Tuesday’s top tech news: a new era (or two) for Sonos

On November 21st, Elon Musk gathered Twitter’s remaining employees at its San Francisco headquarters to tell them that, after forcing out roughly two-thirds of the workforce in a matter of weeks, layoffs were over. He keeps laying people off anyway.

Dozens of Twitter employees across sales and engineering departments were laid off last week, including one of Musk’s direct reports who was managing engineering for Twitter’s ads business, according to company sources and social media posts from affected employees seen by The Verge. This means Musk has done at least three rounds of layoffs since his promise to stop doing them in November. Meanwhile, he has given a directive internally to revamp how ads are targeted in Twitter’s main feed within a week — part of his plan to fix what he has publically called “the worst ad relevance on Earth.” (The Information first reported that fresh cuts hit the sales team last week.)

Medical device maker AliveCor announced today that President Biden has upheld an International Trade Commission ruling that could result in a potential import ban on the Apple Watch over its EKG feature.

“We applaud President Biden for upholding the ITC’s ruling and holding Apple accountable for infringing the patents that underpin our industry-leading EKG technology,” AliveCor CEO Priya Abani said in a statement sent to The Verge.

Starry, an ISP that launched in 2016 with a focus on delivering home internet with wireless antennas instead of cables, has declared bankruptcy. In a press release, the company says that it intends to quickly restructure and that it’ll continue providing internet service in its “five core operating markets.” Those are Boston, New York City, Los Angeles, Denver, and Washington, DC.

The ISP has clearly been struggling over the past few months. In October 2022, it announced that it was laying off around 500 people, which amounted to about half of its staff. A few months later, Starry announced it was leaving Columbus, Ohio, in a bid to focus more on its five “core” markets. All the while, it was burning millions of dollars in cash, and its stock was dropping after a special purpose acquisition company-backed IPO in March — it started at around $10 a share but is now worth $0.012, down from last week when it was approximately $0.02 per share.

Microsoft has been trying to convince Sony that it will keep Call of Duty on PlayStation if its giant Activision acquisition is approved, but the companies haven’t come to an agreement over the terms of any potential deal. That’s clearly left Microsoft frustrated and looking for partners to counter concerns from regulators. Both Nvidia and Nintendo have stepped up to help Microsoft try to ease regulator concerns.

Speaking during a special press event in Brussels today, Microsoft president Brad Smith outlined the software giant’s position on the deal and described Sony as a “super dominant company” that is outselling Xbox consoles and opposes competition in the form of the Activision acquisition.

Microsoft is already loosening restrictions it recently placed on interactions with the Bing AI chatbot and said it’s going to start testing another option that lets users choose the tone of the chat, with options for Precise (shorter, more focused answers), Creative (longer and more chatty), or Balanced for a bit of both.

After repeated reports of strange behavior (like the time it split into multiple personalities and one of them offered us furry porn) and jailbreaks that did things like expose its secret rules, Microsoft set new rules last Friday that limited the number of interactions testers could have and how long they last. The limits cut down testers to five turns per session and a max of 50 per day.

Microsoft is bringing its Xbox PC games to Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud gaming service. Speaking at a press conference in Brussels today, Microsoft president Brad Smith announced the news as it seeks to convince EU regulators to approve its proposed Activision Blizzard acquisition.

“Microsoft will be bringing its Xbox games that play on PCs to Nvidia’s GeForce Now cloud gaming service,” said Smith in a press conference attended by The Verge. “We will also bring all of Activision Blizzard’s titles including Call of Duty to GeForce Now.”

Presidents Day is over, but there are some excellent deals still lingering as well as some fresh ones to accompany them. The Ikea Symfonisk picture frame speaker, which can disguise itself as wall art, is one of the most unusual smart speakers on the market, and it’s on sale for its lowest price of $194.99 ($65 off) direct from Ikea. This 16 x 22-inch speaker is part of Ikea’s partnership with Sonos, so it works natively with Sonos’ Wi-Fi-connected ecosystem. It has good sound quality for the money, about on par with the $219 Sonos One, but no Sonos speaker allows you to free up space on your furniture quite like the Symfonisk picture frame.

It may not be everyone’s style, especially if you’re not fond of the cable hanging from it, but the Symfonisk comes in black or white, and Ikea offers alternate artwork inserts for different looks. I personally own and use a Symfonisk picture frame in my home office, and of my handful of Sonos and Ikea speakers, it’s easily my favorite. Perhaps if I could figure out a way to “hack” in my own artwork, I’d dig it even more. Read our review.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) threw his support behind striking YouTube Music workers in a letter addressed to Google CEO Sundar Pichai Tuesday, as first reported by the Austin Chronicle.

Sanders’ support comes amid growing tensions between workers on YouTube Music’s Content Operations team and its parent company, Google. The nearly 60 workers are formally employed by Cognizant, a third-party contractor to Google. Last October, they filed for a union election with the 1,300-member Alphabet Workers Union (AWU). But shortly after that request was filed with the National Labor and Relations Board, Cognizant issued a new return-to-office mandate that organizers — and Sanders — argue amounts to an illegal union-busting strategy.

Last year, Elon Musk completed his acquisition of Twitter and promptly brought chaos to the company — laying off three-quarters of the staff and upending many long stable (if not always successful) parts of the business. So Twitter users began looking for a way out. Many migrated, even if only for a few days, to Mastodon, others moved to Instagram or Snap, and a lot of people declared Hive Social their new home.

Hive seemed like a cleaner, better version of Twitter, with an attractive app featuring a familiar interface — only it creaked under the sudden influx of new users. Then, the company announced it would need to shut down its servers for two weeks to fix security issues. The challenges Hive faced were enormous — as they would be for any social media company suddenly handling so many new users while wrestling with old security concerns. But Hive wasn’t a company of thousands of engineers. It only had a handful of employees.

The Beats Fit Pro are our favorite earbuds for exercise, and today, the company is adding three new color options to pick from. As leaked a few weeks ago, the latest choices include blue, coral pink, and neon yellow. All three will be available later this week on February 23rd for $199.99.

When they were originally released, I preferred the Beats Fit Pros over the first-generation AirPods Pros for a couple of reasons. They sounded better, and the flexible wing tips helped them stay put even during vigorous workouts. The second part remains true, but I think Apple leapfrogged the Fit Pro in audio quality with its second-gen AirPods Pro last year.

The first shots have been fired in a Supreme Court showdown over web platforms, terrorism, and Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Today, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Gonzales v. Google — one of two lawsuits that are likely to shape the future of the internet.

Gonzalez v. Google and Twitter v. Taamneh are a pair of lawsuits blaming platforms for facilitating Islamic State attacks. The court’s final ruling on these cases will determine web services’ liability for hosting illegal activity, particularly if they promote it with algorithmic recommendations.

Microsoft and Sony’s gaming chiefs are both preparing to meet with EU regulators today in a showdown over Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard. The closed-door hearing in Brussels will see Xbox chief Phil Spencer and other senior Microsoft executives argue the case for the $68.7 billion deal to proceed, with PlayStation chief Jim Ryan attending to voice Sony’s concerns over the deal.

It’s a pivotal moment for Microsoft’s proposed acquisition, which has already seen opposition from regulators in the UK and US. The FTC is suing Microsoft to block its Activision Blizzard purchase, while the CMA published its provisional findings of its investigation earlier this month, warning that the deal could harm UK gamers. The CMA has offered up possible remedies that include Microsoft being forced to sell off Activision Blizzard’s business associated with Call of Duty.

Call of Duty will be available to Nintendo players on the same day as Xbox with “full feature and content parity” under a 10-year agreement between the two platforms, Microsoft’s Brad Smith announced. The deal was announced in early December, but Smith is offering more details today ahead of a hearing in which Microsoft will argue its case with EU regulators to allow its $69 billion acquisition of Call of Duty publisher Activision Blizzard to proceed, Reuters reports.

As my colleague Tom Warren wrote back in December, the Nintendo deal is almost certainly part of Microsoft’s attempt to pressure Sony into accepting a similar offer and allay regulatory competition concerns. The PlayStation maker has emerged as one of the chief opponents of Microsoft’s proposed acquisition, saying it risks reducing competition by locking key franchises like Call of Duty to Xbox consoles and Microsoft services like Game Pass.

Sonos is continuing to finalize details for a pair of new smart speakers set to launch in the coming weeks, and The Verge has now obtained marketing images of the products and learned roughly how much they will cost. The spatial audio-focused Era 300 is expected to be priced in the ballpark of $450, making it less expensive than the company’s flagship Sonos Five. As such, the Five will likely remain part of Sonos’ lineup after the pending hardware announcements.

But the same cannot be said for the Sonos One, which is all but certain to be replaced by the upcoming Era 100. Sonos has discussed pricing that speaker around $250, a slight price increase compared to the $219 One. But customers should be gaining several improvements for the extra money.