Hey guys, and welcome to the Week in Review (WiR), TechCrunch’s regular newsletter that recaps the past few days in tech.
Google’s annual enterprise-focused developer conference, Google Cloud Next, has been dominating the headlines — and we’ve had plenty of coverage from the event. But that wasn’t all that was going on (see: the spectacular eclipse).
Lorenzo wrote about how hackers stole over ~340,000 Social Security numbers from government consulting firm Greylock McKinnon Associates (GMA). It took GMA nine months to determine the extent of the breach and notify victims. so far, it is not clear why.
Elsewhere, Sarah had the story on Spotify’s personalized AI playlists, which allow users to create a playlist based on written prompts.
And Connie reported on the death of businessman Mahbod Moghadam, who rose to fame as the co-founder of Genius, the online music encyclopedia. Moghadam died at the age of 41 due to complications from a recurrent brain tumor.
A lot more happened. We recap it all in this edition of WiR — but first, a reminder to sign up to get the WiR newsletter delivered to your inbox every Saturday.
News
Tesla Price Drop: Tesla slashed the prices of unsold Model Y SUVs in the US by thousands of dollars in an effort to clear an unprecedented inventory build-up.
Snapchat turns off its solar system: Snapchat has tweaked a feature in its app that shows how ‘close’ you are to your friends after a report revealed it was increasing teenage anxiety.
Non-invasive anxiety therapy: Neurovalens, a startup developing technology to deliver non-invasive electrical stimulation of the brain and nervous system, won FDA approval thanks to an agency rule change in 2019 aimed at encouraging innovations targeting insomnia and anxiety.
Blade 3: At an event in London, Meta confirmed that it plans an initial release of Llama 3 – the next generation of the AI ​​model used to power chatbots and other applications – within the month.
Emulators in store: Apple has updated its App Store rules to allow emulators for retro console games globally an option to download titles.
AT&T breach: AT&T has begun notifying US government and regulatory authorities of a security incident after confirming that millions of customer records posted online last month were authentic.
Financing
Web3 and beauty: Kiki World, a beauty brand that uses web3 for co-creation and customer ownership, closed a $7 million round led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Analysis
Magnets on keyboards: Frederic writes about an interesting development in mechanical keyboard design: magnetic switches, which can quickly change the actuation point – the point during a key press where the switch registers a downward path.
WFH, here to stay: Working from home isn’t going away — even if some CEOs wish it were. Ron writes that most workers crave flexibility and work-life balance — who knew?
Podcasts
On Equity Focusing on Wednesday’s startups, the crew dug into Multiverse’s acquisition of Searchlight, the latest Guesty round, the Monad Labs transaction, and a new venture capital fund targeting growth rounds in Africa.
In the meantime, They were found which is presented Ben Christensen, founder and CEO of Cambium, a startup that is redefining the wood supply chain and repurposing previously wasted materials for use in new building projects.
Bonus round
Microsoft passwords exposed: Security researchers discovered an open and public database hosted on Microsoft’s Azure cloud service that stored internal information about Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Microsoft says it has fixed the bug.
