Friday’s top tech news: 1080p but better

Here’s a video of the long-delayed Tesla Cybertruck “off-roading” over some bushes in front of Tesla’s new engineering HQ in Palo Alto. Check out that giant windshield wiper! (For more on the Cybertruck’s wiper woes, click here.)

We’ve talked a little bit about how interest rates explain what’s going on in tech, but I really enjoyed this insightful newsletter about why Alexa is suddenly bothering you about how it can make shopping lists:

The other day was the final straw. Someone in my household made a request, and during the follow-on prompt, in a terrifying concert, my wife, my 3 and 6 year-olds, and me, all, in a tone that no parent should ever encourage for their kids, yelled, “Alexa, NO!!!!”

On the latest episode (you can find the audio feeds here) TC, Nilay, and Alex broke down this week’s Supreme Court hearings that could significantly impact the internet.

After a break and a lineup change, we also dig into the new fraud charges filed against Sam Bankman-Fried, Spotify’s AI DJ (I don’t trust it), the Microsoft vs. Sony battle over Activision, and Tesla’s new California engineering HQ.

Its 2021 shutdown followed this NYT article (called a “hit job” at the time by founder and CEO Carlos Watson) exposing the whole thing as a sham, reporting COO Samir Rao pretended to be a YouTube executive while on a call with potential investors.

Now Rao has pleaded guilty while Watson has been arrested, with prosecutors calling him a con man whose lies didn’t stop there:

Watson directed Ozy’s then-Chief Financial Officer (CFO) to send the bank a fake signed contract between Ozy and the cable network purporting to be for the second season. When the then-CFO refused, Rao, with Watson’s approval, sent the fake contract — which contained terms favorable to Ozy and a forged signature — to the bank, copying the then-CFO. 

Later that day, the then-CFO emailed Watson and Rao to say that she was resigning effective immediately. She explained, “this . . . is illegal. This is fraud. This is forging someone’s signature with the intent of getting an advance from a publicly traded bank.” She continued, “To be crystal clear, what you see as a measured risk — I see as a felony.”

From the newest edition of my Command Line newsletter, which just hit inboxes for paid subscribers:

Meta is planning another round of layoffs, I can unfortunately confirm. Leadership has been coy both internally and externally about what is coming, but I’m told that the current plan is to announce more cuts in March after last year’s performance bonuses are paid out. Given what I’ve heard about plans to cut certain orgs by double-digit percentages, I wouldn’t be surprised if the total number is somewhere in the ballpark of the last layoff, which was about 11,000 people or 13 percent of the company.