstream

• Microsoft integrated ChatGPT into Bing and released a demo on the Bing homepage today.
• The bot aims to provide answers to search queries directly to enhance productivity.
• Microsoft added a more complex version of GPT, GPT 4, into the search engine, which is able to provide more useful answers, annotate answers and provide up-to-date results with fewer errors.
• One implication of the integration could be that articles or blogs may get fewer clicks, meaning fewer dollars for publishers from ads.

Electric sprint begins

• Mercedes is releasing the largest version of its electric sprinter van in North America in 2023.
• The Mercedes-Benz eSprinter has excellent mileage both on the highways and in cities.
• The van can charge with alternating current and direct current.

Bard breaks the search engine

• Google revealed Bard, its AI chatbot, which aims to answer search queries with the breadth of the world's knowledge with its large language models.
• Bard uses Google's own Language Model for Dialogue Applications to answer questions in a conversational way and pull information from the
• Bard will be integrated into Google Search in the form of several new features.
• Bard has been positioned as a competitor to OpenAI's ChatGPT, which will be integrated into Microsoft's search engine, Bing, soon.

Only the good bots

• Twitter is shutting down free access to its APIs on February 9th.
• After an outcry from developers and researchers, Elon Musk said that Twitter will provide free write-only API access for bots that are creating "good content."
• Researchers and student developers rely on Twitter APIs to conduct research or build new products.
• Putting the Twitter API behind a paywall will interfere with research and projects that rely on free access.

Return to sender

• A group of affiliated debtors with FTX, who dubbed themselves "FTX Debtors," sent letters to politicians, PACs, and other recipients of donations from FTX, asking them to return donations they received from the embattled cryptocurrency exchange.
• Recipients of the letters also included parties who received funds from CEO Sam-Bankman Fried.
• The letter requested that the funds be voluntarily returned and threatened that action would be taken to get the funds back if the parties did not comply.

Boost for Automakers

• The US Treasury announced today that it is changing the definition of "SUV" to encompass more vehicles so that more electric vehicles will qualify for up to $7,500 in federal tax credits.
• The decision means that more vehicles from Tesla, GM, and other automakers will qualify for the credits at higher price points without having to reduce prices for their SUVs.

Bye bye API

• Developers use the Twitter API to create third-party tools on the platform.
• Researchers use Twitter data gathered by the API in their work.
• On February 9th, Twitter will stop offering its API for free and start charging to access it.

Not like other links

• Summari started by providing readers with article summaries on demand, but a year later, it is taking its summarization capabilities to new heights with a new service: link previews.
• When a reader hovers over a link, a short summary written by AI pops up to deliver the reader more useful information.
• When the product is implemented, websites experience over 50% more page views.

Record year for hackers

• A record $3.8 billion in cryptocurrency was stolen from various companies last year.
• Much of the theft was orchestrated by North Korean-linked hackers.
• North Korean-linked hackers stole an estimated $1.7 billion in cryptocurrency from various hacks in 2022.
• Hackers targeted decentralized finance protocols and cross-chain bridge protocols.

Information breach

• Google Fi, which is Google's cell network, confirmed a data breach this morning.
• The breach is likely related to a recent security breach at T-Mobile, where hackers accessed the personal data of millions of T-Mobile customers.
• Google alerted customers this morning that there had been suspicious activity in a support system that contained a limited amount of customer data.

AI music

• Google has developed a new AI system that can generate music in any genre from text descriptions.
• The tool, MusicLM, was trained on 280,000 hours of music to learn to generate coherent songs.
• The system can also build on existing melodies and can write a narrative from the prompt.

Meta allows Donald Trump back on Facebook and Instagram

• Former President Trump has been allowed back on Facebook and Instagram by Meta, two years after he was banned for inciting violence after his supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6th, 2021.
• Facebook is a powerful fundraising tool that is likely to be heavily utilized by Trump's campaign for the 2024 presidential election. In the 2020 election, Trump generated millions of dollars in campaign contributions on the platform.
• Democrats argued that Trump still poses a threat to public safety and, as such, should not be reinstated on Meta's platforms.

100 million users

• GitHub reached 100 million active users.
• Github had 90 million plus users three months ago, and 28 million five years ago when Microsoft acquired the company.
• The platform now serves as the default hosting service for millions of proprietary and open source software projects.

What's in the suit?

• The Justice Department and eight states filed a suit against Google for abusing its position at the center of the online advertising industry to create a monopoly and claim profits that should have gone to advertisers and publishers.
• The allegations in the suit also include charges that Google bought up competition and strong-armed advertisers into using Google over other competitors.
• Google runs an automated auction when you load a site to find advertisers who are willing to pay to show their ads.
• The suit won't have any immediate impact on users.

AI toolkit

• Shutterstock and OpenAI partnered to offer users of its online design platform Creative Flow to generate images based on text prompt with DALL-E 2.
• The images are ready for licensing right after they are generated on the platform.
• Shutterstock's partnership with OpenAI is exciting for both as image generators become more and more mainstream.
• The partnership could set Shutterstock apart by integrating it into the Creative Flow platform.

Trader traitors

• US authorities have accused a pair of North Korean hacker groups of stealing more than $100 million in crypto from Harmony's Horizon Bridge.
• The hackers used a malware campaign called "TraderTraitor" to gain access to the assets.

$100 million

• North Korean hackers exploited a vulnerability in Harmony's Horizon Bridge to steal $100 million in crypto assets.
• The state-sponsored hackers hacked into the company's cross-chain bridge, which users use to transfer digital assets from one blockchain to another.
• The FBI said that stolen crypto assets are used to fund North Korea's nuclear weapons program and evade international sanctions.

New pass

• Amazon launched RxPass, a service where Prime users can pay a fee of $5 out of pocket to get as many generic medications as they need.
• The pass covers 80 common ailments, and the conditions were specially selected to reach the largest number of customers.
• The pass is not open to people on Medicare or Medicaid.

More games for fans

• Meta is expanding its partnership with the NBA this season to offer more than 50 live games in VR on the Meta Quest headset.
• The package includes 54 live games and five immersive 180-degree monoscopic VR games in the Xtadium and Meta Horizon Worlds.
• Meta is also added NBA-branded apparel to its virtual store for avatars.

New deal

• Microsoft announced it was extending its partnership with OpenAI into a third phase after it invested in the Chat-GPT maker in 2019 and 2021.
• The renewed partnership includes a new multi-year, multibillion-dollar investment into OpenAI to accelerate breakthroughs and commercialize advanced technologies.

Partnership extends

• Microsoft announced it was extending its partnership with OpenAI, the startup behind ChatGPT and DALL-E 2.
• The multi-year, multibillion-dollar contract will be used to further advance AI research and develop products that are "safe, useful, and powerful."
• The infusion of capital will be used in the deployment of supercomputing systems that are the backbone of OpenAI.

Silbert's empire

• The cryptocurrency lender Genesis Global Holdco filed for bankruptcy on Thursday night.
• Genesis is a subsidiary of the Digital Currency Group, which is owned by Barry Silbert.
• Genesis is the latest crypto company to fold since the collapse of FTX.

FTX-triggered collapse

• Crypto broker Genesis filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, listing 100,000 creditors with liabilities ranging from $1.2 billion $11 billion.
• Three bankruptcy petitions were filed for Genesis' holding companies.
• Genesis was a crypto lender, providing loans to crypto hedge funds and over-the-counter firms.
• The collapse of FTX locked a large portion of Genesis' assets on the platform and led to the lender filing for bankruptcy.

Genesis collapsed

• The cryptocurrency lender Genesis Global Holdco filed for bankruptcy on Thursday night.
• Genesis is a subsidiary of the Digital Currency Group, which is owned by Barry Silbert.
• Genesis is the latest crypto company to fold since the collapse of FTX.

Silbert's collapsing empire

• Crypto broker Genesis filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, listing 100,000 creditors with liabilities ranging from $1.2 billion $11 billion.
• Three bankruptcy petitions were filed for Genesis' holding companies.
• Genesis was a crypto lender, providing loans to crypto hedge funds and over-the-counter firms.
• The collapse of FTX locked a large portion of Genesis' assets on the platform and led to the lender filing for bankruptcy.

Illegal training

• Getty Images is suing the company behind Stable Diffusion.
• Getty says that the makers of Stable Diffusion illegally copied and processed Getty's database of copyrighted images to train its AI image-generating tool.
• The suit was filed in the High Court of Justice in London.
• Getty has gone as far as to ban AI-generated images from its database and has decried the use of artist-owned, copyrighted images to train AI image generators.

Personal data leaked

• T-Mobile revealed that a hacker accessed the personal data of 37 million customers.
• The hacker accessed names, billing addresses, emails, phone numbers, dates of birth, and other information.
• T-Mobile has been hacked eight times in the last eight years, with the most recent hack happening last year.

Data stolen

• The hacker who accessed the personal information of 37 million T-Mobile users breached a single application programming interface that held the user's information.
• Payment information, social security or tax ID numbers, driver's licenses or government IDs, or passwords were not stolen.

12,000 people

• Alphabet, the parent company of Google, announced its cutting around 6% of its workforce as the pandemic-driven digital boom dwindles.
• Google is the latest tech giant to announce layoffs after Microsoft and Amazon announced layoffs this week.
• The cuts will impact about 12,000 people.

Increased focus on AI

• Alphabet is cutting about 6% of its workforce, about 12,000 jobs.
• Google's parent company is facing increasing competition in the AI space from companies like Microsoft.
• Alphabet made the decision to cut staff after a review of company priorities, which includes intensifying efforts to improve the company's AI-based products and decreasing spend on recruiting.

Ad spend declines

• Ad spending by the top 30 advertisers on Twitter fell by 42% after Elon Musk took over the social media company.
• Research from Pathmatics showed that companies significantly reduced ad buys after Musk's takeover.
• Of Twitter's top 100 advertisers, 50 stopped their activity or fully cut ties with the platform within the first month of Musk's reign as CEO.

Upgraded pod

• Apple discontinued the original HomePod smart speaker in 2021, but today they announced a rerelease of the speaker.
• The HomePod smart speaker is larger than the original, with upgraded audio, an S7 chip, and a lower price.
• The speaker also includes new smart home tools.

Job cuts

• Amazon kicked off its largest round of job cuts ever today, impacting 18,000 employees globally.
• US, Canada, and Costa Rice-based employees were notified today by email, and workers in Europe will be notified in the coming days.
• Employees in China will be notified after the Chinese New Year.

Two years of challenges

• According to CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft is embarking on a difficult two years and will lay off 10,000 jobs by the end of the third quarter.
• Microsoft ended the fiscal year with $83 billion in operating income and $198 billion in revenue.

Layoffs announced

• Rising prices and lower spending on tech prompted Microsoft to cut its workforce dramatically.
• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that customers are reducing their digital spend, which is impacting Microsoft's profits.

2018 tweet

• In 2018, Elon Musk tweeted about a plan to take Tesla private, causing the carmaker's stock to jump, then plummet when Musk didn't follow through with the plan.
• The tweet debacle caused investors to lose billions.
• If the tweet is found by the court to be a false statement in a trial that began today, Tesla and Musk could be liable for billions in damages.
• The plaintiffs need to prove that the money they lost on Tesla stock was directly tied to Musk's statement, and Musk will need to prove that he did indeed have the funding secured to take Tesla private when he crafted the tweet.

Microsoft lay offs

• Microsoft is reportedly preparing to cut about 5% of its workforce tomorrow.
• Thousands of people may lose their jobs at the software giant.
• Microsoft recently implemented a new unlimited time off policy, and CEO Satya Nadella also warned of challenges in 2023.

New Mac Mini

• The Mac Mini is the latest Apple computer to get a boost from the M2 chip.
• The new Mac Mini features 16GB of RAM, an additional two Thunderbolt 4 ports, and 512GB of SSD storage.
• The new Mac Mini will have the new M2 chip, which is super powerful.

MacBook Pro updates

• Apple announced new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros with the new M2 Pro and Max chips.
• Apple announced the new MacBook Pros in a Youtube video.
• The M2 chips is expected to deliver an 18 percent faster CPU and 35% faster GPU compared to the M1.

Software snag

• Canadian accountant Karlee Besse was fired for being unproductive in her job, but she sued the company saying she had been fired without just cause.
• The company claimed she was engaged in time theft by misrepresenting more than 50 hours of work.
• Time-tracking software installed on her work laptop proved that she had misrepresented the hours, and she was ordered by a Canadian court to pay $2,756 to her former employer.
• Time-tracking software is growing in popularity as work-from-home policies become more commonplace.

Since March 2021

• The Defense Department has received 366 reports of UFOs since March 2021.
• About 26 of the sightings were confirmed, and about half were attributed to unmanned aircraft like weather balloons or drones.
• The majority of sightings came from Nacy and Air Force aviators.
• The report did not provide evidence that the sightings were due to extraterrestrial life or new aircraft or weapons from other nations

Long-awaited

• The unclassified report was published by the Pentagon today.
• The report covers a total of 510 sightings, 366 of which were sighted between March 2021 and the report's release.
• Of the reported sightings, 171 remain uncharacterized and unattributed, while the rest were attributed to drones, unmanned aircraft systems, balloons, or airborne clutter.

Competing at home and abroad

• Tesla cut prices on most of its electric cars throughout the United States and Europe to compete with the growing demand for other electric vehicle makers.
• The lower-priced models will now qualify for the $7,500 federal tax credit established by the Inflation Reduction Act.
• Auto sales in the US fell last year, but the sale of electric vehicles increased as demand grew.
• Tesla is willing to concede profit to increase sales volume.

Price cuts

• Tesla is cutting prices throughout the US and Europe by up to 20%.
• The cuts impact Model Y in Europe and Models X, Y, and S in the US.
• The price cuts mean that Model Y will now qualify for the $7,500 federal tax credit established by the Inflation Reduction Act.

Webb's first

• NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has discovered its first new exoplanet, named LHS 475 b.
• The discovery was announced at an American Astronomical Society meeting.
• The planet is notable because it is Earth-sized and rocky, while most exoplanets astronomers have discovered are large gas giants. The planet likely has a carbon dioxide atmosphere or none at all.

Exciting news for NASA

• The planet LHS 475 b, discovered by the Webb telescope, is outside of our solar system and is almost the exact size of Earth.
• Scientists used the Webb telescope's spectrograph technology after finding signs of the planet with NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite.

Win cemented

• The National Labor Relations Board rejected a slew of objections from Amazon and ruled to certify the union formed by workers at a Staten Island Amazon warehouse.
• Amazon attempted to overturn the vote which formed the union last April.
• The Amazon Labor Union voted to unionize in April after an initial vote in 2021 failed because of interference from the e-commerce giant.

Loss for Amazon

• The National Labor Relations Board ruled that Amazon must recognize its first unionized warehouse on Staten Island.
• The Staten Island warehouse workers voted to join the Amazon Labor Union 618 to 380.
• Unionization efforts have rarely resulted in victories for unions, thanks to Amazon's strict anti-union policies.

Rescue mission

• Russia will launch another Soyuz spacecraft next month that will land at the International Space Station.
• The craft will replace another Soyuz that was sent to the ISS with two Russian cosmonauts and a US astronaut to the moon but was hit by a micrometeoroid, causing an unfixable leak.
• The leak caused Russia to press pause on all ISS activities like spacewalks.

Backup rocket

• Russia's space agency is sending an empty Soyuz capsule to the ISS next month.
• The next Soyuz will carry the three astronauts back to Earth, replacing the craft they took to the ISS, which sprung a coolant leak after being hit by a micrometeoroid.
• The damaged Soyuz will return to Earth sometime in March since it poses a safety risk in case the leak increases in size.
• The micrometeoroid that caused the damage was determined to be a piece of space debris and was not orbital debris from a rocket or satellite.

Going on eleven

• Ubisoft delayed the release of the video game, "Skull and Bones," yet again until 2024, until economic conditions are more favorable.
• The delay is the fifth since the game was announced and pushes the game into year eleven of development.

New policy

• Microsoft emailed employees this morning, telling them that under a new "Discretionary Time Off Policy," they will get unlimited time off instead of needing to accrue vacation time.
• The new policy will take effect on January 16th.
• Employees with an unused vacation balance from before the policy begins will receive a payout in April.

Latest states

• New Jersey and Ohio banned TikTok on government devices over national security concerns.
• The two states are the latest to ban the China-based app TikTok on government devices over concerns about data sharing with the Chinese government.
• TikTok responded, saying they were disappointed with the decision.

Ten month sentence

• Nikhil Wahi was sentenced to ten months in prison in the first cryptocurrency-related insider trading case brought by the DOJ.
• Wahi's brother worked at Coinbase, and Wahi used his connection to buy coins before they were listed as popular by the exchange, then sell them once they were for a huge profit.
• The scheme was discovered by a Twitter account that noticed the pattern.

On the mend

• Scientists with the World Meteorological Organization expect the hole in the ozone layer to start closing in the coming decades and return to normal.
• Ozone molecules are damaged by certain airborne chemicals that have been banned since their prominence in the 1980s and replaced by greenhouse gases called hydrofluorocarbons.
• The Ozone layer is expected to return to pre-1980s levels by 2066.

Orbit regulation

• The FCC voted to form a space bureau to regulate objects orbiting the earth and handle business like satellite approval, orbital communications, and space debris.
• The new space agency will work on decluttering the space around the earth and mandate that Satellites in low earth orbit return to earth safely instead of cluttering the upper atmosphere.

Job cuts

• Coinbase announced they are cutting 20% of its workforce, which is about 950 employees.
• The cryptocurrency company also said it would shut down several projects to reduce expenses and weather the ongoing cryptocurrency winter.
• Shares in Coinbase have fallen 83% in the past year.

Year of the headset

• Apple will spend 2023 launching a mixed-reality headset after seven years of development.
• The launch will have to wait for Apple to smooth out some kinks in the device's software, hardware, and marketing strategy.
• The launch means that Apple will have a relatively muted year and release fewer new devices.

Suit can proceed

• The Supreme Court declined to block a suit brought by WhatsApp against the Israeli spyware maker NSO group for uploading it's Pegasus phone spyware onto 1,400 users' devices.
• NSO Group argued that it could not be sued because it was acting on behalf of a foreign government, a claim that was rejected by the US Supreme Court.

Take that AI!

• Edward Tian created an app to detect whether an essay is written by ChatGPT from OpenAI.
• Tian is a 22-year-old computer science major and journalism minor at Princeton.
• The app detects whether a portion of text has been written by the viral chatbot from OpenAI, ChatGPT.
• Ever since ChatGPT's launch, the bot has been criticized for its potential to be used unethically in schools as AI plagiarism.

DIY

• John Deere signed a memorandum of understanding with the agricultural lobbying group American Farm Bureau Federation, which will allow farmers to take their machines to third-party repair shops.
• The tractor-maker uses a software lock that prevents third-party mechanics from fixing equipment.
• The agreement still leaves plenty of wiggle room for John Deere to back out or skirt federal and state right-to-repair legislation.

Copyright violations

• Twitter is being sued by the celebrity photo agency, Backgrid for failing to take down copies of its images from the platform.
• The suit alleges that Twitter should not be immune to American safe harbor laws for copyright, even though social media platforms aren't liable for user-generated content.
• Copyrighted images are not technically considered user-generated content, opening a hole in Twitter's content policy armor.

Fan experience

• At CES 2023 in Las Vegas, Sony showed a preview of a metaverse experience that the company is partnering with the soccer club Manchester City to build.
• The preview showed an experience that lets fans participate in activities in a virtual Etihad Stadium.

Helping honeybees

• The Department of Agriculture approved a vaccine to help honeybees fight American Foulbrood disease.
• The loss of bees has far-ranging impacts on the health of agriculture in the US.
• American Foulbrood disease is contributing to the decline of the honeybee's population health.

World's first

• The USDA granted a conditional license for a company called Dalan Animal Health that treats American Foulbrood disease in honeybees.
• The vaccine targets queens of hives, who pass on the immunity to their offspring.

Feeling out Afeela

• Sony and Honda unveiled their electric car brand at CES 2023 on Wednesday night.
• The two unveiled an EV prototype called Afeela.
• The car will go on sale in North America in 2026.
• The prototype includes over 40 sensors on the exterior of the vehicle, which will aid the car’s ability to drive autonomously.

Free for SkyMiles members

• T-Mobile is partnering with Delta to give SkyMiles members free wifi.
• The service will run on Viasat's network and will have no session limits.
• To sign up, users will have to be members of SkyMiles.

Crypto fraud

• New York Attorney General Letitia James is suing the founder of Celsius Network, Alex Mashinsky, for defrauding investors out of billions in cryptocurrency by failing to disclose the internal collapse of the crypto lending platform.
• The suit seeks to ban the founder from doing business in New York and force him to pay damages for violating the state’s Martin Act and other laws.

Massive collapse

• Alex Mashinsky is being sued by New York Attorney General Letitia James for defrauding investors in his cryptocurrency lending platform, Celsius Network.
• The AG’s office is seeking monetary damages and fines from Mashinsky as well as seeking to ban him from leading a company or working in the securities industry in the state.
• Celsius offered investors sky-high yields before it collapsed, taking $20 billion in investors' money with it.

CES highlights

• CES 2023 kicked off today.
• One highlight was the Withing U-San, a device installed into a toilet that uses the customer's urine to track health metrics.
• Samsung announced three new TVs.
• Qi wireless charging is being upgraded with tech from apple that allows MagSafe to build out the new Qi2.

Stock spikes

• Coinbase settled with the New York Department of Financial Services for failures in its anti-money laundering program and for failing to vet new customers properly.
• The suit called out Coinbase for suspicious or unlawful conduct that was being conducted on the Coinbase platform.
• Coinbase did not properly vet new customers, allowing users who have been flagged for crimes to be allowed on the platform.
• The stock prices of Coinbase have spiked since the $100 million settlement was reached.

$100 million total

• Coinbase reached a $100 million settlement with the New York Department of Financial Services for improperly vetting new customers and allowing for money laundering on the platform.
• The settlement is comprised of a $50 million penalty and a $50 million investment into boosting compliance efforts to fix the platform system for checking new customers and preventing money laundering.
• Coinbase will work with a third-party monitor to enact the new changes.

First time for everything

• Three hundred quality assurance testers at ZeniMax, a gaming studio owned by Microsoft, voted to unionize.
• The union is Microsoft's first.
• Microsoft declared in June that they would support the unionization efforts of employees after employees at Activision Blizzard, which Microsoft is in the process of acquiring, voted to unionize.
• Quality assurance testers often work overtime without compensation and face challenging working conditions before games are launched to the public.

Law takes effect

• A new law in Louisiana went into effect on January 1st that requires visitors on sites owned by MindGeek to verify their age with a government ID.
• The law targets sites owned by MindGeek, like Pornhub, that contain explicit content.
• Users will have to prove they are above the age of eighteen to access the site.

Government ID

• Louisiana HB 142 took effect on January 1st, mandating that any visitor to sites composed of 33% percent pornographic content provide a government ID to verify they are 18 or older.
• Sites like Pornhub now require a government-issued ID for Louisiana residents.
• The sites are allowed to retain data from the verification process only for the visitor's age, but age verification has been proven problematic in the past since it requires trusting a third-party service with the user's private data.

Historic settlement

• Meta agreed to pay $725 million to settle a privacy class action suit filed on behalf of Facebook users over Meta's sharing of users' data with third parties, including the consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.
• The settlement still needs to be approved by a judge.
• The sum is the largest ever paid in a privacy class action suit.

Read the room

• Microsoft filed a 37-page response to the FTC's suit attempting to block Microsoft from acquiring Activision Blizzard.
• In the response, Microsoft defended the acquisition, reiterating that they remain committed to working on the deal to protect competition, consumers, and workers in the tech sector.
• Microsoft also said that the video game industry has an enormous amount of competition, so their acquisition of Activision Blizzard wouldn't eliminate competition in the industry.

Intends to fight

• Microsoft responded to the FTC, saying that they intend to fight the suit from the commission trying to block the acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
• The FTC claims the merger could violate antitrust laws by squashing competition in the video game industry.
• The case could drag out until August, but Microsoft remains committed to the acquisition.

Cracked the vault

• Password manager LastPass confirmed that hackers stole customers' encrypted password vaults, which included passwords and other secrets, in a data breach earlier this year.
• LastPass assured customers that if they change their current master password, their vault will be resecured.

Just now

• Even though LastPass revealed the hack earlier this year, they did not specify that hackers had been able to copy a backup of customer vault data.
• Customers store passwords or other secretive information in their vaults.
• If you have an account with LastPass, your password vault may be in the hands of hackers.