Google suspends hiring, Netflix loses nearly a million customers and Slack raises prices
Hey, folks! It's that time again. Another week has passed, and that means another issue of Week in Review – the newsletter where we recap the top stories to make TechCrunch's headlines over the past seven days. Sign up here!
The main story this week was about a new set of documents detailing how (and how often) the Department of Homeland Security uses third-party data brokers to obtain potentially sensitive location information while "dodging the legal process that government officials would typically need to go through." A privacy bill aptly named the "Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale" law is in the works that would require agencies to obtain a warrant for that data, but that's only the case. 'in its infancy.
other thingsWhat else were people reading on TechCrunch? Here are some of the most read articles this week:
Solar power for your balcony: Do you have a sunny balcony and want to switch to renewable energy? That's the idea behind these vertical solar panels designed to attach directly to a balcony railing. Mike Butcher sat down with WeDoSolar, a team founded by a Ukrainian entrepreneur to “wean Europe off Russian gas,” to hear their story.
Google Suspends Hiring: Last week, Google announced it was slowing its hiring pace for the second half of 2022; now the company says it will freeze hiring outright for the next few weeks "to allow teams to prioritize their roles and hiring plans for the remainder of the year."
Netflix Losing Customers: The Good News? Netflix lost fewer customers this quarter than expected. The bad news? It still lost nearly a million customers, which is "the largest quarterly loss in the company's history".
OpenAI expands access to DALL-E 2: DALL-E 2, OpenAI's tool for generating entirely new (and often stunningly good, albeit wildly surreal) images from a prompt textual, will be available to one million new users in the coming weeks. The company also announced pricing for the tool (so far free), and that basically boils down to "free if you just want to deal with it once in a while, but expect to pay if you use it a lot. ".
Tesla drops most of its bitcoins: Last year, Tesla announced that it had acquired $1.5 billion worth of bitcoins. Bitcoin's price has gone up and down (mostly down) since, and it looks like society wants to at least partially get out of that roller coaster; in its latest earnings report, Tesla revealed that it sold 75% of its bitcoin holdings.
Loosely Rising Prices: Inflation Happens to Everything! Milk! Meat! and now… Slack? This week, the company announced its first-ever price hike since its launch in 2014, raising the price per user by around 60-75 cents per month (depending on whether you pay monthly/annually). bit; if you're in smaller/less active Slack communities using the free plan, be aware that messages won't hang around as long.
sound stuffPodcasts podcasts podcasts!
Want a recap of everything that's been happening in the world of TC Podcasts lately? Check out Matt's weekly podcast roundup. Here's some of what happened:
On TechCrunch Live, Brian Heater talks to Ayanna H...
Hey, folks! It's that time again. Another week has passed, and that means another issue of Week in Review – the newsletter where we recap the top stories to make TechCrunch's headlines over the past seven days. Sign up here!
The main story this week was about a new set of documents detailing how (and how often) the Department of Homeland Security uses third-party data brokers to obtain potentially sensitive location information while "dodging the legal process that government officials would typically need to go through." A privacy bill aptly named the "Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale" law is in the works that would require agencies to obtain a warrant for that data, but that's only the case. 'in its infancy.
other thingsWhat else were people reading on TechCrunch? Here are some of the most read articles this week:
Solar power for your balcony: Do you have a sunny balcony and want to switch to renewable energy? That's the idea behind these vertical solar panels designed to attach directly to a balcony railing. Mike Butcher sat down with WeDoSolar, a team founded by a Ukrainian entrepreneur to “wean Europe off Russian gas,” to hear their story.
Google Suspends Hiring: Last week, Google announced it was slowing its hiring pace for the second half of 2022; now the company says it will freeze hiring outright for the next few weeks "to allow teams to prioritize their roles and hiring plans for the remainder of the year."
Netflix Losing Customers: The Good News? Netflix lost fewer customers this quarter than expected. The bad news? It still lost nearly a million customers, which is "the largest quarterly loss in the company's history".
OpenAI expands access to DALL-E 2: DALL-E 2, OpenAI's tool for generating entirely new (and often stunningly good, albeit wildly surreal) images from a prompt textual, will be available to one million new users in the coming weeks. The company also announced pricing for the tool (so far free), and that basically boils down to "free if you just want to deal with it once in a while, but expect to pay if you use it a lot. ".
Tesla drops most of its bitcoins: Last year, Tesla announced that it had acquired $1.5 billion worth of bitcoins. Bitcoin's price has gone up and down (mostly down) since, and it looks like society wants to at least partially get out of that roller coaster; in its latest earnings report, Tesla revealed that it sold 75% of its bitcoin holdings.
Loosely Rising Prices: Inflation Happens to Everything! Milk! Meat! and now… Slack? This week, the company announced its first-ever price hike since its launch in 2014, raising the price per user by around 60-75 cents per month (depending on whether you pay monthly/annually). bit; if you're in smaller/less active Slack communities using the free plan, be aware that messages won't hang around as long.
sound stuffPodcasts podcasts podcasts!
Want a recap of everything that's been happening in the world of TC Podcasts lately? Check out Matt's weekly podcast roundup. Here's some of what happened:
On TechCrunch Live, Brian Heater talks to Ayanna H...What's Your Reaction?
