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The latest tech giant impacted by the economy is eBay, which announced earlier today that it is reducing its workforce by around 1,000 roles. That apparently equates to roughly 9 percent of the company's full-time employees. US employees are asked to work from home on January 24, and those affected will be notified "shortly." Unlike Discord and Riot Games, though, eBay's post stopped short at sharing severance or benefit details. The company also plans to scale back the number of contractors over the coming months.

eBay's impact scale matches that of Unity and Google from earlier this month, which doesn't paint a pretty picture for the tech scene right at the beginning of 2024. Like its peers, eBay blamed this round of layoff on having hired too many people in recent years. "While we are making progress against our strategy, our overall headcount and expenses have outpaced the growth of our business," president and CEO Jamie Iannone said in the memo. Hopefully LinkedIn's new AI-powered categorization tool will come in handy for those in need.

In its Q4 2023 earnings report from earlier today, Netflix announced that starting in Q2 2024, its cheapest ad-free "Basic" plan will be completely gone in Canada and the UK. You haven’t been able to sign up for this tier since last July, but now, even current subscribers will no longer be able to keep their 'Basic' plan, which was originally $10 or £7 per month but bumped up to $12 or £8 in October. In other words, you'll basically be forced into one of the two more expensive ad-free packages (from $16.49 or £11 per month) or the cheaper ad-supported plan ($6 or £5 per month).

It'll be interesting to see which side the current user base will lean towards when they eventually have to make their decision, but it's clear that Netflix wants to boost its ad business. After all, the ads plan currently accounts for 40 percent of all Netflix sign-ups in its ads markets, according to the earnings report. We wouldn't be surprised if the same will be applied to the US before long. "We’re looking to retire our Basic plan in some of our ads countries, starting with Canada and the UK in Q2 and taking it from there," Netflix added.

Positive Grid has already proven its aptitude for guitar amps with increasingly small entries in its Spark line. But for NAMM 2024 its going big with the Spark Live, a 150 watt portable PA system with four speakers and four channels of audio inputs. Rather than quiet solo practice, the Spark Live is meant for band practices or small gigs. 

The first channel is dedicated to guitar and has pretty much the full power of Positive Grid's modeling technology at its disposal. There are 33 amp models and 43 effect builtin that can be combined into eight different presets that are easily accessible from the main control panel. 

Channel two has a combo 1/4-inch / XLR input and has presets and effects customized for bass, vocals and acoustic guitar. There are preamp models as well as new effects unique to the Spark Live. Channel three and four are a stereo pair of direct ins. There are amp models or effects here, but you can run straight in from a synth, a amp simulator pedal or even just a backing track from a computer. 

There's also a sensor inside that allows it to dynamically change its EQ based on position. When vertical the Live has a more direct and punchier tone. But when laid on its side, it delivers a wider, softer stereo field. There's even a built in tilt stand so you can direct the sound where necessary. It can also adjust volume automatically based on incoming signals. There's even an option battery pack for $79 that can power the Spark Live for up to eight hours.

In addition to the Live, Positive Grid also announced the Spark Control X, a Bluetooth foot controller for its Spark line of amps. It can connect to the Spark Live all the way down to the minuscule Spark Go. It has six customizable foot switches, MIDI support, an expression pedal jack and a builtin rechargeable battery. Positive Grid even includes three clear overlays that you can write on with a dry erase marker so you know what each switch does. 

To round out it deluge of announcements for NAMM 2024, Positive Grid also unveiled the Spark Link wireless guitar system. Wireless guitar transmission systems are nothing new, but Positive Grid undercuts other players in the field with a price of $129. And it claims the Link has a range of 70 feet, 20 feet more than most. 

All of Positive Grid's new products are available for pre-order direct from the company. Spark Live will retail for $549, but there's a $50 off coupon available during the pre-order period. The Spark Control X and Spark Link can be preordered for $149 and $129, respectively.

Netflix said that user engagement with games on the service tripled in 2023. “[Despite] games still being small, and certainly not yet material relative to our film and series business, we’re pleased with this progress,” the company said in its earnings report on Tuesday. As an example, the company pointed to the addition of the Grand Theft Auto trilogy to the service last year, although it isn't clear how much the trilogy, which only arrived on Netflix on December 14, helped drive engagement in the final two weeks of the year. 

Netflix said that Grand Theft Auto has become its “most successful launch to date” in terms of installs and engagement. It didn’t say how many people had downloaded the trilogy since it was released on the platform, however. Some customers had signed up for Netflix just to play the Grand Theft Auto games, the company said.

That’s a big change from 2022, when and analysis from Apptopia and CNBC revealed that less than one percent of Netflix’s customers were playing games, which the company had made available to anyone with a Netflix subscription a year earlier. Despite the slow uptake, Netflix continued adding games to the platform. It’s growing gaming library includes popular titles like Hades, Dead Cells, Braid, Death’s Door and Katana Zero, as well as games such as Oxenfree II: Lost Signal, which it developed on its own after buying indie developer Night School. The platform also includes games based on its own popular original shows like Money Heist and The Dragon Prince.

Beyond gaming, Netflix said that it added 13.1 million subscribers in the last three months of 2023, the highest number of subscribers it has added since the explosive growth it experienced during the pandemic. The total number of Netflix subscribers around the world is now 260 million.

Slowly but surely, some platforms are embracing passkeys to provide an easy and more secure login alternative to passwords. The latest notable company to enable passkeys is X (formerly Twitter), though only for US-based users on iOS for now.

When you set up passkeys for an account, your device generates one public key and one private key. The private key stays on your device, while the shared public key is stored on the platform you want to sign into (in this case, X). Once you’re all set up, you can choose a passkey option instead of a password to log in to an X account. Your device will authenticate your identity using the public key. The same passkey will work across all devices that are signed into the same iCloud account.

Logging into a supported account is akin to unlocking your phone — you’ll simply use a PIN, fingerprint or face scan for authentication. You wont need to remember any passkeys and they’re broadly secure. For one thing, passkeys make phishing attacks far more difficult to pull off.

To set up a passkey in X, log into the iOS app with the account you’d like to use it on. Navigate to Your account > Settings and privacy > Security and account access > Security > Additional password protection. In this menu, select Passkey. You’ll then need to enter your password and follow the prompts.

If you change your mind and wish to delete your passkey, follow the same steps. After you enter your password, you’ll see the option to Delete a passkey.

X says it won’t require users to sign up for passkeys, but it’s not a bad idea to do so if you find other multi-factor authentication methods (such as inputting a code from an authenticator app cumbersome). Passkeys also effectively nullify X’s SMS-based two-factor authentication method, which the company has paywalled behind X Premium.

Apple has reportedly scaled back its automotive aspirations, at least for now. Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman says the company’s decade-old vehicle project has pivoted from planning a fully self-driving car to an EV more like Tesla’s. The so-called “Apple Car” is now projected to launch no earlier than 2028 — two years after the company’s last reported target date.

The car’s autonomous features have reportedly been downgraded from a Level 5 system (full automation) to a Level 4 system (full automation in some circumstances) — and now to a Level 2+ one (partial automation). That would mean it offers limited self-driving features like lane centering and braking / accelerating support — while still requiring the driver’s full attention.

Tesla’s Autopilot is categorized as Level 2. Level 2+ isn’t an official designation, but it’s sometimes used informally to describe a more advanced version of Level 2.

What Apple once envisioned as a car without a steering wheel or pedals — and perhaps having a remote command center ready to take over for a driver — now looks more like a Tesla-like market entrance.

Photo by Roberto Baldwin / Engadget

Bloomberg says Apple views the project’s downscaling internally as “a pivotal moment.” People familiar with Apple’s plans allegedly believe delivering the pared-down Apple Car with reduced expectations could make or break the entire project. “Either the company is finally able to deliver this product with reduced expectations or top executives may seriously reconsider the project’s existence,” Gurman wrote.

Apple has reportedly talked with potential manufacturing partners in Europe about the updated strategy. Bloomberg says the company still wants to offer a Level 4 autonomous system at some point, even as its debut is on track for something more grounded.

Bloomberg describes the meetings leading up to Apple’s decision as “frenzied,” involving CEO Tim Cook, the Apple board and project head Kevin Lynch. The latter took over after former leader Doug Field left in 2021. (Field was a former Tesla engineering head who now leads Ford’s EV wing.) The board reportedly pushed leadership about the car plan throughout 2023.

After starting well out of the blocks, self-driving cars didn’t have a great 2023. Cruise, GM’s robotaxi division, laid off 24 percent of its workforce in December. That came after one of the company’s vehicles pinned and dragged a pedestrian who had been hit by another car. The aftermath was swift, as the California DMV suspended Cruise’s driverless permits over safety concerns. On the brighter side, Waymo seems to be doing well. But government standards are the wild card in this equation, and perhaps Apple saw the wind blowing in a direction that warranted caution.

Apple’s Project Titan has been the subject of rumors since at least the mid-2010s. The company has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the initiative. It’s worked on “powertrains, self-driving hardware and software, car interiors and exteriors, and other key components,” according to Gurman. Given how many times the expensive project’s details have changed, don’t be surprised if they do so again.

It’s hard to believe that Artruria has anything left to add to Pigments at this point, but here we are. NAMM 2024 is just about ready to kick off, and Arturia is rolling out version five of its home-grown super synth. In the grand scheme of Pigments updates, this is a relatively minor one. But that’s not to say there aren’t new features worth getting excited about.

Perhaps the most important new feature is also the most invisible. Pigments finally supports multi-core processing, dramatically improving performance. It was never the biggest resource hog in the virtual synth space (the current champion in my experience is Moog’s Mariana), but it could be demanding depending on the patch. Now CPU usage in the standalone version sits at about 4 percent when idle on my M1 MacBook Pro. And I rarely see it climb above 20 percent.

Arturia

There are also changes to the stripped down Play view. It’s more consistent and a bit prettier now, with a new spectral visualizer. It doesn’t really change things in any practical way, and while I’ll admit that the main UI can seem a little busy to a newcomer, I never found it particularly difficult to navigate. Play view might be a welcome improvement for those who use Pigments in performance settings and rarely do deep sound design, but its not something I ever find myself switching over to.

If you’re not one for sound design and rely more on presets you’ll probably appreciate the 150 new ones that are included, not to mention the three new sound banks of 150 patches each, all of which are designed with MPE in mind. Pigments is one of a handful of high-profile soft synths out there with extensive MPE support, but its presets often don’t take full advantage. But now that MPE controllers are becoming more common, Arturia is making an effort to remedy that. Heck, maybe Arturia will announce an MPE controller of its own in the not too distant future.

Arturia

One of the more exciting upgrades is a new option in the utility engine (only on the second source) for audio input. That means you can process other instruments, or even your voice using Pigments’ effects. Chances are you already have access to a rich suite of effects in your DAW, but being able to seamlessly combine external audio with Pigments’ synth engines and process them through the same effects to help them meld together more seamlessly is a nice new source of timbres. I tested it out by running an Elektron Digitone through Pigments and was pretty happy with the results, but I definitely have a lot more exploring to do. If you’d rather stick to the built-in engines, there’s a selection of new samples and wavetables for you to explore as well.

The sequencer has also gotten some pretty significant upgrades. There’s a new dice icon for generating a random sequence which can be locked to a specific scale. And sequences can now be saved separately as their own presets, which you can lock to try the same sequence with multiple different sound presets. You can even feed the MIDI from the Pigments’ sequencer to other instruments. So if your DAW or synth of choice lacks generative features you can now just let Pigments do the work.

As usual, Pigments 5 is available as a free upgrade for current owners. If you haven’t taken the plunge yet, this is a pretty good time to do so. For a limited time you can get Pigments, plus the three new sound banks for $99. That’s quite a steal since Pigments is normally $199, and each of the sound banks (Beats Exploration, Expressive Explorations and Liquid Explorations) will be $30 at full price.

Hold onto your cabbages. Netflix just dropped a full trailer for its forthcoming live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender. It actually looks pretty cool, surprising fans who have been dreading a repeat of the disastrous 2010 film adaptation. The vibe is on point, calling to mind the source material, and the casting department looks to have done a fantastic job. Just look at Sokka, as portrayed by Ian Ousley.

This is the second trailer for the show, but the first was more of a teaser. The new trailer features two and a half minutes of footage, complete with jokes, action set-pieces and plenty of appearances by the franchise’s resident cutie-pies, the air bison Appa and winged lemur Momo. They are both CGI, but look pretty good to me.

You also get a deeper glimpse into both the world itself and the show’s primary characters. Gordon Courmier and Kiawentiio Tarbell look great as Aang and Katara, respectively. The trailer also boasts a shirtless Firelord Ozai, as played by Lost’s Daniel Dae Kim. Of course, it wouldn’t be Avatar without Prince Zuko and General Iroh, both of whom are featured prominently. Iroh is played by Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, fresh off his stint in a galaxy far, far away (he’s in a bunch of Star Wars shows.)

Netflix’s version of Avatar: The Last Airbender premieres with all episodes on February 22. Original series creators Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko aren’t involved with this adaptation, but are making an animated movie to further the adventures of Aang and the gang, in addition to more projects set in the Avatar universe.

As for Netflix, this is just the latest live-action adaptation of a pre-existing cartoon. The anime One Piece got a show earlier this year, preceded by Cowboy Bebop, Death Note, Fullmetal Alchemist and several more.

Samsung just announced that its self-repair program will now include certain home entertainment devices. The company has developed a range of step-by-step repair guides for various products in the category, in addition to providing genuine replacement parts and repair tools.

This program covers Samsung 2023 TVs, along with their remotes, and monitors released throughout the past year or so. Additionally, the self-repair program now includes the second-generation Freestyle projector and select soundbars. You can pick up replacement parts directly from the company.

Of course, the program doesn’t cover every repair issue. For TVs and monitors, the program only handles issues related to the picture, power, WiFi connection, sound and remote control. For soundbars, the program covers problems related to HDMI and optical connections, power, sound and wireless communication. According to Samsung, most of these issues can be fixed with common tools like a Phillips-head screwdriver.

The company’s been on something of a self-repair spree in recent months. Back in December, Samsung opened up the program to foldable devices, like the Galaxy Z Flip 5 and Z Fold 5. In the first part of 2023, the company added S22 and Galaxy Book devices to the program, joining pre-existing Galaxy products.

To that end, Samsung just announced a broader assortment of self-repair parts for devices already included in the program. This includes speakers, SIM trays, side keys, volume keys, display assemblies, back glass and charging ports for phones and tablets. Galaxy Book owners can also now conduct DIY repairs to fix the speakers and fan. Meanwhile, rival Apple doesn’t exactly have the best track record in the self-repair movement.