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Dropbox lays off 20% of staff, says it overinvested and underperformed
Dropbox also laid off 500 last year but still had “excess layers of management.”
Dropbox is laying off 528 employees in a move that will reduce its global workforce by 20 percent, CEO Drew Houston announced today.
Houston wrote that Dropbox’s core file sync and sharing “business has matured, and we’ve been working to build our next phase of growth with products like Dash,” an “AI-powered universal search” product targeted to business customers. The company’s “current structure and investment levels” are “no longer sustainable,” according to Houston.
“We continue to see softening demand and macro headwinds in our core business,” Houston wrote. “But external factors are only part of the story. We’ve heard from many of you that our organizational structure has become overly complex, with excess layers of management slowing us down.”
Android Trojan that intercepts voice calls to banks just got more stealthy
FakeCall malware can reroute calls intended for banks to attacker-controlled numbers.
Researchers have found new versions of a sophisticated Android financial-fraud Trojan that’s notable for its ability to intercept calls a victim tries to place to customer-support personnel of their banks.
FakeCall first came to public attention in 2022, when researchers from security firm Kaspersky reported that the malicious app wasn’t your average banking Trojan. Besides containing the usual capabilities for stealing account credentials, FakeCall could reroute voice calls to numbers controlled by the attackers.
A strategic evolution
The malware, available on websites masquerading as Google Play, could also simulate incoming calls from bank employees. The intention of the novel feature was to provide reassurances to victims that nothing was amiss and to more effectively trick them into divulging account credentials by having the social-engineering come from a live human.
Downey Jr. plans to fight AI re-creations from beyond the grave
In podcast interview, actor takes firm stance against digital recreations of his likeness.
Robert Downey Jr. has declared that he will sue any future Hollywood executives who try to re-create his likeness using AI digital replicas, as reported by Variety. His comments came during an appearance on the “On With Kara Swisher” podcast, where he discussed AI’s growing role in entertainment.
“I intend to sue all future executives just on spec,” Downey told Swisher when discussing the possibility of studios using AI or deepfakes to re-create his performances after his death. When Swisher pointed out he would be deceased at the time, Downey responded that his law firm “will still be very active.”
The Oscar winner expressed confidence that Marvel Studios would not use AI to re-create his Tony Stark character, citing his trust in decision-makers there. “I am not worried about them hijacking my character’s soul because there’s like three or four guys and gals who make all the decisions there anyway and they would never do that to me,” he said.
Proton is the latest entrant in the quirky “VPN for your TV” market
Why are there so many VPNs for Apple TV? Oh, right—geofencing.
Streaming in the US has become a broken and fiendishly complex tangle of ephemeral choices—and that’s before you factor in sports. You can see why it might seem somehow easier to stream shows from other countries, where the networks, some of them with public dollars behind them, offer broader access if you seem to be located there.
So it is that privacy-focused Swiss firm Proton has released a Proton VPN app for Apple TV. The firm notes that it “offers over 6,200 servers across 100 countries” and its own guides to accessing various regional content providers, such as Britain’s BBC and France.tv, or sports and live event channels, “no matter where you are.”
That this—virtual geolocation—is mentioned ahead of “privacy and security benefits” is notable, but only if you haven’t looked. I typed “VPN” into an Apple TV’s App Store search interface today and learned that Proton was now one among dozens and dozens of VPN offerings for Apple TV. “Dozens” is as far as I can go, because I eventually got tired of clicking to keep scrolling down.
AT&T praises itself after getting caught taking too much money from FCC program
AT&T obtained subsidies for duplicate users and non-users, will pay $2.3 million.
AT&T improperly obtained money from a government-run broadband discount program by submitting duplicate requests and by claiming subsidies for thousands of subscribers who weren’t using AT&T’s service. AT&T obtained funding based on false certifications it made under penalty of perjury.
AT&T on Friday agreed to pay $2.3 million in a consent decree with the Federal Communications Commission’s Enforcement Bureau. That includes a civil penalty of $1,921,068 and a repayment of $378,922 to the US Treasury.
The settlement fully resolves the FCC investigation into AT&T’s apparent violations, the consent decree said. “AT&T admits for the purpose of this Consent Decree and for Commission civil enforcement purposes” that the findings described by the FCC “contain a true and accurate description of the facts underlying the Investigation,” the document said.
Amid controversial changes, Reddit is getting more popular—and profitable
With Reddit finally making money, the Reddit of yesteryear isn’t coming back.
In May 2023, Reddit announced that its API would no longer be free, signaling the demise of most third-party Reddit apps and the start of a new Reddit era. Reddit was always interested in making money, but the social media platform’s drive to reach profitability intensified with its API rule changes, which was followed by it going public and other big moves. With Reddit reporting this week that it has finally turned its first profit, we can expect further evolution from Reddit, whether old-time Redditors like it or not.
In its fiscal Q4 2024 results announced on Tuesday [PDF], Reddit said that in the quarter ending on September 30, it made a profit of $29.9 million. This is significant growth from fiscal Q3 2024, when Reddit lost $7.4 million. Revenue, meanwhile, was up 68 percent year over year, going from $207.5 million to $384.4 million. Reddit is expecting $385 to $400 million in revenue for fiscal Q4.
More Redditors
During the Reddit app-ocalypse, many Reddit users and moderators said they would quit the platform because they were disgusted with how Reddit treated third-party developers and moderators, particularly during user protests against the API rule changes.
Google CEO says over 25% of new Google code is generated by AI
We’ve always used tools to build new tools, and developers are using AI continue that tradition.
On Tuesday, Google’s CEO revealed that AI systems now generate more than a quarter of new code for its products, with human programmers overseeing the computer-generated contributions. The statement, made during Google’s Q3 2024 earnings call, shows how AI tools are already having a sizable impact on software development.
“We’re also using AI internally to improve our coding processes, which is boosting productivity and efficiency,” Pichai said during the call. “Today, more than a quarter of all new code at Google is generated by AI, then reviewed and accepted by engineers. This helps our engineers do more and move faster.”
Google developers aren’t the only programmers using AI to assist with coding tasks. It’s difficult to get hard numbers, but according to Stack Overflow’s 2024 Developer Survey, over 76 percent of all respondents “are using or are planning to use AI tools in their development process this year,” with 62 percent actively using them. A 2023 GitHub survey found that 92 percent of US-based software developers are “already using AI coding tools both in and outside of work.”
While ULA studies Vulcan booster anomaly, it’s also investigating fairing issues
“We have integrated some corrective actions and additional inspections of the hardware.”
A little more than a year ago, a snippet of video that wasn’t supposed to go public made its way onto United Launch Alliance’s live broadcast of an Atlas V rocket launch carrying three classified surveillance satellites for the US Space Force and the National Reconnaissance Office.
On these types of secretive national security missions, the government typically requests that the launch provider stop providing updates on the ascent into space when the rocket jettisons its two-piece payload fairing a few minutes after launch. And there should be no live video from the rocket released to the public showing the fairing separation sequence, which exposes the payloads to the space environment for the first time.
But the public saw video of the clamshell-like payload fairing falling away from the Atlas V rocket as it fired downrange from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on September 10, 2023. It wasn’t pretty. Numerous chunks of material, possibly insulation from the inner wall of the payload shroud’s two shells, fell off the fairing. The video embedded below shows the moment of payload fairing jettison.
M2 and M3 MacBook Air models get bumped to 16GB of RAM for no extra money
All baseline Macs have jumped from 8GB to 16GB this week, new processors or no.
Apple’s week of Mac announcements isn’t extending to an M4 MacBook Air—rumors indicate that the Air, as well as desktops like the Mac Studio and Mac Pro, will get new processors sometime in 2025. But Apple is bringing one of the best features of the new M4 Macs to the M3 MacBook Airs, as well as the entry-level M2 model: All of the base models are being bumped from 8GB to 16GB of RAM for the same prices as before. The M2 MacBook Air still starts at $999, while the 13- and 15-inch M3 versions start at $1,099 and $1,299.
All of these laptops were available with 16GB of RAM before, but it was normally a $200 upgrade. All of them still top out at 24GB of RAM, which is now a $200 upgrade to the 16GB models rather than a $400 upgrade as it was before. All models still start with 256GB of storage.
This week’s launches mark the first time since 2012 that Apple has increased the amount of RAM in any of its base-model Macs, and the upgrade addresses one of our single biggest complaints about the laptops. Not all users will immediately notice the benefits of a 16GB RAM upgrade, but it will definitely make the laptops more versatile and capable of keeping up with users as their needs change.
Hyundai teases a three-row Ioniq 9 electric SUV
The proper Ioniq 9 reveal happens in November.
In November, Hyundai will formally unveil its next electric vehicle. It’s the new Ioniq 9, a three-row SUV that uses Hyundai Motor Group’s highly competent E-GMP platform seen in the Ioniq 5 and 6. Ahead of that reveal, the automaker shared some teaser images.
Regular readers will know that Hyundai’s various design directions always have interesting names, and like the two smaller Ioniqs, the Ioniq 9 will feature “parametric pixels” in its headlamps—the blocky 8-bit look has been used to good effect on the Ioniq 5 and Ioniq 6.
E-GMP has already given rise to a big electric three-row SUV. Kia’s EV9 has been on sale for a while now and has just about matched the cheaper EV6 in terms of sales for the last nine months, despite a $54,900 starting price that’s more than $12,000 greater than the EV6’s. (American car buyers really do want larger cars, and they vote with their wallets.)