Amazon CEO Andy Jassy Calls for complete Return to office in early 2025. For the past 15 months, employees were expected to work in the office three days a week. Now, employees are expected to be in the office five days a week, with work from home only permitted in exceptional circumstances. Big tech executives have advocated for a forced return to the office, but this has not been popular among some tech workers.
US tech giant Cisco lays off thousands of employees in 2nd round of layoffs for 2024. The technology and networking company will cut its workforce by 7%, or about 5,600 employees. The cuts follow a previous layoff in February, when it cut about 4,000 employees. In August, Cisco released its latest annual earnings report, which saw the company’s “second-strongest year ever.” Are you affected? We’d love to hear from you. I hear from you.
iPhone 16 Pro Max he A Peek into a Smarter Future for $1,200According to Brian Heater of TechCrunch . There are a lot of new things to look out for across the iPhone 16 lineup, including a new camera control button, the A18 Pro chip, a major change to Siri, and a bunch of Apple Intelligence features. But are the features — plus the FOMO — really enough to justify an upgrade?
This is TechCrunch’s Week in Review, where we review the week’s biggest stories. Want to get them delivered to your inbox every Saturday? Register here.
news
The next big thing – literally: Snap’s new Spectacles offer developers a immersive augmented reality experience for $99 a month. Spectacles, which are large in size, are a compromise between augmented reality devices, headsets, and wearable smart glasses. Read more
Side project at Citi Bike: Some innovators have found a lucrative way to cash in on Lyft’s “Bike Angels” program by “trading stations.” Lyft has condemned the practice, but only after some Bike Angels were able to make thousands of dollars a month. Read more
Hello, iOS 18: iPhone users can now update to iOS 18 and customize their home screens, text Android users more easily with RCS support, and scroll through their photos in the new tab-free Photos app. But don’t expect too many AI features just yet. Read more
Rejecting modernity and embracing tradition: With the release of iOS 18, some users are missing the look and feel of the iOS Photos app before the update. That’s why LateNiteSoft has introduced Photon Library, a new app that brings the familiar look and feel of the previous version of the iOS Photos app. Read more
Your Discord messages are now more secure: Discord has announced that voice and video calls within the platform will now be end-to-end encrypted, meaning Discord won’t know what users are talking about in those conversations. Read more
Mozilla says goodbye to fediverse: Mozilla has announced that it will end its experiment with running a server on Mastodon. Users will be able to download their data or transfer their accounts to another Mastodon server before Mozilla.social is permanently shut down on December 17. Read more
John Mulaney mocks Dream Force: As part of a long tradition of using tech experts in comedic material, John Mulaney closed out Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference with a 45-minute set that included plenty of criticism of San Francisco’s tech and AI culture. Read more
Sam Altman leaves OpenAI’s safety committee: Sam Altman is leaving the internal committee OpenAI created to oversee “critical” safety decisions related to the company’s projects and operations. The committee will instead become an “independent” oversight group for the board of directors. Read more
Never pay again for in-flight Wi-Fi: United Airlines is teaming up with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to bring Starlink internet service to its entire fleet. For the first time, United passengers will be able to access free Wi-Fi — though they’ll have to wait until 2025. Read more
analysis
LinkedIn games are fun, actually: It seems like everyone has games these days. The New York Times has lit a fire with its popular Wordle and Connections games. Netflix has joined in on the fun with its own set of games. And now LinkedIn has jumped on the bandwagon with daily puzzles to accompany your job search. While LinkedIn’s games are fun, Amanda Silberling wanted to understand the science behind why we love these quick, once-a-day puzzles. Read more
