Tuesday’s top tech news: Lightyear’s buzz fizzles – The Verge

Rick and Morty will continue but without Justin Roiland

2023-01-25T14:10:00-05:00

Justin Roiland at New York Comic Con in 2013. | Image: Getty

Though Adult Swim initially had little to say about recent news reports that Rick and Morty co-creator Justin Roiland is facing two felony charges for domestic battery and false imprisonment by menace, violence, fraud, or deceit, the channel now says it has cut ties with him.

In a statement provided to The Hollywood Reporter, Adult Swim / Cartoon Network communications senior vice president Marie Moore announced that the network has "ended its association with Justin Roiland."

pic.twitter.com/npS7WpywtD
- Rick and Morty (@RickandMorty) January 24, 2023

According to The Hollywood Reporter sources, plans are currently underway for Roiland's …

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Tesla’s new $3.6 billion Nevada investment includes a ‘high-volume’ Semi factory

2023-01-24T20:18:17-05:00

The Gigafactory. | Image: Tesla

Tesla is investing more than $3.6 billion into its Reno, Nevada Gigafactory, and with part of the cash, it plans to build its "first high-volume Semi factory," according to a blog post published Tuesday.

The company officially delivered the first of its long-delayed electric Semi trucks to PepsiCo in December, but it appears Tesla is ready to significantly expand its production of the new vehicle. However, Tesla's blog post doesn't specify how many trucks the factory might make on a regular basis or when it's expected to open, so it might be awhile before that high volume kicks in.

Today, we're announcing $3.6B of new investment in Giga Ne …

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Now Lyft will charge extra if you make drivers wait

2023-01-24T18:20:16-05:00

Lyft’s policy arrives a whole seven years after Uber implemented the same one. | Photo by Smith Collection / Gado / Getty Images

Lyft is cracking down on late passengers. The ridesharing company quietly updated its support page with new wait time fees that it'll charge at a per-minute rate, a policy that's been around since December 2022, according to Lyft spokesperson Katie Kim (via TechCrunch).

The wait time fees start two minutes after a driver arrives at your location or five minutes for Lux Black and Lux Black XL rides. If a driver reaches your location ahead of time, the wait time fees won't kick in until two minutes after your scheduled pickup.

Lyft doesn't specify how much it'll charge per minute and doesn't outline any possible fees on its website. It only …

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How the Spotify layoffs impact its podcasting business

2023-01-24T17:15:00-05:00

Another week, another round of layoffs. This time, it is Spotify. CEO Daniel Ek informed employees yesterday morning that the company would be cutting 6 percent of its workforce and said he took "full accountability for the moves that got us here today." The most high-profile change is the departure of chief content and advertising officer Dawn Ostroff. And while no additional shows have been cut, advertising and business employees, particularly under Podsights and Chartable, were laid off nearly a year after Spotify acquired both companies.

Plus (and I am fully aware of how incongruous this is, apologies), we have some more announcements f …

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Microsoft Q2 2023: Windows, devices, and Xbox down as cloud holds strong

2023-01-24T16:09:05-05:00

Microsoft has just posted the second quarter of its 2023 fiscal financial results. The software maker made $52.7 billion in revenue and a net income of $16.4 billion during Q2. Revenue is up 2 percent, but net income has dropped by 12 percent. The results come just days after Microsoft announced 10,000 layoffs.

Microsoft previously forecast a tough quarter for Windows OEM revenue and hardware, and the results are clear on the state of the PC industry right now. PC shipments fell by 16 percent in 2022, according to analysis by Canalys, and Gartner reported a nearly 29 percent year-over-year drop in Q4 - the largest quarterly shipment declin …

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LastPass owner GoTo shares more bad news about November’s security breach

2023-01-24T16:05:25-05:00

GoTo, the remote collaboration and IT software company that owns LastPass, has confirmed that, along with LastPass' password vaults, it had customer data taken by attackers during a November 2022 security breach (via TechCrunch).

The company, which was formerly known as LogMeIn, is updating its blog post about the breach for the first time since November 30th, when GoTo confirmed "unusual activity" within its development environment and cloud storage service.

Many of GoTo's enterprise products were affected, including Central, Pro, join.me, Hamachi, and RemotelyAnywhere. GoTo CEO Paddy Srinivasan writes that a hacker "exfiltrated encrypted …

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Google to shut down spam backdoor for political campaigns

2023-01-24T15:45:22-05:00

Google plans to end a controversial pilot program that allows political groups to bypass Gmail's spam filters later this month, as first reported by The Washington Post Tuesday.

Google launched the program last September in response to Republican accusations that the company's algorithms disproportionately flag conservative fundraising emails as spam. The program allowed candidates, political party committees, and leadership political action committees to sign up with Google to make their messages exempt from the company's spam detection systems.

"We will keep investing in spam-filtering technologies that protect people from unwanted mess …

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Google is being sued by the US government and eight states over online advertising

2023-01-24T15:38:22-05:00

Google's facing a lawsuit from the US Department of Justice and eight states over its alleged monopoly on the digital advertising market. The agency accuses the company of abusing "monopoly power" at the disadvantage of websites and advertisers who use other advertising tools, according to a lawsuit filed on Tuesday (PDF).

"Google's anticompetitive behavior has raised barriers to entry to artificially high levels, forced key competitors to abandon the market for ad tech tools, dissuaded potential competitors from joining the market, and left Google's few remaining competitors marginalized and unfairly disadvantaged," the lawsuit reads.

Jus …

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Apple issues security update for the almost 10-year-old iPhone 5S

2023-01-24T15:36:30-05:00

A vintage iPhone is getting an important security update well past its “fresh by” date. | Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge

The iPhone 5S got its last OS upgrade in 2018 with the release of iOS 12, but it's not totally down for the count. As AppleInsider points out, the 2013-vintage device got a security update this week: a bump to iOS 12.5.7, to be precise. Even if you don't have an iPhone 5S, that's good news for anyone who's a fan of getting the most out of their device.

There's not much to iOS 12.5.7, but it's an important update if you own one of the phones it supports. It closes a nasty-sounding security loophole in which "processing maliciously crafted web content may lead to arbitrary code execution." Apple's support documentation also says it "may have …

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Twitter for web will now stay on your preferred timeline

2023-01-24T15:20:56-05:00

Twitter should now be less annoying about pushing its "For You" algorithmic timeline. The company announced that the web version will now remember which timeline you were using last and default to it when you open it again. The feature should also be coming to iOS and Android soon.

The update brings back functionality that existed before the tab UI was introduced - there used to be a button that let you choose which version of the timeline you wanted to see. If you're the type of person who occasionally pops over to For You from Following or vice versa, the new version with the ability to remember which tab you left off on should make that …

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