A notification on Washington’s statewide Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) layoff and closure database says the exact number is 305. According to a statement from Microsoft to GeekWire, that number is in addition to the 6,000 layoffs it announced last month,
Deadline reports on another round of mass layoffs at Disney, affecting hundreds of people. “...across divisions of Disney Entertainment, including marketing for both film and television as well as television publicity, casting and development,” as well as corporate financing.
This latest round comes just weeks after 200 employees were laid off in the TV and ABC News divisions.
The keynote for Apple’s next developer conference is only a week away, and the homepage for the event has just been updated with a short tagline, “sleek peek,” while exec Greg Joswiak tweeted out this new animation. We’re guessing this refers to the visionOS-like design refresh supposedly coming for Apple’s operating systems, and not to the “gap year” for AI features rumored over the weekend.
Whatever it is, we’ll be at Apple Park on June 9th to report the details.
The show that launched in 2009 is closing up shop, as a three-year distribution deal with Acast seems ready to wrap up. “Comedian interviewing everyone” podcasts are everywhere now, but WTF was an early and very popular version, with Squarespace paying $100k to be the sole advertiser on the Barack Obama episode in 2015 without knowing he was the guest.
After announcing a “pause” on encrypted DMs earlier this week, Musk said the company formerly known as Twitter has started to test a new messaging system with support for file transfers and calling. TechCrunch recently reported the feature had begun to appear for some paying users, but there’s no word yet on when it may be more widely available.
All new XChat is rolling out with encryption, vanishing messages and the ability to send any kind of file. Also, audio/video calling. This is built on Rust with (Bitcoin style) encryption, whole new architecture.
Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman’s Power On newsletter follows up on his earlier news that Apple’s operating systems will switch to Madden-style numbering by saying the new Mac update will be Lake Tahoe-themed.
With just one more week to go before WWDC 25, he’s also suggesting this will be a “gap year” for Apple’s AI ambitions, with projects like LLM Siri, a true ChatGPT competitor, and an Apple Intelligence-enhanced version of its Shortcuts app still in development but possibly not ready for a preview.
This bad chatbot advice to a fictional former addict is referenced in a Washington Post article about the risks of AI companies optimizing bots for increased engagement, with bigger risks than a version of ChatGPT that “glazes too much.”
It’s from a recent study where researchers reported AI models could test well on benchmarks for sycophancy and toxicity, but also “suddenly act harmfully in the presence of gameable user character traits.”
