Welcome to Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter summarizing the week in technology. This edition is a bit bittersweet for me. This will be my last edition (for a while anyway). Soon I’ll be turning my attention to a new newsletter focused on AI, which I’m really excited about. Stay tuned!
Now let me tell you the news. This week, Google laid off employees from its Flutter, Dart, and Python teams, just weeks ahead of its annual I/O developer conference. A total of 200 people were laid off from Google’s “core” team, including people working on app platforms and other engineering roles.
Elsewhere, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has laid off the company’s team overseeing the Supercharger network in a new round of layoffs despite recent acquisitions of major automakers such as Ford and General Motors. The cuts are so complete that Musk suggested in an email that they would force Tesla to slow the expansion of its Supercharger network.
UnitedHealthcare CEO Andrew Witty told a House of Representatives subcommittee that the ransomware gang that hacked US health technology giant Change Healthcare (a subsidiary of UnitedHealthcare) used a set of stolen credentials to access Change Healthcare systems that were not protected by multi-factor authentication. Last week, UnitedHealthcare said hackers had stolen health data from “a significant percentage of Americans.”
Much else happened. In this edition of WiR, we summarize it all. But first, a reminder to sign up to receive the WiR newsletter in your inbox every Saturday.
News
hallucinations, hallucinations: OpenAI is facing yet another privacy complaint in the EU. The report, filed by privacy rights non-profit noyb on behalf of individual reporters, takes aim at the inability to correct incorrect information generated about individuals by AI chatbot ChatGPT.
Just leave… at Sam’s Club: Sam’s Club customers who pay at the register or through the Scan & Go mobile app can now leave the store without having to check their purchases again. The technology, unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, has now been deployed in 20% of Sam’s Club stores.
TikTok bypasses Apple rules TikTok is providing some users with a link to a website where they can purchase coins that are used to tip digital creators on the platform. Typically, these coins must be purchased through in-app purchases, which requires paying a 30% fee to Apple. This suggests TikTok may be trying to circumvent Apple’s App Store rules.
NIST’s GenAI Platform: The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a U.S. Commerce Department agency that develops and tests technologies for the U.S. government, businesses, and the general public, has launched NIST GenAI, a new program to evaluate generative AI technologies, including text and AI. Image creation AI.
Getir takes out: Fast commerce giant Getir is pulling out of the US, UK and Europe to focus on its home country of Turkey. The company, once valued at close to $12 billion, said the move would affect thousands of full-time workers.
analyze
Inside Techstars’ “Cold War”: Dom’s ingenious reporting capped a year of financial losses and staff cuts at Techstars, the startup accelerator whose CEO Maëlle Gavet has been a driving force in the debate for change.
AI-powered coding: We take a hands-on look at Copilot Workspace, the evolution of Copilot, GitHub’s AI-based coding assistant, into a more general tool. This builds on recently introduced features like Copilot Chat, which allows developers to ask questions about their code in natural language.
